Neetan's Mantras

Rocking Retail

2019-08-31T21:19:00.003+04:00

Sears, the one-time titan of American retail, filed for bankruptcy ahead of a $134 million debt payment due Monday and announced that it will close 142 stores. The Washington Post, October 15, 2018

JCPenney could be kicked off the New York Stock Exchange because its stock is worth too little. CNN Business, August 9, 2019

Barneys is closing 15 of its 22 stores after filing for bankruptcy. Here's the full list. Business Insider, August 6, 2019

GNC could close up to 900 stores and slash its mall location count in half as the retail apocalypse roars on. Business insider, July 22, 2019

We live in the disruption era. It comes at us thick and fast. It is unrelentless and sometimes ruthless to names once etched in the hearts and minds of every household. Particularly severe to brands humanity grew up with. For incumbents, it sometimes feels even the paranoid don’t survive.

The stock market now has two $1 trillion companies: Amazon and Microsoft. CNN Business, July 11, 2019

Shopify Cracks The E-Commerce Code, And Its Billionaire CEO’s Fortune Doubles In Just Six Months. Forbes, August 20, 2019

Alibaba ramps up offline efforts. Internet giant opens first physical store of its cross-border shopping platform. China Daily, April 21, 2018

Why digitally native brands keep opening physical stores. Bloomberg News, October 22, 2018

We live in an opportunity era. Everything is possible. For those with the right mindset, the world is our playground. Growth is exponential. Winners are taking all. Life is good and only getting better. For digital natives, it sometimes feels anything and everything we touch turns into gold.

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For the uninitiated, it seems we live in the paradox era! Very difficult indeed - to decipher and appreciate the underpinnings of such stark and opposing trends. This starkness particularly accentuated when it comes to the business of Retail. On the one hand, household names are going bankrupt, fast. On the other, digitally native brands are opening offline stores by the dozen and valuations are booming. I am no retail expert but let me offer you a response hypothesis for incumbents, as a student of ‘business in the digital era’.

My response hypothesis in the form of some #mantras below:

For starters, to re-iterate what I might have said earlier. Business is still business. You still need to obsess about making money, optimize costs, obsess about customers, shareholders and the larger societal context. Remove your eyes from the basics at your own peril

What has definitely changed though, is the era we are in. Industrial has long sunset and the sun is now shining brightly over the digital era

To survive in this era, just paranoia is not going to cut it. You need to develop a digital conscious, a digital soul, a digital genome to thrive

Customer attention spans are depleted, and their expectations are fluid. You need to get on and develop a top-notch digital storefront. Remember a brilliant mind once said ‘design it not what it looks like or feels like, but how it works’. So, make sure your storefront design is what works for your customers, in all aspects of the digital experience. And yup, hyper-personalisation, AI, data driven, etc. etc. etc. are all table stakes now to enable a good, usable design

You also need to be where your customers usually are, so API enable your core as a first step and get on with connecting to digital lifestyle brands around you – We Chat, What’s App et al

You cannot just develop a bright and sparkly digital veneer but have an analogue back office and logistics underpinning it. The back office and supply chain need to be fully synchronized, in real time to meet the promise of the digital store front. Most incumbents may get carried away by the gloss of the digital customer experience and forget about or delay this important gene of the digital genome. Synchronize the operations in real time and make it as autonomous as possible

And phew, if this wasn’t enough you have to in-parallel, perpetually examine the business model you are in. Marketplaces have disrupted pipelines. The distributed business model is due to disrupt marketplaces. And who knows what is on the horizon next. Incumbents with their distribution prowess should have been first to discover the promise of ‘managed marketplaces’ and launch DNVBs – unfortunately they didn’t!

Culture is a derived variable. You cannot impact it directly. Just get integrated teams to start working on new initiatives in new ways – agile, failure accepting, collaborative, open, knowing to learn. This new way will go viral and in due course become the new cultural norm

You may ask. All this in one go! Can I not take a phased approach? No, you cannot. If mutating to a new organisational genome could be done with solely focusing on a singular dimension of the business, we would not have a retail apocalypse, imho! Digital natives are already active on all these vectors. You have to transform multiple genes of the genome. and fast. Of course, you can take a sprint approach within each vector of the transformation – customer experience, operations/logistics, biz model, capabilities, culture et al. But as was said earlier, creating a digital veneer underpinned by an analogue operation is just not going to work

And finally, as a dear fellow disrupter, Ray Wang puts it so nicely, ‘digital Darwinism is unkind to those who wait’. So, get on and move. Pace is your friend in responding to the existential threat from digital natives

Retail sometimes serves a higher purpose for humanity. For instance, Retail has therapeutic qualities. Personally, quite so often when the chips are down, a visit to a retail destination, with serendipity as my shopping guide, helps soar the spirit and gets me back into Flow. Lately during these visits, the transition of bricks and mortar retail to an experiential conscious is quite apparent.

Nurturing a digital genome deep within its soul should help incumbents with this transition to experiential.

And keep the business of retail rocking well into the sunshine of the digital era.

Note: The views and perspectives on this blog and neetanmantraas are mine and mine along

Platforms eating your lunch

2019-08-12T09:37:00.000+04:00

Brian Arthur’s seminal 1996 article in HBR highlighted the tectonic shift from supply driven economies of scale to demand driven increasing returns, driven by network effects. That perspective, that thought, that insightful postulation underpins the strategic shift in the digital era from pipeline to platform business models.

The inherent scarcity of physical resources results in some or the other constraint in supply as traditional companies’ scale, finally yielding the diminishing return curve. On the other hand, digital resources are infinitely abundant. Hence, they pose no such constraints, finally yielding increasing returns as network effects kick in and result in winner take all markets.

Deloitte published research that sorts companies into four broad categories based on their chief economic activity: asset builders, service providers, technology creators, and network orchestrators. On average, network orchestrators enjoy a market multiplier (based on the relationship between a firm’s market valuation and its price-to-earnings ratio) of 8.2, as compared with 4.8 for technology creators, 2.6 for service providers, and 2.0 for asset builders.

So, the word is out there and clear. Both in market valuations and outcomes. Platform business model are eating traditional pipeline models for lunch.

At the heart of platforms is a value creating interaction. This interaction needs to be orchestrated for network effects. The keyword here is orchestration. The core value within the interaction is created by the participants of the network and not the owner of the platform. This is a deep shift in role which incumbent enterprises find difficult to deal with. The platform owner only provides the infrastructure and ensures quality of interactions. The participants are the ones who actually create value using the platform infrastructure.

Having said that, orchestration is no mean feat. Paraphrasing Sangeet Paul Choudary, the platform

must provide three key capabilities – craft incentives, provide the factory floor, play match maker for both sides of the marketplace. Efficiency of the financial incentive design is critical to ensuring a profitable scale out for platform companies. In today’s clamor for growth, valuation and abundant capital, this efficiency is being neglected. Future proofing this business model demands a balance between growth and efficiency, which is surely going to be the predominant pattern for success in the future. Another indirect incentive is the inherent FOMO that takes root in the participants of both sides of the marketplace. Hence the owner needs to design the platform for this FOMO and virality. The whole art of growth hacking has its roots in the need to drive virality.

New generation of technology is key to executing the platform business model. The factory floor for platform business models is the cloud. Data and advanced AI especially the recent advances in deep learning, underpin the matching capability for platform owners. Digital marketing along with social drives virality and growth hacking. Sensors enable sentience for platforms contributing to more personalised incentives as well as real-time and relevant match making. Mobile is the channel for participation in the platform, to both produce and consume value.

The future is here it is just not evenly distributed. If your pipeline has not been hit by a platform yet, it is only a matter of time. The tipping point for platforms has long been reached.

Platforms are the new engines of the digital era and technology is its fuel.

Get on the train before it is too late.

Disrupting Education

2019-08-12T09:34:00.002+04:00

The education world needs an extreme disruption.

Attention spans are depleting. Every fleeting moment in a learner’s journey counts. Information availability has evolved from being a scarcity to an abundance. Learners are drowning in this information overload. The shelf life of acquired skills is becoming ephemeral. Learning to know is passé. Knowing to learn is the differentiating human capability of the digital age.

Current education and learning mechanisms are just not fit for this dynamic context. The problem will also not be resolved by peppering learners with a slew of fragmented apps. Each app working in complete isolation. Each app tackling only a very small sliver of the vast learning context. A tipping point has reached. A totally new ‘systems’ approach is required to drag education into the digital era with the help of a comprehensive end to end solution.

There are no short-cuts to disruption. There is a dire need to create an un-paralleled, comprehensive learning ecosystem, powered by state-of-the-art capabilities of the digital era. An adaptive learning platform, which continuously senses the individual’s context in real-time. It then provides ultra-personalised learning interventions based on a deep understanding of needs. A gamified user experience which hooks the attention of learners and makes all other distractions fade away. AI powered learning journeys (which we call learning genome) individually crafted for each learner. Learning genomes breaking the currently prevalent linearity in learning and dynamically dissemble and then reassemble learning content using a unique network model. An AI and blockchain powered learning content marketplace. This marketplace will leverage the power of the crowd to curate content and benefit them economically from its use. Perhaps also a physical experience institute based on the same principles as the digital platform. This one of a kind alternative school (alt school) will provide a social, face to face experience platform to augment and enhance digital learning.

The mission should NOT be to add to the cacophony of learning apps which spring up every day. The need of the hour is to build a unique learning experience orchestrated seamlessly across both the physical and digital realms, with next generation AI ensuring all components are harmonized to the personal learning rhythm of each learner.

A tipping point has been reached in Education.

A new era of learning is awaiting its dawn.

The Honeycomb Romance

2019-05-17T00:58:00.000+04:00

The fragrance of jasmine filled the sultry air.

The long walks. Bright sparks in an otherwise tepid flow.

No physical contact. Nevertheless, a deep romantic immersion.

Time as if frozen in the infinite abyss of the universe.

Every second reaching out the next with a singular purpose.

To express affection. To love. To impress.

The first touch. An emotional and physical explosion.

