#53

Just came back from a trip with a mind recharged but the body discharged … it was just a very tiring trip. Anyway some thoughts from the trip …

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I think we all had the same experience – no matter where we traveled, we kept comparing the other countries / cities with our city. And same in my trip, I kept thinking why the “systems” in Copenhagen and Paris are so inefficient … their airports, subways, restaurants etc. etc.

That questions kept popping in my mind and then one day in Paris I asked myself another question – is our city a better city then Copenhagen and Paris … even though we are doing things “a lot more efficient” ?

The answer is of course NO. Then I reckon doing things efficiently are good, but not great anymore. I mean, that’s no good by just keep doing the old things (even though in a super efficient way) any more. We need to do things in a new way …

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Then I found all sort of interesting things around me. The subway display panel in Copenhagen is a lot advance than in HK. Even the toilet design is a lot clever than I saw anywhere (even though it was designed _40_ years ago).

And the ticketing kiosks in Paris have only three user interface elements – Yes button, No button and a “scroll bar” – there is no mouse pad, no keyboard, no touch screen. But it does everything you found in our subway’s ticketing kiosks – including support of multi-language, multi-products and multi-payment methods.

All these “Think outside the box” designs are so good that it blend into the city’s culture seamlessly – you don’t even know they exist unless you take a very close eyes to those.

And I think that’s what we need – Doing things efficiently and differently. That shall be our goal to compete in this volatile market.

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Things change quickly and I learnt the following lines from my friend couple of weeks ago.

If you are a wind-surfer professional,

• that’s no use to master the skill of forecasting the wind direction.
• what more important is to master the skill of maneuver the sail and the board when the wind changes.

Indeed, wind (like business scenario) changes all the time, that’s no point to forecast how, when and where it changes; but we all shall focus ourselves in learning the skill on handling the changes itself.

Author: Michael Yung

Michael possessed over 30 years of experience in Information Technology with focuses on complex application development, database technologies and IT strategy. He also spent the last 20 years in Internet technology, eCommerce development / operations, web usability, computer security and Public Key Infrastructure technologies. View all posts by Michael Yung