Beware, virtual is getting real

One friend recently told me about second life, which is an amazing concept. It’s a 3-D virtual world whose usage is limited only to your imagination. You need a downloadable program, which enables its members to first attain an avatar of their own liking and then interact with almost 10 million other members in various ways. If this is not impressive enough, then let me tell you this - you can even buy land on their planet. People are building hotels, houses and living a virtual life. This virtual world has its own economy with its own currency, its own land that you have to buy.
People create their own goods and services and trade them. e.g. you can buy some land, create a building, landscape and trade like real economy. You can build a machine or a vehicle and sell it. Your creation can be protected by copyright!!

Life is not boring at all in this world. You can even create, display, buy or sell art- from oil painting to music. There are live concert taking place.

And take this - countries are opening their embassies there. Maldives has done already and so have Sweden, Malta, and Philippines. Of course they would not issuing visa, but they will be promoting their countries culture.

This makes one think and wonder how technology is shortening the gap between real and virtual. And there are so many ways such virtual world could be used to our real virtual world and its inhabitants.
Consider these innovative ways this virtual world is being used:

virtual classroom for colleges like Harvard, INSEAD and many universities. lectures and projects are being hosted in this world for the real world.

IBM is using it for corporate meetings. Just have a look on one of such corporate gathering.

Armani has a virtual store too, so unless you want to shell out real dollars, and enjoy your virtual fashion accessories, though it still costs you in their own currency - Linden Dollars.

Companies are even thinking of test market their products in such virtual worlds.

Who knows, tomorrow, if you are looking for a job, your first interview would be in a virtual office. Teleworkers, word hard, otherwise your boss can call you instantly in his virtual office and give his peace of mind or a virtual pink slip, which will have real impact !

If you want more details about this virtual world, see here.

Time to go beyond outsourcing - Crowdsourcing anyone?

We have had heard a lot, first about outsourcing, then insourcing and now there is another concept coming up - Crowdsourcing.

Outsourcing was about delegating the non-core operations of a business to external entity for whom that operation is CORE.

Insourcing is about bringing particular operations to a internal entity for whom the activity is CORE. Basically it followed the outsourcing when employees started aggressively defending their jobs and insourcing was popularised to convince employees that though some work may be going outside, other is coming back in house.

And if you thought this would make the full circle, we now have crowdsourcing !!
i.e. instead of outsourcing a particular task/operation to a single entity, its outsourced to a large, undefined group of people.

Now this is creativity at its best. its admirable to see someone just showing one more of extracting the maximum out of available technology, be it internet, open source or call to find out missing Steve Fossett.

Clearly we haven't seen the last of various form of ..........sourcing.

US housing market trouble - Consequences of going wild?

Well, though I don’t live in the US, but what happens there, economically and politically, affects almost everyone around the world, so got interested in finding out what’s going on. What’s all the fuss about Subprime Mortgages and trouble associated with it?

Well, lets start with subprime mortgage.
Basically, it’s the practice of giving loans to less credit-worthy borrowers at a higher rate (higher then currently going rate in the market). Now it’s a win-win and loose-loose proposition for both parties – lender as well as borrower.
Win-win, because it helps less credit worthy to afford a house (or any other asset) and helps the lender to earn higher return on their money.
Loose-loose, because its fraught with risks for both parties – one is lending to other who is not credit worthy, and one is borrowing from other at higher interest rate so repayment is going to be difficult.

Now all looked great while the interest rates in the US came to 1% (before June 2004), both parties were happy doing normal business i.e. lending, borrowing and repaying.
Trouble started when US Federal reserve started increasing interest rates to contain rising prices and today it has come from 1% to 5.25% and this has disturbed the borrowers ability to pay and hence lenders have started feeling the heat due to ever increasing the defaulters and going bankrupt. These lenders were given money by institutional investors and hence these big investors have also felt a big jolt. And this ultimately has to come the stock market, first to the US and then to all over the world.

