Tag: Volkswagen

An American Invention

Dr Lloyd Tran never stops and hardly sleeps. For a right reason. He is an inventor at heart.

He started out as a chemist. Then worked for huge corporations such as Monsanto. Then he invented and manufactured his own drug release device in Irvine, CA (right at the time companies started to look elsewhere to outsource and offshore). After a stint in nanotech, he found his niche in CleanTech e.g. solar panel, EV battery etc… His most recent invention: electric car conversion.

His students built on top of what they had learned from AC/DC (I thought that was a band).

So far, they have de-gutted a few Porches , VW, and even Jaguar as gliders to install EV components (power train, A/C and even cruise control). I test drove the green Porche and found it quiet, fast and futuristic.

I don’t see how others can’t do it. Just find a problem, ask why not and solve it.

Tesla is getting first-prize for this year Electric Vehicles (the S series).

Toyota, embattled with lawsuit and litigation, is a bit cautious and conservative. But even then, Toyota won first-prise in EV race cars. It has released its first three-wheel EV concept car also.

What’s the waiting? EMR (Electronic Medical Record) and EV. Or we just wait to admit everyone into ER?

We don’t lack the know-how. We lack the will to change. To rock the boat. All the while, we are told to think “out of the box”. Maybe the “box” or the boat, needs to get out of itself.

One way is to travel. To see how other species go about their days (water jars on their heads in the desert, automobile glider on buffalo cart in Vietnam etc…). I wish I could show you a picture of the latter which I saw on One Vietnam Network.

The point is, we take the path of least resistance by default.

Changes are mentioned only in passing. But men like Dr Lloyd saw an old Jaguar, hauled it back and made something amazing out of it (Jaguar ironically is now own by Tata, former colonized now owns empire’s jewel, after a change of hand at Ford).

If I were to be Tata owner, I would contact Dr Lloyd Tran, and ask to see the all-electrified Jag.

What used to be a symbol of luxury is now also hip and cool (environmentally friendly). I took that  smog-filled Jag to state inspection. Now, I heard that it is smog-free (zero emission).

Can’t wait to get back and give it a test-drive. It might blow me away (fast and furiously quiet).

For now, I put this out as a challenge: be world citizen. Solve problems where ever you may see them. Think first as a technologist, then a marketer (and last as a politician).

Before you know , you might even get elected. I know how hard and challenging the task was to transform an ICE Jaguar into an EV one. But the team did just that. All I have is “three cheers” to an American Invention. It is right here in our back yard (behind the city’s dump). One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, that which once was smog-filled now turns smog-free.

Camel, container and call center

Each represents a distribution venue in various era.

Now, the man behind “As Seen On TV” wants to do away with call center altogether.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/30/business/media/30adco.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&hpw=&adxnnlx=1309474819-WalLu/L4Q4AdzzCWZqpw4g

Essentially, he just keeps the container, while relying on the “cloud” and the credit card

to elicit impulse buying.

Welcome to the future, where pundits who blamed off-shored call centers for taking jobs away from Americans all of a sudden gone quiet (can’t blame the blinking lights in co-lo centers which might be residing in one of the trailers’ parks in North Dakota or Wyoming).

I had my experience of “impulse buying” when I called the 800 number to place orders for Time-Life Music of the 70’s (Singers and Songwriters set – ‘you have to call it now, to get the bonus CD‘ etc..). I ended up giving out my credit card numbers to an order taker

who I knew full well was working the night shift, and did not grow up listening to those music.

In a few short years, I won’t even have the privy of talking to a live person at all.

They will just keep the container to ship tangible goods, and have me download the rest (SaaS).

Clean tech, clean transaction. Direct response. No intermediary.

Ford ushered in the model T’s, all in black. This displaced the horse carriage. Now Hyundai overtakes Ford (just behind GM, VW, Toyota and Nissan).

Camel was the thing of the past (Silk Road).

I saw the picture of that bridge just opened in China.

That should facilitate a lot of containers, rushing to the port (for export).

What we used to think of as “long-term solution”, now happens to be middle-term at best, and short-term at worst. Technology with its high velocity compresses our concept of time. But, if anything still holds true, it’s our human nature (social animal) and 24-hr day.

We still are going to buy from people, trust friend’s recommendations and optimize time/value trade-off.

Hence, in taking disintermediation to the extreme, companies end up trading customer satisfaction for operational efficiency. Pushing it, they end up killing the golden goose (conversely, happy customers turn evangelists, the end result of exceptional customer service). It’s what getting the customers to come back and bring their friends that count more than a single impulse buy (exercise equipment, as seen on TV).

Customer Life-time Value.

Facebook’s CEO knows this network effect well when he mentioned that in 5 years, social media will morph into something we won’t recognize . In today’s speed, 5 years is a life time ago, when we were “irrationally exuberant” with housing prices and nobody even saw the coming of the Ipads.

On this, I am willing to revise my long-term planning. Let’s say, 2015 is far out enough into the future, when not even Cambodian college students want to work in call centers. They will be too busy counting the US dollars sub-contracting for Chinese supply chain companies whose containers are full of stuff “as seen on TV”.

Culture shock, future shock, aftershock

We just saw an aftershock in Japan at magnitude 7.0. In and of itself, it’s a major earthquake. But, since it had been preceded by the big one (9.0), it is pale in comparison.

As to culture shock, a man from the Amazon who got transported to Seattle, WA will only hear one thing in common: Amazon.com.
The rest like Starbucks, Microsoft etc… seems strange to him. Off the bet, he needs winter wear to survive.

Like Austin Powers who needs to adjust expectations, majorly, upon stepping out of deep freeze.

Things are partitioned with biometric passwords and cumbersome authentication process (unlike the Woodstock fence which got pushed down and stayed down for the duration of the three-day concert). No room on the VW van or Love bus for Luddites.

Welcome to our digital future, where everything is mobile and online.

Austin cannot use his traditional charm to pry for information.

In other words, his spy craft needs serious brush-ups.

(incidentally, dentistry has advanced quite nicely since his time).

He will hardly get any service or human interaction: at the gym (finger print pad, more sophisticated than Austin’s spy school,) on the phone with “customer service” (speech recognition and voice activation before you get a live operator, from call center far way, whose accent Austin incidentally can ID, but may be doubtful if he had mis-dialed the country code).

Even kids check text messages while talking to parents. The Dad still checks out stock quotes while his wife nags that dinner was ready.

Yet one deadline remains the same: April 15th. As sure as death, tax time is due time for everyone. Government might get shut down, so pay up.

The future is now. But it comes not without a few shocks of its own.

Meanwhile, ROW (rest of world) is playing catch up. Emerging countries all try to export their stuff to the Walmart near you. Pretty soon, we are surrounded by Dollar stores, where everything is priced at one dollar, inflation-adjusted.

BTW, when our Austin Powers runs into our Amazon man in Seattle, they can agree on one thing: we need to take care of Mother Nature, because these aftershocks are not funny. Quite inconvenient indeed. Whether you are a primitive man or a hit man, you know that when the bell tolls for thee, it’s also for me. Culture shock, I can adapt. Future shock, I can embrace. But aftershock, …. it keeps me up at night. Just check with Fukushima and Sandy refugees in the shelters. They can tell you, it may take years, not months, before they can return to “normal”. I can empathize, having absorbed all three shocks myself.