Edson Perin
Before studying to be a journalist, I had a remarkable experience in another college with Philip Kotler’s marketing books , when I reached the first knowledge about the subject and, incidentally, I always tried to employ in my professional career. One of the unforgettable lessons I have studied in these books, which is part of the Kotler and other business philosophers thoughts, concerns what has been defined as “Marketing Myopia” – or a limited view of business.
An example of this is the famous case of the railway companies from England and United States, which – instead of seeing themselves as transport providers – define themselves as basic industries. The result of this was the emergence of car and truck companies that dethroned the powerful railway companies. Conclusion: if the railway companies had understood the historical moment in which they were inserted, they would have diversified their businesses and maintained their strength by selling cars.
And note that this happened at least 100 years before Steve Jobs, the Apple wizard, realized that he was not in an electronics equipment industry, but in the media industry! See how amazing is the power of knowledge and study to take us much further. Even if the studies are not formal, as in the case of Jobs, who never sat on a university bench.
This shows that history repeats itself, like the waves of the sea – which are not the same, but similar. So, consider that we are riding a new wave. Now, we are facing a new evolution, from the Internet to the Internet of Things and the Internet of Things to the Internet of Packaging (look at the IoP Journal there!), That is, the Internet of Goods, or the Internet of Supply Chains.
A question I ask: about this, what would Jobs do and what does Kotler say, from the height of his almost 90 years of age? I answer: I am not sure, but I venture to say what I think, taking them as inspiration.
Based on what I’ve read in my life, and I swear it wasn’t just cartoon magazines, technology providers should see themselves as business consultants and not as sellers of tags or equipment or software or services. Those who see themselves as sellers of “things” have less opportunity to win than sellers of ideas – and by “ideas” I mean “business consulting”.
Business consultants, in turn, have two hemispheres to design their vectors, realizing that there is a sphere of possibilities in the 3D world, seeing themselves from the same starting point – in the center – and as a function of time.
As vector hemispheres, imagine the hemispheres of the Earth, North and South. Consider that one half is set back and the other half is set advance. If you go south, the closer you are to 90º south, the more efficiently you will achieve success. On the other hand, similarly, the more tangent to the Equator, the slower the advance (in the South) or the regression (in the North) process. Or even, the total regression will be waiting for those who sail towards 90º North latitude.
In this imaginary world of forward and backward, we can Cartesianly assume that there are more effective business technologies in Antarctica than in Ecuador or, even worse, in Greenland. I am not saying that in Ecuador there is no technology. Only that the pager is in the North Pole and that the smartphone is in Antarctica. Got the reasoning?
What I mean, however, is that success does not depend purely and simply on whether the technology is via wireless radio tags (RFID or radio frequency identification) or Digital Printing or even QR Code or anything defined as “high tech”. Success depends on how the best technologies are combined to make better business and in the best possible way – that is, lower costs and high revenues.
If you participated in the IoP Journal World 2020 and got this message, I am extremely happy. If not, I hope you have been inspired now, through these poorly drawn lines. And I can assure you: the IoP Journal aims to guide more and more business minds closer to 90º south latitude.
Shall we sail together?
Edson Perin is the editor of the IoP Journal and founder of Netpress Books
