The below article was featured in The Economist’s 2016 Innovation Forum event summary. Blue Daring partnered with The Economist to host the Forum in Chicago this Spring. The Forum brings together today’s leading thinkers to envision how companies can transform and adapt to flourish tomorrow. While adopting a culture of innovation has many benefits like product… Read more »
Your brand’s value is not what you make or what you do. It’s certainly not your tagline. Your brand’s value is the net change your business catalyzes in your customer’s life—the purpose and goal of your products or services. Through this lens, Tesla does not make cars, but rather energy efficient solutions. Waste Management does not… Read more »
If you have ever fallen in love with a restaurant, you’ll know about the heartbreak of crushed expectations when you visit them after their time in the spotlight. Why is it that the minute restaurants have to cater to a lot of people quickly, they lose the very thing that made them famous to begin… Read more »
While sitting at the Hyatt in Belgrade last month, I had an epiphany. My kuma Katarina, who I was meeting for coffee, walks in. We hug, say hello and she says: “You look good.” That afternoon I had my glasses on (which I never wear out of my home) and so I said “Are you… Read more »
Many of you know the saying the shoemaker always goes barefoot. For those who don’t it means when a craftsman does not do for himself what he does for others. I started to feel that way about our brand. While our core philosophy has gone unchanged, the last five years [since our re-brand] have been so… Read more »
For over 8 years, Blue Daring has been a proud business owner at O’Hare Airport. Through the Federal Aviation Authority’s Airport Certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (ACDBE) program, we were afforded the opportunity to partner with the country’s and later the world’s largest travel retailer as a minority stakeholder and partner in two concession operations at… Read more »
As I heard a personal branding consultant say last week–branding happens. Question is, are you going to control it? With that in mind (and really all the time since it’s what I know, breathe and love), I always look to my environment for both lessons and inspiration. Here are three lessons on branding from three… Read more »
I am going through a bit of an identity crisis. In what seems to be the blink of an eye I have gone from being a young Latina hustling my way through four degrees, a career and a young business in a delightfully diverse city to having spent this weekend “picking up” a new car,… Read more »
When people ask me how we compare to the competition, I answer—we have no competition. Am I ignorant or arrogant you ask? Neither. The answer is that there is no other Blue Daring (with a Melissa or a Vanessa, with our unique experiences and DNA, etc), so when I say there is no competition, it’s… Read more »
As our company has grown over the last few years, we have found ourselves engaging not only more service providers, but further more sophisticated ones. As a person who defines their work as “being of service”, it has been interesting for me personally to be on the other side (for a change) of the service… Read more »