Colm's Blog

Hello Everyone,

Well, I am glad to be away from Shanghai and in Hong Kong. That Mongolian Dust (otherwise known as heavy pollution) took out a few members of the class in Jinan. But most appear to be well on the path to recovery. Hong Kong is a cool city, I like....I like....

The trip to Jinan was fun and the karaoke was excellent craic,.....some dodgy song selections by neffsky but good music and a lot of fun.

The first session of technology innovation was enjoyable. The prices of the commodity products were ridiculously low, and could be multiplied by a factor of 5 to 10 in Switzerland or Ireland. The point was made that the commodities market is tough and margins are low. Groupthink was interesting but maybe the point could be made that in , larger groups there may be an element of social pressure and unwillingness to be different. Obviously the processes that lead to innovation are important and must be done correctly. If the market research is poor and the results are skewed, we get incorrect indications of where new needs can be met.

I lost my virtual shirt on the futures market!!! (minus $2700, unwise to bet on a coin flip, much better when you have the possibility to influence the outcome). Its a pity we do not have more categories to trade on, but the overall idea is great. Apparently the predictions market is more accurate than individual experts, only twelve people are required to make a reasonably accurate prediction.

Session three: The process of innovation was discussed

• there is the new product that is not on the marketplace already. some new service or product is brought out that satisfies some kind of need that was not being satisfied before. This is disruptive to the competition and create a new market that was not there before.
• There is a continuous innovation process, like the porche example where a product is improved on an ongoing basis, but is regarded as not true innovation.

We had some short presentations focussing on the impact of an innovative product, the Asus eee. It is low cost, light and aimed at the student/younger segment of the market. There was an interesting discussion about brand value and low cost value. My opinion was that, this product would not cut too much into the markets of the Apple macbook air for example as there are always brand conscious people who are willing to pay for a high value product.