In an article on MarketingProfs.com, (August 16, 2005) Lisa Johnson talks about the new entrepreneurs - she calls them “mompreneurs”. These are the women behind the absolute revolution in baby and child care products, toys and related stuff. She says, “Diaper Genie creates a sealed chain of used nappies. There was a rocker with programmable nature noises, a sleek spinning mobile, state-of-the-art furnishings and a range of eco-friendly materials. Parked in the garage were the strollers—not one, but three different baby vehicles, including one for off-road trips. It was amazing to see the problem solving, innovation and Zen-like simplicity of these products”. I can relate.
My wife and I are both oldest children, and we had our first daughter, Amy, 6 years ago, we amazed our parents with the goodies and products that we bought to make the task of parenting easier. Now, our third daughetr Rebecca is 3 months old, and we ourselves have been amazed at the further innovations that have taken place in just the past few years. Who do we have to thank? Well, it seems that there is a growing league of moms who are key to this innovation - many of them working as entrepreneurs.
In the article (click here to read it in full), she explains a number of reasons for this new phenomenon. (Also check out http://www.mompreneursonline.com/).
Continue reading ‘The New Innovators: Mompreneurs’
Tom Peters highly recommends the book, “EVEolution:The Eight Truths of Marketing to Women” by Faith Popcorn & Lys Marigold (buy it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net).
In his generic presentation on Re-Imagine, Peters extracts some key learnings for anyone who takes women seriously as a market (and everyone should!). Each of these thoughts links marketing to women very strongly with the connection economy mantra we preach here.
Continue reading ‘EVEolution’
A few days ago I got a bit of flack on the Quality debate. I’m bored with that topic, so I won’t go there, but a few interesting things came out of that posting (and a few in the past that have been turning over in my mind), that I felt I wanted share with you as a community, especially as understanding and promoting the connection economy is so integral to what the TT.biz community is about.
My biggest soap box in business is relationships. It is not necessarily about liking the person or relating to them, it is about trusting and respecting them. When you have that you can achieve so much more, less painlessly and more efficiently.
We all know that the connection economy is about forming relationships, often with people that we may never set eyes on. So how we interact with them on the forums available to us, determines how successful that relationship will be. That means the tone of the emails, the blog posts etc will determine what sort of relationship you form. When we say something – are we smiling, are we frowning, can it be interpreted in another way? When I first started using the chat forum I hated those “silly� emoticons (I am so not a frilly funky nick nacky person), but I soon started to realize that I need them to convey what I was saying. I am very assertive and can be very intense, so unless people can see my face, they don’t know whether I am being serious or pulling their leg, especially those that know me.
Continue reading ‘Communicating in the connection ecomony’
I just saw an article in the Mail and Guardian, “Saint Dad” (requires login).
This article talks about how raising children should be just like breathing for fathers.
What I’m finding interesting is that we are writing and talking more and more about women in business and there are also so many more opportunities for women in business. If she is fortunate she has a new contract (check out bright young things, and if not she is still in the boxing ring (Check out Keith’s post article in the e-zine about women and the boxing ring).
So my question is as these opportunities come up for women, are more and more men also taking care of the kids, are they becoming “stayhome dads”? Is there also a new space for dads, new qualities they are bringing to bringing up kids.
Imagine this as a presentation called “The world of Dads”……well well well
In the latest Inc magazine, there is a small piece about a new style of offsite meeting (”bosberaad” for South Africans). Its a team build/leadership development process for women, led by two ex-Marine women (click here to read it). I have not looked into any more detail beyond Inc’s summary of their offering, but it strikes me that this is the dangerous thing that we talk about in our World of Women presentation.
Although they say that teach women to be women, and not to act like men, it appears as if this is very superifical (don’t try to be macho, don’t speak with a gruff voice, etc). They then go on to say that you should never apologise, or show weakness. I am not sure that this is what “being a woman” is about. As we say about “World of Women”, “As we look at the workplace of today, and the emerging workplace of the future, women must understand the unique perspective they bring. Too many women try to succeed in the workplace by acting like men, and try to take men on at their own game - the power-based, competitive, testosterone-filled, dog-eat-dog, workaholic game. It’s not that they can’t compete – if they want to, they can. We argue its that they shouldn’t compete. Rather, women should see their function as changing the workplace to exhibit more feminine characteristics. This is the challenge that lies ahead for businesses - and it is one that they MUST understand and respond to. Today’s generation of young employees and customers demand nothing less.”
There are some great comments and discussions going on at TomorrowToday’s e-zine from this past month. Keith Coats wrote about Women in the connection economy, and the comments added to his article have really been great additions to this thinking. Check out Keith’s post here.
Seeing as contributions to the “World of women” category have been poor of late … courtesy of FM June 24:
Nedbank, as part of its “women’s forum” series of occasional events and courses to empower its female employees, is avertising the following to staff:
“Courses for July:
8: Dr Loretta Giorcelli, ‘Humanity, community, responsibility for modern children and teens’
4-15: St Mary’s Life Skills Camp
20: Vehicle safety/spanner & wench workshop”
A wench workshop seems a little old-school for these liberated times.
The , exploring the subject of women and leadership, carried an article titled, ‘Women can beat men at their own game’.
My question is, “why would they want to do that?�
Trying to ‘beat men at their own game’ is not only a foolhardy tactic but one that will simply ensure that women leaders who succeed in this will merely join the majority their male counterparts on the ‘irrelevant leadership scrapheap’. Not a pretty place to be.
Writing in the February 2004 edition of , Linda Tischler asks why it is that so few women are to be found in the ‘corner office’. South African statistics confirm this to be the case in that only 1.9% of CEOs and MDs in the Rainbow Nation are women. A far cry from the progress being made within Government circles! In fact the United States, Britain, Australia and Japan do not fare much better when it comes to the relevant statistics.
Continue reading ‘Smart Women Don’t Box: Leadership in the Connection economy’
At TomorrowToday.biz, we’re convinced that the 21st century will be dominated by women - in leadership, organisational structure, marketing, etc. Read our ‘manifesto’ on the issue.
Tom Peters interviewed the authors of Don’t Think Pink (buy it online at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net) - read that here. Also read their blog, Learned on Women.
Other people who like this book include: Jack Covert, founder of 800-CEO-READ.
Read a review of it here.
This is a summary of an article by this name, appearing in The Wits Business School Journal, November 2004. It was written by Norman Chorn, Visiting Professor in Strategy at WBS from Sydney, Australia.
It starts, “This is not an article about getting more women into organisations — although I believe that this is necessary… Creating feminine values is not about women. It is about those behaviours which will drive the cultures and strategies required in the current and emerging competitive environment in South Africa. To view in favour of creating more feminine values is based on two key premises: (1) The emerging competitive paradigm will demand a set of values and behaviours which emphasise more of the so-called ‘feminine’ attributes; (2) Traditional ‘masculine’ values have a number of limitations when applied to the task of leadership in modern organisations.”
Continue reading ‘Creating Feminine Values in Organisations’
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