What's your definition of essential?
And is that being rewritten?
Is replacing your six month old smartphone essential? One of the lessons we learned in the last two months is the true meaning of the word.
Food is essential.
Health is essential.
Mental peace is essential.
Family is essential. The rest is the icing on the economy cake.
We're discovering that we can make do with a lot less.
Ever since the internet was invented, we've lived life in fast forward mode. As if normal didn't exist.
We need to take our foot off the accelerator and cruise for a while.
Billion dollar companies were created in years instead of decades.
The world 'changed' every week. I've read mobile phone reviews where 'screen lag' was a matter of life and death in the vanity sweepstakes.
Nothing was fixed. Replacements were preferred.
Including relationships that grew more predictable with time.
The word predictable became dirty. Disruption is the cliched favourite.
And yet, our sense of stability and comfort comes from life being predictable.
It's nice to be on a roller coaster once in a way but not as a daily routine.
Hopefully, we'll rethink our ways until nature sends us another 'STOP' sign. I'd like to be optimistic. We can't replace the world. But we can fix it.
To the 4Ps of Marketing, add a ‘T’
There are product opportunities that open and close. Markets in which the 'T' or Timing is everything.
Have you heard of a company called Log9? It was incorporated in 2015 to make products that would 'clean up oil spills' using nanotechnology and graphene based products.
Then Covid happened.
So the company built something called a Corona Oven.
It uses UV light, to sanitise masks, PPE kits and even home groceries in less than 10 minutes.
For hospitals that have had to dispose of PPE, this provides an option to reuse expensive PPEs. And masks.
It sold over 1000 Corona ovens in less than 2 months.
Struck up a partnership with the SSI group to make the product available worldwide.
One of the ovens will safeguard the residence of the French President. So it has approval from the high and mighty. And the well-connected.
A sales cycle that could have taken years has been cut to days. And if the company scales production, it can literally mint millions overnight.
These are not ordinary times.
Is there a lesson in this? Just the age old one. Find a way to solve a problem the world faces.
For Log9, Covid created a gateway to growth. And it walked right through.
A video feature on the Corona Oven
Keyboarding got a lot more interesting
Keyboards are like coasters. Useful but boring. Until some guys saw potential there.
Your current choice is between wired and wireless. Or back lit.
You might even have a fetish for the right kind of feedback from the keys. And that's where it usually stops.
What if your keyboard was virtual? Meaning the displays on the buttons could change according to what you do.
The buttons display not just letters of the alphabet but graphics. Or emojis. or characters
Instead of hitting Shift for typing capital letters and configuring hotkeys, you could do more. Much more.
Sonder Design has taken #eink, the technology behind the #KIndle and applied it to keyboards.
So, you get a real keyboard with the option to change 50 keys according to whatever you fancy.
Languages, graphics, app specific layouts can all be managed on the fly. So the #UX becomes far more flexible - and like Apple changed the smart watch, Sonder imagined the possibilities for the keyboard.
There's a downside, though. It costs $200 for the privilege.
But this looks like the future of keyboards. Especially when the major laptop manufacturers make it standard.
Now that it has been done, you wonder why it took Sonder. Ah, couldn't resist :-)
Would you be interested in getting one?
There are rumors that Apple is interested in Sonder