Month: October 2012

If you scrolled through my contacts, the last thing you should expect to see is the cell phone number of my employer. However, for the 8500 Quicken Loans’ employees, having CEO Bill Emerson nested among the names of family and friends would be a little more common.

In many organizations, there often exists a growing anonymity as you climb the hierarchical ladder. Although this might be the easiest way of operating, it is doubtfully the most effective. From experience, I can say that the managers that I have been most motivated to work for were the same managers that made an effort to know me personally. While I may not have had their cell numbers, simply being able to put a name, face, and personality to the person that I was working for provided inclination for me to work harder and stay with the company.

Giving his number to employees is not Bill’s way of inviting his employees to afternoon brunch, but his way of shaping an organizational culture where the CEO isn’t some faceless figure, but an actual person that his employees can relate to. And by doing so, Bill might just be differentiating his company enough to entice people to work for him. As we say in Organizational Behaviour, “cool employers attract cool employees.”

To read more on Bill click here.

Image: Bill Emerson – Image from businessweek.com (http://images.businessweek.com/cms/2012-10-22/1019_billemerson_630x420.jpg)

The Walking Dead poster art – Image from cdn.ficgohub.com (http://cdn.ficgohub.com/ficmicrosites/ficmicrosites-en/media/365/hl_980x551.jpg)

Every idea needs its point of difference. And as unique as fighting zombies in a post-apocalyptic world can seem, re-killing the dead has become more and more popular, possibly even slowly wedging its way into the esteem aspect of some North American need hierarchies.

So how do zombie-based mediums stay different? Well, Fox’s The Walking Dead has created an Apple App that allows viewers to make predictions about the show’s outcomes while watching. Essentially, it’s like a live game of Clue where viewers make predictions about what character will make how many kills and with what weapon, and then compare their stats and scores with friends over Facebook and Twitter. It works through your Iphone, Ipod, and Ipad, using their mics to pick up bits of data encoded in the show’s audio track to sync the episode you are watching with the App.

Above all, the app is a link between consumers. Encouraging viewers to use their tablets while watching television, an act that 88% of Americans admit to doing, not only fully engages the audience, but also provides an interactive point of difference from other shows. In the same way that Lululemon ties customers together through health, Fox’s new App provides the same sort of community appeal, by supplying a free and unique service that ties customers to an existing paid product.

For the BBC news article click here.

RIM’s company Logo – Image from sync-blog.com  (http://www.sync-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/rim_logo_blue.jpg)

The once powerful technology company, RIM, has taken a hit in the past year. Its share price closed today (September 27th, 2012) at $6.96, under three times less than it was this time last year. Furthermore, although the company’s revenue is at a grand $2.9-billion, it is down 31% from the same point last year.

But how is this good for RIM? Well, although the technology giant is down from last year, it is doing better than most analysts expected. Its revenue is up from the first quarter and the less-than-expected disclosed losses bumped its share price up to $8.62 in after-hours trading.

From a non-expert standpoint, I don’t see RIM going bankrupt any time soon. RIM has too much invested in research and development and intellectual property to go under. In my mind, the company can follow one of two routes. Either, with the release of its Blackberry 10 line in 2013, RIM will slowly regain its position among the top mobile technology developers, or it will be bought out by another technology giant. In either case, this company just seems to be “too big to fail.” Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m going to invest my college fund in RIM, but I’d be surprised if its share went anywhere but up in the next five years.

To see the Globe and Mail article click here here.