Tim de Jardine | Blog

For the past few weeks I have been getting a morning coffee from Felix, a cafe in Wellington. The coffee at Felix is excellent, and the staff friendly; until today. You see, the inevitable has happened. Word has spread about Felix, their coffee and prompt service. Today I ordered my brew and about 15 extra people show up after me, most ordering take-away.

The system just broke.

While diners sit and get their coffee first, those who ordered takeout are last priority. This led to a crowd of people in the front entrance of the restaurant, giving the illusion that they have no spare seats!

The point is this:

Your system, must evolve to meet the demands of you customer. It would be simple for felix to prioritise orders to takeaway customers as diners sit down and talk, they are not as time concious. Takeaway customers stand and think.. They think about todays meeting, what they want to do when they get into the office, whether they are late for a meeting and why the hell they are waiting! We live in an impatent world.

Ironically I overheard the Barista comment to a colleague “dont they know there is a coffee shop down the road?”…right and you are a? Coffee Shop? Dont flatter your competition Felix, you’re obviously better.

Evolve.

UPDATE:

Looks like Felix have evolved their system to accomodate for the demand and got a new person to serve! Its better service and orders are prioritised for takeaway, great stuff.

Apple has achieved success with its closed model of computing. Apples vision of computing as an appliance (hardware + software) calls for a closed system.  This approach could be creating one of the companies greatest catch 22 situations.

With the released of the Iphone and the consumer reaction to the closed system of providers and software platform, this has seen an uprising in an open-source community creating thousands of applications for the Iphone at little or no charge.  The consumer reaction to the device was positive, but to AT & T and a closed system; quite the opposite.  

Now Apple faces itself with a catch 22 dilemma. Psystar a company that has just started up in California now offering reverse engineered cheap hardware that will run Apples operating system. In other words Mac clones.  This opens up Apples software and takes away Apples control.  Naturally Apple will file suit with Psystar.

Perhaps this approach is not the best?

The future will be Open Systems and I see parallels in the Iphones hyper adoption and Apples latest OSX issue.  If Apple wants to be a large player they could simply certify other hardware providers to run OSX and increase their marketshare.  To keep their niche Apple would reject the notion of open and play the way they always have; closed.

Only time will tell.

I had to visit the hospital today and while talking with a doctor there about trends in the medical industry he asked me a question about my medical history. I could not answer him and he could not look it up. The only person who would know is my usual Doctor. Why? Because of the thousands of private practices in New Zealand almost all of them are operating in silos. My information is treated as their IP and me as their customer. The only one who has access to this infomration is my doctor.

If I were to leave my current General Practitioner (GP) I would have to sign a paper authorising this and fax them it. Only then can the GP “release” MY information. Why is this you ask? they would lose funding by losing a patient (customer).

Picture a world where medical information is stored by a GP and then uploaded to a central secure and private repository. If I travel down to queenstown and need to go to the doctor they can access my full medical history in seconds.

As a patient, I’m not concerned with their funding, I want them to make an informed decision. Believe it or not some doctors are STILL operating with no information systems; that’s not informed.

Innovate or Die comes to mind. There is absolutely not enough reasons not to utilise these simple technologies.

The Doctor swore to me the system would never happen and it would never exist…I cited that internet banking should not exist and email shouldnt be stored online…but it is. At first ideas appear radical, then they are denied, then accepted and finally embraced as status-quo. This such idea falls into that category.

My file is My IP, my safety record; not the GP I belong to. I paid for that file, therefore I should be able to choose to make it available to all in times of need.