What once seemed to many like a problem for the next generation has arrived with urgency, everywhere: the climate crisis is here. Virtually all corporations from banks to CPG are pledging to take action; many of them are participating in Climate Week NYC right now during the UN General Assembly. On an individual level, we’re …
Exploring pathways to impact
I’m always curious how people end up in the careers they do. My own trajectory has been far from a straight line narrative, going back and forth between digital strategy and marketing roles, private and nonprofit sectors. I have had one clear career through line: belief in the power of technology to convey groundbreaking ideas …
COVID as catalyst for digital transformation
It’s both hard and easy to believe that the sentiment “Digital will become the core” still attracts a lot of attention in 2020. It’s hard to believe: Isn’t that the pivot we have all been making for more than twenty years? But it’s easy to believe when we experience interactions with enterprise companies that are …
AI summit takeaways
For several years I’ve served on the business council for Glasswing, an early stage venture firm focused on AI and frontier tech. Working with Glasswing has broadened my knowledge of where AI is currently viable, particularly its application under the hood in marketing technology. Three takeaways from their recent annual summit at MIT Media Lab: …
Talking digital problem solving with Postlight
Fun to do this Track Changes podcast with the Postlight team. In this episode, Paul Ford and Rich Ziade mock a bunch of CxO titles, and then dig in on the hard slog of marketing knowledge and learning. In the end, I make the case for closer collaboration between marketing and product teams.
New from Pew: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans
Almost every event I’ve been to lately — whether it’s within the marketing, technology, or social entrepreneurship communities — raises both the inevitability and the risks of artificial intelligence. There’s a lot of excitement and trepidation, and early consideration about where the responsibility for ethical AI resides. A new Pew report captures some of those …
Translating startup-speak for the corporate buyer
Startups salivate at the prospect of entering the enterprise — and for good reason. The enterprise is rife with legacy systems and circuitous processes that frustrate employees and hinder results — and the startup has just the perfect product to fix the problem. Too often though, the pitch to the enterprise falls flat …
How to build a cross-team content engine
Bringing teams together to work on enterprise content products requires intentional and consistent effort. It’s hard to get people sitting in different silos to collaborate, and it’s crucial to gain executive buy-in for an investment in content strategy. Confab 2018 invited me to share some of the approaches I’ve used to break down barriers and …
The care and feeding of your chatbot: Conversational interfaces demand a content strategy
Suddenly, we’re surrounded. From internet-enabled speakers to just-in-time text messages to AI-powered bots of all flavors, we have daily interactions through conversational user interactions. And as with any technology in its infancy, many of those interactions are flawed. How do you begin to create well-designed conversational interactions that take into account both the intent and context?
Lessons from Boise: What colleges can teach us about fostering innovation
Students are natural idea generators. Exposed to new concepts, people, and settings, students are in a learning mindset and readily apply their minds to solving problems on campus, locally, and even globally. But how can campuses build on this natural inclination to help students take their ideas a step further?