Ashwin's Blog

Habit-Formation and the Science of Teaching

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 00:48:00 +0000

In the book, Habit-Formation and the Science of Teaching, author Stuart Henry Rowe presents insights on being consciously aware of forming habits for different types of studies. The excerpts from the book below highlights some of his insights.

Interest in the subject as the foundation for habit formation

The real source of initiative must be drawn from an interest in the subject and and appreciation of the importance of making this organization automatic. These interests are themselves habits in many instances, but serve to carry other habits still further.

A habit of tolerance

Such (tolerance) habits are not established by definitely concentrating on them. The sort of initiative which is effective is based on imitation skillfully suggested, with considerable emphasis of approval and disapproval. In fact, it is quite possible that the very best way to bring about in a child such a habit is to make no attempt to teach it all, but merely to comment naturally and frankly as one would regardless of any thought of teaching. There is no doubt that many habits of religious, semi-religious, or moral chacarter are never really presented nor drilled upon. They develop naturally and incidentally, and it is safe to allow them to develop in that way, remembering that unconscious learning is the best kind, if it succeeds. All habits of wider application, like the protracted types of disciplinary habits, have elements of unconscious learning in them; habits of appreciating the scheme of nature as revealed in physics and chemistry, of catching the atmosphere of the French or German language, of looking for the elements in history which make for the success and failure of nations, are only established in the course of time as a result of much untaught learning and organizing on the part of the pupil. The formula corresponding to the habit might have been given almost at the outset, but, the habit in its full development is the product of time, i.e. the product of numerous instances of unconscious though reflective practice.

When studying a subject, first identify which habits are to be formed

Drill is the process of artificially promoting repetition for the sake of getting facility in some branch of study. Courses of study should indicate where important habits are to be formed. Books on special method should show these habits are to be formed.

How Differential Steering Works - Simple Explanation of a Complex Concept

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:50:00 +0000

Quoting from geek.com

The differential mechanism basically allows each wheel to spin freely of the other, while providing power to both. If one wheel is spinning too slowly the mechanism will keep driving the other one without any skidding. In this situation, the slow one is the inner wheel and the one spinning more quickly is the wheel on the exterior of the turning radius. Thanks to the differential no torque is lost and the tires aren’t shredded every time you make a turn. It’s both brilliant and deceptively simple.

Read the full entry here - http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/a-brilliant-explanation-of-how-a-cars-differential-works-20111218/

Always Produce

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:55:00 +0000

From Paul Graham's How To Do What You Love

"Always produce" is also a heuristic for finding the work you love. If you subject yourself to that constraint, it will automatically push you away from things you think you're supposed to work on, toward things you actually like. "Always produce" will discover your life's work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.

Steve Jobs Interview at D8 Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:51:00 +0000

You can also watch directly here for a little bigger screen size.

How to Improve Amazon Wireless - User Story, Feature Proposal, Challenges and Solutions

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Sat, 08 May 2010 13:46:00 +0000

I came across Amazon Wireless wireless.amazon.com and found no dramatic differentiation as compared to shopping for cell phone on Amazon's main website www.amazon.com. It got me thinking, what could Amazon do to make its vertical micro-sites more effective and buyer-friendly. Below I have proposed what can be done to improve Amazon Wireless by providing a user story depicting the problem faced by a typical cell phone buyer, feature proposal to solve that problem, and technical and business challenges/solutions in implementing the solution.

Overview
Shopping for cell phone is not a pleasant process, specifically when you also have to shop for wireless plans to suit your needs and deal with the rebates often promised when you sign up for new two-year contract. Amazon Wireless aims to make it easier. This document proposes a new feature to enhance the user buying experience for cell phones and service plans.

