The Value Innovation

For this week, we had to read two independent publications, that specially made me reflect about the initial idea related to a new concept of integration of bycicle parkings. First the ideas on The Future Of Retail about a new way for brand stores to hold their clients, and then the interview with Ron Johnson, both of them were telling to me the way through which we had to develop the idea of customising bike parkings. So we took our initial idea, and gave it the value vs cost approach, that basically states that retailers must work in adding more value to the relations they have with their clients, instead of looking for a way of increasing revenues by slowing costs. That way, I figured out that I have to associate the problem in case to a value given proposition. To take a today's common parking lot and name the completely opposite characteristics, then integrate them into a whole new concept of product/service. 

So, following the Business Model Generation philosophy, I attacked this problem by sketching de contextual Business Model Canvas and then observing which factors could I eliminate, reduce, raise or create, in pro of giving a much more better experience to the users.

Source: Adapted from Blue Ocean Strategy

Today we are attached to another totally different strategy, which includes minimum costs (just in cases there actually is a bike parking) and no concerne at all about the value. That automatically makes the associated experience an awful one. We have to consider that people who dare to ride a bike in Santiago, has already a hard time making their ways through the city. Streets aren't safely enough for a person to pedal on it, but the riders aren't also well received on the sidewalks, where there's not enough space for them and walkers to coexist. 

The purple lines indicates cycle paths in Santiago... You don't have to do a lot of research to notice that there's an alarming lack of available kilometers for people to travel by bike, given this huge city's already known context.

Now the problem is settled. The challenge is to transform today's disturbing experience of leaving bikes in a safe/comfortable place after our pedals in a whole different concept of treatment to the costumers.

I gues the sensation I want the costumers to experience is the one associated to the video below. After some thinking and filling the Canvas with estimated numbers, I can say that this a totally a profitable project that would change completely associated store's image by improving the experience of the costumers, that would also help by adding themselves to a great develop of conciousness and change of mentality.

This is cool.

Discovering A Real Need

During our last practice experience (Warm Up 2, The Mall Observation), I was a little bit immersed in that lapse when minutes/hours pass and nothing new seems to appear in front of us. So one early conclusion I could prove was the importance of the persistence needed if you want to notice a real need in a public area...

However, yesterday I needed to get some tickets for a show and I decided to go to Parque Arauco. This time, like I usually do, I used my bike (without asking myself first if there would be any place to park it). 

My previous experiences with bike parking lots in retails or in general big stores weren´t so different between them. With the exception of one Lider supermarket wich has a small space for 5 or 6 bikes near the entrance, I haven't used a single outdoor safe place for parking my bike without being aware of his safety during my staying. And this wasn't any different.

When I get there, and after asking some guards and doing some circles around the block, I found the bike parking, in the subterranean, where there wasn't any space for it (there where no more than 20 bikes). So I had to lock my bycicle in a common safety rail near some cars. I didn't need more than 2 minutes (the time a spent down there lefting my bike) for noticing the nonconformity of the other people who was looking for the same. And that made me think about a similar experience I had in Jumbo, where I had to pedal all the way accross the car parking lots in the supermarket's subterranean to finally leave my bike, not before giving all my personal data (It was a horrible small dirty kind of jail). So when I was looking for my Bob Dylan's ticket, I couldn't stop thinking about the particular need of having a customized space for parking our bikes, in this kind of places. The particular fact is the direct source of experience through which I capted this particular necessity of having a comfortable and safe place to leave a transport media that today is playing a central role in a kind of revolution that slowly becomes taking force in Santiago.

Later, and doing more thinking at home, I wander about the idea of adding value to an already existing thing by promoting the benefits of using a bike. In this case, the idea is strictly related to the mall's image, people need's satisfaction, and a deep work of conciousness of everyone (specially people here in Santiago). So I started gettin informed about some relevant and influential revolutions that has taken place in history and could be observed as a rich source of general data.

Nice

Warm Up 2.- Observation: The Mall Experience

In this opportunity, our group went to the Mall Plaza Vespucio, near the University, to walk, sit and most important watch what was going on in that place. Our goal was to identify some key facts that make people go to Mall Plaza instead of other small shoppings to buy almost everything... At first it was obvious, then very confusing, but at the end we think we understood it.

So once there, we start seeing lots of people walking, just sitting, or eating ice cream, all them looking at the showcases or carrying bags with any kind of products. Based on the AEIOU method, we can put in the categories of activities the ones just named in addition to sitting on benches or in restaurants for working or just doing nothing. 

I think she's posing...

Now, and refering to the environments, I think that the conept of Mall Plaza is to offer us a lot of combined environments in just una big box. The corridor, different kind of stores, fast food places, restaurants and terraces are basically the type of environments that Mall Plaza combines in one hit,  which could be one natural reason of why people go there instead of shopping in small stores. As we just read in the Basic Needs lecture, people tend to satisfy their basical needs, where we find the need of socializing. People can also eat in these Malls, and we also read that evoiding the hunger sensation is related to another basic and physiological need to be satisfied. There we have two big and easy-to-catch needs and reasons why people keep going to the Mall Plaza.

Sitting doing nothing.

Lot of people...

The interactions observed in Mall Plaza were between parents, grandparents, and children. Between people and products, food, benches and tables. The variety of things and kind of people related to the context we noticed in the mall is in some way similar to the Araucano Park context observed in warm up 1. I suppose that is really the kind of effect that Mall Plaza wants to transmit, but they must know there is one big failure in the environment proposal: There is a big lack of green areas in those big boxes. Now all of the things and kind of persons I've described are the objects and users involved in the AEIOU method, which brings back the thought about the similarity  between the Mall Plaza and a real plaza. 

"Green Areas"

The concept is about being in family.

The working concept is present here and in the real square.

So as a concluding remark of this particular experience, I can say that the meaning that Mall Plaza management wants to give to their "Plazas" is really a similarity to the real squares, like the Araucano Park. In order to that, is the need of satisfying the physiological and basic needs the one that, based in our observations, make people going to the Mall Plaza and develop their lives there, instead of going to a small store with the only purpose (or possibility) of buy something.