<Pre-trip preparation>
Before the Las Vegas trip, I had many thoughts.
What did I want to bring back?
1. Personally
On the tech side, since we had even filed some patent applications, I was interested in building a "smart space" based on sensors and near-field communication, and in big-data processing that could underpin "artificial intelligence."
On the operations and organizational-culture side, I was curious about Zappos. Not their success — I didn't care about that. I was curious about the process they were creating. I wanted to learn about the culture they build in order to make profits, and the city-planning project they were doing with those profits.
They started with what you might call a "buy-and-resell" shoe shopping mall — utterly generic and small-scale. But the process was different.
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At Zappos, instead of the familiar names "call center" or "customer center," there is a department called the Contact Center. It makes contact with customers through many channels — phone, email, live chat, and so on. But the Zappos Contact Center has no manual. There are no separate guidelines saying "when a customer requests X, answer Y." How to respond to a customer's order or question is left to the judgment of the Contact Center employee who takes the call. In other words, the employee faces the customer as one human to another. The "content" of the service therefore varies by person and situation. And this provides "an unforgettable experience" to both the employee and the customer. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh calls this "delivering happiness." Zappos is convinced that delivering happiness to employees and customers is the strongest strategy for guiding the company to long-term prosperity. |
Recently, I feel Eastern values and common sense are intersecting quite a lot with the Western ones.
For example, the kindness and consideration of Koreans — once called "the country of courteous people of the East" — seems to have faded considerably during the fast-growth era. Meanwhile, Westerners are absorbing Eastern cultural ideas — rites, the Tao, Buddhism — as attitudes. I was a bit sheepish at how, at even the slightest contact, they'd say "sorry," "thank you," "excuse me," and pause and wait with a gesture or a look.
The way they do business seems no different.
We develop services for the sake of marketing strategy and branding, running through the most common cost-benefit calculations along the way. They, on the other hand, think about the human side first and consider the user's feelings first.
Some say the services they run are strategies for branding; others say the city projects they do are a form of corporate social contribution.
Of course, I may be committing the error of generalization. All I want to say is — it isn't about them being flawed too, or about them being "just the same as us." The point is: if you recognize something worth learning in what they do, learn it.
Not self-criticism or the victim's escape of "they aren't all like that" — but a line of thought that might actually help you.
Somewhere along the way, serious thought has become a "rare and unusual" thing.
2. The company's perspective (as I see it)
The latest trends don't have an impact across all of society. I realize this even more as we run our Daejeon project. Information diffuses more slowly than you'd think.
New items (businesses or technologies) face three hurdles in the early days.
First, the cost of replacing familiar existing technology with new, even-more-convenient technology. Second, even when major media praises and validates the new tech (business), actual consumer purchase ratios are much smaller. Third, at the moment when the press and the public do recognize it, can you build the supply environment to meet that explosive demand?
This isn't only an IT issue. It's the same situation as the trucker's diner near my house.
After the 3–5 months it takes for customers to reconsider a new restaurant vs. the old one, regulars start to form, and then — suddenly, without warning — the number of customers coming through word-of-mouth surges.
To handle the demand they hire more people. But customers who felt inconvenienced, because of that bad memory, all start to stop coming. Sales trend down, and yet with the larger headcount, cash flow starts to wobble. Small emotional issues pile up, and people begin to leave the organization.
If you can't handle that explosive growth in demand, it produces negative outcomes.
So: adoption of new technology happens more slowly than expected; once it starts spreading it spreads uncontrollably; and whether you can manage that rapid expansion determines whether you get a "next."
Therefore, rather than chasing global trends, verifying the market you can create on the basis of your current operations is probably the most realistic way to secure a "next."
In other words: prepare in line with global trends, but execute on the basis of reality.
(That said, don't make the mistake of slacking on learning about new changes under the banner of "chasing reality." Everyone knows it's too late to pick up what you need at the moment you need it.)
3. The company's perspective (as the director seems to see it)
Before leaving, I was mulling over various things — should I build even a quick company-introduction microsite? Make QR-code or NFC stickers? Create global-style business cards? Etc.