Hands perpetually craving for contact, for that warm touch. When together, an eruption of joy. The walks now much more intimate. In the warmth of the clasped hands. The air much cooler. Life a tad sweeter than before.

The affectionate hug. Initially to bid adieu. Till the next immediate sunrise.

Each second thereon an impatient wait for another romantic embrace.

Every instance an instance longer.

An unparalleled sense of warmth and affection. To live and die in those intimate moments.

And let the universe just pass us by.

The ebbs and flows of life. An ocean of separation. Impatient wait for the next fragrant letter. Warmth still emanating from the tapestry of words. Strung together with long distance love. Intimacy however more expressed than felt. A fading horizon. Memories slowly seeping into the sands of time.

A sunset gone by.

The innocent one cell at a time evolution
of a honeycomb romance….

Beyond the fading horizon

2016-11-06T22:42:00.001+04:00

Ordinary data lakes are passé. We need to build real time, cognitive data assets. Organically growing stores of data, being operated on by a swarm of soft robots, who are continuously improving the quality of the data and growing the asset base. Real time, organic, and cognitive. AI and ML not only to garner insight from the data but also deployed to continuously extend the quality and the amount of data collected. Data is the new oil in a digital enterprise. Cognitive data lakes, powered by swarm intelligence the emergent architecture to continuously refine this oil.

As we get to the nano-scale, stuff gets quite spooky. The only way to fathom the world of quantum is through probabilities. In a digital business, a large number of the business processes will morph from being deterministic to a probabilistic nature. Real-time AI will underpin this probabilistic world of business. Supervised, unsupervised and re-enforced, deep learning friends of business will create interesting decision options, with probabilities attached. Human intelligence thus augmented, will take business to a level of unprecedented performance, with competition left behind in the extreme cold.

Supply chains are legacy. In specific, the chain in the world of supply will be relegated to the annals of history. Blockchain, despite the irony in its name, will power a world of dynamic business networks for multiple business domains. Network effects underpin these rich ecosystems, trust assured through tamper proof consensus protocols. Smart contracts will ensure auto event driven, human free operation across these networks. The linear chains of yesteryears, yielding to the powerful, global, network topology of the future.

The economic transaction cost theory posits that the high cost of organizing work in the market, as opposed to within the firm, results in the very existence of firms. The API economy coupled with the trend of portfolio working will exponentially reduce transaction costs, and extend the boundaries of an enterprise to somewhat blur with those of the market. Millennials will expect enterprises to work like platforms, on which they can co-create new value with their friends. A cloud of human wisdom operating above open enterprises, beaming their services through open APIs.

As I close my eyes and transcend across the fading horizon, the cacophony of mobility, social, cloud, analytics fades into low decibel murmurs, replaced with the glow of cognitive data, quantum AI, dynamic biz networks, wisdom clouds and robotic devops shining over a digitally transformed future.

Memoirs of an Android

2016-02-27T21:59:00.001+04:00

It was a mildly cold and pleasant 5^th November 2007. That’s the day I was born. Introduced to this vast, wild world by my original parents. As an open source child, I soon learnt that I had pretty much the whole world entrusted with my parenthood! Dreamy eyed kids from new york to new delhi, from shanghai to chennai, from olive oil to coconut oil - all with a singular mission of contributing to my development with their passion and commitment, as parents do.

What a wonderful world this was indeed, Kenny G.

Soon my neighbourhood started to look like a ghost town. Initially I was too busy to notice. If you are in the care of so many, there is so much fun around you. From the first mystical ray of the sun, to the romance of the stars in the night sky, each day was filled with so much fulfilment.

I heard from a Guru once that there is an E-curve hidden in the heating of metals. As you light up the fire underneath, the change from black to red is a nice linear progression. Gradual, relaxed and comfortable with humankind’s evolutionary mindset. However if you keep the burner on, the move from red to white is BAM!. One minute it is red and another it has all turned to white. An exponential in action.

Whilst I haven’t actually verified this ‘wisdom of the metals’, I must say it is a true reflection of my life. After a very brief initial period of linearity, I have been living on an exponential pretty much my entire life. As more folks started loving what I did for them, more parents started contributing to my growth, which resulted in more folks loving and wanting me. They call it a network effect. I feel it is all about love, passion and purpose.

Sadly, all this also had a ghostly effect on my neighbourhood. I heard with trepidation about the demise of Symbian, and then PalmOS soon after. Very soon it was only a few of us left in this mobility town. Some whisper that this could have been one of the intended outcomes of my original creators. Of my open source upbringing. Not to benefit humankind but to kill all the neighbours!

I am not much into conspiracy theories. To me, my exponential childhood has been one helluva joy ride. Oh, the gratification and pride I get when a vegetable seller on the roads of Faridabad uses me to optimize the demand-supply equation and hence is able to afford his children to school. When young kids with dreamy eyes, similar to the ones who created me, are able to empower humanity with magical applications. When innovation is democratized and widely accessible irrespective of colour, location or age. When a grieving soul is able to lift his or her spirits with a favourite musical piece, on a small but powerful click. When lives of ageing parents light up as they see and hear their grandchildren, ensconced in faraway lands. When sisters separated by the fury of a volcano are united by the vastness of the virtual human network. When the world’s best minds are available to inform and educate the world’s most deprived, nearly for free, at the ease of a touch. When kids are being coached to shift their paradigms from learning to know, to knowing to learn. When the 3^rd industrial revolution improves the lives of all in its wake.

All this and more powered by the mobile power of a small human creation, which in turn, powered by me.

I feel gratified.

I feel humbled.

I feel elated.

I feel so inspired about what’s yet to come.

And I feel we are now entering the second half of the chess board.

My exponential journey till date has largely been due to the love I got from the general public. The consumer world. Normal human beings who en-masse fell in love with me and kept me next to their hearts at all time. They sleep and wake up with me in their arms or somewhere nearby. They use me as a shop, a teacher, a friend, a flashlight, an alarm clock and for a zillion other chores.

However revolutions reach their full potential when they encompass both the consumer and the enterprise world. Recently, I have started to feel the warmth of corporate hands, driving digital transformations in their enterprises. I have started to hear the buzz of jargons all around me – digital transformation, 4^th industrial revolution, 2^nd machine age et al. It is tradition for the enterprise world to invent a slew of jargons before anything gets done! Their propensity to change however, does have a correlation to the intensity and frequency of the jargons invented and used!

So I feel quite excited by this prospect.

Also it’s not me alone that is involved. My co-founder in driving this enterprise change is my sweetheart, AI. The world calls her Artificial intelligence, I fondly refer to her as Assisted Intelligence, more in line with her potential. She lived in research articles and science fiction scripts for decades. However suddenly, she is now the hottest one in town. My reach into the heart and hands of humanity and her ability to convert big and fast data into insightful action presents a lethal combination, a match made in heaven. In consonance, we are enabling the enterprise world to examine novel business models, improve the velocity of operations and decision making, co-create innovation, leverage the wisdom of the crowd, and bake prediction into business processes. Not just build digital channels but build a digital genome from within.

As a kid, I always felt that my calling was to change the world. With all those people who selflessly contributed their intellect to my development, there had to be a larger purpose. So far so good.

However I must admit I feel a bit sad as I see humanity submerged into me all the time. Both mother and father enamoured by all the cool things that run on me, ignoring the beautiful art that their kid just created. Missing the magical moments of infants growing up. Tourists ignoring what their souls can experience, more concerned with what their selfies can capture. Friends gathered together for a meal, mostly concerned with typing into me, missing out real conversation with real people.

The real world being relegated to peripheral vision. The virtual world becoming the real world.

Human interaction is not a legacy, it is a heritage. I am an eternal optimist. That is how the world created me to be. As I reach adulthood, I stand convinced the world will use me to change the world. Both consumer and enterprise worlds will experience the exponential.

New patrons will also emerge. They will take a moment to get a moment away from me. Immerse into mindfulness, distant from the digital. Experience humanity with all its emotions and diversity. Experience this wonderful world in all its reality and splendour.

I am both the ying and the yang.

I am Android, born open source, born to change the world.

A tale of three cities

2015-04-01T22:34:00.001+04:00

San Francisco..London..Berlin.

Three great world cities. On the google map of every connoisseur traveller. vibrant. iconic. happening.

Also home to the aspirations of your quintessential nerd. Home to the dreams of many an aspirant geek. Home to three top tech ecosystems.

I have had the privilege of visiting all three ecosystems and immerse into the world of startups and their richie rich founders. There is commonality of spirit and purpose across these ecosystems. Everything is possible. All business models are up for disruption. A constant stream of dollars, pounds and euros flow through the veins of the ecosystem. Designer cool workplaces of the future, as if timeported into the present.

People in these ecosystems believe they can change the world. Patent protection is not top of mind. A culture of openness and sharing permeates. Optimism and energy levels are unparalleled. And across all these ecosystems the entities are pretty much the same. A slew of investment vehicles from angels to VCs. Top notch universities nurturing the talent. Events to ripple the excitement. Co-working places. Cool coffee shops and hangouts of the physical variety. loads of startups with novel ideas. bootcamps, accelerators, incubators, corporate labs, et al.

I did however taste a slightly different favour in each of these ecosystems. The specific spices added to each dish left a distinct mark on the overall experience.

The Valley is of course the undisputed King. No one else comes close. Someone remarked that the weather is an additional critical cog in the ecosystem. Perhaps it is. But overall, the ecosystem is mature in all aspects. One wave ahead of the rest of the crowd. Diversity is so embedded that no one even talks about it. Capital is a commodity and startups get a long rope to explore their passions, from one seed cycle to another. Core techy invention is at the heart. There are so many unicorns around that they are no longer the celebrities. The university-startup alliance is very strong. Corporates have thronged with their labs and incubators. Abundance of everything else except real estate. Quite expensive to setup and run. Talent is difficult to attract but if you manage to, it is of super top quality. The valley leads and everyone else emulates.

