Month: May 2008

business, career, corporation, education, success

How to Be Smarter

Christa Avampato

The definition of intelligence, its measurement, and the belief that it relies more heavily on nature or nurture are all up for debate. In discussions on intelligence, there does seem to be general agreement that there are steps any person can take to make the most of the intelligence they have. 

The New York Times ran an article this week detailing some of the methods of maximizing intelligence: exercise, a pursuit of lifelong learning, sufficient sleep, and challenging ourselves with riddles, puzzles, and mind-bending games. Though my favorite piece of the article involves its reference to the list Conde Nast released of the 73 top brains in business. And you’d think that list would be chocked full of Ivy-educated, fabulously wealthy finance types. And there are some of the those, though their number is surprisingly, and pleasantly, few.

The majority of Conde Nast’s list is dominated by people who go out of their way to think different, be individuals, people who recognize that differentiation, not assimilation, is the way forward in the world of business. The list includes a collection of people who don’t make headline news, but quietly, in their own way are simultaneously changing the world and building wildly successful companies. 

This list gives us some profound food for thought: our education focuses on test achievement, elite school acceptances, and hitting numerical thresholds. Do we need to have a metric in place in our education system that captures a sense of confidence, an ability to look at challenges with new eyes, and have the courage to forge ahead against adversity, naysayers, and others who wish we’d just “be like everyone else”? Current business successes would suggest that the idea is worthy of consideration. 

creativity, innovation, technology

Bulbstorm.com – a meeting space for innovators

Christa Avampato

You have a great idea for a product, or a service, or a business model, and you need some honest, credible feedback. And that doesn’t mean calling Aunt Sally or your best friend or chatting about it with your neighbor. They know you’re brilliant and innovative and achieve everything you set your mind to. But you have this nagging suspicion that you need to get advice from people who don’t know a thing about you, and self-identify as innovators. Your prayer to the innovation spirits has been answered and its name is http://www.bulbstorm.com.


Though still in beta, I suggest signing up to be kept up-to-date on its progress, and to possibly score a place in the beta test. Because everything is so well documented on Bulbstorm, with witnesses, your idea will not be stolen, and the service will connect you to investors and customers who are interested in working with you, along with fellow innovators who can give you feedback and inspiration. 


We’ve entered what I believe historians will regard as the Age of Design. And you might as well take your rightful place among the ranks of those who are advancing our society forward with creative thinking. I look forward to interacting with you on Bulbstorm, and sharing ideas! 

business, career, culture

Why a corporate culture matters and needs tending

Christa Avampato

No matter how much the culture of a company is discussed during recruiting events or in media, mainstream or otherwise, I am always amazed by how few companies actually actively measure it. I consider the quality of a company’s culture to be as critical, if not more so, that any other business metric. They track sales, margin, expense rate, and investment. I’ve even heard some executives say that those are the only four numbers that a CEO can actively manage. 


But what about culture? It increases retention time, which certainly lowers expense rate. Dollar for dollar,  investing in retaining top talent is the best investment a company can make. And I am a firm believer in the idea that if a company cares for its talent, its talent will care for its customers, increasing sales and margin. If looked at that way, a CEO could possibly focus a sizable chunk of attention on culture and do very well. If he or she takes care of the culture, the culture will take care of the talent, and the other numbers will fall into line.     


The Financial Post ran an interesting article on culture this past week, and it’s worth the short read. It discusses two companies, Maple Leaf and Starbucks Canada, who actively measure culture and adjust accordingly to preserve its integrity. Managing culture is no easy undertaking, though from the perspective of these two companies, the effort pays off handsomely. 


The picture above can be found at: http://grivina.ru/i/ill/049.jpg

child, children, family, happiness, kids

The wonder of toes

Christa Avampato

My niece, Lorelei, has recently discovered the wonder of her toes, timed just after she discovered the excitement of rolling over all on her own. It’s the little things. I was considering this during my slog to work this morning, inching along in the rain for an hour and 15 minutes. And I thought about Lorelei playing her little game of rolling over from side to side and then getting those tiny wiggling toes into her mouth. She is excited about the discovery of life. And that made me wiggle my toes a bit too, and smile for being able to do so.

