Is There a Tweaker Driving Innovation On Your Team? - MIT Sloan Management

Innovators aren’t just the geniuses who come up with completely original ideas. More often than not, they’re the people who tweak the ideas already around them, making new things that are more useable or beautiful. In a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research last spring, economists Ralf Meisenzahl, of the Federal Reserve, and Joel Mokyr, of Northwestern University highlighted the historic value of “tweakers.” They argued that the Industrial Revolution took hold in Britain because of “the supply of highly skilled, mechanically able craftsmen who were able to adapt, implement, improve, and tweak new technologies and who provided the micro inventions necessary to make macro inventions highly productive and remunerative.”

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Connecting with Consumers Using Deep Metaphors

Think of famous brands you know: Hallmark cards and Coca-Cola soft drinks, for example. What do these products have in common for consumers? An emotional meaning that taps into thoughts and feelings related to the positive aspects of transformation, according to Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman

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Seven Tips for Managing Price Increases

When driving these days, do you look at the prices every time you pass a gas station? Do you notice yourself paying more attention to the prices of everything you buy? You are not alone. Consumers everywhere are more price aware. People who've been indifferent to price increases for years are suddenly amazed at what things now cost. How can marketers cope not just with inflation but with consumer sticker shock?

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