Invention vs. Innovation

Another random topic: a simple "innovation" around urinal.

I came across this urinal in the Montréal-Trudeau airport. Unlike another other urinals, this one is special. It has a little seashell picture near the drain. The picture has not physical function as it's not mechanical. But it served a very important but subtle purpose: aim.

As human-being, it's my nature to focus my "action" on the seashell picture. The little seashell picture could, theoretically, does a remarkable job in keeping the washroom clean by helping the urinal users to aim at the "sweet spot" (don't interpret it literally unless you are diabetics)

I am fascinated by little innovations such as this: simple, elegant, and effective. Innovations don't need to be groundbreaking and complex.

What's the difference between invention and innovation? Invention is a novel idea, but hasn't be applied to our daily lives yet, innovation is an applied invention. Most complex invention stuck in their invention phase because of the lack of practical applications.

Hats off to the innovator that put a seashell picture in the urinal. Bravo. Brilliantly executed.

Order Matters!

Have you received an email that is sent to a number of recipients? Do you every wonder the order of the recipients listed on the "to:" header? Does the order of the recipients matters? Absolutely.

Correct me if I am wrong, I think most mail client do not rearrange the recipients' order automatically. I am not even sure if there is an option to instruct the mail client to sort the recipients order.

I am not a psychiatrist , but you don't need to be one to understand the logic behind recipients order. The order is the natural order that "pop" into the mail composer's head.

The order of the recipients says a lot. When you compose an email to a bunch of people, how do you start listing them? The less logical order is, whomever pops in your head first. The more logical order is, whomever is most relevant to the content of the email. Although the latter order is more logical, most people aren't that logical and seldom think of it that way.

So, that goes back to, whomever pops up in your head first. Then you have to ask yourself, how come one name pops up earlier than others?

It's what it's?

It bothers me whenever someone said "it's what it's"? No matter which context it is used, it means absolutely nothing, in the literal sense. But from a behavioural stand point, it has its intrinsic meaning. You can translate it to different meaning in different context for different person. But no matter how "you skin the cat", "it's what it's" is not positive nor neutral, IMHO, of course.

How would I interpret "it's what it's"?

* I am a victim of the situation, the situation is beyond my control
* I don't bother investigate the situation behind it
* Please don't ask for more details about the situation (or I don't want to discuss the situation with you)

Although, I don't like this phase, sometimes, I still catch myself saying it. When I say it, I usually mean that I am the victim of the situation as well. I need to remind myself that I don't want to victimize myself in any situation.

How would you interpret "it's what it's"? I would love to hear your point of view!

For the record, the urban dictionary of the phase can be found on http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=It+is+what+it+Is

Pricing Power

On a flight from Montreal to Orlando, I read an article in the Financial Post Magazine, May 2011 edition. The magazine is a month old, but the frontpage title "SWOT TEAM!" caught my eyes. Note, this is one of the very few times that my flight wasn't complete consumed by the personal entertainment system -- simply because I saw every interesting movie it has to offer.

The article is an easy read. The take home message for me is that I learned a new term called pricing power.

The term pricing power is noted in the legend of the article, but I had to read the article twice before locating it in the article body. The term is new to me, but it's self-explanatory; it's the power to price your product.

Quote:

"You want to look for companies and industry sectors where companies still have pricing power. Companies that don't have pricing power will see their margins squeezed and you will have a higher risk of earnings disappointment there."

Well said! The logical questions is how does a company or an industry possess or establishes pricing power. I think pricing power can be formulated by supply, demand, and product differentiation. It sounds trivial but it's not.

Economy 101 taught us supply and demand. Check!

How does product differentiation come in? How does it matter? How does it throw off the balance between supply and demand? Some product are so unique, innovative, and forward-thinking that the the demand has been fully established yet -- the consumer don't know they need/want to consume it.

The greatest pricing power is supply is low, demand is high, and product differentiation is great. That's to say that "you are the only one in town". You have monopolized the market. Also the product must be so novel that there is no pricing referencing to predetermine the value of the product.

MBA -- you've got it all WRONG

Here is my random thoughts about MBA -- Master of Business Administration. I am not taking position on whether you should pursue it or not, it's just my 2 cents -- you need to know your motivation and what does a MBA offer. Have I came across a moment that I want to pursue a MBA degree. Of course! Multiple times, in fact.

