Lesson: When every retail outlet has same products, focus on auxiliary services that could attract divided customers.
Example 1: A petrol bunk in Tarnaka, Hyderabad offers cold water to all its customers and chocolates and balloons to kids during festival times. How much would it cost them? Peanuts, compared to the profit he makes.
What it means to the customer ? A lot... a very friendly gesture.
Example 2: When all the malls in Gurgaon charge a mandatory 40 rupees for a four wheeler parking, the Gurgaon central has a unique system where in the customer need not pay if he has bought anything above 40 rupees, attracting more people when all brands are same at every mall.
Freek Vermeulen, Economics Professor at the London School of Business has brought out an interesting piece of research on what kind of people ultimately become the CEOs.
“An interesting line of research in social anthropology analyzed what type of person is more likely to rise through the ranks to become the headman of a tribe. Often, this would be the most fierce, ambitious and aggressive warrior, who would be willing to take on all his opponents in the quest for leadership. Yet, interestingly, although characteristics such as fierceness and ambition would be helpful in becoming tribe leader, these characteristics were not necessarily positive for the future of the settlement, since these type of leaders were prone to take the tribe to war. This would ultimately take its toll on the size, strength and survival chances of the tribe. Thus, the same characteristics that would make people more likely to become the headman were likely to get the tribe in to trouble.
CEOs might not be all that different. Those people who are ambitious, risk-seeking and aggressive enough to be able to rise to the ultimate spot of CEO, just might be the same people who, once they’re there, take their firm on a conquest.”
But the CEOs I am most impressed with are the most humble ones and open to ideas purely on merit. They do not behave like the only pillar which is supporting the organization, but understand that they are just one of the pillars on which the organization bases itself upon and that all the other pillars are equally important for the well being of the company.
They are hell bent in making the whole team feel good about itself, so that they perform their best. (More like the One Minute Manager)
"Israni decided to launch her own startup in June 2008 when she came up with her first invention, an automatic "Rotimatic" set to be the rice cooker for the roti-eating population. The appliance, about the size of a mini-microwave oven, does the measuring, mixing, kneading, making, and baking of rotis, with users only required to refill the wheat and water compartments after a few days. Zimplistic recently won the prestigious StartUp@Singapore 2009 grand champion trophy, which comes with $28,000 in prize money and one free year of office space. Prior to this, Israni's Zimplistic was awarded the YES! Spring Singapore grant for young entrepreneurs valued at $35,000. Israni amis to partner or license with a consumer appliance brand to bring Rotimatic to market in 2010."
Amazing idea ....
Seen many roti makers which do not necessarily remove the main chore of kneading the dough.
This is what the younger, double earning, faster lifestyle families have been waiting for..
Scenario 1: Imagine your boss requests that you work over the weekend to help meet a deadline that's important to him. It means you'll need to be at the office 9 - 5 both days to achieve the objective. Trouble is, you promised your friends that you'd spend time with them this weekend. How do you notice yourself responding on the inside? Now she tells you that a possible alternative is to work through two lunch hours this week to accomplish the same thing. Again, on the inside, how do you notice yourself reacting to the second choice?
Scenario 2: Imagine you've some guests coming to a party at your house and you want to ensure the house is spotless. You ask your reluctant (kids/friends/partner) to help out with some chores: either they can scrub and clean both toilets for five minutes, or they can vacuum for five minutes. Which are they more likely to go for?
Most people when asked the same question choose 'working through two lunch hours' and 'vacuum for five minutes' as the preferred options.
What's at work here is the psychological phenomenon known as "Perceptual Contrast". If you were only asked to work through two lunch hours with no alternative option, how would your internal motivation be different to scenario 1? Notice that when a more scary, unpleasant or more costly option is presented to us first, we gravitate towards the second far more easily than if it had been the only option offered. It's almost a relief when that 'easier' option is offered. And consequently our motivation to take it is far higher than if it had been the only choice.
