Tag: Henry Ford

Uncharted waters

When Henry Ford first put together 2 and 2 (wheels) to make 4 (wheels), he was probably laughed at.  Then his policy to increase worker’s wages, so they could afford buying the very same cars they had helped assembled was probably viewed as radical.

Today, the same thing with Nissan Leaf‘s buyer’s incentive, and Diamond-Lane privilege (even just one driver) that comes with driving an EV are looked at with envy and intrigue.

Early adopters only.

Going to uncharted territories.

No what if!

Without entrepreneurial spirits, we wouldn’t get Netflix, Amazon, Zappos, Yahoo and Google.

Names that did not exist a few decades ago. Uncharted waters.

Broadband-enabled companies. Google Fiber?

To the tune of Billions and employing big pipes, but not fat payroll.

They were probably laughed at too in early stage. What do you mean customers can send back the shoes free of charge? (Zappos)

Convenient online check-out? Customers recommended purchase? Perhaps you would like to check this out (Cross-selling and up-selling).

With fat pipe, we can expect more apps and new business models i.e. 24/7, easy shipping and hassle-free return,  self-improving algorithm that knows its customers better than they would themselves.

In short, business will get smarter as machine processes transactions faster.

Machine will help both sides of the equation: Business and Consumers, selling and buying.

Entrepreneurs can strike out without too much sunk costs.

Software can be tested off-shored, and while being overseas, companies might as well let the public sneak peak at  their proofs of concept (Japan has a Sample Store).

The irony of this whole process is: while off-shoring centers were viewed as cost centers, they ended up as profit-centers, for BRIC countries are now the ones with relatively strong purchasing power (after years of doing someone else’s dirty work). When traversing uncharted waters, one will never know what perils and possibilities are waiting at each turn. The pre-req is an open mind and a brave heart to deal with those unexpected turns of event.

Modernity and memory

A “xe om” (scooter taxi) guy mentioned a city (Lai Thieu?) where one can find all the abandoned carriages (horse or cow).

Hearing that, I flashed back to those early days when I accompanied my grandmother on her monthly trip to receive pension.

We took a bus, and Lambretta . I always got treated to a good lunch, a special bonding. It made me feel needed albeit just a kid.

At Ben Thanh Central Market, we could still find horse carriages leisurely move about in sparse traffic.

Speaking of the here and now. Vietnam finished some “white elephant” projects recently (Can Tho Bridge, Thu Thiem underwater bridge, Da nang Dragon bridge).

For those people whose livelihood depended on ferrying passengers, modern bridges spelled the end of their earnings.

When Henry Ford tied together two motorbikes to make a four-wheeler, horse carriage operators assumed that his invention would fail (too much smoke and noise, a disruption and distraction).

Yet we all know what has happened since.

A whole industry went down the tube: saddle makers, horse shoes, horse breeding and carriage builders.

In fact, in England, taxis still keep the old sitting arrangement (where two rows of passengers facing each other).

Nostalgia.

Lost cause and lost era.

Many residents of Thu Thiem perhaps feel elated but also puzzled by this change.

People stopped in the middle of the tunnel to take souvenir photos???

Modern memory.

We leave behind our digital fingerprints and carbon footprints.

Future archivists will excavate and learn about our “elementary” approaches to using the Web.

Our kids will look back to find our social graphs quite rudimentary.

What do you mean you only post a class picture on Facebook?

Video chat that can only see your face under poor lighting condition?

Families living across the continent can’t get together over Thanksgiving dinner online?

(MCI commercial was about just that, back in 1993).

Modernity, by definition, never stops reinventing itself.

I will never find horse carriages in the city, but out in the country, cities like Da Lat , tourists can still ride a horse carriage as they do with cyclo today in District 1. Modernity or memory? I miss my grandma already despite the age gap and generational gap.

OPP (other people’s problems)

We live in a world full of acronyms e.g. PPO, OPM (Other People’s Money), SOP, CDO, COD etc..

In big companies, Customer Service reps just get through their day, throwing around acronyms to feel they are on the inside, without thinking about “touchpoints” (problems as opportunities to upsell).

My cable acted up two days ago.  The CS rep on the phone failed to help, so I had to take the box to the local center for an exchange.

The reception area was tiny, the guard imposing and customers, many were old men, holding the box with no place to sit. The rep first wanted me to drop my ticket in a pencil holder (her makeshift trash bin), then proceeded to check my ID. If it weren’t for the sign that says “Comcast” , I would have thought I had been at a DMV (whose seating area was more comfortable. In fact, the DMV in Stuart, FL was excellent at being “civil servant”.  Comcast reps should come over to learn a few things).

