Saturday 20 December 2008

ฉะ แฉ ฉาว อาจารย์มหาลัยฯ

"We would learn from you as much as you would learn from us"
เด็กไทยจะมีโอกาสได้ยินประโยคนี้ตอนเปิดคอร์สหรือไม่นี่

เค้าบอกว่าอาจารย์มหาวิทยาลัยมีหน้าที่สี่อย่างด้วยกัน คือสอนหนังสือ ทำวิจัย บริหารองค์กรและบริการสังคม ผมอยากบอกว่า อาจารย์เป็นที่วิชาชีพนึงที่มีสุข เศร้า เหงาและรักนะครับ ไอ้ที่ดีๆนั่นก็มีเยอะแต่ที่แย่ก็มีหลายแบบนะครับ อาจารย์จึงเป็นเพียงผู้สื่อผู้สอนผู้นำพาและผู้ปฏิบัติ น่าเสียดายที่ระบบบริหารการศึกษาไทยๆทำให้เละทั้งระบบ ยกตัวอย่างง่ายๆ มีอย่างที่ไหน กว่าจะเรียนจบเอก (แทบตายตกตามโปรเฟสเซอร์)ไม่ว่าทุนตัวเองหรือทุนรัฐบาล กลับเข้าบรรจุเป็นข้าราชการอาจารย์เงินเดือนเริ่มต้น 10,600 (อ่านว่า หนึ่ง-หมื่น-หก-ร้อย-บาท) อาจารย์ก็มนุษย์นะครับ ลองคิดดูว่ารายได้ไม่พอก็ต้องดิ้นรนหาเรื่องทำอย่างอื่น(หรือหาอย่างอื่นทำ) ความจริงจุกอกที่น่าเจ็บใจก็คือว่า เพราะความเป็นอาจารย์ศักดิ์ศรีมันเลยเยอะ(เลยจมไม่ลง) พูดมากไม่ได้(ว่าเราก็ต้องกินต้องใช้เหมือนกัน)

ทั้งหลายทั้งปวงไม่ต้องไปโทษเด็กทั้งหมดนะครับ เพราะถ้าเค้าออกมาเป็นบุคคลากรของสังคมที่ไม่สมบูรณ์ ส่วนหนึ่งของเราๆท่านๆและระบบนี่แหละ ผมเจออาจารย์มันส์ๆ ฮาๆ(แต่น่าเศร้า)หลายแบบ เช่น

  • แบบสอนไปเรื่อยๆเพราะลูกศิษย์หรือคนอื่นเรียกว่าอาจารย์ ไม่เคยค้นคว้าเพิ่มเติม ไม่เคยดูโลกภายนอกว่าอะไรมาและผ่านไปแล้ว ขี้เกียจอ่าน text ไม่อยากอ่านเปเปอร์
  • แบบอ่านหรือลอกหนังสือมาสอนเพราะไม่เคยสอนวิชานี้ ทำเฉลยหรือทำความเข้าใจทีต้องซื้อหนังสือเฉลยมาดู
  • แบบวิ่งสอนตามที่ต่างๆ จนต้นสังกัดไม่เคยเจอตัว ก็สอนภายในคณะฯไม่ได้ตังค์ สอนที่อื่นเงินดีนี่ครับ
  • แบบ10ปีก็ขอสอนวิชานี้เท่านั้นอย่ามาแย่ง (เพราะขี้เกียจเตรียม) ส่วนใหญ่จะไม่เกิดกับวิชาจำพวกน้ำท่วมทุ่งผักบุ้งโหรงเหรง หรือวิชาพื้นฐานที่ใครก็สอนได้
  • แบบดูถูกเด็กทุกคนว่าฉลาดไม่เท่าตัว ไม่เคยรู้ว่าบางครั้ง(หลายครั้ง)เด็ก (โดยเฉพาะปริญญาโทและเอก) เก่งกว่าตัวเองอีก เพราะเด็กเค้าทำงานมาหลายปีก่อนมาเรียน โถ ท่านเรียนรวดเดียวตรีโทเอกไม่เค๊ยไม่เคยทำงานจะไปรู้ได้อย่างไรว่าไอ้ theory กับ application มันต่างกันอย่างไร หรือไอ้ที่ท่านเรียนถึงเอกมา(เคยรู้ว่า)มันสู้ภูมิปัญญาชาวบ้านได้หรือไม่
  • แบบแย่งกันสอนเฉพาะวิชาที่ค่าสอนแพง(แต่ปากบอกว่า ก็แล้วแต่มหาวิทยาลัยจัดให้ตามสมควร แต่ตางี้มองกันเป็นมันถ้าเวลามีวิชาไหนว่างเนื่องจากผู้สอนเดิมเลิกสอนหรือถอนตัว)
  • แบบเอาแต่รับงานนอก ทำงานพิเศษ พูดข้างนอก รับจ้างทำวิจัย วิเคราะห์ ที่ปรึกษา ทั้งที่งานผ่าน(โดนหักค่าต๋ง)หรือไม่ผ่านมหาลัยฯ(รับเนื้อๆและไม่บอกใคร) เพราะได้ตังค์ดีและได้กล่องง่าย แต่สอนในมหาลัยฯตัวเองหรือเวลาปกติแล้วไม่ได้ตังค์เยอะและไม่มีกล่องนอกจากนับโหลดหรือชั่วโมงทำงานของตัวเองได้ (อย่าเอ็ดไป พูดให้ดูดี ในวงการเค้าเรียกหน้าที่นี้ว่า บริการสังคม)
  • แบบได้แต่สอน อธิบายไม่ได้ เฉลยข้อสอบไม่ได้ (มันคงยากมากจนน่ากลัว) เคยได้ยินหรือไม่ครับอาจารย์ถูกขอให้เฉลยคำตอบบนไวท์บอร์ด (เหมือน สส ถูกซักถามให้ตอบกระทู้สดในสภา)และทำอะไรไม่ถูกนอกจากปาดเหงื่อ

อาจารย์แบบที่ดีๆจริงๆน่าเคารพ(รัก) น่าเอาเป็นตัวอย่างก็หลายคนครับ ผมเชื่อว่าทุกคนต้องมีอาจารย์ในดวงใจอยู่แล้ว ที่รจนาให้เห็นก็ไม่ใช่อยากจะเอาเพื่อนร่วมวิชาชีพมาแฉ แต่แค่เอาเรื่องจริงที่ไม่ค่อยมีใครอยากให้พูดมาเล่า (ประมาณรู้ว่ามีอยู่แต่ เหมือนนโยบาย Don't Ask, Don't Tell เรื่องข้อเท็จจริงของทหารที่เป็นเกย์ที่มีอยู่มากมายในกองทัพสหรัฐ) ผมผ่านและได้ยินมาก็มาก ตัวเองก็ทราบว่าไม่ได้เป็นอาจารย์ที่สมบูรณ์หรือเก่งที่สุด ผมยังต้องปรับตัวอยู่เสมอ เรื่องการศึกษาไทยต้องร่วมด้วยช่วยกันนะครับ

รวบรวมงานเขียนทางวิชาการในอดีต

ผู้ที่สนใจบทความหรือตำราเล่มใดส่งอีเมล์แจ้งได้ครับ


หนังสือ

การจัดการทางการเงินในงานก่อสร้าง ปี2545 ผู้ช่วยศาสราจารย์ ดร กุลเดช สินธวณรงค์

เศรษฐศาสตร์มหภาคในอุตสหกรรมก่อสร้าง ปี2546 ดร กุลเดช สินธวณรงค์

บทความและงานวิจัย

Effect of Psychometric Approach towards Accuracy of ANNs Project Time Modelling Sinthawanarong K and Kridakorn S Proceedings of the Conference on Advancement of Construction Management and Real Estate วันที่ 6 – 7 ธันวาคม 2547 ณ เขตปกครองพิเศษ ฮ่องกง สาธารณรัฐประชาชนจีน

"การศึกษาการกระทำที่ไม่ปลอดภัยของคนงานก่อสร้าง" นายยุทธิพร ช่วยดร มหาวิทยาลัยเทคโนโลยีมหานคร 2553

Development of Indicators for Construction Industry Performance Measurement กรพล สายเชื้อ และ กุลเดช สินธวณรงค์ การประชุมวิชาการวิศวกรรมโยธาแห่งชาติครั้งที่ 9 จังหวัดเพชรบุรี 19 – 21 พฤษภาคม 2547

Construction Industry Performance Measurement Indicators Sensitivity Analysisกรพล สายเชื้อ และ กุลเดช สินธวณรงค์ การประชุมวิชาการวิศวกรรมโยธาแห่งชาติครั้งที่ 9 จังหวัดเพชรบุรี 19 – 21 พฤษภาคม 2547

Impact of the Implementation of ISO9000 on Project Costs for Thai Contractorsสาละวิน วังโสม และ กุลเดช สินธวณรงค์ การประชุมวิชาการวิศวกรรมโยธาแห่งชาติครั้งที่ 9 จังหวัดเพชรบุรี 19 – 21 พฤษภาคม 2547

Determinants of Conflict Resolutions: A Study of Thai Contractors’ Perspective วิทวัส ทองใสเกลี้ยง และ กุลเดช สินธวณรงค์ การประชุมวิชาการวิศวกรรมโยธาแห่งชาติครั้งที่ 9 จังหวัดเพชรบุรี 19 – 21 พฤษภาคม 2547

A Multi Objective Paradigm in Gas Application for Construction Solution คงศักดิ์ แสงกาศนีย์ และ กุลเดช สินธวณรงค์ การประชุมวิชาการวิศวกรรมโยธาแห่งชาติครั้งที่ 9 จังหวัดเพชรบุรี 19 – 21 พฤษภาคม 2547

Critical Factors influencing construction productivity in Thailand Emsley M W, Makulsawatudom A and K. Sinthawanarong Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Construction in the 21st Century (CITCII) วันที่ 10 – 12 ธันวาคม 2546 เขตปกครองพิเศษ ฮ่องกง สาธารณรัฐประชาชนจีน

Contruction Management Practices: the thai experience Ungphongpeth S and Sinthawanarong K Proceedings of the Regional Symposium on Infrastructure Development in Civil Engineering วันที่ 3 – 5 เมษายน 2546 ณ โรงแรมรามากาเดน กรุงเทพ

Procurement Costing: Implementation of Artificial NNS Model Thongyos S and Sinthawanarong K Proceedings of the Regional Symposium on Infrastructure Development in Civil Engineering วันที่ 3 – 5 เมษายน 2546 ณ โรงแรมรามากาเดน กรุงเทพ

Real-time Project Monitoring for Time-Cost-Labour Productivity: A Hybrid Genetic Algorithms Approach Sinthawanarong K Proceedings of The 3rd International Conference on Decision Making in Urban and Civil Engineering วันที่ 6 – 8 พฤศจิกายน 2545 ณ ประเทศอังกฤษ

Multi-objective optimisation paradigms in GAS application for construction time-cost solution Sinthawanarong K and Sang-Gassanee K Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computing in Civil and Building Engineering วันที่ 3 – 5 เมษายน 2545 ณ ประเทศ ไต้หวัน

Effects of Non-linearity in Composite Measure of Strategic Construction Organisational Performance Sinthawanarong K and Lueprasert K Proceedings of the International Conference on Advancement in Design, Construction, Construction Management, and Maintenance of Building Structures วันที่ 27 – 28 มีนาคม 2545 ณ ประเทศ อินโดนีเชีย

BEHAVIOURAL ALTERNATIONS FOR ON-SITE SAFETY IMPROVEMENTSinthawanarong K Proceedings of the 8th EAST ASIA-PACIFIC CONFERENCE IN STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING AND CONSTRUCTION ที่ประเทศ สิงคโปร์ วันที่ 5-7 ธันวาคม 2544

โลกของป้าต้อยกับสถาปนิก

สองปีของป้าต้อยบอกอะไรกับวงการสถาปนิกไทยได้บ้าง
ป้าต้อยดูเด็กที่ไม่ใช่ลูกแต่เลี้ยงเหมือนลูก อดทน อดกลั้น ทั้งๆที่จะเอาตัวเองก็แทบไม่รอด
ป้าต้อยดีใจเมื่อลูกดีใจ
ป้าต้อยคือคนที่โอบอุ้มคนป่วยที่ทั้งๆตัวเองก็ป่วย

ตอนนี้วงการนี้ใครดูแลเราอยู่
เค้าป่วยอยู่หรือไม่
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นักการเมืองไทยและผู้รับเหมาที่แย่ๆ

มักไม่มีมิตรแท้ศัตรูถาวร
มักใช้เครือญาติเป็นกำลังสำรอง อาวุธและยุทธวิธี
มักไม่มองรายละเอียด มองภาพรวมๆเพื่อบรรลุเป้าหมายใหญ่
มักอยู่กับเงินจำนวนมากแต่บริหารแบบคิดไม่ไกล(สั้นๆ)
มักเล่นเกม และเก่งมากเรื่องนอกกติกา หรือไม่มีกติกา หรืออ้างกติกา
มักอ้างหรืออิงหรือใช้ประโยชน์จากผู้มีบารมีหรือคนที่คนอื่นคิดว่ามีบารมี ไม่ว่านักเลง ศาล นักวิชาการ เจ้าพ่อ
มักเปิดหน้า มีช่องโหว่และจุดอ่อนเสมอ

Friday 19 December 2008

Delay Analysis in Complexity Programming

Technical Delays can be categorized into the following types:1. Critical and Non-critical2. Excusable and Non-excusable3. Compensable and Non-compensableIn order to determine if a delay is critical, an understanding of some basic scheduling terms and concepts is needed. A critical delay is a delay to an activity that will cause the project completion date to be delayed. A delay is critical only if it extends the duration of work that is on the then-prevailing critical path. The critical path is the longest continuous path of work that establishes the project completion date. The activities on the critical path do not have float. Float is defined as the amount of time between when an activity could start and when it must start to avoid delay to the project completion date. Thus, the analyst’s job is to systematically determine with objectivity the delay issues that affected work activities on the critical path. To accomplish this task, the analyst will work through a myriad of delay issues to determine which issues delayed the critical path work, or delayed non-critical work to the extent that all the available float for the activity was expended causing it to become critical.Review of the project contract documents will often establish which delays are considered excusable or non-excusable. Typically, delays caused by unforeseen events beyond the control of either party, such as extreme adverse weather and strikes, are classified as excusable delay. In cases such as these, absent contract language to the contrary, neither party is at fault for the delay and the owner should grant a time extension if the contractor follows the prescribed procedure to request one. Non-excusable delays are those that are the contractor’s responsibility.The project contract documents will also usually establish which delays are compensable or non-compensable. Compensable delays are excusable delays for which the contractor is entitled to additional time-related compensation. Subject to the contract language, the contractor is typically entitled to the labor, material, and field office costs associated with the delay period; and may, in some cases, be entitled to additional home office overhead costs.