Clearly, it’s a consequence of mortgage industry going wild and there are always consequences of going wild. This has a parallel to the IT crash of 2001, which was also a consequence of going wild. After all any start-up with a .com in the end could raise money. Even a start-up aiming to sell dog food on the net also got VC funding, despite the fact that cost of the dog food was miniscule in comparison to cost of delivering it to individual customers, but no-one was prepared to look into these minor details then!!

Now, the bigger question for those owning a house in the UK. Is UK housing market not following the US in subprime mortgages?
According to market analyst group Data monitor, mainstream mortgage lending grew by 4.1% last year, while sub-prime mortgage lending rose 9.1% for the period.
However, the big difference between US and UK is that while almost 35% of all mortgage securities issued last year in the US come under subprime category, this is only 5-6 % in the UK. And most of the major retail banks stay away from this market, there are only 2-3 major banks offering such mortgages.
So lets hope that UK housing market doesn’t go the US way and doesn’t add to the agony of the stock markets world over.

Art of Innovation

Came across this interesting webcast on innovation.

First, a word on this website zenstation.com which itself has applied good innovation. Traditionally, in a video presentation on the web, you have to sacrifice the quality of the presentation slides or the speaker to get going. But look at this great way of presenting on the web.

Now about the art of innovation, a video presentation by famous business guru Guy Kawasaki

Though I would suggest to see the video yourself, but here is summary of few of the key points raised by Guy in this presentation. Here is what he thinks is prerequisite to innovation:



Make Meaning - Innovators are motivated by one thing - to make things better. Making money is not their prime goal. It could be the by-product but it could not be your sole motto.
And having read about many great innovators, I can see what he means by that. After all, none of the innovators (we are talking about real meaningful and original innovations) had any other goal pursuing their innovation apart from making meaning.
So while innovating, one should have aim like- make people more productive, make things easy to operate, make a cheap laptop.
So making meaning has to be one's prime driver for any innovation.


Make Mantra not mission statement - This one is my favourite !! Having myself sitting in few of the sessions during sales days, I can vouch for guy's point here.
Mission statements are so complex and unrealistic (even lofty) that they just confuse employees and no one takes them seriously, simply because no one can remember those long fancy statements !! He instead suggests to have mantra of few, simple and meaningful words. The mantra should define the aim of your business. Why does it exist, simple.
Only than will people be consciously working towards achieving the goal of your business and innovation will happen when employees are really sold out on the aim of your business.



Jump to the next curve - i.e concentrate your energies on making not 10% improvement through your innovation, but 10 times improvement. We should strive for path breaking innovations. e.g. Sony Walkman to Apple ipod


Don't worry, Be crappy - Revolutionaries do not worry, they are not afraid of being crappy. When you jump the curve and make a next generation product through innovation, don't worry about how well it works or even how much it works. Learn from field. Don't worry to first make it totally fault free and functionally rich (you can never do that without getting feedback from field), just ship it.


Polarize People - This one is really bold one. Don't be afraid of polarising people. Don't try to please everyone. If you will do, mediocrity Will be the result. After all, you can't please everyone.
One of the example he quotes is Macintosh.

Niche Thyself - Your innovation should be targeted at providing not only unique product or service , but also providing value to customer. You just can't concentrate on one at the cost of other, its not innovation. Dot com boom had many such examples when any silly idea could get funding.



Don't let the bozos grind you down - don't listen to the those - this would not work, there is no market for hybrid cars etc. etc. Founder of Digital Equipment Corp said in 1977 - "There is no reason why anyone would want a computer at home. He jumped the curve from mainframe to mini computers but he could not embrace the personal computers."
And boy, was he proven wrong!!

Evaluate yourself using Johari Window

Though most of us would have read about Johari Window during our academic life, I think we can use it more effectively once we have spent some time in our professional life and have a more matured view about ourselves and others.


I think, if used honestly, it will certainly tell you many things about your own self, about your personal and professional relationships.

Basically, you can represent each person by their own four-quadrant. Each of these contains and represents personal information and shows whether the information is known or not known by themselves or other people. It can then help you to work with others towards 'shared discovery' about yourself. The below picture will make it even more clear :

© alan chapman 2003. http://www.businessballs.com/johariwindowmodel.htm

Use this link to know more about Johari Window. However, here is a summary:

There are some traits of a person which are known to him and some which are known to others and some which are known to none as seen in each quadrant in above picture.

