Primary and Secondary market research are the two basic types of market research.   Secondary market research  is available, often at little to no cost through Trade Associations, Public and Government resources.  This type of research is often performed first because it gives you a general sense of viability and feasibility within a particular market sector or geographic location.  Detailed census data, for instance, can tell you about the consumer's attitude and tendencies. Primary market research's purpose is to provide specific feedback on consumer interest in an offering.  It is important to be careful to use a method that is appropriate for your target market. As mentioned by Karen Plesner in Part II of  her video , using online surveys are only useful if people are willing or able to fill out a survey. It is often difficult to determine how valuable a particular research activity will be to your bottom line.  However, it is often the assumption ...

Since leaving the corporate grind last year (haha! I can say that now!) and restarting my Software Development firm, tekAura , I have come across many articles in the start-up community that keep on selling our secrets upstream.  The only saving grace is that I don't believe the corporate goons are capable of comprehending the underlying message. Anyone that has been a part of a corporate innovation initiative or two, or three hundred... you know what I mean!  It takes a unique kind of person to recognize the fallacy in these efforts.  After all the paper prizes and shiny internal disposable marketing packages, some of start wonder.... where is the change they keep talking about?  And one day, you stop, take a moment to look around and find yourself in a sea of drones, a sea of vacant button pushers.  Then you realize why everyone thinks you are nuts!  You make them look bad, you make them work harder.  Those people don't want to help, they don't beli...

Every year, about this time, most humans on this earth participate in some form of the  New Years Resolution . This peculiar ritual was practiced the ancient Babylonians, Romans and continues to be deeply entrenched in tradition for Christians, Jews and Catholics. Being born and raised, but, ironically, never baptised, by a strange mix of Christian denominations, I was free to extend my religious studies into many others.  And have since developed my personal belief system, which includes a form of this practice. As a natural Engineer and Project Manager , I tend to contemplate a sort of casual  postmortem .  Instead of simple list of things that I wish I would have done better, I tend to perform a more detailed analysis with several areas of incremental improvement.  Ironically, seldom do I write it down this internalization.  However, this year has been especially tumultuous and I find it helpful, if not necessary to post it here. The year began half...

I am finding myself disappointed by our supposed innovation star, Google.  Maybe I just haven't been paying close enough attention or maybe it is because I am starting to see the world through a small business owner's perspective.  But with the recent hoopla about their YouTube Content ID service changes , I am should be surprised to find out that Google+ does not actually offer Custom URLs.  They are just Suggested URLs.  Their community Help page states that there is no review system or option to choose an alternate URL.  Meantime, posts on the page by users indicate that the option was available at one point, but everyone is getting rejection emails. Google!  Ewe dun fuk'ed it up again! Although these options do match my name on my profile, I don't want to use my name, I want to use my USERNAME. Whatever happened to anonymity.  Does google not value it?  Another idea for a blog post, maybe..... hmmm.... Please leave your comments below. FYI -...

With all of the recent Content ID matching issues on YouTube, I am starting to seriously consider creating my own video hosting website as a replacement.  This would be an  Open Innovation  organization using  copyleft  licensing like Creative Commons, encouraging  fair use  content with an ad-revenue structure. This type of venture would require a CDN ( Content Delivery Network ) that already supports this structure and if none exists, the creation of a new CDN. The basis of this desire stems from the strong belief that IP Claims abuse is rampant and growing.  If we don't restrain corporate interests from being able to undermine the legal system in this manner, they will destroy the creativity movement entirely.  Worldwide, we are facing the potential for total disaster at every turn.  If we continue to discourage creativity and innovation in the same manner, we will surely experience further recession and other potential consequences. ...

Video 1.8 - Design Thinking: Bringing Empathy and Collaboration To Your Designs The perfectionist in me can't stop from noticing that the first video in this series covered the 3rd and 4th points. Where the second/last video covered the first two points. But, I digress.... This program is really trying to drive home the point that good product design is intuitive. Being a female engineer, I am intimately familiar with this concept. I find myself wondering if the world if starting to catch on to my personal passions surrounding open innovation and creativity or if I am being shaped by this world. Am I the artists hands and is the world my clay or is it the other way around? References engineeringdotcom. (2012). Design Thinking. Bringing Empathy and Collaboration to Your Designs. Engineering.com. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-tQJ9RHKRw engineeringdotcom. (2012). Integrative Thinking and Experimentalism in Design Thinking. Engineering.com. Retrieved from...

