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Every business faces increased competition and reduced margins.

The obvious solution is to has innovation to come out with new offerings. But that is not enough.

Your innovation needs to stand out among the myriad of choices available. In fact, today customers are so overwhelmed with choices that a good value-adding service is to help customer decide and choose the right one. More choices increases stress and result in poorer decisions being made.  See Sheena Iyengar on the art of choosing | Video on TED.com and Choices could be Bad – Dummies are right!

Hence we need, not just more features and functions in our innovation, but to learn how to  be more meaningfully differentiated.

Beginning with the correct understanding of innovation as business value creation rather than just a creative idea or a new product or service, understanding the value  mind set of customers, going through the systematized method(BVITS ideas generation, BvOtech’s Business Model Template, Customer Experience Feature Matrix, Differentiation Chart & Cross, Simplified & Intensified Map) , and process (Innovation is also a process!), and using the framework proposed with maximized value with  minimized costs, you can master the know how to create the new business model and delivering the wow customer experience and thereby achieve sustainable and breakthrough innovations on demand.

High Returns and Not Just High Value

Most people can easily list down a number of key features that iPad or iPhone lack. Most iPad killers that are coming out stress on more functions, more powerful, bigger here and better there. They seems to forget that

1. for every feature or function added, there is a cost to it.
2. for every feature added, it is another item to list of choices . Is this the feature that Customer really desired and not be further confused?
3. for every feature added, it consumes power and kills battery life. Battery life is a KEY feature for mobile devices. It is easy to see that the Apple Killers usually do not have battery that last 6 hrs. iPad has it as 10hours. New Amazon Kindle has it as 1 month!
4. for every feature added, it may also add extra weight – directly with additional component, or indirectly for increased battery size.
5. for every feature added, it increases the possibility of bug and reduces reliability

Payoff  or Returns = Value Customer willing to Pay – Cost of Production (features)

Adding features may or may not increases the value but definitely increases the cost of production and hence reduces the possibility of high payoff.  I admired Apple Inc for getting the optimizing this balance, maximum value and minimum costs of production, i.e. maximizing the payoff.

The Secret – Simplify & Intensified

I think the secret is to simplify the list of features, more is not merrier, to those that bring significant and meaningful value to the customers. A simplified and integrated list of features make for greater ease of use end elegance, reliability and low costs (See 10 Design Rules for the Dummies.).

The other is “Intensified” the difference against the competitor. For example, battery life of the mobile device, a day of outdoor use is about 8-10 hours.  I am glad that  the new Amazon Kindle extends the life from 1 week to 1 month. It may be marginal after 24 hours of batter life, but it creates an unforgettable impression. Battery life is not a concern any more.

Chinese are practical people. They do things to achieve outcomes – either gaining good fortune or to prevent losses and disaster. The principle of life for the Chinese is “趋吉避凶 go after good fortune (i.e. blessings, not just money. The Hebrew word shalom, meaning complete or peace in body soul and spirit may be a closer meaning) and stay away from disaster. Such principle comes from the Ancient Chinese I-Ching philosophy.

Chinese Management Guru and Scholar Zeng Shi Jiang has very good speech on this 易经的奥秘(15)超越吉凶 易经 曾仕强 However, it is in mandarin. He is encouraging people to do better, going beyond gain & loss, fortune & disaster, to seek after what is right and wrong and do the right thing and the right time in the right situation for the right cause. In the speech, he highlighted 4 outcomes of I-Ching, which are 吉凶悔吝。When we are in good fortune 吉, we tend to relax and commit error like over drinking and getting lazy. If we are alert, we will 悔 repent and move back to good fortune. However, if we just attribute our failure to others, blaming 吝, and take no corrective actions, we will end up in disaster 凶.

In my study of I-Ching, I find there are actually nine states or outcomes. Here is the mind-map of the nine outcomes:

I-Ching has a set of strategies, described in 64 hexagrams and 384 stage-lines telling in what situations, taking what actions, will lead to what kind of outcomes.

The fundamental principle is seeking after Truth and persevere in Righteousness and keeping purity.

I put this outcome at the center. We don’t talk about gain or loss, just about what is true and right and pure. Prof Zeng said that gain and loss is from man’s point of view. For the view of nature or heaven & earth, there is no gain or loss attributed to any event. It is just natural events, the usual and normal sequences of life that go on and on, seasons after seasons.

Nevertheless, we are human living in this world. Our actions will produce result that bring gain or loss to ourselves and our community.  In this present globalization, our actions affect the world.