That’s the wonder of children – everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, is an exciting adventure to them. The gift of fresh eyes. So whether we have kids of our own, or in our family, or have friends with kids, or volunteer with kids, or have a job that involves kids, it is a gift to be around them. They’re teaching us, at every moment, about happiness and contentment and the magic that is all around us.

business, corporation, design, marketing

The goal of all designers: create conversations

Christa Avampato

Tim Lebrecht at frogDesign wrote a post earlier this week about the earliest stage of ideation. In this age of user-generated design, he questions whether designers are really going about their work in the correct way. He challenges designers of all levels to consider that whatever the end product of their design, they should seek to create conversation.

I was a bit confused by this for a time until I considered an art exhibit I saw a few years ago at the Phillips Collection in DC. The exhibit featured works by Joan Miro and Alexander Calder. The created their art as a conversation; this is largely because they did not have a common fluent language. Miro would create a piece; Calder would answer it, and then add another idea for Miro to comment on. And so it went, for many, many years. Across decades, across oceans. They transcended language with design.

So what if companies like Coca Cola or Target took the design POV that they were creating conversations with their customers, rather than creating products? How much richer and more relevant could their designs be? How much loyalty to their brands could they generate?

Pictured above is Joan Miro’s “Garden”

economy, environment, happiness, travel

Gross National Happiness (GNH)

Christa Avampato

I’m starting to feel panic at the pump. In Rhode Island this past weekend, I paid $3.99 for a gallon of gas. When I arrived home, I found this week’s issue of Business Week waiting for me. Some energy sector analysts are predicting $200 / barrel oil by the fall of this year. Wal-mart and Costco are placing limits on the amount of rice any one customer can buy. Food bills, air fares, electricity prices are all climbing. And then there’s the real estate market.


On my long drive home from work, I often consider whether or not we did this to ourselves. Our consumption level is frighteningly high. In this country we seem unable to be happy with what we’ve got – it’s embedded in us, as Americans, that we always strive for more. 


While we are obsessed with measuring GDP, other nations in the world have different benchmarks. The country of Bhutan considers GNH, Gross National Happiness, an indicator of societal well-being. A while back I found the following definition and history of the term GNH:


“Coined by Bhutan’s King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, Gross National Happiness (GNH) measures actual well-being of a country’s citizens rather than consumption, accounting more fully for social, human and environmental realities. Its premise is that basic happiness can be measured since it pertains to quality of nutrition, housing, education, health care and community life. By contrast, the conventional concept of Gross National Product (GNP) measures only the sum total of material production and exchange in any country:


Promotion of equitable and sustainable socio-economic development

Preservation and promotion of cultural values

Conservation of the natural environment

Establishment of good governance    


At the GNH International Conference in 2004, participants adopted a declaration that said that the facilitation of GNH should be accompanied by “the development of indicators that address human physical and emotional well-being. They must be capable of use for self-evaluation, so that individuals and groups may gauge their progress in the attainment of happiness. In addition, indicators should facilitate full accountability, good governance, and socially constructive business practices, both in day-to-day life and in long-range policies and activities.”   


So while we weather this latest economic situation, the consideration of alternate indicators is at least worth a few moments of time. After all, if you’re going to wait out a storm, you might as well have some reading material that gives you hope for a better tomorrow. Learn more at http://www.grossinternationalhappiness.org


The images above can be found at http://www.transitionsabroad.com/publications/magazine/0411/Bhutan_Monastery.jpg

environment, green, travel

Life dream: Rwanda

Christa Avampato

Real Simple Magazine recently asked their readers to write in with the top 3 things on their life’s “must-do” list. I needed to think long and hard about this and I came up with the following short list, though there are many more things I’d love to do:
1.) Scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef 
2.) Learn to play the piano
3.) See the mountain gorillas in Rwanda

Runners-up:
4.) Speak another language fluently
5.) Visit Sicily with someone I love
6.) Buy a home

Taking the Rwanda “must-do”, I did a bit of research after hearing the tail end of a story about mountain gorillas on NPR. Many scientists have traveled to Rwanda to study the animals, and many conservation groups are working round the clock to save them and their habitat, in the face of poachers and a never-ending stream of wars in that nation. The gorillas grew used to seeing people, though once the genocide grew rampant throughout Rwanda, scientists withdrew from their work with the gorillas. The populations of the animals has been falling ever since, until now. 

