Complementary Products

The notion of complementary products are very helpful in generating product ideas.

Preconditions for a self-organizing system based on Lyapunov Functions

Self-organizing systems based on Lyapunov Functions

Lyapunov functions can explain how a city/system self-organizes.

Consider Disneyland with 5 rides and 5 customers. Each ride can only service one customer.

• Each customer first waits at the gate and writes down the sequence of rides they plan to take
• Once the gate opens, each customer goes to the first ride on their list
• If more than one customer goes to the same ride, then someone have to wait and a ride somewhere is empty.
• To avoid waiting, customers in queue will then choose rides with no queue.
• This behaviour collectively result in every ride being occupied and no queues.
• The system self-organizes.

Pre-conditions for self-organization

However, self-organization happens only if certain preconditions are true:

1. Perfect information - e.g. all customers know exactly which rides are empty (say within visual range)
2. No cost to switching - e.g. customer can switch to another ride without cost
3. No barriers to switching - e.g. all customer can switch to any other ride at any time
4. No externalities - e.g. customers behaviour are independent, one taking a ride does not affect another taking a ride

Consider if the the opposite conditions hold:

1. Imperfect information
• e.g. customers cannot see which rides are empty (e.g. rides are in housed the buildings) so they'd rather continue queuing rather than risk going to another ride which may have a longer queue
2. Costly switching
• e.g. rides are very far apart and to walk to the next nearest ride takes half a day - then customers may rather stay put
3. Barriers to switching
• e.g. rides are segregated to VIP zone and normal zone - normal customer cannot access VIP rides even if they are empty.
4. Externalities
• e.g. when Customer A is a sloppy person and leaves behind a trail of food and grime everywhere - other customers will then be reluctant to go on a rides that Customer A has been on

Other examples of self-organizing systems

• Checkout queues in a hypermarket encourages self-organizing customers
• Consider what happens if the checkout queues are split into 3 separate groups
• Multi-storey parking buildings with the number of free slots at each floor prominently displayed
• Drivers get better information and make better decisions
• Consider a crowded parking building with zero information

Structure, Behaviour, and Presentation

The separation of a system's internal structure, behaviour and external presentation is inherent in application domains:

• GUI Applications: Model-View-Controller
• structure = Model, behaviour = Controller, presentation = View
• Web Applications: HTML, CSS, Javascript
• structure = HTML, behaviour = Javascript, presentation = CSS
• HtDW Applications: Data definitions, Function definitions,
• structure = data, behaviour = function, presentation = missing

Structure is  internal.
Presentation is external.

A Decision Tree App

A Decision Tree App

Create an app that uses a decision tree to help make decisions.
Everything is either an event or an outcome.

Events

• must have an associated name
• may have an associated cost
• may have an associated time duration

Outcomes

• must have an associated payoff
• must have an associated probability
• may have an associated time duration

A mashup of:

• Decision Trees from Model Thinking
• App building from Creative Programming
• Time Value of Money from Introduction to Finance

Problems mean Opportunities

Problems mean opportunities

Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational has developed several apps which are a direct outcome of his research.

So here's the idea/challenge. Go and look up some great research and create appealing apps that rely on those laws of nature.

Problems mean opportunities.

Six Shifts Affecting the Digital Consumer

How should you align your game to cater or capture opportunities in the following shifts?
If the shift has not yet happened, how can you accelerate it?

Six Shifts

• Devices
• From PCs to mobile and touch devices
• Communications
• From voice to data and video
• Content
• From bundled to fragmented
• Social media
• From growth to monetization
• Video
• From programmed to user driven
• Retail
• From channel to experience

Source

• Developing a fine-grained look at how digital consumers behave

Kickstarting Thailand's Solar Rooftop Industry

Kickstarting the Thailand Solar Rooftop Industry

Solar roof market is under-developed and it should be further developed.
Raise funds to generate an alternative market:

• Sell rooftop solar products (economy of scale)
• Provide soft loans
• Buy power
• Produce power

In The News

• 13 Jul 2013: Incentive Scheme for solar rooftops ready for launch
• 29 May 2013: Making the Switch
• 09 May 2013: Major boost for Thailand rooftop solar sector