the Whiteboard

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

The Battle Is For The Customer Interface

Think about these four companies and discuss

the questions in groups.

Airbnb Uber blablaCar Couchsurfing

1. Which of these companies have you heard of?

2. What do you think they all have in common?

3. Why do you think people use them?

4. Have you used any of them? If so, what was your experience of them?

Introductory reading:

Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.

Reading 1

In this age, the customer interface is everything. There are two approaches.

Full Stack Companies

Full stack companies like Tesla, Warby Parker, BuzzFeed, Nest or Harry’s seek to SURE control by owning all layers. From R&D to marketing, from distribution to sales, these companies do it all. It’s a great way to keep profit in the family, yet it’s harder to scale and build.

The Interface Owners

The new breed of companies are the fastest-growing in history. Uber, Instacart, Alibaba, Airbnb, Seamless, Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, Google: These companies are DESCRIBE thin layers that sit on top of vast supply systems (where the costs are) and interface with a huge number of people (where the money is). There is no better business to be in. The New York Times needs to write, fact check, buy paper, print and distribute newspapers to get their ad money. Facebook provides a platform for us to write our own content, and Twitter MONEY the front page of newspapers, which happens to now be the Twitter feed.

Discuss:

Which are "full stack" companies and which are "interface owners"?

The New York Times
EF
WeChat
E-bay
Tesla
Google
Amazon

Reading 2

The Interface Is Where the Profit Is

The value is in the software interface, not the products. Uber provides average cars in a premium way; iTunes for many years took VIRTUAL all the profit made in the entire music industry by being just the thin software between the hard work making tunes and the money selling them.

Big Battles For the Customer Interface

In the modern age, having icons on the homepage is the most valuable real estate in the world, and trust is the most important asset. If you have that, you’ve a license to print money until someone pushes you out of the way.

Discuss:

1. Read the last paragraph again. What will make one company succeed against others in this age?

2. Is it a good thing if the world’s fastest growing companies don’t actually produce anything?

Think of ways to continue these sentences.

1. There are two reasons I didn’t finish the assignment, namely ...

2. Cars not only cause air pollution but they also ...

3. Most teenagers are strongly influenced by their peers, that is to say ...

4. Uber costs half as much as normal city taxis, in other words ...

5. His whole salary goes on rent and health insurance, so in effect ...

6. Average property prices aren’t showing any sign of decreasing. In fact,

Sunday, September 3, 2023

The Wind Phone

windy tsunami ones coastal wind nature extreme struck aftermath forces

When an earthquake and tsunami 1. ____ Japan in 2011, 30ft (9.14m) waves obliterated 2. _____ communities. The small town of Otsuchi lost everything including 2000 residents.

One resident, Itaru Sasaki, was already grieving his cousin before the 3. ______ hit. He had the idea of nestling an old phone booth on the 4. ______ hill at the bottom of his garden which overlooked the Pacific Ocean. This would be a place he could go to speak to his cousin - a place where his words could ‘be carried on the 5. _____.’ The white, glass-paned booth holds an old disconnected rotary phone. He called it his Wind Phone.

In the 6. _____ of the terrible tsunami, as word of the phone spread, it became a pilgrimage site for those who had lost loved ones. In the sanctuary of the booth they would dial old phone numbers and talk to their loved 7. ____.

In many ways the wind phone typifies a very Japanese relationship with 8. _____ and death and with the invisible 9. ____ that connect us all. As the residents of Otsuchi face the slow progress of rebuilding their town and the frightening reality of future 10. ______ weather, the wind phone is a reminder of those losses that won’t be forgotten.

Video (3:33 min)

Podcast (26:30 min)

The Wind Phone