What is a Problem?

Last week, we met with Dr. Reza and discussed the importance of finding and solving engineering problems. Before class, I had two different expectations. As a former mechanical engineering student, I have met with Dr. Reza outside of class to discuss with him my plans for the major as well as research opportunities. I was also familiar with the horror stories about his classes from my mechanical engineering friends, but this didn't dissuade me from going into the lecture with an open mind. I am very glad I didn't let the opinions of my friends cloud my judgment during this lecture, as one part resonated with me, identifying problems.

Well, I always believed that what some products show as problems may not actually be. For example, Juicero, a defunct company that sold a "juicer" which cost 400 dollars, and all it did was squeeze juice out of premade packets, packets that were proven to be easily squeezable by hand. While this company got over 100 million dollars in funding. It failed to deliver on its promises as it manufactured a problem that didn't exist, sold a terrible and expensive solution, and its juice packets, advertised as "fresh", were nothing but. If at the time the investors could have seen the downfall of this product, a lot of people could have avoided this major disappointment.

During the lecture, Dr. Reza put major importance on the notion of stakeholders, and I believe that the disappointment it was could have easily been avoided if the stakeholders or founders had thought about them more carefully. Stakeholders are those who are actually affected by the problem, either in gain or loss, from the founder's perspective. If their goal was to make a juicer that provided the freshest juice possible, we can imagine the company on an entirely new trail. Instead of focusing on the bells and whistles and lacking substance, they should have stayed away from the tech hype, which, while it helped them gain huge funding, led to their demise. Simpler is always better, and I believe that if they had opted to remove the packets while keeping the juicer but making it a more advanced juicer of sorts, it could have worked phenomenally. The main problem with juicers and blenders is that they either leave a lot of the fruit unused or, in the process of blending it, destroy everything that makes the juice fresh by introducing mechanical forces that denature and heat it up. If we take the blender approach, a solution that minimized the forces and strived to keep the juice cool would have sufficed for an unparalleled quality, especially since a lot of people have tested and proven that blending fruits with some ice not only improved the taste but also the texture and overall experience.

Now, from the shareholder's perspective, if this product stayed the same, they could have seen through the veil of the false promises they were given, especially if they looked at the plethora of people who were criticizing it at the time, and that I had the (mis)fortune of consuming my YouTube recommendations at the time. The people saw that this product was just smoke in mirrors, especially since some actually bought it for the purpose of disproving it, but this didn't stop Silicon Valley from pushing it, especially with how aggressively they were pushing smart tech. Forgetting all of this, imagine that you are a shareholder in this company, who will buy the product? The stakeholders, of course, have they a reason to justify the premium of this product? Those two questions would have probably dissuaded you from investing in this company and would have saved you time and money. While I was very passionate about this topic, I feel like there are other areas we can apply this notion to, especially in day-to-day life, and that is what I want and plan to do from here on out, and what I encourage you to do.