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“Love the Refugees” : Why the Token Representative in Business and Culture works – a Market and Consumer Behavior Perspective

This post is about the power of the ‘token representative’. The image of the refugee of today, is replacing that of the mobster of yesterday. It is always easier (and more emotionally satisfying) to use ‘approximate thinking’ and remember a simplified story. Interestingly, this is flowing from cultural products like Film to other areas, including business and entrepreneurship…

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Art Consumer Behavior Creativity Cultural Products Cultural Resources Culture Leadership Stories TV Series

Vikings: Culture, Creativity, Meanings, and reframing the past…

So, how can Thor, Odin, and the rest have been results of pillaging, rape, and raids? This post has some comments on Vikings (the series), culture, creativity, audiences, and cultural resources…

Well… the above sentence is highly reductionist, but there is some truth to it. While watching this captivating (mostly) series (Vikings), I frequently thought about culture and its components. I also thought about mobilizing the past (with some creativity and slight of hand) to support statements in contemporary public life.

Here are some of these thoughts, along with a few quotes from the show I really liked (hated).

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Art Creativity Cultural Products Culture Stories

Three (very) Short Stories by Manto

In general, short stories focus on a self-contained event or mood. They can be quite powerful (although some really aren’t worth the time). (Very) short stories are a further challenge for writers. Here are three excellent examples from the film “Manto”.

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December Bits & Tweets

Readings, comments, links, and Quotes from the month of December.

Topics include personal growth, social media, brands, consumer behavior, and Innovation.

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Art Books Consumer Behavior Creativity Innovation Knowledge

October bits

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Art Books Creativity Cultural and Creative Industries Cultural Products Culture Production

“Origin” – Dan Brown’s (OK) novel as a model for evolving cultural products (and their markets)

“A vacation is an expensive way to read a book in peace”

– @naval

One of my summer reads this year was Dan Brown’s novel “Origin”, the fifth book in the (Robert) Langdon series. It has been sitting in the reading waiting list for a while,  and it was pushed down the pipeline by other books in the last couple of years..


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Art Creativity Leadership Passion Work

Give yourself permission to be creative – Ethan Hawke

Give yourself permission to be creative

I came across this video (youtube’s cunning recommendation algorithm), and I was quite surprised how insightful and deep it was. It had many lessons on creativity, and the ‘self-permission’ it requires. Frequently, it takes courage to be creative, and this is nicely captured by the talk.

Here are some thoughts / lessons / reflections :

  1. The value of difference and irregularity: In a world where more and more things (and people) are similar, irregularity and unpredictability are valuable.
  2. It is quite hard for us to judge how good what we do is. I think that a better strategy would be to do great effort and keep thinking about growth and contribution.
  3. The world is an extremely unreliable critic: This has been tested many times. Think about it – if something is really original and new, then it – by definition – won’t be familiar, and most people dislike the unfamiliar (because it forces them to think).
  4. Making sense out of life is crucial , but only at key moments –> Why not always ? Well maybe because this activity of ‘making sense’ is not a guaranteed and linear process. You can’t be sure that you’ll make sense of it.
  5. Art helps with that: Art is not luxury – it is nourishment for the soul and the growth beyond the confines of the limited and bounded current reality.
  6. ‘Human Creativity is nature manifest in us’
  7. ‘Know yourself’ – what do you love ? if you get close to what you love , who you are is revealed to you… and it expands !
  8. My experience is not as unique as I’ve thought ..
  9. ‘There is no Path till you walk it’
  10. Be willing to Play the fool
  11. Read the book you want to read (I will probably talk about this later here)
  12. Listen to new music (challenge yourself to do it, even though it might not feel very comfortable at first).