User Story - Understanding The Context Of A Typical Cell Phone User
Let's take profile of Jennifer Wilson, who is a working mom and obviously busy. She is due for a cell phone upgrade. She is currently using a voice-only phone and now wants to upgrade to voice+data phone so that she can keep track of her personal and work schedules as well as overlay schedules of her kid's after-school activities. Her knowledge of current smart phones is limited and she is not particularly keen on doing in-depth research of smartphones either. She knows that she is willing to spend about $50 per month for a voice+data plan and she doesn't mind signing up for new two-year contract if she can get a free phone in return. However, in order to get a good phone to last for atleast the period of the contract, she doesn't mind spending upto $50 on the cell phone device. With this data, she is hoping for a magic wand which she can wave and finalize her decision on her purchase. She has been a loyal Amazon customer, and she heard about Amazon Wireless. But when she lands on wireless.amazon.com, she is dealt with list of phones that she knows nothing about, and is not interested in learning more about them as well. All she wants is a reliable phone and a good service plan for a reasonable price.

Feature Proposal
For serving Jennifer Wilson (a typical customer described above), Amazon Wireless can provide a feature which asks user for some very basic information and help them make a purchasing decision. The picture below shows the information requested from the user who, someone like Jennifer, can easily answer and get a list of phones suiting her exact daily life needs. Such a feature will enhance the buying experience for a cell phone as well as service plans.

CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO SEE THE SCREENSHOT

Challenges
In implementing this feature, there are several challenges - both engineering and business - that needs to be overcome. The high level challenges and their proposed solution are listed below.

Engineering Challenges And Solutions

User Profile Sensitivity Indicator For Cell Phone

Problem Statement: How can cell phone(s) be mapped to a User Profile? i.e. given a user profile, how can Amazon Wireless determine which set of cell phones are highly relevant?

Input: Data provided by user: spending capacity per month for service plan (voice only, or voice+ data), spending capacity on device itself, willingness to sign two-year contract for getting a bargain (free) on cell phone.

High Level Solution:

1. Build user's technology profile (i.e. technology footprint) from purchase history if available and rate her on a scale of 1-10. This can be based on user's past technology product purchase from Amazon.com, or relevant reviews on technology products. If user is deemed to be technologically literate
2. For the scenario where technology profile cannot be built predictably because there is no purchase history or there isn't any relevant information in purchase history, then Amazon Wireless can provide broad profiles for user to choose from. The profiles can range from Working Mom, Road Warrior Business Traveler, Small Business Owner, Parent buying phone for their teenager kid, etc).
3. Each profile has to be mapped to a set of cell phones. This can be done at the point of data entry by vendor for each cell phone. This mapping can be further improved by learning about purchases made by users on AmazonWireless.
4. Once the user's technology profile is evaluated, a set of highly relevant cell phones can be provided to user to choose from. Note, that these cell phones have to be overlayed with the relevant service plan depending on the user's willingness to spend on service plan on a monthly basis.

Equalizing Service Plans
Problem Statement: How can cell phone service plans from different vendors be equalized for fair and exact comparison, so that the user doesn't have to compare herself?

Input: User's zip code, service plan data provided by vendors

Solution: While business development can play a key role in equalizing the service plans from different vendors by mandating requirements for doing so (see section 'Business Challenges' below), from the engineering side following can be done:

1. Define categories that define parameters of a service plan - Anytime minutes, Night and Weekend start and end times, Additional minute charge, per SMS charge, etc
2. Using the above parameters, specifically Anytime Minutes, come up with per minute cost for each plan which can used as a guidance to equalize the service plans. The algorithm can also take into consideration the rollover minutes and provide user dollar amount for a range of minutes used for a particular interval (monthly, quarterly, yearly).

Business Challenges
Both the above engineering challenges can also be complemented with solutions from business side as well, as listed below:

All Cell Phones Are not Equal
Assumption: Cell phone vendors provide the data for each device they list on selling on Amazon.

The ability to show highly relevant results to user (depending on their profile) depends on the data for each cell phone provided by the vendor. On business side, if there is a process of getting data from vendors to describe their cell phones depending on the parameters expected by the engineering solution for showing relevant phones, it would greatly improve the search experience and also make the purchase experience more user friendly.

