I wanted to alert those loyal readers of this blog that the URL will be changing in the coming weeks. I am taking back http://www.creativeoutletlabs.com/ for some new things I am working on. More details will follow about that later, but for now I must, sadly, leave you guessing.

Sometimes you read research reports and they change your mind. Other times, you read the summary of a multi-year, multi-billion dollar study and think "Did we really need a research study to tell us that eating fried foods leads to weigh gain?"

Then there is the 3rd category. The research reports you can't quite belief, or disprove. There was an interesting article in the New York Times about some research around the correlation between intelligence and physical height. It is strange research, that is hard to explain or justify. If it is true, I'd like to know why taller people are statistically smarter.

Are there other things you have read like this that just leave you scratching your head?

In Tim Ferriss' provocative book, 4 Hour Workweek, he redefines what it means to be an expert and sets the threshold very low. He contends that if you have read 3 more books on the subject than the average person on the street, you can consider yourself an expert. The more you are asked for your opinion, the more people will ask for your opinion and so your celebrity (and implied expertise) grows.

So, although I don't agree with Mr. Ferriss about many things, it did make me think about what I knew better than the average person. The first thing that came to mind: air travel (probably because I was reading the book in the SFO terminal). Not just air travel in general, but business travel. Not just business travel, but how to travel for business when you are early in your career (some of the things that I have learned the hard way, but wished someone would have told me when I was just out of college). Perhaps, I will write a book (or a whole seminar series on CD with a workbook, as Tim recommends, that I will sell for $89).

In this book, I will have a whole chapter dedicated to the principle of "Never Pack More Than You Can Lift."

Can that be true? According to the folks at Comscore it is.

How we take things for granted!

Do a little experiment this next week. Keep track of how many hours you spend doing the following activities. All of your work hours must be sorted in the bucket which best describes the activity:

• Internal Coordination and Alignment: those activities focused on status reporting, getting buy-in, getting updates, correcting misunderstandings, and setting priorities.
• External Results: those activities which directly produce, execute, for fiinish something visible for the customer, which they value.

The Lean strategists would tell you the more things you do that are directly visible and valued by the customer, the leaner the organization overall. I am not sure who said it first, but you should never equate activity with results.

I am reminded of a poem I once read when my youngest brother was small that read "Even when removed of all obvious confections, children are sticky."

To be sticky in a business concept is to have an idea, product, or website that keep people keep coming back to (in their actions, their words, etc). I have read that you need to be controversial and polarizing if you want to create buzz on the internet (as measured by trackbacks). I guess the adage is true that "bad publicity is still publicity," even on the internet.

In broader terms, businesses want to have sticky products to build customer loyalty. Marketers and campaign leaders want sticky ideas. Chip Heath author of "Made to Stick" contends that all sticky ideas share six principles:
1. Simple
2. Unexpected
3. Concrete
4. Credible
5. Emotional
6. Story

Perhaps that is why children are sticky afterall.

P.S. If you want to find out how sticky your ideas, products, or company might be, here is a link to some tools that you can use to monitor web buzz.

I am a fan of enthusiasm. That said, I thought this was just too funny to pass up. Gotta love Hugh at GapingVoid.