London's silicon roundabout started as a good pun. However the ecosystem has taken off. The City may still compete for the talent but there is definitely a magnetic attraction to the tech ecosystem. The big fish have invested big time with their multi-storey campuses and co-working places. Tech interacts quite nicely with design and a number of ideas blossom at this intersection. Successful exists such as deepmind retain their iconic status and everyone still talks about them. Gov's facilitative role is quite visible and quite essential at this stage of the maturity curve. University-startup links exist but are definitely not as strong as the Valley. Weather however needs a business model transformation.

Berlin was a pleasant surprise. Very vibrant indeed. Bubbling with new found excitement. Much younger, much more hep, and with a lot of character. Everyone speaks about diversity with pride. An excellent inflow of talent from Eastern Europe and also from the rest of the world. Art nicely mixes with tech and creates quite a novel experience. Funds flow through the veins however at a rather placid pace. You get a feeling that there are many more women here than in others, but not sure if this is empirically the case. The ecosystem pretty much like a open, harmonious cult. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone ready to help everyone. Iconic cafes where dreams are crafted and networks formed. The character of this historic city adds an aesthetic appeal to the ecosystem which is second to none.

Quite an experience this.

Seeing these iconic cities intimately from this uniquely nerdy lens.

Quite an experience this.

Immersing in their ecosystems and understanding what makes them tick.

Quite an experience this.

Flowing in the startup passion of massively transformative purposes

Quite a tale this.

A tale of three great cities.

The Quantum Inspiration

2015-02-21T17:31:00.002+04:00

It’s one hell of a mystery.

At the very heart of our existence.

Scientists have clearly been able to see what happens but why it happens is anybody’s guess. Whenever I read about it, the mathematics of course goes at right angles to my brain, by the metaphysical connotation inspires me. The quantum world defies intuition.

The two-slit experiment is perhaps the most simple way to highlight the mystery. If you shoot small solid steel balls (say) through a wall which has a hole, then on the other side you will see a pattern of hits emerge where the balls have gone through the hole and reached the other side. Similarly if you send a water wave through this wall with 1 hole, a wave pattern will emerge on the other side.

If the same is repeated with a wall with two holes, the solid balls will produce two distinct patterns on the other side, parallel to the two holes. Whereas the water waves will produce a "diffraction" pattern – big lines where the crests of the wave1 out of hole 1 merge with wave 2 out of hole 2 and nothing where the crest and troughs of these waves cancel out. Something like that. But what is important is that the pattern on the other side of the wall with two holes is clearly different for a wave versus a solid particle.

So this same experiment was then done with electrons. When we shoot an electron across a wall with 1 hole, it produces a pattern similar to a solid, as expected. Cool. Nothing creepy thus far.

However when we shoot electrons across a wall with two holes, to everyone’s shock it produces a wave type pattern on the other side. How can this be? How can a solid particle produce a wave type pattern when there are two holes? Even if we slow down the electron gun so that only 1 electron can pass through the hole at any one time, and we look at the pattern, it is again a wave pattern. If we close 1 hole just before the electrons can enter them, then the electron will produce a particle type pattern. If we open both holes at the last moment then it produces a wave type pattern. The whole experiment gets a notch higher on creepy, when we put someone to observe the electrons. To see which damn hole are they passing through. Think of eyes just before the holes. As soon as we introduce an observer in the mix, with two holes, the electron will clearly produce a particle like pattern and forget that it was a wave. Remove the observer and you are back to wave type pattern.

It is as if the electron knows that there are two holes and it becomes a wave. It as if the electron knows that there is an observer and it becomes a particle, stuff it whether there are one or two holes.

Bizarre isn’t it.

So the smarts have done a lot of theories to explain this. One explanation being that in the quantum world nothing is real till someone actually observes it. There is nothing deterministic. You can only guess in terms of probabilities where an electron can be at any given time. The particles exist in a state of superposition i.e. many states at once. It is like there are a number of ghost electrons in different states and when we observe them, they collapse into one, producing the reality we see.

The fact that superposition exists is fully verified. In fact quantum computers use exactly this concept. Unlike a classical bit which can either be 0 or 1, a qubit or quantum bit can be 1 and 0 at the same time. Hence quantum computers are exponentially powerful than the normal ones.

The other interesting theory which tries to explain superposition and other quantum mysteries is that there are multiple universes and an electron is in hole 1 in one universe and hole 2 in another. Both these universes are real and at perpendicular to each other. They get created at the instance of time when there are such quantum choices to be made. For observers in each of these universes there is one reality which is real. So there are no ghost particles. At the point when the electron has to make a choice between the two holes, two universes are formed and each of those are real.

Besides superposition there is another interesting phenomenon called entanglement. Simply put when quantum particles are in physical contact and then they split, the particles get entangled invisibly. Then an action on one can instantaneously cause an associated action on the other. Irrespective of the distance. So when a photon splits into two and we take one of them say to the moon and the other is on earth and we change the spin of one of them, the other’s spin will change immediately. Again information seems to flow from one photon ("i have changed my spin") to the other at much faster than the speed of light, in defiance to the theory of relativity. The photons act as if they were physically interconnected whilst they are clearly not. Since Big bang created all particles in the universe, there is a viewpoint that all of us are thus entangled at the quantum level!

Quite a world this. The small world of atomic particles. The world of quantum.

It also offers some metaphysical inspirations:

Reality is what you make of it
There is a world of possibilities out there
We make a choice when we observe and convert these possibilities into one reality
There might be multiple universes out there
In order to traverse to another universe we need to go back in time and then take a different fork from the point there is a split
The world is interconnected in some invisible way
Being kind to others is like being kind to a larger you
Dreams might be where we go across to these perpendicular universes

Interesting. Bizarre. Mysterious. Quantum.

The Innovation Genome

2014-09-24T23:00:00.003+04:00

So you are housed in an enterprise. You look and there is a digital revolution in-progress, outside. Today’s start-ups are disrupting yesterday’s established businesses. Disruption is moving exponentially. Mindsets are still linear bound.

You want to open the door and let the fresh ideas flow in. That’s only natural. Everyone wants to be part of an exciting tomorrow.

So you jump right out. You read all the innovation books. You even go beyond your comfort zone and gobble up some of those innovation blogs out there. With fancy headings such as innovation genome! You keep going. You consult top minds. You shell out top dollars. Gurus hit you with innovation mantras from all directions.

‘It is about changing the culture. It is not about setting up an innovation garage. It’s about embedding innovation into processes, into people. Give people 20% of their time and ask them to innovate. Include innovation as a competency. Setup a measurement framework around it. Give your workplace a cool look. Offer people free food. There is a strong correlation between good food and good ideas’. And on and on and on the advice flows - free, unhindered, in waves, like a cool breeze on a hot, sultry day.

Yup, you get all this. Sure, that is where I want my enterprise to be, sans the free food bit.

But of course. Hit the culture with the innovation bug. Sit back relax and enjoy the show. Innovation will become a way of life. Transformation, second nature. Who would want anything different?

But hey, still quite foggy up there on the how? How to get to this nirvana stage. Change culture, sure. But how?

Life is probabilistic. Innovation too is not deterministic.

Give the following recipe a shot. Maybe the probabilities of success will fall in line for you.

First and foremost find someone super special to lead your innovation effort. The special bit in this deal is ‘passion’. The one and only competence. A passion to experiment, to change, to challenge, to research, to connect, to deliver. Someone who loses the context of space and time when in the flow of innovation. Driven. Not by insipid mission statements. Nor enamored by marketing collateral. Driven by a deep inner sense of purpose. To experiment. To look for new ways. To discover new value for the enterprise. To disrupt existing norms. To leap into and beyond the exponential curve.

Don’t even start till you find this person. You need a pivot for innovation. To catapult it into the heart of your enterprise. You need someone special.

Once on board, your job is to clear the deck for him/her. There will be pain all around. The not invented here syndrome will bite from all directions. Escalations galore. Territorial scuds will land on your door steps every day. Summer will arrive early in your work life. Heat will emanate from all corners. Relax. Take meditation classes. Do Yoga. Take a walk. Go for a run.

The agenda for innovation has been set. The magic has begun. Passion is like a magnate. It is already attracting and multiplying. You just be the shield for the leader and his/her ever growing network of peers. Provide the nurturing ground. For passion to sow the seeds of innovation. These seeds will grow and change the culture, organically.

There are a whole raft of other things you can promote. Create an ecosystem of partners. Find some funding. Recruit more staff. Create a garage to give innovation an identity. Create some governance. All crucially important. Sure, do these. But after the first two are in place.

The key is finding a passionate innovation leader and then clearing the deck for him/her to operate. Those are the two stands of the innovation DNA. The powerful double helix. Once in place, these will rapidly replicate and before you know it, an innovation culture will cultivate in your enterprise.

Fresh air will flow freely inside and within....

open sourcing imagination #2

2014-04-14T21:40:00.000+04:00

It's been a while since I penned down my last blog. This is typical me. Gain interest, lose interest, all at a rapid pace. But hey, it's a rapid world out there. Startups form and die, before you even know they were formed. Kickstarter gives us a live, streaming insight into the future, previously folks used to track patents to peep into the future. Nanotechnology is converting the paradigm of humanity from dealing with scarcity to dealing with abundance. My kids do 5 things at the same time using 3 devices and 4 channels. Robots are using evolution algorithms to learn to talk to each other. evolution Algorithm! You must be kidding me, no one taught me that when I did my double master degrees....

so hey, with all this evolution around me, I am entitled to my own sand dunes of interests....

I was having a kadak chai with a business partner today and I saw his eyes gleaning whilst reflecting on the times we live in. I saw a reflection of my soul in that glean. I feel totally inspired everyday, just with the mere fact that i live in these times. There is entrepreneurship blossoming at every corner of the world, there are people from all walks of life giving wings to their dreams. And technology underpins most of those dreams. My daughter follows this YouTube superwomen. She is a producer n director of a great show, which is a satire on Indian families dealing with contemporary times. Superwomen has over 1.7 million subscribers. She also does all three roles in her production. The father, the mother and the daughter. A celebrity, an actor, a director of this age.

