Unnecessary Tech: Digital License Plates

Example of an unnecessary tech product looking for a market:  Michigan has become the latest state to approve Reviver digital car plates.  

Today, you have simple metal plates. You pay a yearly fee and you get a yearly sticker to put on. Simple.

With this, you get a digital display that has toxic substances, uses power, you need to also pay a monthly subscription to the company, they can display messages, and you can be tracked. Not to mention, what if it gets hacked?

So, for an investment of time and money, you get an environmentally unfriendly, more complicated, security risk that duplicates the low tech you currently have. That's not Strategic Simplicity® .

© 2022 Praveen Puri

Bumble Bees are fish!

I saw an article in today's WSJ that, in CA, farmers sued to block bumble bees from being added to the state's endangered species list because it just covers "bird, mammal, fish, amphibia, or reptile."  

Well, the fish and game commission appealed and a state appeals court ruled that bumble bees qualify as "fish" under the CA legislation's legal definition of fish, which is very vague (basically, no backbone).  

You can't make this stuff up!

© 2022 Praveen Puri

Exploding Seatbelts!

Hyundai is recalling 240,000 cars because the seatbelts might explode! 

They have a technology called "pretensioners" to automatically tighten seatbelts in case of an accident. It relies on "small explosive devices".

Get this: "...pretensioners supplied for the seatbelt retractor mechanisms may not perform the way Hyundai's safety engineers intended, and an uncontrolled explosion may release shrapnel into the cabin."  

WTF!

Definitely not technical Strategic Simplicity®!

© 2022 Praveen Puri

Today's Inflation is Another Reason to Practice Strategic Simplicity®

With today's inflation increasing their supply chain costs, companies are either eating the difference, raising prices, or reducing the amount supplied.

There is another option, rooted in Decision Simplicity, which is part of my Strategic Simplicity® framework.  By reducing the options and choices you offer customers, you can buy larger quantities from fewer suppliers, thus increasing your leverage for negotiating costs.

© 2022 Praveen Puri

Why Do I Need A Data Lake?

This webinar from my colleague Douglas Squirrel is a great strategic introduction to Data Lakes: https://squirrelsquadron.com/events/2022/02-24-why-do-i-need-a-data-lake.html

They have great strategic value because they allow you to store data that you don't currently use, but may need to analyze in the future, in a raw state (structured enough so that you can retrieve it).

Keeping the data in a data lake can be better than the alternatives: discard it, or store it in a processed state in a data base / data warehouse (where it's silo'ed, slows down performance, and has lost raw info during the formatting/cleanup process).

© 2022 Praveen Puri

Simplicity is Key

"We tend to make everything far too complex and complicated, as if that’s our value. I don’t know about you, but my value is in making things clear and simple. Right?" - Alan Weiss

© 2022 Praveen Puri

"Great Resignation"

Sign of the times: ZipRecuiter is advertising on the back of fortunes from fortune cookies.  

© 2022 Praveen Puri