January 2011

About once a month, the partners at High Lantern Group gather a small list of interesting, provocative, and contrarian items that shed light on what makes great strategic positioning and thought leadership. We are happy to share them with you – and hear from you about ideas worth sharing.

Six Ideas That Made Us Think

Six Ideas That Made Us Think

1. Is Search the Future of Content?

Must-read Bloomberg Businessweek piece on how one company is dominating the world of supplying the online world with new content.  Fascinating – and depressing:

Demand Media is the fastest-spinning mill of all, currently producing more than 5,000 articles and videos for the Internet every day on topics often selected by computers. A decentralized horde of 13,000 freelance writers, editors, and producers earn minimal fees (around $15 for writing an article of a few hundred words) to keep the production line humming. The resulting stories are distributed across Demand-owned websites such as eHow.com, Answerbag.com, or Livestrong.com and are hyper-engineered by specialists to appear at the top of search engine results for a vast number of queries.

2. Statistics Can Be the Best Arguments

Sometimes a single statistic is the most powerful argument.  For example, this stat leaps out from an interview with criminology professor Mark Kleiman:

One third of all the homicides in the United States are committed either in a bar or within 50 feet of the door.

3.  Getting the Title Right

Because some people never get beyond the title,  it is worth getting the right one:

First, find the simplest title not yet taken for your papers.  One-word titles are the best.  Second, before you get started on a paper, think about the title.  If you can’t come up with a short title for it, then it’s probably not worth writing.

4.  How to Respond to Dumb Letters

Back in the 1970s, the Cleveland Browns organization set the standard for how to respond to dumb letters.  Unlikely to be surpassed.  Ever.

5.  Jim Cramer as Motivator

Investor James Altucher, who used to write for thestreet.com, ignores stock picking and instead offers 10 insightful things he learned about Jim Cramer’s business skills.  Valuable observations, including this:

He doesn’t know every stock but he does know everything he needs to know for THAT DAY.  This doesn’t mean you should know everything about stocks. But whatever field I’ve been in I’ve always tried to know everything about the competition, the technology, the subtleties and the nuances of the field.

6.  Larry Page and the Virtues of Laziness

As Larry Page prepares to take the helm at Google,  his 2009 commencement speech at the University of Michigan is worth re-reading:

Technology and especially the internet can really help you be lazy. Lazy? What I mean is a group of three people can write software that millions can use and enjoy. Can three people answer the phone a million times a day? Find the leverage in the world, so you can be more lazy!

For more information about High Lantern Group, please visit our website at www.highlanterngroup.com

Unsubscribe |  Profile Center