You only have to look at prices in gourmet coffee to see different versions of perceptual contrast at work. Have you noticed how the price differential between large, medium and small is so negligible that most people go for large without questioning why the small size is so damned expensive. In contrast, it seems like a better deal at $2.40 for a cup of coffee. In effect, we're being encouraged to have a different kind of internal conversation. Rather than "do I buy it or not?" the internal conversation becomes "which one should I buy?". It's a subtle approach: moving the conversation from a selling frame to a negotiation frame.
The original author is Haider Imam of the Kaizen Team. Due credit to him.This article was posted as a part of the Leading minds tip.
How to use it: To make something look good, first show something of inferior quality. To get someone to buy something expensive, first show them something even more expensive.
A car salesman might show us a unit that is overpriced and in poor condition before showing us the one they really want us to buy. By contrast, the second one looks like a great deal and we want it more.
I notice the strategy I generally use when I’m asking for something I want is to pare down the request to something that seems reasonable - something I think I can get a “yes” for. Apparently that instinct may be incorrect. If instead I were to ask for something huge first, I would activate the weapon of “perceptual contrast”. If I were to then ask for what I really wanted it would seem small, reasonable, and trivially easy by comparison.
A corollary principle is that once you have already agreed to something large, additional items that are added seem smaller by comparison. Sales professionals use this technique to sell you options and accessories to large ticket items you have already purchased. Once you buy an expensive camera, the costs of all the accessories like a tripod, bag, filters, etc appear trivial.
Bill Waddell has written a beautiful piece on the nonsensical extravagant behaviors of executives here. It deals with the recent fact that the government has seen the need to putlimits on travel expenses for executives from companies receiving bailout money.
The following lines really hit the core.
“A guy who wears an expensive suit to work, has a company paid Persian rug in his office, and a company paid Lexus parked in the spot closest to the door cannot lead a lean transformation. In fact, that guy cannot lead anything. None of that nonsense enables him to do a better job - it just makes him look good in his own insecure eyes. Everything about him screams to the employees "I am better than you". And that is a failure of leadership in its most fundamental form.”
It is in sync with the saying that the leader should lead in humility.
Dad used to point out people like that. “Look at that man eating his breakfast on the road. He is the owner of that company but still walks up to the tiffin stall to have his breakfast.” The simplicity just awed me.
"Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance."
Here are few points that I have developed over observing external consultants come in and give seminars. I have seen some impressive people, which made me salute them inside and I have seen some whom I just wanted to ask, “Why did you even join consulting, this does not suit your personality.”
I’ve been making notes on what I should do and shouldn’t do if I am in their shoes.
I was looking up my notes this morning and thought I would post some of them.
Here they are:
Go to basics
Go to the basics. Ask questions like, “Why are you here” “why did they hire you”“what is the goal of this business” what is the one differentiating factor between you and your competitor”. These questions startle your audience and leads them to a little introspection. I have found that these questions also help when you are trying to motivate individuals.
Dress like the people:
Blend into the people. Do a little research. Wearing a suit and counseling a group of manufacturing supervisors actually distances you from them. The consultant I felt the most affinity with, actually wore jeans and a rugged work shirt. He was just dressed like the supervisors and they lapped up everything he said.
Don’t show that you are the smart ass
Don’t try to show them that you are the smartest guy in the room and a know all. Don’t make yourself the center of attraction. Turn the focus lights on them. They are the superheros for the day. Make them feel good and make them like you, fast.
It is more important to be liked and a part of them than to be the smartest guy in the room. Coming back to my age old principle, “ People listen to you only when they like you.” And if they don’t like you, spell out the secret of the holy grail, no one cares.
Following it up with another line that has been very useful to me over the last couple of months “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
Repeat people’s words and quote their names
Eg: Like Chris rightly said a while ago, the customer is the most important person on the line.Everyone knows that the customer is the most imp person, but by crediting a person in the group to that statement you turn a person of the group into your favor and make him feel proud.
Show them the future
Show them a dream, a vision of how the whole organization would look 1 year from now with the proposed changes. Eg: A year from now, you would be so high up in your industry that your competitor would just be satisfied to be the number 2. Atleast I bought into the idea, when he described how our plant could look with the changes.
