Not Our Type

Not Our Type

For those of us who care about such things, it’s fascinating to note that keyboard design and composition have remained largely unchanged since Enrico Royal brought the first typewriter to the United States aboard Christopher Columbus’ flagship, Santa...
Marketing Double-Talk

Marketing Double-Talk

I left my last corporate job 20 years ago. Even then, I was aware of a phenomenon that continues to become more prevalent: Kleptus vocabularus — the stealing of a lexicon germane to one context for the purpose of deliberately misleading in another context. More...
New Year’s Resolutions

New Year’s Resolutions

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions. They’re as effective as a Band-Aid to the ski-jump guy: They won’t fix anything, nor will they have meaningful or lasting effects. Nevertheless, my New Year’s resolution is to propose some...
Best of What Breed?

Best of What Breed?

In the good old days (when were those?), companies differentiated themselves by purporting to be the best at what they did. One specialization. One concentration. One reliable deliverable or set thereof. That was then. This is now. Can a company that did one thing...
Do the Lighten Up*

Do the Lighten Up*

In 2004, the priest who presided over the high-school graduation of my son, Quinn, said this, acknowledging the myriad difficulties of the age in which the accidents of our births find us in existence: “We are blessed with challenges.” My first reaction...