There are two types of innovation that increases the competitive advantage. The first type is the attracter of the customer, the second type is the renter of the customer. The attracter of the customer can fullfill an unmet customer needs, it be a new function, a specific design or cost. The retender can be membership, customer resource investment or departure penalty.
For the bridge, you can put lights on the bridge to make it more attractive to those curious. You can also make the bridge wider, on festivals, you can let vendors to sell arts/crafts, ice cream, pop corn on the bridge, basically converting the bridge into a night market. It becomes not only the best place to cross the bridge but also a good place to hang out with friends and family. These are all the attractors of bridge. There can also be a point card, the more you spend on the bridge, the more points you get. There is also a fast lane, that you can pay and receive a bill later on. Basically, you do need to pay for a fee for passing the bridge, but you feel the bridge is well worth the money.
The retender can be multipass of the bridge, switching discount (if you ask to terminate the multipass, you can be offered a discount for next year's multipass, etc) , loss of the accumulated points.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
How to innovate an operating system when there is a free one there.
A computer operating system is a piece of software that turns the hardware alive. In history, both Apple and Windows operating system have made huge amount of money. However, in recent years, because of the competition from free Linux and Android, operating system are in danger of becoming of low margin business. What could an operating system innovate to keep on fending off the competition from the cheaper ones?
The first one is to improve the customer experience.
Basically, there should be richer open box experiences available on proprietary Operation System than a free operating system. All the software companies that are interested in running promotion should be able to give their free trials installed on the proprietary operating system.
The second one is to improve the developer experience.
In order to improve the developer experience, there are developers who wants to innovate, you got to empower them to innovate on the proprietary operating system because you can provide more components that can be re-used just as is. You got to make better documentation of the API, provide more extensive sample code, keep on enhancing the functionality of the existing API. Implement expensive and widely used algorithm, e.g. singular value decomposition, deep learning, at the low level, so that others love the proprietary implementation better than others.
The third one is to reduce the total cost of ownership.
Owning a computer is not only about acquisition cost. Although the acquisition cost for Linux is zero, maintaining it is not. Focusing on improving the tools that are important to manage each component will likely to reduce the total cost ownership. For example, there should be a dash board for network, dashboard for printing, dashboard for file sharing, dashboard for Internet usage, dashboard for security.
The first one is to improve the customer experience.
Basically, there should be richer open box experiences available on proprietary Operation System than a free operating system. All the software companies that are interested in running promotion should be able to give their free trials installed on the proprietary operating system.
The second one is to improve the developer experience.
In order to improve the developer experience, there are developers who wants to innovate, you got to empower them to innovate on the proprietary operating system because you can provide more components that can be re-used just as is. You got to make better documentation of the API, provide more extensive sample code, keep on enhancing the functionality of the existing API. Implement expensive and widely used algorithm, e.g. singular value decomposition, deep learning, at the low level, so that others love the proprietary implementation better than others.
The third one is to reduce the total cost of ownership.
Owning a computer is not only about acquisition cost. Although the acquisition cost for Linux is zero, maintaining it is not. Focusing on improving the tools that are important to manage each component will likely to reduce the total cost ownership. For example, there should be a dash board for network, dashboard for printing, dashboard for file sharing, dashboard for Internet usage, dashboard for security.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Creating innovative product via building minimal viable product
Innovation is hard because resources are often tied to the activities that generates cashflow or pre-existing business endeavors. As a result, it is of critical importance to create a minimal viable product(MVP) with the focus. Leverage on the demonstration of the MVP, you can harness more resources to mature the product.
How to build a minimal viable product? The primary element of creating a minimal viable product is focus. You should always keep a priority list and always focus on your number one priority.
First, you need to identify the customer scenarios. What are the minimal customer/product interaction are needed.
Second, how can you find the most basic solutions to satisfy the minimal customer/product interaction.
When you completed these two parts, you are already half way through the building of the MVP.
Afterwards, you should cost the efforts to actually implement the MVP and budget resources to realize it.
How to build a minimal viable product? The primary element of creating a minimal viable product is focus. You should always keep a priority list and always focus on your number one priority.
First, you need to identify the customer scenarios. What are the minimal customer/product interaction are needed.
Second, how can you find the most basic solutions to satisfy the minimal customer/product interaction.
When you completed these two parts, you are already half way through the building of the MVP.
Afterwards, you should cost the efforts to actually implement the MVP and budget resources to realize it.
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