All Service Plans Are not Equal
Amazon Wireless can play a key role in bringing about an order in the chaos of choosing wireless service vendor and also service plans for each vendor. In return for volume business, Amazon can demand uniform structure of service plans from different vendors. A classical example of 99cents song purchase from Apple's iTunes. It was a monumental effort on part of Apple to help music industry see the value of selling single song for 99 cents as opposed to entire album. It was able to do so and now is reaping the rewards.

Making wireless service providers to agree on a uniform service plan structure is no less than a monumental effort, but if done successfully can be a very rewarding deal for Amazon.

NOTE: You can read a similar document capturing How to Improve LinkedIn here.

James Cameron's Virtual Camera Technology - Can it Make it Possible For Your Avatar Watch Game in 3D Virtual Stadium

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 18:35:00 +0000

I have been watching the ipl20 on youtube channel youtube.com/ipl and it LOOKS AMAZING.

And that got me thinking. If the live sync up of real world and virtual world could be done, then:

1. there could be theoretically infinite virtual stadiums where virtual crowd can check-in to watch the game.
2. Today I comment on the game via twitter hashtags. I also chat along with my friends about the game. But if my avatar and avatar of my friends were watching the game in a virtual world, then our avatars would be able hifi each other.
3. It would open up virtual good economy. My avatar can buy props to enjoy during the game....team cap, team jersey, placards and so on.
4. It would give me option of moving across different seats to get better view of the playground. And yes, better virtual seats will cost more.

A little bit of sync up between real world and virtual world:
1. Sensors on real world players capturing the movements
2. Sensors on the stumps, ball, and all other game equipment to capture movement
3. Feed data from these sensors to play its virtual counterpart in virtual world.

This is the same 'virtual camera' technology (wikipedia, popular mechanics)that James Cameron (Director - Avatar) has helped built (heard him on NPR's Fresh Air episode on 04/23) which gets input from the sensors attached to real world actor's body and that gets relayed in near real-time and those movements gets superimposed on virtual actors (avatars).

Now only if this technology can be stretched further, then it could change the future of watching sports altogether. And then our avatars can watch the games in virtual stadium.

iPad or EBook Reader - Which is More Efficient for Information Consumption?

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 01:41:00 +0000

Reading is just one of the means to get information. Its incorrect to compare iPad with EBook Readers as they both are different categories. Apple, as usual, has created a new 'category of one' with iPad. iPad is not a netbook, is not a laptop and is not exactly a tablet. This new category is slowly going to extinct EBook Reader category or will make it so niche that it will continue to exist as a rare category, just like the category of vintage car owners.

iPad Sunset Mag Cover Spec from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Which of the above would be your choice for consuming information?

While the EBook Readers are selling their unique selling proposition of catering to serious book readers with their easy-on-eye e-ink technology giving real paper feel and is so light in weight that its not strain to hold it in your hand. the world is rapidly changing the way its consuming the information. And reading is just one of the means to get to that information. We have information overload and we need a medium to consume that information faster and efficiently, and reading text is not that medium. Video on the other hand is fast becoming such medium. Roughly, the equation goes 1000 words = 1 picture = 10 second of video. iPad (and devices like that) will become vehicle of choice to consume information in variety of formats as it gives different options for format - video, audio, picture, text - for consuming information. Slowly, the population of serious book reader will migrate from EBook Reader to iPad for viewing (yes, viewing and not reading) the same books, but in a different and a more pleasant manner.

Truly Inspirational Work - Aravind Eye Care

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:06:00 +0000

Truly inspirational work targeting bottom of pyramid demographics (free eye surgeries or at most $2 when paid) and an efficiently run business. If you have 18 minutes to spare, I highly recommend to watch this video

Some highlights:
- "When you grow in spiritual consciousness, we identify all that is in the world. So there is no exploitation. It is ourselves we are helping. It is ourselves we are healing" - Dr. G. Venkataswamy (addressed as Dr. V) , who mortgaged all of his life savings, that too after retirement to start Aravind Eye Care.
- Dr. V's simple analogies behind executing such vision - if McDonald can train its employees all around the world to make burgers the exact same way, the same can be done with eye care and that's what Aravind Eye Care has done successfully.
- If ophthalmologists are less in number, make the process efficient to use the opthals time very very very efficiently....place the surgery tables side by side with patients ready to operate to avoid wasting surgeons time....nearly quadrupling surgeons productivity.
- provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution i.e. without providing free transportation, villagers will not come to hospitals for eye surgery. Providing free transportation to bring villagers to hospitals is equally important as operating on them.
- hire and train people to be eye technicians - 2 big side benefits: Firstly, it creates jobs and that too new category of jobs of eye technician. Secondly, eye technician reduces the load on surgeons by doing all the prep work - pre and post surgery.