悔 Repent & Correct: Deviation from truth bring you down the part of disaster. However, if we detect early and repent, and take corrective action, we will be building on the truth and walking on the path of truth and righteousness to abundance and progress. This is why I put ‘Repentance’ on the gain side rather than on the loss side. Repentance is not just saying sorry but taking corrective actions to move in the right path.

利 Advantage / Benefit: Moving on the right path will us in an advantageous or beneficial position. Knowing is not go enough and we must choose to take the right action.

亨 Flow / Progress: A key concept in I-Ching is flow, or smooth, unobstructed flow of progress.  I actually have difficulty deciding to put this at the top above 吉 Gain / Fortune or not. I think flow, or progress is a more important concept that just good fortune. Abundance is a stagnation. Flow is an ever progressing state.

吉 Gain/Blessing / Fortune: As explained above, 吉 Gain / Fortune is more than just money. A closer term for the present may be 福 blessing. A concept of abundance, harmony, joy, complete, for lot of people together. If this is the concept, I will put it at the top.

The 2nd Principle of I-Ching is then Build on the Truth and Attain Blessing of Harmony & Completeness & Abundance.

The world has been very defect fixing focus. Partly caused by Medicine of fixing sickness and the Total Quality Movement. There is nothing wrong with defect fixing and sickness curing. They are necessary. But they are not enough. Fixing defects/sickness bring to normal or average. It does not make you a champion. Chinese medicine in the long past has also concentrated on keeping a healthy and long life. 吃补 eating supplements for good health is a long term and common Chinese practice. Psychology has moved from defect fixing into Positive Psychology. Appreciative Inquiry practice is method based on building on your strength to become champions rather than focusing on fixing weakness and defects.

Nevertheless, the world is not perfect and there are calamities and disasters that are beyond our human control. Controllable disasters are under our responsibilities to prevent them and I-Ching has must to tell how to prevent them. I-Ching also teaches us how to handle non-controllable disasters, risk management, that we should anticipate and minimize their impacts. So the

third principle of I-Ching is about anticipating, preventing disasters and minimizing their impact.

It begins with

咎 Fault or Error. Controllable disasters do not just happen (even uncontrollable earth quakes can be predicted). Some cracks or faults happen first. We must be watchful and be aware of them first. Take action before it become serious. But a typical reaction of human being to discovered faults or mistakes is to blame others.

吝 Remorse but Blame: If we are just sorry for the bad consequences of the fault and the blame others for causing it, then we will not take any corrective action on our parts. What will the situation become. Someone says “Madness/Stupidity is expecting a different result from doing the same thing”. Not taking corrective action will result in 厉 Danger.

厉 Danger: Uncorrected fault over time will become a danger. The cracks and widen and deepen. The problems are more apparent and obvious. There is little accuse for not taking action. But strangely, people just ignore the warning. This may be due to interest “xbody” story.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.
Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.
Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done

凶 Loss / Disaster: The eventual happens – a big disaster. Actually, it could have been prevented is the teaching of I-Ching has been followed. I-Ching teaches 居安思危 – when in peace we think about the danger. We takes steps to prevent it and also to minimize its impact in case it does happen.

Hope you have gain a good understanding on the purpose of i-Ching and go into the details and learn about the strategies to build on the way of truth and righteousness to harmony and abundance and at the same time preventing disasters.

You may want to start with Learning from I-Ching Part 06 Steps for Application.

64未济 Uncompleted – Finished it Wisely & Boldly.

未济        火水未济       离上坎

This hexagram has Fire trigram on top of Water trigram. Fire has yet to be put out by water signifying ‘yet to complete’, uncompleted or unfinished. The six lines are all in wrong positions (vs 63 Completed) and need to bring them to right positions to be completed. This hexagram represents spring, coming out of winter.

Description:

1. 亨: smooth flow of progress
2. 小狐汔济，濡其尾，无攸利: A little fox nearing the edge of stream in the crossing. It has its tail submerged. There is nothing beneficial to do (except to continue the present journey to completion).

Textual Commentary:

彖曰：未济，亨；柔得中也。 小狐汔济，未出中也。  濡其尾，无攸利；  不续终也。 虽不当位，刚柔应也。

Uncompleted is smooth progress. The soft gained central position. A little fox crossing and getting near the edge of stream. It immerses its tail. There is nothing beneficial to do. Not continuing to end means ending in failure. Though the positions are incorrect but they work together.

Pictorial Commentary: 象曰：火在水上，未济；君子以慎辨物居方。

Fire on top of water is uncompleted. Wise man carefully discern the situations and decide its position and direction to follow.

