November 22, 2006

“because” vs “with”

My friend, JP Ran­gas­wami wri­ting in The Daily Tele­graph blog:

As tech­no­lo­gists, we have two choi­ces:
One is to pro­vide the cus­to­mer a bet­ter expe­rience, the free­dom to select what he wants, a dif­fe­ren­tia­tion based on ser­vice qua­lity against a back­drop of abun­dance.
The second is to create arti­fi­cial scar­ci­ties around the things that are abun­dant, create new incon­ve­nien­ces for the cus­to­mer, new lock-ins, new irri­tants. Irri­tants like Region Coding on DVDs. Lock-ins like we see in digi­tal music.
For the last thirty years, too many of us in IT have focus­sed on crea­ting these arti­fi­cial scar­ci­ties, often without even kno­wing it. First we paid to bury the data in ven­dor stacks, then we paid to try and dig it out. We’ve been doing this for years. And we’re in dan­ger of doing it again.
Time for a change.
Time to focus on ways of deli­ve­ring ser­vice where the cus­to­mer wants, when the cus­to­mer wants, how the cus­to­mer wants. Time to focus on open plat­forms, open pro­to­cols, open soft­ware, open ways of doing busi­ness.
That’s what the eco­no­mics of abun­dance is really about. Making money because of what you do, and not with what you do. Having cus­to­mers who stay with you because they want to, not because they have to.

Great stuff from JP, as usual.

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4 Responses to ““because” vs “with””

  1. niti bhan says:

    Hear hear! Our phi­lo­sophy exactly. thanks hugh and JP.

  2. Calvin Jones says:

    An envi­ron­men­ta­list gone bad, or pro­gres­sing?
    Hi there, I have been wor­king on cli­mate change and been invol­ved in cli­mate acti­vism for some time.
    I have become inc­rea­singly inte­res­ted in the mar­ke­ting of Ideas and beha­viour chan­ges.
    I am inte­res­ted in fin­ding out more about both mar­ke­ting in gene­ral and in rela­tion to cli­mate change.
    A cou­ple of reports that I have read on cli­mate change mar­ke­ting so far can be found here:
    http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com/2006/11/marketing-climate-change.html
    Any sug­ges­tions of reports/articles to read would be very well­come.
    Regards,
    Calvin