Disrupting Traditional EDI
Summary
Uber- was a prefix or at best a slang word that denoted an outstanding or supreme example of a particular kind of person or thing. Examples included ‘an uber concert’ or ‘an uber-fancy party.’ I am aware of the way this age group used the term because I had two teenagers in the house at the time, who spoke this way constantly. By 2010, people in San Francisco began hearing about a new dispatch service called UberCab1 that allowed users to request a cab from anywhere using a smart phone app and ‘within minutes a professional driver in a sleek black car arrives curbside’ The service’s option of ‘hassle free payment’ using the app was its biggest value proposition2. As word of this UberCab spread, people downloaded the app and used it to request black cars instead of cabs. Later that year, Uber eliminated the yellow cabs from UberX and began dispatching a regular car driven by a regular* person3.