The Lauren Report

Everyone knows the big payments company is the dominant player in online transactions. But it is moving in several new directions as the quote above indicates, including mobile. Should you worry? Or partner?   Two years past its tenth birthday, PayPal exudes mainstreamed qualities that many of its present and emerging competitors in the quirky world of alternative payments would covet. This includes established brand recognition and the ownership of a payment platform that is becoming a standard. In keeping with this status, President Scott Thompson has said that a day doesn’t pass when he reads of some new entrant stating its designs to be the next PayPal. Not that the San Jose, Calif.-based payments company is without detractors, as sites such as PayPalS*cks.org attest. “The critics come with the territory,” says Ron Shevlin, senior analyst at Aite Group, Boston. But he adds that “the company has improved risk management in recent years and elsewhere worked on e...

Can’t find inspiration? Just do it already. When I talk about having to do your work, you artists, writers, craft mavens… you all know what I mean. You need to do it. No matter how silly or whimsical your work might seem to someone who doesn’t share your enthusiasm. Even if you’re not being paid to do it. Whether your work involves establishing a daily writing habit, or practicing your instrument, writing a song, or taking photos.  It’s about mastering process, then learning to go in a different direction. It’s also about using your abilities wisely, working your mojo, implementing some of your ideas, rather than letting them lie fallow.   Heading into 2018, I’m rooting myself on. I’m reminding myself to lean into my talents.  I’m also reminding myself—and you—to face any given project by starting with the end in mind. If you have a plan, and start working, you make it easier to become engaged. In this way, by diving in, you just migh...

Being culturally “with it” is partially about knowing what’s on trend, and what may happen next. But lately, in the eternal now, many of these developments seem less important. I’ll explain… These days I’m in a state I think of as “the eternal now.” A mix of groundhog day, like the film, and experiencing random variations that seem to portend a lot of change to come but mostly add up to the same picture. In broad terms, I think of the future. (What may happen to the planet for instance.)  But I wonder less about my future. It wasn’t always this way. I used to be as trend obsessed as anybody in NYC and future focused along with it. When I was a B2B reporter in the 90s, for instance, one of the annual features that I put together for the banking magazine where I worked was “ What’s Next in Information technology. ” Generally, I looked forward to working on the project.  It was a variation on 5 hot trends in hemlines now , but naturally, it wasn’t about clothing, and ...