entrepreneurship Archives - Page 156 of 235

Dubai Series: Sugar Daddy’s

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I stumbled upon this Single Minded Hero in Dubai. In fact, my Dubai host drove out of her way to take me here. The Sugar Daddy’s ‘Cup Cake’ Bakery. And they make and sell, yep – just cup cakes. Here’s a bit of a photo essay I took.

Also Notice the word ‘make’. Selling just ain’t enough these days. We want to deal with the expter, the person who knows what they are doing, the person who cares about what they are doing and deliver it to us themselves. We like to deal with the craftperson direct.

No doubt we are living in the age of the micro niche. There’s also no doubt that simplicity in Ideas and theatre at transaction is very refreshing and worth investigating.

How micro is the focus of your startup?

Dubai Series: From Chrysler ‘A Space’

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s another simple innovation from an old industry, a parking lot, actually giving a hoot about their customers.

car-park-lights

As you can see in the pic there is a little red or green light above every space indicating its availability. So the tiny car space mirage is now a thing of the past. The thing that actually excites me about this innovation is that it doesn’t benefit the car park owners. They’d be better off having cars drive around longer searching for a spaces and elongated traffic jams, which would result in greater revenue. But they chose this instead which is very cool.

What stuff is your business doing for them, and their benefit?

Dubai series: Hijack Advertising

Posted on January 31, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

The photo below is on the car of the guy I am staying with in Dubai. Have a look at the wheel cover on his 4 wheel drive, of which there are more than sedans on the road in said location.

You’ll notice that it has a cover on it for ‘Danube’ which happens to be a building materials company. Funny this is ‘Michael – the car owner’ doesn’t work there. He told me one day he returned to his vehicle to find it placed on his spare wheel. I asked him if it annoyed him, and he proceeded to tell me, it doesn’t worry him as it protects his wheel, and it is a bit of a hassle to remove. Yep, he hasn’t got around to removing it yet…

Subsequently I noticed these on many cars in Dubai. Seems the other owners of the hijacked cars haven’t bothered to remove theirs either.

It’s an interesting piece of advertising and media invention. It is giving an item of value to the hijacked, that is the wheel cover, but on the same token it’s very interruptive. If the cover get’s thrown away, it becomes a costly exercise for the advertiser. I’m not sure it would be tolerated in a western market, but it’s innovative non the less.

Dubai Series: Business trip tips

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

We all know it’s very important to have a keep a diary during business travels. We’ve got to keep the tax man happy.

So here’s what I realized on my current overseas trip. I can keep all the records I need during my normal daily business procedures without keeping a separate diary.

iphone

The logos above, I love. Simply because they create time stamped digital footprints of the work I have done on my overseas trip.

Skype: Who I had chats with from the rentoid team, for how long, when and what was discussed.
WordPress: My ‘Global Marketing’ (subject I teach) research diary for Melbourne University, with insights found and relevant articles written.
Twitter: Staying in touch with rentoid members, chatting and sharing twitpics of ideas with strong marketing implications.

Of course most of the above are done on my iphone with also has the digital time stamps the Tax office requires.

It’s never been a more awesome time to travel on business. It’s easy to share ideas, and with these tools our diary doesn’t have to be a a labourious tax afterwards, but can be an interactive digital tool which is part of the fun during the trip.

Dubai Series: Hotel Sampling

Posted on January 29, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Once you pass through the customs area in the Dubai International Airport they have a very interesting area reserved for Hotels as can be seen below.

hotels1

hotels2

hotels3

The area has all of the 5 star hotels from the city represented. The general idea is that each hotel has a mini foyer with the exact styling and ambiance of the actual hotel. The mini foyer has Video footage of the hotel, details on menus and hotel services, samples of the haute couture fragrances in room and some even have masseurs for weary travelers to encourage / reward bookings. Concierge salespeople are there to explain the benefits and convert the sale. For those already booked they have a comfortable waiting location where they serve refreshments until the hotel driver arrives.

A simple idea, but one which makes sense for such a burgeoning metropolis and shows that even the oldest industries can innovate too.

New York Series (& Dubai…)

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Startup blog author is lucky enough to be heading to New York and Dubai in a little over 2 hours.

So the coming entries on this little blog will be global marketing and ‘startup insights’ from abroad. If you have any particular areas of interest, or ideas you’d like to see covered, let me know in the comments.

Idea Borrowing

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

Some of the entrepreneurs of our time haven’t been the inventors we believe them to be. It’s not a criticism, entrepreneurship goes far beyond inventing and ideas. In fact some of our most revered entrepreneurs are simply good at cross fertilization.

Let’s take Steve Jobs for example. He didn’t invent the GUI (Graphical User Interface), the mouse, icons, paint, folders or any of the ‘user friendly’ things that Apple became famous for.

He ‘borrowed ideas’. By looking at related categories Jobs was able to adopt new thinking and bring it to his market in a way that made sense. He was a great normative thinker. The best example of Jobs in action was when he was invited into the Xerox PARC office for a study tour to ‘share knowledge’. In essence, they gave Jobs the key to their kingdom. This is where Jobs vision of the future of the personal computer grew from.

The first GUI was on a Xerox office workstation called the Alto. Closely followed by the Xerox Star in 1977 – see picture below.

Look Familiar?

The trip to Xerox by Apple computer’s Steve Jobs in 1979 led to the graphical user interface and mouse being integrated into the Apple’s Lisa and, later, the first Macintosh.

Jobs borrowed ideas, ideas born in a photocopier company.

Ebay took the excitement and quick sale of the auction process from real estate.

Craigslist made an electronic web based newspaper classified.

So the question begs to all entrepreneurs, what new technologies, ideas or systems can we borrow from adjacent industries?