Recently in Strategy + Ventures Category
An amazing quote - by either Seth Godin or by Arthur C Clarke. In any case.. it’s something to remember when designing a product, service etc…
The original idea should feel so real that people believe in it.. Then even if you don’t completely make it real, people will live in the experience..
This idea isn’t new! Movies and Plays have done it for ages, and most recently, Second Life proving quite conclusively that - as we move from an age of Solutions to an age of Experiences, feeling real may be as good as being real…
Now where’s my avatar when I need it?
This is the guy who brought Amazon back… and he’s awesome
Seth Godin points us to Kevin Kelly who’s written a riff on this subject. Read these posts (click on the links in this post). It’s the best way you’ll make money going forward.
As almost all products get commoditised, you need to sell the value in value added services. The posts suggest ways in which you are going to look for, create and communicate value.
What an incredible man and presentation!
This idea is loosely borrowed from the extreme programming paradigm of software development.
Essentially the idea of planning in Extreme programming is - Just plan the next step, Then execute, Learn and then Refine the plan. This saves time and cost.
I have a brief suggestion:
No matter what kind of project planning you do, whether extreme or “normal big bang” planning, After you finished your work on any stage.. Go back to your planning and update the plan with what you actually spent in terms of resources and time. The next time you have a project that includes these elements, you can copy paste the relevant sections of the “executed plan”, and have a more realistic idea of how things will unfold..
A side benefit - you know who you want on your team the next time around as well if you do this.
I joined a health club yesterday, because it was nice.
The concept of the club is recognizable - they want to create a place where you feel at home - a “third place” between home and work where someone can come, relax, meet people, and consume the product being served - in this case fitness services.
Starbucks did this, and the others copy it. It’s a trend - as people tend to watch their pennies carefully, they still demand more and more value for their money. So service providers move into providing more and more ancillary services while creating the “home away from home” concept…
My question is: Until which point is this viable? When all places (not just health clubs) are “nice to be in”, folks will make choices. And the choice may not fall on the one who invested the most and has the most services.
It would be interesting to see and influence how this plays out!
Commodities were hot in 2007. and they will stay hot in 2008. But when most people think commodities they think Oil, Steel, Copper etc.
But the biggest stories will be in food commodities… A couple of stories
- CNN has a video about the “Queen of Oranges” - an uneducated illiterate Yemeni woman who is one of the biggest wholesalers of oranges in Yemen and the Middle east. Apparently she sells 270,000 dollars of produce per day!
- Mango producers in the Ratnagiri district and the rest of the Konkan area of India have never had it so good. Apparently the global demand for Mangoes “all the year around” has given rise to giant orchards on the Sahyadri hills in the Konkan. Using special strains of mango trees, they manage to produce mangoes in just 2 years after planting as compared to 7 years previously. The mango plants and mangoes are germ resistant and a single plant produces 40 kilos of mangoes per year.
Agri-products and “manufacturers” of Agricultural products will really prosper as two trends take hold -
- As supermarkets push on to create their own private label products, newer customers for the producers are created. Old intermediaries will be pushed out.
- As the middle class consumers in China and India get more comfortable with the concept of “I eat the food I want to eat, when I want to eat it”, the year around production in warm climate countries like India, Kenya and Brazil to fulfil this want will increase the business of agriproducts in its entirety, and exotic produce in particular
So
a) If you’re a producer - get serious about positioning - market your product as an attractive addition to the menus of consumers and target retail customers to support them in their private label efforts
b) If you’re an investor - start researching agricultural companies and their position in the “value chain” from farm to shop
c) If you’re a consumer - enjoy your meal!