Here is an interesting interview by Pramath Sinha. Interesting points:
>>How he became the unintended founder of ISB atthe last minute >>How founding a B-School is also like an entrepreneurial activity?
>> Did you know that ISB was born in a McKinsey Lab?
>> How the campus of ISB shifted from Mumbai to Hyderabad ( which was not even in the scheme of things)?
>> What is the role of Bal Thackeray in the founding of ISB??
Here are some excerpts:
"At that time there was the Shiv Sena and BJP combined government, with the Shiv Sena being the power behind the scenes. And so our board member said, "Hey we all know Balasaheb [Shiv Sena, founder Balasaheb Thackeray]. We'll just go and talk to him and sort this out."
Unfortunately, they went to see him at a time when he was having a big gathering at his place. So there was an occasion to grandstand, and the press was there. So in front of all of these people he made a big deal about how the best business school in the world was going to get built in Bombay, and that they were involved in it and there would be 10% reservations for Maharashtrians by the way, and 50% for employees. And this came off the cuff, from the blue, and it was the next day published in Mid-Day, and it was all over.
This was clearly unacceptable to us. We had always said very clearly that this was going to be completely merit of credit. Can you then support the needy candidates? We will never allow any sort of reservation."
"So it was to put competitive pressure on Bombay, but never really to leave Bombay that we wrote a note to all chief ministers and chief secretaries around the country. Well, not all, but Gujarat, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Gurgaon, Haryana, and we said, "Listen, we are these guys, we have the partnership, we have the school, this is our vision, these are the people on our board," from Ratan Tata to Ambanis, to Bajajs, to Mahindras, to Parekhs and Kamath, and Lakshmi Mittal. By then the whole board was there. "And please see if you can give us appropriate land. We are looking for 100 acres of land."
And so one monsoon morning we flew from Bombay to Hyderabad, to Bangalore, to Chennai. But the first place we landed was in Hyderabad, and we were completely floored by the hospitality of Naidu [Andhra Pradesh's chief minister at the time, Chandrababu Naidu].
Now it is much more built up than then, and amazingly open, and he said, "Two hundred fifty acres is yours," and, "I will give you plus one of whatever anybody else offers. And we just knew that this was the right place and the right thing to do. And we came back from that trip. I remember we did a teleconference, and the board approved within a few months. We had possession of 250 acres of land which is prime land today for a business school."
Dude..!! Hats off to Naidu... he was a visionary. Can't comment on his political strategies, but he sowed the seeds for technology in Andhra Pradesh, for which Congress is reaping the rewards.
As you probably already know that I am an avid fan of product design. I get blown off by new design ideas for the simplest things. We take it for granted that somethings that we use are the best they can be.
And some geek comes ahead and does something so simple that its simplicity just blows us off.
The annual design awards by IDEA are my Oscars. They give me the little kick I need once in a while. I religiously look into every new design and just exclaim inside offering my kudos to the designer.
The new thing that blew me off was the Tikk-Tekk.
Was working on redesigning the stock room layout this week. I had to carry this 25 foot tape measure everywhere, measuring the racks, floor and all that crap. The tape measure is the most physical sort of measurement. You have a piece of tape with physical measurements marked on it
and then you place it along the dimension you want to measure and note down the corresponding measurement on the tape. Age old…and I thought this was the only way to take measurements.
And this morning I came across the Tikk-Tekk.
Tikk-Tekk Rainbow measuring device
Bronze Award Category: Student Designs
Design: Guopeng Liang and Yun Li, Tongji University (China); Samsung Design Membership China (China)
Tikk-Tekk Rainbow is a low-cost universal measuring tool for the visually impaired that uses visual, tactile, and auditory feedback. A rubber plastic ring slips over each index finger. As the measuring string unwinds, the device makes an audible "tikk" sound at every centimeter and a "tekk" sound at every five centimeters. Printed digits and embossed Braille numbers also provide measurement results.
Woww..!! this is where we ought to be going. Move away from age old design and make things simpler to use with the aid of technology. Its also designed with Braille.
The best thing about it was that it was designed by a student..!!!
