Wired to Care

I have started reading 'Wired to Care' by Dev Patnaik. The author presents a compelling case for empathy. One particular sentence in chapter 1 has stuck with me. 'If companies can learn to put themselves in the shoes of their prospective customers they will be able to spot opportunities.'

Perhaps this explains why most successful companies have grown out of startups which started to solve a problem that bothered the founders. Google was born when Larry Page was frustrated with the poor quality of search results on erstwhile search engines. Apple was born when Steve Wozniak was frustrated with the limited User Interface capabilities of the Altair. Harley Davidson does not refer to its customers as customers; it calls them riders, for so many members of their own team are riders themselves. Harley Davidson is able to create and maintain its cult status because they build what they would like and then nurture their paying riders to be part of the community.

This should be Marketing 101. But it is amazing how many companies start to toe the Wall Street line and start focusing on quarterly results rather than on cool problems to solve. Hewlett Packard used to be a company of the geeks by the geeks for the geeks, starting out manufacturing electronic calculators and then going on to build the best laser printers and inkjet printers. Then the Wall Street types moved in a recommended a merger with Compaq, also a great company in its day. Ever since then, HP has been struggling to build mediocre products and unreliable printers, slowly but surely conceding market share to companies like Canon.

The book is re-affirming my faith in the Parsi way of doing business. Do good work, do it long enough and eventually it will pay in gold. The book also helped me define 'good work'. Put yourself in the shoes of the customer and then do what is right for you.