• Efficiency.
• Uniformity.
• Innovation.

Efficiency

Think about the things that drive satisfaction. In a retail situation, you just want the transaction to be correct and expedient.

Uniformity

People don’t like McDonald’s for the food (do they?), they like it because they know that no matter which McDonald’s they go to, wherever the hell they are, they are going to get the exact same thing. That said, they do not have apple pies in China, they have pineapple pies! Brilliant! Surface has the power to bring that uniformity.

Innovation

Doing something new and different will generate buzz and if people adopt it, change the way things are done in the entire market.

Surface in Retail

I would like to see Surface at checkout. Instead of that stupid conveyor belt, let’s put our groceries on the surface, bar code down. Surface will put a little green glow around the item to let us know that we have succeeded. Stuff can still move down the conveyor to the bagger, but now we have a chance to do some marketing!

First, surface takes care of the checkout. Assuming the person scans in with their thumbprint, phone or loyalty card (are we really still making people carry them? How stupid is that!?) surface can link to their online profile where maybe they have already prepared a list.

If they have forgotten something on the list a message can appear on the surface that asks if the customer would like someone to bring it up for them. If they respond positively, the item is added to the bill and everyone in the store is paged to have someone bring the item to the front. In the meantime, we are capturing all kinds of great information on the customer that we can compare to others. The surface can create custom entertainment on the checkout monitor next to the conveyor belt based on the person’s preferences. It can suggest recipes based on items on the table and could offer discounts on items that other people who buy the same items as customer like. The customer could touch the recipe to put it on their phone or have it emailed. They could touch an item to have it added to their tab and have someone in the store retrieve it for them.

Surface has the power to upsell and to make sure that people optimize their trip to the store and create a uniform experience with each trip. The question now is, who will be first to try it? Shaw’s? Stop & Shop? Piggly Wiggly? Publix?

My current foray into the Social Media space/phenomenon has been infinitely satisfying primarily due to a seemingly endless array of questions that need answers and what seems to be a daily tasty new software snack tossing itself into the fray. One thing I have noticed is that when people find a new piece of social media ware, they enjoy sharing it with their online communities. It feels a lot like they are pioneers moving into a land and staking claim on it as if it were their own. Each new Social Conquistador exhibits newfound passion and instant evangelism along with a sense of ownership. You also hear them bring the thunder and lightning when the stuff is down. Look at Twitter for instance. You don’t have to take my word for it, just look at all of the complaints about how badly Twitter sucks.

But are they even entitled to act like that? Twitter does not have any revenue model that I can detect. Unless… maybe the revenue model is not transparent. Let’s look at the possibilities:

• Charge subscription fee. That would be an epic fail. Want to see everyone run to Plurk?
• Sell Ads. I would think this would be part of implementation on day 1. You gotta eat and your angels and VC backers will only feed you for so long.
• Sell out to Google, Yahoo or Microsoft

I guess they’re hoping to be bought. It worked for Jaiku!