209 years from now, what will be in the history books about today?

Today is the anniversary of the opening of the 1st US auto manufacturer Duryea Motor Wagon Company back in 1895.

I wonder what someone is doing today that will be in the history books in 209 years.Of course there won’t be ‘books’ as we know them other than perhaps in museums.Just like kids today ask what those black vinyl things are in the sleeves on shelves or in boxes.

Sometimes we just take things for granted all our lives and suddenly they seem to be meaningless. I took a pile of books over to a family member yesterday, one of her favorite authors and whilst she likes the author “I only read on my Kindle now. I can lie back on the bed, even in the dark and it’s just so convenient.”

I can’t imagine we’ll have cell phones in 200 years. Of course we’ll communicate, but how will it take place? I struggle to imagine. It could be a watch, or glasses, but I doubt it. Perhaps an ear-ring or something fashionable. It probably won’t be an implant for security and other reasons, but I doubt if we saw what they use, they we would recognize what it was. Imagine showing an iPhone to a family a hundred years ago.

Does Your Business Have CIPA? (Read Time 82 Seconds)

I’m just finishing the book Socialized by Mark Fidelman. It is one of the better books I have read of late about harnessing social media. Many of these books date very quickly, but the information in this 2012 book is still very relevant and I recommend you read a copy.

Towards the end Mark relates the story of a girl who suffers from Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, aka CIPA. It was an analogy to businesses who are heading down the gurgler at a rate of knots and don’t even realize it. Those of you who read my blogs will know about how frustrated I was to see Borders self implode, when they didn’t need to. As I mentioned earlier this week, many businesses are being hurt but not realizing it, or not knowing what to do about it. It’s that frog in the pot of simmering water. We all know the story, but many of us are sitting in that pot, enjoying the warmth and then getting severely cooked.

In my experience, it is people who aren’t institutionalized in your business who you need to talk to. If it’s not consultants like myself, at least talk to your customers, the ones you have left. Ask them why they come to your business. What is it that drew them in and how can you give them what they want and stay profitable?. I had loads of answers for the book industry, but they ‘knew what they were doing”. They focused on best sellers, general merchandise goodies and even fluffy toys. The questions you need to ask have to be qualitative, don’t give them choices you think they should answer, have conversations with them. Or get out quick and sell your business to someone while it still has some value. I still maintain if I had been on the management team or board of Borders in NZ, they wouldn’t have floundered, they would have risen like a phoenix out of the ashes of the past and their stores would be full of people, in many cases still buying paper.

Do does your business have CIPA? Are your margins declining, is your stock-turn going down? Are people buying similar products online instead of from you? Are your customers slowly churning to other sources or evolutions of the goods and services you offer? What have you done to future proof your business? As I said in my other blog earlier this week, people are reading more, listening to more music and taking more photos daily than ever before.

Got any questions? Feel free to leave them as comments and maybe we can have a discussion about this.

8 Technologies that will destroy how we do business

Unleashing the Road Warrior

I want a 3D Printer and a Filabot. The are two items on my bucket list. I guess that means I’ll be printing plastic, but the Filabot of course means that I can recycle plastic, so that’s a good thing right?

I was reading an article in the July-August edition of my favorite magazine, The Futurist about Tomorrow’s Jobs. If you have followed my various blogs over the years, you will know that I am driven by working smarter rather than harder, so the story about Goldman Sachs prediction about 8 technologies that are forcing businesses to adapt or die obviously caught my eye. The quote was about 3D printing. If you have a look through some of my other blogs you will find stories about 3D printing military clothing, printing human organs, my friend Vik Oliver’s work with Reprap and others.

So I was naturally curious about what Goldman Sachs thought the other 7 were. I was thinking self driving vehicles, eBooks, virtual and augmented reality tourism and education, eGovernment and all those menial jobs that don’t require human understanding and problem solving skills. So in a nutshell to satisfy my curiosity and maybe yours. The other 7 are:

