I am a PC...

I have made a life making PCs, Repairing PCs, Selling PCs, Teaching PCs, Developing Applications for PCs, Selling Software that run on PCs, Architecting Solutions for PCs, Partnering to Businesses that make money out of Services on PC for the past 2o years.

Couldn’t agree more with this “I am a PC” campaign.

However, keep in mind, this is the era of mobile, ultra mobile, compact and ultra compact PCs…

and for many, it is called “Mobile Phone!!!”…

Service + (of) Services

The more I read thought leaders like “Tom Peters” and the more about business models, two concepts are standing very clear. 1. Scale, scale and scale… 2. Niche, niche and niche…

Scale gives you price arbitration and niche gives you value arbitration. The strange thing is they rarely co-exist.

Every great business starts with catering a niche market and its profits /growth rate will be very high. But as the business scales, focus turns to revenue pressure, profitability and the most important item...stock price. They tend to spread their wings to achieve all these and do everything within their limit to get there.

It’s the same with Software Services Business Model. We have services for everything from search, news, photos, videos, music, files, news, content, storage, computing power, and applications like CRM, Accounting, etc. These services are becoming bigger and bigger… and eventually the will become commodity.

So, how do you deliver value with services?

Let me share with you some niche services business that are simply “Service of Services”, a very valuable proposition.

www.framechannel.com

You get your account on FrameChannel and pickup content from over 400 channel feeds like news, weather, sports, finance etc. You also configure framechannel with your account details on facebook, flickr and picassa etc.

Congratulations….You have just configured a service of Services!!! YES, framechannel, makes your customized content as a service!!!

You go pickup a wireless photo frame and configure it with framechannel credentials. Bingo… your customized content is now displayed on the digital photo frame.

Think about this... You are on an international trip and upload pictures to Google Picasa / Facebook or any picture sharing service. Instantly your family back home is able to see them on the photo frame in your living room!!!

In fact, it need not be a photo frame, it can even be an application like a screen saver or a gadget that connects to framechannel service!!!

Now, I call this a "Service of Services" as it aggregates various sources of information form discrete services, delivers a customized content to wherever /whenever you want... A true value.

Could Google or Microsoft do it? Probably NOT. They will surely integrate their own assets into a single service.

Will they inter-operate? Probably NOT. or it may take ages...Take for example, Yahoo and Live Messenger integration.

But, a nimble, smart bunch of kids can pull this off without any "Big Brother" attitude and "clash of strategic priorities".

Also make a note, consumers want choice, they will never stick with one single platform or a single service...

If you are thinking of a startup, or some new idea, go figure if you could come up with a niche “Service of Services”

Innovation in "Services + Hardware" has just begun...

Last week, I dusted out a digital photo frame that was awarded to me two years back while at Microsoft by “TSP Academy”, a distance learning program designed for “peer-to-peer” coaching & learning for Microsoft's field technology professionals.

It is a 5” LCD photo frame that had multiple memory slots and an inbuilt speaker for playing music while displaying the pictures. While setting it up, I started thinking about few “Wouldn’t it be great if…” scenarios.

I could immediately think of USB interface instead a memory slot so that I could store hundreds of pictures on a memory stick or external hard disk and/or even better a 802.11 wireless feature that would allow me to directly stream pictures / video and audio from home PC storage.

During my nomadic search on the net, I stumbled upon two new models of photo frame by Samsung and Sony just released last week with some interesting features.

Let’s take Samsung first

Internet Photo Frame SPF-85V is an 8-inch, WiFi-enabled device for an estimated street price of $199.99.

It had all typical features of photo frame with USB 2.0 interface. Interestingly this device is optimized for use with Microsoft’s Windows Live Space for easy photo streaming.

Additionally, it also came with Samsung’s InfoLink feature, which offers the ability to receive RSS feeds from “USA Today” and www.framechannel.com. This device could also work as a second monitor using Samsung’s UbiSync Technology that uses only USB Cable!

Looking at Sony,

SONY VAIO Wi-Fi Photo Frame comes with a 7”5, 800x480 screen. It can locate and playback all the photos from your PC, display from memory cards or directly from the built-in 128MB internal storage.

Again the interesting feature is displaying pictures from Google's  Picasaweb albums!

It is indeed interesting that we are starting to see emergence of consumer device from hardware vendor that leverage services from a different software vendor.

