Interesting talk by Steve Blank where he smartly ties the innovation to the world war & to Silicon Valley.  One hour of pure entertainment.

Came across a very  interesting talk by Hal Varian (Google’s chief economist) from Mckinsey Quarterly

Here are the few points that I picked :

1. There is more data but relatively lesser info & hence even lesser knowledge on a relative basis. Is there an opportunity here? Understanding the context by weaving the information available  &  giving consumers a Cohesive,Time-relevant & Location-relevant info so that it helps them to take an informed decision can be a big opportunity. (Sounds complex? More on this later)

2. Because of the web, there is a paradigm shift in the way we work. Work is coming to us rather than we going to work. This is making society more productive.

3. Innovation :  Combination & re-combination of components in an ecosystem makes innovation possible. Earlier the cost of combining these components was larger & hence I guess the opportunities were limited. In today’s world, the web ecosystem with its low cost components (apps, languages, protocols,cheaper storage etc) has become a fertile ground for innovating. Better is you can recombine these endlessly to create value at low cost. Today you can build an app, ride it on the social network, reach a critical mass, scale your system at low cost with clouds.All this in a far easier & faster way than say 3 years ago. If something goes wrong, you can recombine these components & redesign things with lesser pain. These are surely exciting times.

Surely a talk worth spending time & sharing.

Whats comes to a Man & Women’s mind when someone says ” Lets go for a drink”..Thank God, I am a Man

On the way back home from a Movie which showcased that its possible for India to do wonders in every sport (if supported with strong will), my mind started wandering into India’s past, present & future.I was beginning to gather meat for this post.

Loads of questions filled my empty mind.What’s changed,what’s changing & where is India headed?What could slow down or accelerate Her growth? Too many questions, too many answers – result-Confusion:) I gave up the thought of writing the post:) but a cup of coffee provided that much wanted trigger…so here is our attempt at highlighting how India has changed & a role that each one of us can play to make it the greatest nation.

Quick rewind – India’s journey

60 years: broken down into 2 phases (for simplicity sake) – Pre Reforms & Post Reforms

Pre Reform: An economy trying to gain some ground after Independence, trying to get direction.India became more inward focused, apprehensive about the outside world.Reason:150 years of rule by outsiders because of letting them in easily.Result: A closed economy with License Raj. Nehruvian Socialism took solid ground during this period.

Post Reform: The realization that India cannot remain isolated from the world economy for a long time resulted into the 1991 reforms.The power of freeing India’s Entrepreneurial spirit became evident.The Hindu growth rate was to become history.Across all sectors of the economy there was above average growth.With the Services sector’s increasing contribution to the GDP & its growth, it was evident that India will remain on the fast growth track (most economies have seen an inflection in growth when its services sector starting growing faster than its other sectors).Other favourable factors like Democratic form of governance, Large consuming class,Young population (50% of Indians are born after 1980), English as the primary language of official communication, External factors such as industries in developed economies feeling the pressure to cut-costs to remain competitive etc..made India an economy to watch out for.

The other side of the coin:

- A recent government report estimates that around 700Mn Indians live on a less than Rs.20/day income

- Poverty is pervasive with a huge number of Indians below the poverty line

- Growth is asymmetric.Some parts of the country are experiencing more growth while the others are still growth neutral

- Elections are still won on Secularist issues

- The state politics is still not driven by economic agenda.Thanks to FM & PM, this is beginning to change

- The reform process is yet to get its depth in sectors other than Services

- Infrastructural growth is not matching the growth in other sectors & it has already started acting as a bottleneck

We can just keep on elongating the list like a true Indian…

These are structural problems of the growing economy and with the two most qualified persons at the helm of its management, it would be really stupid of us to prescribe any solution to these problems.And for the same reason,we believe that going forward there will be more right policy prescriptions than wrong ones.However we believe that to compliment every good policy reform, there has to be a social reform.One without the other won’t work.To bring about this required social change, everyone of us

- must ask the right questions to our leaders (thanks to the democratization of media, this is a lot easier now)

- we should severely punish their every wrong moves

- throw out the ones who fail to deliver on the economic agenda &

- finally feel responsible for whatever is happening & will happen to India.It all starts with us as individuals!

India is at a critical juncture of becoming the greatest nation & we are lucky enough to be a part of it.Lets not loose this chance of our lifetime…

Happy Republic Day

There is a dearth of good marketing organizations in India. However, there are always some exceptions; one of those is definitely The Times Of India. I feel they have some of the best marketing brains in the country managing the mother brand. Thats pretty evident – even any of the newly launched print newspapers (Hindustan Times, DNA) have not been able to make a dent in its market share. In fact, TOI was so confident that it sold full page ad space for several days to Hindustan Times while they ran their launch campaign 2 years back!

