The art of spotting opportunities

During the January 2013 Yarl IT Hub's community meet up we had a session on augmented reality. The highlight of the session was a demonstration of an implementation of an augmented reality application by Sujewan.

The above application from a technical sense worked really great and Sujewan has done a great job taking in to consideration that its an individual undergraduate project, but from a business sense it lacked a business case. The same augmented reality technology put in the hands of a shrewd business mind has made all the difference. Look at the video below,

Johnson and Johnson launched the above product. In its simplest form, what made the difference was their ability to spot the potential business case by taking the tracker and putting it on a band aid plaster! They created an experience for the children with plasters.As per the makers they "Turn moments of pain in to moments of delight"! The neat use of technology has made it a application with 4+ rating on itunes and I assume more sales!

The lesson to be learnt is that its not only about writing software or knowing technology, but the need to be able to map them in smart ways matters. With regard to this ability to map, we love to believe that these thoughts comes up in Eureka moments, while sleeping under a tree. But in reality in 99% of the cases they do not come in such moments of epiphany, but its 'magic' that appears in the trained minds. The trick I am made to believe is to start training by learning, experimenting and trying, so hopefully we would also develop a knack to spot such opportunities.