Thought Garage

Dental Tourism, just another form of outsourcing. Who says ‘price’ is not a factor when it comes to healthcare?

At least 2,544,000 people around the world will search the internet for dental treatment abroad this year, according to Reva Health Network. In June alone, 636,155 dental tourism-related searches were carried out globally by 212,051 unique users on Google, Yahoo! and MSN search engines.

( | Via RSS Feed | Link to Article | )

2008 Olympics is quite an advantage for China, to channel more funds to technology and infrastructure. And that may act as the largest differentiator when compared to other Asian powerhouses, like India.  China’s strategy is definitely paying off.

In 2011, China will lead the world in IPTV subscribers. The massive size of the population, combined with the government’s technology emphasis for the 2008 Olympics, are the principal reasons for the growth. Revenue, however, will be driven by the United States.

( | Via RSS Feed | Link to Article | )

That’s what marketers do, after all. We spend time and money to change the role of our products and services sometime in the future (whereas salespeople try to change the now). Changing tomorrow is really, really difficult. It’s expensive and abrupt and rarely works out for the best. Which is why the worst time to change your marketing is right after 60 Minutes calls on the phone. Tomorrow is so close, it’s probably going to go down the way it’s going to go down, regardless of what you do. Changing the future of tomorrow is tough. Changing next week’s future is a little easier, next month is easier still. You can lay the groundwork now to change your team and your products and your story so that over time, you’re in a different place than you are now. Changing next year, though… that’s really hard. It’s hard because a year is so far away, you can count on the world being a very different place by then. Something to think about if you’re running for President, building a website or selling services to a big corporation.

( | Via RSS Feed | Link to Article | )

Seth Godin on ‘How to make a million’ says tyring to make a penny from hundred million almost never works. Instead try to make a dollar from million people.

One popular method is to make a dollar in profit from each of a million people. Or a penny from a hundred million. This is the China strategy. It almost never works.

It almost never works because the challenge of reaching that many people is just too great. It’s too risky and too expensive. Doesn’t matter that you’re only hoping for a dollar or a penny. The price isn’t the challenge, it’s the difficulty in spreading your idea.

Far easier to make a thousand dollars from each of a thousand people, or even $10,000 from a hundred organizations. You can focus on a small hive of people, a group that talks to itself. You can push through a smaller dip and reach a level of recommendation and dominance that makes incremental sales far easier.

And you can learn much earlier in the process if you’ve gotten it right or not. Because you’re making more per sale, you can spend the time necessary to figure out what really sells and modify your offering sooner in the process.

The irony is that many products and services that have reached huge masses of people actually have significant margins (Windows, for example, or a cup of Starbucks). They got the best of both worlds because first they focused on winning small communities over and that led to the larger market.

Apply this rule to today’s web2.0 companies and software development companies. I don’t understand where they are going.

• For most web2.0 companies, the only revenue channel is by showing ads. To make any marginal revenue out of those ads, you must server Millions of page views. Each page view paying a penny. And software companies like 37Signals does it entirely different. They only had around a Million customers. Not sure how many of them are paid customers, but they charge a minimum of 12 dollars a month for a paid customer. To generate 12 dollars in ad revenue if we go the ad route, they need a minimum of 20,000 page views. So when it comes to listening to customers and make changes in thier products, which organization is better.  In other words, if you want the organization to respond to you, you know which one to pick.
• Many companies used to sell their software by licensing it for a fixed number of servers or users or a combination. (Take for example Solaris Unix). And then they decided to offer the software for free. Motivation behind is to get more customers who pay $100 per support instead of having few customers who pay license costs that runs in thousands per license.

So finally, which one is better. Offer your product free and sell ads. Millions of signed up users to boast while you may not be making any profit. Or offer your service at a fee. You have only a few customers but you may make Millions in profits.

( | Via RSS Feed | Link to Article | )

Quite an interesting innovation and very promising for all of us. Whiteboards right on the refrigerator.  No more stick-its and post-its on the regrigerator. Go head scribble your thoughts on the refrigerator itself.

When GE launched “Imagination at Work” as its new slogan to replace “We Bring Good Things To Life”, the most eye-catching part of its online campaign was a virtual whiteboard that visitors could sketch and scribble on. Apparently, someone at GE had the smarts to transfer the ad’s essence to the gleaming white surfaces of GE’s appliances. White goods + whiteboard…? Witness the birth of the sketch-a-fridge.

Currently only available in Brazil, where it is sold as Risque Rabisque (roughly: Scrawl & Scribble), the refrigerator is covered in a special coating similar to dry erase whiteboards. Replacing the age-old practice of sticking grocery lists and children’s drawings on the fridge, missives can now be written directly on the appliance and easily wiped off. It’s a simple innovation that cleverly integrates existing human behaviour, and turns a mundane product into something playful and appealing. Opportunities? When rethinking a product or service, don’t just focus on features or haute design. An element of fun can be just as much of a sales magnet, at a fraction of the cost.

( | Via RSS Feed | Link to Article | )