A Better Way to Map Brand Strategy

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A Better Way to Map Brand Strategy   Companies have long used perceptual mapping to understand how consumers feel about their brands relative to competitors’, to find gaps in the marketplace, and to develop brand positions. But the business value of these maps is limited because they fail to link a brand’s market position to business performance metrics such as pricing and sales. Other marketing tools measure brands on yardsticks such as market share, growth rate, and profitability but fail to take consumer perceptions into consideration. Continued here

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4 Domain Trends to Expect in 2023   Opt for creative names that are simple and evocative. Continued here

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The Good-Better-Best Approach to Pricing   Companies often crimp profits by using discounts to attract price-sensitive customers and by failing to give high-end customers reasons to spend more. A multitiered offering can use a stripped-down product (the “Good” option) to attract new customers, the existing product (“Better”) to keep current customers happy, and a feature-laden premium version (“Best”) to increase spending by customers who want more. Continued here

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Three Factors Limiting Growth in Multifamily Investments   Navigating a perfect storm of rising rates, log-jammed eviction rolls, and increasing costs. Continued here

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As an Entrepreneur, Shift Your Mindset   How to ignore precedent in a world that's obsessed with it. Continued here

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3 Types of Difficult Coworkers and How to Work with Them   Building a relationship with a difficult colleague may seem hard, but it’s a skill you can learn. In this piece, the author outlines three common archetypes of difficult coworkers — the pessimist, the passive-aggressive peer, and the know-it-all — and offers practical ways to manage your relationship with each of them. Sometimes trying something new, even something small, can shift the dynamic between you and a coworker who gets under your skin. Continued here

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How a Ketchup Bottle Changed My Business   Insights are all around us, if only we're willing to pay attention. Continued here

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We Overcommit Because We Don't Want to Disappoint. But Then We Disappoint Because We're Overcommitted   We live in a culture of “yes.” We don’t want to disappoint our bosses, colleagues, families, or friends, so we say “yes” as often as we can manage. But when we overcommit ourselves, we spend our time checking things off a list rather than actually creating value. Without the ability to say “no” to low-level tasks in order to say “yes” to groundbreaking ones, people stop innovating. Overcome this problem by instituting a value assessment system: Instead of saying “yes” or “no” to a project on a case-by-case basis, rate all new initiatives on a scale of 1 to 10. Using established criteria to force-rank initiatives will help your team make smarter decisions about which to pursue. After projects are greenlit, watch out for warning signs: When will we know if this doesn’t work, and how will we know? Finally, give people credit and kudos not just for the great ideas they pursued, but also for the middling ideas they passed up. Keep track and celebrate each “no” as a necessary step on the path to finding more world-changing ideas. Continued here

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S25

This Massive Scientific Discovery Sat Hidden in a Museum Drawer for Decades   The fossil was a prehistoric bird is called Pelagornis sandersi, and its wings stretched out twice as wide as those of the great albatross. Flora Lichtman: You are listening to Scientific American’s Science, Quickly, and I’m Flora Lichtman. Continued here

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Generative AI Could Be the Great Equalizer That Also Boosts the Global Economy   The AI revolution offers new possibilities for job creation, upskilling and boosting productivity. Continued here

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You're Doing Remote Teamwork Wrong   How to lead a productive (and happy!) team. Continued here

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Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie Is Preparing a Second Presidential Bid Next Week   The Garden State politician is due to take another run at the Oval Office. Here's a look at his business bona fides. Continued here

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How to Prepare for a Hot Summer   This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.As my colleague Matteo Wong noted earlier this month, a hotter-than-usual summer may await many Americans. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s temperature and precipitation outlook for June through August shows a significant chance of above-normal temperatures across much of the country. I spoke with NOAA experts about how these predictions are made, what to expect in the weeks and months to come, and how to stay safe in extreme heat. Continued here