How to Improve LinkedIn - Feedback and New Feature Proposal

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 09:09:00 +0000

I have written a document about my feedback for improving LinkedIn and new feature proposal.

Summary
This paper contains my general feedback about LinkedIn and new feature proposal along with new theme. I consider myself a normal user of LinkedIn. It also contains new feature proposal from a perspective of a normal user who would like to see LinkedIn help him not only network professionally, but also advance professionally. The paper has two sections - Feedback and Proposed New Features. Section 'Feedback' provides my feedback and user experience of the site as it is today. Section 'Proposed New Features' provides how I would want to use LinkedIn to advance in my career.

You can read the rest of the paper here

Product Design Part 4: Help customers buy into your offering.

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 13:53:00 +0000

IKEA might have a great sofa at a very reasonable price. But if I decide to purchase that, I have to start worrying about getting it delivered to my home. However, if IKEA comes up with a free delivery option, it could lead to increased sales. It is akin to Amazon's free shipping for orders above $25. The cost of free shipping adds to the cost of the product indirectly. But, this added cost of free shipping, will bring in more revenue in the long run.

For eg: Endless.com is an online store (backed by Amazon.com) that sells shoes and handbags. Historically, people are not comfortable buying these items online because of obvious reasons (reasons being size of shoes that fit your feet, texture of handbag's leather, and so on). In order to help people overcome the mental block, endless.com gives $5 back to customers if they choose next day shipping.

Thus, if you are innovating a product where you are faced with hand holding your potential customer to cross over the hump (read mental block for trying your new innovative product), then you HAVE to consider that as a concrete REQUIREMENT for your product design. The cost of hand holding your customer to cross over the hump has to be considered while designing your product. If it means shaving off certain feature of your product to give away free shipping, then so be it. Because, it is free shipping that is going to convert visitors to customers. Once, they become comfortable with the concept of your new innovative product, and they buy into your concept (which is utmost important) then you can start reaping benefits from that sell.

Product Design Part 3: 'Getting used to' factor

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 06:14:00 +0000

So what is "getting-used-to" factor? If you want to get some task done using a software product, you just know how to do it as against to navigating your way through toolbars and menu items to figure out how to get a task done.

In case of consumer software product where the switching cost is almost zero, if the product is not easy to get used to, it would become an obstacle for reception of the product by consumers. If you are building a product that is a 10x better version of competing product that users are currently using, how easy are you making it for them to switch to your product. For eg: if you developing a state-of-the-art email client, will your users be able to come up to par with being familiar with your email client in less than 2 minutes after installing the product. If not, most likely users will form a first impression of your product that it is not easy to use and will simply continue using whatever they were before installing your product.

So, if you are making a product which will replace an existing competing product, one of the important criteria to keep in mind is the 'getting-used-to' factor. In this case, getting used to should be seamless.

Product Design Part 2: Iterative deliverables

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 06:01:00 +0000

Conventionally, product requirements are gathered by soliciting users for requirements. If the user is solicited for requirements, he will only be able to come up with some imaginative thoughts, but those might not necessarily be his real requirements.

Instead, give user a pilot product to use. Now you may ask how do you come up with a pilot product. Its a catch-22. Here is where you will be creating your differentiation or creating a new market altogether. You have to become a keen observer of the problem that you are trying to solve. Once you have intricate knowledge of the problem space, you can start to answer that by your pilot product. It is this pilot product that you provide to your users. Once the user has a tangible pilot product to play with, he will be able to point out shortcomings. Real requirements will only surface when he will be provided something tangible to play with. Here you should tap into the basic nature of us humans and that is we are experts at pointing out negatives in any walks of life. Give the user your prototype product, and he will easily be able to come up with a laundry list of shortcomings in your product. These shortcomings are your product's real requirements.