Just Visualize, videos from Youtube, Music from iTunes, RSS feeds from your own favorite news site, your calendar, your blog or any service out in the cloud streamed into your photo frame!!!

Let me extend my imagination a little bit…

How nice would it be to have similar USB port and wireless network chips embedded on our TV sets, converting them into large photo frames?

An era of innovation in "Services + Hardware" has just begun...

Browser may be the "Platform of the Future"

Today, Google released Google Chrome, a web browser!!! It assumes very significance from the very fact that the download link is right on "Google Home Page" which never happened to any of their product releases.

As I started analyzing things, few things stand out…

Open Source – This is a fork of Webkit , an open source project. By this Google straight away wins the hearts and minds of open source lovers all over the world, making adoption of this browser viral. Google will never look “Evil” at least the time being, Privacy groups will never be able to complain as anyone could review and scrutinize.

Faster – Early tests reveal that it is faster that Firefox and IE in rendering web pages; a reason for many users to switch to Chrome.

V8 Javascript virtual machine – This java scripting engine is 3 times faster in executing scripts. This gives them enormous power to deliver productivity applications like Google docs better and better. Google’s assets will be tuned run faster on this browser increasing adoption of Chrome

Anonymous browsing – If Microsoft announced “Privacy mode” in IE8, Chrome got this anonymous browsing.

Tabs - Tabs are located on top of the window and not under the url bar. This makes the Tabs central part of user experience and tabs can me moved around by “tearing off”! !!

Tabs (Technical) – This is one feature that made me look closer. Each Tab is a process, which means these are isolated, safer and I can kill any rouge application just by closing the tab. There is a “task manager” to see the stats like memory consumption, etc for each tab.

Search interface – It is definitely intuitive; you do not have a separate text box for search.

Availability: Chrome is available for Windows first, then Mac and finally on Linux. This very clearly shows whom Google is going after.

Automatic updates – As per user license agreement, Chrome will be updated by Google, which means, expect new additional features and any security holes plugged slowly on to the browser.

There are already mixed reviews from the pres. Some are rating Chrome just below Firefox and above IE. On the other hand, some are skeptical as there is nothing compelling for a seasoned user of IE or Firefox.

Let me guess the long term impacts of this Chrome release.

Google will release Silverlight / Flash Equivalent: Given that the web bandwidth is increasing and becoming cheaper, users no longer look for simplicity; users need experience. Flash/Silverlight equivalent is the only way Google will be able to deliver rich user experience. Google Docs is a classical example where user experience is utmost important. Looking at V8, this is inevitable in the long run.

Chrome adoption will be in pockets and grow slowly: Google followers, open source developers, and geeks will embrace Chrome immediately. Hardware vendors may offer Chrome as another choice. Unless Google releases few “cool” features, like how Apple revolutionized portable music and phone users, adoption could be slow and limited to these pockets.

Google becoming a complete software platform provider: Google is already proven in services platform, now getting into software platform by way of Chrome browser platform and android Mobile OS platform.

Google may deliver services and software on their own hardware Platform – From Services to Software to hardware; that’s the way I see. Experience and stickiness can happen only with consumer experience. Extreme experience can happen only when “Services + Software + hardware” are under one hood like Apple products and gaming consoles like X-Box / PlayStation.

More and more, we are spending our time using browser in our everyday life. The paintbrush, calculator, control panel and everything else is becoming trivial things. Browser plug-ins like Adobe’s Flash and Microsoft’s SilverLight deliver a more visually appealing experience on the browser.

I am not predicting about special users like developers, animators, designers and large servers that run in datacenters, but when it comes to computing need for normal consumers, choice of operating system will become insignificant decision factor and experience & perceived value will be the norms. We are already seeing such behaviors on Mobile, Apple and Nintendo buying trends.

To me, it looks like “Browser may be just the Experience Platform of the future”

Innovation = Perseverance

Last week, one of my business associates called to catch up and say “thank you”. It was about an initiative we started 1.5 years back, when I was working for Microsoft.

They took the concept, crystallized execution details and started executing.

But, as in every innovation journey, they faced hurdles, their priorities got redefined and in the meantime, I too changed roles and even left Microsoft.

But they, as a team believed in, focused on this initiative and eventually brought it to reality. Today they have this niche solution on hand, complete with sales & marketing collaterals and ready to hit the market.

