Re: [projectvrm] Microsoft's Personal Health Care Records

[Matthew Blass < >]

You say "I think the terms [of the relationship] have always been based on the individual's value agenda". Well, that floors me.

I mean that in the sense that just because someone makes something that doesn't mean people buy it. Producers try to make something they believe individuals will buy (profitably from them), but it's not the producer saying we need green meat, and then we buy green meat because that's what they offer. Other competitors realize that's not what people value, so someone else makes organic meat instead, and people who value that buy it. Producers drive the market, but they drive it based on their understanding of consumer values, and if they get it wrong (like many companies in the bubble), then they go out of business.

And it follows that through changing mediums of communication, and through changing capabilities in production, we're seeing the breaking of the mass market relationships that have existed for a few decades and along with the loss of effectiveness of tactics like mass market advertising. VRM isn't a tool that I hope will do this as the breaking of business models by a changed landscape is already happening in the news industry, in the music industry, in the auto industry, and others. As an example, blogs are now a simple concept, but they've helped (along with other factors) break the news industry's business model.

The direction that we're seeing with the concepts like the long tail is the spreading of "smaller" messages in greater quantity. However, that's still not enabling the consumer's message to get out. And I don't mean to say that a consumer knows what he or she wants. I didn't know I wanted an iPhone or the Surface until it was created. However, I hope that with VRM, I can open up my preferences to a market of entrepreneurs who will find ways to offer products and services that better suit me personally. I don't really mean that all production will be about customized products, but it will allow for greater more granular communication of values.

For instance, RSS lets authors, who I find interesting, sent me new content. The reverse might be a RSS feed of all my comments on all blogs (twitter like - I don't use twitter, so I'm guessing) from which producers can see what I like, and supposing I've left open a channel for them to contact me, they can offer me products that they think appeal to my values such as another author, or maybe they see I've commented that I'm moving, and they offer me moving assistance, or something else.

That is the opposite of what we have now where producers throw messages out into the wild and see what sticks and what bounces back. When I rent a car, the company has little idea what I like (even if I've rented from it many times) unless it's created a CRM system to track those things. In the VRM world, I go to them with my preferences in a way that they're able to adjust their offering to better suit my values, and at the same time, I'm not stuck with that company just because I've been using their lousy business and they've got all my preferences stored. Instead, I can take those to another company who's better able to suit to my needs...as a handicapped person, or as an new driver or an elderly driver, or as someone who owns lots of cassette tapes and wants a cassette player with the car.

Making better decisions comes from having better information and this works out best if both sides of the relationship can share better information. Right now, we're only sharing in one direction, which is from the producers. If VRM can improve communication and smooth out transactions, then we'll end up making better decisions at lower costs. That's a win-win that I think is along the line of what Joe has said in his last couple emails.

Matt

On Oct 12, 2007, at 12:53 AM, "> wrote:

Hi Matt,

 

 I'll leave other people to comment on that if they want.

 

But your core point is that VRM is a tool to 'break the mass market agenda' because it allows individuals to vocalize different messages to "allow greater granularity and customization (hopefully) of product offerings."

 

Yes, VRM is an enabler of customization. But from my perspective this is just one small part of VRM.

 

And if anything, your argument underlines my point about personal decision-making. In order to be able to 'vocalize' a specification for a customized product, you have to go through quite a complex decision-making process. You have to generate a very clear idea of exactly what you want and what you don't want. You need to check this against what is available and possible. You then need to weigh up costs and trade-offs and set them against your circumstances and priorities. Then you need to bring all this together to make a decision.

 

So the improved ability to specify and customize is a quintessential product of 'better decision making'.

 

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest (going back to earlier discussions), "It is not VRM unless it helps individuals to make and implement decisions better".

 

In this, 'better' includes better product outcomes (quality, fit, price etc including customization), better implementation (time, hassle, convenience, cost, etc), and a better decision making process itself (time, hassle, fun, cost, ease etc involved making decisions about both products and implementation).

 

Alan