Thoughts on Product Design

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 06:12:00 +0000

In coming weeks, I'll be writing a series of blog postings on the topic of 'product design'. Being in software industry for almost a decade now, I have come across software products fitting in the range from 'mediocre' to 'blow your mind' kind of products. I've also have avid interest and keen eye on design for non-software products too. I have always liked to import ingenious design ideas and get inspiration from them to apply it in the context of my work. I also like to debug the design thought process that goes behind great products. I'll be sharing my insights from such experiences in weeks ahead. Below is the first of ten part series of postings that I have planned.

Product Design Part 1: Keep Context in Mind. Let bigger picture define the smaller picture.

Let me ask you a simple question about designing a chair for kids in age group of 2-4 years. Should a kid's chair be designed to bear 50lbs or 200lbs? And no, I am not referring to designing chairs for obese kids who are weighing 200 lbs. This question is purely from a design standpoint taking into consideration the context in which the product, in this case - the chair, will be used. The logical answer to this question is a kid's chair should be able to bear about 50 lbs of weight because a kid of age 2-4 years would normally weigh in that range. But, if you take a step back, and see the usage of the chair in a bigger context, the answer would be 200lbs. Let me explain why. If you question the overall context in which the chair would be used, you would discover that the kids chair will not only be used by the kid himself. It would most likely also be used by an accompanying adult (parent, teacher, elder sibling). It would be inconvenient for the accompanying adult if the chair was not able to bear his weight. He would be either forced to kneel down to bring him to the level of the kid who is sitting on the chair, or bend from waist down. On the other hand, if the kid's chair was designed so that it could also bear the weight of an adult, it would make it so much more convenient. Had the context not been considered, the chair would not be able to deliver a 'wow' experience for an adult user.

While designing products, be it a kid's chair or enterprise software or whatever you are designing, it is necessary to extract the design requirements keeping the bigger picture in context. Context not only guides you to extract 'practical' design requirements, but it also protects you from feature creep. Any and every feature of the product has to make sense in the context of the bigger picture, the bigger context. Context helps you uncover features of the product that otherwise might not have been discovered with conventional way of thinking. This is as shown in the example of the designing kid's chair. Conventionally, a kid's chair would not have been designed to bear 200 lbs of weight. Only when you consider context, do you uncover such requirements. And it is such requirements that go into making products that deliver 'wow' experience to your dear customers.

Is it just me or do you think that wikipedia could use better presentation of information?

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 19:38:00 +0000

Don't get me wrong. I am a big fan of wikipedia. I treat it as a good source of information, and hang out frequently devouring information on pages after pages on wikipedia. However, after reading some number of pages, it just starts to drag. Again, don't get me wrong. The information is wonderful, but the presentation needs some work. I can't tell exactly what is wrong. Maybe using a different font or maybe line spacing or maybe page layout might make the difference. Maybe all the pages have too many links and these links are blue and are underlined, which starts to hurt the eyes after some reading. I cannot precisely pinpoint what's wrong in the presentation of pages, but all I can tell that there's something missing.

In general, that's something I've always felt about software applications. Great applications have features that you won't even notice because such features just gel naturally with usability. However, when such features are absent, its just hard to define them. I guess that's what separates good applications from great ones.

Example:
1. In the browser, you use CTRL-F to find text on a webpage. In Internet Explorer, CTRL-F opens up a dialog box. You have to keep juggling this find dialog box as you search for the text on the webpage. In Firefox, CTRL-F makes search textfield and related buttons viewable at the bottom of the browser window which is just so convenient. Moreover, as you type the text in the search textfield, it changes background color of the textfield to red if it cannot find the text, or green if it can.