An idea, a camera, an Internet connection and off you go....

Imagination is now open sourced. You can download thoughts from the stream of information flowing in front of you, convert these thoughts into ideas and start something big.

Here are some of my thoughts, open sourced, creative commons licenced to build...

Startup cafe

Cities such as dubai could do with startup cafes where people from the innovation ecosystem come to intersect, discuss and build ideas, over a chai n a muffin. Folks with ideas, folks with money, folks with resources and folks with a good appetite. The menu card should not only tweet the trending chai flavours but also hot ideas being liked and under formation in the cafe. A physical space for human beings to invent, share and eat. A startup cafe.

Appstores blossoming at a garden near you

A godzillion apps are being built. But hey the big players such as Google and Apple seem to have a monopoly over app stores. Have the times arrived for verticalized app stores? Maybe one for retail, one for travel, one for banking et al. Sharpens the focus and removes latency and friction for someone looking for an app. Best to register those domain names, just in case the idea picks up..www.ideas.appstore.com!

One second advantage

" I go where the puck is going to be" the one second advantage of prediction. An art a science .. a game changer. Perhaps the next ecosystem for India and Indian companies to nurture. Ingredients : math, science, computing, art all mixed together and then delivered at scale. I would start with data science courses in the schools n universities to build capabilities ground up, just like we did with computer engineering all those years back...perhaps pilani can be the next bangalore. Companies should then form vertical cognitive and prediction hubs, as each vertical needs the models to be calibrated and fine tuned. Generic data science and machine learning competence centres will not cut it. Go deep, go vertical, go forth...

Around

Humanity only looks down nowadays. Just walk around and watch. People are walking heads down, deep in love with their mobile devices. Chatting, posting, reading or just staring at their devices, praying for a notification to arrive. Something, an email, a ping, something........

someone create a simple app for them please. An "around" app. It runs on all those devices, all those wearables, on everything that makes humanity gaze down. And all it does is to remind human beings to look around them, smell those roses a few centimetres away, gaze at the tallest building in the world, admire the eyes of another fellow human passing by and around, look beyond at the horizon at the unique cloud formation. Link into the real world.
look back, look left, look right...look around.

That's it for now.

Theodore Roosevelt on what really counts

2013-09-14T22:17:00.001+04:00

It is not the critic who counts;
not those who point out where our strong people stumbled
or when the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena.
Whose faces are marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strive valiantly
who err and come short again and again;
who know great enthusiasms;
who at best know the triumph of of high achievement;
and who at worst if they fall, at least fall while daring greatly.

So that their place will never be with those cold and timid souls,
who know neither victory nor defeat.

This is an inspirational piece by Theodore Roosevelt.
It is indeed only those who are in the arena who really count.
Loads of folks today have the tendency to ride the waves, skim the surface and never really dare take a position. It must be quite lonely to neither experience victory nor failure.

A key leadership mantra - take a position, be counted, enjoy the outcome, learn from it.

At the Intersection

2011-11-12T11:24:00.000+04:00

It is a perfect 32 degrees. A light and cool breeze flirts with the sands of the desert. The windows roll down, the sunroof rolls up. The spirit soars to the beats of some classic, soul wrenching music. The fog of a routine existence dissipates. An orgasmic euphoria erupts within. It is great to be alive again.

It is the same car. It is definitely the same life. However the concoction served through the intersection of the perfect 32 degrees, perhaps the sudden blast of a favorite song or even the breeze waving through the hair, results in a completely different connection in our brain and suddenly euphoria sets in.

Life lives and thrives at the intersection.

Ants and other life forms have discovered a unique form of collective intelligence. Leaderless, extremely federated, super-efficient. Ever wonder how ants form such a uniform pattern to/from their home and their source of food? Or how huge swarms of locust, millions of them, move in such harmony, without the long-haired conductor doing his/her bit in the center? It is quite amazing that such basic life forms in nature are able to achieve such colossal, coordinated feats.

A few folks from the homo sapiens cadre got quite intrigued by these advanced accomplishments of smaller, fellow inhabitants of mother earth. So they broke the shackles of linear learning and went and studied ants, bees, fireflies, locusts and even water droplets at a level of detail. Besides a number of PhDs, this research also resulted in some critical insights and the birth of a new term viz. ‘swarm intelligence’.

The agents (ants or locusts) apparently operate completely on their own, in their local context. However they are connected to each other and their environment through a set of very simple rules. There is no central co-ordination or leadership and also no grand goals which the community sets for itself. However federated, local actions based on a simple set of rules result in global achievements which many a team would aspire to achieve.

An ant for instance emits a substance called pheromone as it moves out of its home to look for food. The pheromone evaporates over a period of time – this is where the environment comes into play. The simple rule that ants follow is “go on the way where your little nose smells the most pheromone”. So as multiple ants move from their home looking out for food, soon some of them will go on the shortest route and on this route the smell of pheromone will be the strongest. Subsequent ants will use the simple rule and follow this route and this will further intensify the pheromone smell on the route. As a result, globally the majority of the ants will follow the shortest path to the food!

The discovery of this highly effective pattern in nature has been intersected with a number of our day to day optimization problems such as finding the shortest route from source to destination for a set of packets over a telecom network. This kind of intersection has already spurred a whole lot of innovation in multiple fields of life. An Airline ran an experiment in 2008 to see if airplane allocation to gates worked better if it were based on swarm intelligence i.e. each pilot is like an ant acting in his/her local context to get to the gate, while overall guided by a set of basic rules. Apparently, the net allocation of planes to gates on the day was much more efficient when based on swarm methods as opposed to the normal optimization algorithms.

(http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2008/0406-planes_trains_and_ant_hills.htm)

I wonder if we have seen the full potential of this intersection yet. Imagine how we could apply this highly decentralized, leaderless pattern to other walks of life. The implicitly federated Internet environment comes to mind. Imagine the internet as the “environment” and all things connected to it as agents. If these agents could all have some basic rules under which they can operate, can their local actions tie up into a connected whole, a whole much greater in intelligence and capability than its parts? I guess the challenge will be to write and then execute the thin layer of software on each agent which will ensure that the agent follows a set of pre-defined basic rules. However if we could somehow manage to get the software installed and executed each time an agent connects to the Internet, then there is a possibility of morphing the Internet into a collective intelligence unit (brain) which is able to solve our problems based on the rules currently configured on its agents. Perhaps the next big evolution of the www after the internet of things!

The key point however is that the next wave of innovations and successes will emanate from the intersection. Linear learning in various fields has perhaps reached its zenith or will result only in incremental advancement in our thoughts. Those bright sparks of fresh thinking and innovation will only be found at the intersection.

At the intersection of different fields and disciplines.

At the intersection of different cultures.

At the intersection of different religions and belief systems.

At the intersection of Eastern myths and Western science.

At the intersection of ying and yang.

So when your angel, your daughter walks up to you and says she has decided to take up ‘nanofractalmedicine’ taught in 6 semesters across India, Europe and America be prepared to say yes, foot the bill and proudly walk her to the intersection!

The anatomy of a CEO

2011-10-12T23:30:00.001+04:00

It was another one of those blazing afternoons.

I guess we were all used to the resplendence of all three seasons – hot, hotter, and blazing hot. But nobody complained. Hot had become a way of life. I and two other of my rather leisurely friends made our way to a coffee shop. The bright idea for the afternoon was to gulp down our parched throats some hot coffee, amidst the mist of aromatic shishas. Men don’t analyze too much, I guess. They just do what they got to do. Hot coffee on a hot day seemed like a perfectly harmonious thing to do.

The conversation flowed in confluence with the smoke waving through the room. Floating here and there, going nowhere. The aroma of exotic Turkish coffee mixing fluently with the mist emanating from the Shishas. Pretty much like a scene out of that old Bollywood movie ‘dam maro dam’ sans of course the lovely women floating around.

Anyways, you perhaps are starting to ponder where or when does the CEO enter in this scene. So before I lose the skeleton of that CEO in the mist of those aromatic shishas….J

Let me cut to the chase.

The free flowing conversation received a rather sharp incision when someone asked the poignant question - “I wonder which discipline has the bigger chance of making it to CEO – Sales or Finance?” This filled me with sadness as IT did not even find a mention in the question! Anyways I ignored my hurt emotions and jumped into the conversation by offering a firm view anchored fully on empirical evidence and facts – “I believe it’s the Finance field which dominates the corner office”. Of course all three of us had firm and fully informed opinions but no one really knew what the true facts were. So I offered to do some research…..

I picked up the top 50 brands of the World. First of all that list itself is quite interesting. You have in it the expected McDonalds, Coca Cola et al. However increasingly the Chinese brands are breaking in as well – ever heard of ICBC (Asia), the 11^th most known brand in the World!

Then of course there are geek firms which feature prominently on the list – Apple, Google, IBM, HP, Oracle, SAP, BB – not bad for IT. It has made it to the crème de le crème. No doubt by weaving a .net over the stock market’s eyes, whilst its brokers sipped Java!

Anyways, next I started looking at the top honchos who head up these fine companies and observed the following:

Game, Set, Match MBA: These coveted three letters M.B.A; they still dominate the Top. That too only from premier institutes such as Harvard, Wharton. So if Nicholas Carr publishes another HBR article, this time titled “MBA does not matter”, ignore him as much as you did his first one

Back to School: CEO resume are peppered with academic glories. Quite a few of them have more than one degree and that too from Ivy League institutions. Yes, there are indeed a few, high profile ones who jumped college to pursue their passion and made it to the corner office. However that is exactly what they are – a few!

