Category Archives: Business

“Zero Cost” Mobility

Artificial Intelligence, Autonomous Driving, Connectivity, Driverless, Electro Mobility, Internet Of Things, Machine Learning, Urban Transport, User Experience

“Free or near Zero Cost” Digital Mobility in the Online world is ushering in a brave new economy. An economy in which value is increasingly driven in the Digital space. Friction-less Mobility in the Online World  has ment that a large portion of consumers are increasingly spending more time online and that has led to businesses going digital following the ” Go where the Customers Go” paradigm.

However it is the real Physical world were the outcomes of a digital effort is realized. it does not really matter if you have 1000 friends online if you have so few enriching relationships in the real world. The Digital exist to improve our lives in the real physical world.

So what Off “Physical Mobility” then. Its damn easy in the online world  and “How would the world look like if  “Physical mobility within Cities” were to be as easy as it is in the Online world?

Can we imagine a world in which people can transport themselves and goods across the city at “near zero costs”  Just like the Digital Experience we now know off. Will it benefit society and economy in a similar way as Online Mobility has? To be very clear on what i mean by Cost, It is not just Dollars.

Let´s look at a few personas that traverse the city lanes every day to enumerate what i mean, purely as a vision exercise.

  • Zero Travel Time Costs: Bob, the Designer needs to get to his office

“Time is the only limited resource” says Bob; it is understandable coming from young parent who is also peaking in his career as a designer. His work needs him to be emotionally and rationally immersed and it is somewhat similar when he is home with his young son & Partner.  He finds himself always doing the Commute math, every time he has to get around the city; he has gradually developed a “necessary Evil” view of Commuting to Work.

The problem lies in the fact that travelling in a city can be so stressful; it needs a plan if you are using public transport and much worse if you are driving, as you have to focus all your faculties to it. Bob perceives this time as something he loses forever.

Imagine a city where Bob steps out of his house and in no time he is off in a “Mobility Device” that was waiting in front of his door. It looks and feels like home inside and if he were “working on a new version of his designs” or say “Building a cardboard house with his son” before his commute, he continues as if there has been no change.

After his Son is dropped off right in front of the school door in this silent and clean “Mobility Device”, he gets back to his Designs. He is alerted a few minutes prior to his destination by the Mobility device  and out goes Bob. Now it does not matter to him that he spent 60 min getting there anymore.

Bob is subscribing to the “Maximize Time“ Commute Package that lets him prioritize “Fastest Mode”, “Private Space” OR “Family Space” in any sequence he wants.  He can set the preferences in his calendar in advance and can also make changes within a few minutes of the departure time. He also does not have to worry about the hassles of changing transport means in between his long commute.

Bob has a new saying these days “Space and time are related”, “In the right space; it is always, Time well spent”.

  • Zero Social Costs : Anita the Entrepreneur has a productive day

“Trust makes all the difference, I just can´t get enough quality Face to face time with people who matter” it does not help having a Phone call all the time and to synchronize so many calendars and zigzagging thru to city to meet all of them is such a pain all the time” says Anita.

Imagine a city where Anita can book meetings with people when they commute, every “Mass Mobility Device” comes equipped with meeting rooms that you could book if you had the right subscription. Now the 8 hour work day seems so much more productive for both her and her stakeholders.

The other day she was hosting a delegation of investors and had to travel all the way into the industrial area at the outskirts of the city, she could book all of them into a coach Bus with a conference room setup, just thru her calendar and off they went and on the way Anita and her team were able to discuss and make presentations. It was also possible to get overseas participants into the conference thru Virtual reality tools.

Anita no longer feels the same limitation in her job, having to be on the move is now an advantage. “City Mobility is now an extension of my office and I just love the way we have more discussions in the physical world than online, it is so much more productive”. In fact she extends the same thinking to her friends’ network as well; she now meets more of them and has more enriching social life which is not completely reliant on connections in the online world.

  • Zero Boredom Cost : Tanya the Tourist

 “ I Love to see new places and cities are my favorite, a city that conserves its history has a charm of its own, an urban landscape would boring if it did not allow for a good blend of Green, ease of getting around and possibility to see the people who make the city what it is”.

Imagine a city where Tanya jumps on a Segway right out of her hotel OR AirBNB. The Segway is activated by a button of her smart phone and provides her with a lot of city tour options and she decides to explore the city with a group of diverse nationalities on a history tour.

In the inner City zone, people are either walking or using horse carriages, bicycles, Segway or Open air low speed electric carts. All this mobility is noiseless, except for the horse carts of course.

