Super-customers are always right
Yet the most successful interlocutors with super-fans are in fact the very high-tech companies that are most disruptive of old business models. The likes of Google and Facebook routinely provide their most passionate users with special access to their latest products and ask them to recommend improvements. The customers get the psychological satisfaction of being taken seriously by brand-name enterprises. The tech companies benefit from lots of free workers who debug their software and provide ideas for new products.
There are, moreover, plenty of super-consumers who are as obsessed with solving problems as they are with the products themselves. Eric von Hippel of MIT’s Sloan School of Management has found that about 80% of breakthroughs in scientific instruments came from “lead-users” rather than the manufacturers. Even super-consumers who are fixated on old or existing products (such as fans of vinyl records in an age of digital music) can provide companies with lots of valuable advice and insights on stuff that makes money. Analysing big data is all very well. But nothing beats hanging out with your biggest fans.
Why Park Geun-hye should resign
The president has a duty to spare her country months of drift
Dec 3rd 2016, 00:00
MANY members of the party of South Korea’s president, Park Geun-hye, want it. So does the opposition, which controls South Korea’s parliament. So do most ordinary Koreans: they have been marching for it by the millions. Even Ms Park says she is ready to do it. So why has she not yet resigned?
Ms Park is hopelessly mired in an ever-deepening influence-peddling scandal (see article). She admits that she shared too much information about affairs of state with a close confidante, Choi Soon-sil, including advance drafts of many of her speeches. Ms Choi, prosecutors say, went on to use her clout with the president to extort money and favours from big companies and other organisations. Ms Park, the prosecutors allege, was an active participant in this racket, ordering her aides to help Ms Choi extract her payouts.
The response of Ms Park to the allegations has been muddled. She says the notion that she took part in influence-peddling is a politically motivated fabrication—even though the prosecutors behind the claim work for her administration. She has said that she will co-operate with the investigation into the scandal, but is refusing to speak to prosecutors. This week she said she had committed a “huge fault” and is willing to leave office, but that parliament should decide how and when.
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Just what she meant by this is anyone’s guess. Parliament had been about to impeach her, but Ms Park’s offer is prompting second thoughts. Impeachment is a long and cumbersome process in South Korea. Once parliament has approved a set of charges, the constitutional court reviews them. It has six months to decide whether to turf the president out, triggering a new election. While it reflects, and during any ensuing election campaign, the prime minister serves as acting president.
Such protracted flux would do South Korea unnecessary harm. The economy is faltering because of a slowdown in China and feeble export growth in world markets. National security is parlous, with North Korea increasing the tempo of missile launches and nuclear tests just as Donald Trump, America’s president-elect, threatens vaguely that he will withdraw American troops from the South. A distracted leader with an evaporating mandate would struggle to navigate such daunting waters, as would a temporary stand-in. If Ms Park truly wants what is best for the country, she should resign immediately, without any more fuss. Asking parliament to set the terms of her departure looks suspiciously like a delaying tactic that will end up only prolonging the agony.
South Koreans are fed up with Ms Park, guilty or not. Her approval rating is 4%—as bad as François Hollande’s in France. Protests against her have attracted 1m people or more. A provincial governor and a parliamentarian deserted her party this week; ministers are resigning. Even the man who managed her election campaign says she should go.
Heir today, Geun tomorrow
Ms Park, the daughter of a previous president, has always seemed out of touch. She has given only one press conference each year, and none since the allegations surfaced. She seems hapless in the face of the scandal, proposing a series of compromises that parliament has batted away. She has given no fewer than three televised speeches to apologise, each one suggesting new remedies. One of her contrite gestures was to sack most of her closest aides, leaving herself even more isolated.
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There can be no recovery from such a fiasco. But Ms Park could salvage a little dignity by ending the circus now. Her resignation would pave the way for an election within 60 days, drawing a line under the crisis. It would also help by putting paid to the idea that has so enraged her opponents: that the elites of South Korea can get away with anything, whereas ordinary people feel the system is stacked against them.
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