Didi’s Jean Liu is in TIME’s & Tim’s top 100
Thoughts on Apple Car, Part 69
Steve Jobs used to gather his top 100 people every year. Tim Cook sure continues and has found a new member.
In Cook’s words for TIME magazine (emphasis & editing mine):
Jean Liu is a disrupter, and not only through her ambitious effort to change the way people in China commute, travel and connect with one another.
Take the word China out of this sentence and you have Apple’s ambition for the car:
Change the way people commute, travel and connect.
With Didi Chuxing, the ride-sharing, taxi-hailing startup she leads alongside Cheng Wei – its name means “Beep Beep Mobility” in Chinese – Jean has built a transportation platform that offers convenience and flexibility to tens of millions of commuters.
Neil Cybart very much agrees with this last sentence:
Convencience, flexibility, personalization and customization are key drivers of a future shared mobility experience, so that it would be of interest to customers.
How can one figure out what people may want in this regards, and how can one measure whether sonething works or not?
The answer is data, and Didi is leading in this skill:
She and her team are succeeding with innovative, big-data algorithms that aim both to improve the efficiency of Didi’s service and to ease the congestion on roadways. By analyzing commuter patterns the way oceanographers track the tides, Didi may help traffic jams go the way of the flip phone.
Here’s Cook referring to the starting points of iPhone development. See also:
As to what data Didi has to offer:
Cook closes with:
In over 400 cities across China, Jean has also built a company that is dedicated to serving the community around it. Guiding Didi to this higher purpose, and giving back to the places where it does business, she shares my belief that companies can and should measure themselves by more than just the bottom line.
Apple will make sure to market Apple Car not just as a product, but an answer to some of the defining challenges of our time in climate change, health and local businesses.
China is prime for this discussion as they would be severely hit by rising sea levels:
That’s why Apple Car is for China:
