ChangeThis
ChangeThis is our weekly series of essays from today's thought leaders that are meant to evoke conversation by bringing forth new and unique ideas.
ChangeThis
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Blog / ChangeThis
Guerrilla Marketing
By Jay Conrad Levinson
The Guerrilla Marketing Guru, Jay Conrad Levinson, serves up 93 (yes, 93) examples of unusual, quirky, and downright effective ways you can catch people's attention. Marketing your business or yourself doesn't have to boring, and if you're a guerrilla marketer, it better not be! You're guaranteed to leave this one with some ideas of your own.
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Blog / ChangeThis
6 Design Lessons From the Apple Store
By Porchlight
Say what you will about Apple computer, its products have drawn the kind of attention and spawned the kind of loyal (some might say rabid) customer base that other companies would kill for. Famous for its attention to detail, the company recently stepped outside of its comfort zone of hardware and software and built its first retail stores. The thought that went into each detail, both successful and unsuccessful, and how Apple transformed its brand identity into a physical space and experience, bears lessons for those developing all kinds of products and services.
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Digital Rights Management
By Cory Doctorow
"DRM punishes honest people!" ... "Without DRM, people will steal and artists won't get paid!" ... Usage of Digital Rights Management (DRM) has been hotly debated since a college student threatened to put an entire industry out of business with a little application he built in his spare time, Napster. In this transcript of a speech he gave at Microsoft's campus, Cory explains why DRM doesn't work, why DRM is bad for society, bad for business, bad for artists, and a bad move for Microsoft. Using Sony and Apple as examples of companies that are using DRM to *punish* consumers, he suggests Microsoft use the opportunity to once again champion users' rights. To follow our current path, Cory argues, is to stifle innovation and contradict the purpose of American copyright law: to promote the useful arts and sciences.
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Holy Avengers
By Jessica Stern
Lecturer at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Jessica spent six years interviewing religious terrorists in Pakistan, India, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Indonesia, and the U.S.. Along the way, she discovered what causes someone to become a religious zealot and how terrorist leaders cultivate followers with emotional, spiritual, and financial rewards. Using terrorist motivations as her basis, she explains why the war in Iraq could not have played out better for terrorists if bin Laden had scripted it himself. Read her manifesto to learn why.
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Blog / ChangeThis
The 10 Laws of the Grassroots
By Donna Brazile
Whether you're trying to elect a president or grow a non-profit, raise money, or awareness, Donna Brazile's 10 Laws of the Grassroots can help you mobilize the masses. Culling from lessons learned as the campaign manager for Gore 2000, Donna tells us that the future of campaigning has less to do with money and media noise and more about what worked in the past: invigorating the people. Download her manifesto to apply her principles.
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Why We Fight
By Porchlight
Rejecting both the left and the right, ERIC RAYMOND tells us, "Terrorists have made themselves outlaws from the moral community of mankind, to be dealt with as rabid dogs are." Read his Anti-Idiotarian manifesto.
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Why Diversity Rules
By Jerry Colonna
Diversity, that of personality and style, is critically undervalued by even the most egalitarian of organizations. JERRY COLONNA, one of Forbes' Best VCs in the Country and one of the 25 most generous young Americans according to Worth, shares a personal story about the value of misfits.
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Guru Red Manifesto
By Porchlight
Mike's rules may just spark a business revolution. Keep secrets! Don't tout your achievements! Stay under the radar. Don't take money from strangers. Be ruthless! MIKE SMOCK offers his collection of practical truths on honest American entrepreneurship. Build meaningful, profitable organizations that strive to attract customers, not investors, and build loyalty, not headcount.
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Unbalance of Power
By Porchlight
"What would Benjamin Franklin think of President Bush's assertion that he has the inherent power...to launch an invasion?" The U.S. is now in a permanent state of war, says Al Gore, former vice-president of the United States. Read his biting assessment of the Bush administration's trespass of our trust and our liberty.
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LESS
By Porchlight
Your customers don't want more, they want LESS! Kasanoff uses examples to point out the mind-twistingly frustrating customer experiences that have become commonplace in today's corporations. Improve your customers' lives: Clone your best people! Anticipate your customers' needs! Make a don't-do list! (Item #1, don't ask for your customers' account number three times in one call!) Be flexible! Fix your customers' problems before your customers even know they have them! And above all, simplify, simplify, simplify!
Categories: changethis
The original idea behind ChangeThis came from Seth Godin, and was built in the summer of 2004 by Amit Gupta, Catherine Hickey, Noah Weiss, Phoebe Espiritu, and Michelle Sriwongtong. In the summer of 2005, ChangeThis was turned over to 800-CEO-READ. In addition to selling and writing about books, they kept ChangeThis up and running as a standalone website for 14 years. In 2019, 800-CEO-READ became Porchlight, and we pulled ChangeThis together with the rest of our editorial content under the website you see now. We remain committed to the high-design quality and independent spirit of the original team that brought ChangeThis into the world.