Look at this cool promo of the Tikk –Tekk. The mechanism behind how it operates is cool..
I thought that it was the coolest design until I saw the floater ladle. How many times I have sunk my ladles in a big bowl, only to dip my fingers in to pick the ladle up and wash it.
Hats off…to Seongyong Lee for his concept. Cant help but bow to his creativity.
This ladle cant sink..!!!
Look at this cool tape measure. Once you look at this, you cant stop thinking… “I should have thought of this.. Its so simple..”
O,EZ tape measure
Bronze Award Category: Student Designs
Design: Jaewon Choi, Youngdo Choi, Sanghoon Lee, Jieun Myung, Samsung Art & Design Institute (South Korea)
Not just a tape measure, the O,EZ also includes a built-in pencil. When taking measurements, the retractable lead tip can accurately mark the location, leaving your hands free and avoiding the need to scramble for a pen. The hook at its center can also be secured and used like a compass to draw a large circle on a wall or surface.
This LightLane design is supercool…
A device for the bicycle rider to display its own safety lines behind the rider..
I needed a prototype of a design that I was working on. Searched online and hit up on this supposedly industry leader ALPHA in prototype making. Uploaded a file onto their website to get a ball park quote. Looked at their prices and searched around for better deals. Later uploaded the same file to a dozen more websites to get quotes. Some of them were less than the ALPHA quote.
Couple of hours later this sales guy from ALPHA called up to follow up on what else he could offer to win our business. Talked to him for a while about some industry standards, material options available, etc and he answered all my questions politely.
He informed me that the price of 1 part would be $200.00 whereas the price of 16 parts would be just $264.00. Liked the proposal and sent the purchase order. Specially informed him that I needed the parts yesterday.(Yeah, not a typo, that is the word used when you want something ASAP)
Got it shipped overnight and received the package 2 days after and the parts exactly served my purpose. Liked the quick response and delivery and sent a feedback mail thanking them for the good experience I had doing business with them. Immediately got a personal reply from their CEO thanking me from my feedback.
This flattered me as a customer to know that this was a company where the CEO was in the grind of building personal relationships with customers. Decided that this is the company that I would do all my business with. What did the CEO do different to gain me as a trusted customer and invaluable goodwill?
Nothing much, just a personal thank you mail. How much did it cost him. Just 2 minutes of his time and no extra cost.
OK, and now what do they need to do to win me as a customer forever, bowl out their competitors and develop a personal relationship with me?
The last nail in the coffin was just nailed 10 mins ago.
Just got a gift package from ALPHA thanking me for doing business with them and giving them valuable feedback.
What was inside it? FudgeyNut and cookies.
How much did it cost them? Maybe 10 bucks.
What did they do? They surprised the customer with something he did not expect. They could have offered a discount. But chose a more touchy option of a gift to build the personal relationship instead of a monetary reward. More about this later.
What did they gain? They’ve won unwavering trust from their customer in a very competitive environment.
Finer nuances: The action of giving a personal gift rather than a monetary reward in the form of a discount has more to it than what meets the eye. A discount would benefit the customer company but would not give any incentive to the guy who actually makes the purchase. But with the personal gift, they build a relationship with the key person who actually decides which company should win his business. It could be the purchasing manager, the project engineer or even the maintenance guy.
Certainly an important lesson to remember when you are working in a competitive environment and all your competitors can provide more or less the same. That is when, you go above and beyond the line to build a relationship with your customer.
Read through the entire thing and its really worth your time if you are looking for some startup idea guidelines.
The essay is comprehensive in the sense it is logical and encompasses all the bits and pieces of startup advice that you've been hearing everywhere.
Some excerpts: "To generate such questions you need two things: to be familiar with promising new technologies, and to have the right kind of friends. New technologies are the ingredients startup ideas are made of, and conversations with friends are the kitchen they're cooked in. "
"What these groups of co-founders do together is more complicated than just sitting down and trying to think of ideas. I suspect the most productive setup is a kind of together-alone-together sandwich. Together you talk about some hard problem, probably getting nowhere. Then, the next morning, one of you has an idea in the shower about how to solve it. He runs eagerly to to tell the others, and together they work out the kinks."