• eCigarettes. I know a few people who use these and I was semi-tempted as someone who gave up smoking over 20 years ago, to give it a try, but yeah, nah. I do wish they had been around back in the day though. I’m sure these were originally conceived by someone like Jules Verne and if it wasn’t for the power of the tobacco industry, we probably would have been using them years ago.
• Cancer Immunotherapy. This is something I have read a little about on recent times. Who doesn’t know someone close who has had or has passed away from a form of cancer and we all know that often the treatment is almost as bad or worse than the symptoms. The concept of having your body able to combat cancer cells in the same way as we deal with a virus is compelling and hugely attractive.
• LED Lighting. Energy savings of up to 85%, a longer lifetime and so many creative ways you can use it from the home to the car to wherever you are. This one has already become huge without us even realizing it. Something that many disruptive industries and technologies are doing. Is there one invading your turf that you haven’t acknowledged sufficiently yet?
• Alternative funders for insurance such as pension funds that are willing to take a lower return. That’s a very interesting topic in my neck of the woods right now, where insurance companies who were happy to take premiums from the citizens of Christchurch seem to be reluctant to give it back after the earthquakes. Here are some stories from New Zealand’s Campbell Live Show on TV.
• Natural Gas Engines for the freight industry. Funny reading this because my very first company car ran on CNG. Goldman Sachs predicts that by 2020 20-30% of hauling fleets will be fueled by natural gas.
• Software Defined Networking. The cloud gets smarter. This blog is in the cloud and I’m writing it online, it is not stored on my hard drive.
• Big Data. No surprises here. This is what I was saying earlier about the human element. Until we have a true artificial intelligence, we are still going to be asking the questions, so I’m hoping that problem solving people like me will continue to be able to find exciting and fulfilling work to do. This is not intuitive for many people and the more specialized the workforce becomes, especially in large businesses, the less innovative the companies become. Shareholders increase their expectations of Return on Investment from old products and business concepts, then when it all turns to mush, they wonder what happened. I have to say, it’s not big data, it’s the ability to understand what’s contained in big data and how to apply it. Ask the wrong question and the answer could hasten your demise.

So there you have it. Interesting isn’t it that fundamentally there is nothing particularly new here. Yet all over the world companies are clinging to dated concepts and wondering why they are imploding. The crazy thing is that what people want and need isn’t changing significantly. People still read books, they still listen to music, they still want to know what’s in the news, they take more photos in a day on mobiles than in the entire history of Kodak film based cameras, yet the traditional businesses that grew fat on those industries are going broke.

What I also find interesting is often the answers are in the exact places that those companies don’t look. They are with the customers, they are with independent consultants, often with little experience in the specific industries. They are not in the traditional spreadsheets and they are not in the typical boardroom (don’t get me started). Business As Usual is a great model for going broke and yet none of the above industries are significantly novel or bleeding edge. They are natural evolutions of what came before. Yet many leading brands don’t get it, or stubbornly don’t want to get it.

So whether you own a business, or whether you are looking for your next job. You had better think very carefully about your future. The answers are closer than you think, but possibly not where you are looking. Do you know where your knowledge base is? Do you know what your greatest asset is? If you’re thinking it’s in your IP, unless you own your people, you might find that very soon the value of your patents will be minimal and that your creative minds have moved on, in many cases with the suggestions and creative ideas you turned away, because you knew better.

Whoops, I have sort of ended up on my soapbox again haven’t I?

Nice One Orcon

Why is it that the little things are so hard? Why do I really dislike credit departments? Do you know how yours talks to your customers?

So today I got home after a long but great day at the office. I found a ‘letter’ from Orcon saying that I had 5 days to pay my overdue account or risk getting my phone and Internet disconnected. I previously took up the option to pay by American Express to make sure that it was always paid on time, along with my power bill.

I rang Orcon and their credit department answered way faster than their support help desk ever has, less than a minute! I gave them my details and said I had received the letter and the person on the phone (Philippines accent I think) responded with “and when are you going to pay it?” I was taken aback. As far as I knew, it was always paid on time by Amex.

It transpired that my Amex card expired at the end of July, but I never received the replacement that American Express subsequently told me they had sent. I didn’t receive anything from Amex asking why the card had not been authenticated, nor did I receive anything from Orcon saying the account hadn’t been paid. I spend over a thousand dollars a year with Orcon, so at least a response like “How may I help you?” Rather than “when are you going to pay?” might have been nice.

So Orcon, I paid your account, that I didn’t know was overdue, on my Visa and American Express will no longer get a commission on that monthly transaction.

If you know that’s how your ‘Accounts Receivable’ treat your customers, you should also know that they don’t like it.

The last company that spoke to me like that was GE Money, through which I once bought a Canon SLR camera on 12 months interest free and was about 5 days overdue (because I didn’t get a reminder note from them). That was about 5 years ago and I have never used them again and told lots of people who follow me, my story.

Maybe it’s time to shop around and see what packages your competitors are offering, Orcon….. I’m sure my blog and social media followers would welcome my opinion. For everyone else, if you use 3rd party call centers, it’s a good idea to check them out as a customer once in a while and see how they are representing your business, because they are your front desk, especially if you don’t have a bricks and mortar presence.