Ask the RFID Expert: combating imperfect information in markets
The free Ask the RFID Expert service offered by ODIN is two weeks old and it is clear it is filling a gap in the industry. To date we have received questions ranging from tracking cooking oil to the EPC Global ALE standard, from tracking laptops to RFID’s impact on biologics. Believe it or not, there is a common thread here; these questions are common.
That’s right. We have heard each of them before and answered them. It’s a perfect example of imperfect information in the market. Most capitalist financial theory rests on the foundation of perfect information available to investors. When information is imperfect or available only to a select few you get insider trading, fraud, and investor disenchantment with the system. Organizations such as the Securities and Exchange Commission regulate financial markets to enable more perfect information sharing through 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and countless other documents. Without some sense that the system is fair and that information is readily available to investors and potential investors alike, the market is seen as rigged and no one puts his faith, confidence or money into it.
So how does this relate to RFID? Anyone with even the vaguest experience in RFID will know immediately that imperfect information is the rule. This is in part because the technology applications are so broad that no one has a clear view to all permutations. However, the bigger issue is the typical sources of RFID information, vendors, have specific agendas to advance and are often ill-informed on even the most basic facts. ODIN thankfully has accumulated those basic facts and a great deal of in-depth information over the past seven years. The Ask the RFID Expert service is our way of making that information available in an objective, unbiased venue. Since we don’t make tags or readers but have scientifically benchmarked and installed them in real-world settings globally, we have some facts to share.
When ODIN’s founder, Patrick Sweeney, authored RFID for Dummies for John Wiley & Sons in 2005 we discussed an important question at ODIN. If we put our latest knowledge in the book, will we be hurting ourselves by getting our competitors up the learning curve faster? The answer was yes and we did it anyway. The viewpoint we took was that a better educated end user will lead to better uses of the technology; better educated implementers will lead to more RFID success which will be good for the industry. Some basic information sharing and standardization is good for everyone. Industry old-timers may also recall that ODIN faced this same dilemma in 2004 when we first started publishing the RFID Benchmark Series™. Through our testing we were learning more about tag and reader performance than anyone in the industry and we published the data for all to see.
Ask the RFID Expert is just our latest innovation to educate the market. We hope it provides more perfect information for the RFID market (providers and users), enables better decisions about how to properly deploy and use the technology, and increases the confidence and faith of end users.
Ask your own question of the RFID Expert in the top right corner of the ODIN website and receive an answer in 24 hours.
