SWCAMBORNE

In 1981, when we started our first successful company, Coventry Manufacturing, the title on my business card read “President.” During the first few years we were in business I read an article in INC Magazine about W L Gore Company and their decentralized organizational structure that we adapted and adopted. In the article it mentioned that one of the companies sales people went by the title “Supreme Commander.” I loved it and within a short while I was the “Supreme Commander” of Coventry Manufacturing Company. The benefit of having an unusual title on my business card was immediately apparent. People kept my card, they talked about me, and they remembered me and wanted to ask me why I had that title. It worked to differentiate me and my little company from our competitors.
As the years went by the title “Supreme Commander” started to get stale. I ran into someone who was the “Intergalactic Supreme Commander” and I knew I couldn’t compete. In fairly short order I became the “Head Coach” of Brandon International, the successor company to Coventry Manufacturing. I was more “touchy feely” in tune with the 90’s. I still lead the company strategically but I now managed managers and helped them with tactics. The title fit for that time.
More years went by. We opened a factory in Singapore and the good humored bonhomie of a factious title didn’t work well with Asian bankers and even less well with government officials in places like Thailand and Malaysia. I had to have a new card with a new title again. This time I bifurcated. I had a card made that listed my title as “President” and I called it my officials and bankers card. I also had a card for business that read “Elder Statesman” that continued my tradition of having a non-traditional title to differentiate myself.
A few years later we sold the company to Brady International and I retired, but I still needed a business card. In fact I felt naked without one. So I had a new card made on nice thick stock that listed my title as “Approbator.” Now when I hand out my business card people look at it and ask; “What is an approbator?” I can reply: “Thank you for asking. An approbator is one who give praise, as in approbation.” And a conversation is started.

All of this derives from an old marketing saw: “If you are not different, you don’t exist.”

Since some of you will want to check the source of my title here is the citation:
Approbator. Dictionary.com. Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, MICRA, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=approbator&x=34&y=18 (accessed: September 15, 2006).

Traffic Congestion is one of the banes of living in modern urban areas.  This idea could help.  I was looking around for a market solution to the problem of congestion on the freeways after spending an hour in bad traffic in the San Fernando Valley last Thursday.  The restricted zone idea used by Singapore and London would not work because the zone that needs restricting is all of the freeways.  Charging to get on the freeway even during congested times would be extremely unpopular and a political non-starter.  But what if we went a different way and distributed ownership rights to freeway access and allowed these rights to be sold on a secondary market.
Imagine that by 2010 all of the automobiles in Southern California had been equipped with a fast pass type transponder.  During that year freeway access rights (FARs) would be distributed to all vehicle owners, business’s with fleets and residents.  About 600 FARs would be given for each car and perhaps a 120 for each non-car owner.  Beginning in January of 2011 one FAR would be deducted from the account of each vehicle each time it went on the freeway.  FARs would be good for one year and would expire.  People who didn’t use all of there FARs could sell them on the secondary market.  New FARs would be issued to the owners of shares each year.  When Caltrans increased road capacity they could sell new rights.  Rights could be transferred from vehicle to vehicle.  When a person stopped driving on the freeway they could sell their FARs.
There are lots of details that need to be worked out and almost everybody will find something that they don’t like about the plan.  But market forces can be used to allocate this scarce resource much better than any other political solution.

Your objections overcome:
What about visitors?  Day, week and month passes could be sold to out of area cars at convenience stores.
What about commercial vehicles?  FARs will not be needed to get on the freeway between 10pm and 6am.  Commercial fleet operators can purchase extra FARS on the secondary market.
Won’t it stop the purchase of new cars?  Not for replacement cars, but it will marginally increase the cost of having more cars on the road.  But without some restrictions driving will become so onerous that car sales will self restrict.
What about poor people?  In this system people without cars will have 10 FARs each month to sell.  People who never go on the freeway will also be able to sell their rights.

