Breaking the rules

A vision born from necessity

The Austin Seven turns 100 this year and was created by a visionary industrialist and a junior engineer in the privacy of the industrialist's home.

After WW1, a ￡20 annual tax was imposed (at a time when a worker earned ￡5 a week) on the only post-war car offered by Austin. Sales spiralled, and Sir Herbert Austin predicted his firm would collapse.

So, he poached a promising 18yo draughtsman, Stanley Edge, and the two set up a skunk-works in Austin’s country house. Eight months later, they had a production-ready design freed from the constraints of history or company politics. The car was carefully positioned to carry four occupants with just 7hp (which you guessed, didn’t you?), weighed just 380kg — and, best of all, was priced at ￡165.

All of a sudden, families of modest means could set their horizons beyond their village or town, and businesses could flourish within wider radiuses. The car went on to phenomenal success: by 1930, a quarter of Britain’s million cars were Sevens.

Question: How could you design a transformative product or service, from an assumption that it MUST save your organisation from failure?

Centaurs Part 2

My fascination with human-technology ‘centaurs’ continues, and here’s something I noticed on the footpath (sorry, sidewalk!) in Los Angeles last month.

“Parker” is controlled by a human who uses a video game controller, like you (or your kids) would use to play a favourite game. With the help of cameras, Parker moves around the streets, picking up food from restaurants and delivering it to hungry customers.

But it got me wondering: what does success look like for a robot like Parker? Well, it's clearly not just about the economics. It's also about making the delivery process smoother and more enjoyable for customers.

Recently, Amazon stopped developing their own delivery robots because they needed human helpers to correct routes or prevent theft. But with Parker, the goal is to have a fully autonomous robot that can handle everything on its own, under a watchful remote eye.

Question: What experiments can you conduct that test economics, logistics and customer experience of technology-human ‘centaur’ service offerings?

Crazy or brilliant?

Recently, while walking in Docklands, a modern neighborhood in Melbourne, I noticed a man my age filming cyclists as they rode through a busy intersection.

I asked him what he was doing and he proudly told me he was filming cyclists who were breaking the law by crossing against the red light. He explained that he's been doing this for months and uploads the videos to a police website.

When I asked about the consequences for the cyclists, he replied, "Imagine if there were 50 people like me filming illegal activity in the city."

He went on, “I don’t know whether I’m crazy, or brilliant. What do you think?”

I told him I thought he was both. We went on to have a 15-minute conversation about surveillance capitalism (we’re both suspicious of the commodification of public data), the ethics of vigilantism (we agreed to disagree on that one), and the power of public activation (we agreed that this is as yet untested in the digital realm beyond ‘clicks’ and ‘thumbs up’).

Question: How can you mobilise your customers or clients to act together in the interests of the greater good?

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Until I’m back with you next Friday, enjoy observing people watching other people.

Andrew

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