Filed under: 2 min mindmap, branding, retail and restaurants | Tags: mindmap, retail and restaurants, starbucks
It’s been a while since I posted a mindmap, and although this doesn’t really count as one, I did take a little coffee break today and documented it. Starbucks is one of those places we all love to hate, yet hate to admit we love.
Filed under: 2 min mindmap, Charlotte, community services | Tags: charitable needs, Charlotte, mindmap, Mission Possible, volunteer
I just realized I missed the deadline for entries after I got around to creating a mindmap for the Mission Possible project, so I guess I’ll post it here. Maybe there’s a nugget of an idea in there somewhere for the folks who didn’t procrastinate like I unfortunately did.
In my original conversation with Steve Gunn, we talked about how framing a problem in a specific way makes it easier to solve. In this case, a smaller, yet very real problem in the area of charitable needs is not actually getting more volunteers, but rather, how might we get them to commit their time consistently?
Filed under: 2 min mindmap, consumer behavior, financial services | Tags: business week, consumer behavior, consumption smoothing, lifecycle consumption smoothing, mindmap, recession marketing, retirement
I’m just now catching up on some back podcasts on Business Week, and I caught a curious phrase from an cover story from a few weeks ago that I hadn’t heard in a while: Consumption Smoothing. It’s a strategy rooted in retirement planning, where you try to balance saving and spending behaviors over a lifetime so that when retirement comes, you can enjoy a lifestyle that’s on par with what you’ve averaged over the majority of your working years.
In the spirit of the 2 minute mindmap, I played with the notion of how this concept could apply in lots of different places that we consume.
Filed under: 2 min mindmap, Charlotte, retail and restaurants | Tags: Charlotte, mindmap, Queen's Feast, restaurant week, Tyler Cowen
In honor of Charlotte’s Queen’s Feast restaurant week, I decided to create a 2-minute mindmap to have fun with the concept.
This topic probably could have gone on for much longer than 2 minutes and covered many walls. I started to see 3 patterns of ideas emerge:
- Feature improvements Ways to enhance the consumer experience of Restaurant Week via scheduling and restaurant selection tools, engaging marketing campaigns, etc.
- Extended partnerships Mutually beneficial business partnerships with local institutions to bring additional revenue and visibility to other areas of the city.
- Other “weeks” Applying the restaurant week concept to other industries, collectives, or social movements to celebrate and bring greater focus to them.
On a more tactical level, one of my favorite writers/economists Tyler Cowen offered a few strategies for Restuarant week in an old article in the Washington Post.