She can at any point in Time; Park the Segway at the many docking stations and decide to explore the city with a different option. The city is full of Green spaces and lovely eating spaces in all corners, the chanter of birds, people and the calm breeze is all one can hear.

“Moving around the city seems so easy and a natural thing to do that you hardly seem to notice that you have been out all day, it also makes it possible to meet so many people along the way, it is so much more fulfilling sharing this experience with real people and being present here every second, than spurting out photos by the minute to my online connections”.

All of this with a pre-booked subscription and every mobility device unlocks for her thru the phone.

What is more, the city is full of high resolution cameras and based on her subscription, at the end of the day Tanya gets Candid videos & photos of her amidst all this exploration on her phone.

  • Zero Monetary Cost : Zac the Student

“ It is a tricky balance between renting cost and communing cost, the closer i live to the university campus the more i spend on rent and any attempt to lower the spend on rent, i spend a lot more on commuting”. ” Every penny matters with increasing tuition costs and a hazy job market,  i just don´t want to end up with a big education loan at the end of all this”

Imagine a city where Zac pays no cost of commuting, as he can use a Student Subscription that lets him the right to use all transport modes save the ” Private Space/ Family Space ” modes.

In return for enjoying this subscription, Zac puts in a few hours being part customer clinics and feedback sessions with the Mobility providers to help them improve the system. He was also part of a drive to conduct end user surveys, as he commuted he was collecting responses from subscribers who were actually paying for the mobility service.

” It is great to be able to keep my rental costs low without having to worry a lot about commuting cost and the time i spend supporting the mobility provider is nothing short of an internship in marketing”

  • Zero Economic Costs : Yuki the Ambulance Driver

“All this new autonomous technology seems to be complicating things for people like me, I can´t help feel that the society is really ignoring the impact of technology on me”

Imagine a City where Yuki starts her work day by looking at big dashboard showing the overall health of the entire City transportation system. The dashboard flashes alerts regarding health of the various mobility devices and utilization.

“Having been a human Expert at driving all these years, I now have the possibility to evaluate how we can improve the user experience with Mobility, I have the possibility to look at high level metrics and then zoom into individual areas and also alert field response staff on any attention needed. I supervise the 10 blocks right at the heart of the city and ensure all the mobility solutions are up and running at their best levels”.

“So many of my former colleagues have moved to the command center roles and field response roles where they remotely operate or drive in person if needed. Some of us have also picked up the skills to trouble shoot and guide the guys perfecting the software running all this”

“I am part of the revolution in Mobility and I am proud of what I do”

  • Zero Environmental Cost : Professor Watson, the Climate Warrior

“If earth were to be a human; it so resembles a Chronic Drug addict. Our need to drive growth at all costs is an addiction that is blinding us to sustainable ways of growing. It’s the same process; once an addict discovers the high drugs induce, the mind conspires against the well being of its Host; the Body. Increasingly we humans are the Minds and our Earth the body”

Imagine a City where every citizen knows the impact of each of their mobility choices and pays a price for it, a city where Watson can influence the policy makers with all the data that is so freely flowing from the Mobility system.

Watson can now measure the Air Quality of every point in the city accurately thanks to the sensors on every mobility device. This enables him to identify “No Fossil Fuel Zones” which when mandated can be easily implemented as “No Go Zone” on IC Engines.

Watson can also measure the Energy needs of City Mobility and predict with a great degree of accuracy how it will evolve. He is also now able to qualify all Mobility energy sources, like charging points etc. as “renewable” or “Non Renewable” based on source of power in a dynamic way. This allows the City to price the charging from these sources differently. The Fossil Fuel based sources attract a heavy tax. This has led to “Opportunity Charging” being re defined as “Green Charging”

The Subscription model of Selling Mobility Services has also led to better planning by energy companies, they are now clear on the load demands and can forecast clearly the monetary benefits in investing into renewable Sources.

“Earth seems to be on a recovery path, however just like addiction treatment this is a long term approach and will involve regular monitoring and mindful choices along the way, and what gives me hope is that we can make it, with the right data as an influence”

Technology has always been about people, nowhere is it more evident than the history of Internet & Computing. As long as a technology is not democratized in a way that empowers people & society, it does not flourish.

So will the convergence of technologies such as “Electro Mobility”, ” Artificial Intelligence” & “Connectivity” result in a world where we Share “Digital enabled mobility” for an Enriching Life in the Physical world

OR

Will we forever be stuck in a perfect Online world & increasingly uninterested to navigate the imperfect physical world.

 

The IOT Promise : My Car is now a 19th century Horse, only much worse!!!