While conveying this message over phone, that person’s voice was beaming with pride, confidence and bubbly as they just learnt that worldwide head of vertical domain @ Microsoft in which they developed the solution, has appreciated their work and the immense opportunity this solution brings to both the organizations. That executive was even ready to give them sales leads and invited them to showcase this solution at Microsoft conferences and Microsoft Technology Centers .

As I hung up call the chat, I too was proud of what this individual has achieved, and thoughtfulness to call me to say a simple ”Thank You”.

After all, Innovation is all about spotting an opportunity and persevering through the ups and downs to its closure…

It’s about time… Proof Point @ MS India - 10 years of Innovation

Last week there was lots of press around Microsoft India Development Center completing its 10 years. What started as a small team with few engineers,

now blossomed into an organization with 1500 engineers innovating for Microsoft right out of India!!!

The center claims to have 220 patents from India.

Some of their focus areas are pretty relevant to future trends and very strategically leverages local talent…

• India is a maintenance hub for business applications – They are developing business applications like CRM / MBS / Duet !

• RFID is at the inflection point of mass adoption – They are working on RFID server !!

• Office is a cash cow for Microsoft – They work on Office Mobile !!!

• India is a country with multiple languages - They are working on localization !!!!

• India & mobile revolution are synonymous – They work on Mobile !!!!!

• Web is the platform of the future – They work on Live Platform !!!!!!

• Virtualization is the way forward – They are on Virtual PC 2007 !!!!!!!

• India is a Developer Nation – They work on Developer Tools !!!!!!!!

• Search & Mobile phones are ubiquitous - They work on Mobile Search !!!!!!!!!

• Windows is another cash cow – They work on Windows !!!!!!!!!!

looks like time has already arrived for Innovations out of India…

What is in need is a "Name" indeed…

I am blessed with opportunity of interacting with “Gen Y” and their online behaviour, particularly search.

The term “Googling” is very synonymous for search with Gen Y and they quickly associate with that brand with innovation and in fact Google ranks higher in their innovation chart.

n the other hand a quick scan on Microsoft’s Search assets indicate some of their solid investments in this space,

FAST Search (www.fastsearch.com). This is a company that Microsoft acquired recently in April 2008. Gartner plots Fast as leader and visionary in the Enterprise Search space. In fact this company has acquired two more before being acquired by Microsoft. Corporate Radar, a web based BI Product Company in April 2006 and Convera’s RetrievalWare, a knowledge platform for information retrieval and search in April 2007. Looks like this Retrivalware not only has robust linguistic foundation for disambiguating terms, but also for speeding multilingual and cross-language retrieval.

Tell me (www.tellme.com ) – Tellme improves the way phones connect people and businesses with each other. Unlike other traditional search engines, tellme helps people locate information buy voice. 40 million people use Tellme every month. This is a typical dream of Bill Gates, convergence of technologies for Search.

Powerset (www.powerset.com) – Microsoft acquired this company in June 2008 and it’s a Natural Language Search Engine. It will enable people ask questions and enter phrases instead of just keywords. Powerset provides different kinds of results depending on whether you are searching based on a broad topic, a simple question, or more complex questions and phrases.

MotionBridge (http://mobile.live.com)- If tellme enables you to use voice as way to search, motionbridge makes it easy for doing the same through mobile devices, With GPRS becoming mainstream and 3G phones debuting, internet search using mobile phones will accelerate at a much faster pace. Microsoft acquired this company in February 2006 and already integrated it into their live platform

MedStory (www.medstory.com) – Domain specific search is very niche market. However, when it comes to medical and health related Search, the scope is pretty wide. Microsoft acquired this company in February 2007. This product uses Categorization techniques to deliver Medical Search but I believe, this acquisition will bring capabilities to deliver any domain specific search.

Amalga (www.microsoft.com/amalga) – If MedStory delivers search capabilities to enterprise customers whose requirements are different than internet search, Amalga delivers search capabilities to hospitals within stringent privacy and security requirements. This capability comes from Microsoft’s acquisition of Azyxxi in July 2006. Azyxxi brings together all types of patient data from hundreds of sources and makes them instantly available at the point of care.

Virtual Earth – This platform has again two services. For public internet users, it is delivered through http://maps.live.com. For enterprise customers, this service is through licensing and special SDK www.microsoft.com/virtualearth/product .

