“IF is a collaborative ideas resource for for modern marketers and business professionals run by Piers Fawkes and the IF team. We provide daily inspiration.”

“A database… For copywriters, clients of copywriters and those who for itself the copywriter. Always it is useful to look, that is thought already up on a theme which you interests. The database can give new ideas for copywriters or keep them from inventing already thought up, to copywriter’s clients…”

“…featuring news and information about everything that has anything to do with Customer Relationship Management.”

“#1: Be Narrow - Focus on the smallest possible problem you could solve that would potentially be useful. Most companies start out trying to do too many things, which makes life difficult and turns you into a me-too. Focusing on a small niche has so many advantages: With much less work, you can be the best at what you do. Small things, like a microscopic world, almost always turn out to be bigger than you think when you zoom in.”

“Convincing cautious bosses of the benefits of a novel approach is a tricky business, but it can be done. Here’s how…”

“So as anyone within earshot of me knows, we’ve been on the grand tour of grade schools for the last couple of months, looking at the public and ‘independent’ schools in our (extended) neighborhood. I could (and do!) go on for hours about what we’ve been seeing and learning, but that would bore you to tears. Instead, I’ll share with you the results of a little between-classroom brainstorming about how office life could learn a little bit from grade school life. So, in no particular order, here are some ideas for how to run your next Web 2.0 startup…”

“A blog called ‘Presentation Zen’ has generated a lot of buzz for a couple of posts that smugly satisfy what an audience wants to believe: Bill Gates and Visual Complexity and Gates, Jobs, and the Zen Aesthetic. Readers feel righteous in the easy digs at Microsoft’s busy PowerPoint slides, particularly when compared to Jobs’ spare presentations. And when I first saw those posts, I thought, ‘Yeah! Spareness! Simplicity! Whoo!’ Bet then I wondered, ‘Um, isn’t Bill Gates worth a gajillion dollars? Isn’t Microsoft an exceedingly successful company? Should we maybe look at this a little differently?’”

“… it’s a huge mistake to equate executive blogs with business blogging, just as it’s a huge mistake to see the world only through the economic and culture lens of stars and hits (what I call ‘headism’). The best business blogs come from the employees, not the bosses. They have more time, and are less prone to marketing gobbledygook and gnomic platitudes. And those kind of blogs are on the rise, not the decline.”

“This is a first-person account of how IBM was able to con my execs out of millions of dollars. Gullible management tries to swim with the shark and gets chewed to pieces. Witness the exec-level FUD sales techniques and the $325/hr subcontractor labor bait and switch.” (Thanks Communication Nation!)

“CEO Jason Fried’s startup philosophy can be summed up in three short words: Keep it simple… We’re trying to underdo the competition, and do less than they’re doing to beat them. It’s a very Cold War mentality to keep trying to one-up everybody. We’re trying to ‘one-down’ people. “

“So how did this happen in the first place? Back at the beginning, certain, shall we say, paternalistically minded parties (i.e., the guys in suits) decided that we should act like grownups, and being as yet somewhat immature‚Äîat least as businesspeople–we did as we were told. Which is how, one day, we ended up sitting around a conference table listening to representatives from a ‘branding’ company. What followed is still a bit of a nightmarish blur, but it involved a PowerPoint presentation on the history of names…”

“There’s been a lot of talk in ‘design thinking’ circles about how the practice of design needs to do more to inform business. You won’t get any disagreement from me. But I haven’t seen a lot of talk of this being a two-way street. We seem to think business folks should appreciate the value that design brings, but we don’t expect designers to appreciate the value that business brings.”

“I had the following conversation recently. Entrepreneur: ‘Brad, I just got an offer for my company for $15 million from Company X.’ Brad: ‘Awesome. Who’s Company X, I’ve never heard of them.’ Entrepreneur: ‘It’s a private company funded by Venture Firm Y.’ Brad: ‘Cool, $15 million — is it a cash deal?’ Entrepreneur: ‘No, it’s all stock…’”

“Entrepreneurs often ask me for a sample business plan they can use as a model for their fundraising efforts. They are surprised when I send them a powerpoint file.”

“I’ve noticed a lot of talk about Powerpoint lately. About how it’s so terrible and how it enables awful presentations. But the problem isn’t Powerpoint, of course. The problem is bad content delivered poorly. I speak for a living, and hear lots and lots of presentations at the conferences I attend. Here are some notes I wrote up for someone who is about to give his first ever public presentation.” (Thanks Communication Nation !)