Over the years my marketing students have come up with a number of innovative ideas and business models. Some of these have been turned into real products and/or services- very gratifying for a professor. Examples include an indoor Laser Tag arena and efficiently routed school buses for our College. One of my favorites is the 'Bow Wow Doggy Day Care" services firm, an idea my students came up with long before the concept became mainstream.
I was reflecting on this as I read the article "An Idea Whose Time Has Come: The Time-Share Dog Monica Had 2 Families, 2 Names, Much Love; Boston Bans Short Pooch Leases" in today's WSJ. My mind turned to the accounting aspect of this concept.
- Shared Capital Asset. It appears that for some people a dog is just a capital asset- something whose ownership can be divided up across multiple owners. As an asset it can be traded, and eventually "disposed off" for its salvage value
- Lease with an option to buy. The article cites examples of people who took out dogs on the "short-term" plan and liked them so much they kept them for the long term. This appears to be akin to the dating game- only the counter-party (the dog) has no say in the matter
- A 'contract' worker doing all the work a regular employee does...the problem that companies like Microsoft and FedEx ran into. In this case the 'shared' dog is expected to provide everything a 'fully owned' dog does to its owner, but the shared dog's contract can be 'terminated at will without any due compensation.'
While the discussion is about dogs, the concept can be extended to other pets as well.
Of course, for an even more tasty bite - a few weeks ago, the Chinese government banned dog meat at its 112 official Olympic restaurants. This was done in order to avoid offending the fine sensibilities of the visitors.
Just one more illustration of the premise that the humans mind can scale the highest peaks and sink to the lowest depths. Doggone it!
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