All delay analysis techniques are most often a variation of one of the following five methods:1. Impacted As-Planned2. Collapsed As-Built3. Windows Analysis4. Contemporaneous Analysis5. As-Built AnalysisEach of these techniques will be briefly discussed in the paragraphs that follow.Impacted As-PlannedThe impacted as-planned (IAP) method makes use of the schedule that was created at the start of the project – the as-planned schedule. The analyst inserts delay activities into this schedule to allegedly represent the impacts to the work caused by the particular delay events. These inserted activities cause the project completion date to be extended. This is taken to be support for the number of days of delay and entitlement for additional costs. Most construction industry professionals and third-party venues have agreed that the IAP method is not an accurate method to quantify the impact of delays on a construction project. The IAP method disregards all of the as-built project information. It also affords the analyst great latitude to select what issues to address or overlook. This provides additional opportunity to manipulate the results of the analysis.Collapsed As-BuiltThe CAB method, also referred to as a “but for” analysis, gives the analyst great latitude to manipulate the analysis to produce the desired results. An attractive aspect of this technique is the use of an ‘as-built’ schedule or immediate correspondence tool as the starting point for the analysis. The project records are used to establish the start and finish dates for the activities shown in the ‘as-built’ schedule. This wealth of factual documentation, often in the form of daily reports, meeting minutes, letters, and photographs, lends the impression of validity to the analysis. The first major opportunity for manipulation comes in the analyst’s creation of logic relationships for each activity. Next, the analyst identifies particular delay events, retrospectively creates ‘fragnets’ to represent those delay events, and then removes the fragnets from the ‘as-built’ schedule, to show the improvement to the project completion date “but for” the delay issues. The CAB method is highly subjective because the analyst creates the as-built schedule, assigns preferential logic, chooses the delay issues to address, creates a ‘fragnet’ to represent those issues, determines how those ‘fragnets’ tie-in and affect the work, and then removes the delays in some chosen sequence. The choices made by the analyst in these areas largely determine the results of the analysis.Windows AnalysisThe windows analysis method (WAM) organizes the events that occurred on the project into specific, analyst-defined time periods. A major shortcoming of the WAM is that the analyst’s selection of the analysis time period, or ‘window,’ is subjective and materially affects the results produced. Another shortcoming of the WAM is that although various methods of analysis can be used within the window time period, all versions are generally referred to as a windows analysis. The WAM can also fail to consider and address out-of-sequence progress or delays that occur outside the ‘window,’ which may be the real cause of the project delays. Again, the choices made by the analyst in these areas materially affect the analysis and can largely determine the results.Contemporaneous AnalysisThe contemporaneous analysis is usually the preferred method of analysis. The monthly project schedule updates that were produced by the project participants are used. The critical path of a schedule is compared to the critical path of the schedule from the preceding month. The analyst tracks the day-to-day progress of the activities on the critical path from month to month and records any delays or savings. This method produces a specific identification of the activities causing delay to the project completion date from the beginning to the end of the project. Since the analyst employs the schedules created and used by the project participants, the method is less susceptible to analyst manipulation. The method does require project schedules that were updated regularly and reasonably accurately during the course of the project. The analysis is highly recommended to project of most complex nature.As-Built AnalysisThe as-built method of analysis differs from the previously mentioned CAB method. The as-built method is typically used when detailed project schedules do not exist, or they exist but are flawed to the extent that they cannot be relied on to support the delay analysis. The project documents are used to establish a detailed record of the as-built work. The analyst has the responsibility to identify and document any revised logic from the as-planned sequence in the as-built work. Delays are determined in a sequential manner through comparative analysis of the critical as-built work to the critical as-planned work. The as-planned schedule dates are updated to recognize the chronological impact of each delay in turn. In the event that no reliable as-planned information exists, the analyst will identify critical delays by comparing the as-built information to a retrospectively developed plan that allocates the overall project duration into reasonable time periods to accomplish the major work tasks. The successful use of an as-built analysis requires an analyst very experienced in construction means and methods making choices that are transparent, documented, and supportable.Although many methods of analysis are used to determine delays on construction projects, but-for method seem to be able to illustrate most favourable basic understanding of the assumptions inherent in the delay analysis methodology used in our case and they will be carefully examine and question analyst-driven decisions in order to identify subjectivity and manipulation that affects the findings. A simulation model is to be employed as a tool to simulate delay and its possible consequence on a what-if basis

Are we really a management?

เนื่องด้วยบริษัทฯเราซับซ้อนขึ้นในหลายมิติ มิติของจำนวนคน การบริหารองค์กร การสื่อสารภายในและภายนอก และอื่นๆ จะเปรียบให้ฟังสำหรับคำว่า หัวหน้างาน ผู้จัดการ ผู้อำนวยการ (Supervisor Manager Director)เหมือนกับ ปริญญาตรี ปริญญาโท ปริญญาเอก (Bachelor Master Doctor of Philosophy)Bachelor แปลตรงๆว่าคนโสดในภาษาละติน เป็นคนที่คิดว่าตัวเองอิสระ เที่ยวเล่นไปที่ต่างๆเห็นโลกเป็นครั้งแรกและนึกว่ารู้ทุกอย่างในโลก แปลว่านึกว่าตัวฉลาดแต่คนส่วนใหญ่มองว่าโง่Master แปลตรงๆว่า นาย หรือ ผู้นำทางความคิดหรือทางการกระทำ ในภาษาละตินหมายความว่าผู้ที่รู้จริงเห็นจริงและสอนคนอื่นๆได้ เป็นครูได้ แต่จริงๆคนส่วนใหญ่มองว่าผม สั่งเป็น สอนได้ แต่คนไม่มั่นใจ ไม่ยอมรับหรือไม่เชื่อใจว่า มันสอนถูกหรือเปล่าDoctor of Philosophy แปลว่าผู้ที่ต้องศึกษาลึกถึงแก่นในวิชาปรัชญา วิชาปรัชญาถือเป็นแม่แบบการศึกษาในทุกๆอย่าง เป็นการศึกษาเรียนรู้กลับไปในรากเหง้าของทุกสิ่งอีกครั้งเพื่อเอามาขัดเกลาหาสิ่งใหม่เพื่อปัจจุบันในสรรพสิ่งที่ได้พัฒนาแล้ว ที่น่าสนใจคือคนกลุ่มนี้นึกว่าตัวเองพบ แล้ว รู้แล้ว เห็นแล้ว ทำให้ไม่มองไปข้างหน้าหรือมองไม่เห็นคนอื่นๆข้างหลัง กลายเป็นประมารถ ทรนง สะเพร่า เลินเล่อหัวหน้างาน พี่เชื่อว่าน้องทุกคนผ่านมาแล้ว คือเป็นผู้นำที่ดีพอสมควร ทำงานให้ได้ตามที่ได้รับนโยบาย สานต่อได้มีประสิทธิผล(ปริมาณ)ผู้จัดการ คือจัดการได้หลายสิ่งพร้อมๆกันในเวลาเดียวกันให้เสร็จตามเป้าหมาย รับเงื่อนไขที่ยากขึ้นมากขึ้นแต่มีประสิทธิภาพขึ้น(คุณภาพ)ผู้อำนวยการคือ ทั้งหัวหน้างานและผู้จัดการรวมกัน (สองอันนี้รวมกันไม่เกิน 50%ของความเป็น directorship) มองปัญหาและศึกษาปัญหาอย่างถ่องแท้ ทดลองแก้ นำไปใช้ และควบคุม มองโจทย์ที่ได้รับให้เข้าใจในหลายๆมิติ นำเสนอกลั่นกรองสิ่งใหม่จากสิ่งเก่า เหมือนกลับไปที่รากเหง้าของทุกสิ่งแต่ในอยู่องค์รวมมากขึ้น ผู้อำนวยการฝ่ายออกแบบก็ไม่ใช่มองแต่ อัตลักษณ์และบริบทของงานออกแบบเพื่องานขายและงานก่อสร้างที่เกี่ยวข้องในระนาบเดียวกัน(ใครๆก็ทำได้ ย้ำใครๆก็ทำได้) แต่เราจะสนับสนุนงานอื่นๆด้วยความเป็นตัวเรา อัจฉริยภาพทางงานศิลปของเราที่มีอยู่(อย่างไม่ต้องสงสัย)ได้อย่างไรผู้อำนวยการฝ่ายการตลาดก็มิใช่แค่การตลาด การขายหรือการพัฒนาความสามารถในการรองรับการขาย (ใครๆก็ทำได้) แต่เราจะสนับสนุนคนอื่นด้วยจุดเด่น(หรือด้อย)ของเราได้อย่างไร เราจะทำให้การสื่อสารจากตัวเราชัดเจนได้อย่างไร ในตลาด ในองค์กรคำถามของพี่คือ ตอนนี้เรามองหรือเข้าใจโจทย์ที่ได้รับอย่างถ่องแท้หรือยัง? เป็นหัวหน้างานหรือ bachelor ที่เป็นผู้นำที่ดีพอสมควร มองอะไรกว้างในโลก ไม่กลัวและพร้อมที่จะลุย สิ่งต่างๆหรือยัง? เป็นผู้จัดการหรือmaster ที่ลูกน้องรัก เคารพเชื่อใจจริงๆหรือยัง? (Respect is what you have to EARN, not to be given by birth or social/work status or appointment)ตอนนี้เราทดลองแก้ปัญหาหรือแก้โจทย์ มองอะไรลึกในทุกๆมิติ like a philosopher หรือยัง?ตอนนี้เราคิดหรือนึกเอาเองว่ารู้แล้ว เห็นแล้ว พอก่อน ทำให้ไม่มองไปข้างหน้าหรือมองไม่เห็นคนอื่นๆข้างหลัง ทรนง สะเพร่า เลินเล่อ หรือไม่?สิ่งที่พี่พูดไม่เกี่ยวกับเวลาหรือทรัพยากรที่มีครับ ห้ามอ้างสิ่งที่พี่พูดคือเรื่อง Awareness of Directorship ล้วนๆสิ่งที่พี่พูดคือเรื่องรากของปัญญา ของการรับรู้ ของวิธีการอยู่ที่ตัวตนและการตีความเงาความคิดขอให้ exploit your directorship อย่างที่ควรจะเป็นถ้ายังทำไม่ได้ก็ยังไม่ใช่ ผู้อำนวยการ แต่เป็นแค่ผู้จัดการหรือหัวหน้างานที่เก่งเท่านั้นครับตระหนักไว้ว่าสงครามเศรษฐกิจในปีหน้า เป็นการเอาชนะตัวเอง

Marketing Design Service in Recession

In these times, most business owners are watching the development of the economy anxiously. The stock market is down and there's talk about recession. Orders aren't coming in as they used to and companies aren't making the profits they forecasted.It's as if everyone's waiting for something to occur.Well, perhaps the promised recession. But it doesn't really matter WHAT they're waiting for because the WAITING itself causes a slowdown in the economy.Advertising is down, marketing has all but ceased.Whether or not recession is coming (or here), the waiting inevitably slows business down.And that's a definite problem for any Architect firm.Traditional marketing (as we know it) doesn't yield results to speak of. It's expensive to keep up and if there aren't any results, what's the point?On the other hand... if we stop all marketing, how are wegoing to find new projects? To go after published projects means taking your chances along with HUNDREDS of other Architects, involving a lot of work with not so good odds.A paradox if there ever was one. And here's one solution that will allow us to keep up (and expand!) your marketing, to obtain new potential clients continuously, and keep on finding new projects... There are practically HUNDREDS of building projects being planned right now. Regardless of the times, business owners envision a new office building for their use and individuals are dreaming of a new house.Companies and people still have money. They may slow down their project and decide to go carefully... but they're still going ahead with their dreams. Dreams do not stop existing just because the media is blaring about recession.Now, more than ever, people want INFORMATION about building projects.The current economic gloom presents several interesting questions. Our state of mind governs the way we see the world. If we believe we cannot influence our future then it BECOMES so and we cease trying.Of course, absolutes are unobtainable, so it's impossible to be totally unable to affect the outcomeof one's future.In fact, we can influence it QUITE A LOT.But only if we stop to think about things from a new perspective.Here are a few "heart-stoppers" about the present economic situation:Is the gloom the result of recession... or is the slowdown caused by the gloom? And does it HAVE to be "either or" ... could PART of it be in our mind?Is it best to stop marketing during a slowdown... or is this the moment to MAKE USE of the fact that competitors are voluntarily stopping all efforts to obtain new projects?For instance, how CERTAIN are you that it isn't possible to get one or two new projects within WEEKS?What could you do to increase the chances of getting a new client next week or month?It can be quite helpful to challenge once in a while that "certainty of doom" we've built up in our minds through following the disparaging news which the media chooses to highlight day in day out.Of course, there IS a gloom about the economy. There's no denying of that. But a good part of it is in our mind, resulting in uncertainty on what to DO to effectively counteract the change in the business world.In terms of marketing, we can be certain that ONE thing has changed.What used to work in marketing Architect services doesn't work so well any longer.Two things cause this change.For one, it's the media. When they start blaring the impeding doom, the general public's viewpoint changes from trusting future to uncertainty about it. In an uptrend, all marketing is based on the concept of "it's going to get better and better." Now, that message doesn't work, obviously.The second factor is caused by the uncertainty. Buyers become more careful and want to be absolutely certain that their investment is sound and that it will go exactly according to plans, schedule and budget... and that it IS the right thing to go for.As a result, we need a specific approach in marketing which combines these points:"Unique services for individual client" Here, I'm talking "marketing" and not construction technology or Architecture. The way weapproach, present and sell your service has to be seen as something totally UNIQUE by the client. If he believes that specifically tailored service is NOT available anywhere else, wehave it made.Making our service a prelude commitment, not the project. If we go after the project itself, wesetting a very high target for yourself and the potential client. Instead, create a pre-project fact-finding service and approach interested parties with THAT offer. It'll give them a way to take a STEP toward their goal without having to commit to the project. And it'll get our foot inside the door.Most clients can't commit to the project simply because they still need information in order to make the final decision about it, you see?Say what we will. The HOW of marketing changes every time there's a significant and persistent change of confidence in the marketplace. This is especially true when we change from an uptrend to a slowdown.Like it or not, Architects are highly respected in the business community. What you say carries a lot ofweight... and the more some people sneer and belittle your status, the more the point itself is proven. One doesn't rebel against what one doesn't respect.For those who have their dream of a new building, our knowledge, leadership and advisory support areneeded now more than ever. They NEED the knowledge and certainty only we can give. Otherwise, they don't have a HOPE of getting their project off the ground.

to earn is to appreciate!

