(Not So) Used Ideas

I’m in the middle of a year at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and for each course we get a very extensive course reader full of articles, cases and other stuff. This is in addition to or in place of a textbook.

Now, I might be an exception, but in how I learn and what I look to get out of a class, the bulk comes straight from reading everything in the course reader. While there are many classes I would not want to enroll in and sit through, there are many courses I would like to borrow/buy the course readers for.

But why be limited to classes here at the GSB or even Stanford, what if it was possible to get the course readers for any class in the world? That would be much more valuable to me than MIT putting all their classes online.

But why be limited to existing courses by existing “teachers”? Why couldn’t this be a new framework/structure for anyone to capture and advocate something people would want to learn. Build a course reader full of bits of your writings and those of others that lead people through a series of points you feel are valuable.

Just a thought.

I’m sitting there this morning realizing how ubiquitous my cell phone has become, and I realized that for all of the smarts it contains, it’s really not using much of it unless I ask it to. Why doesn’t it do more? Why isn’t it studying me and learning what I want it to do?

For example, it must know by now that at 1 o’clock each weekday afternoon, I either turn it to silent or check to make sure it is so. This is because I have class and a ringing device costs you $5. Couldn’t it watch my pattern for a week or two and then project that I will do today what I’ve done every Tuesday beforehand?

Or how about the feature Apple offers where you can go through .me and find your phone if it is lost. Why do YOU have to go do that? Doesn’t your phone have a pretty good idea when it’s lost? Let’s say I have the phone in my pocket every day I go out the door. Every day. Since forever. Might the fact that tomorrow, the phone is still sitting where it was left, unmoved for 36 hours straight give it the sense to know something is up? Might it not “call” my designated contact, or email someone to say “hey, where are you? Do you know where I am?”

How about security? We put so much into these phones, with the banking apps, passwords, etc. Aren’t we worried if someone gets there hands on our phone? Sure, but what can we do about it? Well, the phone should be pretty good about identifying its owner, no? We use it every day, and though we might not see it, we have some very subtle patterns of usage and behavior that can’t be duplicated that easily. Can’t the phone identify and track this, such that when someone else tries to use the phone, using it in an entirely different way, that it thinks that something might be amiss and emails for confirmation: “Hey Matte, am I still in your pocket? Should I really be letting you into your online bank account or let you post to Wordpress?”

It might be weird to wake up one day to HAL in our pockets, but I think a device we encourage to be self-aware will do us less harm than a really smart device we continually expect to play dumb.

I had this idea back during the Internet bubble (before we knee it as such) when everyone was spending gross sums on super bowl ads. A startup that wanted to be noticed needed to spend most of their VC money on the ads.

But what about all of the startups and brands that couldn’t afford the money? What about a range of products and services that wouldn’t necessarily appeal to the entire super bowl audience?

So my idea was for a raft of companies to band together and buy commercial time and have an ad advertising the groups’ site. Once on that site, each of the companies could feature their ads.

One could amplify the number of companies and their creative that could reach the audience.

Now, would all those ads be funny? Who knows. A risk of the model.

We happened to be visiting “The Shack” today looking for a sort of novelty Xmas present and next door was a hearing aid store. Quickly an idea came to me – why not novelty hearing aids?

On the one end of the spectrum you could have the “hearing voices” model which records random bits of conversation and then when there’s silence later it will play back those conversations in hushed tones. You’ll start to think you’re hearing people who aren’t there.

Related to that would be that “affirmational” model which would periodically fill the quite spots with affirmations such as “you’re super!” an “you deserve another piece of cake.”

Then there would be the “transformational” models such as the auto-tune model which would make even the worst night listening to friends do karaoke tolerable.

What about the “affiliate” models? Big Red Sox fan? The hearing aid has a big logo and when the game is on, it acts like a radio. Periodically it could play greatest team moments as well. How about the voice of Ted Williams to make a guy want to wear a hearing aid?

So, there could be a market for intentionally purchased novelty hearing aids as well as the surprise gag gift. Either way, with a little bit of fun and entertainment, even people with perfectly good hearing will want to wear them.

I know enough about business and the world to know that the rental car business is an unglamorous and difficult business. It’s hard to innovate for a fleet of reasons, but that doesn’t always mean one shouldn’t try or that one can’t succeed.

One of our case studies in business school illustrated the difficulties of managing a fleet of cars due to technical constraints, organizational structure and office politics, but there is no doubt much to be gained from centralized buying as well as a centralized strategy.

The buying part is obvious, without a doubt, some savings can be found by buying in bulk and using the muscle power of such larger fleets to draw savings from either standardized models or brands. But the strategy is a little harder to see. What are the benefits that would offset the organizational inertia and fifedoms present in the rental car companies? Well, when what car one rents only matters to the extent that the car runs and is off a certain category, not much. But what if people want more granularity than “compact” or “luxury”?

I think there’s a market for a company to rent specific models to their customers. Say I really want to drive a Corvette, or just feel comfortable driving the same car I have at home, it would mean a lot to be able to rent a specific car and be assured I’d get it. Perhaps I am considering buying a new car? Wouldn’t it make sense to rent one for a few days to see if I really like driving it? I think a system like this would open the door to more aspirational rentals. In fact, that market would be in addition to the current rental market as no one provides for it.

There’s understandable concerns. I think it’s safe to say that currently rental car companies don’t know until the moment you arrive (if then) what car they will have for you. That’s an inventory management issue writ large, with both technical limitations as well as customer constraints. Apparently, by the fees they charge these days, rental car companies are at the mercy of customers returning cars both early and late. Both of which wreak havoc on their inventory. And some drivers drive from on location to another, further mixing things up.

One immediate solution would be to flatten the inventory. One would use the bulk buying power to have fewer models of cars available, so you’d have less variety in your inventory to juggle. Might mean rental car companies would specialize even more by car manufacturer than they do now.

So, it may never happen, but if I could choose a company and rent a specific make and model car, I’d do it and I’d do it direct, meaning I would pass up the current cutthroat lowest price by category model, giving rental car companies a chance to make a little more premium.