No pictures.  The Flickr link to my blog site doesn’t seem to be working at this time.

“It seems to me we place too much emphasis on how long we live, and not enough on how well we live.”

Jonas Salk 1914-1995

Polio Vaccine Pioneer

This idea came to me one morning while I was making a cup of tea.

I though about how Lipton is now advertising the new fancy tea bags made of an open weave material that is heat sealed into a pyramid.  The technology has been around for a number of years in the high-end tea business but now it has gone mainstream.  There is a machinery manufacturer somewhere who just bought a new car.
So then I thought what else could improve the making of a cup of tea?  And I saw the dish that Nurit uses to put her finished (infused?) bag into and I had an epiphany.  What about designing a material that swells up and closes the bag after a few minutes in hot water.  It could be called an “infusion control bag”?  Is it possible? It could make the same strength cup of tea every time and no mess.

The tea marketers who were differentiating themselves with the pyramid bag will now be looking for a new idea so the time is right.

Every nation in the Middle East— Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia— dates as a sovereign state from 60 to 70 years ago. “The only difference is that Israel has made a go of it.” This fact about the Middle East that was pointed out by Mark Steyn in National Review.  Draw your own conclusion.

We went with our friends Gene and Carole B to Alaska for a cruise with Lindblad Expeditions. You can see our photo on Flickr by clicking on the photos above and then the Alaska Photos section of the page. Or click here for a shortcut to the entire set.  If you watch the slideshow you won’t get to read our witty and informative commentary.
There were only 65 passengers on the boat all of whom were fun, interesting or at least tolerant of our antics. Gene and Carole were great traveling companions, the food was delicious, thanks to Bill and his staff, the service was wonderful and the naturalists made an amazing trip even more exciting and informative.
Click here to see the Lindblad Daily Expedition Reports from our trip

Try this link:

http://www.jacksonpollock.org/

Great fun!

There is no limit to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.

General George C. Marshall

On the Alaska cruise Lindblad Expeditions gave out free postcards.

This one of them. There are three others, if you click the photo above you can see them all.

Two of the cards although beautiful violate one of my rules of postcards that they meet the international size standard to be mailed at the reduced postcard rate. They can be no bigger than about 4 inches by 6 inches.
Lindblad is an excellent tour operator and I highly recommend them for adventure type travel. They have free postcards, excellent naturalist, very interesting guests and delicious food.

Do you have electric windows in your car?

Do you have electric windows in your house?

Why not?  Perhaps because they are not yet readily available.

This sounds like a business opportunity.  Electric windows in a house would be environmentally sound, save fossil fuel and make life a little bit easier especially for people with disabilities.

Electric windows in a house could be set to open and close based on temperature differences between the indoors and the outdoors saving electricity.  They could be hooked into the air conditioning unit so that the a/c couldn’t turn on until the windows were closed saving even more electricity.  The system could even have a storm override so that the windows would close automatically in bad weather whether anyone is at home or not.  It could all be operated from one switch per room, a whole house master switch or a remote master.  A remote master would allow people with disabilities to open and close windows with relative ease.

After the electric window systems are in mass production the increased cost of installation will be easily paid back by the energy saving on heating and cooling.  The convenience will be a bonus.

Still not a believer: consider that even many inexpensive cars now come with electric windows.  Why, because the cost differential between hand crank windows and electric windows is so low that it barely affects the cost of the car.  The cost in homes will be relatively more because of the cost of wiring but this is a knowable cost in new construction and manageable cost in the replacement window market.  The benefits will be tremendous including helping to fight “global warming”

What about safety?  My newish Acura has windows that go up and down automatically but that stop when they meet resistance.

Who will make this product?  Ideally it would be Pella Windows or one of the other high window manufacturers in cooperation with one of the big utilities like SCE.  In reality it will be a small company that makes high-end windows for rich peoples custom homes.  The design and testing costs will be high but within ten years this will be a multi billion-dollar market in new construction and even more in the replacement market.