JC Blog

“I know Kung Fu” – Real possibility of learning by inducing brain activity

Pretty wild research posted a few days ago by the NSF:

Vision Scientists Demonstrate Innovative Learning Method

Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person’s visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.

Top three things I’d love to “learn” immediately:

  1. The cello
  2. Chinese
  3. Boxing

But would that just take all the fun out of learning?


Not losing customers, quick lesson from HBR

Great HBR article by Rita McGrath last week about watching how customers interact with your company (or don’t):

How Many Customers Did You Lose Today?

Fully 3 people looked at the line and bailed on the thought of purchasing for every 1 person who actually made a purchase. Imagine — the café would have increased its business by 300% if everybody who thought they might like a coffee had been converted into a coffee buyer.

In our education business, we recently noticed some online classes that were getting great traffic, but not selling because there were no more openings. Matt wisely suggested that rather than scheduling the classes with 6 seats–the maximum number we allow per class–we create them with 20+ seats and find teachers as needed.

Probably should have been a duh moment for me, but still, watching what our customers were doing online helped point out a great opportunity to pick up more business.


4 Great Inc Articles: Fat Entrepreneurs, Renting Interns, +2

Recent/interesting/useful Inc. articles:

  1. Why Mistakes Are Your Greatest Untapped Resource

    Great observation about shifting the definition of a mistake away from being outcome-based:

    A man plays the lottery and loses every week. His friends may call that repeated decision a mistake based on the terrible outcome. But what happens if he wins one week? The outcome is different, but the decision is the same. Is it then a brilliant decision or still a mistake? This definition of mistake is too outcome-based. To me, it’s more beneficial to look at how the decision was made.

  2. Smarter Sales: 2 Hours Is All You Need

    Simple and great advice for busy entrepreneurs to increase sales.

    It’s really easy to become the smartest person in the room for your market and industry. Just talk to all of the other smartest people. It’s not hard.

  3. Can’t Hire? Rent a College Student

    Clever concept we may look into–matching cash-strapped firms in need of project-based work to students hungry to earn cash and gain experience

  4. Why Entrepreneurs Gain Weight: 3 Reasons

    I don’t know if this makes me feel better or worse.