Moral Teachings:

1. Uncompleted means there is smooth of progress to be made.
2. It is important not to give up when we are close. Complete this task first. Nothing else is beneficial until we finish this one and reaches the shore. Don’t start new project until we complete this current one.
3. Study and analyze the situations, find the right positions and order of things, take actions to move in the right direction to get all positions right.

Stage 1 Begin Six: Wet the tail. There is blame and regrets. 初六：濡其尾，吝。
The pictorial commentary explains that the tail got wet is due to lack of knowledge, especially of the end points. 象曰：濡其尾，亦不知极也。

Lacking knowledge, and don’t know where are the end points and direction to move will result in us spending all the time in water and getting our tails submerged. We can stay forever in water. We need to reach the shore. Hence our socking in water situation is pitiful. Do some situation analysis and plan to move somewhere.  There is a same “wetting the tail” situation in 63 Complete line 1. That line has no fault because we know what we are doing there.

Stage 2 Second Nine: Drag the wheels. Perseverance in righteousness is good fortune. 九二：曳其轮，贞吉。
The pictorial commentary explains that righteous conduct brings fortune. 象曰：九二贞吉，中以行正也。

We have make progress in stage 2. We pursue righteousness and drag our wheels out of the mud. We know where we are doing and what we are doing. It is good fortune.

Stage 3 Third Six: Uncompleted. Progressing is disaster. It is beneficial for cross great river. 六三：未济，征凶，利涉大川。
The pictorial commentary explains the danger comes from incorrect positioning. 象曰：未济征凶，位不当也。

We are correcting a bad positioning. There will always be danger of ending in disaster. But we must overcome the danger to accomplish great things. We cannot fear the danger and then give up. We just have to face the danger with wisdom, caution and courage. Since we may lack the ability and resources. It is best to get and mobilize others to help us to work together for a worthy project. Great accomplishment is about putting the wrong things right. Offering new and great benefits that was not there. Improving fuel efficiencies and developing green energy. Eliminating the CO2 and helping to solve the global warming. Extending the healthy life and curing major illness etc. etc. All means lots of challenges and risks. It likely beyond the effort of a single person. But he can starts and get others to join.

Stage 4 Forth Nine: Perseverance in righteousness brings fortune. There is no regrets. Surprise the Devil’s country by attack it. For three years, there are rewards from the great Kingdom. 九四：贞吉，悔亡，震用伐鬼方，三年有赏于大国。
The pictorial commentary explains the good fortune and no regrets comes from execution of our mission. 象曰：贞吉悔亡，志行也。

We take up the challenge of accomplish the great worthy project and the righteous cause. With the support and help of the great others, we surprise and shock the opposition by our aggressive attack.

Stage 5 Fifth Six: Perseverance in righteousness brings good fortune. There is no regrets. The light of integrity and sincerity of the wise men shines. Good fortune. 六五：贞吉，无悔，君子之光，有孚，吉。
The pictorial commentary explains that the light of the wise men are brightly shining and bring forth good fortune 象曰：君子之光，其晖吉也。

Opposition overcome. The light of righteousness, integrity, and sincerity shines forth through out the country and bringing forth benefits and blessings for all to enjoy. This is great accomplishment.

Stage 6 Top Nine: Celebration with drinking of wine in confidence. There is no fault. But if one wet his head, he looses his right conduct. 上九：有孚于饮酒，无咎，濡其首，有孚失是。
The commentary explains that wetting the head is showing lack of self control. 象曰：饮酒濡首，亦不知节也。

Celebration of success, drinking of wine, has not fault. It is only at fault if one loose one self-control by getting drunk – filling our head with wine!

The first three lines talk about water and the last three lines talk about the light of fire.

Summary

1. Don’t give up until one completes the task.
2. Analyze the situations.  Find the right positions. Take actions to move in the direction and get all the positions right.
3. Accomplish this worthy project is good enough (see below). No need to be distracted with other things.

Wisdom from the Stage Lines:

1. Wet the Tail. Wandering in water. Pitiful. Do SWOT and move with purpose and direction.
2. In the Mud. Drags the wheel and move in the right direction. Spend the effort wisely.
3. Crossing Great River. No great accomplishment comes easily. Cautiously overcome the danger and move on. Get help from others to do together.
4. Shock the Opposition. Aggressive accomplish the righteous cause with help from others. Shock and overcome the opposition.
5. Shinning Light. Mission accomplished. Light of integrity and righteousness shine though out the land and bring benefits to all.
6. Maintain the Light. Celebrating success with wine is OK. Don’t go overboard and be drunk.