To earn a good sale, to close a good deal-we make our prospect appreciate what we do. Appreciation is at its height when a top professional examines the work of his peer with a benevolent eye. But, by definition, appreciation doesn't have to be EXPERT. Anyone can appreciate and admire beauty, for instance, if anyone SEES it and has the willingness to admire it. As an Architect firm, we pretty much at the top of the ladder when it comes to creativity. So MUCH so, in fact, that we are far above the average population. So HIGH ABOVE, in fact, that the majority of people look at you and your creations with awe.Our client or ordinary prospect/even competitors FEEL they don't understand. That's caused by the awe, you see? The DO understand as there's nothing technical about appreciating aesthetics. But they THINK they don't, because they believe they need to be experts to do so. Do you remember clients asking you if this is a modern design or if this loose furniture brand fits your design package?So, the usual response is they say NOTHING when they don’t. Unfortunately, some time or most of the time you say nothing too.They shut up, in other words. Obviously, for you this creates a mighty VACUUM. No feedback from people and yet there are always those critics who, like mad dogs, bite anything new and shred it to pieces.No wonder it can begin to feel slanted, to say the least. Now, it might be that you're one of those super beings who has the ability to acknowledge his good work to himself without the need of outside appreciation.Even if you are, it's better for business and future projects if people can appreciate your skills widely.But to get them to appreciate your skills, you must first create some understanding.The way consumer goods are advertised and sold, one might get the idea that success requires some kind of "overpowering" of the buyer's thinking. Yet the successful way is exactly the opposite.Marketing and sales are essentially educational activities. The starting point in both is that the prospective client doesn't KNOW enough in order to make a POSITIVE decision. That's the hardest one to make. Deciding NOT to go ahead with a project is easier. And deciding not to DECIDE AT ALL postponing the decision indefinitely is easiest of all.These are your adversaries when marketing and selling Architect services. You do not want this to happen but it always did.In marketing commercial or residential sector, your task is to FIND the prospective clients that have PLANS to have a building constructed... and to give enough information so they understand what to do. In other words, you "activate" these dormant ambitions to build that so often take months or years to develop into ANY kind of action. The main reason for this inaction is simple these are nonprofessional and they just don't know whom to turn to! Once the contact has been made and you HAVE a prospective client, your task is to ENLIGHTEN him about his future project so that he can understand it better and conceptualize it in his mind. Each of these marketing and sales involves tens of separate, gradual steps that each are really educational processes on their own. These ARE steps because they each bring the prospective client higher in his understanding. Once he fully understands the project and the benefits of using your Architect services, you have a sale.Marketing and Sales tasks are not just to earn and to close. I once describe architect as a “dreamer”, engineer as a “dream maker”. Marketing and Sales team for JARKEN has to be a “master minder of all dreams”. You team is the one who is behind everything.

Design Trend 2009

งานสถาปัตยกรรมสมัยใหม่สำหรับอาคารเพื่อการพักอาศัยที่ดีควรสื่อให้เห็นว่าเราเป็นใครในวันนี้และความพร้อมที่จะรับความเปลี่ยนแปลงในวันต่อๆไปอย่างไรขณะนี้เริ่มมองเห็นภาพว่าแนวโน้มงานสถาปัตยกรรมสมัยใหม่ในปี 2009 จะออกในลักษณะที่ได้รับอิทธิพลจากวัฒนธรรมเอเชียและเอเชียตะวันออก (Asian and oriental) มากขึ้น 80-90% งานออกแบบอาคารเพื่อพักอาศัยระดับบน (high-end residential buildings) ในปีหน้านี้ ภาพรวมจะมองเห็นลักษณะความพยายามที่จะผสมผสานความร่วมสมัย (contemporary characters) อย่างชัดเจน อย่างไรก็ดีแนวทางและรูปแบบบริบทของงานสถาปัตยกรรมสมัยใหม่ที่ทันสมัยหรือล้ำสมัย (ultra modern) ยังคงพอมองเห็นได้จากรูปแบบผลงานที่เป็นอาคารที่เห็นได้ในปัจจุบันและหลายปีที่ผ่านมาของกลุ่มนักลงทุนหรือเจ้าของโครงการบ้านซึ่งมีลักษณะเฉพาะตัว (niche marketplace) อย่างไรก็ดีต่อจากนี้ พวก urban loft คงเห็นน้อยลง งานดังกล่าวในปีหน้าน่าจะลดสเกลความดุดันที่ได้รับอิทธิพลจากงานย้อนยุคแรงๆ (vintage) ในสองสามปีที่ผ่านมาก ให้เดินแคบลงเข้าสู่รูปแบบสถาปัตยกรรมที่มีเส้นสายที่ชัดเจนสะอาดและสว่างขึ้นอีกทิศทางงานสถาปัตยกรรมในปีต่อๆไปจะเห็นงานโมเดิร์นที่ได้รับการขัดเกลาให้มีกลิ่นและความรู้สึกของรากเหง้าของสิ่งต่างๆมากขึ้นโดยการผสมผสานรูปแบบที่ร่วมสมัยของวัสดุ แนวคิดและคงไว้ซึ่งรูปแบบการใช้งานที่เป็นจริงมากขึ้นในปัจจุบันไม่ล้ำอนาคตมากเกินไป อาจเรียกว่า soft modern หรือถ้าเทียบกับงานอาร์ตก็เป็น impressionism ที่เข้าใจง่ายแต่ลึกก็ได้ครับ เราน่าจะได้เห็นเส้นหรือแสงนิ่งๆนอกบ้านหรือในบ้านซึ่งสะท้อนเห็นได้ออกมาจากวัสดุพวกหินหรือไม้ที่มีลายน้อยๆ กระจกหรือแสตนเลสน้อยลงไปแปร๊บปร๊าบเหมือนเก่า เหลี่ยมมุมขอบแหลมๆของบ้านน่าจะเห็นลดน้อยลงบ้างเพื่อลดความกระด้างของบ้านจากทางยุโรปทางเหนือหรืออเมริกาในยุก ’60 (ต้นแบบและอิทธิพลของงานที่เราเอามาเรียกว่าโมเดิร์นนั่นแหละครับ)จากการศึกษารูปแบบแนวโน้มงานทั้งในและนอกประเทศ จาร์เค็นขอสรุปทิศทางหลักๆของงานออกแบบอาคารสถาปัตกรรมสมัยใหม่ (Modern architecture) ในปีหน้าได้ดังนี้ครับ• Accessibility: เราจะได้เห็นแนงทางการออกแบบได้เอื้ออำนวยความสะดวกสะบายเพื่อ physical and mental needs มากขึ้นเช่น ทางเดินหรือคอริดอร์ที่กว้างขวาง oversized มีแสงหรือจุดดึงสายตาจากตัวอาคารมากขึ้น ขั้นบันไดที่น้อยลงแต่กว้างขึ้นและที่น่าสนใจคือความนิยมที่มากขึ้นเรื่อยๆในการออกแบบบ้านหรืออาคารโมเดิร์นชั้นเดียว• Informal space: พื้นที่ส่วนกลางหรือพื้นที่เปิดเอนกประสงค์มากขึ้นโดยไม่ยึดติดว่าต้องเป็นฟังค์ชั่นอะไรตายตัว เพื่อความคิดหรือการปรับเปลี่ยนอื่นๆในอนาคต • Size and Layout: ขนาดบ้านโมเดิร์นส่วนใหญ่จะขยายขึ้นตามแนวทางการออกแบบที่เน้นเส้นที่ตรงไปตรงมา บ้านโมเดิร์นเล็กๆจะเห็นน้อยลงเนื่องจากความไม่คุ้มค่าด้านราคา (คือบ้านลักษณะนี้จริงๆแล้วราคาสูงพอสมควรครับ) ซอกมุมที่มักถูกใช้เป็นตัวกำหนดความคมแสงเงาจะน้อยลง บ้านจะยิ่งโล่งขึ้นทั้งภายในและภายนอก• Outdoors: ทิศทางoutdoor living จะมาแรงแต่มีความเป็นไทยหรือเอเชีย outdoor มากขึ้นไม่เน้น decks กว้างเหมือนงานออสซี่หรือสแกนดิเนวัยนยุกแรกๆที่พอมาเมืองไทยแล้วรับแดดมากเกินไปไม่เวิร์กทั้งการใช้งานจริง ความทนทางวัสดุ porches, and patios จะเห็นได้มากกว่าทั้งภายนอกโดยตรงหรือภายในทางอ้อมเพื่อใช้แสงเป็นสื่อไม่ใช่เป็นฟังค์ชั่นครับ• Amenities: ฟังค์ชั่นพิเศษอื่นๆนอกบ้านจะกลับมาเป็น gimmick และองค์ประกอบของการออกแบบครับ พวก swimming pool, pool bar หรือ outdoor kitchen เดคสำหรับโยคะจะกลับมาเป็นคอร์ของอาคาร งานบางงานจะเรียกตรงนี้ว่า Personal Space ครับ บ้านบางหลังให้ความสำคัญกับ personal space (ตรงนี้ของฉัน) มากกว่าทุกๆส่วนส่วนเรื่อง Green Concept จาร์เค็นมองว่าเป็นกระแสและการตลาดมากกว่าครับ งานออกแบบสถาปัตยกรรมที่ดีต้องคำนึงถึงสิ่งเหล่านี้อยู่แล้ว

ลูกค้างานก่อสร้าง

ลูกค้าครับลูกค้า พูดได้สิบปีมีไม่จบ เรียนรู้ไม่สิ้น มีครบทุกแนวครับตั้งแต่ บู๊สนั่นจอ พี่ชายที่แสนดี สุดสวาทขาดใจ ห้าแถว พ่อดอกพิกุล วิตกจริต เร็วเข้าว่ารับรองจ่ายน่ะ หักคอจนคอหัก และอื่นๆ แล้วทำยังไงดีครับ
ลูกค้างานก่อสร้างมี 4แบบใหญ่ครับ
  • ทำเป็นอาชีพแต่ไม่ค่อยได้ทำ

พวกเอกชนธุรกิจที่ต้องขยับขยายสาขา หน่วยงาน โรงงาน ครับ กลุ่มนี้ผมคิดว่า กลมกล่อมทำงานด้วยง่ายที่สุดเนื่องจากมีที่มาที่ไป มีความเป็นมืออาชีพพอควร และมองเป้าหมายธุรกิจอื่นนอกจากโครงการนั้นๆ

  • ทำเป็นอาชีพและทำบ่อยๆ

ประเภทเจ้าของที่ดินหรือผู้รับเหมาครับ แบบนี้ครบทุกรส คม เขี้ยว อย่าหวังจะเห็นเม็ดเงินหรือความสบายใจเมื่อทำงานด้วย กระบี่ซ่อนข้างหลังทั้งนั้น

  • ไม่ทำเป็นอาชีพแต่ทำบ่อยๆ

พวกเนื้อไม่ได้กินหนังไม่ได้รองแต่ต้องเอกกระดูกมาแขวนคอครับ สนใจทำมากก็เหนื่อยเปล่า ไม่สนใจทำน้อยก็โดนนายด่า ประเภททำโดยไม่ใช่ของตัวเอง นายสั่งให้ทำ เป็นพวกที่ปรึกษา หน่วยงานราชการหรือร้ฐวิสาหกิจงัยครับ สร้างบ่อยๆแต่ไม่ใช่ของตัว เหมือนรู้รายละเอียดแต่ไม่รู้จริง ชอบทำอะไรให้จบๆง่ายๆโดยไม่คึงถึงอะไรอะไรที่ตามมา

  • ไม่ทำเป็นอาชีพและไม่ค่อยได้ทำ

แบบนี้เรียกว่าสารพัดสารเพครับ ก็เราๆท่านๆนี้แหละสร้างบ้านครั้งแรกไม่รู้เลยมาก่อสร้างเค้าทำอย่างไร ฟังเค้ามาทั้งนั้น ผู้รับเหมามันเลว เกิดมาเพื่อโกง โอ๊ยเทคนิคไม่รู้แต่พี่มีเงิน ลูกค้าแบบนี้อ่านเดาใจยาก กีก็ดีเลย แย่ก็จบที่ศาล ความไม่แน่นอนสูง

Design-Life Styles-Fashion

มาดูว่าผู้ออกแบบ คุณ ผมและคนอื่นๆ ทำงานด้วยกัน(โดยไม่รู้ตัว)อย่างไรนะครับ งานออกแบบทำให้ชีวิตเราเปลี่ยนไปอย่างไร(จริงๆ) บ้าง

เรื่องกฏหมายอสังหาและก่อสร้าง (แค่คิดก็เหนื่อย)

เครียด เบื่อ เซ็งนะครับได้เรื่องความจริงของชีวิต

ผมเป็นคอนซัลล์ให้หลายๆคดีๆหนึ่ง เจ้าของบ้านเป็นพ่อลูกกัน มาจากต่างประเทศ ซื้อคอนโดห้องเหมือนกัน (ย้ำว่าห้องเหมือนกัน)แต่อยู่คนละตึกในโครงการ พร้อมๆกันจากโครงการที่มีดีเวลลอปเปอร์ที่มีชื่อเสียงแห่งหนึ่งแถวสุขุมวิท ทั้งสองพ่อลูกตัดสินใจฟ้องเจ้าของโครงการเนื่องจากส่งมอบห้องช้า(จากที่ต้องส่งมอบพร้อมกัน)และให้วัสดุไว้ไม่ตรงกับที่สัญญาจากใบโฆษณา สองพ่อลูกใช้ทนายคนเดียวกัน สำนวนเดียวกันแต่จำต้องแยกฟ้องสองศาลเนื่องจากคุณพ่อและคุณลูกมีข้อแต่งต่างเรื่องที่อยู่และโฉนดของตึกคอนโดคนละใบกัน คือคนละที่อยู่

เชื่อไหมครับ ศาลนึงตัดสินให้พ่อแพ้ ศาลนึงตัดสินให้ลูกชนะ

อีกคดีหนึ่งผู้รับเหมาที่มีชื่อเสียงมากแห่งหนึ่งสร้างอาคารขนาดใหญ่ ทำกำแพงกันดินชั่วคราวเพื่อเจาะฐานราก ปรากฏบ้านข้างๆถล่ม ผู้รับเหมาต้องเช่าคอนโดให้เจ้าของบ้านอยู่ไปพลางๆระหว่างขอทำการก่อสร้างให้เสร็จและขอเวลาคิดค่าเสียหาย เจ้าของบ้านก็ยอมเห็นเป็นเจ้าของโครงการมีชื่อ ผู้รับเหมารับงานเป็นหมื่นล้าน พอตึกเสร็จผู้รับเหมาเสนอให้แค่ไม่กี่แสนสำหรับบ้านขนาดใหญ่หนึ่งหลังรวมสิ่งปลูกสร้างอื่นๆที่พังลงมา มีคนอยู่เป็นสิบ บ้านถล่มนะครับไม่ใช่ร้าวปูนฉาบ ขอย้ำ เรียกว่าอันตรายขนาด วสท ต้องลงมาดูและเขตประกาศให้ตึกเป็นเขตอันตรายละกัน

