My son, Zach, had my favorite Philly cheesesteak sent in from the Jersey Shore. Shipping cost way more than the sandwiches. Worth It!!
As much as I love innovation (or finding something better), sometimes things are perfect as they are.
Wow, how time flies! Birthdays seem to come more quickly as I get older. It makes sense, though. When you were four, a birthday represented a quarter of your life. Now, a year represents a much smaller percentage.
Reminder: while aging may suck. It sure beats the alternative.
It's like a game where the ecosystem and the other players adapt and interact to the moves and responses of the others.
As a result, many innovations evolve (or mutate) ... and ultimately get used for drastically different purposes than they were created.
It makes sense because the inventor is often focused on solving a particular puzzle (or finding a specific advantage), but once the innovation is exposed, others try to imagine how to use it for their (often different) benefit.
One one level, it's DarwinianNatural Selection. It's not always the best idea that wins; rather it's often the easiest (or quickest) to adapt that survives.
Historically, space exploration was funded by nations based on their wants and needs (including defense initiatives). However, recently, profit is becoming a bigger catalyst. Space travel for travel's sake is seemingly within grasp. So too is asteroid mining (with promises rich profits).
When the prize is big enough, it is more likely that someone finds a way.
The result is more innovation (as more resources are directed at the problem).
The point is that innovation often follows a prize.
There has been a ton of press about the poor air quality in China. Not much has made it better.
Now, however, there is an idea for towers to suck up polluted air, and clean it, releasing it back into parks and playgrounds (which then are supposedly 70-75% cleaner than the rest of the city). The difference is that this idea revolves around transforming the captured smog into diamonds.
If it works, China may actually have a disincentive to reduce smog.
Then, someone will figure out how to put that Tower on top of smog-producing sites (presumably capturing the carbon more efficiently and effectively).
At some point, the company that figures out how to do this will offer to do it for free (in exchange for its ownership of the byproducts of the process).
Soon others will sense the "profit" and compete. Predictably, they will offer to share the profits with the company (and later the city, the county, the state, or the nation).
And the game goes on ...
Eventually, someone will complain that someone else got rich. But, on a different level, that's an innovation tax (the price society should gladly pay to have a better society).
It makes sense to let people search for value. It's even better when they create it.
For gamers, it’s an interesting expedition into “Real World Gaming," for techies, it's a cool use of augmented reality ... And for the business-focused, it is a big sign of what's to come!
Let's start with the HUGE adoption numbers. It's not just kids playing, Parents are playing, my 23-year-old “adult” son is playing ... I’ve been in a car where someone with a Master’s Degree was driving with his phone on the dashboard so he wouldn’t miss a Pikachu. It’s mind-boggling ... and it's everywhere.
I imagine that this will be a major advertising strategy ... Restaurants, stores, and events will pay for exclusive geo-fencing (meaning, you can only get "this" Pokemon at Coachella, while shopping at WalMart, or in a McDonald's). And, it won't be just Pokemon. Expect sports teams, bands, and movie franchises to get in on this quickly.
Flashback to 2001: I'd take my kids to 7-Eleven on our way home from school, and they'd beg me to buy them another pack of Pokemon cards, which they were convinced had "REAL" value.
Now it's 2016 and Pokemon is still relevant, and some of the cards are actually worth something.
Here's a geek note: A former division of Google had a similar (even more full-featured) game, called Ingress, before they created Pokemon GO.
This reiterates that success isn’t tied as closely as you might expect to being "first to market" or the "quality" of a product ... it’s often the story and the experience.
To close, I’m excited to see what other innovations I'll get to enjoy before my kids are too old to care ... My ace-in-the-hole, I expect future grandchildren to spur demand. (Side note to my kids: Get on this soon, please.)
Innovation is cool ... And it is fun to guess which things will persist, and which will perish.
For example:
How long are we going to use TVs? Or,
How long will people try to trade stocks themselves?
Change is the only constant.
We’ve come a long way – and it is just the beginning ...
I was in Indonesia last week – and had some exotic experiences.
That picture was taken in Bali, where I first met my wife many years ago.
Indonesia is famous for coffee. For example, "Sumatra" is their biggest island – with “Java” coming in close behind (and both are synonymous with coffee).
They also make one of the most expensive coffees in the world … Luwak Coffee.
It is a very particular coffee, created using a very particular process.
In traditional coffee production, the cherries are harvested, and the beans are extracted, before being shipped to a roaster, ground into a pulp, and brewed by a barista at your local Starbucks.
In contrast, with Luwak coffee, something different happens.
The coffee cherries are harvested by wild animals.
Specifically, they’re harvested by the Asian Palm Civet, a small, cat-like animal that absolutely loves the taste of coffee cherries.
But,if the civets eat the cherries, how can they still be used to make coffee?
Here comes the gross part—the civets eat the coffee cherries, but their digestive tract can’t effectively process the beans, only the flesh surrounding them.
When the partially digested, partially fermented beans are eventually excreted, coffee producers harvest them. The beans are then cleaned, roasted, and used to make astonishingly expensive (“with retail prices reaching up to $700 per kilogram”) coffee.
Now is the coffee that mind-blowing to warrant a price north of $300 a pound?
No, not really. In fact, many critics will openly call it bad coffee, or as Tim Carman, food writer for the Washington Post put it, "It tasted just like...Folgers. Stale. Lifeless. Petrified dinosaur droppings steeped in bathtub water. I couldn't finish it."
To be fair, the Luwak coffee industry is an experience. When I toured a plantation near Ubud, Bali, a smiling tour guide greeted and led me on an in-depth exploration of the forested property, where I was allowed to immerse myself in the various spices, roots, beans, and civets used to produce this one-of-a-kind coffee. Here is a video I shot of the process.
According to the New York Times, privatizing these services often makes them more accessible - but less responsive and more expensive ... Do you agree?
Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading
Someone sent me a motion-activated toilet bowl night-light for my birthday. I guess that is an early indicator that Depends won't be far behind.
Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.
Lighter Links:
Trading Links:
Posted at 07:03 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Gadgets, Ideas, Just for Fun, Market Commentary, Religion, Science, Television, Trading, Trading Tools | Permalink | Comments (0)
Reblog (0)