Archive for April, 2005
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 18 Apr 2005, 4:10 PM - 4 Comments
I love Apple and they never cease to
amaze with all the new and cool things that they come out with.
However, I was a bit surprised when they came out with iPod Shuffle. It felt like it was more of a marketing play than a pure product innovation. I expected a lot more from Apple.
Here is why:
iPod
from Apple already has a feature called “Shuffle” that will shuffle the
songs and randomly choose the sequence of upcoming songs. The lowest
version today costs about $199.00. Of course, iPod has a lot more
features than iPod Shuffle (costs $99)
If that this the case, does it mean that the “Shuffle” feature on iPod is worth $99?
What do you all think?
Posted under Business Models, Compelling Offers, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 18 Apr 2005, 6:30 AM - Leave Comment
The following quote nicely describes the power of expectations. I have
seen this in my own life and in the life of so many people I know -
when people close to us expect more from us, we usually rise to meet
their expectations
“If I
accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you
as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become
that.”
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 15 Apr 2005, 7:06 AM - Leave Comment
Brad Feld writes about ordering custom printed M&Ms.
If you can order customized computer products from Dell, you can now order custom printed M&Ms from Masterfoods.
I am confident that others will follow but hats off to Masterfoods for taking the lead!
It seems like an obvious extension now, doesn’t it? Again, most innovation projects are that way.
Posted under Business Models, Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 14 Apr 2005, 7:50 PM - Leave Comment
Not much you may say. I beg to differ. I was watching a TV show the
other night and I saw someone performing a haircut underwater and
charging upwards of $200 per haircut.
What got me interested was Onsite Haircuts, whose service is described as
Onsite Haircuts is devoted to a single idea: providing a quality
haircut with the least interruption to your busy life. Get in. Get out.
Get on with life.
If you are outside the bay area, the service may not be available at your location yet!
Posted under Business Models, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Tue 12 Apr 2005, 9:51 AM - Leave Comment
All of us know that leadership is more than holding a title or a
position. However, it is difficult for many people to start an
initiative without positional power. Undertaking a lead role in a
volunteer effort will solve that problem. Leading a volunteer can be
hard work but the rewards are great.
If you are leading a team of volunteers you know that:
a) almost all the team members are in this for a cause and not for the money.
b) each team member has an option to quit at any time.
c) each team member is already walking the extra mile
d) each team member has other choices to volunteer their time
In other words, it takes a lot of effort to lead and succeed in a volunteer effort. What it will make of you is priceless.
Succeeding in leading a volunteer effort will provide several benefits:
a) you will spend time for a great cause
b) very few people lead a volunteer effort so you are in a minority (distinguished yourself)
c) great networking beyond your professional circles
d) short cut to developing your leadership skills
Good luck!
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Leadership, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 11 Apr 2005, 7:08 PM - Leave Comment
Close to my home there is a huge sign making an offer to stay at Vagabond Inn “Try us first – 0th Night Free”
There are two issues with this.
First: The sign is so huge that the mistake is glaring. Everyone knows
that what they mean is 10th night free but you don’t want to announce
to the world that you don’t care about fixing such problems.
Second: This one is about the offer that they are making. Even if they
meant that the 10th night is free, it is far from a compelling offer.
All they are saying is that if you stay for 10 days, you may get upto
10% discount on your stay. Remember, that if you stay for 19 days, the
discount may be as low as 5%.
What they have is a prime space that thousands of people watch almost
everyday and I think the offer needs to be more compelling.
How about the offers you are making in your business and in your profession?
Posted under Compelling Offers, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sun 10 Apr 2005, 7:37 AM - Leave Comment
This quote from Mark Twain reminds us the need to distinguish ourselves.
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sat 09 Apr 2005, 11:51 PM - 1 Comment
First read about this at Robert Scoble’s blog yesterday. Paul has done a phenomenal job of combining the power of Google Maps and Craigslist.
Google maps is on one extreme of sophistication and Craigslist is on
one extreme of simplicity. Paul is brilliant in combining the
sophistication and simplicity to display how this combination can take
usability to the next level.
Once you see it, you will think that this was obvious. Most innovation projects are that way.
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 08 Apr 2005, 6:52 PM - Leave Comment
Talk about anything significant – you have a set of rules. Some are
global and some are specific to a particular situation. One rule that
has been time tested in life is that “sometimes you win and sometimes you lose”
However smart you are there are times when you will goof up or fail. How
fast you recover from a goof up or failure will be a key factor in
determining whether you are part of the statistics or you will be a
stand out. One of my friends used to say “either you succeed or
you LEARN”. Actually, failure is not the problem in most cases. What
you do about the failure is. How quickly do you recover from a failure
and start marching again. In other words, it’s not the falling down but getting up quickly everytime you fall down
that’s important. History is filled with lessons (Abraham Lincoln,
Colonel Sanders etc.) where peole did not accept failure and ultimately
succeeded.
They say that nobody can stop an idea whose time has come. However,
just having an idea rarely makes anyone successful. One needs to
execute on it. Execution is where the rubber meets the road.
Ask any successful person on their journey to success and you will see
that the path was never a straight line. There is no shortcut to
success. One of my all time favorite books The Innovation Paradox deals
with this concept in great detail.
What I am saying will be very obvious if you look back at your own life
and think through most of the failures. Imagine yourself and think
about the feelings you had right at the moment when the failure
occured. What are your feelings now about the same failure. Very
different, indeed! What looked like a huge failure a few years or
months ago will seem insignificant after some time. If this is
true, one way to trick your mind is to fast forward your life a bit
whenever a failure occurs and observe what you would think about this
failure when you look back (a few years from now) This is a way of
reframing to help you to get back on the feet.
In summary, I want to say that failures happen and you will fail or fall down
at times. If you want to distinguish yourself, learn to get back on
your feet fast every time you fall down.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 07 Apr 2005, 11:21 PM - Leave Comment
Seth had an intresting post about brainless PR folks trying to get his attention by sending him irrelevant press releases. That brings me to the next post in the “Distinguish yourself” series.
A few months ago, I received an unsolicited email from (now) my good friend Bob Thomas. It was an announcement about a brand new magazine called Enterprise Open Source Journal, the first ever magazine dealing with open source in the enterprise. Being in the open source business for the last four years, I did not consider this spam and in fact, I thanked Bob for sending this over to me, albeit unsolicited. Why? One key reason was that this information was very relevant for me and my business.
Relevancy is key to move ahead. If you remember some of your interactions where you “tuned out”, one of the reasons may have been that the other person continued to say things that were not “relevant” to you. Now the key question: How many times did you continue talk with someone about something that was not relevant to them?
If we are not relevant, people will tune out and our messages won’t get through. Relevancy is a key factor to increase your likeability says my friend Tim Sanders in his new book The Likeability Factor.
Striving for relevance in every key interaction (with your clients, co-workers, family members etc.) can make a big difference in your life and in the lives of people around you. This may sound obvious but let me say it anyway – if you want to increase relevance, start truly caring for people who you interact with. Once you care, you will start taking notice of what is relevant to them rather than focusing on what is relevant to you.
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
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