(Big) Buisnesses Are Dumb
Posted on Friday, January 19, 2007
I stubmbled an interesting rant by Matt Mullenweg showing how poorly Sun and HP when it comes to catering towards small, and upcoming businesses. Joyent had issues as well. Why do these huge corporations find it so difficult to take people’s money? These guys are not alone. How many times have you stood in line to pay someone? Doesn’t that seem strange? Why do some businesses operate like this, yet I can’t even step foot on a car dealer’s lot without being bombarded by salesmen? Businesses, especially big ones, are dumb. They spend millions and millions on consumer research and completely fail to solve simple problems. Consumers are also dumb. We don’t demand change, we just deal with what we’re handed.
If I were going to open a grocery store tomorrow, I wouldn’t want my customers to have to stand in line, because I don’t want to stand in line. Technologies exist to solve these simple problems, and there is no reason we they shouldn’t be put in along with traditional solutions. What about RFID to solve my grocery store problem, and put a sensor at the edge of the cart. Each item gets tagged as I put it in the cart, then when I drive up to the check-out counter it should just present my with my bill and I can walk out of the store? They’re cheap, they’re already used all over the place. The grocery store is probably one of the most complex examples.
More fun: take your typically clothing store. They have to take everything out and put it on shelves (takes employees to do this), and continue to fold things as customers mess them up. In addition, this requires a large amount of “nice” storefront. What if, they had one of each item out, and you merely just took a card that represented the item if you wanted to purchase it? Now when you go to check-out, a pre-folded package of the is there for you.
Granted, these are only brief ideas. I think businesses should innovate more, these technologies exist and they already use them behind-the-scenes!
I’m tired of standing in line.