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Advantage of Youth: ignorance

Young people make better entrepreneurs because they're too inexperienced to know that their ideas are silly:

The mistakes novices make come from a lack of experience. They overestimate mere fads, seeing revolution everywhere, and they make this kind of mistake a thousand times before they learn better. But the experts make the opposite mistake, so that when a real once-in-a-lifetime change comes along, they regard it as a fad. As a result of this asymmetry, the novice makes their one good call during an actual revolution, at exactly the same time the expert makes their one big mistake, but at that moment, that’s all that is needed to give the newcomer a considerable edge.

» corante.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Viral Marketing for the Real World

Cathy Olofson sits down with Columbia University professor Duncan Watts to discuss his new article in the May 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review, "Viral Marketing for the Real World." Watts explains that while marketing messages may not exactly spread like disease, viral marketing, if used correctly, can be an extremely successful and cost-effective means for getting the word out.

[ mp3 ] listen or download

Taking the pulse of the people: Newest awards by popular vote

What is America's favorite example of good design? The Smithsonian's Cooper- Hewitt National Design Museum in New York has been asking that question this autumn by urging people to vote for their favorites in the first People's Design Awards.

What does the response tell us about America's perceptions of design?

For starters, it suggests that design is one of those subjects on which most people have opinions, often strong ones. Public votes and prizes are precarious projects for museums, accustomed to exploring subjects with scholarly subtlety in exhibitions, rather than delivering absolute judgments by naming winners and losers. As the Turner Prize for contemporary art proves year after year at the Tate Britain, awards are remarkably effective at generating media coverage and public debate, and at provoking controversy and accusations of sensationalism.

» peoplesdesignaward.org

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