The director, watching me struggle with all this, finally spoke up:
"Well... all of that's nice. But if they actually call the company, who's going to respond? Various worries are good, too, but in my experience, in the end only the feeling remains."
"In the end only the feeling remains"...
He once told me something like this.
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The Las Vegas experience, like projects, is also — in the end — a thing of feelings. If you want to convey this good emotion, or this lesson, from here, then whatever you're conveying, don't aim to satisfy the listener through the explanation itself. Aim instead at transferring the feeling you had at the time. How would you replace a feeling, and by what means? If they merely come away thinking "I want to go too," isn't that enough? |
And here — on a related note — is something else he said, which I also remember.
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Sincerity alone isn't an answer. Nor is grasping the facts and making them public always the key to solving a problem. The motive (the recognition of improvement or of a problem) is recognized via the other party, but what matters in the end lies in you, not in them. Only when you, yourself, feel it — not dependent on the other person — can it be left as meaning. In other words, what matters is how I felt. Before blaming the other person, you have to ask: it's all about how I use them — what's wrong with them? Before their state or their attitude, what matters is how I use them. Will you solve the situation by criticizing the other? Or reinterpret them and use them for some other purpose? How you overcome it is, in the end, your problem. What matters is how much the subject — you — feels. * Typically, subjects divide into three kinds: - Those who try to smooth it over from their own perspective - Those who understand but say there's no choice - Those who say "there's no choice, but I'll do it anyway" |
4. Pre-research
I worked on a schedule together with the manager so we could spend the trip meaningfully within the given days.
Also, to ask for advice from local agencies about the market situation and cross-border collaboration styles, I pulled a list of major agencies in Las Vegas from an American IT web-magazine site and sent them an email.
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702web adlava ideawork jenniferwebdesign |
http://702web.com http://www.adlava.com http://www.ideawork.com http://www.jenniferwebdesignlasvegas.com |
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Excuse me. We're a web agency located in Korea. To understand the new technology trends. We're going to visit the 2015 CES in Las Vegas. You see, It's not an easy choice to fly to visit the exhibition of foreign. So we want to take advantage of this visit more meaningful. Our company's goal is to be expanded into foreign as soon so, If possible, We want to take the opportunity to see a web agency in the United States. I searched your company through the Web Design Featured Site If you allowed to share general information such as market conditions Building process, programming languages, development environments, internal personnel configuration, and information related to labor such as non-operating Information about the type, orientation and customer requirements I'm going to introduce our company We're running a web agency in Korea We're creating a website mainly public institutions It's annual turnover is about 30 billion And there are 40 people in company. We could build a website. In addition Airlines VR, 3D rendering, i-Beacon, NFC, QRcode, CMS technology and manpower and then I'm going to develop a location-based products and services (web, app) It is concentrated "IT companies" in Korea. In addition, there is a location-based technology, based on a small area It would be a good opportunity if we have communication of technics. We want to know how to build a website in any way in the outside we think it would be able to get a chance to extend it's business the US. Companies that cooperate with us, You'll be able to get the opportunity to advance to Asia So, if you are interested in our proposal, contact please. We're going to stay in Las Vegas, January 7 to 13 If you can, It's better on January 11,12,13 days. If it's not possible, It's good to contact informations through the e-mail. It could be a good opportunity To each other Of course I know. Every country is different, so I think we should be careful because of different about culture and etiquette Perhaps If you think it is impolite, I apologize from the bottom of my heart. |
Sadly — whether it got marked as spam, whether the content was too thin, or whether it was too late to schedule meetings — I got no replies during the trip.
<After getting back..>
CES is not a place for showing private, unreleased products.
The products on display are already things you can see in the media.
What makes a world consumer-electronics expo like CES meaningful is that the product-development leads from each country can simultaneously meet offline and build a network together.
If it were merely a chance to try the products again, or to go "oh, there's also this product" as research — the cost of flying all the way there from another country would not really be worth it.
Still, looking at recent posts, most of them focus on comparing domestic vs. overseas manufacturers and evaluating their merits. I'd wish more capable experts would focus less on that take, and more on how each company's interests are shifting, or on analyzing products and technologies that could be applied within one's own company.