Other Search capabilities (www.live.com) - I am impressed with Video, News and Image capabilities of Microsoft through live platform. Not to miss out the recently closed down Book Search that merged into live search. Particularly Microsoft image search is something I always chose to use all the time over Google search. Features like continuous scroll are fantastic value.

I am pretty convinced Microsoft has tirelessly focused on acquiring pretty impressive and right search assets under the wrap over the years and the challenge now is to attract users.

The “Googling” and “Do you Yahoo?” phenomena is cool with the Gen Y and “Living” and “Do you Live” for some reason does not fit well. The other fact, that press refers “Microsoft Search” and NOT “Live Search” is indicator of scheme of things at large.

May be “What is in need is an online brand indeed”

It’s about time…

Two years ago, there was serious concern in the intellect community that we are only producing worker bees and not scientists that can do fundamental research.

There were news on how India’s top research institutions are losing their talent.

But, during the same period, we also saw super focus on “Innovation” by leaders, government, industry bodies and enterprises; here are few…

Dr. Abdul Kalam, Former president of India relentlessly messaged about the importance of innovation during and after his tenure. Innovation and his speech “India’s Role in the Knowledge Economy” is legendary

http://www.abdulkalam.com/kalam/jsp/display_content.jsp?menuid=25&menuname=Thoughts&linkid=125&linkname=Developed%20India&content=849

India's leading industry bodies CII and NASSCOM both have their Innovation Initiatives.

http://www.nasscom.in/Nasscom/templates/LandingPage.aspx?id=5721

http://cii.in/menu_content.php?menu_id=501

I would like anyone visiting this blog to read Anand Mahindra’s NASSCOM 2008 Leadership Summit speech, in which, he beautifully explains need and concept of Innovation for Indian IT industry in particular using Hindu mythology.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/IT_has_its_own_Hiranyakashyap_to_battle/rssarticleshow/2782893.cms

Indian IT vendors such as Microsoft, IBM and SAP have also upped their effort and investments on “Innovation”.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/storypage.php?tp=on&autono=28462

The in late 2007, Kapil Sibal, Union minister for science & technology declared “We want to bring in an ‘India Innovation Act’ to spur innovation in India, for which we would like Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry to draft legislation and present it to the government in three months”

http://www.ibef.org/artdisplay.aspx?cat_id=60&art_id=16684&refer=n41

If the stories of “Innovation made in India” listed are precursors of what is to come… then

The tale of the creation and design of the world's cheapest car is one of innovation and ingenuity, both inside and outside Ratan Tata's organization

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/may2008/id2008059_312111.htm

“Unilever to nurse Asia as R&D hub” with India leading with more than 250 researchers / scientists and 300 patents.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News_by_Industry/Unilever_to_nurse_Asia_as_RD_hub/articleshow/3292639.cms

There is no doubt, it’s about time…

Search is ripe for Innovation

In the recent financial analyst meeting Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer talked about something closer to my heart “Innovation”. In the past I have posted few blogs on Innovation, the Microsoft style. But this one is different from all of them because, the possibilities Steve highlighted sounded like a sci-fi movie.

 

“Search is ripe for innovation. It has not been the most innovative category in the world. I mean, think back, what did search look like five years ago, 10 blue links on the left, some ads on the right, and maybe some ads on the top. What does it look like now, 10 blue links on the left, some ads on the right, and maybe something on the top. It is ripe for innovation. If you say to yourself, five years from now, 10 years from now will search be as humdrum, hard, 50 percent of searches don't actually lead to an answer to somebody's problem, is this an area that's ripe for innovation, in user experience, natural language, semantic understanding, consumer experience? The business model hasn't been touched”

here is what I would say...

Search is really ripe for innovation: Over the years, though the noise has been growing, I have NOT seen any breakthrough innovations in search as an end user.

50% Searches do not lead to an answer to a problem: This is true as the search engines do the ranking but do not take care of the context which could be different for each user.

Whatever, few more things that made sense to me as a technology tracker.

Search User Experience to Query needs innovation: There is hardly any change in the way we search for information has changed other than few fancy Browser Add In’s. When will search engines understand my 8 year old son’s query? When do they understand natural language queries?

Searching for information needs innovation: Today we have to go to multiple places to search for what one needs – For Text, for Pictures, for videos, for news, for location and so on. When will users be able to see all the results in a contextual sense in one single interface?

