problem solving | wealthymatters

Out Of The Box Thinking To Make Capital

May 31, 2015 Leave a comment

“I heard a story how a company made its capital back in 1970s in Kerala. There was a manufacture who wanted to install a huge machinery in a pit prepared in their factory. The machinery was very heavy and delivered by its manufacturer at the site of installation. Now placing the machinery in the right position near 30 feet below the ground level was a big problem. It should be handled carefully otherwise it will damage the base as well as the machinery.

Remember huge cranes were not available in those days as they are today. Many quoted for the job and all of them thought of bringing crane from other locations and get the job done and they all quoted above Rs.10 lakh to 15lakh.Somebody also enquired if there is a problem if the machinery get wet with water. The answer was ‘no’. Read more of this post

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Theory, Tool Kit Tagged with acquiring capital to start your business, Bootstrapping, out of the box thinking, postaday, problem solving

Working Backwards Amazon Style

September 26, 2014 2 Comments

wealthymatters “There is an approach called “working backwards” that is widely used at Amazon. We try to work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it. While working backwards can be applied to any specific product decision, using this approach is especially important when developing new products or features.

For new initiatives a product manager typically starts by writing an internal press release announcing the finished product. The target audience for the press release is the new/updated product’s customers, which can be retail customers or internal users of a tool or technology. Internal press releases are centered around the customer problem, how current solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing solutions.

If the benefits listed don’t sound very interesting or exciting to customers, then perhaps they’re not (and shouldn’t be built). Instead, the product manager should keep iterating on the press release until they’ve come up with benefits that actually sound like benefits. Iterating on a press release is a lot less expensive than iterating on the product itself (and quicker!). Read more of this post