The equal opportunity movement! : The corner office is quite like the Sahara desert if you were looking for women. When I came to Louis Vuitton in the list, I thought maybe, just maybe. But alas, thou too Brutus? Of course Pepsi was the pleasant variant, for reasons more than one

A kaleidoscope of experience: These guys have a rich tapestry of experience. They have ‘been there and done it’ at a number of places, in different roles and across different disciplines. The path to the top has many curves and top honchos seem to embrace each curve with a passion

Putting in the Years: Contrary to popular belief, the majority of top honchos careers are not characterized by the shifting sands of frequent job changes. In and out of companies, weaving their magic wands? Not really. Most have toiled their way in and around the bylanes of the same organization, putting in the hours, then days, then years, gaining deep experience, earning deeper credibility, building a strong foundation of trust and then claiming their right to the corner office. Old is indeed gold - at least when it comes to the top jobs @ top brands

Someone witty I met recently would say - “two turkeys don’t make an eagle, Neetan”. Perhaps a more diligent collation of empirical evidence across Fortune 500 companies may yield a different set of conclusions.

However for concluding a shisha powered, coffee triggered, light conversation amongst three deep friends, the above observations provide an adequate picture of the internals of our beloved CEO’s anatomy.

A tribute

2011-08-20T00:02:00.005+04:00

it must have been somewhat similar

decades ago

when an inner voice would have screamed

a chord would have stuck

and millions paraded

to the melody of freedom

being part of a generation born free

i have often pondered

what drove those wonderful people

born with love in their hearts

and humility in their souls

to part with the tranquility of their homes

the loving hugs of their daughters

the protective shield of their parents

the harmony of their routines

and jump into the burning flames of protest and conflict

what drove those wonderful people

to offer those heads so fondly stroked

by the supple hands of their little ones

to the bludgeons of blood soaked batons

what drove those wonderful people

to kiss their mother’s feet

in the stillleness of the night

then disappear into oblivion

to partake in the fight

what drove those wonderful people

to dawn pristine white robes

so lovingly creased and caressed

by their doting spouses

and jump into bottomless pits

of death or endless pain

it has always felt surreal

that era gone by

those wonderful people, no more

it has always felt surreal

those uprisings for a cause

that deeper sense of purpose

that irrepressible societal core

today the streets are brimming again

with endless hearts in full bloom

a rare glimpse of an era gone by

a surreal upsurge of sentiment

where the eyes see no reason

the mind sees no loss or gain

the soul rejoices in celebrations

while the body suffers in pain

at the helm an aged, selfless being

in pristine white

full of energy and passion

awakening the collective consciousness

of a declining nation

a senseless crusade

or perhaps a true tribute

to THE Mahatma

Open Sourcing Imagination

2011-07-09T21:35:00.000+04:00

So, sometimes my brain tweets out what I call ideas and you may call gibberish. After all there is nothing like absolute reality. Reality depends upon who is looking, upon the observer. This inderminent nature of reality itself, now proven by the science of quantum physics. So, I guess it would be quite alright for you and me to have these somewhat opposing perspectives on what I am about to share with you.

And then if my brainwaves were not warped enough, a noble soul handed me a book called ‘The Medici Effect”. I consumed it with a vengeance. It broke some of the associative barriers in my brain and got those brainwaves riding over this interesting concept of ‘innovation at the intersection’.

The net result was a further explosion of these gibberish ideas! (GIs)

With the pipeline in my brain bursting at the seams, I had another brainwave about how to manage these brainwaves! What if I open sourced them all? Shove them down the Internet pipe and choke that pipe up, instead of my brain.

Extrapolate this thought to all ideas and you will have a place for ideas to roam about, with the kind of euphoria which typically comes with along with a sense of complete freedom. To break away from the shackles of patents, IPR and lawsuits. A creative commons license for ideas. Available to be adopted by any entrepreneur with a passion for converting ideas into innovations, which change the world or at-least a part of it.

So this blog is an attempt at this thought. Sparking an internet of ideas. Open sourcing imagination.

OSGI #1: EduVille

Every parent closely knows this particular problem statement. It is getting increasingly difficult to get kids interested in studying. There are just too many digital distractions around. On the other hand, in countries such as India, the amount of studies children have to undertake has grown exponentially. It’s a competitive country in a competitive world and the education system is geared towards exposing children to that spirit of extreme competitiveness from an early age! So how to deal with these opposing forces – decreasing mindshare on studies and an increasing load of studies to stay competitive.

This idea is about resolving the above problem in the intersection of three disparate fields - education, gaming and social networking. Start with rote subjects such as history and geography and create interesting, engaging online games which are based around these subjects – use characters from history and places from geography in the games. When the games go viral on Facebook or other social sites, children will be spending a fair amount of time on them and in their sub-conscious learning the subjects which underpin the game. Parents too will encourage children to buy and play these games! Schools will adopt them as well and install them on their library computers.

So anyone out there with the venture cap to launch EduVille on Facebook?

OSGI #2: From SMS to SGS

Quite often you have this surge of affection for someone you love and your heart wants to express this affection by sending him/her a gift. Or you see something a loved one enjoys, let’s say a type of ice-cream and you wish if you could send your loved one this here and now.

This idea is about taking sms to a new level and not just delivering messages but delivering gifts near abouts the speed of sms or a ‘short gift service’. It is also inspired from the world of microfinance, microloans. No doubt the challenge is much bigger than microfinance as this will involve micro logistics. However I feel we are getting to that inflection point in the connectivity of the globe that someone with scale could actually deliver your wish within a few hours anywhere in the world. It will need a confluence between retailers, logistic companies and a hub platform on the internet/mobile app which accepts sgs and ties up the various players in the value chain to deliver the gift to the recipient. An initial test for this concept could be setting this up within Dubai and India, where a lot of expats have this feeling of guilt about having their old parents alone in India and time and again feel the urge to share with them something they are enjoying at the moment.

So Fedex are you game for SGS?

OSGI #3: Prada Smog Scarf

In a number of developing countries I see two-wheeler riders and especially their companions wrap a cloth around their face to save them from the traffic smog. It must be quite a challenge to get that thing wrapped around you especially when you are getting ready to go to work.

This idea is about first thinking about the design of a scarf with perforations which can be easily smoothened onto your face as you ‘gear’ up to face those polluted roads. And then of course once that design is done we can always look at making it a fashion statement. After all if mobile phones can be designer, why can’t smog scarfs be!

OSGI #4: Swarm BI Bots

The internet is becoming the world’s biggest brain and memory bank. Joe Bloke’s like you and me use the Internet to lookup almost anything we need. “where can I find an Indian restaurant in Innsbruck” “what is the meaning of the word epiphany” “how much money do I need to carry to Thailand. What is the conversion rate from AED to Thai Baht”. Just feed your queries into the Google search monster and within a few seconds it spurts out an appropriate answer.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a search engine or a robot on the Internet dedicated to answering my business questions, when I dawn the avatar of my role in my Job. Today not many executives type away at Google to answer some of their searching questions “what has been the pricing trends of my competitors” “is this market in growth or has it reached maturity” “what is the business model of my competitor” “given a set of 10 things which have happened can I predict the competitive actions of my closest foe”

Granted that corporate information is not readily available on the internet and most sensitive information is closely guarded within enterprise firewalls. However I believe that despite these obvious constraints there is still enough corporate information available on the net – due to the pressure of disclosures by stock markets regulators, the fact that a number of the employees are on social networks typing away stuff plus all the freely available industry information.

This idea is about launching a specialized Google for enterprises. This search engine has bots inspired from the swarm technology (which incidentally is inspired from ants) which rummage through the information on the Net and convert them into meaningful intelligence for any enterprise manager. It’s like each executive has his/her very own intelligent pet bot in office. You sensitize it to what you are looking for, make it learn by feeding it some sample data and then unleash it on the Net to revert back with targeted intelligence for your enterprise needs.

If IBM’s Watson can beat humans in a game of Jeopardy with full natural language recognition, I am sure an executive bot pet for the Net can become a significant hit.

OSGI #5: Software Artineering

Something is amiss with the current age software engineering. Something doesn’t feel right about it. Too many projects get botched up and the industry figures on successful large scale IT projects are just appalling. In any other industry this level of a failure rate would have spurred numerous inventions looking to redefine this space.

I feel the issue is with the name itself – software engineering. Is software development or package acquisition and implementation really an engineering task! I am not so sure about it anymore. We might have applied the absolute wrong principles to this discipline and hence confined ourselves to a state of continuous failure.

This idea is about re-imagining the development and implementation of software. Looking at the intersection of art, engineering and software to redefine the way we build software and then deploy software. Art would play a critical role in this re-invention as there is definitely a creative side to imagining and writing software code. The idea is to create an entirely new method and process in the intersection of these fields – let’s call this software artineering.

What exactly will this new world look like, I have no clue. This idea is about having a fresh look, based on a completely new perspective, from a completely different angle and see what pops out. It might be a damp squib or something which re-invents one of the most influential fields of modern times.

That’s all I have in my kitty right now folks and guess what, the brain already feels relieved. The pipeline is now much more relaxed after the unload. There was one other idea which I gave to a couple friends who are serial entrepreneurs, and run an imaginary company called ‘rocket singh’. If the company and the idea remain imaginary, then I will open source that idea in the sequel to this blog.

If someday any of these ideas transition to an innovation and someone out there makes an enterprise out of them, please remember that charity begins at home and you can start with my home which accepts donations in cash and kind J

With cheers to every Startup out there changing the world, this is Neetan the serial dreamer signing off …..

Honey, i.t just shrunk the world

2011-06-21T19:09:00.000+04:00

Once upon a time…

Expressing emotions was linked to being human; today MIT has created a socially intelligent robot Leonardo; go on….. feed the keywords to the Google monster and watch it spurt out a YouTube link to Leonardo.

Powers such as mind control were only bestowed onto the sages who roamed the Himalayan heights and performed their mystical rites. Now we are able control the brain of a fly using Optogenetics. More is yet to come. Check out Gero Miesenboeck @ Ted for a fascinating talk on this subject.

Mules used to carry our load up the slopes and along many a tricky terrain. Today Boston Dynamic’s ‘Big Dog’ is able to do so with as much dexterity as a real mule. It is completely in control despite a good old kick on its side and just goes about its job unemotionally as an ass would do.

