Serendipity! Ain't it grand?
I was just following up on an email from Jon Levy announcing that he's left HBS publishing to join Monitor Group. That rings a bell. Oh, sure, they're the guys who bought Global Business Network. I used to follow GBN's booklist suggestions religiously when Stewart Brand was choosing the tomes. It was so brilliant to send your customers books. Cheaper than brochures and so much more meaningful. Astute marketing.
This evening, I happened upon the Ideas section of Monitor's site. There's great stuff here. Click on the topics in the left column. I enjoyed reading Learning, Ecommerce, Management, Marketing, Strategy, and Technology.
Giving away ideas. It's akin to sending out books. It's the old "an informed customer is a better customer" strategy. Educating people to buy. Win-win-win. It will never go out of style.
Continuing my explorations, although I should either be in bed or vacuuming, I happened upon the current GBN Book Club site. Treasure Trove! A wonderful way to riff through ideas and pick what to explore more deeply.
When I attended college, back in the days when owning a typewriter made you high-tech, I was proud of my collection of time-saving paperback summaries like 100 American Plays or my mastery of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, the touchstone for locating reviews of books assigned for reading, written at the time the books were published. It's so easy now, just mousing one's way through the great ideas. Kids, when I was your age, I used to walk five miles through the snow just to get to the school bus. Now the Internet dumps it in your lap. (Well, perhaps I'm exaggerating a little. About the snow and the miles. Maybe it was bicycling a mile on the asphalt to school. Whatever. It was more arduous than your childhood, I assure you.)
