At one point in human civilization, everybody must be making stuff. Nobody probably thought about not making until Barter system was in practice. Barter system made things better but had problems of its own. It was a difficult and impractical system to follow until money was evolved. Money made acquiring things very simple for (wo)mankind. After Humans invented money, the concept of buying came to practice. Of course, the consequence was that fundamentally all human beings, families, communities, businesses, cities, districts, countries and now a days even continents(Euro) are driven by this omnipotent and omnipresent money, which I love to call "Vitamin M".
What is my point? With money, everybody have a potential to buy. However, consciously or unconsciously, we make this "Make" vs "Buy" decision for every transaction we make. For example, let's take one of the fundamental decision every body has to take 3 times a day (for some it could be more), which is food consumption. On every instance, we make a choice whether to cook at home or eat out. There are many reasons why we decide to one over the other. Here are some of them:
1. Cost
2. Effort
3. Convenience
4. Variety/Flavour
5. Quality
6. Time
I do agree that above list is not exhaustive but should cover all the bases. Think of these variables as inputs to our decision making process, which should finally help us to make the decision. Depending on the situation we apply this decision making process for our daily needs.
What is my point? With money, everybody have a potential to buy. However, consciously or unconsciously, we make this "Make" vs "Buy" decision for every transaction we make. For example, let's take one of the fundamental decision every body has to take 3 times a day (for some it could be more), which is food consumption. On every instance, we make a choice whether to cook at home or eat out. There are many reasons why we decide to one over the other. Here are some of them:
1. Cost
2. Effort
3. Convenience
4. Variety/Flavour
5. Quality
6. Time
I do agree that above list is not exhaustive but should cover all the bases. Think of these variables as inputs to our decision making process, which should finally help us to make the decision. Depending on the situation we apply this decision making process for our daily needs.
If this is a simple process to understand, what I do not understand is, why many companies waste billions of dollars of their investments on making things which they are not supposed to and buying things which they are supposed. (Vice versa is also true). I will leave this thought here and will try to expand further in next blogs.
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