How to Lose €10B+

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.
Damon Runyon

According to Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, nearly 30,000 new products are introduced yearly, and 95% fail.

But there are ways that one can help increase the potential for product success. It involves determining the Value, Demand, and Cost of goods and services before they launch. Buyers reveal how they Value the product features and their Demand. It is up to producers to figure out those parameters, along with their Costs. Not looking at all those variables in advance is a recipe for financial disaster.

You’re bound to fail if you placed a heavy bet on a program with long odds against you– but you went ahead with it, got it into production, and rode it out until it ran out of steam after losing tens of billions of Euros. That is the conclusion I reached for the Airbus A380 in my paper, “CSI EU: Cost Scene Investigation,” for which I won the ICEEA 2023 Best Modeling and Case Studies Track Paper. This step-by-step analysis gives you the framework for creating models that enhance your chances of being that one in 20 product that succeeds. Below is the video of the presentation:

Introducing Hypernomics

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
Albert Einstein

The world oversimplifies.

Want more government revenue? Raise taxes. That’ll work. But why did Nevada make more cannabis tax revenue in 2019 than California with a tax rate of less than half of CA’s?

You’d like the safest helicopter in the world for the president? Put all the widgets on it. Oops, too many, it’s too expensive, Obama cancels it.

Do you like cool? I give you the DeLorean. But it’s under-powered. It won’t sell. The company goes bankrupt.

These are but a few cases where thin study led to bad outcomes. The solution for them and many more is to expand the analysis.

Don’t suppose you can get by with two dimensions when the problem begins with four.

Earlier, I called the field I found Multidimensional Economics. The research revealed that the forces within it exist beyond markets.

Thus, its new name: HYPERNOMICS.

Hyper-: Existing in more than three dimensions: hyperspace

-nomy-: A system of laws governing or a body of knowledge about a specified field: agronomy

-nomic: adj combining form

HYPERNOMICS studies forces working with and against each other in four or more dimensions.

#entrepreneurship #innovation #strategy #success #design

Problem? What Problem?

A mathematical problem should be difficult to entice us, yet not completely inaccessible. It should be a guidepost on the mazy paths to hidden truths. – David Hilbert

In a space-limited outdoor diner we visited a while ago, we observed the seating arrangement in A. They had two tables for two and ten for four. Seven of the four-place tables had parties of two. So, I wondered – is the setup they had the best for the crowd they faced?

A report I found (see below) noted that restaurant parties of two outnumber four-person parties by over two to one. On average, there should be more tables set up for couples than for larger groups.

But the average condition may not be the usual one. Or the one they faced.

What to do?

Suppose the four left-most tables were modular. The establishment could separate them into eight two-place setups. Then they could seat all seven of their two-person parties and put a two-top in storage. Their capacity would go down by two (at least temporarily), but, in the case shown, occupancy could go up by 30%, as we see in B.

Restaurants make money through occupancy, not capacity. It’s important to know what problem you need to solve.

#sales #demand #restaurants #business #success #management #problemsolving

Restaurant Math – Thin Odds

You spend your life waiting for a moment that just don’t come/Well, don’t waste your time waiting – Bruce Springsteen, Badlands

You know the feeling you get when you walk up to a roulette wheel in a casino, place a $100 on 00, it comes up, you win $3,500, and then you let it ride on 00, hit it again, and walk out with $122,500? No? Me either.

The reason I don’t is that while it’s possible to come up with that combination, the chance of that happening on a 38-pocket wheel is 1/38 * 1/38 = 1/1,444 = 0.00069, about 7 times in 10,000 tries.

But that is more than twice as likely as the probability of a restaurant result I recently witnessed.

As we left a brewery, it had four open tables; each sat eight, B. Four parties waited, C, held in place by their policy not to seat parties of four or fewer in tables for eight. But, the chance of filling them up according to their plan and the data, A, is 0.13^4 = 0.00028, less than half that of our roulette gambit.

Meanwhile, those people stayed hungry. They and the restaurant both suffered.

We are, all of us, always playing games of chance. It pays to know the odds. Anybody up for blackjack?

#business #success #management #probability #sales #restaurant

Finding Your Niche

Wee Willie Keeler knew a thing or two about baseball. The Hall of Famer still holds the National League hitting streak record, 45 games over two seasons. He summed up his approach with “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.” It turns out that’s sound advice for entering a market, too.

In the early 1970s, the airline industry embraced the then-new Boeing 747 wide-body. Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas both wanted some twin-aisle profits as well. They came up with the L-1011 and DC-10, respectively. While they had obvious design differences, from the standpoint of their customer airlines, they were virtually identical, with highly similar specifications and prices. Neither had a corner in the market – they shared the same spot, and would have to split the sales.

Lockheed only sold 250 L-1011s; its break-even point was 500 units. With a lower target, McDonnell-Douglas managed to squeak past its break-even value of 438 planes, as it sold 446 DC-10s, eventually offering engine options and added range to distinguish it from the L-1011.

But neither model was a financial triumph.

Nothing guarantees success in the market.

But mimicking the competition reduces your chances.

#innovation #newproduct #business #success #branding #competition #entrepreneurship