Microsoft's Photosynth: Beauty lies in the eyes of your computer

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:54:00 +0000

From blogging standards, it ridiculously late to post about Microsoft's Photosynth technology. Its way too old news. But somehow, in the act of serendipity, I came across it recently, and was completely blown away with where this technology can take us. I am sure you will be blown away too. Wait until 4:05 minute into the video, where Blaise Aguera, chief architect of Photosynth, shows how a 3D image of the Notre Dame Cathedral that was reconstructed just using the pictures of it on flickr. You can also visit http://labs.live.com/photosynth/ for a web version that is shown in the video.

If you are short of time, scroll to 4:05 minute mark to see the 3D image of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Customer service phone call - an opportunity to 'humanize' your business

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:50:00 +0000

Companies are becoming more and more inhuman when it comes to customer service support phone calls. They make the customer feel stupid by making them talk to their voice recognition software, and making their dear customer answer questions repeatedly until a robot correctly understands what is being said. Imagine the embarrassment when calling customer service while you are in a public place where there is a possibility of others overhearing you say 'internet connection down.....internet connection down' endless number of times in different accents just so that the voice recognition software understands what you are saying. Why do businesses today want to embarrass their customers. All this does is just create ill-feeling towards the company. Reducing the cost of customer support by using voice recognition software to automate tasks is a good idea, but is it really worth it when what it exactly does is create ill-feeling towards your business.

Instead, customer support call is a great opportunity to 'humanize' your business. Its a great opportunity to present a human side of your business. In case you have screwed up and your customers are calling you for that, its a great opportunity to let them talk to a live person who would be able to convey more humanly (and emotionally too) that you are aware of the issue and are trying your best to fix it. Customers wouldn't mind screw ups so much if they are assured that they are being worked on and will be fixed soon. Humanizing your business will create empathy towards your business in the hearts of your customer. It will only create more loyal customers. Imagine how ecstatic your customers would feel because they got a chance to talk to a live person straight away, when they were anticipating pressing numbers for different menu options or clearing their throat for preparing to speak to a voice recognition software.

When it comes to putting your customer service on steroids, following comes to my mind:
1. Have a front line of customer service representatives (and lots of them) just for triaging the call. This would give the impression to the customer that they had a chance to talk to a a live person right away. After this initial welcome and triaging of the call by a real human, it would make it less painful to wait on hold. Also since the call would be triaged by a human, it would be more routed correctly to related second-level of representative.

2. To make #1 even better, instead of putting customer on hold after triaging the call (by a real human), get a callback number from the customer and tell them you will call back in certain amount of time. This would free up the customer who would gladly accept the incoming call later from your customer service department.

Do the above options really cost companies too much when weighed in the loyal customers it would bring in. Would it really cost companies too much when weighed in the fact that happy customers will evangelize their business bringing in even more new customers. Is squeezing cost on customer service really a good idea? Instead, humanize your business and provide more humans on other side of the phone when your customers call in. All your customers want is to talk to a human instead of pressing number for endless menu options and repeatedly saying something which your voice recognition prompts them to say.

Amazon.com: Wish it had 'Wish Price' for items in 'Wish List'

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:55:00 +0000

For every product, there is a customer at a given price. 80GB iPod may retail at $333. Definitely, there will be customers living on cutting edge and are willing to pay that price. However, there will be many more potential buyers for the same iPod at say $250, and even more buyers at $200. Increase in sales volume can help bring down the price. Also, with consumer electronics product, price also decreases with time, at which point buyers who have waited to buy at lower prices will jump in. Currently, a large subset of consumers are willing to wait out for prices to fall over a period of time at which point it becomes affordable for them.

Instead of price being a function of time, price can still be shrinked by increasing volume. Increasing volume means aggregating more buyers to buy a particular product. Which better place to aggregate buyers than Amazon.com. Similar to 'Wish List', Amazon can introduce 'Wish Price' where users can specify their willingness to buy a particular product at a given price. 'Wish price' is the price users 'wish' the price was at which they are willing to buy the product.