ที่สุดต้องขึ้นศาลเพราะตกลงกันไม่ได้ ศาลชั้นต้นตัดสินให้ผู้เสียหายได้รับเงิน 10ล้าน

แต่ถึงเดี๋ยวนี้เจ้าของบ้านยังไม่เห็นเม็ดเงิน เพราะรออุธรณ์(และคงจะฏีกา) ว่ากันไปอีก 5ปี 10ปี

ตอนนี้ผู้รับเหมาถูกฟ้องล้มละลายและรอโดนเตะออกจากตลาดหลักทรัพย์ ที่เจ็บใจคือยังมีค่าคอนโดไม่เคยจ่ายให้เจ้าของบ้านอีกเป็นล้านตลอดที่อยู่เป็นปี (ทุรนทุราย ย้ายเข้าและต้องกุลีกุจอ ย้ายออก)

อีกคดีนึง เจ้าของบ้านซึ่งโครงสร้างอายุเกิน 30ปี มีรอยร้าว(นิดนึง)เนื่องจากตึกข้างๆก่อสร้าง(เสร็จแล้ว) นึกขึ้นได้ว่า(อาจ)ต้องใช้เงิน ออกข่าวลงสื่อว่าผู้รับเหมาแย่ไม่รับผิดชอบสังคมแบบนั้นแบบนี้ ผู้รับเหมาไม่อยากเสียชื่อตกลงจะจ่ายให้เป็นล้าน ไม่เอา กระหน่ำข่าวไปอีก (จากคอนเน็คชั่นกับสื่อแบบอินไซด์) สรุปได้มาหลายสิบล้าน ตกลงได้นอกศาล บริษัทประกันภัยที่จ่ายกับผู้รับเหมาแทบล้มละลาย

คดีที่เกี่ยวข้องกับก่อสร้าง หรืออสังหาริมทรัพย์(บางส่วน)ปรกติเข้าหลักจ้างทำของ จึงไม่ต้องมีสัญญาก็ได้ อายุความสองปี ถึงแม้ สคบ จะพยายามทำให้ธุรกิจนี้บังคับสัญญาแต่ในทางปฏิบัติยากมากที่จะเป็นธรรมกับทุกฝ่าย หรือที่จะลงรายละเอียดขนาดนั้นในการทำงานและควบคุมงาน

จากผิดอาจเป็นถูก จากถูกอาจเป็นผิด ขึ้นอยู่กับวิธีการและหลักการ พลิกประเด็น หาประเด็น หลายเรื่องเกี่ยวข้องทางเทคนิค สัญญา ซึ่งพิสูจน์ยากทั้งทางปฏิบัติและทางทฤษฏี

ศาลไทยงานเยอะนะครับ ทะเลาะกันก่อนกว่าจะไปศาลต้องมีเป็นเดือนเป็นปี ชั้นต้นมี 2ปีกว่าจะทราบผลศาลอุธรณ์มีอีก 2ถึง4ปี ฏีกาอีกพอๆกัน รวมเป็น 5ถึง10ปี แล้วต้องมาตามบังคับคดีซึ่งมาอายุความอีก10ปีถ้าลูกหนี้ซ่อนทรัพย์เก่ง ก็เหนื่อยเล่นแมวจับหนู

เพราะฉะนั้น
ฟ้องแล้วท่านอาจไม่ได้อะไร

แต่ไม่ฟ้องท่านอาจไม่เหลืออะไร

ผมพูดถึงทั้งทั้งผู้ถูกทำและผู้ทระทำ

คุยกันเถอะครับ

อสังหาและก่อสร้างไทย ใครๆก็บินได้

อะไรจะขนาดนั้นครับ มาง่ายไปง่าย มาเร็วไปเร็ว ลงน้อยเอามาก ลงมากไม่มีอะไรเหลือ แตกแล้วโต ตำนานหลายๆแบบที่มันส์ๆขอเล่าเรื่องเหล่าลูกน้อง(และนินทา)นายเก่าครับ

เชื่อหรือไม่ว่าเวลาท่านจะสร้างบ้านสักหลัง สิ่งเริ่มต้นที่เราส่วนใหญ่คิดถึงคือผู้รับเหมา (แทนที่จะเป็นคนออกแบบ) สังคมไทยเริ่มจากสังคมสบายๆเอาง่ายเข้าว่า จะสร้างบ้านทั้งหลัง จ่ายเงินเป็นล้าน กลับมองหาคนทำแทนที่จะเป็นคนออกแบบ ผมเคยถามหลายๆคนได้คำตอบที่น่าหวั่นวิตก ไม่ว่าจะเป็น ก็มันถูกดีคุยกับผู้รับเหมาเลย หรือจะไปออกแบบทำไมก็เอาเหมือนๆกับเค้านี้แหละ ว่าเข้าไปนั้น ท่านไม่รู้จักคำว่าเสียน้อยเสียยากเสียมากเสียง่ายหรือครับ ก็เราไปคิดเองเออเองเสียแบบนี้ อะไรๆมันก็เลยทำให้พวกก่อสร้างง่ายเข้าไปด้วย ผู้รับเหมาที่เราๆท่านๆเห็นเป็นส่วนใหญ่ที่เรียกมาสัมภาษณ์ส่วนใหญ่แค่ดูโหวงเฮ้งก็สอบตกแล้ว ไม่ว่าหน้าโหดหนวดรกรุงรังลากแตะเหมือนจะมาปล้นมากหว่า หรือหน้าใสแจ๋วจนคิดว่าไอ้หนูนี้หรือ(วะ)จะมาทำบ้านชั้น หรือขับเบ็นซ์ใส่โรเล็กซ์เรือนทองล้อมเพชรมารับงานจนเจ้าของบ้านนึกว่าเราจะโดนฟันแหงๆ แต่แปลกว่าในที่สุดพวกเขาเหล่านั้น ก็อาจได้งาน

เราต้องยอมรับว่าธรรมชาติของงานก่อสร้างที่รายละเอียดเยอะ ทั้งมูลค่างานและทางเทคนิค เช่นใครบอกว่าเป็นผู้รับเหมาทำบ้านหลังหนึ่ง (ประมารว่าทั้งของทั้งแรง คือซื้อของเองทำเอง รับผิดชอบทั้งหมด) จริงๆอาจจะมือผู้รับเหมาย่อยกว่ายี่สิบเจ้าในบ้านท่าน อย่าลืมนะครับ ยี่สบเจ้าก็ยี่สิบ กระเป๋า ยี่สิบชุดคนงานยี่สิบความเสี่ยง เอาง่ายๆ บ้านทุกหลังต้องมีกระจก เหล็กรูปพรรณ ประตูไม้(หรืออลูมิเนียม) ไม่มีผู้รับเหมารายไหนหรอกครับไม่ว่ารายย่อยหรือบริษัทฯที่จะมีร้านผลิตกระจกพร้อมช่าง ขายส่งเหล็กเอง หรือมีประตูไม้บานสำเร็จรูปหรือเป็นร้านอลูมิเนียม ไอ้ที่โฆษณากันโครมๆว่าสร้างบ้านด้วยช่างของตนเองที่ฝีมือดี จริงๆคือช่างที่จะไปหามาหรือเคยทำงานด้วยอาจมีฝีมือดี(แต่คุมได้หรือไม่ อนาคตจะมีปัญหาหรือไม่ ไม่ทราบ) หรือสร้างบ้านโดยไม่ใช้ผู้รับเหมาช่วงก็คงทำได้แค่เหมาแรงงานทั้งหลังและมีดีลที่ดีกับผู้รับเหมาช่วงชุดต่างๆเท่านั้นครับ ในบล็อกนี้ที่อื่นผมคงเล่าละเอียดกว่านี้เรื่อง ผู้รับเหมาแต่ละชุดนะครับ

ทีนี้พอโครงสร้างของก่อสร้างบ้านเราเรามันง่ายๆแบบนี้(เพราะเราๆท่านๆนั่นแหละอยากให้ง่าย) ผู้รับเหมาพอสนิทกับเจ้าของบ้านมากหน่อยหรือเริ่มมีทุน(หรือหลอกตัวเองว่ามีทุน) ก็ขยับมาบอกตัวเองว่าเป็นผู้รับเหมาที่ทำบ้านทั้งหลังหรือรับงานได้ เช่นเดียวกับผู้ออกแบบ หรือสถาปนิก ทำไปทำมา เจ้าของงานอยากให้พิสูจน์ตัวเอง(และแอบขุดบ่อล่อปลานิดๆ) หรือฮึกเหิมลองสร้างตัว ก็หันมารับงาน พอมีทุนบ้างไม่มีบ้างก็ถูไถกันไป รวยบ้างเจ๊งบ้าง ไปรับงานบ้านเรามันง่ายไม่มีระบบตรวจสอบที่ชัดเจน บางรายจดทะเบียน หจก หรือบริษัท ก็ไม่มี ถามว่าเคยทำงานที่ไหนถึงพาไปดูก็พาแอบๆเข้าไปเพราะงานที่ตัวเองทำแค่งานโครงสร้างหรือบางส่วน (ไอ้ที่ลักไก่เอางานคนอื่นมาโชว์หรือเข้าไปดูไม่ได้เพราะมีเรื่องทะเลาะกับลูกค้าไม่ต้องพูดถึง) ปุปปับพอคุยกันถูกคอก็ได้งานแล้ว ทำไปเรื่อยๆประคองตัวกันเข้าดี ก็ว่าไป ไม่ดีก็กลายเป็นตำนานไม่รู้จบของ ผมมีปัญหากับผู้รับเหมา(อีกแล้ว)

ทำธุรกิจรับเหมาก่อสร้างไม่ง่ายนะครับ จริงๆน่าจะเริ่มต้นยากกว่าคนอื่นด้วยซ้ำ ท่านลองคิดดูเอาง่ายๆ ท่านไปรับงานมาบ้านหลังเล็กๆขี้หมูขี้หมาก็เป็นแสนเป็นล้านใช้เวลาเป็นปี บริษัทที่จะมีรายได้มาเร็วและสามารถรับงานขนาดนี้ได้ ต้องตีโจทย์ธุรกิจแตกและมีศักายภาพในการทำตลาดพอดู อย่างว่าครับ บ้านเราโจทย์มันง่ายใครที่อยากเป็นผู้รับเหมาก็เลยอ่านโจทย์และทำข้อสอบได้ไม่ยาก ทีนี้พอได้งานมาต้องมีบัญชีการเงินไว้เก็บเงินและตรวจสอบเพื่อจะได้ไม่มั่ว ต้องมีจัดซื้อไว้ซื้อของซึ่งรายการมากมายก่ายกอง ต้องมีโฟร์แมนคุมงานเพื่อไม่ให้รั่วไหล ต้องคนคุย(และจัดระเบียบทางอารมณ์)กับลูกค้าเวลาโดนด่า ต้องมีเซลล์คอยมองหางานใหม่ๆเพื่อความต่อเนื่อง(และใช้หนี้เก่า) ง่ายๆแค่นี้ก็หลายคนแล้ว แต่เชื่อหรือไม่ครับผู้รับเหมาสร้างบ้านส่วนใหญ่ในเมืองไทยสามารถทำงานทั้งหมดที่ผมกล่าวมาได้โดยคนสองคน คือตัวเองกับเมีย(กะไม่ให้มีเบี้ยหัวแตก) คือตัวเองทำทุกอย่างที่ว่ายกเว้นให้ภรรยาดูแลเงินทอง เป็นความจริงที่น่ากลัวสำหรับมูลค่าตลาดปีละ 50,000ล้านนะครับ ที่ยิ่งน่าสนใจคือถึงแม้กว่าครึ่งหนึ่งของตลาดจะถูกควบคุมโดยบริษัทใหญ่ที่มีการบริหารที่เป็นเรื่องเป็นราวมากกว่า ทั้งหลายทั้งปวงยังคงเป็นการบริหารผู้รับเหมารายย่อยกลุ่มต่างๆมากกว่าการนำแรงงานหน่วยย่อยทั้งหมดหรือการจัดซื้อวัสดุทั้งหมด มาบริหารโดยตรง กลับมาจุดเดิมครับ งานก่อสร้างความเสี่ยงสูงรายละเอียดมากและไม่มีใครอย่างเสี่ยงเมื่อรู้ว่าทำแบบนั้นแบบนี้แล้วขาดทุนเห็นๆ

What they don't teach you in grad school ปริญญาโท ปริญญาเอกเค้าเรียน(หรือไม่ได้เรียน) อะไรกัน

อย่าหวังอะไรมากครับ ไม่มีไม้อาญาวิเศษ แต่ถ้าคุณอยากให้ใครมาจัดระเบียบความคิดคุณใหม่ ก็ไม่เลวนะครับ

ปริญญาโทไทยเป็นเรื่องแปลก ให้คนทำงานมาเรียนหลักสูตรเต็มเวลาแล้วเรียนไม่จบโทษมหาลัยฯ เมืองนอกไม่มีนะครับ เค้ากว่าจะเรียนจบสองปี เรียนทั้งวันก็ทำได้ กลับบ้านไม่ต้องทำอะไรอ่านหนังสือค้นคว้า ทำทั้งเปเปอร์และการบ้าน

นักเรียนปริญญาโทเมืองไทยของเราวิ่งปุเลงปุเลงมาจากที่ทำงานเพื่อให้ทันหกโมงเย็นถึงสามทุ่ม เหนื่อยและเรียนไม่รู้เรื่อง คนเรียนปโทหวังว่ากระดาษใบนี้จะอับเกรดอะไรๆได้ทันใจ

การเรียนปโทสอนให้เราคิดท่านคิดว่าท่านต้องมีความรับผิดชอบสูงกว่าคนปรกติ ท่านต้องเปลี่ยนลอจิกหรือตรรกกะการคิดใหม่จากการเรียนรู้สิ่งใหม่ ศึกษาในรูปแบบใหม่ ผ่านการสอนในรูปแบบใหม่และที่สำคัญค้นหาคำตอบด้วยตัวเองในรูปแบบใหม่ผ่านวิทยานิพนธ์

การเรียนเพื่อให้ได้ปโท คือการสอนให้ท่านพึ่งตนเองได้ในทุกมิติ ไม่ว่าความจริงของชีวิต การเรียนรู้ หรือการแก้ปัญหา

ท่านแค่ต้องการมาหาความรู้ใหม่เหนือจากปตรีหรือครับ? ถ้าคิดแค่นั้นอย่าเรียนเลย

Innovation in our industry (is there???)

