We’ve seen a good bit of reporting lately on the return of the multigenerational household. And like every social trend, you know this one has it’s implications for business (ones that go beyond the fact that there appears to be an opportunity for contractors who build and/or renovate in-law apartments). What is it? Well, to begin with, as noted by market researcher Lorin Drake in this piece from last Sunday’s New York Times, “If we win over the boomer mom, we win over the adult kids and parents who live with he. We can scoop up all three at once.” That’s certainly something to keep in mind.

We’re rooting for the guys profiled Sunday in the Boston Globe Magazine who are working to revive candlepin bowling. Because, hey, candlepin is a great game. Yeah, tenpin’s fun, too, but candlepin’s way more challenging. It’s also the perfect way to introduce kids to bowling. A kid can actually pick up a candlepin ball and bowl without needing to use some crazy ramp contraption.

More to the point, though, we hope these guys succeed because they’re going at it the right way. They’re not out there simply saying, “Hey, this old game is great.” They’ve found creative approaches that make tournament candlepin more exciting. They don’t want you to like the game out of nostalgia; they want you to get to the lanes and discover (or rediscover) how much fun it is. That kind of thing should happen more.

OK, so for some of us, this takes a bit of getting over a tendency to look sideways at a guy who wants to design his own shirts (no, it’s not a homophobia thing; it’s a dandy-phobia thing — gay or straight, there’s just something off-putting about men who pay too much attention to their clothes). But after that, you’ve got to look at Blank Label as a pretty sharp business. Conceptually, anyhow. Because the essence of the thing is a realization that the internet economy makes it possible to tailor (yeah, yeah, complain about the pun all you like) the retail experience to every consumer. And, sure, neither the service nor the price are going to be right for everyone, but there’s no doubt that there are enough potential customers out there to make a service like this highly successful. Success comes from identifying opportunities and taking risks. This business deserves to succeed.

Agency friend Kevin Cullen is doing an outstanding job of keeping the issue of bullying (here in South Hadley and elsewhere) in focus. And in this column from Sunday, he brings in another ongoing problem, the one about how youth sports have been taken over by the wrong people with all the wrong ideas. Seriously, folks, sports are supposed to be fun for kids. We’re not doing anything to encourage a love of physical activity when we consistently put so much pressure on kids that they come to look at playing games as something stressful, which is to say something best avoided. There’s nothing wrong with keeping score. There’s nothing wrong with winning. But there’s something really wrong with teaching kids to be bad losers (or bad winners) and making what happens on the field more about the parents and the coaches than about the kids. It isn’t working. It isn’t fun. For kids, or anyone.

OK, so this is how you have fun selling a product. The Weak Shop, which offers a variety of absurdly funny products, was put together by the British Columbia Dairy Foundation. The real point, of course, is that you’d be healthier if you drank more milk. It works. Because fun sells.

Oh, and, uh, while you’re there, check out the milk videos, which are simply brilliant. Here’s one to get you started:

There are a lot of reasons to go back and read the Wall Street Journal’s recent story on the huge early success of Topps new Attax baseball card game. One of them is that it’s worth noting that Topps has been promoting the cards with demonstrations at minor league ballparks. Why? Because you can find kids there — and baseball fans, too. Not that you can’t find both at major league parks, but the hit rate isn’t so consistent. Major professional sports venues, for a number of reasons, increasingly are the territory of corporate executives. Some are there for the games; some are there for business. And they’ve priced out families, who now go to minor league parks – and go to see baseball. So if you’re marketing a baseball-themed game for kids, well, you figure it out.

The bigger point, though, is that Attax is being marketed, and successfully, as a kids games. That, as the story points out, is a big turnabout for the sports trading card business, which had hitched its wagon to the collector market and took a big hit as a result. The collectables market is always fickle. And subject to economic trends. Kids, on the other hand, always love to play.

Topps is also succeeding with Attax in part because it’s given kids a baseball card you can actually have fun with. The fact that Attax aren’t simply for looking at but for playing with harks back to the days when kids used to flip cards on the playground, something that’s gone away as card prices soared making parents sensitive about games that damaged those collectable items – and made playing for keepsies a lot less fun. So Topps is getting ahead by putting out an affordable, fun baseball card for kids. Who’da thunk it? Sometimes thinking different just means thinking sensibly when everyone around you isn’t.