Search Result Viewing needs innovation: It is this simple list at all times when it comes to seeing search results. When will we be able to see search results in a faceted browsing experience?

Searching itself needs innovation: Today, searching means searching for text based information. As the web has grown from simple text based documents to pictures and now to videos, when do we get to see searching on the photos and videos? Then move on to friends, locations, directions, places of interest etc?

Search Advertising needs innovation: Did you ever get what you wanted in the advertising relevance? Since there is no scope for search context, today’s technology never will be able deliver what we need.

Search History needs innovation: Search is about looking for some information. But what happens once we get the information we need? Do you know what you have searched for in the past? Where do you park all your search results? Bookmark? That’s an old way of doing things. When do we have a seamless way of marking all the answers to our search queries so that I do not have to search from the scratch all over again?

Search needs innovation to integrate to your other information sources: When do we see search picking up context from location, time, day, calendar, mood etc? Enough interesting scenarios emerge when you put all of them together…

Devices integration with search needs innovation: As we move from desktop computing to mobile computing, with mobile computing power increasing each month, with mobile computers getting 3G bandwidth, with mobile computing getting global positioning system chips integrated, with mobile computing devices having built-in wireless network adaptors,  where do you see search going?

Searching by talking and listening for results, search engine knowing your exact position and connecting your next appointment to give you driving directions? Search engine  knowing that its lunch time and showing restaurants nearby for the meeting? Search suggesting a particular restaurant and menu based on your taste buds and the occasion and the person you are going to meet?

Search needs business model innovation: one of the points that Steve mentions is that paying back some revenue generated to the end users. That’s an innovative piece on the business model.

Search needs Content Rating Innovation: we have almost many of the web sites and their content rated. But when do we see search results taking into consideration that my 8 year old son is using the search and show only rated content for him?

Search needs innovation on content authenticity: Search just throws out results from the index. It is the responsibility of the user to validate that the content from authentic source. When do we get to see authenticity ratings for the content result that we get?

Today every search player has some pieces of Jigsaw puzzle. Only time will tell when we get to see the full picture…

Search is indeed ripe for Innovation...

MOSS 2007 = MS Access 1995 ?

SharePoint Technologies has always been my favourite product since its early days way back from 2001 to today’s MOSS 2007.

This product has come a long way since then from be it on the storage (File based WebDav system to SQL based query system) or on the front end(ASP to ASP.NET) or on the design tools(from No support to Front Page

which is now the dedicated SharePoint Designer) or WorkFlow(just from document approval serial / parallel to full-fledged WF engine) or content management (from nothing to reasonable support) or search (from primitive to extensive). Things like integrating Live communicator is the icing on the cake.

Any CIO or Chief knowledge officer who invested on SharePoint would be beaming with happy that he has met his biggest objective of creating a culture of moving user generated unstructured information from individual desktop to centralized SharePoint Storage.

Once deployed and open to users, SharePoint spreads like wildfire. Particularly it’s a darling for collaborative teams spread across different locations. It is quite easy to understand start using it.

Here are few observations

SharePoint spreads like wild fire. Once in, enterprise CIO’s and CKO’s can never get rid of SharePoint. It’s just not that easy. I would say it has achieved the distinction of today’s Lotus Notes.

It will be a real pain if deployment not planned well. Given its ASP.Net based front end and central SQL based storage, if not planned well for scalability and storage, users will start seeing huge performance degradation which may lead to huge dissatisfaction issues.

User education will lead to better usage and ROI. Users need some amount of training in smartly using, customizing and configuring it. For example, instead of creating multiple document libraries, one could create additional column for document taxonomies. Some excellent features like Excel Services and InfoPath Form Server will go unutilised without proper user training.

Worry about manageability training – if not prepared, like any other internet application, you will start seeing sudden performance and use dissatisfaction issues as the user base increases. Getting your IT staff up to speed on Planning / Deploying / Managing / administering / Performance tuning is very important so that they know how to address these things when things go out of control

Power of Web Parts – Out of the box web parts will quickly run out of their use. Users will need more and more as the start using SharePoint. This is one area Microsoft is lagging behind and they have not invested into providing more web parts. Listen to your users and get some custom web parts developed to suite your organization needs. There is already a shortage of SharePoint design skills though it follows the same ASP.NET web development model.