My post-graduate advisor/professor was convinced that I will get a MBA degree some day, eventually. He maybe right, maybe not. I can only prove it when I got one of disprove it when I reunion with the Almighty Lord. If and when I eventually enrol in a MBA program, I will, undoubtably, have clear goals and objectives in "getting something out of it", instead of merely the three letter behind my name.

I question and challenge the real benefits from a MBA program. I don't have sufficient facts to argue either way. But I am convinced that you need to have a couple solid years in industrial management before enroling to the program in order to reap the most benefits out of the program, maximize your ROI. I am totally against a fresh-grad BBA continue with a MBA program. In fact, some well-established institutes impose some years of work experience as a prerequisite of enrolment.

Most people believe that MBA unlocks the secret of understanding business administration, and thus make big bucks out of it. There maybe some merit to it, but if that's your motivation to get in the program, I pity you.

MBA is well beyond education. Most people got it all wrong. To me, MBA is not only academics, it's also about networking! During the course of the program, you ought to acquaint with your fellowship classmates. Unlike undergraduate programs, most of your classmates are of pretty much of the same academic and industrial background: just finished high school and had some part-time job in some irrelevant "industries". Different from other graduate programs, most of your classmates are perusing advanced academic knowledge about a subject matter. They are (laser-)focusing in a microscopic subject in order to philosophy the matter to the point that no one has done before -- so you are working pretty much alone, maybe with your advisor / professor if you are lucky. MBA students could have very different age, ethics groups, more importantly, differnt academic and industrial background. But they have a set of common goals: get educated, get acquainted, get the degree, and get on with their life.

The know-how is no longer sufficient in this current business climate, you need to also know-who; you need to network. Note: I would like to emphasis that you need to know both: how and who, not just neither one. I can think of a handful incidence that know-who saved my ass.

How about the prestige-ness of the business school? Does that matter? Depends, if all you care is the three letters added to your name, you should not care about the which business school you enroll to. In fact, you should not even bother with enrolment. You can probably buy off a degree from some phony schools. If all you care is the intelligent advancement from the degree, the school matters, a little. People urge to get into the most prestige business school because the classmate are more "network-worthy". That's also partially the reason that MBA costs an arm and a leg. There are coach class, business class, and first-class in MBA school.

So what about DBA or Executive-MBA, I haven't able to think that far yet. (No, DBA != database administrator in this context)

Leadership Quality - Integrality

One sizes doesn't fit all in management. Management involves people, difficult people. And these people are all different; some prefer public compliment/acknowledge, others prefer short-n-sweet thank you email, or a simple pat on the back.

However, after years of management, there is some universal truth to successful management -- integrality. To further dump it down a bit, be genuine. I haven't come across anyone that prefers a hypocrite boss.

I was trained to be a highly effective / efficient professional. I found that the lack of integrality is the beginning of highly ineffective organization -- everyone second guessing others, everyone reading between the lines. Everyone spent more time deciphering the truth meaning for information communicated instead of "taking it for what is worth".

After all, one of human being's basic instincts is sensing danger. In our urban world, physical danger is general not a concern, however, people spent tremendous energy in sensing the invisible danger -- the ingenuity around us.

If you are a bookworm and genuinely interested in improving corporate culture, read the book "Love is the killer app" by Tim Sanders (http://timsanders.com/books/love-killer-app.html)

Capacity Planning -- have I dated myself?

A couple days ago, one of the project managers used the word "rewind", I told her that she just dated herself. For those of you who doesn't know what "rewind" means, google it! It's a verb referring rolling back of a sequential storage media, e.g.: rewind a video tape. Who uses a tape now?

Another day, I asked my team to "plan the production web servers' capacity" accordingly. As I come to think about it, I just dated myself as well!!!! With the maturing IaaS (infrastructure as a service) based hosting, known as the Cloud, capacity planning is overrated.

With the elastic capacity model, there isn't a need for any sophisticated planning. New web servers can be spawned as quick as a few minutes. With a decent traffic trend monitoring setup, server capacity can be scaled upward with a push of a button. If you really want to sleep tight and get fancy, you can setup automatic scaling, such as, http://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling/.

Why bother planning, set the capacity to the auto-pilot mode!