Advertisers are always looking for ways to reach your eyeballs. But simply entering our field of vision is just the first step. The advertisement should engage us, be relevant to our situation and help us make a purchasing decision. Historically, “out of home” advertisements (as opposed to “in home” ads seen on TV, for example) have been the static variety –large billboards along the highway or posters on walls with unchanging content.
With the advent of electronic displays, it has become possible to duplicate the concept of static ads (think of old TV sets used for information display in lobbies) with ease. This has been going on for well over 15 years. This method of conveying information is called “Digital Signage”. Companies such as Scala, to mention one among many, have been providing software, media players and related technology necessary for Digital Signage. Ad Signage companies such as Focus Media have been contracting with location owners (such as office tower owners), and using Digital Signage technology, create and display content in elevator lobbies. As the content and business owners, Ad Signage companies have been operational for over ten years; however, as we near the end of this decade, it is not clear that their business is thriving.
As the owner of a Digital Signage technology company, I have had the opportunity to occupy an inside-the-ring “seat” in this industry for the past couple of years. I believe that the ecosystem is broken, the business model is upside-down and the technology needs to be revamped. Allow me to outline why I think this is so and how Digital Signage industry can be reinvigorated... MORE in my whitepaper (click the link below).
PG's Digital Signage Whitepaper: "Business IPTV Service – A New Cloud Business Vertical"
Whitepaper Summary: Digital Signage business of video ad delivery to public display and mobile screens is at a tipping point in 2009 but the current ecosystem is not set up to tip it right! Business model and technology solutions have to be reconfigured into a cloud business vertical –“Business IPTV Service”: a business and technology platform that telcos and other cloud service providers own over which multiple ad signage virtual operators function. If ecosystem rebuilding starts now, Business IPTV Service will be a multi-billion dollar business in Greater South East Asia alone by 2015.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Startup Pains & Pleasures #4: Workplace Creativity & Fermi Problems
In my blog last week, I talked about my everyday creativity “trick” - if you cannot solve a problem, find an approximation of the problem that you can solve. If this solution is adequate, meaning it is still of business or technical value, if you can “sell” the approximate solution, do it. Then try for a closer approximation of the problem and solve it; this will be your version 2 solution!
Have you tried “creativity by approximation” yet? I will give you a very simple example from last week. My wife picked me up from the airport and during the drive back, said to me, “I meant to vacuum the whole house before you got back from Tokyo but as I was too tired, I just did the heavy-traffic areas”. I was pleased that a readymade example for my creativity “trick” had suddenly dropped in my lap. She approximated the “whole house” by “heavy-traffic” areas, solved the problem, and had energy left over to go out later that night. This is classic day-to-day creativity!
Is there is a *systematic* way to arrive at approximate solutions? There is: a favorite method of mine known as “Fermi Problems”. Author Hans Christian von Baeyer has a classic article on Fermi Problems called, “How Fermi Would Have Fixed It” (Sciences; Sep/Oct88, Vol. 28 Issue 5, pp2-4).
Let me explain the classic Fermi Problem method using an example. When I taught Probability Theory & Stochastic Process to EECS students, the first question I asked them in the very first class of the semester was the following: “How many piano tuners are there in Ann Arbor?” When the class acquired a collective glazed look in their eyes, I took them through these steps:
1. Take a guess at Ann Arbor’s population – say, 300,000 people.
2. Now, assume that an average family contains four members. The number of families in Ann Arbor must therefore be about 75,000.
3. If one in five families owns a piano, there will be 15,000 pianos in Ann Arbor.
4. The average piano tuner:
a. Can service four pianos every day of the week for five days and
b. Has two weeks of vacation during the year
- A typical tuner would service (4 pianos per day X 5 days a week X 50 weeks per year) = 1,000 pianos per year.
- So, there must be about 15 (15,000/1,000) piano tuners in Ann Arbor. Check the telephone directory Yellow Pages and see what you find . . .
The guesses in the first 4 steps are totally unrelated. In statistical terms, these random variables are independent and hence the errors in these guesses tend to “cancel out”. Approximate solutions arrived at using the Fermi Problem method are surprisingly good (within an order of magnitude of accuracy) and hence very useful for practical situations.
What this tells us is that when confronted with a problem, do not be dismayed by a lack of information; Get Creative! – (a) break the problem down into a number of sub-problems and solve the sequence or (b) solve an approximation of the problem.
In the first case, you find approximate solutions to a bunch of exact sub-problems and in the second case, you find an exact solution to an approximation of the problem. In either case, the approximate solution you reach is a creative way out – either when you are in a tough job interview (you may recall the infamous Microsoft and Google interview questions!) or when confronted with a rough practical situation.
Next blog onwards, I will leave the Start Up topic and move on to other interesting issues.
Enjoy the haiku . . . PG
Have you tried “creativity by approximation” yet? I will give you a very simple example from last week. My wife picked me up from the airport and during the drive back, said to me, “I meant to vacuum the whole house before you got back from Tokyo but as I was too tired, I just did the heavy-traffic areas”. I was pleased that a readymade example for my creativity “trick” had suddenly dropped in my lap. She approximated the “whole house” by “heavy-traffic” areas, solved the problem, and had energy left over to go out later that night. This is classic day-to-day creativity!
Is there is a *systematic* way to arrive at approximate solutions? There is: a favorite method of mine known as “Fermi Problems”. Author Hans Christian von Baeyer has a classic article on Fermi Problems called, “How Fermi Would Have Fixed It” (Sciences; Sep/Oct88, Vol. 28 Issue 5, pp2-4).
Let me explain the classic Fermi Problem method using an example. When I taught Probability Theory & Stochastic Process to EECS students, the first question I asked them in the very first class of the semester was the following: “How many piano tuners are there in Ann Arbor?” When the class acquired a collective glazed look in their eyes, I took them through these steps:
1. Take a guess at Ann Arbor’s population – say, 300,000 people.
2. Now, assume that an average family contains four members. The number of families in Ann Arbor must therefore be about 75,000.
3. If one in five families owns a piano, there will be 15,000 pianos in Ann Arbor.
4. The average piano tuner:
a. Can service four pianos every day of the week for five days and
b. Has two weeks of vacation during the year
- A typical tuner would service (4 pianos per day X 5 days a week X 50 weeks per year) = 1,000 pianos per year.
- So, there must be about 15 (15,000/1,000) piano tuners in Ann Arbor. Check the telephone directory Yellow Pages and see what you find . . .
The guesses in the first 4 steps are totally unrelated. In statistical terms, these random variables are independent and hence the errors in these guesses tend to “cancel out”. Approximate solutions arrived at using the Fermi Problem method are surprisingly good (within an order of magnitude of accuracy) and hence very useful for practical situations.
What this tells us is that when confronted with a problem, do not be dismayed by a lack of information; Get Creative! – (a) break the problem down into a number of sub-problems and solve the sequence or (b) solve an approximation of the problem.
In the first case, you find approximate solutions to a bunch of exact sub-problems and in the second case, you find an exact solution to an approximation of the problem. In either case, the approximate solution you reach is a creative way out – either when you are in a tough job interview (you may recall the infamous Microsoft and Google interview questions!) or when confronted with a rough practical situation.
Next blog onwards, I will leave the Start Up topic and move on to other interesting issues.
Enjoy the haiku . . . PG
“Summer evening
Hear the breeze caress the leaves
Honey BBQ flavor!”
- AM
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