Star-schmaltz

My father introduced me to Starbucks.  It was the late nineties and, for some years, he’d been flying back and forth to the States with work.  One weekend we were walking through the rather synthetic surroundings of Milton Keynes’ shopping centre when he spotted a new store not far from John Lewis.  I was 15, I didn’t drink coffee, it was noisy, it was cluttered, I didn’t understand the menu and I couldn’t fathom his excitement. 

Some years later I drink coffee by the bucket and am proud to work with one of the world’s finest producers and suppliers of quality coffee, Lavazza.  Starbucks, however, is a very different proposition and, many years after my first encounter with the brand, I get it.

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Enchantment by Guy Kawaski

Guy Kawaski defines enchantment as the process of delighting people with a service, organisation, idea or product. The former Apple evangelist’s latest offering is a step by step check list of the cycle of enchantment from the idea stage to launch of a service or a product and its life thereafter.
This cycle encompasses how you and your product are perceived, the effect on employees, ways to enchant your boss, its use in and of technology and also ways to overcome any resistance.

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Customer Experience by Qaalfa Dibeehi and Steven Walden

The quality of customer experience has become of paramount importance in recent times as businesses struggle to differentiate themselves. So what are the emerging trends that businesses should focus on today? In their book, Customer Experience, Shaw, Dibeehi and Walden explore the growing trends that progressive businesses need to understand to give themselves a competitive advantage.

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The Shallows by Nicholas Carr

Our lives today are dominated by the internet, technology, and the ever increasing presence of social media. In succumbing to the electronic system we are facing, as scientist Joseph Weizenbaum claims, ‘a slow erosion of our humanness and our humanity’.

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