Take away: we are born naked and will die rotten. What we have now is all derivative (from our lineage, our society and our global links). Customers will always vote with their feet and they don’t wait until November. No contract could lock anyone in. Companies should periodically audit employees’ “attitude” (Sales should pick up Service skills, and vice versa). Gone are the days of “yesterday we were nice because you were a prospect”.

In its place should be the kind of enchantment Guy Kawasaki was referring in his book.

There is a reason Nordstrom and Four Seasons got their J.D. Power awards even in tough times.

(Recent USA Today poll features a large percentage of consumers cutting the chords with their long-time Hairdressers, Personal Trainers, landscapers etc..).

The trickle down economy.

Even China is growing only at 8% (down from earlier 10%) while the US teetering over the red line. Not all emerging countries are doing well. Thailand got a centennial flood. Like global recession, global warming is not OPP. A UN expert on Natural Disasters opined on the Newshour that it’s 50-50 natural/man-made split, let’s say, in the Mekong River (logging, upstream dam overstretched…) or a Honda plant in Thailand was submerged while Toyota parts couldn’t get to us from Fukushima.

Jasmine rice from Thailand (with Elephant brand) will be in short supply next year.

Tomorrow we will enjoy Bill Clinton’s birthday concert, brought to us by Yahoo.

But we can not just download the good stuff (democratized technology) while ignoring our carbon footprints.

Technology and globalization are the two sides of the same coin.

A manufacturing plant cannot move overseas without dumping toxic waste into someone else’s stream and water supply.

Again, early civic lessons came to mind (a neighbor found a dead rat in his yard. He decided to toss it over the fence to his neighbor. The next day, the whole neighborhood, his house included, smelled dead-rat). Or as in a story about living down-hill from someone else’s farm. The act of helping to water a neighbor’s farm uphill,  ended up with the benefit of having part of the water flow down hill anyway. In doing good, we are also doing well (Henry Ford knew this when he decided on paying high manufacturing wages “so my workers can afford to buy my model T’s – in any color they want, as long as it’s black”. We will all need to relearn the concept of service in today’s hyper competitiveness yet globally connectedness (and not letting the machine-generated “Now, serving number B-52 at window number 3” announcement put us in a trance, or worse off, become machine-like ourselves.) Want another acronym? It’s called living in the age of AI (Artificial Intelligence).

Twice the romance

For almost a century, we have gotten used to Hollywood‘s sunset scenes of the Pacific (they could even make Skid Row desirable).

Now, fiction is trumped by recent discovery of a two-sun planet.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/215013/20110916/planet-two-suns-star-wars-kepler-16-b-tatooine-seti.htm

Sunset scenes will need to be re-cut. Twice the work. But also, twice the romance.

As evolving species, we will adapt, both to adversity and austerity. Just eating in.

You might resent the new acronym (PIIGs), but wait until you have to go without pork (like in China in the time of inflation).

The Chinese are stepping up to the plate by offering to stabilize the Euro zone currency. with condition.

They failed to mention the arm shipments to Libya during Gaddafi‘s time (perhaps, already a market-economy exchange on that deal).

With every earth-altering discovery like that planet with two suns, we need to re-examine our assumptions.

What if we can also discover alternate energy out there? What if we can alter our attitude toward consumption and community?

Why would the damn vehicle always have to seat 4 people in “bowling alone” era (how about sidecar motorcycles; after all, Henry Ford was just tying two motorbikes together to make his first 4-wheeler, all in black, of course). As of this edit, Toyota concept EV is doing just that: three-seater enclosed vehicle.

What defines “hip” and romance (Gaga , the mermaid on wheels, w/ a “bad romance”).

What if we were given another shot at life, with our current macro-economic vantage point? (the rogue trader is doing it again, this time in the tune of 2 Billion).

Planet Bollywood.

Las Vegas in Macau.

Ford auto assembly plants mushrooming along China’s Eastern coasts.

We only transplant and replicate what works.

A tweaking here, a tweaking there. Not an overhaul. Not a paradigm shift.

Until, it’s in our face, at planetary level.

Two suns.

A discovery that should silence both Galileo and Copernicus .

Before we know it, we will adapt and take the two sunsets for granted. We will long for thrice the romance, two off-line, and one line.

Enlightenment turns entitlement again.

Turn off the telescope and turn on the microscope to look inside. We will find the thing called desire. And it’s unquenchable, and our last frontier to be conquered.

The happiest moment might not be a  Hollywood sunset. The happiest moment lies in our selective memory, wired in our deepest part of the brain. There, you will find twice the romance. More than provided by the two-sun planet’s. It’s a remarkable discovery nevertheless. Go NASA!

