Customization of manufactured products has been around for decades and has really taken off with computerization and the ability to easily program machines to sequence complex actions with limited human intervention.  

Type in your waist size, in-seam, length, and style and jeans made to fit every inch of you will be delivered to your door step in a few days. Cars, houses, and whatever else we want to get altered or retrofitted can be made to order at minimal cost.  So what’s next? What’s next are whole packages made to fit your identity and life style, so you don’t have to worry about the details. Concepts that combine different functions and save time will catch on, that’s why the Blackberry and iPhones are big hits today. And coming down the customization pike is nano­technology which will shift the paradigm.

Another manifestation of extreme customization now being sold is the “full service package,” soup to nuts. A new sub-division of houses of various styles from French Regency to British Country Style sitting side by side each fully furnished to that theme, with accompanying music system, matching kitchen utensils, linen, computer network entirely set up and ready to move in. What they have in common, is the price tag of an affordable $10 million that only few will be able to afford, but a large few. This scenario was built and sold in Oceanfront 23 miles south of Santa Monica.  Only 79 houses were built but 1,500 people from 4 continents were vying to get one of these 79 houses, OK mansions.

How and where will this theme of Extreme customization show up? And why? Anything that simplifies life and saves time in the 24/7 lifestyle will have a niche in the market. It will show up everywhere because it takes a lot less time to buy a package of related items (one stop shopping taken to its limit) than it does to buy each item individually. Where do Larry Page and Sergey Brin the founders of Google like to shop for clothes? Find out inside…clue. Not on the web. What are some trends to expect from this theme and what are some of the opportunities?

AIR TRAVEL

Dating in Rows 24-37 A-K

Customer-ized Extras

Emerging Trends:

As travel reservations are made on-line more often (to survive, travel agents need to become a lot more specialized or get into innovative partnerships with other services) the possibilities for on-line customizations get easier and easier and many for no added cost. But for a price. Eh? 

Sections of a plane especially on longer flights could be designated “talking” or “do not disturb”. In the former you can customize further, ask to be seated next to someone interested in Celtics basketball and into Kundalini Yoga, so that you already know you have “center forwards and chakras” in common. And you may decide to communicate via i-phone or e-mail before your flight when you book on-line. No need for breaking the awkward ice with, “excuse my elbow.” Instead you can go; “hello Ming!  I am Prataap.”

Similar concepts could also apply to cruises, commuter trains, restaurants, and in shopping malls where pre-programmed PDA/cell phone alerts sound when you pass someone who also loves Thai food, tennis, and hiking in Tibet. You can check your personal digital assistant then look the person over and decide; stop and chat or keep walking? Forget cutting coupons, items of your preference that are on sale will appear on your PDA as you walk by, window shopping will never be the same again.

Next Opportunities:

Customizing in the airline industry has been happening but the shift is towards polarization. 

Customizations on flights are going to follow the trend of Extreme Polarization.  When in First Class on Emirates and Singapore Airlines you’ll have the luxury of a separate cabin while in the cattle car you’ll pay for everything beyond the seat. Think of the endless opportunities for extras. Extra for extra leg room (I kid you not), extra for a cell phone free section, extra for a shot of pure oxygen to reverse the effects of jet lag. Endless extras to be offered. Your opportunity to create and sell the extras!!  

Virgin airlines  pioneered the idea of everyone  flying in “upper class.” Now,in their continuing effort to make you feel special, they’ve coined the term “jetrosexuals”.  Virgin prides itself in giving everyone some extras to customize their experience. Even while airlines are cutting back, I see that as a trend that is catching on. It will not come free,  most (like showers and massages) will come at a price, others (like a hit of oxygen before landing) will become standard, part of the price.  Obvious real opportunities exist for airlines, computer programmers, and travelers alike to customize air travel all over again.

On charter flights to vacation destinations, rows 24-36 could be for those who have asked to be matched with others,based on information provided during booking, where they are staying, interests, etc. so that they can choose to meet fellow travelers en-route with similar interests to hike, sail and eat out together.  Hook up and enjoy the vacation before it starts!! And just when you thought that was wild enough, a German firm OssiUrlaub.de introduced “nude” flights in Germany this July!!  An all nude flight at 30,000 ft. Now that is customization!!