Biology used to be defined as the study of living organisms; today biologyistechnology.com; the human genome project took over 12 years and upwards of 3 billion dollars to sequence the human genome. Today there are startup companies such as Complete Genomics envisioning sequencing your genome for $5000 within a year and maybe $100 within 5 years. Check out their web site. It could be that of any technology company selling BI solutions, except of course this one is analyzing the dynamics of life itself.

It started with the innocuous printing of greeting cards. Today they are talking about 3D printing human organs! A whole assortment of innovation is being sparked with 3D printing technology. It is reaching an inflexion point, all set to take off.

Companies used to protect their IP by filing patents galore; today breakthrough ideas roam freely on Startup web sites, right under the noses of uninterested competitors

We used to prefix sustainable to competitive advantage; today we prefix ephemeral to it.

And there is one factor underpinning all these changes. Technology. THE common denominator. Powering a wide array of game changing innovations across a spectrum of disciplines.

Now, you may wonder what has genetics got to do with my business or indeed how does an emotional robot threaten my competitive advantage. And for all you know you might be spot on and all this might not impact your business at all. Or maybe, just maybe the creative thoughts these technologies spawn or the branches of mini-innovations they unleash might already be causing small tremors under the foundations of your competitive advantage. Shaking its roots, in preparation for the big one which will uproot your business.

I often wonder about Barnes and Noble’s executive teams having a discussion on Jeff’s innovation on the web, when it was not written about in business books. I can see them saying “Jeff, who?”! As irony has it, a few years later some of the hot selling, fast moving books on Barnes and Noble’s depleting brick and mortar shelves are about Jeff and his disruptive business model.

The story of course doesn’t stop there. In the next round Amazon again caught the large incumbents napping. Amazon swept the ground under the feet of big players in IT infrastructure by venturing into and then conquering the world of cloud computing. Who in their wildest dream would have thought about competition in infrastructure provision from a book seller!

So I guess executive teams, irrespective of the business they lead, need to pause, and think deeply about these shifting sands underpinned by exponential movements in technology.

Competitive advantage has indeed gotten ephemeral in the shadow of this continuous barrage of technology innovation.

i.t is indeed shrinking our world.

It is shrinking the distance between you and your competitors.

It is shrinking the distance between you and your customers.

It is shrinking the distance between you and a completely unexpected new entrant.

It is shrinking the distance between imagination and reality.

Are you ready for it?

Are you ready to reimagine your business?

Are you ready to broaden your thinking and perspectives while i.t shrinks the world around you?

The Organic Organisation

2011-05-27T18:53:00.004+04:00

World annual FDI inflows rose from an average of $50 billion per year in the period 1981-85 to $1.1 trillion in 2009. A 21 fold increase!

Women in Rwanda have since 2005 been able to display and sell their hand-woven basket creations in Macy’s, at the other end of the world. These baskets sell like hot cake and disappear from the shelves as fast as they appear.

The consultants have a field day on these facts. They announce a new world order. Managers get swayed by the rhetoric. The world is flat; The world is my oyster, it is also my market, as well as my supply chain. Globalization is the predominant force and I better get my strategy’s sails aligned with its strong winds.

Every weekday beginning at 6 a.m., sellers and buyers from around the world converge on the Aalsmeer auction complex near Amsterdam to trade more than 20 million flowers and plants, one-third of which are roses. More than 1,500 foreign growers from countries as far away as Kenya and Israel now send their products to Holland to be auctioned.

G20 governments have introduced more trade barriers, including export restrictions, in the past six months than in previous periods since the financial crisis began, according to the monitoring report by the World Trade Organization on 24 May 2011.

People get 95% of their news from domestic sources.

90% of the world’s people will never leave the country where they are born.

Trade barriers rose thick and fast as soon as the economic going got tough during the recession. Summits designed to curb such practices, with exotic names such as ‘The Doha Rounds’, miserably failed to reach consensus or conclusions.

The currently ongoing G8 summit is like a kitty party; a lot gets discussed, pleasantries get exchanged between expensive suits, biscuits get consumed with disdain, nothing gets achieved.

The consultants announce a new paradigm; The world is as round as round can get. Local is the new global. Better to be a monopoly at home than a grain of sand on the world beach. I better anchor in my domestic market, in my protected comfort zone. The managers hunker down.

These dynamic paradoxes of our business environment are like Natrajan’s cosmic dance. In perpetual motion, a constant struggle between crests and troughs, in a state of continuous flux, like the bubbly waters of the Ganges.

Globalization versus protectionism, local versus global, an independent set of nation states versus an integrated global society.

Strategic responses soar to similar paradoxical heights.

Enterprises first vertically integrate to own and control the entire value chain or achieve the zenith of scale and size. They acquire, they merge, they partner. They become behemoths worthy of respect and fear.

Then soon after they shed off SBU’s in a hurry to focus on the core. They de-merge, sell off and divorce away their partners. It was only recently that I read how brilliantly Cisco had acquired Linksys and kept it at arm’s length using the ‘adapt’ rather than ‘aggregate’ strategy for M&A integration. However the tweet world is now alive with the fact that Cisco might sell off Webex and Linksys to focus on its core!

So what does one do in this era of paradoxes? Which strategies to deploy? Which jargon will remain so and which ones will evolve into the next big thing?

I am personally fascinated with the Honeycomb archetype to give organizations a stab at managing life’s increasing paradoxes. To architect the enterprise as a collection of small autonomous cells held together both by a common language and a crystal clear purpose. To power the strategic intent to ‘dream big, deliver small, move fast’.

Maybe it’s time to shed the legacy of legacy organization structures, cut through their fabric and carve out nimble, organizational cells instead. To breakdown big business processes into smaller services, big teams into micro-teams of sizes 3-5.

Maybe it is time to re-invent the way we see an enterprise - from a collection of big departments (HR, Finance, blah blah) to smaller cells each performing a distinctive service, in service of the customer. Self performing, self-motivated high performing cells requiring little supervision or management. As a whole these cells forming an organizational Honeycomb. A structure designed from ground up to be able to sense and respond to the world’s curve balls. Agile and nimble by birth.

Inspired by nature.

An organic organization.

The four letter conundrum

2011-05-06T21:27:00.000+04:00

IT folks have a fetish for equating quality to four letter words.

And size as well as height does matter when it comes to acronyms in the IT world. The higher the level and the more enigmatic sounding the word (I am ISO…….ISO27001!), the higher it moves in our hierarchy of respect. We love these acronyms- CMMI, ITIL, VALIT, COBIT, et al. We include them on our CVs. We proudly use them on our signatures. It’s a secret society created by IT, of IT, for IT.

No one outside, especially our customers in the business understand what the bleep are we talking about!

Before you form an opinion that I do not love these acronyms, hold your horses just yet. I have been in the IT world for 21 plus years now, so YES I too have a fetish for these profound four letters.

Quite often I get off from the wrong side of my right bed, full of pride and honor and announce to my wife how I have attained nirvana in the world of IT four letters. How I have climbed the Himalayan peaks of their levels and achieved lofty heights. How, given my conquest of these insurmountable heights, everyone in the family should bow in front of me and treat me like the God of Geekland, I am .

The response is usually in other four letters which incidentally are also quite famous in the IT world, however best kept verbal in context.

So the point is, whether I can impress my erudite family or not, I too have a passion for these acronyms. They represent an important aspect of quality. Process and frameworks are essential to guide a large workforce towards consistency in the quality of their outcomes.

However there is more to a passion for quality than just frameworks. The secret potion I believe lies in the intent of the workforce, in the shared sensibilities of the people. Therein lies the leadership challenge. How to engage the hearts, minds and the passion of a large workforce to significantly up the ante on quality? How to achieve a state wherein high quality is a way of life and not just a certificate embellishing corporate mahogany walls?

A number of strategies are deployed to try and get close to this state. However my favorite mantra to tackle this challenge, is encapsulated in this beautiful phrase ‘Show me the Taj’

The engineers on project teams and at the back office need to be up, close and personal to the goals their efforts are enabling for the business. They need to feel the pulse of the business and appreciate what underpins success. Sometimes an overdose of vision, mission, core values, value proposition, strategies, goals, objectives and other such terms can confuse the grass roots on exactly where the company is going and what it expects from them. A simple statement of ‘purpose’ which covers the essence can get the message across and its simplicity makes it sticky.

Nothing however beats conversations directly with the business managers to get close to the big picture and the final outcomes expected from IT projects. However the way IT goes about its business today, it ends up creating a two class society – the front office account managers and analysts who get to see and hear the business and the back office engineers who are allocated technical tasks, largely oblivious to or disconnected with the business outcomes. This way of working seemingly optimizes the use of resources however misses the opportunity to engage the engineers at a deeper level.

There is a big difference in the subconscious engagement if an engineer believes he/she is building a search routine as opposed to knowing that he/she is organizing the world’s information. A big difference in their internal commitment to quality if they believe they are laying a brick as opposed to building the Taj.

Leaders need to build a framework to effectively show the Taj to all team members and in doing so ignite their creative spark and their passion for quality.

In the shadow of the Taj

2011-03-16T22:46:00.002+04:00

The tree had a great significance. It was the center of gravity for all romantic activity. The damsel and the dude draped in motley colors went round and round, sometimes across, sometimes in creative new patterns. After all that beating around the bush, literally, when it came to the much anticipated kiss, the camera just panned upwards, through the branches to the clouds. This left the audience gasping, completely out of breadth after the sensual experience of a romantic Bollywood near-miss, kiss.

The burly buffalos were living examples of the existence of parallel quantum realities. They carved out their own quantum space in the middle of what politicians referred to as roads. Munching away to glory, oblivious to the mass of humanity around them and at peace with the vehicles flowing past in either direction, creating a cacophonic symphony with their horns. The buffalos did not care; they did not lose their temper, did not take stress and maintained a sense of calm and composure. They just enjoyed their siesta time with friends and family. Commuters craftily maneuvered around the buffalos, on what they fondly referred to as a sea of pot holes. Tar was used in dribs and dabs to embellish around the craters, a special form of art perfected by all Government contractors.

