Business, leadership, and entrepreneurship micro-summaries for June 28, 2019

What strategic tool shouldn't be controlled?; Apple selling a $70 blood-sugar monitoring device; Resumes and degrees vs. cover letters and writing skills; Digital identity may be a Trojan Horse in the Libra whitepaper; A teen hero in Istanbul

Straight from my RSS feed:

Links and micro-summaries from my 1000+ daily headlines. I filter them so you don't have to.

1. The Powerful Strategic Tool Companies Should Not Try to Control - In this interview with Harvard's Frank Nagle and Sonali Shah from the University of Illinois, Harvard's Working Knowledge web site covers the strategic relationships between companies and their user communities. The article suggests that user communites can help firms reduce costs by providing limited technical support as well as helping the firms grow by reinforcing branding, identifying recurring problems, and supporting innovation. The article goes on to say that a nuanced approach involving multi-dimensional communications is ideal, and that companies should help their users organize in communities and interact with them when then do. There is a fine line, however, between interacting with users and stifling them, so the company must remember that users are volunteers, not employees. If not, users may resist a firm's attempts at control. An example of a company who is doing it right is LEGO, who has created a platform where their users can share designs.


2. Apple starts selling diabetes monitors in its stores - Reflecting the importance of health technology to Apple's corporate strategy, the company has begun selling a $70 device that will help customers track their blood sugar. The customer still has to lance themselves, but Apple's device offers a bluetooth connection to the iPhone or Applewatch, which makes it possible to track sugar levels automatically with no additional effort.


3. A tech CEO explains why he 'throws résumés out the door' — but places huge value on the cover letter - Basecamp CEO, Jason Fried, says that resumes are basically worthless, and he wants to see how you do on a sample work project. The company also tests a candidate's writing skills by asking them to walk through a sample assignment in writing. Fried goes on to add that he doesn't care if a candidate graduated from Harvard or a local community college, and he has even hired people without degrees. He only hires good writers, though, which is why the company places so much emphasis on a cover letter that can sell the candidate in a succinct manner.


4. Buried in Facebook’s Libra White Paper, a Digital Identity Bombshell - From the article: "An additional goal of the association is to develop and promote an open identity standard. We believe that decentralized and portable digital identity is a prerequisite to financial inclusion and competition." That's all there is, the rest is speculation, but the idea of an identity scheme that's centrally managed by 100 or so large businesses has many people concerned.


5. Teenager saves toddler from 2-story fall in Istanbul - What the headline says. Just click through and watch the video. (@rt-international will receive 5% of the rewards from this post.)

For example, feel free to comment on any or all of these discussion topics:

• After reading the interview with Nagle and Shah, what are some examples of Steemit doing things right when interacting with the user community? What are some things that can be improved?
  
  
• After reading the article about Apple, what health-related purposes do you have for your own mobile devices?
  
  
• Do you agree with the Basecamp CEO that writing skills and cover letters are more important than resumes and degrees? What is your reasoning?
  
  
• Would you trust Facebook and the Libra Association to manage your online identity? Why or why not?
  
  

About this series

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