by Joe Johnson
Gift giving season is upon us. You’ve finished all your shopping, right? Right?! Okay, so maybe not. But it’s not too late to find the perfect gift.
Musing over some spice cookies and mulled wine, it struck me that excellent gift shopping shares a lot of parallels with excellent customer research, which makes me a bit of an expert on the subject.
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by Alo Mukerji
Agile practices are everywhere now. Like the rest of the tech world, I have welcomed the many benefits that practicing Agile offers.
But there’s something missing in all the conversations about Agile: The impact it has not on development but on product management. Specifically, what does it mean for a product manager and how the requirements of that role may have changed due to Agile practices.
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by Greg Garson
When you take a step back and evaluate BofA’s current situation, you could potentially have sympathy for them. The failing mortgage business (thank you, Countrywide); the under-performing investment business (thank you, Merrill Lynch); the Durbin amendment (over $2 billion in lost interchange fees) and the Reg E (another couple of billion in lost overdraft fees) (thank you, US government). It is hard to be the big. Is BofA the misunderstood Frankenstein monster stalked by the town’s folk?
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By Nitzan Shaer
Last week, High Start Group partnered with Allen & Gerritsen to host a half day summit on the future of Location Based Marketing: GEOM2.
The event was part of FutureM week held by MITX. GEOM2 was a uniqe opportunity to discuss insights about the ground breaking opportunities mobile location based services can offer today and over the next couple of years. [Read the rest of this entry...]
By Janet Muto
I recently attended a seminar on SaaS best practices. As an executive in the early days of SaaS, I wasn’t surprised by any of the lessons.
However, one speaker, Skip Besthoff, from Castile Ventures noted that “service is in the SaaS title” and that customer experience is everything.
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By Nitzan Shaer
These days there are few opportunities to reach across cultural divides in the Middle East. However, Babson Professor Ted Grossman’s program: “Bridging the Cultural Divide Through Entrepreneurship” provides a rare opportunity for young people from the region to leverage their entrepreneurial spirit to bridge such divides. This year, overcoming considerable roadblocks, Professor Grossman brought together 44 Israeli and Palestinian students to take part in this remarkable program, here in Boston.
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by Janet Muto
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an innovation junky. I love being around it, participating in it, and pushing innovation myself. It’s why I do what I do. That’s why I was so excited to be on the panel at The BootCamp Ventures Israel Innovation Road Trip in Boston a few weeks ago.
We participated in a flurry of presentations from companies looking to innovate. They gave us their 30-second elevator pitches, deeper 6-minute presentations. And then the panelists provided on-the-spot feedback.
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The MIT/ Stanford Venture Lab event Beyond Bricks and Clicks saw a great discussion earlier this week on the opportunities and innovations in mobile commerce for retailers, banks, startups, and brands. Most importantly, what it all means for consumers. It was yet another sold-out event for VLAB, attracting entrepreneurs and investors from all across the valley.
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by Greg Garson
The Durbin Amendment passed a few days ago and will be enacted on July 21, 2011. Senator Durbin was thinking about consumers when he envisioned this law. He wanted to take the money out of the hands of the “evil” banks and give it to the consumers. So, starting in July we’ll all see an annual refund of about $110 right? I mean, that’s our individual share of the $12 billion in revenue the banks are giving back. So we’ll all be able to have a nice meal because Durbin is so magnanimous, right? Think again. Consumers won’t see anything like that.
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by Nitzan Shaer
You may not think about innovation all the time. But it’s surrounding us—in the office, on the phone, in the piles of emails you click through every day. Somewhere in there you’ll find innovation. But just what is innovation and what are some of the most innovative ideas around today? There’s no better place to get the answer than TED.com. It’s one of my favourite web destinations. That’s why I set aside some time to find the 10 best TED talks on innovation.
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