Archive for the 'innovation' Category
Loyalty Mobile
It looks like cell phones today have so many features that it is becoming less phone and more everything else. The new trend, when it comes to transforming your mobile phone into something else, is turning it into a Loyalty Card Collector. Startups like CardStar and CardBank already offer business a solution that uses barcodes to virtualize loyalty cards and store them in mobile phones. There are plenty of others, like Foursquare, Loopt, Shopkick and Gowalla, and they all aim basicaly on the same target, though using different techniques.
After reading about this subject, I just realized that most of these tools almost always requires users to act in order to redeem cards or register their presence in a given place, and that’s a real show stopper. Sometimes, we just don’t have the time or don’t remember to use our mobiles to redeem the cards. I think that the contender that come with an idea to skip this process will gain the biggest market presence.
One idea is to combine all possible informations about a customer, his credit cards, bluetooth ID, mobile phone details, phone number, etc. And whenever the customer uses his credit card, the cash register would try to connect via bluetooth to the customer’s phone to store his loyalty card automatically and register his presence in the store and keep a log of whatever he consumed or bought. This would be a really good catch, and would encourage people to leave their bluetooth receiver activate all time.
The Loyalty Card redeeming system can take advantage that customers’ bluetooth is active and send in relevant advertisements based on what he has consumed or bought lately in that store, or suggestions on how to redeem the loyalty cards he gathered.
We could add integration to other social medias (like facebook, twitter, tumblr, etc.), but the core goal is to avoid user from the need of interacting with his mobile phone in order to redeem the card after purchase.
When it comes to Technology today, Usability and Relationship are the king. If your system offers good usability and is capable of relating stuffs and people in a very usable manner, then you’re half way to success, and that’s what I think these guys are missing at Loyalty Mobile Systems.
2 commentsSoftware Patents not worth the effort?
This week I read an article from Erik J. Heels, where he states that patents are not always worth a try for startups, mainly when it comes to software patents.
Well, it happens that I have being reading about this subject lately, and sometimes I do agree, sometimes I don’t.
Although being expensive and time consuming, patents do give its owner a reasonable advantage over competitors avoiding them from stealing the idea. Ok, I agree that it doesn’t always avoid that. Sometimes, enforcing a software patent isn’t that easy, and if they steal your idea early, then they may gain a huge advantage over you before you even get you patent aproved.
It takes something between 5 to 6 years to get a software patent aproved. That’s just about the life time of most technologies!
If your technology is good enough to strive through and live longer than that, you probably managed to gain the biggest piece in the market share. Then, would you really need a software patent to enforce competitors?
It happens that there is no easy answer to this. It is very hard to predict the future, and patents are assets. If you’re more conservative, then patents will certainly bring you some peace of mind. If you’re the type that doesn’t fear competitors and trust in your bat, then patents may be a waste of time and money.
But never forget: patents are assets. Though you may never use it, whenever you need it you’ll have it.
And no, I’m not going to start working as an IP lawyer or consultant, in case you’re wondering I’m being biased. It simply happens that I have a special interest on this matter.
What do you think? Is it worth investing on patents, or is it better to use that money and time trying to overcome competition?
No commentsBreakthrough: Stories and Strategies of Radical Innovation
This book was in my wishlist for almost a year before I had the opportunity to acquire and read it. As I couldn’t find it here in Brazil I had to wait for an opportunity to acquire it abroad or buy it from a foreign website. I did the first, and bought this book while travelling to USA for the Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit 2007. Unfortunately, even with the book in my hands, I wasn’t able to read it by that time and had to wait a little bit to delight myself reading it.
As a scientist, I’m a big fan and enthusiastic of breakhroughs, and the processes, environments and stimulus that leads to innovation and disruptive technologies. Today, it is very hard to imagine a world without cars, computers or telephones. Each one of these inventions are pretty young compared to the time we’ve being dwelling in this Earth since we’ve been created.
Also, it is not hard to conclude that in some years, we’re going to have more disruptive innovations that will make part of our lives, and that we neigther our ancestors have never thought about, and it will certainly be very hard to imagine a world without those innovations at that time in the future. We are doing the future now, and seeding the stimulus, environments and processes that are willing to trigger disruptive innovations that will certainly change our lives in such a way that we will not imagine ourselves in the future without them.
As the ones in charge of creating the steps to inspire future innovations, and provide our shoulders to stand other giants we have to share knowledge and experiences without the biased behaviors that we’re used to witness. The overall welfare is provided by the efforts of each human being towards the progress of humanity, “being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous and in doing good to all men”[0].
The book itself doesn’t preach any of those thoughts I have shared, but if you read it and read my thoughts you’re going to see how one complement the other. The book does tackle subjects like how breakthrough happen, how can we feed ourselfs with the right stimulus to increase the chances of having ground breaking ideas, how to see differently and keep innovating after the years. That mainly depends on process, environment and stimulus. Continually seeking for the behaviors cited[0], and not being biased, is the main step towards overall welfare and continuous improvement of human beings. That welfare and improvements, leads to better process, environments and stimulus. Then, here it comes the bits I found in Stefik’s book. After achieving that behavior, we are ready to start innovating.
The book is mainly based of interviews made with the brightests minds that are innovating today. All of that is about sharing knowledge, and not being biased. When you hide and protect the knowledge from being spread, you’re probably doing that with one thing in mind: creating a monopoly. That is a biased behavior, and that doesn’t lead to innovation, but to the stalling of it.
The book is a good reading, and shows us the backstages of disruptive breakthroughs and how to provide the meanings to better the processes, environments and increase stimulus in your place to have innovations likely to happen. Also, keep in mind that sharing knowledge is good and that the knowledge you share might come back to you improved. Good reading 
[0] – SMITH, Joseph. The Articles of Faith. History of the Church, Vol. 4, pp. 535-541.
