Category Archives: Thinking Aloud

The Information Booth

I was meeting someone at Grand Central Terminal last week (and for you non-NY‘ers, Grand Central Station is a subway stop; GCT is the commuter train station).  We agreed to meet “at the clock” which everyone knows is the clock atop the information booth in the middle of the building.

The Seth Thomas Clock Company-manufactured clo...

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I was a few minutes early and as I was waiting, I overheard the person in the information booth as she dealt with the line of folks needing help.  What struck me wasn’t the speed with which she answered the questions (how the heck do you keep track of all those bus routes in your head?).  Instead, I was impressed with something else, something that is the yet as unfound grail in digital, but one which Siri and other voice interfaces may be on the way to finding.

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Time On Your Side

People who invest in land often justify it with the throw-away line that “it’s something no one is making any more of”. I guess if the laws of supply and demand hold true, that means over time the demand will outstrip the supply and the land is sold for a profit. The realities of the market recently, however, might point us toward investments in something else that no one is “making more of” and that’s time. OK, maybe that’s slightly misstated, but the point is that there are a finite number of hours in each day and the competition for each minute within those hours is huge and growing. So how does that help us as businesspeople? Continue reading

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Moby Dick

I was going to write about analytics this morning but I think we’ll save that for later this week (I can hear you all marking your calendars…). Instead, I see that today is the anniversary of the US release of Moby Dick 160 years ago. I’m sure some of you think it’s been making students miserable ever since.

Illustration from an early edition of Moby-Dick

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I have two thoughts – the first is that I find it odd that one of the great American novels was released in London a month before it came out in the US and the bad English reviews drove a harsh reception at home; the second is that it really is a business book in so many ways. Why? Continue reading

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