Everybody who is involved at any level in running a business needs to read this Boston Globe story on Apple Computer’s model for continued success. Yes, we say that in part because there’s a part about how focus groups don’t work, something we talk about all the time. But there’s a lot more. And if you’re smart enough to own or run a business, you’re smart enough to figure out how to put the principles that have driven Apple’s ongoing success to work for your business, no matter what industry you’re in. Go. Read. Now.

As the spring youth sports season gets ready to kick into gear, we’re thinking more and more about this recent Sunday New York Times story about Sandlot Day. The concept, created by Tim Donovan, director of the Youth Sports Institute is to set aside a day for kids to play sports the old fashioned way: however they want. Without parents coaching, officiating, enforcing by-the-book play or engaging in the coaching from the stands and other overbearing behaviors that make a lot of organized youth sports unfun.

Yeah, it is crazy that it took an expert to come up with an idea this simple. But it did. And every parent and every coach in America should embrace it, because what it’s about is emphasizing playing games – which is a lot different from “participating in organized sports.” Because, look, organized youth sports are great. But it’s got out of hand. That’s partly a reflection of modern reality. Kids lead busier lives than they ever did in the past; and with two parents working in most families and an ever-growing fear of what can happen when you let your kids out of your sight, unsupervised play, which is how kids used to acquire most of their athletic skills, has become a thing of the past. It’s also a reflection of the fact that adults think they can improve everything kids do, which is just plain wrong. Adults want to tell kids how to play. They think they’re being helpful. But more often than not, kids are better served when they’re encouraged to work things out for themselves.

There’s also the fact that a lot of parents seem to think the point of youth sports is to help kids develop pro-level athletic skills. That’s where much of the parental interference – with kids and volunteer youth sports coaches – comes from (that and the ugly compulsion to exercise their own competitiveness through their kids). And it’s a huge mistake. The vast majority of kids don’t need to learn the kind of skills that get you a college scholarship or lift you to the pros, because the vast majority of kids aren’t ever going to get to that level. No matter how hard they train. But every kid – every single one, without exception – can benefit from the kind of skills learned through pick-up games – and through play in general. This is where kids learn to lead, to cooperate, to work together, and to create. Playing without parental meddling, kids learn self reliance. They acquire self confidence. They learn that not everything has to be serious, that it’s OK just to have fun. And they’re reminded that, yes, you can actually have fun running around, chasing one another and chasing a ball, which is to say they acquire the kind of love for physical activity that keeps people active and healthy as they get older and the opportunities (and the time) to participate in organized sports grow ever shorter.

Think about the fact that we live in a world where we need to be reminded to step back every now and then and just let kids play. Think about how desperately that needs to change. And then get behind Sandlot Day so it can happen where you live.

Here’s one of those ideas we wish had been ours. Ruby Receptionists, based in Portland, Oregon, provides cost-effective live receptionist services nation-wide. They’re not an answering service. They provide professionally trained, receptionists who learn about client businesses so they can actually answer questions. As far as callers know, they’re talking to someone sitting at your front desk. That beats dumping callers into a voicemail system that makes them feel like you don’t care about them. It beats having your calls routed overseas where they’re answered by someone with an impenetrable accent. It beats … well, hell, in a lot of instances, it actually beats having a receptionist in your office. Because this company attracts and retains great professionals. Fantastic idea. Great company. Now if only we could go back in time and come up with the concept before they did.

OK, so there’s something a bit off about an article that starts out talking about efforts to make “healthier” potato chips. But the bigger point is still well taken. If junk food producers are sinking R&D money into creating “designer salt,” it’s a pretty safe bet they’re not motivated by altruistic concern for consumers’ health. They’re doing it because they’re pretty sure there’s a lot of money to be made selling products that are, at the very least, less hideously unhealthy than the stuff they’ve been pushing for the past 60 years or so. That’s a trend that’s not letting up any time soon.