When more speed is required, people are often shocked by how rapidly a process can be accomplished. Consider Dell Computer. The company will manufacture a single personal computer customized to order.
The customer goes online or calls a toll-free long distance number, places an order, and pays by credit card. As soon as the credit card charge is authorized, the order goes electronically...
Visit any information technology (IT) organization, and you will find a group overwhelmed with writing custom software to create special reports that often number in the thousands. Each time a database package from a new vendor is installed, chances are that new software has to be written to accommodate the existing reports while the request for new reports continues unabated. And what are all...
Online education allows busy working people to get the training they need to advance into new, entrepreneurial careers. In a short period of time, they can learn more about what questions to ask and how to develop their dreams than they can in a decade of trial-and-error experimentation based on looking at what's going on around them.
Yet many will see the short route to getting their...
The 80/20 Principle states that 80 percent of our results come from 20 percent of our efforts. That observation suggests that we have a lot of unnecessary activity going on.
He's the best physician who knows the worthlessness of the most medicines. --Benjamin Franklin
Three times since the 1960s, gasoline prices have unexpectedly spiked and held at substantially higher levels. The first...
It's easy to lose a focus on what needs to be delivered in trying to reduce costs. When that happens, costs increase and benefits are reduced.
Here's an example. Most organizations that provide charitable help to the poor like to check to be sure that those who receive the benefits are really poor.
Arrive at such a charitable organization, and you find long lines of people being...
Exponential cost reduction allows well-run organizations to grow by reducing customer and user costs by more than 96 percent while expanding profits. What are some reasons for this potential?
Advances in transportation and communications mean that you can quickly access help and resources from unusually remote locations. Rapidly declining electronics costs further aid the replacement of...
Most people accomplish tasks without looking very far ahead. That approach can be dangerous when making exponential cost reductions. You need a well illuminated road for cost reduction progress before you can proceed rapidly toward you goal.
"It's like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." -- E.L. Doctorow
But you...
Your new route to exponential profit growth will seem simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar, confusing and disorienting to some. It will only be after beneficiaries, users, and customers are totally befuddled that they will think to ask for help.
Even after you have taken all the steps you can imagine, things can go wrong. Be prepared for that.
Have a method that lets you observe...
Many people don't believe you can reduce user costs by as much as 96 percent. Why? Well, they've never reduced any user costs.
Let's look at an example based on studies that many of my language school clients have employed.
Becoming fluent in a new language is an activity where user costs can be high in terms of time and money. At the extreme, the student could make a mistake and...
Planning your communications for the new route is a critical priority. Otherwise, all the hard work you did on developing a route to expand your business by 20 times will be wasted.
But deciding something is a top priority won't make that much difference by itself. You also have to employ a different approach to develop your communications sooner.
Here's what I mean: Assuming that...
