Replace against Repair

This has been my observation past 10 years, And gradually this has caught up with the entire population in India (replace against repair), We are still considered a third world or a poor country (materially) by the west,I don't know who asked them, by the way I consider them the poorest. We certainly have our ways of getting things done, our own products, our own services. And they may not be upto the standard, or may be they will never pass any quality TESTS. But the fact that they serve well and are functioning, and we continue to smoothly function as a Nation, with products and services catering all the different economic levels of people, right from the richest to the poorest. we still bargain when buying vegetables, street shopping, and almost at any level and this indirectly controls inflation and in-turn the economy. But this one is a surprising thing, where are our all the cobblers (mochiwala) gone, where are the Bi-cycle repair shops in the metros, where are the watch repair shops, mind you Babers (Nahvi)call them hair stylists these days, Hey I am still looking for a computer hardware specialist to repair the computer motherboard , Where are the automobile experts i knew once would tell you what's the problem with your bike, by just listening to the firing sound, Today i was looking out for a repair shop to fix a electric fountain pump, and when i found one, here's the reply form the guy, Optoin 1: Repair costs 200-250 Rs, Time 4 Days. Option 2: new alternate Motor, price tag Rs250. instant. Possibly he will make the same profit with both the options, without calculating the time he is going to put in, it will at least take 2 labor days to fix it. Cobblers are gone, because we do not repair shoes anymore, stitching is over, where are the Bi cycle repair shops in the metros. Has the cost of repair hit beyond the cost of replacement in all the services. On the other end we have a huge population, services still can be cheap. Now the question is are we willing to work. Our youth is in jinx of the BPO, process charts are laid out to fix a technical glitch for the non technical guys, Follow the process Don't use your brain that's what they learn at these BPO's. I have this absolute belief and am confirmed that we are loosing our abilities to think first logically, creatively and to find a solution in available resources, because that has been our style, with scare resources we have learn't to invent and find solutions, that's our secret of a happy survival Nation amongst all the odds which continues to surprise the west even today. Today its "Replace against repair", and is this killing us, our brains, our creativity, play around with whats available and create solutions, if none. I guess Replace against Repair was brought in by the Japnese guys, mind you japan is similar to India, with scarce resources. They mastered automobiles, and told the world "FILL IT FORGET IT", SUZUKI Samurai "NO Problem", today we have Skoda Octavia with 3 Lac kilometer warranty, that's a life time warranty for a weekend user. Then there is electronics, radio repairs are gone, dear you can get a new one at Rs 20. Is this prosperity ? at the loss of thinking. Well its a straight calculation if (Cost of repair > cost of replacement ) then Replace. Let the thinking be done by the design engineers and Quality testers. But this concept was brought in by the japnese after serious quality testing, and they defined how long would a particular product stay functional and reliable specifying a usage lifetime . and Then the replacement, And this is true with all the Japnese, Korean automobiles take the Suzuki, Toyota, Honda etc, They all have happy customers.

fundamental finance

We have the Lehman brothers vanishing with bankruptcy ,and now recently the NRI (Non resident indian) DRAMA / SCENE killing his entire family and then himself. I seriously don't pity both, both met their greed. The first thought struck my mind when i read the Karthik's (NRI) news on the headline is, was our education system not strong enough to teach that dumb head to be patient with hard times, that he could not even sustain the mere thought of starting back again from scratch. being a graduate from IIT chennai and a MBA, what the hell was that education use of, which could not even teach him sustenance. Well this is just one perspective of how far our education systems our, where lacs of students every year go through those age old theory books, absolutely in a conventional manner, and presume all that they have learnt will reflect the same in the real world.

I also had some discussions with my friends ,about Lehman going bankrupt, of course needless to say that Lehman had the best financial graduates, MBA's, PHD's deployed to manage it. And still it failed. THEN Where did it go wrong.
1. Is it our conventional crapy education system,
2. may be the wrong people(MBA's, PHD's) hired ,
3. or is it the GREED that these people bring along.

I personally concluded it to this basic fundamental observed, Kill your desire and fulfill the need (utility). and when it comes to spending money, this is exactly where it boils down, when you spend money make sure you are buying utility when its a need, and when its a DESIRE, think a million times.

Its pretty simple, i need a cell phone to call, i dont need a IPhone, unless that Iphone is going to give me more business with my calls :) because Nobody gives the dam which cellphone you are calling from. So stick to the fundamental. Another reason why Warren Buffet still lives in a modest apartment, because he understands this.