The main aim is to increase the 'shared discovery' which is resultant of self disclosure and feedback solicitation. I would say this can be used in all walks of life including your marriage and at the job to understand partner/colleagues. In this respect, Johari window is a communication tool as well.

To use it more effectively, you can use this free online Johari Window tool to analyse your personality and relationships. The good thing is that you can seek online opinion from your friends and then analyse results.

Try it, if you seek feedback from right kind of people, it might lead to shared discovery !

Harry Potter - Darker side of super-star brands

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Came across this interesting research on Harry potter and its economic impacts.

This throws some light on how a brand which breaks through all sorts of market rules and becomes not a hit but a rage, can be counter productive to so many parties involved.

First a brief note on concept of Harry Potter - Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels by English author J.K. Rowling. There are 6 novels released so far. Seventh and last one is due for release on 21st July 07.

Now the economics of it - Due to success of Harry Potter novels, Rowling has become the richest author in literary history. For the seventh and last novel, publishers have announced record breaking 12 million copies for first print run IN THE US ALONE !!! And just out of curiosity, I checked the sales rank for this book, and its already ranked one on Amazon.com even before its released !! Confirm here. I was more amazed when I compared it with all time non fiction classic How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie. This all time classic book was first published in 1937 and has managed to sell around 30 million copies worldwide!! The Previous 6 editions of Harry Potter series have sold 350 Million copies worldwide!!

And we have not even started to talk about the money raised through making movies and video games and other means like merchandise and about 400 products licensed to use Harry Potter brand. This makes Harry Potter brand worth an estimated 4 billion USD! Compare it with brand value of world famous brands like Starbucks (3 bn USD), Adidas (4.2 Bn USD). ( See World's top 100 brands List )

So, we can safely call harry Potter a super star brand which has only brought riches to those involved with it in any way. Right? Wrong.

Go back to the Newsweek article I discussed in the beginning, it gives some startling facts about how this super brand is making people loose money:

1. Retailers, spellbound by the chance to reach millions of Potter-obsessed customers, are cost-cutting for market share to the point where many stand to lose money.

2. Shareholders, who have seen the share prices of these publishers, movie maker companies. swinging from one extreme to another. See comments from market analysts for Scholastic Corp. (SCHL ), which has U.S. rights - "The children's book division often does better in off-Potter periods. "The company tends to lose focus in a Harry Potter release year". And now imagine the share price of this company after the Harry Potter series ends with this coming book.

3. Amazon.com concedes that the company won't make a profit from the new Potter book. But it has racked up more than 1 million pre-orders so far--and, Amazon hopes, plenty of new customers will buy other books on their order where they would be able to make profits. So can we call Harry Potter a loss leader for them?

4. Britain's bookmakers, famous as they are for all sorts of bets, are now taking bets on whether Harry Potter will be killed in this last book. Imagine how many people will loose money.

Apart from the economic loss, it has critics claiming that its putting the whole new generations into a 'witchcraft mindset', specially because most of its customers are in a impressionable age.

So, though this brand has brought money and lot more for few, many other actually suffer because of it. This is applicable to any brand which grows beyond a certain point defying all sanity. A company might not loose in short run, depending heavily on one super brand is sure shot way of loosing ground reality.

Virtues of the "Middle Path"

Just read this interesting article by Ex BBC Correspondent Mark Tully about how Indian culture has mastered the art of adopting middle path in life and how west can learn from this unique quality.

I think in this age of contradiction and competition, there is more scope for middle path to help us lead better life and make this planet a better and safer place than it is today.

For starters, how about applying this principle of middle path on environment.
So many talks have failed on global warming and in fact have added to tension between developed and developing countries. Where as developed countries are asking for everyone to reduce the greenhouse gases and other factors contributing to global warming on equal basis, developing countries like India and China are claiming that they are still in early stage of economic development and hence they can’t do as much as developed countries who should take the lead. They in fact claim that their per capita pollution is less than developed countries e.g. America. But I think growth without care of environment will lead to disaster. China is adding 2 coal-based power plants every week!! And I think here comes the middle path as saviour. How about developed countries taking the lead in reducing global warming and agreeing countries like India and China to carry on with their development but invest in counter measures as well e.g. growing the tree plantation rate, better fuel quality, more alternate sources of energy and bringing in stringent standards around environment.


