Category: Services & Products

Somehow, there is always a Marketing Manager in the room believes that with years of experiences in print media, s/he knows how to do Digital / Social Marketing.

There is also always a Sales Manager in the team thinks that s/he is good in B2C eCommerce as s/he knows how to run business in Bricks and Mortar stores.

Then of course there is one Technical Manager who think s/he knows how to traverse the latest mobile app ecosystem, Cybersecurity world and Blockchain technology; by applying what s/he learnt in the Novell days.

They are all good colleagues at work but let’s admit it, we don’t know what we don’t know. We need to learn new things every single day and yet we shall let the younger generation to lead us to explore the digital world, not the other way round.

When was the last time someone in the room suggested a new feature to add to the system that you’re going to roll out … then the whole team spend days and nights to collect user requirements / stories, prepare a prototype, design the architecture, and size the effort ?

All before asking the key question …

In 2006, British mathematician Clive Humby coined the phrase “Data is the new oil”.

For some reasons, people twisted it into something like … “Data in the 21st Century is like Oil in the 18th Century: an immensely, untapped valuable asset. Like oil, for those who see Data’s fundamental value and learn to extract and use it there will be huge rewards.” (Wired.com). In other words, it’s suggested that our data is like a gushing oil well and that we ought to be claiming an ownership stake in the profits flowing from that data.

Nothing wrong with that, but what Mr. Humby really meant was … Data, like oil, must be refined and transformed to make it into useful products and services. Only then does it become valuable. In other words, data must be processed and analysed for it to have value.

Having data is not the key, every company has lots of data. However, the key is whether you have transformed your data, to information, to knowledge, to actionable insights and ultimately, great products / services.

Now, your move …

We are lucky ones in this part of the world, as every year we have two New Years – one Gregorian New Year and one Lunar New Year.

In other words, we have two year ends, we can reflect on our works two times and also two chances to plan ahead for the coming year. In fact, we can even prepare two New Year’s resolutions, if the first one didn’t work out.

So let’s prepare for the work post-COVID-19 … what are your focuses ?

You likely have one of these at home, a solvent made with some blends of lubricants. It was developed by Rocket Chemical Company back in 1953 to prevent corrosion by displacing water.

Naturally, WD stands for “water displacement”. However, believe it or not, 40 means the 40th attempt … yes the company succeeded on the 40th try, and then used it as part of the product name.

How many times have you tried, before you developed the right products ? 4, 40, 400 ?