I see an insidious problem in the marketing of weddings as 'the happiest day of your life.' The pressure that is placed upon this event to be the alpha and omega of your entire existence makes it, I think, into a kind of nuptial New Year's Eve, and w...
Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at...
If we don't like rent control, we ought to oppose it on political and social grounds - and not just by arguing that, thanks to smartphones and social networks, we can create new, more efficient markets for matching short-term renters with tenants.
We face the most compelling era of mankind: exponential growth of new technologies, cheaper electronic devices and the globalization of knowledge, commerce, and ideas along with the rapid growth of emerging markets of colossal sizes will generate the...
We said in our 21st Century Party paper there are 61 mosaic groups, which the market research people use as different socio-economic categories and half of our members come from just five of those groups and that is very narrow - too narrow.
Society says I'm shy, when I knew I lack confidence. When I became outspoken, they say I'm "too known". I'm now a digital marketer, but society says I'm a keyboard warrior. I love the essence of humanity, but not people
The biggest challenge of being a pastry chef is that, unlike other types of chefs, you can't throw things together at a farmer's market. When you're working with baking powder and a formula, you have to be exact. If not, things can go wrong.
I've always viewed myself as a brand. When I started 10 years ago, that was very controversial. 'Marketing' and 'PR' were dirty words for the literary world, but that has changed. Once the book is finished, I want as many people as possible to read i...
If you want religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity. I am certain there must be a patent American article on the market which will suit you far better, but I can't give any advice on it.
I took the obligatory economics classes in school, but I've long been a fan of the Milton Friedman philosophy and its libertarian bent: One must be free to do what one wants to do, as long as you don't harm another. This is the seminal treatise on fr...
When businesses go through hard times, through down markets, what do they do is they challenge every basic assumption of how they operate. They innovate. They create disruption for a while that leads them to even greater heights when the economy turn...
Cloud computing offers individuals access to data and applications from nearly any point of access to the Internet, offers businesses a whole new way to cut costs for technical infrastructure, and offers big computer companies a potentially giant mar...
I'll always understand the Schadenfreude aspect to short-selling. I get that no one will always like it. I'm also convinced to the deepest part of my bones that short-selling plays the role of real-time financial watchdog. It's one of the few checks ...
The easiest way to figure out who the customer is in an online space is to figure out who is paying for the thing. Usually, the people paying are the customers. So on Facebook, the people paying are marketers. That makes them the customers. And it me...
No matter how invasive the technologies at their disposal, marketers and pollsters never come to terms with the living process through which people choose products or candidates; they are looking at what people just bought or thought, and making calc...
It's important for us to certainly cast some Christian actors who can speak to our audience when we market the films, but obviously we don't discriminate. So our crew and our cast, the beliefs don't really matter.
It's sort of a meat market, the whole awards thing, and I don't think you can predict it anymore - who's going to like what you've done, if it's worthy or not. And hopefully, that's not why you make a film, because if you're distracted by that, or on...
This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors ...
I'm not as successful as Pixar or Dreamworks, and that is disappointing to me, because I think my films are as valid as a Pixar film. I think there's an audience for my films. I know there's a market for someone like Quentin Tarantino, who basically ...
Owning a variety of asset classes means that some part of your portfolio will be doing well when the cyclical turmoil arises. A broadly diversified portfolio includes large capitalization stocks, small cap, emerging markets, fixed income, real estate...
A NASA-funded study estimates that if the price of a ticket to space approached $100,000, close to a million people would buy one. That's a $100 billion industry. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen gave me $20 million in startup funding to go after that ...