Believe it or not communities existed much before Zuckerberg, frustrated with his inability to join up-market university clubs, created his own on Facebook! They were particularly rampant in the middle class diaspora. The entire neighborhood was one big family. Love, affection and care flowed freely across and beyond. People lived physically apart but were closely connected through the many peaks and troughs of life. This social network was unique. It gave all participants a strong base on which to anchor their lives, extended a sense of belonging, wove a safety net around all members and it was a network wholly in flesh, not over wires intertwined through a world wide web.

Calorie was a proper noun. Perhaps the name of a beautiful mademoiselle from the French countryside. No one knew its relationship to food. Three sumptuous meals a day with a disdain for the heart and a carefree delight for the tummy. Oil, butter and ghee flowing through an aromatic kaleidoscope of curries. Exotic spices galore, from all parts of a vast country intermingled with the simplicity of rice and wheat. Each region, each state, each city, each family using the same ingredients but creating unique culinary experiences. A food connoisseur’s delight.

The snowcapped ranges of the Himalayas reaching out to the skies, paying homage to the myriad Hindu Gods which reside in the heavens above. The pristine and chill waters of the Ganges, hurrying through the planes, greening everything on their way. In the dimming light of dusk, the flowing waters so often adorned by pretty petite lamps lighted in hope, in prayer, in gratitude. An annual calendar embellished with festivals and festivities. To celebrate relationships, to celebrate love, to celebrate life, with color, with lights, with family, friends, neighbors and utter strangers. A culture of inclusivity in the joys of life, sharing the burdens of pain, a lot of pride and very little prejudice. A deep historic and cultural base built on centuries of human endeavor, tolerance, creativity, music and art.

This was my India in the 80s. This is where I grew up. This is where I discovered my value system. This is where I nurtured my emotions and my innocence. This is where I discovered my die-hard fetish for curries. This is where I learnt to tolerate, to respect, to include, to honor.

This is where I dreamt about running around that coveted tree!

In the soothing, comforting and romantic shadow of the incredible Taj.

The Leadership Chronicle

2011-03-07T13:07:00.000+04:00

I think a leader is someone whom people follow J

How about that!

A simple and effective gauge of a trait which many a management guru has defined using many more esoteric and exotic criteria.

But think about it. You are the leader in your organization. You have charted a clear way forward for where you want to take your enterprise. You are driving ahead with a passion to meet that vision. But when you look behind in enthusiastic anticipation, you find barren and deserted sand dunes. There is no one behind following your lead. Or maybe there are a few tormented souls, driven more by the chains of hierarchy as opposed to the call of their hearts. If indeed that is the case my friend, then I would conjecture that the arc of your honeymoon period might be long but it will definitely and steadily bend towards failure.

So what does it take for a leader to be followed? Below are some of my favorite mantras on the art of leadership.

A bold vision is paramount. A pessimistic Leader perpetually content with the status quo, with a run of the mill mindset fits like a square in a circle of spiraling change, which underpins business today. Leaders need to carve out visions which catapult their enterprises far ahead of competition. They need to dovetail vision with the ability to take courageous, bold decisions in operations. Don’t just sit there and bask in the success of the status quo, dream big, embrace and drive change and strive for relentless continuous improvement.

The hero stories of the dominant, snooty, ‘I know it all and I will tell you what to do’ leader are ready to be confined to the annals of history. The information age demands a more inclusive and approachable style. I call this ‘benevolent leadership’. Not to be confused with being soft or being uninterested in driving profits for the stakeholders. That is not what I mean by benevolent. The keywords which come to mind in description are ‘genuine, humility, passionate, transparent, inclusive, relaxed persona’. Genuine deserves a special mention. Very often leaders give lip service to open door policies. Their doors are definitely open but minds firmly shut to feedback from the grass roots. And closed minds are openly visible to an increasingly savvy workforce. The days of the dominant boss are numbered if not already extinct. A relaxed and inclusive persona which promotes unhindered expression, open critique and contribution at all levels is the new mantra of the information age. An age in which contribution more than credentials defines who you are and the fellowship you command.

Perhaps the most important mantra for the leader of this age is the ability to connect with and inspire people. Ability to command loyalty and respect. Ability to delegate and then hold accountable. Ability to create an environment where people bring their heart and souls to work and not just their minds. Some people naively translate all this into being nice and being weak! A leader in this age needs to be simultaneously tough and demanding as well as loved and respected. Today’s workforce is fully plugged in and switched on to reality. They understand that making profit on a sustainable basis requires a leader to act sharply on mediocrity and continuously strive for high performance from the workforce. However leaders get carried away with the demanding part of the equation and conveniently forget the loved and respected bit. A healthy balance in a Leader’s character is critical to take people along on a journey towards the vision. People is the glass ball that a leader is holding. If dropped it won’t bounce back and instead shatter into a thousand pieces, wrecking along with it any dreams of delivering the vision. Inspiring and engaging people is the prime role of the Leader, this is where the rubber hits the road. Add a multicultural workforce to the mix and this task becomes even more daunting. But then, anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. Surmounting an agitated ocean of people challenges is what distinguishes the men from the boys, the true leaders from the ‘also rans’.

So are you looking to lead in the information age?

Where news and information in the social world moves much faster than you can click send on your corporate email. Where individuals feel fully empowered. Where power has firmly transcended from the masses to the individual. Where the world is truly everyone’s oyster. Where talent can vote with their feet to almost any part of the world. Where the landscape is competitive in real time. Where new business models are getting ready to threaten your vision even as you read this blog.

Well, if this is what you want to do then…

Look over your shoulder and make sure you are being followed by an enthusiastic bunch of inspired, passionate, multi-cultural and capable people, fully in tune with your melody.

THE Valley

2011-03-01T23:54:00.001+04:00

I am sure there are a number of nature adorned valleys out there in the world. However for the quintessential Geek, the one that counts is Silicon Valley, California.

I had an opportunity recently to visit the Valley and explore it up, close and personal.

A couple things that struck a deeper chord…...

And The Oscar goes to

The ecosystem.

A humming, vibrant, well-oiled ecosystem is at play in the Valley. That’s what makes it tick. That’s what has made it the nerve center for IT innovation. At the heart of the ecosystem are top notch knowledge powerhouses such as Stanford, Berkley, Carnegie Mellon et al. Their focus – to work at the grass roots level and provide a breeding ground for learning, experimentation and research.

Then there is the funding tributary next to the Bay. A high density cluster of Venture Capitalists and Angel investors whose bread and butter business model is to connect funds with innovations, to breathe life into ‘workable’ ideas and convert Joe Blokes like you and me into serial entrepreneurs.

This network’s nodes are also embellished with some of the top companies in the world who either grew up there from startup or have been born somewhere else but have setup their innovation labs in the Valley. All this attracts the world’s best geek talent and media celebrates each success of every new startup and/or entrepreneur publicly. This creates an atmosphere of excitement and happening in the Valley. Even the almighty contributes by adorning the region with a nippy and sunny climate throughout the year.

The ‘ecosystem pattern’ is a winning business model. Each node feeds the other and the network effect creates a virtuous cycle of continuous and sustainable innovation. Fascinating, to say the least.

A free and empowered human spirit

Quite often individual passion for unhindered expression, the inherent human need to contribute, to accomplish, to fail, to get up and run again, the sharpness of individual intellect, the carefree human spirit, is stymied by an undertone of racial, cultural and all other exotic forms of discrimination.

However in the Valley I sensed that history had broken its shackles and leaped into the 21^st century. The human spirit is free. To explore, to express, to challenge, to learn, to share, to contribute, to accomplish, to cherish, to celebrate. Nobody seemed to give a two hoots where you came from. No one asked, no one told, no one bothered. All that mattered was what you knew, what inventions you were cooking, what value you could contribute. I met professionals, youngsters, academics, fund raisers - people from all walks of life all glowing in the bright sunshine of true human empowerment. A diversity in form tightly bound by an aptitude for software engineering, a love for IT and a passion for disrupting existing paradigms. It is no wonder that this free human spirit is able to unleash its potential time and again and drive a continuous flow of innovations along the pristine and blue waters of the adjoining Bay.

The Valley more than lived up to its expectations.

It is humming with excitement.

In abated anticipation for the next wave of innovations that it is fondly nurturing in its cradle.

Nowhere, get me there..

2011-02-28T23:04:00.001+04:00

the melody in the beat

of a heartbeat in flux

the palpations

the elation

a rumble in the belly

a souring soul

each breath as if

racing the next

a time gone by

a feeble memory

a feeling now jaded

a distant dream

a paradise lost

does love depreciate

as all other things material

does affection dissipate

through the schisms in our hearts

does time frost our feelings

for once yawning souls

do responsibilities take a toll

on once a spirited soul

is there anything in life

anything at all

which is perpetual

so why, I sit and wonder

should love be

maybe a refresher is due

a resurrection whose time has come

maybe new melodies are desperate

to tango, to jibe

with the beats of a heart

long in need of a restart

a break from the shackles

the manacles of the norm

a leap into nowhere…….

cognisant of consequences

yet innocent to the impact

a pang of fear

that truth may go naked

a dash of anxiety

about budding possibilities

the spirit moves north again

the soul reignited

a new path

a new dawn

a new hope

maybe, just maybe

nowhere will get me there.

Will the magic of Indian Software industry last?

2011-02-26T13:46:00.004+04:00

I don't think so until a tectonic plate shifts underneath the Indian software industry to usher in a fundamental change in focus. The word 'back shoring' is gaining popularity. Cliché’s can transition rapidly from fads to facts in this globally connected, word of mouth driven, social powered, internet age.

The genesis of the industry was on a cost saving proposition. The herd pattern took over, large deals got larger and Indian software companies grew from garages to ‘info’plexs. Certification became a fad and everyone chased ‘the CMMI stamp’ to signify quality. With the boom came the bane. Engineers treat companies like guest houses- stay a while, learn and then move on. With such stupendous growth the focus has been on volume as opposed to quality. And over the times, the economic price-demand curve has come to the fore with even base costs in India not being as competitive as earlier deemed.

