Natacha Emilien

A platform makes things better for more than one

April 21, 2021April 21, 2021
by Natacha Emilien

Think of water. Fresh, clean water. Once upon a time, one would have to dig a hole on ones land, and hope for the best. Over time, communities dug a common deep hole, called a well, and shared the water.

This was one of the first platforms, as it provided a shared resource to many people, and despite purity, taste and availability being highly variable, it made things better for more than one!

Today, the CWA operates a national scale platform to supply clean drinking water to the whole country. Without the CWA, every family and business would be extracting, purifying and filtering water all day. The CWA therefore makes water cheaper, faster and better (and safer too), saving people time, money and allowing a standard metered service, to businesses and families.

One might argue that every religion (making a way of life better), every political party (making representation and governance of the people better) and even every football club (making enjoyment of a sport better) is a platform too.

In this article, I’m going to talk about Digital Online Platforms, as that’s what you’re using right now, and- unless you’d like to start a new political party to do good- digital platforms can bring benefits pretty fast.

What’s a digital online platform?

A digital online platform, quite simply, allows an exchange to take place online.

Facebook is a social platform, as it allows people who want to share ideas and people who want to hear ideas and react to them, to exchange ideas.

Amazon allows people trying to buy things and people trying to sell things to exchange goods and services online. Such a platform is usually called a marketplace.

Note that Amazon allows not only buyers and sellers, but people who write reviews about products, and people who transport goods, to do their work more easily, to make the exchange of goods and services even faster, cheaper and better. Amazon is a true example of a multi-sided marketplace.

Why are platforms important for small businesses?

A platform is first of all a good tool. A good tool always provides this benefit: small amount of effort in, large amount of value out. That’s called leverage.

A platform allows multiple users to enjoy this leverage. A well-designed platform provides more leverage to each user, as the number of users grows. This is sometimes called a “network effect”. It might be the reason that you installed Whatsapp. As your friends and family are on Whatsapp, it’s worth installing, so you can communicate with them where they are already hanging out. And you joining Whatsapp made it more valuable to them.

There are many reasons to love platforms, but my favourite reason is that platforms allow smaller companies to enjoy cost savings, market opportunities and other things that are usually enjoyed by larger companies.

As a small business, how do I get started with platforms?

To get started, you could either make use of an existing platform, to enjoy benefits for your business, or even build your own platform!

You could use someone else’s platform

An existing digital online platform could be as simple as Accounting software in the cloud, that you might pay a monthly fee to use, or even an account on a marketplace, allowing you to sell your goods to a ready audience.

But here’s where you could get very creative. Could you repurpose a “traditional” existing platform to achieve leverage, at very low cost but with enormous benefit to your business?

A platform doesn’t have to be beautiful. It just has to deliver consistent benefits!

You could build your own platform

Do you do something better, faster or cheaper than anyone else? If so, could you make this available online to serve your customers even better? Or maybe your suppliers? How about your competitors? You get the idea. As a platform owner, you have access to incredible power.

In my next article, I’ll dig deeper into this, and share a framework to get started, and some inspiring stories.

Homework (for those who want to get started)

Until we meet again, here are some of my favourite readings, that I hope you might like.

Derek Sivers is a personal acquaintance. A musician who simply wanted to sell his CDs online. Except that there were no platforms that did that, at the time. Here’s the story of how he built CD Baby, that allowed anyone anywhere to order a music CD (and not just his music CD) and have it delivered to their door.
If you’re in the mood to go in deep, Platform Scale by Sangeet Paul Choudary explains how small businesses can compete with large ones, through platforms
If you want to know about how platforms make money, check out Matchmakers by David S Evans.

By Alam Kasenally

Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Red Dot

Should we even have this meeting?

July 30, 2019July 31, 2019
by Natacha Emilien

In my previous life as a manager, then a corporate executive, I made a curious observation: I noticed myself staying later and later at my job, as I climbed the rungs of seniority. I used to stay until 8:00 PM, 9:00 PM or even 11:00 PM to “catch up” on urgent tasks. I thought it came with the territory of being more and more important. But then I thought “Wait a minute. My two young kids are paying for this.”. On investigation, I discovered the innocent but insidious culprit: The Meeting. Like a chump, I’d been duped into one meeting after the other, thinking that “back to back meetings” were a badge of seniority. I then realized that all my productive work began at the end of my workday: when my children were fast asleep.

