Pain and Gains_herbal hair dye

(http://hairstylesok.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html)

Lady gaga lay down on the bed, think about her hair style next day. She has tons of concerns recently, which ask her to change some amazing style to make fans crazy. Also, her surprising dress and hair style are the most attractive factors to make her top exposure. However, she had to spend more than three hours every time to change her hair color and she needs to change color once a week or more. It’s really time consuming, and she feels sitting on the chair without move for three hours is really painful. Also if somehow the color is not what she wanted, she needs to recolor and endure three hours torment again, after all, as a super star, keeping fashion is the first thing she needs to concern. What’s more, she starts to realize that her hair is becoming dry and easily bifurcate due to frequently colorize. She also heard that every hair dye in current market is more or less harmful to health. She is so worried that she will get some disease someday just because of the chemical compositions in hair dye.  

Our product can perfectly hit the needs for actors or actresses, like Lady Gaga, who need to change their hair style often, and fashion youth who would like to try some "crazy" color on their head often. Herbal temporary hair dye is a hair dye that is purely made by herbal and contains no harmful compositions. It also can be washed off by normal shampoo, which means you can try different color every day. You can simply dye hair by yourself in just 10 mins. Unlike some other hair dye, like O'real, this product is completely harmfulness for health and hair, and could easily dye on or wash off. Customers can try some "crazy" color that would never show up on other brands without worry about whether they would not like the color tomorrow or some health issues. 

PAINS	GAINS
often colorizing make hair dry	totally herbal made and no harmful compositions
risk of choosing wrong color	can be easily washed off and change new color; can choose some crazy color
time consuming	just take 10 mins and can be totally DIY
money cost	product cheap and DIY save service fee
bad for health	totally herbal made and no harmful compositions

A3—How a piece of paper solve mass problems

Every time when I face with problems, I feel totally mass. Too many things come together and I even cannot find out one solution. But when I calm down and think about the whole situation from the beginning, I find that things are becoming clear. I think Toyota give us a theory about how to solve problem from the deep inside. And I really like this way to analysis problem, making things standard, detail, clear and in time.

Standard

All problems showing on one A3 size page and making sure all problems are understand by everyone is really not an easy thing. However, Toyota figured out this way and changes every sentence into symbols, graphs and simple words. Those simplest express ways can make sure everyone, no matter engineer or officer, can understand where the problems are, how to solve them, and how efficiency they have to be.

Detail

Root cause analysis is the part I like most. The best way to find out suitable solution is to find out every detail factor which possible leads to this problem. I tried to put myself on Potter’s position at first, and I only can think out a few solutions which are not effective enough. However, when I saw the “root cause” A3 showed about current condition, I felt much more clearly about what to do next. Since it defined every possible cause so clearly and detailed, the solution it generated would be more relevant.

Clear

When we faced to a huge problem, one thing most possible happened is unclear responsible division, which means that each department would pass the buck to each other.  If we look at A3, however, we can see that each department which related to this problem needs to not only analysis the causes and proposed countermeasures, but also give take response during whole solute process.

In time

Just as Toyota said “no problem is a problem”, we need to always get prepared to every possible new problem.  A3 is a continuous improvement learning model. What’s more, its standard, detail, and clear characteristics make further problem solving easy.

Reference:

Toyota's Secret: The A3 Report, John Shook, http://www.thequalityportal.com/notes/A3Shook.pdf

How Wechat use the 7 sources of innovation opportunity

WeChat, the most popular Chinese IM tool, just had its 100 million users in March 2012. It gained 50 million users within first lunch year without any ads. Why it could be such successful in China?

Wechat is an IM tool that users can use it to send voice, images, and texts, video, and everything we want to share in Digital Age. If we looked at 7 sources of Innovation, which are the unexpected, incongruities, process needs, industry and market structure, demographics, changes in perception, and new knowledge, we can see that Wechat caught some of these opportunities, and make these opportunities into real.

Before Wechat, QQ dominated Chinese IM market. It owned 600 million users based on the growing of past 10 years. However, with the growing pace of people’s steps, and the eager of sharing whenever and wherever, QQ, which is a pure typing IM cannot feed the need of convenience from customers. (Process needs) At the same time, 3G and smart phone entered people’s lives. (New knowledge) People didn’t need to sit in front of computer and chat with others anymore. (Industry and market structure) Customers need a product that allows them to chat while walking, eating, and driving, etc. Then Tencent Co. jumped out and said: I had a new product which could satisfy all your needs and you can chat by just pressing one button, then you could talk in time whoever, whenever, and wherever. At the beginning, people still concerned about whether it’s cost much data when sending voice. But soon they found that Wechat can even save data compare to QQ since it costs only 2.4k/hr to run in the background. (Incongruities) Wechat never stop innovation after success. Face to the youth who want to make friends on IM, (Demographics) Wechat created a function that people can shake their phones and then find the other people who are shaking phones at the same time. As we know, communication need is always the main need for human, and in modern society, people have less chance to go out and social, then they have to communicate and make friends online. That’s why the social media is so popular nowadays. Based on this fact, Wechat includes a mini social media in it and people can share personal information and interesting things through Wechat. This function attracts more people to make friends on Wechat by shaking phones and search information.

Wechat recently cooperate with some Weibo (Chinese Twitter) famous accounts, such as Collection of jokes. People can add these accounts to friends list and they can receive push information from them. (e.l. they can receive three joke messages each day through Wechat if they add Collection of jokes as friend) This function gives Wechat more chances to earn income.

Although Wechat is successful in China, compare to QQ, it still has less market share. And some people said they already tired of Wechat since it couldn’t give us more creative functions. So innovation is still a big challenge in front of Wechat.

Google SWOT

Strength:

Google’s simple page makes it easier for customers to find search bar easily, which they actually want to find at Google. If we see Yahoo’s search page, we can see too many things appeared on one page. That would defocus customers’ concentration, and as a result, make customers feel annoyed. Compare to other search engine, we cannot find ads pictures on Google result pages also. Simple is what Google stand for for customers. Also, I like changed styles of Google logo soooo much! It's more like a art design and always give me surprise.

High tech is also a strength since every result searched by Google is pure automatically and would be ranked by clicks. This would make the search more accurate and fed what customers exactly needs.

Google also have high income, which can give them more power to run company well and invest new technologies, and good image, which can bring Google plenty of talents.  The good enterprise culture and comfortable work environment are also attractive. I heard about that “Googlers” can swims and work out in their office and have cookies for free every day! And nobody would push them to work. They can wear whatever they like, do whatever they want in their office! Wow!

Weakness:

Since Google has simple page, they cannot add too many features on home page, which means, people can hardly reach their new product although Google try very hard to create more Google products. However, Google cannot add these products on home page easily since people already get used to its simple images. Google will lose costomers by careless changes.

What's more, fewer ads will lead to fewer revenue.

Opportunities:

Recently Google bought MOTO, that make Google more competitive. Google can develop its acquisition strategy and be stronger.   

Google developed and released Android System really successfully. It became the most popular mobile system now. If Google make some more development on Android and cooperate with mobile companies appropriate, it will generate more market share.  

Treads:

There are so many search engine appeared recent year, and how to keep strength is critical for Google. Bing- which is owned by Microsoft could bring higher quality of pictures and product search. Baidu- which is Chinese Google, benefit by government support and own market share overwhelming. How to compete with those different kinds of search companies is quite important to Google.

Also, almost 90% of Google’s revenue came from searching, but the growth of market is slowing down. Google need to think about another good method to feed itself as soon as possible.