Leverage BI Capabilities - SharePoint has tremendous capabilities to deliver BI to the masses inside your enterprise. Use capabilities such as BDC to connect to your back end systems like SAP and deliver BI to your users. Connecting to a SQL Cube is a cake walk.

Transactional Systems on MOSS –I am already seeing requests around ways to integrate Transactional systems within MOSS. While BDC (Business Data Catalogs) come handy in reporting, they have their own limitations. Get your teams to think about how to handle such requests.

I am not surprised that in their recent review Forrester advising IT heads to gear up for supporting MOSS like how MS Access apps grew uncontrolled in 1990s…

Innovation = Execution and Commercialization

Recently I read an article how Microsoft was never an innovative organization and why they can never be innovative. This was more than enough for me to get started into some research on the topic. This one from Wall Street Journal got my attention

"Is Microsoft Driving Innovation Or Playing Catch-Up With Rivals?"

This is a 2006 conversation between Dave Winner and Robert Scoble. Few highlights are;

• Microsoft made a bet against the Web back about five years ago and Microsoft is struggling with that mistake

• When you see things like photosynth, you realize Microsoft can come back and be innovative. They have a lot of smart people, and huge resources”

• Xbox Live, for instance, is very innovative. I can't see the gamer scores of players on any other system. That is innovation.

• Apple will come out with iTV next year, after Microsoft has been doing Media Center for more than two years. I bet Apple will get credit for their "innovation" first, though, cause it's not fun to give Microsoft credit for innovation.

• People at Microsoft are more interested in keeping things nice and predictable, they care too much about manners, and innovation is anything but predictable, or mannerly

• I hate is Microsoft's URLs, Google definitely out-innovates it there

And they conclude with some interesting observations and I particularly like these.

No one technology company dominates. Lots of individual try out all kinds of things.

Innovation comes from those individuals and is commercialized by companies

Microsoft is known for their success in commercializing innovations, with a proven track record of 54 Billion revenue.

It’s 1 Billon each week… that’s a heck a lot of money.

Ever wonder, if you were to be the CEO how would you get this 1 billion / week ticking and show double digit growth year-on-year?

Looking at history, the secret lies in their acquisitions…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_microsoft_acquisitions

“An idea becomes an innovation only when it is implemented and cash is generated”

“Microsoft innovation comes from acquiring, integrating, packaging and commercializing”

Otherwise how could they be consistantly on the list of "Most Innovative Companies in the World"?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_17/b3981413.htm
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/123/the-worlds-most-innovative-companies.html

My unforgettable interaction with the legend…

Come tomorrow, Microsoft will be missing someone important @ their Redmond Campus.

That’s the legend - Bill Gates…

• A man who wanted his title to be "Chief Software Architect" for his founding company after being there for 25+ years!!!
• A man who had a vision to employ thousands of engineers to write programs!!!
• A man who realized his dream of his software running on everyone's desktop.
• A man who made it to the top and sustained as the richest person on the planet.
• A man who donated 29 Billion of his personal wealth to Philanthropy.
• A man who's Philanthropy work so believed, that Warren Buffet wrote his personal fortune to the foundation formed by him.
• A man who believed in true friendship, making his friend one of the richest non founder employees.
• A man who wrote 2 NYT best sellers "Business @ the Speed of Thought" and "The Road Ahead"
• A man who championed for a revamp of his home country's basic education system
• A man who worried about his home country losing out on innovation if foreign students that are educated at his home country's colleges not given opportunities.
• A man who planned his succession well in advance, when many would never dream of leaving such a powerful position.

and I could go on and on...

To me, for someone who worked @ Microsoft in the field as Architect Evangelist, his departure is sure a sign of missing a real evangelist for the company.

He would always make it to the employees’ conferences be it sales or technical. Even during the last 2 years, he made it a point to at least attend the conferences for technology personnel.

Here is an instance of my personal interaction with him.

I would never miss his keynote sessions and the following Q&A session where he would address each question however stupid, until the organizers step forward to take him away.

There was one such conference where I had a question, but ran out of luck before my turn. I couldn’t keep it and finally took all the courage and I wrote to him soon after returning to India.

Knowing the preciousness of his time and his questioning deeply on any subject, I felt like being bestowed “Nobel Prize” when he responded, also copying a Corp VP on the subject!!!

Bill, I am sure you will be working hard in your own ways to make the world a better place for the underprivileged and also be an "Insider ouside of Microsoft" from now.