Take example of economics we started on a kind of socialism got little success and went almost bankrupt. We than declared out love for pure capitalism which did not work either as seen by downfall of BJP government despite ‘India shining’ claims. Now government is talking about the middle path – reforms with human face e.g. rural employment guarantee schemes and other inflation control measures like now allowing petroleum products to be fully liberalised.

And look at our foreign policy, we neither supported the United States nor openly criticized it for its aggression against Iraq, India's government has taken what it calls the "middle path". Mostly this approach has served us well.

Take example of common man, while we are all adapting to the new culture resulting from globalization, while we are indulging ourselves in virtues of capitalism, we still seek spirituality. I specifically liked few examples Mark gives in his article. How will you explain the rise and rise of so many spiritual gurus from big ones to small timers. How will you explain more and more people visiting holy shrines from Vaishno Devi to Thirupati Balaji? In west they are facing a big problem in convincing the younger lot to come in the church.

Dalai Lama sees middle path as the only solution for Tibetan problem. In fact this great philosophy of middle path can be termed as the foundation of Buddhism.

While no policy or principle can be applied successfully in ALL circumstances, we have shown the world that middle path is the way to go. Next time when someone discusses Indian culture and it contradictions, make it your duty to correct them and explain that Indian culture is about taking the middle path. We have a proven theory here with many examples as above. Some bigger political problems of the world could be solved if someone genuinely understands the meaning of middle path and act on it. But then for some culture it could be sign of indecisiveness and weakness, though we know its not correct.
Nevertheless, next time you have a crisis/issue/problem at home or workplace, try adopting the middle path, you might get surprised with its effectiveness !!

Five days weekend?

Just came across this interesting idea of five day weekends (who wouldn't like it?) and their sales pitch has a compelling argument.

Since world war II, Americans have worked more each year then the previous one. I am sure things are not better in many other countries, in fact in many developing countries it will be worse. So much so that employees are not even able to take the basic number of entitled holidays. And even on the weekends, how many of us don't work at all?

So, have things gone too far? Is it not surprising that with so much of technological advance to bring in efficiency in our workplace, we feel more inefficient year after year. Its like supporting the Moore's law which predicted that each year the number of transistor will double on a chip while its size gets halved. And this might have increased the efficiency and productivity in absolute terms, we are getting unhappier, more stressed with each milestone towards achieving efficiency.

One reason of the mounting stress level, as famous productivity guru David Allen describes is that the actual nature of our job has changed dramatically then have our training for and our ability to deal with the work.

Talking about nature of work, from working in the farms where the work could be quantifiable (e.g. how much land to plowed, cows to be milked etc) to manufacturing work where we still had control over the quantity of work, the current nature of work for most has been shifted towards being knowledge worker which, due to its vary nature, allows us to filling any amount of time available to one.

This unique nature of knowledge work has led to many process oriented standards evolving to ensure quality of the work (CMM, ISO, BS, ITIL, etc etc). However, though we have done a lot to ensure the quality of this new kind of work, there has not been much, if any, effort to regulate or standardised the knowledge worker's work environment and working hours.
So a 5 day weekend might sound absurd, but I think, it at least forces you us to look at the way we are getting detached from everything else than work. Think about it and start making a noise, not about a 5 day weekend if you don't like the idea, but at least about making things better at work and bringing some sanity in the ever increasing work hours.

What makes an idea or product tick

Just been tracking the sudden rise of Gujjars’ reservation demands (affirmative action for quota in jobs, educational institutions etc.) in India. Even when I come from the area where they have strong presence, I never heard of this demand before and was wondering what has suddenly triggered it to be such a burning issue, overnight.

This prompts you to think how one idea or fashion trend or a potentially dangerous disease spread suddenly while others don’t? What triggers them? How can one particular colour or a movie or hairstyle becomes fashion statement? Why some product or service captures the imagination of so many people while others, equally or more promising ones fail?

