IT is amazing when you think about it. A journalist writing in Appleton’s Magazine in 1908 cited medical opinion that each year 20,000 New Yorkers died from “maladies that fly in the dust, created mainly by horse manure.” On April 12, 1961, the headline read “I Can See Everything Says First Spaceman” regarding the successful flight by Yuri Gagarin.
In a single lifetime, we went from the horse and buggy to outer space.
By almost every measure of the global quality of life from literacy to life expectancy, the world was a better place moving into the year 2000 than it was going in the 20th century. Advancing technology brought challenges, but also opened doors of creativity.
Not long ago, a person might have invented a better mousetrap, advertised through print and media —“Better mousetraps for sale”—and waited for the world to beat a path to the company door. But everything changed with the dawn of this new century. The personal computer gave rise to the Internet, which created a global community. Now we carry our relationship to the world in our pocket wherever we go with the Smartphone.
Isaac Newton wrote in 1675: “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” All the wonders of today are an extension of what came before. But now we see creativity in the use and extension of technology that is perhaps unparalleled.
While we marvel at the inventions of the past and maybe think that there are few new gadgets left to find in the box of human imagination, what we are witnessing now is maybe greater creativity in how we use the existing technology.
To get a taxicab a hundred years ago, you walked to a “Taxi Stand” or hailed one on the road. Then came taxis dispatched by radio. And that was the system until June 2012 when Jonathan Tan started a Smartphone based application, called “Grab Taxi.” Tan capitalized on the Smartphone.
UberCab was founded in 2009 and also used the Smartphone technology. But Uber capitalized on this new phenomenon of networking by bringing in private car owners to operate as on-demand taxi services. End of story? Not quite.
A stock-market acquaintance of mine—Gracy Fernandez—is now “standing on the shoulders of Giants” with her new start-up company Graventure. The company extends both the Grab and Uber concepts into the car rental business. There is not much difference between searching the Internet and searching ads in a newspaper for car-rental services.
Graventure though is a Web and app- based car-rental platform that partners with private car owners, tourist vans, transport cooperatives, and Uber and Grab registered vehicles for companies and individuals who want to rent a car with or without a driver.
In three months, almost 10,000 vehicles registered to provide for the car-rental services, which should begin in the next month or so. And what might be a logical extension of Graventure car-rental services? A Smartphone application for a reputable lipat bahay, pest control, or maybe even a plumber or electrician?
Ms. Fernandez received her inspiration when she saw what happened during the Asean Summit regarding the rental cars needed for the delegates and became so frustrated with the lack of a system. Creativity and entrepreneurship do not require reinventing the wheel. Just figure out a new way to solve a problem.
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E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.