ห้าพันปีที่ผ่านมาเราทำอะไรบ้าง ดีขึ้นอย่างไรบ้าง(หรือเลวลง) มีหรือไม่เนี่ยไอ้เทคโนโลยีอะไรเนี่ยลุง

Financial Management (really!!!)

เรื่องจับจ่ายใช้สอย บริษัทรับเหมาเล็กใหญ่ใช้จ่ายเงินต่างกันอย่างไร ใครจนใครรวย บริษัทออกแบบสภาพคล่องดีหรือไม่ บริษัทอสังหามีชีวิตบนยอดหญ้าจริงหรือไม่ บริหารแบบเจ๊ใหญ่เฮียเล็กไม่ดีจริงหรือ และทำไมบริษัทมหาชนก็เจ๊งได้ ตัวเลขทางการเงินบอกอะไรเราบ้างและมันบอกอะไรเรา รอดูนะครับ

Three Questions You Need to Ask About Your Brand

Three Questions You Need to Ask About Your Brand
Conventional wisdom says creating a brand is about differentiating your product. Think again.
by Kevin Lane Keller, Brian Sternthal, and Alice Tybout
Traditionally, the people responsible for positioning brands have concentrated on points of difference—the benefits that set each brand apart from the competition. Maytag is distinguished by dependability, Tide by whitening power, BMW by superior handling. Such points of differentiation are, in many cases, what consumers remember about a brand. But points of differentiation alone are not enough to sustain a brand against competitors. Managers often pay too little attention to two other aspects of competitive positioning: understanding the frame of reference within which their brands work and addressing the features that brands have in common with competitors. There are always circumstances in which it’s necessary to “break even” with competing brands. Effective brand positioning requires not only careful consideration of a brand’s points of difference, but also of what we call its points of parity with other products.
Subway faced a brand-positioning dilemma in 2000 when its ad agency recommended that the sandwich shop chain present itself as the healthy fast-food brand, using as its spokesperson a 22-year-old man who had lost 245 pounds by following a diet that consisted largely of Subway sandwiches. The agency was so confident of the appeal of the weight loss story that it financed the production of a television spot, which ran regionally and produced an average sales increase of more than 15%.
The agency was focusing almost exclusively on Subway’s key point of difference from other fast-food restaurants: healthfulness. But Subway’s executives were concerned about the brand’s competitive frame of reference and the attendant points of parity. While they were eager to reposition the brand—sales had been flat for two years—they saw taste as the sine qua non of the fast-food frame of reference and believed that taste is more important than healthfulness to core fast-food customers. Subway’s research suggested that the company, which has more stores than any other fast-food operation, could successfully compete on taste with the burger giants, whose sales dwarf Subway’s. And executives knew that fast-food consumers often perceive good taste and healthfulness to be at odds. Management feared that a strong health-centered campaign would jeopardize the perception of Subway as a fast-food establishment.
Subway began running the agency’s advertisements nationwide. But recently it has been simultaneously running another campaign promoting new products on the basis of taste. Whichever approach turns out to be right for the brand in the long term, the example shows that brand positioning focusing only on a point of difference leaves out important issues. Sound competitive positioning requires the identification of an appropriate frame of reference and associated points of parity and points of difference. Subway can continue to differentiate, of course—differentiating is a smart way to keep other potential health-focused fast-food purveyors out of its business—but it can’t forget what business it’s in.
Have We Established a Frame?
Brand positioning starts with establishing a frame of reference, which signals to consumers the goal they can expect to achieve by using a brand. Choosing the proper frame is important because it dictates the types of associations that will function as points of parity and points of difference. In some cases, the frame of reference is other brands in the same category. Coca-Cola is a soft drink. It competes with Pepsi-Cola and RC. But in certain instances, the frame of reference might be brands in quite disparate categories. Coke, Gatorade, and Snapple belong to the soft drink, sport drink, and iced tea categories, but they potentially share the frame of reference that consists of all thirst-quenching drinks.
One variable that may influence the choice of frame of reference is the product’s stage in the life cycle. When a new product is launched, competing products are often enlisted to serve as the frame of reference so that consumers can quickly discern what the product is and what goal it serves. In later stages of the product life cycle, growth opportunities (and threats) may emerge outside the product category. Accordingly, shifting the frame of reference may be necessary. The case of FedEx illustrates this evolution.
When Federal Express launched its service, it offered a clear point of difference from traditional mail delivery via the U.S. Postal Service: overnight delivery. As other providers of overnight delivery services appeared, the new competitors served as a new frame of reference. FedEx positioned itself as superior to them based on speed and dependability. This point of difference was reflected in its advertising slogan, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”
While FedEx continues to be concerned about competitors in the overnight delivery category, some of its stiffest competition now comes from other forms of document transmission. For example, many documents that once would have been sent by overnight delivery can be faxed or e-mailed more quickly and inexpensively. FedEx’s “speedy delivery” point of difference is rendered meaningless when the frame of reference is expanded to include fax or e-mail. A new point of difference is required. Against this new frame of reference, FedEx could choose to differentiate on security, confidentiality, and attention-getting capability. This type of differentiation would be supported by FedEx’s heavily promoted tracking capabilities, which distinguish it not only from fax and e-mail, but from other overnight delivery carriers as well.
Even established brands need to pay close attention to frames of reference, in some cases expanding their focus in order to preempt the competition. If Campbell’s soups, say, were to focus exclusively on competition from Progresso soups, Campbell’s sales could be blindsided by new quick-lunch products such as frozen pasta bowls.
Are We Leveraging Our Points of Parity?
Once you’ve chosen an initial frame of reference, think through the points of parity that must be met if consumers are to perceive your product as a legitimate and credible player within that frame. Consumers might not consider a bank truly a “bank” unless it offers checking and savings plans, safe-deposit boxes, traveler’s checks, and so on. The approach you use to meet these minimum requirements for playing the game will depend on where your product is in its life cycle.
New Brands.
Marketing strategists generally recognize the importance of identifying points of parity when introducing a new brand, as the FedEx example illustrates. But the more innovative the product, the greater the difficulty of fitting it into an established frame and meeting the frame’s minimum requirements. The brief, lonely life of Motorola’s Envoy underlines this point.
Envoy was a personal digital assistant launched in 1994. It received messages wirelessly like a pager, but no one viewed it as a pager because it was too large (the size of a VHS tape) and too expensive ($1,500). Envoy sent e-mail and faxes like a laptop computer, but it couldn’t substitute for a laptop because it lacked a keyboard and sufficient storage. Envoy could store calendar and contact information like an organizer, but its price tag and cumbersome entry system made it an implausible member of that category. Envoy lacked sufficient points of parity to belong to any existing category. Without a clear frame of reference, consumers weren’t sure why they should purchase the product. It was withdrawn from the market in 1996.
Shortly before Envoy was put to rest, the PalmPilot 1000, a device with only a fraction of the capabilities of Envoy, was launched. It quickly became the most rapidly adopted electronic device ever. A key factor in the product’s success was its point of parity with electronic organizers; it was able to claim this category as a frame of reference. Jeff Hawkins, the designer of the PalmPilot, intentionally limited the device’s functions to those associated with organizers. The compact size and reasonable price reinforced its membership in the organizer category, where it set itself apart from others through its simple, one-button PC synchronization.
Brand Extensions.
When extending a brand, it’s easy—and dangerous—to shortchange points of parity. The more an extension differs from a base brand, the greater the importance of focusing on the frame of reference. For example, when Nivea, which markets its skin cream as “gentle” and “protective,” started selling deodorant, establishing that the deodorant did what deodorants do—stop odor—was essential. Once that was established, marketers could think about pushing the gentle and protective qualities already associated with the Nivea brand.
Dove could have learned from Nivea. Dove, known as the soap with “moisturizing lotion,” moved into the dishwashing-liquid business with a product that claimed to “soften your hands as you do the dishes.” Sales were disappointing, perhaps because consumers were looking for a dishwashing liquid that cleaned the dishes rather than softened the hands. Dove needed to establish its points of parity with competitors before stressing its differences.
Established Brands.
Managers of established brands also need to reassess points of parity from time to time, because attributes that were once differentiators can become minimum requirements. When Procter & Gamble developed an ingredient for dishwashing liquid that cut grease, it wasn’t a differentiator for long—P&G itself added the ingredient to its other brands.
Savvy marketers can hold off a competitor’s point of difference by creating competitive points of parity—Gillette is no longer the only company selling triple-blade razors, for example. In this way, a brand can “break even” in an area where competitors are trying to break away and then achieve a point of difference in some other area. Visa and American Express both market credit cards. Visa’s point of difference is that it is the most convenient card—it can be used in many places. American Express highlights the prestige associated with use of its card. Having established these points of difference, Visa and American Express now compete by attempting to blunt each other’s advantage. Visa offers gold and platinum cards to enhance the prestige of its cards; American Express has increased the number of vendors that accept its cards. By attacking a competitor’s point of difference and recasting it as a point of parity, a company hopes to draw attention to its own point of difference.
The benefits of even the savviest brand positioning don’t necessarily last forever. Palm is under fire from an increasing number of competitors, and even mighty FedEx has failed in some arenas (witness its mid-1980s push for remote faxing), although its recent alliance with the Postal Service suggests that another rethinking of both the company’s points of parity and points of difference is under way.
Are the Points of Difference Compelling?
You shouldn’t rely solely on points of difference when positioning a brand, but you shouldn’t ignore them either. Assuming a frame of reference is identified correctly, points of difference—even seemingly contradictory ones—can be powerful. Strong, favorable, unique associations that distinguish a brand from others in the same frame of reference are fundamental to successful brand positioning. But it’s important to avoid a one-dimensional view of differentiation. Careful analysis shows that there are three types of brand differences: brand performance associations, brand imagery associations, and consumer insight associations. By considering each of these kinds of differences, you can better target your message.
Brand performance associations relate to the ways in which a product or service attempts to meet customers’ functional needs. These associations, which are based on intrinsic properties of the brand, revolve around the many facets of the question: “Does this product do what it says?” Brand performance associations, which fall into five broad categories, come into play when brands are assessed on characteristics a buyer can investigate prior to purchase. One category is composed of a brand’s performance on the benefits that prompt consumption. For Subway, these benefits include taste, nutritional value, and the variety offered. A second set of associations relates to a brand’s reliability, durability, and serviceability. Subway might be positioned as delivering the same healthy choices every time a customer visits a store. Service effectiveness, efficiency, and empathy make up another set of associations that Subway might offer by focusing on the speed, courtesy, and accuracy with which it fills customer orders. Style and design constitute a fourth category of associations: Subway’s emphasis on a health benefit might be supported by the simple, hygienic environment in which the product is sold. Finally, associations to value and price might help differentiate a brand from its competitors: More sandwich choices at lower prices would serve Subway well in its battle to top McDonald’s.
When considering whether to buy a computer, a car, a book, or an item of clothing, a consumer can study the product’s concrete qualities and features. In such cases, brand performance associations may be all you need to distinguish your product. But when making choices based on experience—such as where to get a haircut or eat dinner—consumers use brand imagery associations. Brand imagery is typically established by depicting who uses the brand and under what circumstances. Subway represents its point of difference by using a spokesman who has lost weight. This device implies that Subway is for the average person who wants a simple way to get in shape.
The Pitfalls of Brand Positioning
Consumer insight associations are generally used when a brand’s performance and imagery don’t differ much from those of the competition. If all other measures are equal, a brand that can show consumers it has insight into their problems or goals can then make the case that it is the solution. For example, ads for Lee Jeans show women’s tribulations in the search for jeans that fit well (and the rituals they go through to get them on) as the basis for positioning Lee as the brand that offers superior fit.
But don’t rely too much on consumer insight associations. Use of consumer insight as a point of difference is generally a less attractive basis for positioning than focusing on a brand benefit or imagery association because insights into consumers’ goals are readily emulated. The insight that young men desire to be hip and admired by their peers has become a point of parity rather than a point of difference for automobile companies—the same insight underlies ads from Volkswagen, Toyota, and Subaru.
There are two questions that serve as fundamental filters through which to run your brand’s points-of-difference benefits: Are they desirable to customers, and can you deliver them? When the answer to both is yes, a point of difference can become a strong, favorable, unique brand association.
Desirability.
To qualify as desirable, a point of difference must be perceived by the brand’s audience as both relevant and believable. Relevance is easily over-looked. In the early 1990s, for example, a number of brands in different product categories (colas, dishwashing soaps, beer, deodorant, gasoline, and so forth) introduced “clear”—colorless and in some cases transparent—versions of their products to better differentiate themselves from competitors. Although clear might have initially signaled naturalness, purity, and lightness, a proliferation of clear products blurred the meaning of this attribute. It’s worth noting that as long as benefits are perceived as enhancing performance, they needn’t have any real effect. For example, flaked crystals have been used in successfully promoting Folgers coffee, even though flaking’s contribution to product performance is unclear.
The simplest approach to believability is to point to a unique, provable attribute of the product. If a high-caffeine soft drink were to argue that it is more energizing than other drinks, it could support the claim by emphasizing its higher caffeine concentration. Palm-Pilot started out contending that it offered superior convenience relative to other electronic organizers because it provided one-button PC synchronization. Subway supports its health claim by advertising that its sandwiches have fewer grams of fat than those offered by its rivals.
Deliverability.
A product’s point of difference needs to meet three deliverability criteria. First, creating the point of difference must be feasible. In recent years, airlines have wisely abandoned efforts to claim superior on-time performance as their point of difference. Management recognizes that an airline’s ability to deliver such a point of difference is compromised by numerous uncontrollable factors. Second, positioning on a particular benefit must be profitable. A major bank that provided personal bankers to answer clients’ questions presents a good example of an unprofitable benefit: The bank terminated the service after accountants, insurance executives, and other professionals overwhelmed the staff with inquiries. Finally, the positioning must be preemptive, defensible, and difficult to attack. While consumers may find low prices or free delivery attractive as points of difference, all too often these features compromise profitability and are easily imitated. Outpost.com offered free delivery of customer purchases but canceled the service after one year when it became apparent the benefit could not be sustained profitably.
Market leaders typically market their products on the basis of the category’s points of parity; they try to create a “We are the frame of reference” message. Coke (its ads suggest) is refreshment. McDonald’s equals great taste. Even when a brand leader doesn’t enjoy a performance advantage, it can sometimes use its bigger ad budget to claim that it does. Thus, leading banks promote longer hours as if this were a point of difference, even though lesser competitors offer the same service. Follower brands must not neglect points of parity as a means of announcing their frame of reference, but they compete on points of difference. McDonald’s is great taste; Subway has good-enough taste but competes on healthfulness. Pantene offers healthier hair; Suave gives you healthy hair at a lower price.
Putting It All Together
Developing an effective position goes beyond determining the frame of reference, points of parity, and points of difference. It also requires that these elements be internally consistent at any point in time and over time.
Ensuring that attributes don’t contradict one another is particularly important. From a consumer’s perspective, the fact that a brand possesses a given benefit can imply that it will not possess another benefit. For example, it might be difficult to position a brand as “inexpensive” and at the same time assert that it is “of the highest quality.” Brands that are positioned as nutritious and good tasting, powerful and safe, ubiquitous and exclusive, varied and simple include negatively correlated benefits.
But, as the success of Miller Lite—“great taste, less filling”—shows, apparent contradictions can be transcended. There are three good ways to go about it. First, sequencing. Establish a brand’s “great taste” before you move on to “less filling.” In most instances, consumers are unlikely to devote the resources necessary to process multiple brand attributes and benefits at one time anyway. A second approach is to leverage some other, unconnected attribute. Miller Lite addressed the negative correlation between great taste and low calories by presenting well-known and well-liked celebrities to lend credibility to the taste benefit. And it’s sometimes possible to make the case that contradictions are, in fact, complements. When Apple Computer launched Macintosh, its key point of difference was that it was “user friendly.” But customers assumed that an easy-to-use personal computer could not be very powerful, and power was a key determinant of choice. Apple addressed the potential problem by developing an advertising campaign that stated, “The most powerful computers are ones that people actually use.”
Making It Last
As a brand ages, the challenge is to make sure it stays up-to-date and in touch with consumers’ shifting needs. This can be achieved in a variety of ways. In some cases, the brand’s position is sufficiently rich that exactly the same position can be sustained over time. Marlboro has successfully used cowboys and associations to the Old West since 1955 to depict freedom and individuality.
In other cases, presenting the same points of difference over time does not sustain a brand’s performance. It may be necessary to deepen the meanings associated with the brand. This entails demonstrating more explicitly how the brand relates to consumers’ goals and requires insight about what motivates consumers to use a brand. The brand is then positioned in such a way that its point of difference becomes its essence and implies goal attainment. We call this laddering up.
In the laddering-up process, consumers are first given concrete attributes and then prompted to climb toward progressively more abstract and general inferences. One company’s cellular advertising campaign illustrates that approach. The focus of its initial advertising spot was on unique product features that made the phone service reliable. In a second generation, the ads examined the implication of reliable service, which is that consumers would be less concerned about being tied to the office to await important calls. The next generation of advertising might focus on a more general implication: consumers’ greater freedom of movement.
Another approach to sustaining a brand position is to build what the Leo Burnett advertising agency has termed the “big idea.” This entails identifying a differentiating benefit that is important to consumers and presenting, over time, a variety of attributes that imply the benefit. The context is kept constant so that people can readily associate the ad with the brand name, ensuring strong brand linkage.
Advertising for Green Giant illustrates the big-idea approach. The setting is always in the valley, so consumers know at the outset of each ad that Green Giant is around. The reliable use of this context, and the fact that the benefit is always superior quality, link the individual executions as a campaign. By varying, over time, the attributes that imply this benefit, Green Giant provides new information to sustain consumer interest. Successive generations of ads have informed consumers that Green Giant vegetables are vacuum-packed, fresh frozen, and packed in butter sauce to imply superior quality and taste.
• • •
Frames of reference, points of parity, and points of difference are moving targets. Maytag isn’t the only dependable brand of appliance, Tide isn’t the only detergent with whitening power, BMWs aren’t the only cars on the road with superior handling. The key questions you need to ask about your brand—Have we established a frame? Are we leveraging our points of parity? Are the points of difference compelling?—may not change, but their context certainly will. Asking these questions will help ensure the right brand positioning, but don’t think any of these variables stays static for long. The savviest brand positioners are also the most vigilant.