My machine vs yours

When Henry Ford put together two motor cycles side by side to invent the automobile, he wasn’t interested in pleasing his customers, “you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black”.  Now, car turns commodity, the Chinese came up with Cherry, the pink car designed to please its female customers  Bye bye Alpha Male.

We are moving swiftly to post-industrial society, where valued apps differentiate services (the Application layer).

My android app vs your I-Phone‘s. More women play games that fit their lifestyle, instead of shooting down the enemies in Mortal Combat. And medical records can be made available to avoid cross-drug effects. Ironically, pornographers are way ahead in tech curve (money-motivated people adopts invention very quickly).

How much more the “good” guys can advance if they put their mind into it.

My machine vs yours.

Let’s race.

We went to the Moon, collected rock samples, and returned safely.

Now, we just have to sit down in a chair and think.

Let our fingers do the walking on the keyboard, not feet on the surface of the Moon. Let them glide, and be the extension of our speed of thought.

Besides speed (Moore’s Law), and network effect (Melcafe), we need Movement (macro-wiki?)  to lift ourselves above the mundane.

Google’s “don’t be evil”, Steve Job‘s “be hungry”.

Sadly but truly, hunger and fear are good driving forces. The former compels us to hunt, the other to invent weapons to protect ourselves. Peter Drucker once said “organizations exist to do two things: innovation and marketing”.

From Taser to Tommy, it is not unusual to find in a woman’s bag: car alarm, I pod, I phone, flash lights, garage door openers, remote control of all sorts etc….

Wireless technologies have liberated dancers/singers so they can move around the stage, and their laptops around the house.

My machine vs yours.

Surround sound. Shared sorrow. The Japan that can now say NO.

Once thrived, now disheartened, Japan has quietly moved on to robotics to serve its aging population. If any country that could work technology into health care, Japan should be it. I had a chance to sort through first hand, all sorts of machines junked by hospitals. Brace ourselves for 21st-century hospitalization, where you can’t affor having allergy to all things machine. From Youtube to test tube, you will instead of viewing your music video, end up breathing from one.

My machine vs yours.

The Who will change its tune, from “see me, feel me” to “test me, read me”.

The machine won’t prolong life, but at least, it can give exact reading of time of death. That’s when the cursor blinks, without going to the next alphabet.

No period. Just blinking, incessantly.

My machine vs yours. Learn to live and love it while you can.

Saigon in motion

A couch floats down the river right pass Bong Bridge a while ago.

As of this edit, there was a “hot” clip about police trying to stop a girl from jumping to her death on another bridge.

Vietnam still has to battle with forces of nature, (typhoon Utor) and economic pressures  (bad debt).

Here, before the rain stops, people already start moving.

A poncho, two people. Total trust. You drive, I ride.

Street vendors spread out merchandise on tarp, just to wrap them up five minutes later.

The lucky few zoomed by on Toyota Runner or Lexus.

Progress by osmosis.

Henry Ford reincarnated will be happy to find this land where automobile market has yet been saturated

Despite, people have managed to move about efficiently and effortlessly on two, not four wheels, defying all odds.

High rises are up. So are bridges in the city.

People are in constant motion, on Mobil phones and motor bikes.

People honk at every hour of the day.

(Unlike in the States, honking would invite road rage.)

I get to call on a few ICT companies. I found the work force young, intelligent and responsive. The marks of top students (learning), and soon becoming top workers (unlearning).

Post-war baby boomers grow up with no legacy.

Order a beer, shoot the breeze and hop on the bike.

Competition is tough at all level i.e. entry-level workers, mid-level manager, small companies and mid-size ones. Meanwhile, the nation itself strives to become the next Malaysia and Indonesia. If failed, or not trying hard enough, caught in “Middle-Income trap”.

So, back to two wheels, while the rest of the world on four.

As long as things and people are in motion. A couch that floats and a girl who tries to jump. Keep moving. Keep fighting gravity and inertia. Keep up with progress. Endure the pain to surely gain.

I am not here for solitude and reflection. I am here to move with the flow.

Just to survive. And the fade out music today is “rain and tears….”

More from Saigon on my next blog. Got to hop on a “xe om” to fight traffic.

 

Saigon upgrade

In 2000, I was sitting at Cadillac, a semi-enclosed bar, whose band played Hotel California and I Will Survive.

In 2010, I found myself at Rolls Royce, which also played Hotel California and I Will Survive.

2013, at Van’s Cafe, its band plays Bon Jovi’s number lacing with Santana’s classics.

Nouveaux riches, yetl good oldies.

The expats came and went. The FDI-enabled buildings and factories were built then abandoned. Investors fled, yet their dollars and euros stayed.

