Electronic Paper–Finally a Commercial Proposition?

I’ve written several posts about the emergence of electronic ink / electronic paper technologies. In a nutshell, these technologies allow information to be displayed on a medium which is (a) thin, (b) flexible (to at least some degree), (c) readable in bright sunlight, and (d) power-efficient (power is used only when changing the page, not for display per se.) As I wrote in 2004:

“These technologies could have major implications for the display of long text documents, eliminating the current undesirable alternatives of reading it on the screen or going to the trouble of printing it out, and I think they could have tremendous influence on the future of the media industry (especially periodicals.)”

A couple of years ago, Sony launched the Sony eReader, a 9-ounce product that can store about 80 average-sized books. Downloading is via an i-Tunes-like interface from a PC. My perception is that eReader has not been a runaway success, although it has developed some niche markets–it seems to be popular, for instance, among fans of romance novels, especially really hot romance novels.

Today, Amazon launched a product called Kindle, which has some interesting attributes:

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Everybody Get On

Most people who have flown are familiar with the Southwest Airlines “cattle call”. For those who don’t know what it is, I will give a quick explanation.

Southwest doesn’t give assigned seats for their flights, rather they issue a letter to you, A B or C. When you get to the gate, they simply say “group A get on” and that is what happens. Those who check in earlier receive the preferential section and therefore the best shot at getting those invaluable exit row seats. The problem with this was that people would begin lining up hours in advance of the flight. They had separate lines for the A, B and C sections. If you were in the rear of the section A people, there is no shot at the more valuable seats, but at least you could still get an aisle or window.

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Management Advice From 1797

Yesterday I went to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age….not a great movie, but worth seeing, and better than you would think from reading the reviews. The battle scenes with the Armada reminded me of something written by a Spanish government official, which I posted about a couple of years ago. Don Domingo Perez de Grandallana was writing about the battle of Cape St Vincent, in 1797, but the factors he discusses were likely also major influences on the fate of the Armada, 200 years earlier. And they are also major influences today, 200 years later, on the fate of many efforts in business and government.

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“Recursive Self-Doubt” and Decisionmaking

A very insightful post.

Rob’s argument also partly explains why individuals tend to become increasingly risk-averse with age, since most people know more than they did when they were younger and can therefore more easily rationalize inaction. Perhaps, then, older people tend to be too risk-averse, and might accomplish more if they were more aware of this cognitive bias.

(via David Foster)

Prepaid Medical Service: An Interesting Business Model

Via Rachel comes a WSJ column about a physician who charges his patients flat, monthly rates rather than billing by appointment or procedure. This seems like it might be a good system. It resembles monthly plans for cellphone service, where service providers makes money in part because many subscribers use fewer than their allotted minutes, and subscribers who go over the limit pay a higher rate for the marginal minutes. (The fact that the prepaid medical plan doesn’t cover everything is its way of dealing with high-demand, high-cost customers who are analogous to cellphone users who exceed their allotted minutes.)

Naturally, the innovative physician’s business is under attack from regulators and insurance companies, but it appears that he is more than holding his own (one insurer is considering offering a plan to complement the prepaid service). It will be interesting to see if his business model is viable in the long term and in markets other than the one that he serves.