Selling the Brand Inside

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Selling the Brand Inside
You tell customers what makes you great. Do your employees know?
by Colin Mitchell
When you think of marketing, you more than likely think of marketing to your customers: How can you persuade more people to buy what you sell? But another “market” is just as important: your employees, the very people who can make the brand come alive for your customers. Yet in our work helping executives develop and carry out branding campaigns, my colleagues and I have found that companies very often ignore this critical constituency.
Why is internal marketing so important? First, because it’s the best way to help employees make a powerful emotional connection to the products and services you sell. Without that connection, employees are likely to undermine the expectations set by your advertising. In some cases, this is because they simply don’t understand what you have promised the public, so they end up working at cross-purposes. In other cases, it may be they don’t actually believe in the brand and feel disengaged or, worse, hostile toward the company. We’ve found that when people care about and believe in the brand, they’re motivated to work harder and their loyalty to the company increases. Employees are unified and inspired by a common sense of purpose and identity.
Unfortunately, in most companies, internal marketing is done poorly, if at all. While executives recognize the need to keep people informed about the company’s strategy and direction, few understand the need to convince employees of the brand’s power—they take it as a given. What’s more, the people who are charged with internal communications—HR professionals, typically—don’t have the marketing skills to communicate successfully. Information is doled out to employees in the form of memos, newsletters, and so forth, but it’s not designed to convince them of the uniqueness of the company’s brand. The marketing department might get involved once in a while to tell employees about a new ad campaign or branding effort. But the intent usually is to tell people what the company is doing, not to sell them on the ideas.
We have found that by applying many of the principles of consumer advertising to internal communications, leaders can guide employees to a better understanding of, and even a passion for, the brand vision. Applying these principles enables employees to “live” the vision in their day-to-day activities. And when employees live that vision, customers are much more likely to experience the company in a way that’s consistent with what you’ve promised. I’ll outline the principles of internal marketing in the following pages.
Principle 1 Choose Your Moment
Most people have limited tolerance for change initiatives, and branding and visioning exercises are no exception. But at certain turning points, times when the company is experiencing some fundamental challenge or change, employees are seeking direction and are relatively receptive to these initiatives. Such moments can create either positive or negative energy—enthusiasm for new programs or unproductive rumormongering. Turning points are thus ideal opportunities for an internal branding campaign; managers can direct people’s energy in a positive direction by clearly and vividly articulating what makes the company special. Indeed, we’ve found that internal branding efforts launched without the momentum such a moment can generate nearly always fail. Without a natural turning point, managers seeking to boost the brand internally may need to manufacture this kind of moment, perhaps by launching a new marketing strategy.
British Petroleum seized such an opportunity when it merged with Amoco and then ARCO. It rebranded itself as BP, redesigned its logo, and launched a campaign simultaneously to staff and the public declaring that it was going “beyond petroleum.” The company repositioned its brand and put aside its identity as an oil company to become an energy company, moving from an old-style, closed corporation to an open, collaborative, new-economic venture. This break with the past gave employees from each of the original companies a new and distinctive identity. A survey that was taken after the internal branding campaign was launched showed that 76% of employees felt favorably toward the new brand, 80% were aware of the brand values that constituted the new brand messages, and a full 90% thought the company was going in the right direction.
The arrival of new leadership is another opportune moment for internal rebranding. Staff expect to hear from a new leader right away and are usually open to new ideas at such times. Carly Fiorina exploited this window when she took over Hewlett-Packard. She took a personal interest in the branding strategy and played an active role. To demonstrate her commitment, Fiorina appeared in launch commercials, which asserted that, “the original start-up will act like one again.” The company’s new tag line, “Invent,” became a mantra inside the company, and cofounder Bill Hewlett’s garage, where he and Dave Packard made their first inventions, became a symbol in both internal and external communications. A new leader rediscovering the company’s heritage released a surge of energy throughout the organization.
Similarly, when Arthur Martinez was named CEO of Sears in 1992, he took advantage of his new role to energize and focus employees, using marketing tools such as surveys, focus groups, and a new tag line to pull the company out of a sales slump. It worked: Sales picked up, and morale did, too.
But choosing your moment also means knowing when to pull back. Martinez and other Sears executives, energized by their success, stepped up the campaign in the years that followed. They didn’t know when to leave well enough alone, and, by 1998, employees were so overwhelmed with marketing materials that they began to feel confused and disconnected. A classic case of initiative fatigue set in as floor staff were inundated with messages that had little relevance to their departments, completed survey after survey, and lost significant sales time attending myriad training classes. One frustrated executive turned up at a meeting with a wheelbarrow holding one month’s worth of memos, questionnaires, and instructional videos. The moment had clearly passed. So, at that year’s annual meeting, in a paradoxical effort to recapture the energy of 1993, the CEO announced that there would be “no new initiatives, no new big ideas.” The back-to-basics approach came as a relief to employees and reenergized them around the customer service themes they had embraced five years earlier. Today, the company maintains a low-level, consistent stream of internal marketing initiatives but has curtailed internal campaigns in order to achieve a more appropriate pace.
Principle 2 Link Internal and External Marketing
Employees need to hear the same messages that you send out to the marketplace. At most companies, however, internal and external communications are often mismatched. This can be very confusing, and it threatens employees’ perceptions of the company’s integrity: They are told one thing by management but observe that a different message is being sent to the public. One health insurance company, for instance, advertised that the welfare of patients was the company’s number one priority, while employees were told that their main goal was to increase the value of their stock options through cost reductions. And one major financial services institution told customers that it was making a major shift in focus from being a financial retailer to a financial adviser, but, a year later, research showed that the customer experience with the company had not changed. It turned out that company leaders had not made an effort to sell the change internally, so employees were still churning out transactions and hadn’t changed their behavior to match their new adviser role.
Enabling employees to deliver on customer expectations is important, of course, but it’s not the only reason a company needs to match internal and external messages. Another reason is to help push the company to achieve goals that might otherwise be out of reach. In 1997, when IBM launched its e-business campaign (which is widely credited for turning around the company’s image), it chose to ignore research that suggested consumers were unprepared to embrace IBM as a leader in e-business. Although to the outside world this looked like an external marketing effort, IBM was also using the campaign to align employees around the idea of the Internet as the future of technology. The internal campaign changed the way employees thought about everything they did, from how they named products to how they organized staff to how they approached selling. The campaign was successful largely because it gave employees a sense of direction and purpose, which in turn restored their confidence in IBM’s ability to predict the future and lead the technology industry. Today, research shows that people are four times more likely to associate the term “e-business” with IBM than with its nearest competitor, Microsoft.
The type of “two-way branding” that IBM did so successfully strengthens both sides of the equation. Internal marketing becomes stronger because it can draw on the same “big idea” as advertising. Consumer marketing becomes stronger because the messages are developed based on employees’ behavior and attitudes, as well as on the company’s strengths and capabilities—indeed, the themes are drawn from the company’s very soul. This process can result in a more distinct advertising idea because marketers are more likely to create a message that’s unique to the company.
Perhaps even more important, by taking employees into account, a company can avoid creating a message that doesn’t resonate with staff or, worse, one that builds resentment. In 1996, United Airlines shelved its “Come Fly the Friendly Skies” slogan when presented with a survey that revealed the depth of customer resentment toward the airline industry. In an effort to own up to the industry’s shortcomings, United launched a new campaign, “Rising,” in which it sought to differentiate itself by acknowledging poor service and promising incremental improvements such as better meals. While this was a logical premise for the campaign given the tenor of the times, a campaign focusing on customers’ distaste for flying was deeply discouraging to the staff. Employee resentment ultimately made it impossible for United to deliver the improvements it was promising, which in turn undermined the “Rising” pledge. Three years later, United decided employee opposition was undermining its success and pulled the campaign. It has since moved to a more inclusive brand message with the line “United,” which both audiences can embrace. Here, a fundamental principle of advertising—find and address a customer concern—failed United because it did not consider the internal market.
When it comes to execution, the most common and effective way to link internal and external marketing campaigns is to create external advertising that targets both audiences. IBM used this tactic very effectively when it launched its e-business campaign. It took out an eight-page ad in the Wall Street Journal declaring its new vision, a message directed at both customers and internal stakeholders. This is an expensive way to capture attention, but if used sparingly, it is the most powerful form of communication; in fact, you need do it only once for everyone in the company to read it. There’s a symbolic advantage as well. Such a tactic signals that the company is taking its pledge very seriously; it also signals transparency—the same message going out to both audiences.
Advertising isn’t the only way to link internal and external marketing. At Nike, a number of senior executives now hold the additional title of “Corporate Storyteller.” They deliberately avoid stories of financial successes and concentrate on parables of “just doing it,” reflecting and reinforcing the company’s ad campaigns. One tale, for example, recalls how legendary coach and Nike cofounder Bill Bowerman, in an effort to build a better shoe for his team, poured rubber into the family waffle iron, giving birth to the prototype of Nike’s famous Waffle Sole. By talking about such inventive moves, the company hopes to keep the spirit of innovation that characterizes its ad campaigns alive and well within the company.
But while their messages must be aligned, companies must also keep external promises a little ahead of internal realities. Such promises provide incentives for employees and give them something to live up to. In the 1980s, Ford turned “Quality Is Job 1” from an internal rallying cry into a consumer slogan in response to the threat from cheaper, more reliable Japanese cars. It did so before the claim was fully justified, but by placing it in the public arena, it gave employees an incentive to match the Japanese. If the promise is pushed too far ahead, however, it loses credibility. When a beleaguered British Rail launched a campaign announcing service improvements under the banner “We’re Getting There,” it did so prematurely. By drawing attention to the gap between the promise and the reality, it prompted destructive press coverage. This, in turn, demoralized staff, who had been legitimately proud of the service advances they had made.
Principle 3 Bring the Brand Alive for Employees
The goal of an internal branding campaign is very similar to that of an external campaign: to create an emotional connection to your company that transcends any one particular experience. In the case of employees, you also want the connection to inform the way they approach their jobs, even if they don’t interact with customers. You want them to have the brand vision in their minds and to consider whether or not they are supporting the brand in every decision they make. How do you do that? Much the same way you cultivate the connection with external audiences. You need to plan and execute a professional branding campaign to introduce and explain the messages and then reinforce them by weaving the brand into the fabric of the company. The messages should be directed at employee “touch-points,” the day-to-day interactions that influence the way people experience the workplace.
A professional branding campaign is just what it sounds like. It takes the form of a consumer branding campaign, with a set of stages that starts with research and continues through the planning and execution of a communications strategy designed to convince your employees of the merits and credibility of your brand. And designing and executing this campaign should be the marketing department’s responsibility. The marketing people have the necessary skills, they understand the context surrounding the external campaign, and, perhaps most important, they are uniquely positioned to match the internal campaign to the external campaign.
Market research is a given for any consumer marketing campaign, but companies seldom invest in such research when their employees are the audience. Companies can use many of the same tools for the internal market that they would use for consumers: focus groups, in-depth interviews, and surveys. They can then map their findings to create a big picture of the culture that shows where different subcultures reside and how information flows through the organization. Why go to the trouble? Because once organizations find out what’s on people’s minds, they can tailor their campaigns accordingly.
Miller Brewing Company took employee attitudes very seriously when it launched a new internal branding campaign aimed at improving employee morale. The company conducted an in-depth study, which revealed that employees took great pride in the company’s tradition of brewing, mythologized by stories such as that of founder Frederick Miller carrying the yeast in his pocket from Germany in 1855. The internal campaign became a celebration of employees’ passion for great beer. Larger-than-life posters of employees decorated the breweries, depicting workers as company heroes. The company also distributed materials reinforcing the campaign, including a book celebrating the vocation of brewing and T-shirts emblazoned with “I Make Miller Time.” In accordance with Principle 2, these internal findings influenced and reflected Miller’s external consumer advertising, which drew on the brand’s heritage of craftsmanship. The new TV commercials feature employees talking to the camera, expressing their passion for Miller beer. An added bonus of internal research: By collecting stories like that of Frederick Miller, organizations can be sure that company folklore doesn’t walk out the door when long-term employees leave—preserving the culture for future generations of employees.
Following research, the next stage is to plan the campaign, a full-blown communications strategy like Miller’s that mirrors a consumer marketing strategy. In thinking about the campaign, top executives should first answer some key questions: What do employees think of the company? What do we want them to think? What will convince them of this? And why should they believe us? Once these questions have been answered, the work of creating communications materials can begin.
Unfortunately, the way most companies approach this task is so generic, so removed from the business’s frontline realities, and, frankly, so dull, that the very prospect of the campaign and the new coffee mugs is likely to prompt a collective groan, or, worse, mockery at the water cooler. To overcome people’s natural cynicism, the campaign and the communications materials must ring true for employees and must draw on the company’s very soul, reflecting and reinforcing what people care about and what makes them come to work in the morning. Materials must be free of jargon and grandstanding and must focus on the essence of the company.
To be effective, these materials must be as creative and eye-catching as the materials you deliver to an external audience. Just as in a consumer advertising campaign, you need to surprise and charm your audience. This is a task of persuasion, not information, and dry, lifeless materials will quickly be shelved or discarded. (For suggestions on making these materials compelling and useful to employees, see the sidebar “How to Create Communications Materials Employees Will Actually Use.”)
How to Create Communications Materials Employees Will Actually Use
When it comes to delivering the message, it’s tempting to send out a memo, a video, or a package of colorful materials and consider it done, but there’s no substitute for personal contact from the organization’s highest levels. Indeed, failure to communicate at a personal level can undermine the most sophisticated and expensive rebranding campaign. The failure of the merger of Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank in 2000 can be attributed in part to the failure of management to persuade Deutsche’s investment bankers of the vision for how the newly merged company would compete. Many key employees left, and the threat of a mass walkout forced Deutsche to abandon the deal after considerable damage to the share price of both companies.
It’s worth noting that research conducted early on can pay off when it comes to implementation. If you’ve identified a subculture of resistance, for example, you can give extra attention to the resisters when you roll out the brand. Or if you’ve learned who the most influential employees are—the ones who shape the attitudes of those around them—then you can target those employees directly, and, if you get them on board, they can help get the word out.
The final stage of a branding campaign is feedback and participation from the target audience. For large, geographically diverse organizations, the company intranet can be a superb facilitator of communication and interaction. Indeed, we’ve found that in companies that do not use intranets for candid dialogue, employees inevitably turn to external Web sites like the Vault to complain about the company. Accenture understood that risk when it rebranded in January 2001. It created an interactive Web site to allow people to ask questions and view the replies to questions others had posted. Joe Forehand, Accenture’s CEO, also includes a feedback button on every internal message he sends to employees and personally responds to every question or suggestion.
As yet, however, the potential of this medium is unfulfilled. There is no reason, for example, why the chairman can’t Webcast occasional “fireside chats,” a possibility undreamed of by previous generations of managers. But don’t let the Web become a substitute for face time or walking the corridors: Fireside chats can be broadcast to different company locations so that everyone can take part at once, but the leader shouldn’t hole up in his or her office to deliver the message.
Fireside chats can become part of an effort to weave the branding into the fabric of the organization. Since it’s not feasible to conduct a series of major campaigns—it’s costly and employees begin to tune them out—the company should make every effort to incorporate the branding into everyday experiences, so that employees “live” the brand at all times. Such employee touchpoints mirror the consumer touchpoints that have become familiar in consumer marketing, where every point of interaction with the consumer is an opportunity to reinforce the brand. (Some of the best examples of consumer touchpoints are retail outlets like Niketown or UPS’s vans and uniforms, which are deliberately styled after the military to express discipline and punctuality.)
The most obvious place to begin is the company’s physical space. When Condé Nast asked the architect Frank Gehry to design a cafeteria for the offices (home of Vogue and Vanity Fair, among others), he used curved glass panels to reflect the see-and-be-seen culture of the fashion magazine world. And Nike celebrates its heritage and devotion to athletes by naming key landmarks on the company campus after sports legends: Bowerman Drive leads to the campus, where you’ll find the Joe Paterno Child Development Center and the Bo Jackson Fitness Center.
Companies can also reinforce the brand very effectively through company policy. Quality Bicycle Products, which employs 195 people in the suburbs of Minneapolis, includes as part of its vision statement a commitment to protecting the environment. To bring the vision alive for the people who work there, the company offers a financial reward: Employees who live within ten miles of the company are paid $2 a day to bicycle, carpool, or take a bus to work. The money is paid in credits toward the company’s products. Recruiting and hiring policies are other areas that can serve as touchpoints. Hollywood Video, which regards its passion for movies as its differentiation from the mammoth Blockbuster chain, requires that employees show knowledge of and enthusiasm for movies. Southwest Airlines is known for rigorously assessing candidates’ personalities during interviews, rating all potential hires—from pilots to mechanics—on a scale of one to five on seven traits corresponding to the brand’s core values. While other companies might consider only more traditional values like honesty or responsibility, Southwest preserves its unique brand personality by hiring only people who are a perfect fit.
By incorporating the brand vision into these employee touchpoints, companies, over time inculcate the vision into the employee experience to the extent that on-brand behavior becomes instinctive. Apple is an obvious example, as are Disney and Virgin Airlines. It’s no accident that, despite formidable challenges from the PCworld, there remains widespread Apple zealotry both inside and outside the company.
Amid the pressure to develop new products and squeeze costs out of operations, internal marketing is easily overlooked. After all, in times of financial stress, even external marketing budgets are scrutinized, despite the well-known fact that external marketing is important. But it is a truth of business that if employees do not care about their company, they will in the end contribute to its demise. And it’s up to you to give them a reason to care.

