Yesterday, I texted Cab Eddie on my cell: SITTG IN NY-NJ FRRY. AM DA ONLY 1, STILL COSTS $10.75. LST NITE DA SHUTTL FRM LGA 2 BROOKLN COST $16 BUCKS. ANN ARBR 2 DTW CANT BE $40. RETHNK BIZ MODL.

Eddie had rushed me to the Detroit airport the evening before and we discussed everything-business like we always have in the last 3-4 years since I've been using his cab. "Growth's always a challenge," he started. Just as he pushed on the gas, he gave me the lowdown: his changing per-ride cost breakdown, revenue breakdown, the implications of Michigan's economy ("It doesn't affect me," he said), his search ranking on Google, painful penny-pinching customers, $10 buck tippers, the R-word (recession), Northwest terminal's increasing success, "stupid" competition, and how such solo rides meant just minimum-wage earnings with the current gas prices. He'd intersperse his sentences with, "Hey, listen," and I'd consciously stop my thoughts to listen again. He finally rounded out his update: "If I add one more cab, my growth is 100%. But where are the people?"

Riding in my ferry to Jersey's Port Imperial (nothing really imperial about it) after an interesting night out in Soho (not small-office-home-office, please), I thought about how N=1, R=G might apply to Eddie and his cab service. How personalized can he get? How globalized can he make my every ride experience? Well, here's a three-course N=1, R=G menu for Eddie:

1. Persuade the largest local area employers (like University of Michigan) to introduce (or partner with) a cab-sharing social networking website like Hitchsters to find someone to share a ride to/ from the airport. Their process is dead simple: (a) enter your flight time, (b) match co-riders, (c) receive mobile confirmation, (d) contact the rider. His marketing is focused on handing out several of his cards everywhere in Ann Arbor and creating a successful SEO-ized website. Can he spread his wings into social networking circles to target specific niche segments? Pink Taxi in Moscow focuses on women -- making taxi rides safer for female passengers and drivers.

2. Eddie, always the numbers guy, told me that he's driven 50,000 people to the airport. His daily database is a sheet of paper. My question is, can that be digitized, mined, and extracted to reveal useful business information? He remembered distinctly that I negotiated his earlier $30 fare to $20 more than a year ago. He knows what I do, how long I've been doing it, what I studied, where I studied, and where he picked me up from. When he saw that I was surprised, he nodded and responded, "I remember everything." Eddie's system has to get out of his brain and do what Google does -- use my info on me. What services can he offer my segment N=1? Can he leave a Wall Street Journal in the seat pocket? Can he offer me a choice of Bollywood movies/music for my ride, if it's a solo? Can he sell travel-size toiletries at a premium (buy them at Costco) because he already knows I tend to forget things? Can he sell health food or desi food? Can he connect me with other entrepreneurs in Ann Arbor? How should he change it when two conflicting N=1s ride in the cab? If he does all this, I'll pay whatever without blinking because suddenly my ride is of much more value to me.

3. Now, let's think logistics. There are several examples in the book from UPS to Fedex to even how ICICI bank manages its recruitment logistics. Now, can my friend Eddie tap into the sophisticated logistical capabilities of UPS to play with his own scheduling and maximize running time? Is there a web-based logistics service that he can use and pay per-use? Can UPS do an Amazon? Amazon defied dominant logic by opening doors wide open to its proprietary infrastructure, fulfillment systems, databases, as a dead-cheap web-service. What's more, Amazon Web Services has made it easy for developers to build applications on Facebook. What's UPS waiting for? If they do it, millions of Eddies out there will use it. I know mine will.

All Eddie has to do is build this out (phase the cost out) -- create a personalized experience for me the minute I call him (real easy and cheap -- use a call center in Mumbai that can store my info on an easy database like DabbleDB), co-create a value-oriented ride depending on the passenger, scale it across multiple cabs so that it becomes a recognizable brand, create alliances with companies selling to an airport-riding segment, make his shuttle a marketing engine (think advertisements on the cab and monitors inside it), change the experience depending on the season (example, student season, flu season, graduation season, football season, etc.) and consider franchising the model after he cracks it.

All the best Eddie, and, as always, thanks for the ride.