Amazon can perfectly orchestrate such buyer aggregation (demand aggregation). It already has wish list of millions of Amazon users. All they have to do is add another 'Wish Price' dimension for items listed in customer's 'Wish List'. Once, Amazon is aware of this Wish Price, it can very well orchestrate the demand to subsidize the price. This way, Amazon would have shrunk the time by aggregating more demand, leading to lower prices.

Self-disrupt to Avoid Self-destruction

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 08:18:00 +0000

For sustained success in business of software, it is necessary to constantly anticipate next curve. Not only anticipate, but execute to make the jump to the next curve early on. But often, incumbents become victims to innovator's dilemma (book reference: Innovator's Dilemma) and fear to self-disrupt and in the process get self-destructed. They don't want to strangle their current roadmap that is bringing in revenue. And, surely, they don't want to upset Wall Street.

However, Apple is one of the organization that is self-disrupting in the space of consumer electronics. Apple's iPhone is a good example of self-disruption. Apple's iPhone is an early indicator of self-disruption of its very own product - iPod - that won Apple back its lost glory. iPhone will eventually replace iPod. This might not happen this year or next, but in future not far away from today.

For any organization, big or small, self-disruption should be a built in trait to maintain long term leadership in its business. They can do so in following ways:
1. By having next generation of themselves (a different business unit or a spin-off), whose sole responsibility is to attain leadership on the next curve. In doing so, they might and should take away revenues from their parent company who is still a leader on older curve. This way the parent company will lose its market share, but only to the next generation of itself.

2. Other approach to self-disruption is to acquire company(s) who are already on the next curve. Even though this seems to be dull and not-so-challenging approach as compared to #1, it is a practical one. Instead of placing bets and investment on next curve, its definitely better to shop-and-compare for proven companies who are on their way to become leaders on the next curve. Such an acquistion approach also works out well for software business ecosystem. Smaller startups can innovate at a greater velocity than bigger organizations. Bigger organizations, on other hand, get to shop-compare-buy and not risk their investments based on speculation of next curve. Also, after certain stage, smaller startups can flourish better under big banner organization by taking advantage of its branding, sales, marketing, customer support and other infrastructure.

Does Wall Street reward disruption? Not always.

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 21:30:00 +0000

Anshu Sharma's comment on my recent post led me to think whether Wall Street always rewards companies who lead disruption. I can cite two cases, both on either ends of spectrum.

Amazon is an example of how a company can be punished by Wall Street for trying something disruptive such as their webservice offering of S3, EC2, and Fulfillment by Amazon. Quoting article from businessweek.com:

All that has investors restless and many analysts throwing up their hands wondering if Bezos is merely flailing around for an alternative [S3, EC2] to his retail operation. Eleven of 27 analysts who follow the company have underperform or sell ratings on the stock--a stunning vote of no confidence.

Investors want consistent profit growth and a company investing in disruptive offering (like Amazon investing in S3 and EC2) eats away the profits in the short run. This doesn't gel well with investors and punishment to stock price is eminent.

Apple, on other hand, with its iPod and iTunes has been successful in disrupting music industry's business model (selling individual song as against to album), while still keeping investor's confidence in the company resulting in a healthy stock price. It is successfully changing its strategy from a computer company to consumer electronics company.

On Wall St., it seems like simplicity of disruption matters. If disruption is simple enough, it helps investors (and masses in general) understand and appreciate its significance. Even if disruption is not simple enough, its complexity has to be hidden behind a simple concept that masses can relate to. It is easier to appreciate the impact of Apple's iPod+iTunes than Amazon's S3+EC2. Though, in my opinion, both are equally disruptive in their respective segment. However, both seems to be getting different treatment on Wall Street.

Amazon OS: The operating system of e-commerce

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 07:35:00 +0000

Amazon with its webservice offering has morphed itself into the operating system (OS) for e-commerce retailer. A computer's operating system provides core infrastructure such as process and memory management, controlling input/output devices, security, and networking. As an application developer, you can simply assume this OS functionality to be available to you. Similarly, as a e-commerce retail website developer, you can expect Amazon to provide core infrastructure such as remote shopping cart, detailed information about products, warehouse management to store, ship, handle returns of the products (and even though non-tangible, peace of mind of Amazon branding). You only have to concentrate on value addition on top of core functionality supplied by Amazon, and earn affiliation dollars.