Innovating Through Design

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Innovating Through Design
A group of cutting-edge manufacturers in northern Italy interpret items for the home, like lamps and teakettles, in ways that initially confound consumers and then convert them. The result is high growth rates and long product lives.
by Roberto Verganti
Everyone by now has seen the whimsical cone-shaped kettle with the little plastic birdie affixed to its spout, designed by the architect Michael Graves. Since its introduction in 1985 by Alessi, the northern-Italian home-furnishings manufacturer, approximately 1.5 million units of what is, as kettles go, an expensive item have been sold.
The success of model 9093 attracted the attention of Target, a retailer known for offering sophisticated designs at popular prices, which in 1999 invited Graves to design a new line of products, including a knockoff of the bird kettle. It is a testament to the mystique of the original that Alessi continues to sell large numbers of model 9093—for five times the price of Target’s version. Since both original and knockoff were, unusually, designed by the same person, the critical variable would appear to be Alessi itself. Although Target’s marketing has turned Graves into a design icon, an influential consumer segment seems to prize model 9093 for qualities that happen to pervade all of Alessi’s products and those of its peers. The products’ originality, aura, and prestige are the outcome of a process that is based in Milan but embraces participants and notions far beyond it. Indeed, the process transcends the discipline of design. What Alessi and its local brethren have devised is nothing less than an engine of innovation. What’s more, although Milan is famous as a center of fashion and high style, the maestros of this process are executives, not artists or artisans. Thus any kind of consumer-goods company, located almost anywhere in the world, could adopt the process.
Alessi, the lighting manufacturers Flos and Artemide, the furniture maker Kartell, and many other northern Italian firms make up the Lombardy design discourse, a loose collection of home-furnishings companies that create highly marketable products with distinctive design profiles. These companies do not follow either of the design industry’s norms: “tech push,” whereby an improvement in performance and functionality dictates a modification in design, or “market pull,” whereby the design accommodates consumers’ demand for new features or an up-to-date look. Nor do they resort to the open-innovation techniques for which IBM, Procter & Gamble, and Eli Lilly, for example, have become known. That is, they don’t rely on an anonymous horde of code writers or the equivalent to perfect an existing product; they don’t in-license the patented discoveries of unaffiliated businesses or inventors; and they don’t out-license their own discoveries to generate revenues with minimal effort, or to elicit a third party’s better-informed reading of the discoveries’ marketability so as to spur their own development efforts.
The Lombardy firms’ R&D operation, for the most part, can be found neither inside the companies nor in interactions among them. Rather, it comprises a free-floating community of architects, suppliers, photographers, critics, curators, publishers, and craftsmen, among many other categories of professionals, as well as the expected artists and designers. The members of the community are prized as much for their immersion in a discourse as for their originality. In other words, long before any thought is given to the form an item will eventually take, its role, identity, and meaning have been thoroughly explored. Usually the products that at long last result from this process point toward some new way of living—one that members of the community may already have started to embrace. Because the process is the sociological equivalent of basic research, most of the products it gives birth to represent a dramatic break from their predecessors. In this they differ from products that result when a company in effect outsources the R&D phase to a design studio like IDEO, which explores consumer needs by asking consumers directly what they want and by observing their behavior. In addition, products that are radically innovative allo Milano tend to have longer commercial lives than other goods; they create in consumers bolder expectations for the brand and high receptivity to their equally startling successors; and they tend to enjoy especially high margins, because they are so dissimilar to the offerings of competitors (see the exhibit “The Design Cluster Advantage”).
The Design Cluster Advantage
Model 9093 may not be the most radical exemplar of what might be called “design-driven innovation,” but it’s one of the easiest to grasp. Earlier kettles came in various shapes and sizes, but their purpose was, almost without exception, utilitarian. Consequently, their form followed their function (to boil water)—the first precept of modern design. Sensing from his interactions with the Lombardy research community a new spirit of playfulness that reflected a growing disillusionment with modernism’s severity, Alessi’s CEO and managing director, Alberto Alessi, contacted Graves, a professor of architecture at Princeton, who at that point had never worked on a consumer product but had designed a few notoriously postmodern buildings in the United States (their surfaces were decorative and referred to earlier architectural idioms—modernist taboos).
Although undeniably clever in its synthesis of pop art and art deco references, model 9093 showed its greatest originality in broadening people’s expectations of what a kettle was and did and, indeed, the nature of the breakfast experience. This broadening reflected years of discussion and generations of design concepts preceding Graves’s realization of model 9093. Far from being an annoyance or merely a signal, the birdlike whistle the kettle emits draws its owners to the breakfast table as powerfully as the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. The little plastic bird visually confirms that beckoning sound, and the delightfulness of the kettle’s shape is its own reward. According to an interview he gave BusinessWeek.com, Graves once received a postcard from a French poet, who wrote, “I’m always very grumpy when I get up in the morning. But when I get up now, I put the teakettle on, and when it starts to sing it makes me smile—goddamn you!”
A product called Bookworm represents, perhaps, a more fundamental reconceptualization of a traditional object—in this case, a bookshelf. Made by Kartell, which is known for its plastic furniture, including the transparent Louis XIV “ghost” chair, Bookworm is a long, narrow band constructed of colored polyvinyl chloride, traditionally a semi-rigid material but here having the flexibility of a sheet of stainless steel, which allows the purchaser to bend it into a sinuous shape of his liking and affix it in that shape to the wall. This bookworm is not studious: It can’t hold as many books as its right-angled counterparts. And it is not shy: It outshines the books that it ostensibly exists to support. It was the ingenuity of local mold and chemical manufacturers interacting with Kartell’s founder and honorary chairman, Giulio Castelli, a chemical engineer by training; his successor, Claudio Luti; and Ron Arad, an Israeli designer, that turned what had always been a background fixture into an intriguing and somewhat impractical main event.
As model 9093 and Bookworm suggest, one needn’t be artistic to contribute to such a design process. Alberto Alessi is a lawyer by training, as is Luca Cordero di Montezemolo, the chairman of the holding company of furniture makers Cassina and Poltrona Frau. Ernesto Gismondi, the chairman of Artemide, is an aerospace engineer. Luti’s background is in economics. Nor does one need to be Italian. In addition to Arad and Graves, the Lombardy designers include Philippe Starck, who is French; Richard Sapper (the Alessi designer who first experimented with kettle whistles), who is German; Ettore Sottsass, who is half Austrian; and many others.
Thus innovation, Milan style, combines aspects of the local and the global, another of its key features. While physical proximity is indispensable to establishing a close rapport among people in different companies and disciplines, they are included in the design discourse precisely because they are alert to distant cultural and social currents. Even so, they benefit from an admixture of foreigners based elsewhere who are enticed to participate by the richness of the local community’s interactions (see the sidebar “The Experience for Designers”).
The Experience for Designers
Though the Milanese approach to innovation remains unique (if only because its management practices have never been written about), aspects of it are already alive in other countries and regions. In the United States, a familiar example of how a change in one’s understanding of a product’s meaning can lead to a change in its design, and ultimately a change in its identity, is the iMac, the creation of Jonathan Ive—a bathroom designer before he joined Apple, where he is now the president of industrial design. Ive and Steve Jobs challenged the received view of PCs as chiefly of fice products. By wrapping the iMac in friendly, translucent colors and ovoid forms, Apple declared it to be an appliance for the home. The message contained in the design hastened a transformation in how the public understood the device. The presence of the iMac in home offices then began to alter homeowners’ sense of the appropriateness of the objects surrounding it—lighting, furniture, carpets, and so forth—each of which might need to be redesigned in turn.
The repercussions of a shift in an object’s design and meaning explain in part why the Lombardy group shows a special preference for architects, who, after all, are in the business of creating environments. Architects also know that most buildings will outlive the tenancy of their present owners, which compels them to envision the way of life of future generations who will take up residence there.
But can such design communities be found anywhere but Milan? Yes: Design clusters exist, for example, in Finland, London, Sweden, Denmark, Catalonia, and the Rhone-Alps region of France. Helsinki has many small design studios, several associations of designers, a design museum, a university of art and design, and research centers focused on design and heavily underwritten by Nokia, which understands that a key aspect of its mobile phones’ appeal is their look and feel. Nokia realized that their small size had turned them into personal accessories, akin to key chains and wallets, thus obliging them to appeal to their owners in an intimate and emotional way. Since the mobile phone is the global device par excellence, connecting its user to foreign people and places, Nokia is sponsoring a student project to look into how product design might be able to express the local cultures of Estonia, Israel, Brazil, and several other countries.
In a study I conducted for the government of Lombardy of the design clusters mentioned above, 26 international design experts agreed that the components of the design system—schools, studios, manufacturers, and so forth—were not significantly better in Lombardy than elsewhere. What did distinguish the region was the number and strength of the links between these components and the quality of the interactions among them. In short, it needn’t be a lack of resources that keeps a cluster from forming. The factors that make Lombardy the envy of the other localities are imagination and motivation, which are within the capacities of any group of businesses, whether they be in Toledo, Ohio, or Ljubljana, Slovenia. The eight years I spent studying the inner workings of these firms—from executive decision making to talent management to industrial processes—have convinced me that scores of design systems are just waiting to be ignited.
The Birth of a Product
At roughly the time Michael Graves was just a twinkle in Alberto Alessi’s eye, Ettore Sottsass, then in his sixties, started a collective called Memphis with designers less than half his age. An architect by training, Sottsass was born in Austria but based in Milan as a designer at the telecommunications company Olivetti. Memphis cultivated a liking for intense primary colors, balls and triangles resembling children’s blocks, the uneasy juxtaposition of cheap materials like plastic with expensive ones like marble, and an irreverent attitude toward what was then considered immaculate good taste. These preferences expressed the upending of norms in the wake of the youth movements of the 1960s and 1970s—in particular, a rejection of the machine and its connotations and imagery, including boxy forms, antiseptic surfaces of exposed metal and white, and evidence of an object’s industrial origins. They also represented the conflation of high and low art, luxury and simplicity, into a general democratization of taste. The shapes, colors, and materials Memphis proposed were lighthearted and playful and thus meant to make an emotional rather than a rational, utilitarian appeal to the consumer—a commonplace today, but a novelty two decades ago.
The rise of Memphis inaugurated what was to become a three-phase process of design-driven innovation, which culminated in model 9093.
Phase 1: Absorb.
Although far in advance of contemporary fashion, Memphis captured the attention of local entrepreneurs, who understood it to be a genuine research laboratory that could later inform their own innovation efforts. In fact, Artemide’s chairman, Ernesto Gismondi, helped subsidize it, while leaving its members free, in his words, “to do what they wanted.”
The entrepreneurs met a few times a year to discuss trends, styles, materials, and technology, and gathered at exhibitions they jointly sponsored. They also founded an avant-garde design journal in whose pages the future of design was vigorously debated. Though their companies belonged to several different industries, all their product lines revolved around the home.