"Another classic way to make something people want is to take a luxury and make it into a commmodity. People must want something if they pay a lot for it. And it is a very rare product that can't be made dramatically cheaper if you try. This was Henry Ford's plan. He made cars, which had been a luxury item, into a commodity. But the idea is much older than Henry Ford. "
If these tidbits interest you, go ahead and read the article here.
The advice is pretty valuable for someone new to the field like me. After reading the article, I've realized that my blogs must be anywhere close to the bottom 10% in terms of searchability. (Yeah, I coined this word.)
I did not know why Twitter was talked about so much in the blogging circle and startups, although I signed up for it. Guy Kawasaki used to talk about it a lot in his blog.
Jus found this Beginners guide to Twittering written by none other than the CEO of Zappos.
Finished reading it and it now makes a lot of sense to get hooked onto it and get all ur frens into it too.
One of the most memorable case studies in Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan's biggest cosmetics companies.
The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty.
Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty. Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so.
But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution.
He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line. ********************************************************************************** Moral of the story: ALWAYS look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problem
Recently my cousin, who is studying his 6th class, came over to my house for his vacation. He immediately ran over to the computer. I was curious about his enthusiasm and followed him to find out what it was, that has evoked such a strong feeling of attraction. He opened the site: http://classteacher.com/horlicks/ He was very strongly influenced by the advertisement in TV which is aimed at school going kids. It just has a couple of games and a little relevant info, but it certainly caught my attention as a wonderful business model. I see this is as a good opportunity in a relatively blue ocean market with massive potential.
We will build a portal aimed at specifically at school goers. What do we provide:
Add online games which can be played along with their classmates. This is such a thrill, if u've ever played online pool with your classmates or other friends. (Directly buy the games from developers)
Add ideas for science projects, link things to www.howstuffworks.com. So they have abundance of ideas, whenever they need to work on something. (This is a huge plus, my little sisters keep wandering all over the place and net for ideas.)
Target the students from 4th standard to 10th standard. Pore through their books. Provide detailed info on every topic. Provide ideas for essays, school debates, etc. (Hire some teachers to provide this info on a pay-by-work basis.)
Keep interacting with schools to assess the needs of the students.
Post math tips in an animated way.
Provide a platform, where the kids can post personal experiences and award them with their day of glory by posting it on the homepage.
Provide tools to unleash their creativity and help them develop their distinct personal page, which they will be proud of and flaunt it to their friends.
Provide an online interaction-social networking platform similar to facebook, targeted at school-goers.
In short-make the site such an attraction that kids want to spend all their online time with the site because it provides both educational stuff and fun stuff. Cater to all the needs of the school goer.
Revenue making model: The primary advantage of this site is that you have a large saturated group of target audience withing the same age group and with almost similar tastes. So any advertising just hits the core group unlike an advertisement on a hoarding. I can see this primarily as a advertising based model. If you boast of a high number of registered users or everyday clicks, kid product companies would not want to miss this opportunity to advertise. Better still, approach leading kid based product companies like Boost, Maggi, chocolates, etc to sponsor the whole thing. It helps them build a strong bond with their target consumers.
I am still not convinced by this revenue model and open to ideas on how we could milk this cash cow. This is a largely untouched market segment.
If we can design any portable equipment that will allow us to exercise in our office itself, it would be a huge market.
Some of the present ideas are:
Squeezing the stress release ball in your hand
Lifting a bundle of books with your legs, while sitting.
But all these ideas are not revolutionary. You need to have the next revolutionary design so that the employee can burn some instant fat sitting at his desk, like stretching a rubber cord or compressing something with your feet to build your calf muscles.
If possible need to work with a kinesiologist to come up with the design.
The market is huge considering all the people working in front of computers all day. And if the product is designed so good that the doctors recommend it, dude you are on to big things.
And if the product is credible and certified, corporates are going to buy them for their employees.
Its actually a portal with all kinds of resources and news for indian entrepreneurs.
