Contrary to everything we’ve been taught to believe, new research suggests that money can, in fact, buy happiness.

A recent survey from Pitney Bowes showed that while 87% of SMEs recognise that marketing increases sales, the average SME only executes around 39% of its planned marketing activity. When I read this, I was not very surprised. This is something we frequently encounter with companies; it’s all very well putting a marketing plan together, but seeing it through is quite another matter.

A great blog from Seth Godin popped into my inbox this morning. Its subject was frequency. Specifically, we know that frequent communications of the same message to your target market increases the chance of converting them to take action, but we also know that hammering the same message over and over again will bore and annoy many people.

According to Nicholas Diakopoulos, in his blog post on hbr.org, data visualization works best when we’re happy.

In their report, Disruptive Technologies: advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) assesses the potential reach and scope, as well as the potential economic impact and disruption of major rapidly advancing technology areas.

Came across the Manifesto for Agile Software Development in the Thinking Digitally report by Stylus (full disclosure: a client of Make Happy). Interesting how both the manifesto itself and the principles behind it ring true for a better way for working in general.