Drawing on these discussions, Alberto Alessi recognized that a sharply new design language was needed for his company’s kitchenware, and he believed that mostly foreign architects who had never designed consumer goods were the ones to invent its vocabulary and grammar. He called the project the Tea and Coffee Piazza and asked a Milanese architect and close friend, Alessandro Mendini, to select ten other architects and coordinate their activities. Mendini’s choices included the postmodernists Hans Hollein of Austria and Robert Venturi of the United States as well as Graves. Although Alessi has a rigorous four-dimensional methodology for deciding whether to market a product it has developed, the 11 architects were asked initially to ignore issues of cost and functionality, the company’s first two dimensions, and concentrate exclusively on communicativeness and evocativeness, the second two. Once they had received general direction from Alessi, the 11 worked independently. In contrast to the IDEO process, there was no brainstorming by multidisciplinary teams.
Alberto Alessi had an ulterior motive: to discover the next wave of talent in product design. As he says, “It is easy to make a list of the top ten designers of the past ten years. But I’m virtually certain that fewer than half of them will be among the top ten designers of the next ten years. By then, their language won’t be novel anymore, or will be widely imitated. Also, their interest and vitality may fade. Sometimes, too, they are spoiled by success.”
Phase 2: Interpret.
Alessi knew that before groundbreaking products could be presented to the public, the ground itself had to be prepared, else the public, which had not been consulted about what kinds of products it wanted, would not know how to make sense of them. He took the following steps:
• The 11 coffee and tea service prototypes the architects produced were exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Smithsonian and in other cultural settings.
• They were produced in limited editions of 99 pieces and sold to museums and influential collectors for $25,000 each.
• Alessi prepared a book about the prototypes and distributed it to the extended design community.
• A traveling exhibit of the prototypes was shown in high-end department stores around the world.
• The press in Italy and abroad was invited to write about the exhibits and the project.
Alessi closely followed the reactions of design aficionados to the prototypes. An incidental benefit of publicizing them and the concepts behind them before an actual product existed was to ensure that the public would forever associate them with the Alessi brand and would view any related development by others as an imitation.
Among the 11 architects, Graves was one of only two who were invited to turn their concepts into cost-effective and functional commercial products. Model 9093 was then rated on Alessi’s four dimensions. Its broad base, which facilitated rapid heating; its visible rivets, which recalled a kind of vintage artisanship; its superimposed plastic handle in cool blue, which was decorative as well as heat-resistant; and its little bird, which flew in the face of modernism’s insistence on abstract form, earned it the highest rating in Alessi’s history. Because of the company’s success with Sapper’s model 9091 kettle, which emits two low, harmonizing whistles evoking ships passing in the night, a whistle was one specification imposed on Graves. Alessi also wanted the bird to be removable, so that the kettle could feature a spout instead of a hole, and he wanted a lower cost of fabrication and a faster boil.
Phase 3: Address.
Shortly before and then after model 9093 was launched, Alessi organized another round of exhibitions and publicity. Because advertising is not the ideal explanatory medium, little of it was done. The members of the design discourse, by continuing to talk and write about the kettle’s role and meaning, disseminated knowledge of the product to a wider audience. In the end, they acted as amplifiers of a message they had helped to construct. Nowadays, many of the Lombardy companies maintain their own retail outlets as a way of controlling presentation and underlining the traits their products have in common. When third-party retailers carry them, often items of the same brand will be found grouped together in their own showcase, for the same reasons. And, unlike an Armani jacket or a Gucci handbag, these products come with literature elaborating on how they came into existence and the qualities that make them special.
After the Kettle
Alessi initiates a project like the Tea and Coffee Piazza every eight or ten years. Its successor was called Family Follows Fiction. Moving from Sottsass’s and Graves’s insights to Franco Fornari’s theories on the affective impact of form, especially with respect to objects that evoke childhood pleasures and sensations (birds, building blocks, toys, and what psychologists call “transitional” objects, such as security blankets), Alessi in the early 1990s asked a different group of architects, almost all Italians this time, to design objects for grownups that would directly appeal to their impulse to invest possessions with personal meaning. Typically these would be palm-size objects, such as Stefano Giovannoni’s nutcracker in the shape of a squirrel and Alessandro Mendini’s “dancing” Anna G. corkscrew, with its twisting head and armlike levers.
Worried that the ideas underlying the items generated by the Tea and Coffee Piazza had become too familiar after being copied by other companies, Alessi launched a new project called Tea and Coffee Towers in 2001. In this case, about 20 architects were enlisted, including three Japanese and one Chinese. Alessi expects computer-assisted design to inspire new forms. He says, “These architects know how to use the computer like a pencil. They are so good with the PC that the design comes directly from the heart, just as a traditional designer’s pencil is directly linked to the heart. This permits the creation of a wealth of shapes never seen before in products.” Seven of these architects are now at work developing items for consumers, many of whom await them with the anticipation they might feel about the next movie from their favorite director.
For more information
Companies that are part of the Lombardy design discourse also partner with large companies that are not. For example, Alessi and the electronics company Philips in 1994 launched a line of appliances such as espresso machines and toasters. According to the chief creative director of Philips Design, the focus of the partnership was to provide consumers with sensory and aesthetic experiences and personal comfort rather than improved functionality. Philips and Artemide together conducted a series of workshops to investigate the affective impact of shifting colored light. Philips has recently released a flat-screen TV with Ambilight, which emanates from the rear of the TV and changes color and intensity in tandem with the images on the screen.
In 1996, Artemide had invented a lamp it called Metamorfosi—probably the best proof of my contention that the Lombardy group’s inquiries into the changing meanings of objects are only secondarily about the design they ultimately assume. The lamp—that is, the object itself, as opposed to the light it emits—isn’t even meant to be seen. Composed largely of translucent materials, it exists to produce colored ambient light, which the owner, using a remote-control device, alters according to his or her mood. The impetus for Metamorfosi’s development was Artemide’s goal, set in the mid-1990s, of conceiving a variety of products that its encroaching global competitors would never think of first. At the time, Gismondi and his managing director for brand strategy and development, Carlotta De Bevilacqua, noticed among their fellow citizens a growing concern with health and achieving peace of mind. The two convened a research team that included five well-known designers and a professor of design and that was led by a medical doctor who was also a psychiatrist. Their mission was to investigate the biological, psychological, and cultural dimensions of light. After the in-house R&D department perfected the technology, the team moved on to designing the object, whose whole purpose was to generate a light that would produce a sense of well-being in the user. As Alessi had done with model 9093, Artemide arranged exhibitions and publications to accompany Metamorfosi’s introduction. The debut of the Ambilight TV and the marketing muscle behind it, the company found, helped broaden public receptivity to Artemide’s older, more specialized product.
Can It Happen Here?
Some may think that such a design process can flourish only in surroundings as visually sophisticated and culturally rich as Milan and its hinterlands. In fact, the potential for a design discourse exists everywhere. Let’s take one unpromising candidate: the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, well over 200 miles northwest of New York City and culturally no more connected to that metropolis than western Pennsylvania. Upstate New York as a whole has a high rate of unemployment and one of the slowest-growing economies in the United States. (Job growth from 1990 to 2003 was only 2.3%, and nearly a third of the region’s new residents were prisoners.) But it has the raw material for a design discourse.
Rochester, the largest city in the Finger Lakes region, with a population of 212,000, was once the headquarters of Xerox and the Gannett newspaper chain. It remains the headquarters of Bausch & Lomb, the lens manufacturer, and Eastman Kodak. The fiber-optics maker Corning is based in a nearby town of the same name. Smaller local companies manufacture high-speed digital equipment and do custom printing. The city is also home to the Center for Electronic Imaging Systems, a New York State–funded center for advanced technology that involves a collaboration among Xerox; Kodak; the University of Rochester, a medium-size research institution with excellent professional schools (including its engineering school, which has an institute of optics); and the Rochester Institute of Technology, one of the world’s premier schools of print media. Less than an hour away is Alfred University, which has world-class programs in ceramics and glass sculpture and a division of expanded media, which seeks to promote collaboration among printmakers, designers, video artists, and computer programmers. Cornell, an outstanding research university, is in nearby Ithaca. In June 2006, the Arts and Cultural Council of Greater Rochester held a forum on culture and community renewal.
Indeed, the arts are far from neglected in the Finger Lakes region, which can claim 270 members of the American Institute of Architects, a professional certification body; famous craftsmen such as Wendell Castle and Albert Paley; and a cluster of design studios in Skaneateles, which sits on a lake as serene as Lake Orta, north of Milan, where Alessi is based. Rochester also boasts Eastman House, perhaps the world’s preeminent museum of photography, and other fine-arts museums are nearby. So one shouldn’t be surprised that Richard Florida, in his book The Rise of the Creative Class, rated Rochester the 21st most creative among large cities in the United States and second among large cities in its percentage of “super-creative” people. (According to a joint study by the Progressive Policy Institute and Case Western Reserve University, an average of 2.33 utility patents per 1,000 Rochester workers were issued in the years 1996, 1997, and 1998; the U.S. average was 0.40.)
Despite the region’s concentration of optics, imaging, and offset printing, “information sharing has been partial, creating crosstown rivalries rather than a center of the global economy,” according to one local manager. Creative collaboration among artists, designers, and manufacturers is almost nonexistent. This is true even within Corning, which in 1918 acquired Steuben, a maker of art glass that, thanks to Corning’s innovations, soon became famous for its purity and clarity. Corning’s leadership expected a fruitful exchange between the arts and industry to result. (In researching the Finger Lakes, I stumbled on the fact that Michael Graves himself, in 1989, had designed an item for Steuben.) But despite those hopes, the traffic between Corning and Steuben has been strictly one-way.
According to one Corning scientist, the company does regularly interact with Steuben, but the job of its scientists is limited to keeping the quality of the glass and its other properties as consistent as possible. Situations sometimes arise in which Corning scientists alter the composition of the glass, but such changes typically meet with protest, because they interfere with the production of the standard goods. It was only a few months ago that Steuben approached Corning about departing from orthodoxy and developing colored glass.
Because it focuses exclusively on materials’ functionality, Corning relies on its clients, such as Luxottica, an eyeglass manufacturer, and Samsung, which makes liquid crystal displays for cell phones and flat-screen monitors, to provide specifications for the glass substrates it makes. Those two companies are design-conscious, but their interaction with Corning doesn’t reach the degree of collaboration that, for example, Kartell enjoys with Bayer, the German chemical company, which follows sociocultural developments so that it can propose new materials and uses to its clients before its competitors do. The clients, in turn, have come to rely on Bayer for its suggestions.
Yet the possibilities in the Finger Lakes region are evident, even to the people working there. Says one scientist and manager at Xerox, “In the past, it was rare for local communities such as Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Corning, Xerox, and a cluster of small firms to collaborate. But collaboration in design-driven innovation could allow each firm to create competitive advantages in its respective industry. Xerox could get inspired by Kodak’s camera design and Corning’s glass fiber. Who says Xerox could not use transparent glass as a copier’s frame? It is artistic, modern, and trendy. It also could serve the functional purpose of providing a clear view of paper-jam locations.”
• • •
There is no such thing as an undesigned object—only an object that is well or poorly designed. Thus every business that scants the design process does so at its peril. Conceived broadly enough, that process can be the source of a stream of products that consumers find delightful, meaningful, and worthy of their loyalty. And because of its openness, the process should also prove to be inexhaustible.