A number of exciting opportunities exist for those who can create low cost ways of customizing air travel such as providing 10 minute neck massages on long flights, booked in advance when they make their reservation on line. Or how about providing basic language lessons on Channel 90n during the long flights between countries. A lot can be learnt on a 20 hour flight from Chicago to Tokyo, and if you fly that route often enough you might even learn enough Japanese to muster up the courage to order fugu by the third trip.   

The possibility for customizing air travel has just begun, and when it can be done at little or no cost, the possibilities are endless.  But count on the airlines to make money off of it….or you can do an end run around them and bring your own customized meal, seat massager, DVD player ( as many do today) or be the provider to the airlines  for some of the next generation of extras for them to sell.

Let your imagination run wild.  

Create the future and smell the roses, it’s your move!

PRODUCTS/SERVICES

JUST IN TIME CATALOGS

Creating services and products that fit….exactly !

Emerging Trends:

Computer “bots” at various e-business sites that assemble products on your command and create a custom catalog delivered to you based on your current tastes and needs are already possible and coming to a web site near you.  And of course, the catalog is downloadable. First generation of “bots” that are relatively crude are available and places like gurunet.com act as the clearing house, look for the next generation to be a lot more sophisticated. The opportunities for personalized services are endless.  Key is, “personalized.”

Products range from multi-flex furniture to made-to-suit online catalogs designed for just who you are and just what you like.  The next stage of product evolution will have the ability to “sense” and change with your changing tastes and desires and moods. Modular furniture, but with a twist will reappear. Check out Outgang.com. A chair that can be stretched or shrunk or easily modified to fit different room dimensions and interior designs or that simply vanish at a press of a button into a kit of parts.  Shoes that “mold” to exactly fit your EE or 61/2 size feet are here in their crude forms but will be more than a fad and redefine footwear in the next 2-5 years. Top athletes already have them. Design your own urban chic bag from recycled tarp at  freitag.ch. Clothes with sensors that measure your body temp and outside temp and find the right temperature to maintain body heat or release excess heat are being tested as we speak.

Next Opportunities:

Take real estate for example; the smart way to create the next concept in extreme customized residential  buildings  is not just “full service” meaning concierge and valet parking; but really full service.  

These buildings will be highly flexible and fully wired digitally to maximize flexibility and be modified as needed, you figure out the new layout and while you are on vacation for the week in Kumarakom, Kerala, the building management will reconfigure your condo and its furnishing.  Soon buildings will be built to be customized over time. It is simply the more sustainable model. 

These buildings will challenge existing zoning and land use concepts and regulations as they mix and change various uses within one building over time: gyms, apartments, work spaces, conference centers, retail, restaurants, theme centers, you name what you want. In these buildings, if you need secretarial help or a live-in maid for a week they can easily arrange that for you. Need a crash course in French they will find the tutor for you or locate the best virtual Tai-Chi avatar to help you get that flow back. Bottom line is everyone will want services that simplify his or her lives but tailored to their needs. The more affluent will demand it and pay for it.

So if you are one of these who has a specialized niche product or service that is a natural fit into this mix, you may want to offer your services directly through Trump to the new occupants of the next Trump Towers. Or if you are a chef and want flexible hours, become a “home chef’. But be prepared to offer soup to nuts. Offer to cook, but also to organize the menu, buy the  fresh ingredients, and cook everyday or once a week, offer to deliver a freshly cooked different pre-fixed meal every day. Throw in 2 DVDs, the person’s favorite flowers, along with the meal based on the client’s pre-selected list of preferences, occasion appropriate table cloth, napkins and candles. Discreetly tuck in the NY Times review of the movie and some esoteric information on the flowers and the ingredients in the meal.

Personalization and convenience are the two key words that define the kind of flexibility these services will provide through design and services.  Early prototypes of the customized workplace are being developed by architects all over the world and some like Thompson and Rose architects of Cambridge (Business Week 2000) have pretty good working models of the “nomadic work shells” where you may find yourself tomorrow. A peak into the layout of MIT’s Media Lab  will give you another glimpse of the egalitarian (chaotic) nature of the coming workspaces; part living room, part cubicle, part restaurant, part agora.

