How Startups Can Apply Design to Create Superior Customer Experiences

By Guest Author Soren Petersen and Paul Hagen For a startup to succeed, it must do more than simply develop a clever product or evolve features that mimic an incumbents’ value propositions. Rather, it must design customer experiences that substantially improve the value propositions by a magnitude. Why? Because new capabilities like cloud-based computing, digital distribution,

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Technology Balance Beam: Balancing Internal and Outsourced Tasks

A guest post by Shane Caniglia   Marketing requirements and customer experience are driving the necessity for innovation and speed in our ever-changing business environment of delivering financial education. Right now, there are many simultaneously interlocking elements in development: Web initiatives and analysis, data capture and management, social media, and mobile applications. I consider these 5

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Building Your Brand Experience for Hard Times (Part 1)

By guest authors Charles W. Bush and Kathy Hwang of 3Strand, a brand and business strategy consultancy. Designing a top-notch brand is nice to talk about and all, but when the economy tanks and we’re facing grim business decisions, is it even relevant to today’s conversation? Looking back through history, many of the most effective brands

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Good Things Happen to Good Companies

By Michael Kanazawa, Guest Author One of my business partners at Dissero, John Dare, has been a serial entrepreneur and has raised money from many of the top venture firms. One of the pieces of advice he still carries around today from all of those experiences came from one of the Partners of Kleiner Perkins

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Turn Logic into Magic (7)

By Dominique Trempont, Guest Author A strong brand generates strong differentiation, attentive and loyal customers, and proud employees. It incents creative people with the best ideas, products and services outside the company, to come team up with the strong brand and help them continue to leapfrog competitors. Strong brands tend to know what they are

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Turn Logic into Magic (6)

By Dominique Trempont, Guest Author A world that simply does not get “Magic” is high tech. With the glaring exceptions of Apple, Logitech, Blackberry, Motorola and possibly HP recently, it is a screaming desert. High tech does not understand brand, customer experience and design in general. Not even the beginning of a clue. It may

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Turn Logic into Magic (5)

By Dominique Trempont, Guest Author Design an end-to-end customer experience. Designers tend to favor right brain thinking. People’s perception of a brand is also very much about right brain thinking. That is where magic takes place (or not).

Turn Logic into Magic (4)

By Dominique Trempont, Guest Author The success of Starbucks is outstanding. Howard Schultz recognized and understood what is a cafe in Europe: a safe place to meet, a place not be alone, an engaging staff, conversation, good drinks and simple food. He designed the customer experience in detail, executed and scaled. He came up with

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