Well, I had the most interesting morning with Joe Batista, the “chief creatologist” of Hewlett Packard. A quick bio :
Joseph (Joe) Batista, Director & Chief Creatologist at Hewlett Packard (HP) Corporation, is responsible for building new business realties leveraging HP’s portfolio of assets, and driving new growth, strategy and implementation agendas that deliver real business results.
As you might know, I’m a former chairman of the Cape Cod Technology Council, which sort of sounds like “President of the Orleans Kiwanis”. In a way, it is, but with a twist. Tons of successful Boston area executives and engineers have houses down here on the Cape, Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, and they all have a vested interest in seeing high tech on the Cape flourish. So, we tend to have excellent speakers come to our breakfasts. As an example, we had the director of NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), who has a house here, speak to us about all the neat 10 to 40 year projects that NASA is working on, including anti-matter drives and hopper bots. And yes, it does sound like Star Trek. That’s because the producers of Star Trek make regular visits to NIAC for TV show fodder. Yes, anti-matter drives are a real project, ableit nascent, at NASA. Cool, huh? But, I digress.
Joe was speaking to us about the new economy, where the real asset is ideas. As part of this, he spoke about commoditization, and used as real world examples Clorox and coffee beans. Now, here’s an excellent take away based on coffee beans. It doesn’t take a creatologist to relate this to today’s world of telephony:
Commodity == coffee beans, 1-2 cents per pound
Product == Maxwell house coffee, $1.25 per pound
Service == Dunkin Donuts Coffee, $1.25 per cup
Experience == Starbucks Coffee, $2-$5 per cup
I’ll leave you with a quote from Pulp Fiction :
BUDDY How ’bout you, Peggy Sue?
MIA I’ll have the Durwood Kirby burger — bloody — and a five-dollar shake.
BUDDY How d’ya want that shake, Martin and Lewis, or Amos and Andy?
MIA Martin and Lewis.
VINCENT Did you just order a five-dollar shake?
MIA Sure did.
VINCENT A shake? Milk and ice cream?
MIA Uh-huh.
VINCENT It costs five dollars?
BUDDY Yep.
VINCENT You don’t put bourbon in it or anything?
BUDDY Nope.
VINCENT Just checking.
Later… VINCENT Can I have a sip of that? I’d like to know what a five-dollar shake tastes like.
MIA Be my guest.
She slides the shake over to him.
MIA You can use my straw, I don’t have kooties.
Vincent smiles.
VINCENT Yeah, but maybe I do.
MIA Kooties I can handle.
He takes a sip.
VINCENT Goddamn! That’s a pretty fuckin’ good milk shake.
MIA Told ya.
VINCENT I don’t know if it’s worth five dollars, but it’s pretty fuckin’ good.
He slides the shake back.