I left my last corporate job and co-founded Red Dot 19 months ago, and entrepreneurship has really helped me rethink the value of every single minute of my day: I wish that I had reached this level of time consciousness earlier, and that I now can bring more people along with me on this journey.

At Red Dot, we believe that our country needs to focus on growth more than ever before, and that, equipped with innovative and entrepreneurial mindset and methodologies, any organisation or individual has the potential to thrive and actively contribute to the growth of the local economy. However, there is a catch there: people in Mauritius always seem to be too busy to strategize, to think about growth, to innovate!

When I ask them why, our leaders reply: “I’m a professional meeting-goer. I am stuck in meetings all day/ all week/ all month!”, “we always stay longer than expected in meetings, and then we have to reschedule completely our calendar for the day!” or “frequent but useless meetings that stops me from doing our real work”.

Indeed, much recent research shows that managers spend between 35% to 50% of their time in meetings (and that doesn’t even include all impromptu gatherings that don’t make it into the schedule), while roughly 50% of all meetings are considered wasteful or unproductive. Moreover, it has been proven that time spent in “bad” meetings is seriously impeding the motivation, creativity and productivity of teams.

Meetings should be like salt- a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful. Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation. – Jason Fried

Reading this, one might argue: “why don’t we start by simply reducing the number of meetings?” The way out of this “meetings trap” is to ask a simple, powerful, yet difficult and rare question: “Should we even have this meeting?”.

To help you answer this question, we have designed a useful poster to put at your desk, or on the walls of your meeting rooms, and we strongly invite you to download, print and use this poster with your teams! You can also reach out to us for our upcoming Run Great Meetings public workshops.

Hey, don’t get me wrong. I am not saying all meetings are useless. There are indeed many great meetings I have been attending in my career, and particular since we started Red Dot, at the end of which everyone feels energised, with clarity of mind, and total readiness for action: for example, Creative Brainstorming meetings, or Problem-Solving meetings, when they are thoroughly prepared, well run and timed. In those kinds of meetings, I never leave the room with the impression of having wasted my oh-so-precious time.

Now, take a few minutes, and imagine you had a magic wand that could erase all useless meetings from your calendar for the next 12 months. What would your life look life? What would you do with the spared time? What if your could keep in your calendar only exciting, engaging and impactful meetings that would boost and empower your team to think big, strategize, ideate, and take your best decisions?”

This is my sincere wish for you.

Have a nice (and hopefully meeting-free) day ahead 😉

Vive Moris!

March 12, 2018March 12, 2018
by Natacha Emilien

I am Mauritian. Mo ene morissienne. I know my country and its people, I know its limitations, but I also know its untapped potential. And this is precisely why I can talk about our need to innovate, as a country.

In Mauritius, when we think about innovation, we visualise a lone genius (a Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs type) coming up with an amazing idea out of the blue, which will completely disrupt the world and change billions of lives around the globe. We hear stories of young technology geeks in the US making significant discoveries or developing amazing new products and becoming billionaires after a few months, and we wish we could do the same. However, most of us Mauritians are working in private organisations or in governmental bodies where, well… (and it’s so unfortunate) we can look right, left and center, it’s difficult to see or imagine any of our current colleagues becoming the next Zuckerberg!

We therefore tend to see innovation flourishing in countries like Silicon Valley, China, France or Singapore, but we tend to stay quite pessimistic when it comes to rethink our own country in terms of innovation: “we need to take into account the local political/economical/social context of Mauritius”, “we need to be realistic, we are far from being Singapore”, “how do we even start?” or “let’s start with a first initiative by copying that idea I read about, then we will see if it works”.

Today, we are celebrating the 50th year of Independence of our country. We can choose to focus on the recent political scandals, or our slowing economic growth rate, rising consumer prices or pick any social and environmental issues we care about, but I hope we choose to focus differently.

The capacity of the human mind to build innovative solutions, that address human needs globally is endless. Think of the iPhone how it allowed the smartphone to create a massive impact on humanity. Think of inventions like Skype coming from small countries like Estonia. Invention needs no land, labour and capital, which are traditional constraints. Innovation’s only constraint is creative, and we as a nation are some of the most creative people on the planet.

Today, I see a lot of my compatriots claiming their love for our country and voicing out their pride to be Mauritian. And I hope that beyond today, we can continue to focus on what we love about Mauritius, all the inner capabilities of our people, and how blessed our country is. When we start to see these problems as opportunities, when we ask “why not?” and “how might we be part of the solution”?, we all become innovators.

Vive Moris! Happy 50th Independence Day Mauritius!