The spill-overs pay for the infrastructure upgrade and remodeling of multiple entertainment venues in the city. Saigon District 1 is still prime real estate. As a song goes, “Ngua xe nhu nuoc tren duong van qua mau” (Horses and buggies zip by on the streets of Saigon), it’s the kind upgrade once seen in New York of the time of Henry Ford.

Taxi pulled up, dropped off, especially when it was pouring.

And the youth, on motorbikes, couldn’t get enough of drag racing (richer counterparts have moved up to Vespas and Roman Holiday).

They did this during the World Cup. Now they practice for the next World Cup, keeping local police busy.

WIth all its pent-up energy, Saigon is upgrading and up to task. from Cadillac, to Rolls Royce.

Female singers with tattoos and cigarettes waiting for their gigs.

A  sequel of ” the girl with a dragon tatoo” could easily be filmed here.

And at the bus station, film crews were busy at work, with  PA’s in black T-shirts doing crowd control. With only that much space, and limited infrastructure – to get around, young people either have to wait until 2AM to race, or they go online during the day. By-pass bridges can’t be built fast enough to accommodate break-neck speed of urbanization and modernization (tallest high-rises, then, another taller-than-current-tallest is proposed).

Airport proposal and counter-proposals dominate tabloid news.

Digital content are thriving here. So have cosmetic surgery e.g. eye lash clip-on, hair extension, All things for personal-brand reinvention.

Those rock band members are splintering off only to regroup somewhere else. Bar ownership change hands as quickly as the names on the doors.

But “I still survive” if failed the US interview to live in Hotel California (background Karaoke screen often shows Golden Gate Bridge).

Those who were lucky to migrate to the West can’t wait to make enough money to return to the “village”. This time, to their surprise, the place has changed. From Cadillac, to Rolls Royce. And you can take a working elevator up to the joint as well. No more semi-enclosed bar (Cadillac) where rain would disrupt a fashion show in progress as often did.  Siting from the inside, you might think you are in a Vegas joint. Gaming and gambling are pushed to its neighboring Cambodia..

As of this edit, a legislative proposal is on the table to legalize sports betting modeled after Singapore recent successes.

With only eateries and spirits as socially acceptable vices, everyone  “dzo”, eat, drink and be merry. Tomorrow will take care of itself, that is, kicking the can down the road for younger population to step up and take up the torch. That torch might not be the same. This time, new issues have emerged: gay, abortion and single mothering. I hope they don’t carry real burning torches on their next drag race. Arson is a kind of upgrade no one needs. If upset, just go ahead and torch yourself.

Me, I will survive. With or without Hotel California.

 

The giving

This program has been made possible by Viewers like you, and the following foundations…..

We all heard that line on PBS or NPR.

Now we will see it on Fortune magazine that Giving is back in an organized way (like Barn Raising in an Amish community,

or Cognitive Surplus giving at Wikipedia).

This time. wealthy people from India and China will learn how to be rich (by giving away their new-found wealth).

In other words, to acquire money is just a first step to be admitted to the table.

Then, there is a curriculum: Giving 101 (preparing your will)  Giving 102 ( Giving away to help out the bottom Billion) before graduation at Davos.

Bono has advocated Poor Nation’s debt (for)giving. Jeffrey Sachs argues in similar vein.

And in India, bankers to the poor have tried mobile bank branches, mobile phone booths, and micro-lending.

I am sure these necessary steps will lead to a thoroughly vaccinated population and hopefully a more productive and peaceful world.

This is not the kind of  civic charity we have been accustomed to (Red Cross, Salvation Army, YMCA etc…).

This is new and very 21st-century. It’s the Third Wave’s giving (as opposed to Industrialist philanthropy such as Henry Ford and Rockefeller whose fortune was amassed due to the rise of the Machine). Now we have The Gates and Mr Buffett take the lead in a Round table (Hi, my name is so and so. And I am an anonymous donor AD and not OD).

http://www.economist.com/node/16381387?story_id=16381387

This time, we have a confluence of  information technology , health and bio technology and environmental technology (clean tech) to point us in the right direction (Kevin Costner‘s congressional testimony yesterday for one). Foundation and funding will back those who can best leverage donated dollars, and the best part is it’s pre-meditated and pro-active, not reactive or under relief pressures.

If anybody can do it, this trio can. After all, at the speed of thought, they can transfer shares by a click of a mouse. I hope they and their nouveaux-riches won’t suffer from after-thought which is mirror image of buyer’s remorse.

(As of this edit, only percentage of the pledges actually went through). But during this past Recession, non-profit dollars have been on the rise (Warren Buffet’s son had a nice piece on the NYT about this subject). It’s more blessed to give than to receive.