Category: Behavior
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Experience Stacks: Top Gun, Star Trek, Spider-Man
What are Experience Stacks? And why is it important for businesses and customers for a wide range of industries to understand them? Many companies refer to their selection and arrangement of software and hardware as a “Tech Stack” that focuses on the creation, management, production, and tracking of business activities. On the reception side, we…
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Why it’s so hard to think
Digital technologies crowd out our analog ability to make connections. That’s a problem since analogical thinking is what makes us human. In the middle of the night, Sting’s song “Moon over Bourbon Street” went through my head. I hadn’t thought of it in years, maybe decades. I love Sting, but I hadn’t listened to his…
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Nothing is ever meant to be
The difference between stories and real life is that stories make sense. We humans love stories. We love to tell stories, and we love to consume stories even more. “Tell me a story!” little children command. Whether our stories are sweeping novels like Anna Karenina, a sweeping collection of TV series like more than a half…
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Analog Lives in a Digital World
What makes things special, memorable, satisfying often has less to do with the things themselves than with the context where we experience them. Some mysteries are eternal. If the Coyote can afford all those expensive items sold by the Acme Company, then why doesn’t he just visit a desert KFC to eat plumper poultry than…
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Trust is Analog
A handshake is worth a thousand Zoom calls. This has implications for going back to the office, building corporate culture, and democracy. You’re on a short elevator ride with one other person. Neither of you speak, but you get a lot of information. Does the other person politely keep a distance? Make momentary eye contact?…
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Apple, Alaska Airlines, Taco Bell & Sweetgreen: the Trouble with Subscriptions
Two recent articles caught my eye about a new vogue for subscriptions for products that are typically transactional. The first has a misleading title: “Apple Is Working on a Hardware Subscription Service for iPhones” (Bloomberg, March 24th) is misleading because the planned service actually covers all Apple hardware software. In last Tuesday’s episode of The…
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The Nature of Human Thought: “Stop Trying to Make ‘Fetch’ Happen.”
One of the enduring mysteries of everyday cognitive life is why some things pop into our minds. Today’s example for me happened while I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes. Out of nowhere the line, “Gretchen, stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen. It’s not going to happen” from the classic movie Mean Girls came to…