Putting Customers at Ease: The Patient’s Point of View

By Andrew S. Gallan Sally, a married 54-year-old mother of two teenage girls, had just returned from her mammogram follow-up appointment with a troubled look on her face. “What’s the matter?” asked her husband of 25 years. “Again, something showed up, so I have to go for another mammogram and some additional tests,” she responded. …

Why the mint on your pillow matters

By Stephen Mostrom Unless you spend a lot of time in Louisiana, you likely haven’t heard the term “lagniappe.” But this Creole aphorism has the power to transform your business. Defined as “the gift” or “to give more,” lagniappe represents the potential to turn customers into your largest sales force by exceeding expectations. As Stan …

Unraveling some of the Mysteries of Factors Driving Innovation Success

By Douglas Olsen Innovation is often cloaked in some degree of mystery – a black box where “change happens” and the world is transformed. Success is often fleeting, and, when failure does occur, there is usually a multitude of views as to what went wrong, with the only commonality being “it was the other guy’s …

Does Intangibility Make Service Innovation More Difficult?

by Nancy Stephens Intangibility is one of the apparent ways in which services differ from products; unlike products, services cannot be seen or touched.  It occurred to me that as a consequence, people probably don’t sit around looking at services and thinking of ways to improve them the way they can do it with products. …