All the very best to Microsoft without Bill and to Bill for following your heart...

Innovation = Thinking Simplicity

 

Today on NDTV Profit, I happened to view a story about Shinsei Bank on their turnaround strategy, particularly focusing on an approach towards IT

which uses mostly open Internet, small, off-the-shelf components and a way of breaking complexity into small pieces in the shortest time with limited IT spending.

What struck me was their thinking style of "Simplicity"

1. While financial institutions in the world use huge, number crunching central servers, this bank implemented their entire IT system using affordable small servers running Microsoft Windows Enterprise Servers.

2. ATMs typically use dedicated VSAT based network directly linking to the Bank's network for ultra security. Shinsei Bank used commercial Internet connections, reducing the cost of special equipment and communication infrastructure. Just to be sure they also used two network  providers at each ATM for redundancy.

3. Eliminated paper based transactions by converting every piece of information to digital. They had digital scanners to scan paper documents and modified their business processes to incorporate these scanned digital information.

4. They also restructured communications infrastructure and implemented necessary changes to accommodate "unified messaging" for data, voice and fax.

5. They leveraged intellectual, skill and cost arbitration by using Indian off-shoring vendors like Polaris and core banking products from Indian vendors like i-Flex.

6. All these resulted in 24 x 7 Banking with ATMs, Internet banking, call centers  available round the clock and finally they passed on the benefits to their customers by way of offering free ATM transactions etc.

7. They are also offering their methodologies to other needy banks by way of consulting.

This April, 2008, in order to disseminate their innovative methods freely and to garner feedback and ultimately for any improvement, they formed alliance with Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur to design courseware that will accurately capture and relay their methods in the educational setting.

Looks like this entire story is on Harvard Business Review

Innovation = Opportunity Recognition

My first ever visit to USA was to work for Microsoft Technology Center @ Boston, MA and I landed on a day with 6" of snow. The sight of snow for a person form a beach city of Chennai in India was dramatic and unforgettable.

I lived there for 2 years and now, make it a point to visit US only during winter to experience the snow, the cold and the wind chills. Its also a perfect period to catch up with friends and talk to them for hours over a cup of coffee and dinner. Here is a picture of my Friend Ravi's home in the suburbs of Boston.

This summer vacation, my kids were insisting that we take them to a new show on the town "Snow Ball", an artificial snow world. So we went there and paid about Rs 150 per person (approx US $ 4)

The snow was splashing out of a hole 15 feet above and people were standing below this to let the snow shower on them, catching the snow in their hands and playing...

Knowing how snow is formed, my inquisitive mind was wondering how organizers could create snow in this hot summer and what kind equipment they would be using.

In the meantime, my kids were enjoying the snow on the slippery ice floor, the "snow starved" population thronging the place to see the glimpse of snow.

I was imagining some complex and expensive systems replicating nature behind the scenes and stepped out to find it out.

What I saw was crazy... "An industrial crusher and a fan"

They had this truk that brought large ice bars from factories outside the city and fed those large ice bars to the crusher that would spit out small ice crystals while the fan would blow them out through a hole into the arena!!!

Wow, they were cashing in on an opportunity from a population that never saw snow in their lifetime!!!

Personal Innovation

I have been researching the topic "Innovation" for sometime and use many references, techniques & tools at my work.

From these experiences for the past 20+ years of working for many managers and observing many leaders from close quarters, realized that these techniques could be applied to an individual's aspirations to redefine, to think differently, try new things to "Re-innovate", to move up in the corporate ladder.

In the coming days, I intend to blog about these findings under "Personal Innovation".

First, let us look at capabilities we need to excel in work:

• Academic Capabilities
• Professional Capabilities
• Cognitive Capabilities
• Emotional Capabilities

These skills come handy as you grow in roles and ranks in your career.

While the graph may not be accurate, as you move up managerial positions, cognitive and emotional skills become necessary to be successful, while academic and professional capabilities are taken for granted.

PS: If you do not agree to the "spiritual" aspect, you could replace it with "self realization"

God's Car - Muscle power Vs Machine Power

Last week, I had the opportunity to witness Brahmotsavam Festival held at the Varadaraja Temple at Kancheepuram (Kanchi).