This fascinating book – ‘The Tipping Point’ By Malcolm Gladwell gives some riveting explanation on such questions.

Let me summarize how this book explains it.

Any idea/product/fashion trend can be equated to epidemics and to affect a wider population, it has to achieve what is called a Tipping Point.
i.e. various small factors work together to bring about a massive change in people behaviour.
Successful ideas, have three primary characteristics, like a epidemic1) contagiousness 2) rapid change 3) small changes can have big effects

And who actually can help you in making ideas or products achieve tipping point?
For any idea or product or service to be successful, it needs 3 types of key people.


Connectors : People with special gift for bringing the world together. i.e. they know lots of people. If you want your idea, products to achieve tipping point, connect with as many people as you can. And here we are talking about being acquaintances, not close friends. And more connectors you meet, bigger the area of influence through these connectors. It’s like atomic chain reaction. The closer an idea or product comes to a connector, the more power and opportunity it gains !!


Mavens: The ones who accumulates knowledge and are equally interested to distribute that knowledge to others. Mind you, they are not persuader but their intention is to educate and help out of their own will. E.g. some key people would have got convinced about the viability of open source software and they would have enthusiastically told others before it picked up momentum. Or what about some famous bloggers who get a high feeding others with knowledge?


Salesmen: And they do the work pf persuasion. One example I can think of the way Bush and Blair sold about Saddam having WMDs (Hey, you all believed it at that time though you may not think of them good salesmen now)



And the more you read about this current Gujjar reservation issue or Blogging phenomenon or any new trend in fashion, the more you will recognize the importance of these three factors in achieving their tipping point.

So, the key is to identify the mavens, connectors and salesmen and then depending on whether the idea/product/issue is positive or negative, we can either encourage these three factors or we contain them.

Litigation Society – Abusing the law?

When I compare the society where I was raised (India) to where I am living currently (UK), one thing I have experienced here is that we are over obsessed with litigation. While in India, one is not too keen on resorting to litigation and would do everything in his control to avoid opting for it, primarily because of inefficiencies of the judicial system there, I think the west, as a society is over obsessed with litigation.
Let me give you some examples, which are my own experiences.

Someone once parked his van in front of my house and did not move it for 2 days. Finally, out of frustration I just put a note on the car that if in future it was found on my parking, I will have to deflate the tires (on the lines of few warnings which I have seen like vehicle will be towed away etc etc). Next thing, which happened, is that I get a call from police saying that I have threatened this guy of violence and he is thinking of suing me for damages! And having come from a ‘not-so-litigation-loving’ country, I had to call that guy and express apologies.

Recently my friend told an interesting case at workplace where he could not keep up the promise made to customer so he was writing an apologetic mail when his manager came to know about it. And whereever he has mentioned ‘I apologise’ he replaced it with ‘ I regret’. The reason quoted by manager was that it could lead to – what else, litigation!

Another friend told me a rather sad incident wherein few friends were in a boat enjoying sunny day when suddenly their boat was hit by a huge wave and one of the person got some injuries. The boat owner took best care of his injured friend and after 3 years he got the shock of his life – his injured friend had sued him for damages!

This leads to the question – while in developing countries people abuse the judicial system for its inefficiency, are people abusing the judicial system in the west for its efficiency?
Is everything, including the business and personal relationships being too much driven by the fear of litigations? Can we have honest relationships in such situations where a friend sues you because he was riding your boat when he met an accident? Are businesses being hypocritical about ‘customer being the king’ when they can’t even ‘apologise’ to their customers because they might got sued by ‘litigation happy’ customers? And is this all happening because judicial system is very efficient here or is it just one more ways of making individual gains at the cost of collective failure as a society where no relationship is beyond short term profitability?

Be an ecosexual, metrosexual is passé

Hang on guys, I am not coming up with some weird way of challenging the nature here. I got equally caught up with the term and so I thought I should share this with you all.

As per wired magzine, it means a person who's into hybrid cars, low-energy lightbulbs, and recycling. Please see the full definition here.

Now tell me would you not like to become one ?