************************************************************************ Update: This site is more than just another portal. I am impressed with the wide range of topics that it covers from IT to Air filter manufacturing to rural irrigation pumps. Also has a host of new FEASIBLE ideas.
Lots of entrepreneurial activity going on in India. The most encouraging fact is that the entrepreneurial activity is not in the old tried and tested waters but in the innovative value waters.
Tata-NEN have announced the hottest startup awards for 2008. The TATA NEN Hottest Startup Awards are a result of the combined efforts of TATA, a rapidly growing business group in India with significant international operations, and the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), a non-profit organization, and India's leader in entrepreneurship education.I am not here to explain what it is, just tune into their homepage.Click here
Businessgyan has come up with an article on the 30 shortlisted startups here
While I was researching each business, these ideas struck me as innovative.
Ecomove solutions: Its like the bicycle rental service available in France. Ecomove Solutions Pvt Ltd (EMS) is intending to launch rental station network that allows you to hire and return a bicycle. "It is proposed to provide eco friendly and economical alternative travel solutions to the members of EMS. To start with, we are looking at providing high-end bicycle rental services to all the members at various locations in Mumbai. We intend to have about 40 locations to start with around Mumbai and nearby areas." (Wonderful idea, but I am afraid if the market is ready for a change like this. I may rent a bicycle in US, but would not do the same in India. My reasons would be sweaty, personal safety and pollution.)
Dailydump: Helps you compost most of your home waste at home. It sells related products and helps in after sales service. (Can see a niche market in upper class and few sections of the upper class society. If the investment is not huge, breakeven would be pretty easy. Great idea though.) Deskaway: Online project management tool. DeskAway gives you an accurate view of your project progress and eliminates common problems when working in teams. DeskAway is an online software, so, there is nothing to download or install on any computer. All you need is an Internet connection and a web browser. Elements Akademia: Elements Akademia - conceptualized, funded and run by a group of IIM Alumni - is envisaged as an innovative national chain of vocational schools.
Lakshya: The background looks very impressive. Built hobby into a business. Figured in the entrepreneurial case study in Darden Business School and ISB, Hyderabad. Lakshya is a dream child of four young IIT graduates, conceptualized with an aim to revolutionize the way learning is perceived and teaching is delivered. "We believe that with a proper thought process given to teaching pedagogy, "Learning can be made Interesting" and hence effective."
The Loot: "The LOOT" is a multi-brand discount store, offering customers a wide range of products with discounts ranging between 25% -60% - throughout the year. Evam Entertainment:Evam is a 'theatre entrepreneurship' fuelled by youngsters for the youth. A 5 year young 'happy factory' with one mission - use theatre to make people's life happier and to fill their lives with lightness and a sense of purpose.Primary Revenue streams include live stage theatre shows, corporate theatre performances, theatreLIVE methodology based corporate training modules, 'd sound n d light' - Evam's audio media productions and student interaction modules. (This looks promising, esp for the Gen-N group who wanna do diverse activities while working on their full time job. Suprisingly met an old friend after 16 years and she mentioned that she was part of this theatre chapter in hyderabad.)
Sanmaan Org: Sammaan's idea is to systematize the working of all Rickshaw pullers by bringing them under one roof and to modernize the cycle rickshaw pulling sector (which contributes 30% in urban transport) with small but innovative changes. This not only makes it easier for the rickshaw pullers to drive and increase their income through Outdoor Advertising, but Value Added service such as sale of Mineral water, Juices, Mobile recharge, courier collection, Bills collections also makes it more comfortable and enjoyable ride for the commuter. ( I like this idea a lot. Was just reading "The Blue Ocean Strategy" which mentioned of entering unchartered market spaces by adding value with innovation. This is exactly what they are doing.) Librarywala: Librarywala provides a wide selection of books to readers at a low cost and at their convenience. (An idea that everyone has but no one has the guts to go about it. Success depends a lot on the marketing, operation and serving customer values)
These were the most striking and innovative ideas among the shortlisted 30. The common positive point observed among all these firms is the website design. The website designs of all these companies are really strikingly innovative. Lots of young minds working creatively...
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