Image: Gaping Void

It’s time for change. Time to evolve.

Today I’m officially ending my consulting services as brandERIK and evolving to an expanded offering called Never Compete.

Never Compete incorporates my strategy and account planning experience as brandERIK and beyond, as well as practices and approaches from Grow, the positioning consultancy I co-founded. Plus, it features expanded services through relationships with trusted experts in the areas of media, research, analytics, social networks, and creative.

This site, and its associated email addresses, will remain live for some time. 

If you have a moment, mosey on over to Never Compete and check it out. 

I’m looking forward to the possibilities.

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<div style=”margin-bottom:5px”> <strong> The Social Media ROI Cookbook </strong> from <strong>Altimeter Group Network on SlideShare</strong> </div>

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The real start-up development cycle, courtesy of Paul Graham and Fred Wilson. 

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While you’re tweaking your presentation, Google is already building the prototype. 

In the video below, Robert Wong, ECD of Google Creative Labs, describes the high-speed internal process Google uses to explore, communicate, and execute ideas. In short, they’ve ditched the linear process for thinking and creating on the fly. 

That means no Powerpoints. Instead, strategies and ideas are developed and communicated through the execution of one of four things: a poster, a comprehensive sketch, a video, or a prototype. 

This approach quickly gets Google closer to the idea as it would appear in the real world, enabling instant feedback. And making for more rapid, effective iteration. 

This doesn’t mean there’s no longer a place for the linear process of research > strategize > plan > execute. But executing an idea will always be more powerful than talking about it.

If you check out the video (about 5 minutes), be wary of the poor audio quality. 

<embed src=”http://creativity-online.com/video/player.swf” quality=”high” bgcolor=”#869ca7” width=”480” height=”270” name=”player” align=”middle” play=”true” loop=”false” quality=”high” allowFullScreen=”true” allowScriptAccess=”always” flashVars=”config=http://creativity-online.com/xml/config.player.php&p=24958” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer”></embed>

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All conferences have one thing in common: Business cards. And lots of them.

A recent conference I attended got me thinking about business cards and how they can reflect who and where we are on the stereotypical climb toward “success.” The diagram below outlines a condensed version of this evolution. 

NoBusinessCard.pdf Download this file

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It’s easy to get excited about Google+. It clearly offers some compelling features and a fresh perspective on social connections. But when you actually sit down to start building (or rather, remodeling) your network, the task can seem overwhelming. I’m curious to see if users will make the investment of time and energy required. 

On the flip side, there’s a chance many people will see this as an opportunity to reconfigure their network (using the Circles feature) in a way that better reflects their relationships and interactions. 

Do you think fences really make good neighbors? And do circles make good social relationships? 

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Is there another tech bubble coming? This great infographic created for Udemy looks at the situation by examining the start-up landscape.

On one hand, it’s great to see lots of VC activity again, but when you check the ratio of revenue to valuations, the future gets stickier. (Yes, we’re talking about you, Groupon.)

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Path is the latest service in the trend toward more “personal” social networks. By offering greater degrees of privacy and emphasizing sharing moments with family and close friends, sites like Path hope to carve out a niche in a world dominated by Facebook. It will be interesting to see if we can all support yet another channel for making digital connections. 

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Only in Oregon: Why wait until after your ride to drink? Now you can pedal your way into microbrewvana.

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The phone is fast becoming everyone’s favorite shopping partner.

European agency Momads did a great job of visualizing recent research on the rapid growth of phones as shopping tools. While none of the behaviors outlined are new, it’s the depth of usage and rate of adoption that’s impressive. 

A portion of the infographic is below, but it’s worth checking out the full picture.

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