Robot Strawberry Picker, Abundance Report

January 25, 2011 · Posted in abundance, economics, innovation · Comment 


In the USA picking strawberries is hard low paid work for migrant, often illegal alien, workers. Japan’s robot strawberry picker comes from a different mindset.

Most post-industrialized nations complain about cheap foreign labor taking their jobs. Similarly people living in high income nations complain that automation is eliminating jobs, even jobs no one really wants to do. Standing in the hot sun bending over picking strawberries for 12 hours per day is not desirable work for any person.

Japan values their national cultural identity much more than other post-industrialized nations. Being a small island nation they are very concerned about depending on foreigners for materials. Japan understands and values self-sufficiency. Additionally, Japan is an aging society. The ratio of young people who are able to do manual labor is declining. If Japan is going to remain self-sufficient it must find ways to do more with less human labor.

Japan’s obsession with automation stems from their need to do more with less. Proper design and automation is how Japanese companies increase productivity and quality while reducing costs.

Even though Japan is a small nation it produces a great deal of food, particularly for local use. Rather than using the mass production approach of the nations with large amounts of land such as the USA, Canada, and Russia, Japan produces food in super efficient small scale farms. These types of farms are particularly well suited to automation. A small family owned farm using automation can produce much more food per acre and at much higher quality than the large scale industrial farming approach. Rather than viewing automation as stealing jobs, the Japanese are spreading real wealth by allowing more people to directly own and operate the means of production.

Japan is moving forward into Abundance both technologically and socially. Other nations and people could learn a lot from the Japanese.

How are Predictive Innovation and Evangelism Marketing related?

The world business environment has fundamentally changed Customers can now both find and filter information to get what they want. This means traditional interrupt based advertisement is losing its effectiveness. At the same time customers can search the entire world for exactly what they want. Technology is also making it possible for customers to easily build more of what they want for themselves. So to succeed you need to:

Provide exactly what the customer wants, when the customer wants it, in the way the customer wants, and for the price the customer is willing to pay.

And you must communicate to customers you have what they desire while the customer is actively trying to ignore you because so many others are trying to get their attention.

Innovation gets you half way, but you can’t just innovate, you must Predicatively Innovate to stay ahead of the competition. And how do you communicate something new to people who are ignoring you? Search based marketing won’t work very well because people must first know something exists in order to search for it. That is why Evangelism Marketing is so important.

The great news is Evangelism Marketing doesn’t just introduce a new product; it builds the confidence of each level of user from early adopter to mainstream to late comers. But it’s not just a technique for selling. Evangelism Marketing guides the processes of innovation. In order to get customer to freely sell your product for you, you must first Make them so happy they want to do it. Giving them exactly what they want when they want how they want in the way they want for the price they are willing to pay is essential to Evangelism Marketing.

Evangelism Marketing is a relationship. You are helping someone by giving them information. They in turn give you back information and continue to spread the information you gave them. You might say surveys and marketing research does that, but it doesn’t. How do you get someone to take a survey? Often you can’t. Even with bribes it’s hard and the data is frequently heavily skewed. What about getting customers to freely spread the message? Traditional top down concepts don’t work in a distributed environment. More power, more widely spread is the wave of the future. There are HUGE opportunities for people willing to embrace it and horrible disruption for those that cling to the old way. Which will you be?

How are Predictive Innovation® and Evangelism Marketing related?

April 23, 2008 · Posted in abundance, economics, innovation, sharing, strategy · Comment 

The world business environment has fundamentally changed Customers can now both find and filter information to get what they want. This means traditional interrupt based advertisement is losing its effectiveness. At the same time customers can search the entire world for exactly what they want. Technology is also making it possible for customers to easily build more of what they want for themselves. So to succeed you need to:

Provide exactly what the customer wants, when the customer wants it, in the way the customer wants, and for the price the customer is willing to pay.

And you must communicate to customers you have what they desire while the customer is actively trying to ignore you because so many others are trying to get their attention.

Innovation gets you half way, but you can’t just innovate, you must Predicatively Innovate to stay ahead of the competition. And how do you communicate something new to people who are ignoring you? Search based marketing won’t work very well because people must first know something exists in order to search for it. That is why Evangelism Marketing is so important.

The great news is Evangelism Marketing doesn’t just introduce a new product; it builds the confidence of each level of user from early adopter to mainstream to late comers. But it’s not just a technique for selling. Evangelism Marketing guides the processes of innovation. In order to get customer to freely sell your product for you, you must first Make them so happy they want to do it. Giving them exactly what they want when they want how they want in the way they want for the price they are willing to pay is essential to Evangelism Marketing.

Evangelism Marketing is a relationship. You are helping someone by giving them information. They in turn give you back information and continue to spread the information you gave them. You might say surveys and marketing research does that, but it doesn’t. How do you get someone to take a survey? Often you can’t. Even with bribes it’s hard and the data is frequently heavily skewed. What about getting customers to freely spread the message? Traditional top down concepts don’t work in a distributed environment. More power, more widely spread is the wave of the future. There are HUGE opportunities for people willing to embrace it and horrible disruption for those that cling to the old way. Which will you be?

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