Internet Of Things

Time is truly the only limited resource. Human spirit and ingenuity has had a proud tradition of overcoming every other resource constraint thru history so far. That is a big “So far” one must add considering “Climate Change” is set to reverse or adversely affect much of the resource abundance humans on the planet have enjoyed in the recent centuries.

Coming back to the issue of Time, I notice the significance of this as i trudge along the road at just about walking pace. The road is full of cars like mine!! and i don’t mean the make, size or type here. It is just that they are almost empty!! two people at the most in some cases.. but nowhere close to optimum capacity one could say.

Now i must declare here that i live in Bangalore and it is notorious for slow traffic attributable to bad roads and in some cases No roads!!. Having said that i know for a fact that this is true across most urban areas of the world.. in spite of considerably better infrastructure when compared to Bangalore.

So you could say that all the cities of the world are being filled up with cars & automobiles to the point where the marginal utility of buying a car to get around faster is Nil, you may as well walk!!. (Although this is today mostly true only in peak hours we are surely getting there).

There this other small thing called “protection from pollution”  that one experiences when in a car. Strange isn’t it..  we buy cars & automobiles nowadays to be able to escape the pollution caused by cars and automobiles!!

Not wanting sound like a novice by ignoring the other multitude of reasons for being a Car owner, i rummage thru my mind to recollect all the branding messages i am normally inundated with.

” Arrived in your Life”  – these days, maybe if you are driving a luxury car. With leasing and renting of such cars now possible, do we allocate such a huge portion of our earnings to own them?

“ In control of my Destiny ” – i decide when i want to start and when i want to leave…… { just that i can’t decide when i will reach somewhere :-)} .                     I feel this to be quite a reasonable need, considering the various individual commitments that one needs to satiate. Maybe Uber & Co. is solving this now to some extent and in the process making it worse at the same time, just imagine replacing a “Owner Driven car” with a “Driver driven” one, with no suitable option of ride sharing. Not going to make a dent on the marginal utility of Time.. No sir!!

” Lowest Cost of Ownership” quite appealing to whole bunch of Indians, i can vouch for this. However surprisingly i am not convinced.. Why? Well if we were really looking at “Cost of ownership” dispassionately , shouldn’t we also be as dispassionate in accepting that the cost of owning a car no matter how low, can never justify ferrying one or two people across short distances (10 to 30 km) at walking pace!! not to forget the self defeating “Protection from Pollution”  issue.

So what is  the way forward, i still need to get to work, without loosing 2 years of my working life getting there!! (3 hr commute /working day)

I came across a review summary by Andrew  Nikiforuk (http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/03/06/Horse-Dung-Big-Shift/)of an interesting Book called “Horses at Work”  by Ann Norton Greene. Switching back a century before cars and automobiles powered the society, it was horses in their millions that acted as blood pulsing thru the economy, transporting and  distributing people and goods. In those days as per the book there was one horse for every human in a city like New York, which seems to be quite the same case with cars these days.

Apparently the Horses were not overthrow by the superior economics of Internal combustion engine, but by political action by elements of the society who were looking for a solution for the piles and piles of horse dung lying about in the cities and to curbing a whole host of diseases (95% of which are supposed to be thru flies that breed on horse dung)

So it appears that waste has taken a different form  from “Horse dung” of the 19th century  to “Air Pollution” + ” Higher Energy Burned/person”+”Loss of Time” etc. in the 21st.

However the Waste of the 19th Century was visible and revolting to the human senses, the waste of the 21st century on the other hand is more like slow poison which is being consumed with alarming human enthusiasm.

How can we move from “consumption lead  passivity to waste” to “Sustainable Collaborative value”?

For starters we need a method to put the waste of the 21st century in the faces of people, we need data, visualization and eventually pricing of this waste into day today lives of people to create a catalyst as powerful as the 19th century “Horse Dung”.

IOT offers a glimmer of hope to address this imbalance that has crept in our society. It can connect Cars, other Automobiles, People, Government, infrastructure  and society at large in ways to produce

  • Intelligent Transportation solutions that works for all Ecosystem players
  • Regulatory Framework that can incentivize Asset Sharing
  • and finally enough data to have a reliable means to capture and price, the full cost to society in using fossil fuel technologies. Leveling the playing field for greener technologies.

The question however remains as to what forces will orchestrate this IOT Evolution to the benefit of the society and why?

We appear to be at a point of inflection in the business world with the big behemoths, the architects of the current state languishing in low growth and profitability, whereas the nimble start ups, the hope for a new future racing away at what seems to be unsustainable speeds.

