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2006
Packaging
Packaging can make a huge difference to products. It really hit me when I saw this bottle of Heinz’s ketchup. My two big problems with normal ketchup bottles are: (a) the sauce spills to the side of the bottle and sticks to the cap, and (b) it’s tough to pour the last bits of sauce — you have to hit the bottle a lot.
Now, I didn’t know I had these problems. But when I saw this bottle, it hit me. You keep the bottle upside down — so it’s easy to pour the last bits of sauce. And they way the nozzle valve is designed, the sauce doesn’t stick to the cap. Perfect! Since then, I don’t buy any other ketchup bottle. Even if I WANT ketchup, I don’t buy it unless I get this bottle. Packaging made be brand loyal. (Caveat: I’m not REALLY brand loyal. I’d buy any ketchup with this packaging. But only Heinz has it right now.)
The same thing with honey. The same packaging with honey gives me a third advantage. I can drink a bit of honey directly by holding up the bottle over my mouth and squeezing it. Plus, I don’t need a spoon. Because of this, my consumption of honey has shot up to 1 bottle of honey every month. Further, I have started spreading honey over ice cream these days. Note: packaging changed my eating pattern.
So, impressed by all this, I wandered around superstores, exploring the innovations in packaging (mainly in food). I will shortly blog about that. In the meantime, here are some innovative packages introduced around when Heinz’s inverted ketchup was.
Speed up your torrents
Speed up your torrents. Particularly, get rid of the Event ID 4226 problem.
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The Personal MBA
The Personal MBA. John Kaufman says reading (and practicing) these 42 books should be as good as any MBA (and that an MBA is, perhaps excessively, expensive). Some of these books are worth a read in any case.
Master Yourself
- Mastery by George Leonard
- Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham & Donald O. Clifton
Manage Your Life and Work
- Getting Things Done by David Allen
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Learn the Fundamentals
- What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan
- Profitable Growth Is Everyone’s Business by Ram Charan
Strategic Thinking
- On Competition by Michael Porter
- Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim, Renee Mauborgne
The Only Thing Constant is Change
- Seeing What’s Next by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony
- Re-imagine by Tom Peters
Masters of Management
- The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
- First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
The Finest Minds in Business
- The Essays of Warren Buffett by Warren Buffett & Lawrence Cunningham
- Poor Charlie’s Almanack by Charlie Munger & Peter Kaufman
Dollars on the Books
- The McGraw-Hill 36-Hour Course in Finance for Nonfinancial Managers by Robert A. Cooke
- Essentials of Accounting, 8th edition by Robert Anthony, Leslie Pearlman
Numbers and Negotiations
- How to Read a Financial Report by John A. Tracy
- Getting To Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton
Operational Effectiveness
- The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt & Jeff Cox
- Lean Thinking by James Womack & Daniel Jones
Form and Function
- The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel
- The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
Project Management and Marketing
- The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun
- The Marketing Playbook by John Zagula & Richard Tong
Do Your Own Thing
- The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
- The Bootstrapper’s Bible by Seth Godin
Speak Your Mind
- On Writing Well by William Zinsser
- Flawless Consulting by Peter Block
The Delicate Art of Human Relations
- How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Sell, Sell, Sell!
- The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
Economics and Worldviews
- Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
- The Economist
Businesses, Past and Present
- American Business, 1920-2000 by Thomas McCraw, John Franklin, A. S. Eisenstadt
- Brand New by Nancy F. Koehn
Rules and Morals
- Law 101 by Jay M. Feinman
- A Primer on Business Ethics by Tibor Machan & James Chesher
Analyze This
- The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch
- Principles of Statistics by M.G. Bulmer
Voices of Experience
- The Little Book of Business Wisdom by Peter Krass (Editor)
- Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management by Bill Swanson
Beautiful people are paid more
Beautiful people are paid more because of a positive feedback mechanism. Employers expect them to perform better. They expect themselves to perform better. And these come across.
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Search queries to my site
On a related note, 60% of the search queries that lead to my site this year were Calvin and Hobbes quotes. “i can’t help but wonder what kind of desperate straits would drive a man to invent this thing.” topped the list (Calvin referring to a yo-yo), with i always catch these trick questions following closely.
People searching for Excel related stuff were next (20%): excel indirect(address(, row() excel offset address and the like.
A few were also looking for me by name or school (10%).
The last 10% ranged from the puzzling to the bizarre, including these gems.
- michalengelo hidden skull. Probably looking for the alleged hidden skull in Last Judgement.
- googlemail access between england and india. Why? Did he think there wouldn’t be any?
- greenwich meridien time for india. This is usually the same in Greenwich and in India. Rest of the world too.
- origin of monkey in fez. What?
- address of sexy girl in ahmedabad. But why my site?
- address of tool makers for converting html to xml in chennai. Do they have a license to convert?
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Calvin and Hobbes Extensive Strip Search
Martijn’s Calvin and Hobbes Extensive Strip Search is back. It doesn’t let you search the quotes themselves, but a (pretty detailed) description of each cartoon instead. (Mine searches Calvin and Hobbes quotes).
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Seven plus or minus two
The seven plus or minus two rule. That’s all your brain can remember.
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