Archive for October, 2008
How Twitter Solves Voter and Other Types of Information Asymetry
while ago, I wrote a post on how Digg is characterized by the principles of Game Theory. As it turns out, that post was Dugg to the front page of Digg and almost fried my server. Today, I want to briefly discuss something along the same lines of Behavioral Economics — how Twitter solves the problem of Information Asymetry.
Sarah Palin Wardrobe Break-Even Analysis
Let’s face it: sometimes, people vote not based on character, policy position, or anything else that might be important or substantial. Sometimes, people vote for a candidate because of the candidates’ fashion sense.
So, if we were to quantify the price of a vote (in terms of revenue), the total cost of Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, and the variable costs for a voter, we can calculate how many votes Sarah Palin will need to off-set the costs of her Wardrobe. Below is a picture of what that Sarah Palin Wardrobe Break-Even Analysis might look like:
Let’s face it: sometimes, people vote not based on character, policy position, or anything else that might be important or substantial. Sometimes, people vote for a candidate because of the candidates’ fashion sense.
So, if we were to quantify the price of a vote (in terms of revenue), the total cost of Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, and the variable costs for a voter, we can calculate how many votes Sarah Palin will need to off-set the costs of her Wardrobe. Below is a picture of what that Sarah Palin Wardrobe Break-Even Analysis might look like:
The Role of The Warehouse in eCommerce and eRetailing: Trade-off and Benefits
fficiently optimizing inventory, storage space, labor, costs, and time in eCommerce (e-retailing) is required to attain customer satisfaction and economic profit. For the Operations Researcher, this is no easy task; for the in-the-dirt manager with competing priorities and pressures from her chain-of-command, it is even a bigger challenge.
Efficiently optimizing inventory, storage space, labor, costs, and time in eCommerce (e-retailing) is required to attain customer satisfaction and economic profit. For the Operations Researcher, this is no easy task; for the in-the-dirt manager with competing priorities and pressures from her chain-of-command, it is even a bigger challenge.
Most people are familiar with the front-end of eCommerce — the store, search, navigation, the cart, and payment. But, what most consumers don’t realize is that the true magic and the more technically challenging piece of eCommerce is actually what happens after “click” — The Fulfillment, which often requires a Warehouse.
Tesla Motors is not Toyota: A Contrast in Disrespect and Respect of People
Apparently Tesla Motors shutting down their Detroit office and laid-off 90% of the office. The lucky 10% will be moved to San Jose, California. I have no problems with letting-go of staff — business is tough and times are very tough — but the way Tesla Motors went about it was inhumane, to say the least: They laid-off the people via a blog post and when the unlucky employees came to work, they could not log into their machines! (via gizmodo)
Apparently Tesla Motors shutting down their Detroit office and laid-off 90% of the office. The lucky 10% will be moved to San Jose, California. I have no problems with letting-go of staff — business is tough and times are very tough — but the way Tesla Motors went about it was inhumane, to say the least: They laid-off the people via a blog post and when the unlucky employees came to work, they could not log into their machines! (via gizmodo)
Sarah Palin Pareto
What if we organized all of Sarah Palin’s speeches into an unstructured corpus and ran a word-frequency linguistic analysis on that corpus? A Pareto Analysis of word-frequency in Sarah Palin’s speeches will give us a sense of what she cares about the most, assuming that [what she utters is what is on her mind] and [what is on her mind is what she cares about the most].
What if we organized all of Sarah Palin’s speeches into an unstructured corpus and ran a word-frequency linguistic analysis on that corpus? A Pareto Analysis of word-frequency in Sarah Palin’s speeches will give us a sense of what she cares about the most, assuming that [what she utters is what is on her mind] and [what is on her mind is what she cares about the most].
Customer Service Contacts are Symptoms, not Root Causes: How to Apply the 5 Whys
Most organizations believe that Customer Service contacts are what needs to be fixed or eliminated. On the surface, that might be true. But, when approached as a Lean Thinker, Customer Service contacts are truly only symptoms, the root causes of which are not yet fully known. In what follows, I’ll explain the role of Customer Service in the overall business value chain, and how the business can better meet the needs of the customer through the effective use of the Customer Service function.
Most organizations believe that Customer Service contacts are what needs to be fixed or eliminated. On the surface, that might be true. But, when approached as a Lean Thinker, Customer Service contacts are truly only symptoms, the root causes of which are not yet fully known. In what follows, I’ll explain the role of Customer Service in the overall business value chain, and how the business can better meet the needs of the customer through the effective use of the Customer Service function.
