by Mark O'Brien | Dec 1, 2015
As every consummate consumer knows, the Friday after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday. The term is a marketing and public-relations abbreviation of the full name — Black-Eye Friday — which comes from all the shiners given and received in the shameless,...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 23, 2015
I’m noticing what seems to be a proliferation of a phenomenon called use cases. These seem to constitute vignettes or scenarios in which sellers of products or services illustrate various applications of said products or services — having already elucidated the...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 18, 2015
Even though many of our clients provide software and services to the insurance industry, it’s hard to know, sometimes, where the insurance industry stands on technology. It seems as if we go from one extreme to the other: There are posts about research reports touting...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 17, 2015
This past weekend, I attended the ninth annual Natural Living Expo in nearby Marlborough, Massachusetts. I have no idea why. Being at the Expo recalled the first time I walked into a hardcore comic-book shop. I was in search of the first two editions of the legendary...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 3, 2015
My colleague and LinkedIn connection, Derrick Martins, posted what he had to have known would be irresistible bait for a word-shark like me. More specifically, he angled for trouble when he published this piece — “Analytics and Big Data: The Skeptics vs. the...
by Mark O'Brien | Nov 2, 2015
I love dots. And I obsess about connecting them. That’s why I wonder when people obsess about other things, like this — “Leading CMOs Will Excel at Customer Obsession in 2016” — without connecting them to other things, like this: “5 Questions...
