"Automobiles are free of egotism, passion, prejudice and stupid ideas about where to have dinner. They are, literally, selfless. A world designed for automobiles instead of people would have wider streets, larger dining rooms, fewer stairs to climb and no smelly, dangerous subway stations." --P .J. O'Rourke
First-time car owners often have no clue as to what a tune-up is. It's the routine...
A friend of mine was interested in investing. He put all his money into the financial markets and waited for what he had to grow. In fact, he was so optimist that he borrowed lots of money to buy even more.
My friend then went away on a nice hike for three days. At the end, he called his broker and learned that he was broke. Why? His financial holdings had been sold off by his broker...
Consider Japan after World War II. The nation's industrial base had taken a pounding. Because Japan lacks most raw materials, the country needed to export goods in those days of gold-backed currencies if the Japanese were to be able to purchase the oil, minerals, and agricultural goods needed to sustain the nation.
Those first postwar exports were often made in factories on jury-rigged...
Have as many stakeholders as possible share their concerns, ideas for improvement, and reactions to experiments and other initiatives. That's valuable because even a new business model that starts way off target will soon begin to go in the right direction as a result of continuing feedback from those who help create, deliver, purchase, employ, and consume an offering. Make each individual step...
Most people consider cost reduction in terms of matching an unmet need to an available capability that few have chosen to pursue. That's a good way to appreciate that traditional ways of developing markets, enterprises, and habits are working from only one business model, a model that is increasingly irrelevant.
In this article, I want you to see that there are many alternative, advantaged...
Talk to most organizational leaders about how the global marketplace can help them reduce costs, and visions of low-wage manufacturing employees seem to fill the leaders' heads. Hiring such employees may well be an opportunity, but often that opportunity will be the least important part of your global cost-reduction business model.
The marketing opportunity can be vastly more...
We live in an age of galloping increases in affluence for those who already are affluent. That trend is often hidden by small changes in the average numbers.
There are several causes for the booming wealth expansion among the affluent. First, in many countries the number of people with more education that can be employed in the global marketplace is rapidly growing. These people earn higher...
Market expansion vastly increases the potential for all kinds of cost reductions through scale, learning effects, technology improvements, and opportunities for optimizing providing offerings and benefits. For example, consider how much less expensive it is to provide personal computers today than it was when they were first offered and the market was tiny.
One of the easiest ways to...
"I keep finding myself getting off the freeway at familiar landmarks that turn out to be unfamiliar. On the way to appointments. Wandering down streets I thought I recognized that turn out to be replicas of streets I remember. Streets I disremember. Streets I can't tell if I've lived on or saw in a postcard."
--Sam Shepard
Boston has long had a well-deserved reputation as one of the most...
Someone once said that civilization is merely mass hypnosis to convince us to do all kinds of silly, cooperative things that make us feel connected to one another. From that perspective, much of what seems "necessary" really isn't. If you can find a country where the cultural assumptions are different, your eyes may be opened to vast opportunities to eliminate the unnecessary.
Visit...