Will the “Growth Seeking desire” and “Financial Muscle” of large behemoths combine well with the “Survival needs” and “Brisk pace” of  nimble innovative firms?

Will it be “David and Goliath Story” with a collaborative twist ?

Will they together unlock the millions of hours of time that is wasted everyday on this planet?

Will they save the Human Society from an Oil Fired Pre-Mature death?

Interestingly according to the review i read, the car industry lobby magazine in the 19th century was titled ” Horseless Age”.   Can the industry dream up a “Smokeless & Time Efficient Age”  !!!

“Every Business is increasingly a Consumer Business”

Business, Product Managment

“Every Business is increasingly a Consumer Business”

Well not really!! There are plenty of differences one would say. Of course there are, one being the way revenue generation is managed. In a B2B, context, businesses rely more on building sustainable relationships with key stakeholders v/s advertising spend driven approach that a consumer business might employ.

However i think the key here is not so much about the differences, but more about the few key similarities that enhances the probability of success for businesses in general.

A. Intense Customer Focus: Outside in Mind-set/Processes

One of the key aspects of a consumer business is intense customer focus in all of the processes it would employ, be it Production, Product Development or Marketing. There is no other way but to make all these processes market driven or “Outside In”, when you are trying to get your next million users/consumers or when you are trying to discover “unmet” needs of your existing million users/customers.

This is typically one area, where the so called B2B businesses don’t need the same rigor. However many businesses in this space have evolved with the ever changing value chain they operate in, by looking beyond their immediate customers.

In some cases they have gone on to drive changes in the value chain and secure a sustainable leadership position. A good example is IBM which went from selling Computers and Mainframes to corporations, to selling solutions. How is this relevant?

It is so, to sell solutions it was no longer enough that you understood the CIO’s strategies and plans. It became very important that you understood the business and the industry the client operated in and gradually it became even more important you understood your client’s customers, as the so called solution eventually impacts the “End Customer Experience” and reflects on the client’s brand value and consequently on IBM as well.

Did IBM need to understand unmet needs of banking customers when they were only selling mainframes? Maybe not

But they realized that to hold a sustainable advantage in long run they absolutely had to.

B. Innovation: Build fast, Fail early & Finish First

Consumer business are on a perpetual innovation race with a high penalty for not being first to market (e.g HP Touch pad as competition to I pad) and a even higher penalty for being first with a undesirable product/service!! (e.g Crystal Pepsi).

With such high stakes, successful companies have been able to build a culture of quickly building POCs/experiments that they can deploy on a limited customer base, but representative enough of the segment being pursued. This lets the ideas that don’t measure up fail early and also increases the chances of success for ideas that look promising.

In a B2B context, i recently read about CISCO unveiling a “Smart City Model” in their own campus in Bangalore and also building small model of a Smart City along with an Industry association again in Bangalore. This is a great example of a B2B company striving to break new grounds for their core network products, but for a new upcoming application/geography. In doing so they are having to envision a future that start and ends with the consumer who lives in a “Smart City” enabled by CISCO.

C. Go to Market: “Mind Share” to “Market Share”

Consumer Businesses need to entice customers to come back to them repeatedly for repeat purchases, even though there are alternatives for the same need. A lot of times they are trying to build brand loyalty on what is a relatively low value purchase decision for a variety seeking customer. Why should I always buy Coke when I can try Pepsi?

I do it because Coke has my “Mind Share” over Pepsi. It is more a battle of “Mind share” than “Market share”. Consumer businesses use a lot of tools to acquire this “mind share”, from compelling stories that they weave around their products in the various channels that find me, to enormous advertising budgets that hijack air time from everyone else.

Again the degree to which a B2B needs to go might not be the same as a consumer business, none the less there is something powerful to learn here as well.

Intel employed a similar approach many years back with the “Intel Inside” campaign. Was it rational to spend on advertising directly to end consumers, for a company that made & sold chip sets and processors weren’t they better off focusing on their customers, i.e. computer companies!!

Well two decades later, the world no. 2 & 3 by turnover in the computer industry are contemplating their future in an industry that is “Value dominated” by their suppliers, i.e. Intel & Microsoft. .

In essence good consumer businesses will:

  • Uncover unmet needs before its Peers or even consumers themselves do
  • Quickly build a POC and be able to validate Desirability, Feasibility & Viability much faster than their peers
  • Be able to launch a final product/service across a vast consumer base with a compelling story/campaign that connects the offering with the unmet need.

Many of these qualities will also distinguish successful B2Bs from those who did not make it to the top.