On a recent trip to Maui, I came across car after car, abandoned and disintegrating, on the sides of the roads.
At what point will these dumped cars become interesting historical artifacts?
How long ago were petroglyphs simply graffiti?
So much about value is a matter of framing. Has there ever been a marketing tactic more transformative than the simple passage of time?
Today we “attended” a webinar about innovation in services. The talk was to create some buzz for an upcoming IIR/PDMA conference about Service Innovation Design and Development and was presented by Jeneanne Rae from Peer Insight.
The slides and recorded audio may be forthcoming (although there was a lot of technical problems that really took away from the whole experience) but in the meantime, they’ve got a very detailed report from a study of the service innovation process available as a PDF here
. The first few pages will give you a reasonable overview of the talk.
Some tidbits and thoughts:
1. Services are the dominant economic force in developed countries, but the buzz/mindshare/process is around the creation of products.
2. Some of the service companies described were surprising: i.e., Wal-Mart, Home Depot. Is retail a service business? Not in the same way banking is (although it’s interesting that they call their offerings products). Not in the same way hospitality is, either. Maybe this is a commonly understood distinction but it wasn’t clear to me.
Is software a service? If it comes in a box (i.e., Adobe Illustrator)? What if it’s on the web (i.e., Google Docs)? What if it’s tied to a product (i.e., iTunes)? Or resident on a device (i.e., Windows CE)?
3. The IHIP framework dates back to 1978 and is the classic articulation of what differentiates services from goods. IHIP stands for inseparability, heterogeneity, intangibility, and perishability.
Haven’t seen any posts about The Risk of Innovation: Will Anyone Embrace It? from the weekend NYT. Perhaps it’s because the thesis isn’t novel or well articulated? G. Pascal Zachary reminds us unnecessarily that some products are hard to use and that some products are released but fail miserably. He conflates technology and innovation, and ignores any notion of user experience or marketplace success from his implicit definition of innovation. And he reminds us that getting people to buy and use something new is the big question that all companies want an answer to.
These are good themes to be explored further. Zachary wasn’t given the time or the space to offer anything new on the topic, though, and I end up wondering just why the paper did this particular article anyway.
The Loft store in Tokyo has an entire section that offers a huge range of reusable grocery store bags. Do the Japanese values around “choice” and “sustainability” collide? Does it make sense within that culture? Does it make sense to outsiders?
I had an uncomfortable reaction along the lines of “Oh, crap, something else to buy.” It seemed to contradict my expectations of restraint in a product category that carries a meaning of “sustainable.” Of course, that may not be the meaning that these bags have in Japan.
Our primary giving in 2007 was in support of two organizations: one local, and one in support of developing nations.
Coastside Hope is the “primary provider of safety net services” in our local area. They provide “monthly food harvest, emergency shelter and rental assistance services, crisis intervention and referral services, clothing vouchers, Christmas Adopt-a-Family program, [and] citizenship services.”
has taken an innovative approach to producing wheelchairs for developing countries: “to use components that are manufactured in high volume for other products…He removed every extra feature possible, ending up with the least expensive design that will satisfy a large portion of the world’s need for wheelchairs. This wheelchair design lends itself to manufacture by highly efficient companies where assembly costs are relatively low.”
Sign from Intellectual Property Office, Ministry of Economic Affairs, in the Taipei airport
The sign reads:
Post only authorized images, music, videos, or writings on your blog, or you could be blogging your way into court! Today’s user is tomorrow’s right owner. Respect others’ intellectual properly rights.
Even before clearing immigration in Taipei, there’s an intellectual property warning for bloggers. Is this really such a big problem? I’d expect them to worry more about CD and DVD piracy first.
Die Hard 4.0 poster, Taipei
It’s not news that movies are released with different titles in other markets. Still, it was curious to see a familiar product under a slightly different brand. Live Free or Die is an American slogan, and so outside North America, perhaps Live Free or Die Hard doesn’t work as well as a title (perhaps the American-ness is not as appealing, or there is less recognition of the reference).
IMDB lists the different titles (and working titles) around the world.
Die Hard 4.0 Australia / Denmark / Finland / Japan / Netherlands / Sweden / UK / USA (working title)
Duro de matar 4.0 Argentina / Mexico / Peru / Venezuela
Die Hard 4 USA (working title)
Die Hard 4: Die Hardest USA (working title)
Die Hard: Reset USA (working title)
Die Hard: Tears of the Sun USA (working title)
Die hard – Vivere o morire Italy
Die hard 4 – Legdr?°g?°bb az életed Hungary
Die hard 4 – Retour en enfer France
Duro de Matar 4.0 Brazil
Jungla 4.0, La Spain
Poly skliros gia na pethanei 4.0 Greece
Smrtonosná pasca 4.0 Slovakia
Stirb langsam 4.0 Germany
Szklana pulapka 4.0 Poland
Umri muski 4.0 Serbia
Vis libre ou crève Canada (French title)
Visa hing 4 Estonia
Zor ölüm 4.0 Turkey (Turkish title)
U-Haul, Montara, CA
What use case is eMove
targeting? What narratives are implied by this advertisement?