However, recently I saw a TV program (I think it was on BBC). It questioned the hype which has been created by so many 'interested parties' over the implications of global warning on this planet. So this whole debate, though I do find merit in the concerns expressed, has confused me along with most of you. Is this issue over hyped because of our hunger for 'breaking news' and because future of so many people and organization is dependent on working towards 'rescuing this planet from dangers of global warming' as this program claimed ? And it had some pretty solid arguments to support its theory.

But the bottom line is that there are more arguments supporting the dangers then against it and so it is safer to become a ecosexual.

Think beyond Customer Satisfaction

Just thinking why the high customer satisfaction score reported by many companies is not converting into business growth for most of them. This leads me to think (apart from validity of some of these scores) if customer satisfaction alone is enough to survive and grow your business? Probably not and specially after reading this interesting book – Experience Economy, which gives valuable insight into how and why every business has to evolve from being into selling commodities/goods/services to providing experiences.

This means businesses are under constant and compelling needs to rediscover. Look yourself – every industry is now shifting more and more towards being a service industry – be it aviation or automobile or Internet based businesses. In fact the industry where in I work – the software industry where companies were so far concentrating more on product creation sees its future in services!! How else would you describe the growth levels achieved by companies like salesforce.com or rightnow or other software as a service companies and the predictions? Look at how many software companies are now offering on demand type of services.

In these times, as the books proclaims, the only way to distinguish your product or service is through providing customers – THE EXPERIENCE.


In fact the sub title of the book makes it even clearer – Work is a theatre and every business is a stage! What a remarkable way of looking at the modern way of conducting any business wherein we all can become artists on that stage and work towards creating a lasting positive experience in customer’s mind.

And probably I could get some clue in the book as to why customer satisfaction is not converting into business success. The book suggests, while customer satisfaction is important as always, one has to look beyond it and also concentrate into Customer Sacrifice ( i.e. difference between what customer expects to get and what he settles for), Customer Surprise (break customer’s monotony of doing business with you by throwing some kind of surprise element) and Customer Suspense ( What customer doesn’t yet know, let him keep guessing what’s coming up next while doing business with you)


And most of all, the book reminds us that we are not selling goods or services, we are selling memories! So next time when you talk to customer, think yourself an artist who is working on a business stage in a work theatre !!.

And go read Experience Economy.

May the power of internet help bring Madeleine home

I wish I did not have to start my blog with a sombre thought, but since the time she has gone missing from a portuguese resort 13 days ago, Madeleine's face comes into my thoughts again and again. That’s why I thought I should start my blog with some hope. Hope that is caused by the power of Internet. Its amazing how the people from different walks of life have grouped together in last few days and its only internet which has provided them the platform to do so.

Please visit the official site for madeleine's search efforts and contribute in whatever way you can. Apart from financial and moral support which we can give to her family at this stage, I think its equally important that we spread the word about her missing to as many places and as many people. Already the response received is pretty amazing as can be seen by these numbers:

Over 65 million hits
22,000 support messages
About 73,000 pounds (with lots of money yet to be cleared through)
Thousands of posters downloaded from the site for spreading the missing girl's news

Looking at this, it seems in coming years Internet could become one of the most potent tools to contain crime of all kinds and making it hard for criminals to remain scot free for long. As internet further spreads in the world, It will make everyone more and more 'visible', the only thing we would need to be cautious is that this can be exploited equally well by criminals and terrorist organizations. And if we could counter that somehow, I think internet will make world a safer place. e.g. in some countries, they have started displaying details of various kinds of offenders on internet.

So lets start with this case. Lets spread the word. lets contribute in every manner. Lets explore how we could use this powerful medium to contain crime of all kinds. In the UK, It might be a one off case, but in developing and under developed countries this issue has attained astronomical proportions. And I am sure, internet could play a major role there as well.


Lastly, a word of praise for Madeleine's parents - Its heartening and inspiring to see them uttering positive words at this testing time. I liked her father's statement - "We believe she is safe and well looked after, until proved to the contrary." Well done Mr and Mrs. McCann. We all prey along with you for your daughter's safe return.