This article on Chumby strikes me as the way of the future - or at least one path. This path promises several things:
1. Customization of product - I believe we are moving to an era where style will be less important than functionality, and that styles will not come & go, but they will just move. I mean, you will be less inclined to refurbish your house in Gothic style, you with just sell your Post-Modern design to fulfill your Gothic fetish. The same will be true for function. This is the era of specialisation, and I expect greater integration of markets will result in greater customisation in product and service offerings. This is a positive shift towards conceptual thinking and empathizing with the needs of the client. Until now its been mostly rhetoric. A great deal of this is being made possible with computers and the customisation of the internet experience such that a company can offer different sales experiences in different markets. The customisation will sit alongside premium grade servicing as value-add propositions.
2. Integration - In the area of electronics I think we are looking at improvements in product support and scalability, and the ongoing fading of boundaries between institutions and customers. We can see this with work tasking, but also in product design. We are seeing products being designed such that they are wired to the internet. It has been a dream for some time now that you could control your home appliances remotely, whether from your mobile phone or through your office computer. eg. You are leaving the office, so you turn on the aircon and pre-heat the oven before you arrive. Thats the concept, but in reality we have seen very little of this integration outside home security systems. Chumby is a move in this direction - albeit a primitive step. But we can expect more of this with GPS-based phones that download maps from the internet, external HDDs we source from anywhere. Amazon's eBook readers are an example of things moving in the right direction.
3. More outsourcing - There is no question we will be looking at more outsourcing, which will include more people living at home. But here is the trick. We will need to be trained to work at home because we are not accustomed to working with home comforts. So I see home spaces being redesigned to meet the needs of the home worker. I actually think the Philippines is actually more advanced in this respect than other countries. Two companies here - Shoemart and Robinsons - are designing low & high-rise apartment/condominium complexes integrated with shopping precincts. I wonder when the days of cooking at home will be over? Maybe when restaurants start cooking animals fats for meals that we can afford to eat out every night. When they start packaging meals like our broad lifestyles matter, then they might just have an integrated solution that keeps us coming back. The question is would we want to eat at the same place every time? Probably not, so maybe restaurants will be transient solutions in future, or maybe the meals will be delivered from off-site to store fronts.
Are we there yet?
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
1. Customization of product - I believe we are moving to an era where style will be less important than functionality, and that styles will not come & go, but they will just move. I mean, you will be less inclined to refurbish your house in Gothic style, you with just sell your Post-Modern design to fulfill your Gothic fetish. The same will be true for function. This is the era of specialisation, and I expect greater integration of markets will result in greater customisation in product and service offerings. This is a positive shift towards conceptual thinking and empathizing with the needs of the client. Until now its been mostly rhetoric. A great deal of this is being made possible with computers and the customisation of the internet experience such that a company can offer different sales experiences in different markets. The customisation will sit alongside premium grade servicing as value-add propositions.
2. Integration - In the area of electronics I think we are looking at improvements in product support and scalability, and the ongoing fading of boundaries between institutions and customers. We can see this with work tasking, but also in product design. We are seeing products being designed such that they are wired to the internet. It has been a dream for some time now that you could control your home appliances remotely, whether from your mobile phone or through your office computer. eg. You are leaving the office, so you turn on the aircon and pre-heat the oven before you arrive. Thats the concept, but in reality we have seen very little of this integration outside home security systems. Chumby is a move in this direction - albeit a primitive step. But we can expect more of this with GPS-based phones that download maps from the internet, external HDDs we source from anywhere. Amazon's eBook readers are an example of things moving in the right direction.
3. More outsourcing - There is no question we will be looking at more outsourcing, which will include more people living at home. But here is the trick. We will need to be trained to work at home because we are not accustomed to working with home comforts. So I see home spaces being redesigned to meet the needs of the home worker. I actually think the Philippines is actually more advanced in this respect than other countries. Two companies here - Shoemart and Robinsons - are designing low & high-rise apartment/condominium complexes integrated with shopping precincts. I wonder when the days of cooking at home will be over? Maybe when restaurants start cooking animals fats for meals that we can afford to eat out every night. When they start packaging meals like our broad lifestyles matter, then they might just have an integrated solution that keeps us coming back. The question is would we want to eat at the same place every time? Probably not, so maybe restaurants will be transient solutions in future, or maybe the meals will be delivered from off-site to store fronts.
Are we there yet?
------------------------------------------------
Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