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Climate Change Is Escalating California's Wildfires   A new analysis finds that dry air and record-breaking temperatures linked to climate change have led to more frequent severe fires in CaliforniaCLIMATEWIRE | Climate change is a primary driver of escalating wildfires in California, with extreme temperatures and dry air spawning more intense burning, according to a UCLA study released Tuesday. Continued here

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How Facebook groups help with pet rescue and adoption in India   Several groups on the platform have been facilitating the adoption of rescued animals in India. These groups, with tens of thousands of members, frequently coordinate fundraising for distressed animals, and actively discuss issues ranging from unethical breeding to pet abandonment.“Facebook groups are a medium to reach more people,” said Ashwini, a 30-year-old corporate employee and the moderator of the Pet Adoption in Bangalore group. “They help with adoption, rescue, and also to create awareness on the rights of animals.” Continued here

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Synthetic Morphology Lets Scientists Create New Life-Forms   The emerging field of synthetic morphology bends boundaries between natural and artificial lifeIn the collection of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University reside the mummified remains of a very peculiar creature. It has the shrunken head, torso and arms of a monkey, but from the waist down, it is a fish. This bizarre hybrid was bought by Moses Kimball, founder of the Boston Museum, from the family of a sea captain. Kimball leased it in 1842 to the impresario P. T. Barnum for his popular American Museum in New York City. Barnum claimed it was a mermaid found in Fiji. Continued here

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Calculations on the DeSantis Primary Bid   Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Last week I asked readers if they want Ron DeSantis’s Republican primary campaign to succeed or to fail. Continued here

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Boda boda riders in Kenya accuse BNPL companies of exploitative loans and bike theft   On May 11, Nairobi-based bike taxi driver Quincy Okoth breathed a sigh of relief. He had paid off the final installment for the loan of 235,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,699) that he had taken to buy a motorbike 14 months ago. To Okoth’s shock, the following day, he woke up to find the parking lot empty. His bike had been stolen. “Bro, I’m so sad right now,” tweeted Okoth, saying he had paid a deposit of 15,000 shillings and had been “struggling each day for the last 390 days to pay it off.” Okoth had taken a loan from Watu Africa, a pan-African buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm. Watu installs trackers in the bikes it finances to trace defaulters. But Okoth told Rest of World the company failed to help him after the theft, and only informed him that his bike’s tracker had been disabled at a petrol pump. “They said they would send someone. Up to today, no one has come to investigate,” he said. Continued here

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The most popular person in European street names is a woman   Show me your street names, and I’ll tell you how gender-imbalanced your society is — or, more likely, was. In Europe, that imbalance is ten to one: For every ten streets named after men, there’s only one named after a woman. The most popular person in European street names is a woman, though: the Virgin Mary, in a wide variety of appellations.So says Mapping Diversity, a project that analyzes representation in street names across Europe. Its researchers analyzed close to 146,000 streets in 30 major cities across 17 European countries. More than one-third (nearly 53,000) were named after people, with just under 48,000 named after men, and just under 4,800 after women — less than 10% of all streets named after people. (About 0.5% were named after people who were non-binary or of uncertain gender.) Continued here

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How to Take Better Breaks at Work, According to Research   Taking periodic work breaks throughout the day can boost well-being and performance, but far too few of us take them regularly — or take the most effective types. A systematic review of more than 80 studies on break-taking outlines some best practices for making the most of time away from our tasks, including where, when, and how. It also offers tips for managers and organizations to encourage their employees to take more beneficial and more frequent breaks. Continued here

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F1 Legend Toto Wolff on Leading Through Big Wins -- and Crushing Losses   “This year, I got it wrong on several occasions, and probably to an effect where my control freakishness and trying to solve it myself annoyed some of the people that were actually in charge of the science,” Wolff admits. “There are certain areas where I have to just dial myself back a little bit and trust.” Continued here

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Throw out all those black boxes and say hello to the software-defined car   One of the auto industry trends I'm most excited about these days is the move to clean-sheet designs for car platforms and architectures. For decades, features have accumulated like cruft in new vehicles: a box here to control the antilock brakes, a module there to run the cruise control radar, and so on. Now engineers and designers are rationalizing the way they go about building new models, taking advantage of much more powerful hardware to consolidate all those discrete functions into a small number of domain controllers. Continued here