If you are a retailer then look at Bethesda, Maryland or look where the demographics may be similar to see where this trend may appear within your metropolitan area. The trend here is the “anti-chain” chain stores, with names like Ancient Rhythms, Outrage Cafe, and Fitigues. Little boutique and individualized stores that cater to the,” too refined to shop at the mall types” in suburbia who want the handcrafted, even it is mass produced in India, China or Malayasia. In the Indian villages where a lot of these products are made, they even have a saying for the look of this type of product, “old like”.  Here too polarization is the underlying trend.

The large Walmarts and the small niche boutique stores will both thrive. Figure out where your opportunity lies. The right, crafted aged look sells! Whether it is the decor of the coffee shop or home wares products or furniture. This trend is tied to the rate of change in technology and other aspects of life. People want names, products and personalized services that represent a slower pace, that are reminiscent of an old and familiar age.   According to the WSJ ( Jan 19, 2008) Larry Page and Sergey Brin founders of Google, shop at MAC (Modern Appealing Clothing) in SF. “MAC looks like a refined warehouse, retrofitted in green”.  Selling T-shirts for $60 made of “road kill acrylic.”  Handmade, independent labels. No cash registers or credit card machines in sight.  Once again, the Starbucks lounge approach to shopping.  Exterior color & designs of cars will become completely personalized. Think of a shrink wrapped  car exterior with your personal logo,name or any design you want !!! Yet another source of info overload for the public and one more opportunity for personalized brand making.  People are simultaneously seeking the fine balance between stability and novelty in their environment.

Why the sudden move to a living room arrangement to your favorite coffee shop or now even at banks? It somehow balances things to be sitting on a leather deco sofa at a reproduction Arts and Crafts table and surfing the Internet and sipping Latte at Muchobucks Cafe while you use your cell phone to purchase an airline ticket over the web. Products and services that custom fit the high need for balance in people’s net paced lives will be highly sought after for the next 10 years.

I am sitting in a monastery on a silent retreat writing this! Talk of personalized balance.

Let your imagination run wild.

Create the future and smell the roses, it’s your move!

BILLIONAIRES

Meaning For Sale

Giving It All Away

Emerging Trends:

SO LONG MARKETING

I Demand!

Making It Happen, In Real Time

Emerging Trends:

The days of marketing as a means of creating demand for an existing product are rapidly sailing into uncharted waters. This has major implications for advertising, PR, media, PDA formats, and the consumer as billboard. While you will get personalized marketing of products suited to who you are and your tastes, in return you will have to opt to be a walking billboard for the product…OK not a billboard, for now just a sign on your car or perhaps text messages or ringing on your blackberry or your cell phone every time you pass a store selling products from “your products” list.. Deal or no deal ? Your call. Sign up.

Consumer demand has become a highly volatile and unpredictable commodity. The market has responded by simultaneous release of multiple  overlapping technologies, for example, music down loaders, web phones, appliance based computing, real time video on cell phones and computers.  And in other areas there are the ubiquitous infomercials in elevators and at gas pumps, and coupons at the check out line based on your buying patterns.  All have made the lag tag time required for marketing based on conventional models of supply of products and on demand increasingly difficult to pull off. What does this mean? 

For one, we will constantly get information on what is available NOW! On elevators (already here), pop up ads on the PC/PDF screen, and next on subway tunnel walls visible from the train as it zips out of Harvard Square subway station in Cambridge, MA, and shrink wrapped cars with personalized messages or logos. It will make information overload a major source of stress compared to today. But on the other hand, increasingly more refined forms of targeted advertising and gathering of selective information through “cookies” and “bots” will make it easy to get what you want, when you want it, at the best price, and mostly for free to the end user. It’s already available.

Next Opportunities:

Already, using “cookies,” and recording surfing habits, companies can get a precise profile of your interests, and personal information. And at the user’s end, “bots”, future virtual assistants, programs that will put virtual robots at your service. A bot will get you the precise information that you want, when you want it. Ask for the names of local dealers with red 2008 Toyota Corollas for under $20,000, and you can have it with a map, a picture and profile of the best dealership and salesman suited to you. Not by distance and price alone, but also by negotiating style.  Next stage will be bots that will learn to negotiate the best deal for you. And in the future, there will be bots that can sense what you want next based on your preferences and patterns and have it read for you. So what are the real opportunities you ask? Axe your conventional marketing ad budget and think radically about how to get the message to the precise persons you want to reach. On one hand laser precise marketing is where we are already headed. Branding has been the key marketing concept for at least the last decade, and will evolve in altogether new ways that are slowly emerging.  People as brands will become more commonplace. Tom Peters ” Brand You 50″ has been the new management training bible on this topic. Stand out of the pack by defining what your product and business stands for.  It better be a combination of innovation, reliability, and service.

