[By Rauglothgor (own work), via Wikimedia Commons]

Cold Cash

3 marketing lessons we can learn from the ALS #IceBucketChallenge

Last summer, the ALS #IceBucketChallenge provided some of the coldest warm-fuzzies imaginable. If you’re part of nonprofit that relies on charitable giving watching these videos, you’ve probably started to pensively rub your chin, wondering if and how you could get something like this to work for you.

Sep 10, 2014 Melissa Sorcic

How Does Your Desk Chair Measure Up?

If you work at a desk, chances are you spend the majority of your day seated at its accompanying chair. There are alternatives available—including treadmills, exercise balls and kneeling chairs all designed for the desk-bound worker. But if that’s too avant gard for you (or your office), here’s a few things to consider when looking for a chair that won’t send you home hunched over and craving the fetal position. Then, tell us how you really feel. 

Sep 8, 2014 Allison Joy

Creative Spacing

4 factors to consider

VSP wanted The Shop in Midtown to be flexible, buildable and breakable, a learning space and a prototype in itself (form following function). With that in mind, architects put wheels on the tables and on corrugated cardboard walls to make everything portable and adaptable.

Sep 3, 2014 Russell Nichols
(shutterstock)

Get Creative

Improve your business by thinking like a designer

Thomas Edison is most often credited with inventing a thing, the light bulb. But if you really take a look at what Edison did, you’ll see he was able to envision not only the technology, but also how people would use it and why they would benefit from its use. What he actually created was a product with a fully realized marketplace. Edison’s approach was an early example of a concept that has since been dubbed “design thinking” — a creative manner of problem-solving that places the user at the center of the experience.

Sep 1, 2014 Christine Calvin
(shutterstock)

Working Holiday

How to take a vacation without anyone knowing

The reality is that independent workers don’t get paid vacations, and often don’t have the option to not work. But that shouldn’t come at the cost of leisure—it just means getting a bit more creative with the ever-elusive work-life balance. So, how do you take a trip without anyone knowing?

Aug 29, 2014 Janna Maron
(shutterstoçk)

The Snowflake Strategy

To win with boomers, you’ll need individualized marketing

Let’s be honest, few generations were more aptly named than the baby boomers. While the moniker may have risen from a historically specific fertility trend, in many ways it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. As writer P.J. O’Rourke once described it: “We’re stuck with being forever described as exploding infants.”

Aug 20, 2014 Gordon Fowler
(courtesy of Frankenmuffin)

Stockton Cooperation

Huddle hopes to foster more than coworking in downtown Stockton

David Garcia, Stockton born and bred, has a background in urban policy and planning and has called cities like Baltimore and Washington, D.C., home. So when he and Tim Egkan co-founded Huddle, a new coworking space in downtown Stockton that held its soft opening last June, he knew change was possible. But that doesn’t mean he thinks it will be easy.

Aug 18, 2014 Allison Joy