ESD.57 and Disruptive Tech

(started writing this on Monday)
Even though there is still one more class next week, today's like the last class for me for ESD.57 since my final presentation was today. Understandably, since I am into this Voice thing, my topic is Voice 2.0. Well, this is kind of late topic for this class. My original topic was Mobile Broadband and whether it can be disruptive technology to AT&T. As we went on, I realized that Mobile Broadband is not going to be disruptive technology for AT&T. Well, it can be disruptive to AT&T if it wasn't implemented well. It is not the Clay Christensen's definition of Disruptive Technology.

This is my understanding of Disruptive Technology: a technology that
1. serves a new market. This new market must have no interests to existing players, either because their existing customers have no interests
2. Or, serves an existing, and possibley low-end market, that the existing players have no interests. The reason can be : low margin,

The true meaning of be disrupotive, I believe, is serving a market that the existing players does not want to serve (new market), and even eager to get away (low-end).

For a new market, this can because the existing customers of existing players have no interests to the tech at that moment, such as the famous disk drive case. However, this does not mean the customers will be interested in the future after new use was proven to them.

For low-end market, this can be because the very low margin of the low end, such as the famous steel mill case. The very nature of low end focus will keep drive up and away of existing players from the upper and upper market.

Or, I would say a truely disruptive tech is something that disrupts existing players in an unprepared way. In the case of AT&T and Mobile Broadband, everyone knows that's the future of telco and AT&T knows what that means to them. It is paying huge attention to it, Mostly importantly, this is also a natural extension to the existing AT&T network. It is something they are eager to get into. Mobile Broadband is an incremental innovation.

Ok, let me go back to voice2.0. For the low end, I presented JitterBug and MOSH Mobile. JitterBug's focus on senior market, a market that is not AT&T's focus. The very high operating cost (US based live call center) is also not attractive to AT&T. For MASH Mobile, its ads-sponsored free mobile service is for sure not AT&T's interest. So, how will they disrupt AT&T? It can happen in a few different ways. JitterBug could take away the whole senior market. It can then move up the value chain and focus on middle-age market. The Live Human base call center can be attractive to the middle age as well. No more fighting against the phones or all the so-called smart features (which is not truely AI).

For the new market, I promoted the future focus of the content that is actually flowing through the voice channel. There are a few reasons that why it can happen now, such as speech recognition technology, storage cost, etc. In terms of market to explore, I suggested to look into the lead users. What are their pains and how they are solving it right now.

Final Presentation for ESD.36

Hooray, ESD.36 is over for me. We got our presentation just in time (eg, this morning 10:30). The term project is a bit challenging for me for many reasons. First, I am not in particular interested in manufacturing, even true for Aircraft manufacturing. Second, both my team members are distance. Thuy got a new job yesterday and Tarek is on Beirut. Last, the schedule was super tight. We started really working on the ppt just a couple of days ago. I wasn't even sure if we can get all the slides in time.

In the end, we delivered. I am so glad that ESD.36 is done.

In retrospect, it wasn't a bad class. I think I picked up some useful stuff, such as CPM, DSM and many other tools and methods. I doubt all of them will be useful, but I think it's worth to know those tools and, more importantly, terms.

met with Shashi

ok, this is just some doodling from my chat with Shashi last night, but some very, very important advices:
1. get the first check, don't be shy to ask for it. If you are doing work for them, you deserve to ask for it. Focus on the market.
2. Try to get a deal with voip providers and work on those leads.
3. offer something for free and charge for premium.
4. You will need someone on board full-time to get any creditability.

Man, friend is always important.

major milestone soon

We finally done with the speech training with very acceptable result. More training and improvements are obviously on the way. Training is really time consuming, every iteration takes 3-4 weeks to finish. This is important and encouraging. We will have a demo-able system in the matters of days.

Mobile Monday yesterday

I went to Mobile Monday with Roger and also bumped into Ken Liu. Chatted quite a bit with Palle from RealCME ( I knew him from peHUB before). One thing he said that I totally agree is that, when you are getting started, you better focus on making sure money, the money that is real and focus on the people who is willing to pay.

Nice to see AssuredLabour, a thing founded by David Reich and another sloanie Matt Albrecht. I am still trying to remember if David was my TA for the sales class;). It's a nice eBay trust model applied to labor market.

Also chatted with guys from Cadio. A start-up for tracking your movement and give you location contextual ads, such as coupons. They claim there is nothing needs to be installed to the phone.

peHUB yesterday

I went to peHUB with a few Harvard friends last night. It was way more than what I hoped. Bumped a few VC's that I know before and collected a few more cards. Chatted with Luke Burns on the thing we are doing. Also chatted with Caleb Clark from Wind Jammer. Seems some traction there. The only thing I wish? I wish I had a proper business card, not my crappy sdm cards;).

Oh, went to Bertucci's for ice cream after (they claimed I was drunk, not suitable for driving and need ice cream for clean out the alcohol). Yum, no complains.

Took the Tunnel...

Shamely, I took the tunnel from E40 to building 7. To my argument, it's getting cold in this November of Boston;).

I haven't taken the tunnel since March. It sure was a fun experience to see those nuclear signs again ;).