This 10-day festival is held in honour of Lord Varadaraja and his consorts Sridevi and Bhudevi. Attended by thousands of people from across, the 7th day marks the Car Festival, when the deities are taken in a grand procession around the city travelling just the 4 grand streets (South, West, North and East) of the city back to its original position.

We got a vantage position on top of a 2nd floor building to see the car procession.

In early days, this would take 2 to 3 days for the car to be pulled by hundreds of people to complete its 4 street procession.

Now with the heavy machinery pulling and guiding it, the car leaves its position at 6.00 AM in the morning and comes back to its original place by 11.00 AM, just 5 hours.

My entire family was spellbound by the grandiose of the car and the excitement of such a huge vehicle being pulled by thousands of people.

Imagine, how the citizens of this Chola dynasty would have felt during 14th century...

N=1 and R=G: New Age of Innovation

Currently, I am reading a book by Prof. C. K. Prahalad and Prof. N. S. Krishnan on the subject, driving co-created value through global networks.

This book is about N=1, one customer at a time with R=G global resources.

"Is Apple iPod" a hardware or software or service? epitomizes this model.

With this, they argue, apple has created value experience for its customers a combination of hardware, software and service.

The central point is

"even if a company is dealing with a hundred million customers, each individual in the company must focus on one customer co created experience at a time"

Few aspects that they cover in this book are dynamic reconfiguration of talent, dynamic and flexible business processes and importance of analytics

MSFT and Yahoo: What’s Next…

This walk away has thrown open some interesting opportunities for the gladiators in the coliseum of Web for the search supremacy.

Microsoft:
Now that MSFT has walked away from the deal, now that they have 45 Billion in their pocket plus the saved cost of integrating the combined entity, platforms and people, which they would have spent instantly, MSFT will be closely watched how they intend to fight all alone, all the more vigorously.

In the process, MSFT has also smartly weakened any possibility of Yahoo being bought out by anyone for a 47B price tag. Now they may even focus on moving quickly to 2nd spot with some other smaller acquisitions and deals.

Yahoo:
Now that Yahoo has proven beyond any doubt that they are worth 47 billion (42 B on the first offer + yesterday’s 5 B top up), particularly management has to answer Yahoo shareholders how they are worth the asking price of 52 billion and also detail their plans how they intend to keep that position.

All the eyes will be on their stock price on Monday and if drops considerably, then Yahoo might have to face the wrath of their shareholders and employees, who otherwise could have made money particularly in these difficult times.

Google:
This giant will be the happiest lot. Nothing has changed....

They can get on with their business, as the second and third in line competitors are at a far distance.

Had the deal gone through, the combined MSFT-Yahoo entity could have been a formidable competitor.

One has to wait and see how GOOG intends to proceed with their supportive actions and cross advertising deals with Yahoo. There could be lens on these dealings with Yahoo from the monopolistic angle.

Microsoft Walks Away...

Today, I woke up to the news of Microsoft walking away from Yahoo offer.

One can sense the feeling of Microsoft’s by Steve Ballmer’s closing note on the letter to Yahoo’s Jerry Yang. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/may08/05-03letter.mspx

“I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table.
But clearly a deal is not to be”

I have friends from both open source community that loves whatever Google does and Microsoft community folks who swear by MSFT.

The mood on both sides is quite similar. While the MSFT folks rejoice that their favorite brand walked away saving 45 Billions and folks from other end rejoiced that Yahoo will be able to innovate. And finally reading comments, the mood at Yahoo also seems to be filled with Joy!!!

So, what Microsoft intend do that $ 45 billion is what will be interesting to watch in the days to come.

Here is a clue

"We have a talented team in place and a compelling plan to grow our business through innovative new services and strategic transactions with other business partners. While Yahoo! would have accelerated our strategy, I am confident that we can continue to move forward toward our goals,” Ballmer said.

“We are investing heavily in new tools and Web experiences, we have dramatically improved our search performance and advertiser satisfaction, and we will continue to build our scale through organic growth and partnerships,” said Kevin Johnson, Microsoft president for platforms and services

To be or not to be...

I have been thinking about blogging for long and in fact registered domains http://www.kumarsachi.com/ and http://www.bemytomorrow.com/

Many things came inbetween family, work, travel, transition to new job etc... and blogging went on to back stage.

Finally here I am, on http://kumarsachi.blogspot.com/ with my musings on diverse things.

Catch you soon with more action in this front...