In the last post we discussed ephemeralization – doing more with less and its importance with respect to product related technologies. We sort of also saw how that applies to certain web products as well. For example Facebok – by allowing users to do more with one portal, has been perceived as an innovator and also gained a lot of mileage in terms of branding. Again, its easy to crowd features – what’s difficult to do is make the features relevant to A particular product and gradually expand the scope of the product in such a way that all features introduced get imbibed and accepted.

This post will also continue in the same vien and try and identify features that complement the user’s ‘doing more with less’.

One for sure is Mobility. Mobility is an obvious extension of doing more with less. If the device is not ON you all the time then you cannot make the device do more with less. Think about it this way – I think the iPod has been able to graduate to the iPod Touch with multiple features only because it is being carried around everywhere. The primary manifestation of ‘mobility’ is obviously the phones we carry or personal computers but I’d like you to think of ways we can expand ‘mobility’ with respect to technology.

We can do this in 2 ways. For products that are essentially non technological in nature, the concept of mobility can be applied as well. For example, if a Coke Bottle is available everywhere in India, including the most remote village, I would say that it is ‘mobile’. Thus if there is a decentralized distribution then one can say that the product is mobile as well.

Another concept of mobility is that of movement upwards (or downwards) relating to levels of society. So essentially one could also classify a product as ‘mobile’ if it aids upward strivers to move higher in society. With this view in mind one can easily say that the tiny sachet packets of products available in Rural India are probably as mobile as a mobile phone. Ironically enough, one could also say that the desktop computers being developed and marketed by RajeshJain’s Novatium are also extremely ‘mobile’. In India, we need to keep THIS concept of mobility in mind as well while innovating with our products. Really makes innovation in our country exciting – we are privileged; we have an added dimension.

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