The next time you have to explain what "Web 2.0" or "social media" is to someone...just forward them the link to this...

Context is the 800-pound gorilla in every conversation about the value,
effectiveness, and education that a successful online marketing campaign can
provide. It's very important to track how people view something, but you can't
separate the user's eye movement from the fact he's actively pursuing something.
That he's in pursuit is what makes context such a factor in understanding
value.

If you read all the time what other people have done you will think the way they thought. If you want to think new thoughts that are different, then do what a lot of creative people do - get the problem reasonably clear and then refuse to look at any answers until you've thought the problem through carefully how you would do it, how you could slightly change the problem to be the correct one. So yes, you need to keep up. You need to keep up more to find out what the problems are than to read to find the solutions. Richard Hamming, Bellcore, 1986

The reason we hear about google and apple and jetblue and starbucks all the time is that these are poster children for re-architecting existing business models into something very different. The marketing is not slapped on. Starbucks is not Dunkin Donuts with a clever sign. If Dunkin Donuts goes out to hire a "senior marketer" and gives that person traditional senior marketer duties, not much is going to change.

From Dan Pink's (contributing editor at Wired Magazine, author of the best-selling book, Free Agent Nation) 2004 commencement address at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida:

" ... A few years ago, a man named Robert Lutz took over a top job at General Motors. Now, Bob Lutz is in many ways a typical auto executive. He's a white-haired, white man in his 70s -- a former Marine. But when a reporter asked him how his approach would differ from that of his predecessors, here's what he said:

'It's more right brain. I see us being in the art business. Art, entertainment and mobile sculpture, which, coincidentally, also happens to provide transportation.'

Let those words settle in for a moment. The art business. General Motors -- General Motors! -- says it's in the art business.

... With applications climbing and ever more arts grads occupying key corporate positions, the rules have changed: the MFA is the new MBA. In a world of breathtaking material abundance, in which General Motors is in the art business, in which what used to be good jobs are going overseas or being done by computers, in which people are yearning for beauty, uplift, and meaning, an arts degree is the most valuable degree a person can have."

Read the whole thing in PDF format here.

(After looking at the new 2005-2006 lineup, GM might actually have their act together. Saturn SKY and Pontiac Solstice are two great examples.)

"First, the students are taught everything they need to know to manage a company from 1990, and second, they are taken out of the real world for two years while the rest of us race as fast as we possibly can."