Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

Yesterday we stopped by an ice-cream shop called Cold Stone. Not only it has great ice-cream, it also has a powerful business model — personalized-your-food. Cold Stone differs from typical ice-cream shops in that their customers can order personalized ice-cream with various kinds of mix-ins (e.g., nuts, candies, and fruits).

When a customer orders an ice-cream, a service person takes a generic ice-cream base and mix it with various mix-ins to create a personalized ice-cream. For example, when a customer orders Rocky Road, the service person mixes a chocolate ice-cream base with nuts, marshmallow, and chocolate chips. The best part is that the order is mixed right in front of you, and you have the option of add extra mix-ins (e.g., fruits and candies). From a business point of view this is a smart idea because the store needs to stock only few dozens generic ice-creams, which would be cheaper than stocking a wide variety of special flavor ice-creams. The creation of ice-cream in front of customers also makes the customers to feel their orders are special and their food is unique.

BTW, Cold Stone is not the only place that exploits this personalize-your-food idea. The popular Mexican restaurant “Chipotle” is another good example.

Some psychology researcher claimed that men are more intelligent than women. This claim was based on the founding that men scored five IQ points more than women on average, men have larger brains than women.

I disagree with this claim. First, I believe IQ is not a good measurement of human intelligence because we don’t fully understand how intelligence works, and the relationship between human intelligence and the brain — what’s intelligence? Second, I don’t believe the intelligence of a human is completely determined by his/her genetics, but rather it is determined by a combination of “good” genes (e.g., ability to learn) and “good” knowledge (e.g., able apply the learnt knowledge effectively). Third, I know many women who are more intelligent than I’m.

Personally, I love TiVo. But recently I’m having a hard time to see how it can grow revenue without changing its current business model. After reading this blog ( Tivo Could Be The Ultimate Media Sponge), I think this could be an interesting business model for TiVo.

Kamikatsu, a small town of 2200 in the mountains of Shikoku, has 44 categories of trash. People live in that area are required to sort their trash. For example,

lipstick goes into burnables; lipstick tubes, "after the contents have been used up," into "small metals" or plastics. Take out your tape measure before tossing a kettle: under 12 inches, it goes into small metals, but over that it goes into bulky refuse.

Socks? If only one, it is burnable; a pair goes into used cloth, though only if the socks "are not torn, and the left and right sock match." Throw neckties into used cloth, but only after they have been "washed and dried."

I love this! Often I complain that we generate too much trash and wish there is something we can do. I wish similar trash sorting policies will be introduced in our community. On the other hand, even if similar policies are introduce, it would be hard for the system to work. For one reason, I think most of the people in this area are too lazy, and they won’t really care about things like sorting their trash…

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