It appears that the gorillas could sense the stress of the wars going on in their area, and their birthrates declined as a result. Another well-supported theory suggests that once the scientists withdrew, the gorillas missed them, became depressed, and stopped having as many young. Now that peace has been restored, even though tenuous, to Rwanda, the gorillas population is growing and birthrates are up for the first time in 24 years. 

The natural world often goes overlooked in war-torn areas. The human casualties of conflict are heart-wrenching, and there are other species that are also harmed in the wake of war. They suffer in silence. All the more reason to do whatever we must do to keep the peace – there i more at stake than our own existence.
business, choices, corporation, environment, retail, shop.org

Living in an ecosystem

Christa Avampato

A few nights ago I went to a dinner co-sponsored by Shop.org (a retail trade organization) and Demandware, an e-commerce platform provider. They were kind enough to host a soft sell dinner for 50 retailers in New York City at Ruth’s Chris. While the dinner and networking were terrific, a researcher from Jupiter Research, Patti Freeman Evans, gave a brief speech on e-commerce, though her insights had much broader-reaching applications.


I have written often about the act of curation – in writing and in life. As a retailer, there is also a curatorial aspect to my company’s work. In our brick-and-mortar stores, we are constrained by the size of the box. Even on our website, there is just so much merchandise that any one Guest is willing to click-through. Navigation must be easy. Content must be relevant. Frustration, confusion, and wait time must be held to an absolute minimum from parking in our parking lot all the way through the Guest exit. As retailers, we are curators. Yes, the content matters, though the thoughtful edit matters even more. Or point-of-view and clear expression of it is mission critical. There’s no room in retail for “wishy-washy”.


It’s easy to have a POV about a store, or a chain or stores, or a website. But what about an enterprise POV? Much more difficult when there are parties of conflicting interest. Our business, like so many others, is currently siloed beyond belief. Many people see an ecosystem within their own microcosm. And you can’t build a brand that way. I am surprised every day at how many people drive their respective buses with blinders on. This is only complicated by the fact that we are a turn-around, so we are, as my boss likes to say “driving the bus at breakneck speed while also trying to paint it.” Again, if only I could draw…


What Patti Freeman Evans asked us to do, as retailers, is consider our entire business and indeed our entire industry, as an ecosystem. What we do in one store, one chain of stores, or on one site has an incredible effect on many other people and companies. And her thought provoking analogy of businesses being living, breathing entities offers us a chance to reflect on the question, “what would we do, in our businesses, if we were conscious at every moment that our decisions profoundly effect the lives of everyone we reach for years to come?”

child, children, Sesame Street, television

The Top 50 Sesame Street Moments

Christa Avampato

I am indebted to Gwynne Watkins and her team of editors over at Babble. They combed through the over 20,000 YouTube videos of Sesame Street to pull out the 50 best ones. As a lover of all things Sesame Street, I am ecstatic!

And I understand that some people may be wondering who in the world would ever spend that much time on Sesame Street. But then clearly those people don’t know what they’re missing!

Click here to get to the Babble post that contains the 50 clips.

art, design, GEL conference, gel2008, Terry Borden

GEL 2008: Terry Borden and Bent Objects

Christa Avampato

I have a fondness for wacky art and the minds that create that art. I’m especially appreciative of wacky art that makes me laugh out loud. Terry Borden is one of those people.


About halfway through Day 2 of the GEL conference, Terry took the stage and talked openly and honestly about all of his failures as an artist. And then he hit upon an idea of Bent Objects, using items found around the house and then making them into “people” with bent wire arms, legs, and accessories, then placed in vignettes. He didn’t, and maybe still doesn’t, have much money so he has to create each art piece for only a few bucks apiece. And that constraint has placed the spotlight on his humor and ingenuity. Again, I am reminded that what makes good art brilliant is the need to work within constraints.


I’d describe them verbally, though the laugh is much more easily shared by just visiting his website. http://www.bentobjects.blogspot.com. One of his works “Paying Respects” is pictured above. Several peanut-people bringing flowers to a jar of Jif. I love this guy.