innovation

Positioning is finding the right parking space inside the consumer__ mind and going for it before someone else takes it.

Make sure you test your brand story__ recipe with whomever you__e cooking it for.

Brands play in an exciting sandbox of symbolic meanings.

What is the __nce upon a time_ of your brand story? Ask yourself this: __ow does what I__ building help consumers close the gap between who they are today and who they want to be tomorrow?

Innovation and disruption are ideas that originated in the arena of business but which have since been applied to arenas whose values and goals are remote from the values and goals of business. People aren__ disk drives. Public schools, colleges and universities, churches, museums, and many hospitals, all of which have been subjected to disruptive innovation, have revenues and expenses and infrastructures, but they aren__ industries in the same way that manufacturers of hard-disk drives or truck engines or drygoods are industries. Journalism isn__ an industry in that sense, either.Doctors have obligations to their patients, teachers to their students, pastors to their congregations, curators to the public, and journalists to their readers--obligations that lie outside the realm of earnings, and are fundamentally different from the obligations that a business executive has to employees, partners, and investors. Historically, institutions like museums, hospitals, schools, and universities have been supported by patronage, donations made by individuals or funding from church or state. The press has generally supported itself by charging subscribers and selling advertising. (Underwriting by corporations and foundations is a funding source of more recent vintage.) Charging for admission, membership, subscriptions and, for some, earning profits are similarities these institutions have with businesses. Still, that doesn__ make them industries, which turn things into commodities and sell them for gain.

Entrepreneur, if you're going to start up, make sure you start up with excellence in mind

Entrepreneurs pay the price of a road less traveled, while everyone else takes the freeway and perpetually misses their own exit.

Life is made up of dots

Launching a brand is not for those with thin skin. It takes courage, intelligence and foresight.

Look at every __evolutionary_ brand or category killer, it had an app, or a feature, or a functionality, or a user experience nobody else at that point could offer. I refer to this as __he Killer App_ principle.

When you think there is nothing left to improve on, your business dies, for there is no shortage of innovators

Brands are either built on reruns or coming attractions. The future has no road map while the past does. Creating a brand that blazes new trails can sometimes be bumpy but will also allow you to be the first to discover something new, something meaningful and something that makes others ask, __hy didn__ we think of that?_ Be very scared of __ld tricks_ and build a spirit of innovation. It__ the __ld tricks_ that have the highest risk, not doing something bold.

The biggest mistake brands make are trying to __ell their stuff_ rather than clarifying what people are actually buying.

Social media isn__ a brand strategy. Social media is a channel. While it__ important for a brand to develop something to say, it__ more important to create something that will be heard.

If your brand is a cliché, your brand is losing sales and growth. Why? If your brand is using clichés to promote itself, you__e promoting your __ategory,_ not your unique, individual brand. Painful? Yes. Solvable? Absolutely.

It becomes a question of 'How do we convey our differentiation instantaneously?' and drive a wedge between any apparent (or assumed) sameness in the marketplace.

We know there are thousands of ways to solve any branding problem a company faces, yet the only valuable solutions are the effective ones. Doing something ineffective in half the time__r __ore efficiently_ or __ore economically___sn__ progress, but is instead bad business. Very bad business.

And while a brand is so much more than a company__ logo, the logo is one of the key ambassadors to any brand.