MEDICINE

Pills No More

Swallow the Chip and Don’t Call

Emerging Trends:

As new frontiers of preventive and diagnostic medicine are explored, computer chips have already been implanted or  swallowed by researchers experimenting on how to monitor body functions, cancer cells etc., to retrieve precise information on what exact amount of medication or nutrients are needed by the body.  

Various forms of monitoring systems such as programmable tattoos that constantly display insulin levels for diabetes patients, for example, are in the works at Interval Research an R&D firm owned by Paul Allen (Wired 1997) and others like LifeShirt can monitor various indicators from blood pressure and insulin levels and then download that data on to your PDA and pass it on to your doctor or even release the appropriate level of medication into your system. Japanese toilet maker, Toto, is ready to ship toilets that diagnose, the “smart bowel”, and will even send that data directly to your doctor. DNA testing will be a routine diagnostic test, like MRI or CAT scan, within 5 years. And a great many people will ultimately benefit from it, but our current health care system, will initially ration this for the few who can afford the price tag. At the start this level of highly nuanced, truly customized health care will only be for the very rich.

At the onset the vast majority of people will find the concept of implanted computer chips ethically unpalatable and see it as tampering with nature and a debate will ensue similar to today’s battles over genetically engineered food and stem cell research.

Next Opportunities:

Real opportunities you ask?  Yes they exist!   Especially at HMOs where doctors might see scores of patients in a day and are too busy to discuss anything in detail, increasingly more people are turning to the Internet to fill in the blanks. And as the trend of people opting for alternative medicine and preventive care continues, people will want to take charge.  For a start, they will want ways to make sense of the overload of conflicting information available, and how to chose and manage their health care options.

The burgeoning billion dollar health food/alternate medicine industry is a testament to that. Some of the most popular web sites will be those that give clear, credible answers and provide options (there is a lot of Internet snake oil available)  to complex health care questions. The Ask Beths of the Internet for medical problems already exist, Dr Koop is one. So far, none has a brand that stands out as the leading source of information and advice. A Dr.ClearingHouse.com is soon bound to be the next healthcare web home run. Watch out for that IPO. And what else may be around the corner? Sites like eBay or Priceline to find the least expensive organ recharge, and more experimental chip implants that can diagnose and treat cancer cells before they begin to think about becoming rogue cells. These may well be auctioned off at secret underground web sites as experimental treatments well before they become FDA approved.

Now with DNA testing there is the option of delaying or speeding up the aging process using the diagnostic tests and techniques of newly customized medical care. Once again, aside from marketing the technology, a wealth of opportunities lie in services that can help coordinate medical options with personalized legal, life style, and financial counsel to help the customer make sense of all the choices and their implications. Already the first generation of full package spas serving personalized nutrition, yoga, and spirituality are the rage from Kripalu to Canyon Ranch. Some first generation sites already exist online. Familycareamerica.com provides elderly or chronically ill and their family members personalized advice based on personal profiles.

Next, advice on what would be the best-customized option for each of us based on a much more comprehensive profile. In  the terminology of the future, Personal Care will replace Health Care. People are finally seen in totality after the genome and brain projects completely unravel the human mystery.  The next search then begins, to decipher the human soul.

Real opportunities could come in various forms of medical health sites combined with personal growth. Think of a CPA, MD, coach, legal counsel, therapist, spiritual counseling service all packaged together as one or combined to suit your needs. Medical and non-medical professional collaborations and partnerships for a truly holistic personal care package!  Create personalized care/growth options. Your customized team. Team You.

And extreme Self-Care packages will be the next highly sought after form of self actualization.  Deepak meets Dr.Phil meets Martha.  Relax and take a deep breath and say Om !

Let your imagination run wild.

Create the future and smell the roses, it’s your move!