Video 1.7 - How To Design Breakthrough Inventions David Kelley's Stanford’s Joint Program in Design is realizing the same benefits as this IEMS program at Full Sail. I feel strongly that this course, in particular, is getting into material and discussion that is going to make the most difference to by business ventures. Each material, discussion and assignment provides additional personal validation. References How to design breakthrough inventions. (2013, January 6). 60 Minutes. CBS. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/how-to-design-breakthrough-inventions-50138327/ David Kelley. (2013, December 4). Stanford University Institute of Design. Retrieved from http://dschool.stanford.edu/bio/david-kelley/

While catching up on some reading homework today, I found myself writing this in my notebook: Great Brands Are About Fusing Product And Service. How Do You Do It "Companies need to start thinking about the holistic experience between their brands, products, and services. Crafting an experience requires design that considers these three elements of brand, product, and service in order to generate successful results. Any company can be analyzed through these lenses to evaluate the experience it creates for its customers (Seiger, 2013)." I feel very strongly that we require a strong brand image.  In fact, this has been my largest roadblock.  It keeps holding me back from starting.  I feel like I can describe the elements that I want, the emotion I want it to bring... but have not yet fully allowed myself to realize what that looks like, what arrangement is required and it amounts to my own fear, that I am incapable of doing so, that even though I appreciate and desire to p...

On my previous blog post, Automatically Share Blogger posts to Multiple Social Networks , I discussed my strategy for sharing Blog posts to Blogger.  However, Buffer does not yet post to Google+ Profiles, which often leaves this social network out of the loop and in turn decreases my reach.  To remediate this concern, I have created a this IFTTT recipe . Logic: Twitter posts with links are usually in regard to a new, whereas those without are usually a discussion specific event.  Thus, I have designed it to only fire when posting a link to twitter. In order to avoid double posting to Google+, I have removed automatically posting to Google+ from the other recipes that use sources, like Tumblr, Blogger and Disqus. The loop is now closed and the structure, subsequently, easier to diagram. UPDATE (12/21/2013): Updated IFTTT recipe to use Link to Twitter post instead of embed code, which results in a blank post.

Social Network Management is often costly and time consuming, to say the least.  Using a combination of IFTTT and Buffer , you can automatically share a blogger post to all your social networks for FREE! Just follow these 5 simple steps: Follow this post to Setup SMS to Google+ Login to  Buffer  and link to your social networks Login to  IFTTT Use  this IFTTT recipe to send ALL blogger posts to your SMS and/or Buffer emails Use this IFTTT recipe to send LABELED blogger posts to your SMS and/or Buffer emails I use a combination of the two IFTTT recipes, where all posts get sent to my personal network.  Then I use one labeled version per other network. Specifically, tekAura goes to my company pages, where tekNorah goes to my personal-business/company-employee network. You might have noticed there is no SMS loop for the tekAura company network.  That is because  Buffer now posts to Google+ Pages .  When they add posting to Google+ Profiles, ...

Picture courtesy of ASU women honor STEM role models   Today,  I  commented in the group  Connect: Professional Women's Network, Powered by Citi  on  What would you like to see from your female leaders? : Although I agree with the general desire to have more women in leadership, especially in STEM fields , I think it is more important to highlight the specific qualities that we desire from women in leadership. It has been a long road to gender equality and I believe we are now at a crossroads. Traditionally, women have worked their way into executive STEM positions by being a hellcat. This aggressive behavior has done much to break the walls down, to show that we have the capacity for brutal, calculated, process driven decision making. We have proven that we can "stack up" against our male counterparts. Advantage has been gained and recognized. I believe this is why there is an increase in female management in departments that are appreciate our communicati...