What makes them so strong? Content for sure plus the reader engagement! Further it presents this quality content in a format that not only invites attention but they also market it well. They know when (and how) to refresh the format/ lay-out, create reader engagement (through content, initiatives?), connect emotionally (Tsunami, other national Calamity funds), build relationships through on-ground events (remember Times Yoga?), which in the process reinforces the product’s (the print newspaper) superiority over the available alternatives all the time.

I don’t mean other newspapers provide stale content; I simply say they don’t do a good job of marketing themselves. Good content, better marketing coupled with lowest time to market (does anyone remember Mumbai Mirror’s launch) gives them an enviable position.

The Lead India Initiative that TOI is taken is one such attempt (in its overall marketing scheme of things) where it intends to engage the readers by binding them emotionally to an individual (or a set of individuals) who care (or pretend to care) about the country. Simply because of the grandness of the initiative (did somebody say, nobleness) they will be able to hold on to their audiences and attract more from competition. Further, it not only will create proprietary news (I doubt that other publications would want to cover a competitor’s initiative) but also assist the group’s other media platforms (TV, Radio) to increase viewership, listenership!

Are other TV channels taking a note – TOI is actually launching a realty show that not only gets telecast on TIMES NOW and gets extensive coverage in country’s National Daily, but also binds the readers (and nation) emotionally to the brand and an individual who may make a difference! No, they are busy launching me too singing, comedy and talent hunt realty shows

So many times we come across people who desire to start on their own. But most never start! Primarily because they couldn’t find ideas to start a venture, which they feel are unique, sustainable, scalable, etc.

Of course, there are other problems even if you have an idea – we shall keep that for a later post.

Over last couple of years we have always been on the look-out for promising ideas but its been rather difficult. It doesn’t work that one fine day you sit & decide to think and you will succeed in finding one! In our cases, its always more of a discovery than a conscious effort that one comes with across a promising idea. Though, there are no sure shot ways to find an idea, we have attempted to categorize different approaches. Here it goes -

1. Solving a real world problem – This is the best way to zero-in on an idea. If one is solving a problem, providing an engaging solution that users/customers find compelling, the idea has a large probability of success. Google happens to be the top-of-mind example here.
2. Identifying a target group and developing a service for them – If one has a target group in mind with some homogeneous characteristics, he/she can study them closely and see where the gap can be filled. Here, one may not be solving a problem, but if the target group is large enough for a product/service that people in this target group are willing to pay for, you still have a business model. See the mushrooming of theme restaurants, movies made for multiplexes in Urban India and you will see what we are talking about.
3. Bringing a technology solution to the masses that provides better solution/replacement of existing stuff – This is a tad difficult to make a business in. Because one has already a competition and there is a benchmark product already available in the market that people refer to. Think of Solar Energy devices for mass usage, Novatium’s network computer model in this category.

The above is something we have categorized based on our debates and discussions while identifying ideas. One doesn’t need to follow an approach to find business ideas, but we shall still experiment with the above to see whether we are getting any better. After all, structured thinking have its advantages

Now that we have been working in startup environment from quite sometime, we thought that we would try & break some myths about joining startups that would be of help those who are planning to join a startup or are considering a job change.

Myth: Working in a startup is a risky proposition
Lets get into the root of this mentality.

In our society we have been taught to ‘play safe’ since childhood.

In SSC, every Indian parent is after the child’s life so that he/she is among the rankers.Reason: The child should get admit into the top Science college for HSC. First lesson to the child in ‘Playing Safe’ – Fields other than Science in HSC are risky

Then comes the biggest year in the history of every Indian’s career – HSC (I still see HSC students more tense than the CEO of my company:) The preparation for the big exam begins before the start of the curriculum of HSC. Loads of money is poured into expensive private tuitions. Parent’s suddenly start coming home early, child’s sport activities reduce by 90%, mothers increase the dose of healthy food (so called memory & concentration improvement edible things), non-studying friends are nowhere to be seen around the child, talks revolve around physics, chemistry,maths & biology.It looks like every entity in the child’s universe has the same epicenter – HSC exam.Everybody is concentrating on the four most important letters- P,C,M & B.Reason – getting a good hang of these subjects will get the child admit into either into Engineering or Medicine.