Its a gutsy decision on part of Amazon to open its doors to proprietary data (product description, customer feedback) via webservice that took years to collect. Amazon has been exemplary in providing such a webservice offering. This will surely act as a catalyst for others and will lead them to follow the same path as Amazon, in turn, leading us all to interesting times ahead.

Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) and Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) shows yet another aspect of innovation at Amazon lead by Jeff Bezos. These would have been an obvious offering from some data storage company (it makes me wonder as to why none of the data storage company offered this). But this coming from Amazon shows Jeff's multi-faceted vision, and the fact that companies like Amazon do not fear sailing uncharted waters.

With its webservice, S3, and EC2 offerings, Amazon has truly become the operating system of e-commerce.

Apple - Cisco: whose 'iPhone' is it?

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:03:00 +0000

Even if Cisco wins the lawsuit against Apple for infringing iPhone trademark, it has already lost. In the minds of the dear consumer, iPhone was, is, and will continue to be perceieved as Apple's brand and not of Cisco. Technically, if Cisco wins this lawsuit, it will own the trademark on paper, but thats about it.

Test for consumer perception: Which of the above phone is iPhone? Obviously, the one on the left. But in reality the one on the right is Cisco's iPhone, whereas the one on the left, per Cisco, shouldn't even be called iPhone.

On part of Apple, I think it was a bold and smart move, to consciously go ahead with iPhone announcement during MacWorld Expo, knowing very well that they are violating trademark ownership. On technical grounds, they may lose the lawsuit against Cisco, but they got what they wanted and that is people connecting to the cell phone from Apple with the name iPhone. Now, even if Apple loses this battle and has to call its iPhone some xyzPhone, consumers are still going to refer it as iPhone. In fact, I am sure there are lots of people out there who probably didn't even knew that there is a product from Cisco named iPhone until the big noise of this lawsuit.

A better move from Cisco would have been to give away (or share or form some kind of partnership) iPhone trademark to Apple, get good publicity out of it, and use that publicity to bring a wider exposure to their own iPhone. Consumers would have called Cisco a sport which would have helped them build a soft corner in consumers mind.

Good music has no language barriers

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 01:48:00 +0000

Even though I don't understand a word of this song, the music and even the sound of the lyrics is still pleasant to the ears. For those of you who like mixed paced music, wait until 55 seconds into the song where it picks up the pace. I am sure you'll end up listening the whole song after that.

Un-anonymous Online Communities

noreply@blogger.com (Ashwin Patel) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 09:15:00 +0000

Today, online communities have members whose identity cannot be tied to physical person. Online communities either have anonymous members or members who are using 'handles' to voice their opinions, recommendations, criticism, etc. Everyone is hiding behind 'handles' in order to safeguard their online identity. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this as one has to safeguard their personal identity to prevent identity theft or any other kind of trouble. However, this does not work well for things such as community members recommending vendors of services (eg: plumbers, electricians, real estate agents, tree trimming services, etc) in the real world.

For example, if you are looking for a plumber in your city, you can surely look it up in yellow pages. But, since there are hundreds of plumbers listed there, how do you know which one is trusted and most recommended one. If you take the online resort to find a reliable plumber, you cannot trust the recommendations because the recommendations are coming from 'handles' which you cannot trust and have to take it with a pinch of salt. In such scenarios, it is necessary that trusted identity of the recommendee come into picture.

The old school way of doing this would be to get a reference of a vendor by asking your colleague or friends or neighbors. Since the recommendation is coming from a trusted contact, you can safely consider the recommendation and act on it. It is necessary that today's online communities, at least those that are revolving around product or service vendor recommendations bring in the angle of trust into picture to make the community worthwhile.

After all, all you want when choosing a vendor of commodity services is a touch of trust to zero-in on that one vendor out of hundreds available.