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Jobs But Not Enough Workers? Give Skills Training a Try   A new report shows skill training can attract and retain frontline workers. Continued here

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Resilience is a Skill--Practice Is Key   Instead of waiting for adversity, prepare for it. Continued here

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Bud Light Just Announced a Donation to LGBTQ+ Businesses--but Experts Say It's Too Little, Too Late   In April, a campaign with a trans influencer led some customers to boycott the beer. The brand's response left others unsatisfied. Its latest move does little to heal its damaged reputation. Continued here

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What Is Blue Ocean Strategy -- and Where Does It Go Wrong?   HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy, case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business. What do Ralph Lauren, Salesforce.com, and Cirque du Soleil have in common?  Give up? They’re all brands that have successfully created “blue oceans” – uncontested, new markets where success is all about differentiation and lower costs. Blue ocean strategy is a landmark business idea, first introduced in 2004 right here at HBR. But its co-creator Renée Mauborgne says it’s not a guaranteed win. Today, we bring you a conversation about what can go wrong when you try to implement blue ocean strategy. You’ll learn about some of the common traps managers fall into – like trying to please existing customers OR focusing on adjacent market niches. AND why knowing who your non-customers are is as valuable as knowing your customers. This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in March 2015. And just a note — we recorded this by phone. While the audio quality isn’t great, the conversation is. I think you’ll enjoy it. Here it is. Continued here

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Fans' Expectations of Taylor Swift Are Chafing Against Reality   The singer’s collaboration with the rapper Ice Spice has launched a new debate about what she owes her ultra-devoted audience.Three songs have been playing every night before Taylor Swift has taken the stage on her current tour, and each one seems to convey a different message. One track is Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me,” a classic assertion of female independence. Another is Lady Gaga’s “Applause,” a pump-up jam in which a celebrity confesses her hunger for approval. Then there’s Ice Spice’s “In Ha Mood,” a recent hip-hop song whose presence shows, among other things, that Swift is paying attention to what’s hot in pop culture—an important fact to keep in mind when evaluating the controversy now brewing around her. Continued here

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Desperate taxi drivers in Argentina are finally joining Uber   In May, after 30 years of working as a taxi driver in Buenos Aires, 60-year-old Juan César signed up for Uber Taxi — an option on the ride-hailing app that books a city cab, instead of a private car. For Juan César, it felt like a betrayal. He told Rest of World he believed his fellow cabbies in Buenos Aires would feel the same way, given that they had been fighting against Uber for years. “There’s a culture against Uber,” Juan César told Rest of World, speaking under only his first name for fear of retaliation by his colleagues. His income, however, has increased greatly since he signed up. “I’m making more money than all my fellow taxi drivers. It’s blowing my mind,” he said. Continued here

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Longtermism: The future is vast - what does this mean for our own life?   The point of this text is not to predict how many people will ever live. What I learned from writing this post is that our future is potentially very, very big.If we keep each other safe – and protect ourselves from the risks that nature and we ourselves pose – we are only at the beginning of human history. Continued here

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The rise of highly sensitive parents   Ask any parent of young children whether they've ever felt overwhelmed, and the answer will probably be: yes. Even in the most relaxed households there can be days when the noise, mess and chaos seem to spiral out of control, leaving parents exhausted and irritated. Toddlers don't have an off button or a quiet voice.As normal and common as this feeling is, there's a personality trait that can make everyday family life more overwhelming for some parents than others. Roughly 20-30% of the population are classed as being a highly sensitive person (HSP), according do a 2018 research paper – a trait receiving greater recognition by scientists as well as the general public. This sensitivity can relate to smells, sights or sounds. People who have it may, for example, find it hard to cope with bright lights and loud noise, and can find chaotic situations very stressful. It can also involve a heightened awareness of other people's moods or feelings, and come with a particularly strong sense of empathy.  Continued here