Creativity

A very close friend / brother of mine, has decided to take some drawing lessons from me, i am obliged. Though i think am a little good with creativity mostly imagination. And yes after almost 10 years , i took up the drawing pencil and crayons, and it was fun. Now my job here is to train the kid learn some good art.

Well i have never been into instructional teaching, I have an observation that there are two types of mind, purely mathematical (who memorize or process mathematically) and the other imaginary (who memorize and process/calculate with media like sound , images / pictures). I am little of second category and my student of the first.

My student is a very fast learner, picks up easily, but the point is he is trying to learn to sketch technically and that's exactly against creativity. This makes me remember when my class mates used to shiver at Engineering Graphics. Because the learning was technical than imagination.

Technical learning has a limitation, you have factors / parameters and you try to put things in place with these. where as when one starts imagining there are no boundaries and sky is the limit. Possibly why companies and organizations today have Creative Directors in hierarchy.

And another great observation, there are no coaching classes for creativity. Because the whole world is trying to confine everything into metrics. something that can be measured easily. or a process laid out to achieve an output. creativity comes absolutely out of imagination and there are no quantifiable parameters to it. So no body can measure it , nor lay a process around it to get a desired output.

And this gives a reason why Marketing , Product Design , Graphics , Animations , Music are the highest paid jobs on Earth, and the good part is you don't have to go to any school and college for this, for there are none. Note Engineers / doctors / MBA's not mentioned. unless you are creative. And the far bigger advantage with creativity is anticipation.

Well my job now is to get my student imagining, and yes its a big challenge.

SHIP and then DEBUG

After SELL-ABLE versions defined, minimal development done, SHIP the dam product, GET it OUT, you Egoist Techie, Dont think, Oh God we have not added that feature, we have to implement that new technology, JUST SHIP , SHIP , SHIP, Shipping gets you cash flows, and some embarrassment with Bugs, its ok, handle the customer, fix it after you have the cash flows. Believe me this is FUN.

This is exactly against Software Engineering practices and 90% of the engineers must have read Roger Pressmen , all that sounds great when you are in great company processes laid out, that's when you have all the time on earth, Approvals / Design / Development / QAT. Unlearn and Leave it those Techies.

Skills not to confuse while you Hire

was reading the book by guy kawasaki , and stunbled upon this table, pretty clear and precise

Big organisations skills	Startup skills
Sucking up to the boss	Being the boss
Generating paper profits	Generating cashflows
Beating charges of monopoly	Establishing a beach head
Evolving products and services	Creating products and services
Market research	Shipping
Squeezing the distribution channel	establishing a distribution channel.

may be this now clear why too much of education is BAD.....
If any one can think on this ........ appreciate comments

start up product design Fundamentals

specifically for startup product design strategy , NON FUNDED, bootstrapped companies doing products. And if you are a techie , an engineer, all you will do is set out to incarnate your product idea into a master piece, becuase an enterperneur is so much obssesed with it. And above all you will have the technology EGO. And now you are in a perfect trap.

Just Dont do it,

look around your self, windows vista is crap, xp was all blue screens, motorola phones still hang and are super slow, and iphone is just hacked. Lets look at services my ISP broad band , servers are regularly down for some or the other reason, the bike dealer does not service my bike properly, and nor does my hardware agent fix my computer problems easily, he has to always replace something or the other.

what is the Observation , even best of the brands dont have perfect products and services. Name one product / service that perfect around you, very very rarely will you find one, so dont go on a leap jump when you start to build a product. what will happen is , you will surpass the deadline not in weeks but in months and this will only make the situation worse , because your sales cycle is now toooooo far. remember money has to come in quick and then you need to get going.

So design the product in versions, rather saleable versions and not based on features, version 1 out and sell sell, version 1 will annoy some customers , but thats ok ,"yes sir we are coming up with our next version and it will be just smooth", get the money in , set out saleable version 2 , sell sell sell sell sell sell, "Yes sir, we are just week's waiting for our next release and you would be really happy to see it."

This is the way one needs to go in a bootstrapped environment. we did this mistake on our first product design , trying to perfect it , every time we tested we found bugs and we solved them again tested , again solved them,over all added new features, this will dam continue, Look at microsoft selling windows. Look at them. they are just selling a bad product. And we are using it without complaining.

Cut down your sales cycle time, it will not matter if you have a few customers not happy and you embarrassed. its ok, keep going. perfect the product in stages while you sell.

cheers