The cost proposition is waning. I would conjecture a guess that with respect to TCO we are much worse off with offshoring/outsourcing as opposed to doing it in-house. Two key factors contribute to this in my view – first the high management overhead which the company needs to retain in order to govern the project so that they actually get delivered to promise and secondly the cost of quality resulting mainly from the software engineers being perpetually in-transition.

With the core value proposition under threat, quality of delivery in any case being an issue and state of world economy making protectionism and retaining jobs locally a priority, I think this industry needs a shake up to stay relevant.

My two mantras for the industry’s renewal:

· Significantly yank up the volume on project management. Companies end up spending a fortune on management overheads as the project management support from the offshoring vendor is largely appalling, especially the emotional intelligence component which is so critical to delivering successful projects. It becomes immediately apparent that project managers have just grown through the software engineering line and not placed adequate attention on grooming in the art of management. This needs to be addressed at the grass roots level as IT project management is probably more about management than technology. Getting an IT project to deliver its promise is an art and not science and requires leaders at the helm to achieve success

· Lead software engineering innovation – invent rather than just follow. India has captured market share in the business of software engineering but has done little to spearhead the field in terms of innovating it. Most software engineering innovations still emanate from the enviable Silicon Valley. New programming languages such as Ruby, Bid Data management innovations such as Hadoop, NoSQL, great companies built around IT such as Apple, Google, innovations in the mobility sphere such as the explosion of App stores et al have their roots outside India. A passion and fetish for software engineering innovation needs to seep into the IT ecosystem in India. The industry needs to stop thinking and promoting software engineering as a commodity and positioning it at a strong force to get competitive advantage in business. For this to happen, some of the industry stalwarts, the universities, the fund owners, the startups, the entire ecosystem needs to shed its conservative approach to doing business, promote experimentation, spend intellect on research and take bold steps forward to shape the future of business innovation through engineering. This will then create a sustainable comparative advantage and a new proposition much higher in the value food chain than just 'we reduce your costs of software development'

I feel India with its bright minds, its academic grilling and strong foundations, die hard focus of its people to commitment and hard work, its strong cultural roots, its current positive state of mind - has the right ingredients to create a sustainable business model around the IT industry cluster and surmount any threats.

However it is the Internet age afterall. Past laurels are not a guarantee for future sustainability. The winds of change need to be felt and absorbed pro-actively. Bold changes need to be ushered in at a swift pace.

Winners in this age will be defined by their ability to sense and respond to change as opposed to basking in the sunshine of a sinking sun.

SOA for my mother

2011-02-20T22:36:00.004+04:00

Looking at the mirror one day I realised that I had reached the pinnacle of all learning. Knowledge hit me from all angles and I absorbed it, soaked it into my psyche with a passion. I had mastered the art of such complicated and diverse disciplines such as value driven engineering, expectation management, stakeholder management, time boxing and risk management with its kaleidoscope of red, amber and blues. I was ready to take on any corporate problem using my kitty of management tools, models and frameworks. Important words such as empowerment, swot analysis, exogenous influences, and diversification were oozing out of my 300 buck Brands branded grey suit and 30 buck tie from that shop which has ‘sale’ hardcoded on its mirror….. these important words always in a state of readiness to pounce upon and plonk themselves onto any conversation or PowerPoint slide they could lay their hands on. With the confidence of having Porter as a close relative, I looked at the reflection in the mirror and felt that I had finally arrived, in the corporate world…….

A wise person once said ‘it only takes a small needle to bust a bloated balloon’ (what a stupid quote, wise man, ya right!) Anyway, that wise person was probably referring to the rather sharp poke I got on my bloated confidence when an erudite and noble soul asked me to do a 5 slide presentation in 15 minutes to explain SOA to him as if explaining it to my mother.

SOA for my mother!! I immediately checked with Porter for a framework to crack this one and suddenly he was missing from the list of my next of kin. With trepidation I remembered the last time I had proudly announced our achievements on the Paradise Datamart to my mother she had equally enthusiastically asked me about which shopping mall. Encapsulation, orchestration, granularity, decoupling would equate to electrical wiring, music, wheat and marriage to my mother.

In that moment of anxiety as I scratched my brain for a simple way to explain SOA to someone with no IT knowledge, it dawned onto me that one of the true leadership challenges of corporate life was to explain increasingly complex situations and issues in increasingly simple ways, almost as if to your mother. After sweeping out all the models from my clouded head I could come up with only one example to explain SOA to my mother.

It relates to the kitchen. In the kitchen things are beautifully connected to each other - the sink to the dish washer, the gas to the cooker and disparate things such as refrigerator, kitchen sink, dishwasher, cooker, gas work together in harmony so that my mother can cook me a great meal. If however for some reason the dish washer breaks down we only need to remove it from the kitchen and not bring down the sink or indeed the entire kitchen to fix the dish washer. However sometimes we don’t build our applications like our kitchen, at least I didn’t. We end up connecting our dish washers with the sink in such a manner that if the washer has to be yanked out and used somewhere else, the entire sink has to be replaced.

So my mother’s kitchen is fully SOA compliant while some of the applications I built were unfortunately not so.

An MRI awakening

2011-02-20T22:34:00.002+04:00

Doctors have stepped down from their angelic thrones. Their perceptual monopoly over the minds of patients has started to blur. The engagement in a Doctor's cabin is now more 'clinical' than ever before. Last time I went to see one I experienced the clinical execution of a well honed consulting process which went through the following phases (1) a review of my file for historic insight (2) a pointed question and answer session (3) a physical examination of my problem area (4) a collaborative review of 5 strategic options for resolution of my problem (5) my formal consent on one of the options (6) finally, at long last, execution of the agreed resolution strategy. Phew! Doctor as a management consultant with specialization in healing is here to stay.

The apparently bipartite discussion around strategic cure options was quite exhilarating. The options elaborated by the doctor were clear as mud and I was reminded of my days in the South when I used to nod my head in complete understanding and appreciation of the menu options announced in Tamil by the zealous waiter. After eagerly listening to the tambi’s enthusiastic recital, in true panju style, I would either order a Dosa or a Thali! In order not to dent his enthusiasm I would add “ put some extra takali”. Thereby leaving the waiter with the false impression that his recital had been well understood and the customer had taken an informed decision thanks to his efforts.

To the uninitiated ‘takali’ means tomato in Tamil – about the only word that I learnt in a few memorable years stay in the South.

Unfortunately, the options presented by the doctor bear no resemblance to Masala Dosa and I did not have a medical panacea equivalent to ‘takali’.

My views on the state of medical science and its undertakers thus honed, I was invited to an MRI scanning session. The invitation was a consequence of problems with my neck, which was probably due to its uncanny habit of popping up, down and round about at even a hint of a pretty damsel in the vicinity. A wise man once said – old habits, Bruce Willis.

Anyways, armed with the strength of a cynic, ready to smell a rose and think of a coffin, I ventured into the MRI scanning center. A lovely nurse with a German hard-nosed ex-pression efficiently ushered me into the changing room. I had to strip off all worldly possessions to gain entry into the MRI scanner’s domain. I tried to maintain an overt composure that belied the inferno in the belly. The drumming in the belly had a stark resemblance to the rumblings leading up to a public speech I did a few years ago. However, I continued to smile like Sanjeev Kapoor after he inadvertently gobbled a few drinks in ‘Angoor’, as the nurse struck two ear buds into my ears (offcourse, where else!) and led me into ‘The Room’.

The beast looked quite daunting with its ugly open-ended mouth waiting in anticipation for its next hapless victim. I felt like fleeing and cursed the neck for its infidel overtures. In keeping with the modern-age ethos of the medical profession, the nurse displayed no signs of compassion. Her KPI was to get me in and out of the beast within a period of 25 minutes and ensure that I didn’t run away with the clinic provided nightie-equivalent I had to don in order to entertain the beast whilst I stayed in its august company. What cannot be cured has to be endured. My neck had left me no other option but to reluctantly surrender myself to the beast.

I lay down on my back, with arms folded, face facing up and the sides of the beast right up against my own. At the stroke of a key, the beast started gobbling me up, slow and steady, into its dome. In a few seconds, the beast had engulfed me completely and I had absolutely no room for maneuver. In order to avoid a feeling of claustrophobic panic I immediately closed my eyes. The nurse announced from another planet that the scanning was about to begin and I should gear up for some high decibel noise. Another keystroke and the silence was broken by a sharp sound piercing my ears - “tok, tok tok” went the scanner at an irritatingly consistent frequency. “tok tok tok” – “tok tok tok”.

I tried to make music in my mind dovetailed with the beast’s toks and day dreamt of an interview with NDTV where I beamingly relate the unique inspiration of my top-of-the-chart musical score. My dream was rudely interrupted by the nurse’s distant announcement that the ordeal was coming to an end in a few minutes. Enthused, I opened my eyes….

Life only needs a few moments to pass you by. As I opened my eyes to see myself completely surrounded by a machine in semi-darkness, I felt the strongest feeling of unease I have ever felt in my life. My heart started racing at top speed as sweat beads swiftly ordained my forehead. I felt impounded, impotent, captured and felt a strong urge to break through the shackles and run for my freedom. In those few moments, I truly understood and appreciated the value of freedom – freedom to enjoy the clear blue skies, freedom to bask in glorious sunshine, freedom to follow what your head thinks and your heart desires, freedom to socialize, to interact, to walk, to run, to debate, to discuss, to read, to write, to chase your fantasies and your aspirations.

Not every fall is into an abyss. Not every opening in a tunnel has a train on the other side. As life punctuates our existence with a few disappointments we develop amnesia towards its highs. On that day, during those few moments, I realized how blessed and lucky I was to be free and my heart bled for those who were perpetually confined to the four walls of their hospital rooms.

As I was released from the clutches of the beast I felt a sudden surge of liberation as well as a sense of calmness in my soul. The scanner had failed to unearth anything unusual in my neck however had succeeding in awakening a new perspective to life.