Frictionless commerce and the idjit tribe

Friction and inertia are as real to business as it is to a physical body. Huge changes are occurring in the world...

Firstly, congratulations to Senator Obama on winning the election. His campaign's use of the internet played a significant role in his ultimate victory. I know my congratulations means a lot to him, and even more so: the undying love of the entire Kenya who scored a public holiday - thanks to his election victory. Nice!

Seriously though, I think we had the privilege to witness a history changing event. One we can tell our grand children about. There is hope yet.

The Night The Wood Was Counted

There was exactly 16 pieces of rooikrans on the fire. Correction, there was a little tower of 16 logs and two burning chunks of blitz. Calling it a "fire" would not be correct: The technical term is: "pile of wood".

A "pile of wood" can only be promoted to "fire" when it burns unassisted with virtually no smoke. (Rule 7)

I know it was 16 pieces plus two pieces of blitz because it was counted. The wood AND the blitz. More than once. By more than one guy. It became known later as "The Night The Wood Was Counted."

To understand how we arrived at that sad juncture, it is necessary to tell you about the events that preceded The Counting.

It was a late sunny afternoon a few weeks ago. The Springboks just won a test match (for a change) and everybody was in a good mood - except the supporters of the loosing Japanese team of course. The usual suspects were arriving for the obligatory celebration braai.

I walked outside to the patio and into a rather animated discussion of Newton's first law.

For the record, this is not the type of discussion I expected after a narrow win by the Springboks. Grunting, grinning and groping yes. Physics, no.

As I walked out he said: "Inertia." One could almost hear the full stop. Each of the syllables were pronounced with care bordering on reverence.

Clearly the statement made an impression on the listener, because he remained quiet and tilted his head slightly to one side. He went on: "The short version of Newton's first law of motion says that a body in rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to stay in motion." He paused to take a long swig from his glass - for inspiration it seemed.

He surfaced from the glass and went on enthusiastically: "It's like pushing a car. At first it moves very slowly and then, when it picks up speed, it become easier and easier to move." A sly grin spread around his face: "You own a Landrover right? You know more about pushing cars than most people."

The listener looked around for a safe place to put down his glass.

"Tsk, Tsk", the physics guy said, held up his hand and bowed his head in a Moses-will-stop-the-red-sea kind of gesture. Then he continued: " Once at speed, the car is difficult to stop - this is known as momentum."

The listener seemed to have forgotten he was on his way to put down his glass, and he physics guy continued with a single, metered out word: "Friction."

After few well timed moments of silence for dramatic effect he continued: "In order to stop your misfiring, oil-leaking, smoke belching Landrover, one has to apply some kind of friction, ie brakes. The brake pads grab the wheels and the friction between the two converts the kinetic (movement) energy into heat energy - thereby eventually stopping the car. Sort of Velcro on an atomic level."

The listener was looking around for a place to put down his glass again.

"So!", the physics guy said loudly to distract the listener, "When they explain this stuff to Landrover owners like you we just tell them: Friction is the stuff they put in your brakes and inertia is the stuff in your gearbox. We try to keep it simple for you. You poor fellows have enough problems...with cars."

As the listener put his glass down on the ground the physics guy quickly walked inside to Switzerland (where the girls are), grinning broadly.

I decided to interrupt before the tet-a-tet escalated: "Hey, you think there is enough wood on the fire?". (By this time it was a fire because the wood was burning unassisted, as per rule 7)

"No, he said that we are four couples, and 16 pieces are enough to braai all the meat."

I shook my head. "He counted?" I asked.

"Yup."

I took the shovel next to the braai and heaped it full of coals.

"What are you doing, dude?", the listener wanted to know, but, judging from his broad grin, he had a pretty good idea.

"I'm going to burry half the coals while you go inside and argue with him that there is not enough wood on the fire...and make sure you argue loudly enough for all the girls to hear.", I said while walking over to the flower box to burry and cammo the coals.

I knew he'd rather eat the hot coals than concede that his wood count was wrong.

I also knew it would take a miracle of biblical proportions to cook the meat on half the coals.

"Nice doing business with you, Comrade Dr Evil." The listener grinned and went inside to do his part.

A little while later I heard the argument inside. After a few minutes, Dirk (loudly) proclaimed that he will: "braai the frigging meat my frigging self! There are enough frigging coals to frigging cook a frigging ox!"

After that night he was know as Dirk The Microwave.

Inertia and friction in commerce

A business, like a physical body, can benefit or suffer from Newton's laws. All business have inertia, momentum and friction. A business can either suffer because of it or benefit from it.

Allow me to demonstrate:

Picture this. June 1900. It would have been hot day. The dusty road would have made it difficult to get the horses going faster than 10km per hour, and besides, if he went too fast the "organic soil nutrient replenishment therapy " (horse manure) might have fallen off the wagon.

It would have taken Koos van der Merwe 5 hours to reach his first customer for the day. He would off-load the "nutrient" and then take the order for next month. By then it would have been around noon, and he would have been able to see one more customer before it would be too dark to be on the road. He would have had barely enough time to count the wood, light a fire and cook lunch between his two calls.

The reach of Koos's business was confined by time and distance.

Not his product.

Not his sales technique.

Fortunately not his culinary skills either.

The inertia and the friction in his business is distance, and time. (According to Einstein they are pretty much related anyway.)

Now fast forward to 2008. During the 30 minutes it took other people to drive to work, Sipho made 5 calls from his home office. He spoke to his customers while they were struggling though traffic - happy for the distraction ripping them away from brink of the dark abyss that is road rage. After all: taxi's can be taxing.

He got 2 repeat orders.

He was not even dressed yet.

He emailed the 2 confirmations to his clients with copies to his sales manager and the financial guy. He walked to the kitchen, popped milk into the microwave and was back at his desk 5 minutes later - breakfast in hand, still in his underpants.

While eating this instant oats he logged on to his supplier's web site. They are located in the USA - 8 hours behind our time, and on the other side of the world, but it did not matter because he could use their web site to place an order for more product brochures. Surfing the web for the next 30 minutes, he used web sites in the US, Europe, China and Japan to get pricing and product information. The world was his oyster.

Then it was time to put on pants before someone calls on the web camera...

Distance (and time) has little impact on Sipho's business.

The biggest single "friction remover" in business is ICT. Information and Communication Technologies.

The pace of business started to accelerate and gain momentum provided when the telegraph was invented. Each successive ICT invention reduced friction - today we have always on, high speed internet access. The pace of commerce is accelerating faster than ever before.

Archimedes said that (to paraphrase): "Give me a fulcrum and I'll move the earth." A pivot point. A force multiplier. A friction reducer. ICT.

Friction sucks your energy, steals your momentum, eats away your time. The oil of enterprise is information technology: email, the web, cell phones, instant messaging.

With our much beloved minister of communications having lost her leave to appeal against high court ruling that found that her policies are...well, stupid (and illegal), we will see an explosion in Internet use and cheap bandwidth in South Africa. By the year 2010 South Africa will have two hundred TIMES more Internet bandwidth than today.

Imagine a world where everyone, rich or poor, have access to the Internet. To learn new skills. To find information to improve their lives and their businesses. To help each other. To communicate with each other. To work together.

Now imagine yourself and your business in that network.

Dirk Microwave did not notice that conditions changed (ie his coals were stolen) and consequently failed hilariously.

Tectonic changes are now underway in economies, politics, ICT and the Internet - throughout the entire world.

Pay careful attention.