Second lesson to the child in ‘Playing safe’ – any profession other than Engineering or Medicine is risky

Now comes the choice for fields to be taken for let’s say – Engineering.

Here comes the third lesson to the child on ‘Playing safe’ – Any field other than Mechanical , Chemical , Electronics & (recently added )Computers are risky

Next is the choice between companies for job in their respective fields, for simplicity sake lets take Computers.

The fourth lesson to the child on ‘Playing safe – Any company other than Infosys, Wipro, Satyam & a selected few are Risky

Now I closed the loop – Its here where the myth – Startup is a risky place to work plays a role and people choose Infosys over a small startup.

The point is – we have been brought up in an environment where trying untested things seem risky which is not the case (Had that been the case, we wouldn’t have got Sachin Tendulkar, who has created an inflection in thinking about Sports as a career).

I would partly blame the parents for not letting the child pursue his interests & partly the Government & Industries for creating the asymmetry.

Lets look at Risk.Risk is always in reference to return.We see a choice to be risky when we expect lesser returns compared to the efforts from exercising it.Going with this definition, working in a startup is a Win-Win situation with very high returns & hence it isn’t risky.

Returns from a startup can be classified into tangible & intangible. The tangible component is the equity & salary while the intangible component is the Learning. I would personally rate the learning component to have more weightage.Now lets see why people see startups to be risky.They see only the tangible component coupled with pessimism - what if the company dooms?However they miss the intangible – Learning component.Startups provide a much sharper learning curve(will leave the explanation for some later post).This is fortunately well understood in the corporate world hence even if a company dooms, the other players in the industry are waiting for you with much higher packages & roles.So with every quarter, a startup employee’s value is actually growing at a much higher rate – tangible earnings and the future value of the learning!

Remember I took a pessimistic view, what if the Starup is the next Google?:) the returns are incalculable!

Any counter or supporting views?

This is our blog’s first post and like everything, we want it be good! We delved a lot on what our topic should be but couldn’t come up with a path-breaking one. So we decided to start somewhere and let us evolve in the world of blogging.

So the topic that we chose had a reason. We both come from a background where our jobs involved either consulting for preparing marketing plans or recommend stuff to our clients on modifications to their marketing plans. Both used to be pleasurable jobs – you talk futuristic stuff and attempt to make your clients believe in what we have thought! It works most of the times because you always have fancy powerpoint presentations to back your stuff up with.

We recently shifted to different profiles from consulting – to real world of marketing! While the way of approaching things have remained intact; one can’t afford to wrong in basics! The world changes when you as a person in-charge take decisions or are required to take decisions. I guess every management graduate worth his/her salt wants to make his/her decisions when it comes to work; but its always easier said than done.

Working as a consultant, you recommend a set of things that should be done. But, the client can’t always work or implement all the recommendations.

Both of us used to fight it out with our respective set of clients that how & why we need all this, however, because of the REAL world business constraints (read, budgets), he/she used to pick ONE or a sub-SET from stuff presented. Now that’s the difficult task – choosing ONE from the set of OPTIONS.

I recently found myself in such a situation, where I needed to pick ONE of the 3 options that I short-listed for achieving my immediate marketing objective. The constraints – BUDGET! I wanted to do all – to make a BIG impact on the brand. But the budgets forced me to pick ONLY ONE! Poor ME! (Or my COMPANY!)

But I must say it was a real good experience. I learnt that I need to be extremely result oriented. After all every buck counts (more so, in a start-up).

The way I went on making my decision was – by asking questions!

• Which among these gives me HIGHEST reach?
• No..no…which among these gives me BETTER (i.e. EFFECTIVE) reach?
• Nahin yaar….It should be – Which among these gives me better chances of conversion?
• Oh…did I miss this – Which amongst this should involve minimum logistics (physical efforts) and least wastage?
• What about measurability? Which ONE I can monitor easily and say that IT is the THING which is actually helping us get traction? (So that we can divert more of our marketing dollars there)

Though after listing all these questions, it wasn’t difficult to choose the ONE from the 3 options I had. I still feel, it was an experience worth sharing.

One thing we would like to clarify here is that we both loved our previous jobs and respect whatever we had done in the assignments that we got to work on.

But the decision making task, when the buck stops at you, is a difficult situation to be in. Because you always want to get the maximum out of the resources at hand, you try to think a lot. However, the process is really enjoyable.

I arrived at a decision – should see the outcome soon after the campaign is over and share what I learnt from the process. (Also I will come to know whether the ONE I choose worked or not!)

Do any of you have any similar experiences to share? Thoughts, opinions?