Airbnb Storyboard Dedication, Customer Altruism, Data’s Predictive Edge

The Strategist picks the day’s most interesting stories for the content aficionados who love the backstory and reading between the lines. Here are the gems you need to kickstart your Monday:

Best Way to Get Inside Your Customers’ Heads (Inc)
Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia explains that storyboards are an invaluable tool for understanding and connecting with customers.

Bring text to life to execute ideas and fuel innovation. Here’s how.

Guidelines for Cultivating Customer Altruism (HBR)
Altruism is one of the most beautifully human qualities. Sometimes, it takes a natural disaster or human event to bring it out. If only, however, this natural impulse was an everyday fact of life.

Here’s another powerful social force that rules the world – business. Imagine what would happen if you combined business with altruism – happiness, health, strong family relationships, and more.

The Data Made Me Do It (MIT Technology Review)
Correlation is not causation. If you study statistics, that’s one of the first lessons you’ll learn. You can’t leverage numbers to predict the future, but you can learn what’s likely to happen with some degree of accuracy.

That’s a core value proposition for up-and-coming platforms like Google Now and others. The worlds of business and data are colliding harmoniously into the everyday decisions we’re making. How do you feel about it?

What WalMart Likes in Mobile (Digiday)
Even the biggest retailer in the world experiences strong barriers in mobile marketing.

It’s easy to get excited with a brand new technology, but what’s the best strategy for using it? Here’s what WalMart loves: mobile content, responsive design, wearable tech, and location services.