Amazon is working on a delivery mode, where goods will be delivered by drones. Unbelievable it might seem, it might soon be a reality !!

It seems nothing short of fairy tale to imagine a world where goods will be printed by a 3D Printer, shipping by drone and one would need nothing more than a pair of glass to search just about anything, order anything and picture anything!

Let us look at each one of them and see potentially how can they change the way we interact, communicate, create and transact in world, and also the impact on business ecosystem.

Delivery of goods by Drone: Termed as Amazon Prime Air, Amazon is claiming that it will be ready technically by 2015-16.  Can it really happen? I already see lot of people questioning it from the perspective of technical feasibility, security aspects and logistical difficulties.  What I understand from the excerpts that drones can be imagined as  programmed courier person who has been programmed to deliver at 5-6 places before it returns to the source.

Undoubtedly, if it happens, it will change the world of e-commerce delivery. Nothing can beat the joy of having instant delivery.. That is one thing which still keeps offline shopping experience kicking and alive.  This post gives a lot of interesting ideas in which the world might change with drone delivery.  I like this one.. the diaper’s are finished..mother orders the diapers on amazon and within seconds it is delivered by a drone. WOW! 🙂

Well looks like it might take couple of decades even after the technology is established for the service to be commercially viable for delivering just about anything. So will it mean the consumption pattern would change JIT.. so people will not stock goods.. needs to be seen what impact it will have on the whole production cycle of goods?

Google glasses: This ofcourse competes with 6th sense technology made popular with Indian – Pranav Mistry. Well, I am not an expert in claiming which one will win. But one of the, whichever achieves the end objective of merging the digital experience with offline world will win. In the current avatar, Google glass is just a fancy bluetooth connector, but Google is working on the 6th sense experience everybody expects it to deliver.

When that happens, the world will be a hyper-connected and hyper-transparent place, where consumer can at any point of time check the authenticity of the claim/product etc. by going online and dig all information relevant to decision making in minutes. It will completely change the way people shop offline by helping them compare and review items in real time.  Will it be an end of brand, as information transparency will even make a new good product stand out, letting it compete against big brand ?  In this respect, here is an interesting article which says retailers already hate people who use them as showrooms. Google glass will only accentuate it.  Here is another interesting article which mentions what will be the impact on 5 Industries.

3D Printing:  This seems to be most advanced out of the three technologies and might again radically change the world.  Also what appears is that it will first be adopted large scale for industrial use before it gets common for domestic use.

Without getting in-depth of technology which I don’t understand, 3D Printing helps in creating mass customization which today is unviable for most products. From a consumer perspective, consumers will get umpteen choices and customizable goods. From the perspective of industry – it will give birth to lot of small scale industries / entrepreneurs who will run this 3D Printer to customize a mass produced item by a factory.  This article from HBR also says that it will help industries move closer to consumption centre, rather than being near the source of raw material.

This is a very interesting story of a person who tried making christmas gifts using 3D Printing and gave up. So when it evolves for consumer, it will be radical but it is still long way to go.

So what will 3D printing change. With every customer wanting a customized product, how will the production value chain be altered?  Future shops might look like a catalogue with some products on display and based on customer requirement it can be easily customized.. Will it lead to lesser SKUs by brands, with every SKU having customization permutations & combinations defined?  It will SKT ( Stock keeping template) rather than SKU.

With all these technologies becoming a reality, we would be living in a world of instant search, instant customization, instant production, instant delivery and instant sharing.

Imagine, you see a beautiful T-shirt in M&S store, you instantly google and find out the competitive price in online stores of similar design T-shirt, go to Amazon, customize the item, which gets instantly printed by a 3D Printer and get it delivered instantly by drone… WOW!!

So what it did?   You like a M&S T-shirt but are instantly to get a similar T-shirt from a store which you customize based on your needs and get it delivered instantly at half the price of the T-shirt from M&S.

So the brand becomes powerless….

New set of entrepreneurs emerge who can customize the items…

production is instant based on demand..so is very efficient…

Mind Boggling!!

Related articles

• Drone Delivery (sandoratthezoo.wordpress.com)
• Google Glass: These astonishing images show how it will change photography forever (business.financialpost.com)
• 3D printed prosthetic eyes could be available within a year (techstring.wordpress.com)