Here are two blogs to share some apps and tricks to use the iPad(Pro) for research and for handwriting: note-taking, communicating & teaching. Do comment to share your suggestions.
Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category
Apps and Tricks to use iPad(Pro) for research and teaching
Posted in Technology, tagged iPad, research, teaching on September 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »
BMW’s new i3 electric carbon car
Posted in Auto Industry, global operations, Green ops, Innovation, Luxury goods, Manufacturing, Network, Offshoring, Product Development, product variety, Technology on November 13, 2013| 1 Comment »
Three weeks ago, I had the pleasure to visit one branch of my extended family and BMW Welt (BMW World), the “multi-functional customer experience and exhibition facility of the BMW AG, located in Munich, Germany.” Supposedly, BMW Welt is the second most popular tourist destination around Munich, after Neuschwanstein Castle which inspired Disneylands’ Sleeping Beauty Castle. If you like architecture or cars, you should visit BMW Welt.
OK, but this is the Operations Room, so what else is worth knowing? It turns out that this month, BMW starts selling in Germany its long-awaited i3 (the USA will have to wait until 2014) and here’s some personal pictures to highlight three aspects:
Big Data meets HR meets Call Center Management
Posted in Big Data, Call centers, Computers and high tech, Forecasting, Human resources, Services, Technology, Uncategorized, tagged Big Data, Human resources on April 22, 2013| 5 Comments »
We have already written in the past about the use of data analytics to best route customers to agents based on demographics and other characteristics. The NY Times has an interesting article on the use of data analytics to improve retention and employee-employer relationships (“Big Data, Trying to Build Better Workers“)
The article discusses the broader appeal of these ideas, but focuses on applications to call centers. Why call centers? In contact centers, customer service agents, that are hourly workers handle a steady stream of calls under challenging conditions, yet their communication skills and learning capabilities play a crucial role in determining both the employee’s tenure and performance. The article discusses a new startup, Evolv, which helps firms find better-matched employees by using predictive analytics.
Transcom, a global operator of customer-service call centers, conducted a pilot project in the second half of 2012, using Evolv’s data analysis technology. To look for a trait like honesty, candidates might be asked how comfortable they are working on a personal computer and whether they know simple keyboard shortcuts for a cut-and-paste task. If they answer yes, the applicants will later be asked to perform that task.
Apple versus Samsung: Is Design or Business Model the sustainable advantage? What does that mean for Outsourcing?
Posted in Computers and high tech, design, global operations, Operations Strategy, outsourcing, Technology, tagged Operations Strategy, outsourcing on December 20, 2012| 9 Comments »
Apple, the world’s highest valued company, and its relationship, both competitive and cooperative, with Samsung provide a wonderful setting to discuss some fundamental questions that relate to strategy and operations:
FIRST: Which one is the more sustainable provider of Apple’s competitive advantage: design or the business model?
- Daring Fireball’s John Gruber wrote three beautiful paragraphs to argue his view on what he termed “The New Apple Advantage“:
So let’s be lazy for a second here, and attribute all of Apple’s success over the past 15 years to two men: Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. We’ll give Jobs the credit for the adjectives beautiful, elegant, innovative, and fun. We’ll give Cook the credit for the adjectives affordable, reliable, available, and profitable. Jobs designs them, Cook makes them and sells them.
It’s the Jobs side of the equation that Apple’s rivals — phone, tablet, laptop, whatever — are able to copy. Thus the patents and the lawsuits. Design is copyable. But the Cook side of things — Apple’s economy of scale advantage — cannot be copied by any company with a complex product lineup. How could Dell, for example, possibly copy Apple’s operations when they currently classify “Design & Performance” and “Thin & Powerful” as separate laptop categories?
This realization sort of snuck up on me. I’ve always been interested in Apple’s products because of their superior design; the business side of the company was never of as much interest. But at this point, it seems clear to me that however superior Apple’s design is, it’s their business and operations strength — the Cook side of the equation — that is furthest ahead of their competition, and the more sustainable advantage. It cannot be copied without going through the same sort of decade-long process that Apple went through.
- James Allworth, co-author of How Will You Measure Your Life?, adds an important dynamic component to the argument by applying Clay Christensen’s theory to this question:
The design part of Apple’s equation is to their ability to redefine new industries as they did with the iPhone. Whether they go after the TV market next, or something else, it’s this integrated design component that will be crucial to their initial success. But compared to the business side of Apple, design actually generates much less sustained strategic advantage in any one product category, once performance in that category becomes “good enough”. The tech industry has always revolved around copying. Once folks work out how it’s done, everyone piles on. And at that point, it becomes much less about design than it does about how you operate your business.
- In summary: the answer to whether design or the operating model is the more sustainable competitive advantage is the typical MBA response to a tough question: “it depends.” The rather sophisticated reasoning involves the fact that products and services over time improve and then become “good enough” and the dimension of competition shifts. Notice that I did not say that design is a commodity and fully copyable (my personal favorite question: why can’t Lexus designs have the timeless sophistication and elegance as Mercedes?); rather, another dimension overtakes it in importance.
Stand-Up Meetings and Agile
Posted in Lean Ops, Technology, Uncategorized, tagged Agile, Lean, lean startup, Stand-up meetings on February 24, 2012| 4 Comments »
The Wall Street journal had an interesting article several weeks ago on the idea of “Stand-Up Meetings.”
Stand-up meetings are part of tech culture in which sitting has become synonymous with waste. The main idea behind these meeting (as also pointed out in this MarketPlace episode) is to eliminate long meeting where participants pontificate, check emails, and play Angry Birds: