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We import 90% of our oil. And then we burn a huge chunk of it sitting at red lights. This is madness, but it's fixable.

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Wed, 27 May 2026 16:48:01 +0000

We import 90% of our oil. And then we burn a huge chunk of it sitting at red lights.

Energy security · Urban economics · National reform

While geopolitical shocks in West Asia threaten India's energy supply, we quietly waste hundreds of crore rupees in fuel every single day. Not from driving. From not moving. This is not a traffic problem. It is a national economic haemorrhage with a known cure.

You have been there. Engine running. Light red. The signal has been red for 90 seconds. Cars behind you start honking. The auto beside you revs unnecessarily. The truck ahead belches black smoke. You sit there, burning fuel, burning time, burning patience. Going nowhere.

Now multiply that moment by 350 million vehicles. Across 50 cities. Every single day.

That is not a traffic inconvenience. That is a fiscal emergency. One that India has been treating as a municipal nuisance for decades while paying foreign nations to fuel the chaos.

The moment that changes everything

In early 2026, US and Israeli strikes on Iran sent Brent crude up 7.4% overnight. India, which imports nearly 90% of its crude and routes close to half of it through the Strait of Hormuz, watched its energy bill surge. HDFC Bank warned that a sustained $10 per barrel rise widens India's current account deficit by 40 to 50 basis points. PM Modi appealed to Indians to reduce fuel consumption. The appeal was genuine and necessary. But the conversation skipped the most immediately actionable lever available. We are burning imported oil by the millions of litres every day in vehicles that are not moving. Fix that first.

The numbers that should embarrass us

34 min

To travel 10 km in Kolkata peak hour. The most congested city in all of Asia. TomTom 2024.

₹20,000 Cr

Annual economic loss from traffic congestion in Bengaluru alone. Karnataka government estimate, 2024.

$22 Bn

India loses annually in peak-hour traffic across just four cities. BCG/Uber study.

Kolkata. Bengaluru. Pune. All three rank among the top three most congested cities in Asia in 2024. Ahead of every Chinese, Japanese, and Southeast Asian city. India does not just have a traffic problem. India holds the continental record for it.

The idle fuel crisis: known since 1996, ignored ever since

Here is something that should infuriate every Indian policymaker. In 1996, nearly three decades ago, the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) published a formal study measuring fuel burned by vehicles idling at traffic signals in Delhi. The findings: over 4,22,000 litres of petrol and diesel wasted every day at Delhi's signals alone. The annual cost, at 1996 fuel prices, was Rs 245 crore. For one city.

What the research trail actually shows

The CRRI finding was not an anomaly. Subsequent peer-reviewed studies across Indian cities, including Indore, Chandigarh, Agartala, Chennai, and Ahmedabad, all found the same pattern: massive, measurable fuel waste at signalised intersections, with 95 to 100% of drivers keeping engines running through red lights.

A 2018 peer-reviewed study at eleven Delhi intersections (Transportation Research Part D) found daily losses of over 9,000 litres of petrol and diesel combined. A separate study of just two Chandigarh intersections found fuel loss running at Rs 2.4 crore per year per junction.

The research has been consistent for 26 years. The policy response has been nearly nonexistent. India's vehicle population has grown from under 50 million in 1996 to 350 million today. A 7x increase. The idle fuel waste has scaled accordingly. We simply stopped measuring it as urgently as we should have.

There is no single current national estimate because nobody in government has commissioned one at scale. That absence is itself the story. We track our forex reserves to the dollar. We track inflation to two decimal places. We have never formally calculated, at national scale, how many billions of dollars of imported crude we burn annually at red lights. The moment someone does that calculation officially, it becomes politically impossible to ignore.

"India is paying foreign nations for the privilege of sitting in traffic. We have known this for 26 years. We have done almost nothing."

Why we keep building flyovers and the traffic keeps getting worse

There is a law in traffic engineering called Braess's Paradox. Adding road capacity to a congested network can actually worsen traffic, because new roads generate new demand. We build a flyover. People who previously avoided the route now use it. Within three years it is as congested as before. We build another flyover.

This has played out in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Mumbai for thirty years. The solution is not less infrastructure. It is the right kind of intervention. And the right interventions do not all require concrete.

Picture this: your morning, designed for failure

You leave home at 8:45 AM. First signal: red for 90 seconds. The timing was set in 2019 and never updated. You move 200 metres. Another red, though that road is empty. A food cart occupies the left-turn lane at the main crossing, forcing all traffic into a single lane. You cover 5 km in 35 minutes. At your destination, the metro station has no bus. The bus left 4 minutes before you arrived. The next one is in 22 minutes. You will not take the metro tomorrow.

Every inefficiency in that journey is designed in. None of it is inevitable. All of it is solvable, without a single new road being built.

What works. With proof from Indian roads.

The mistake in every smart-city conversation is jumping to AI before clearing the drains. Here is what actually needs to happen, ordered by what evidence already exists on Indian roads.

Start here: Junction surgery, no technology needed

Every major Indian city has 20 to 50 junctions responsible for a disproportionate share of its congestion. Map them. Clear the encroachments. Relocate the bus stop blocking the merge lane. Add the lane marking. Issue the work order. Enforce it.

Traffic engineering research consistently shows that a small number of point failures, poorly designed junctions and illegal encroachments at chokepoints, are responsible for the majority of urban delay. These require no new infrastructure, only enforcement authority and political will.

Proven and ready to scale: Bengaluru's AI traffic experiment

In May 2024, Bengaluru launched the Bengaluru Adaptive Traffic Control System (BATCS): 165 AI-powered junctions using indigenously developed software from C-DAC, with green wave corridors synchronised in real time. By early 2025, results were in.

15 to 20% reduction in travel time across covered corridors. 16 to 61% increase in average speeds on specific central stretches. 20% improvement in corridor throughput. 10% drop in estimated emissions. Over 56% of surveyed commuters reported a measurably smoother experience. Source: Deccan Herald, Bengaluru Traffic Police, 2025. The system is now expanding to 500 junctions. This is not a pilot. It is proof.

Replicate now: Pune's Google-backed Trafficure system

Launched in February 2026 in partnership with Google India, the Trafficure system divides Pune into 550 real-time traffic monitoring zones, with signal timing adjusted from live Google Maps data.

Early trial data: average speeds improved from 20 kmph to 26.8 kmph. A 34% increase. Pune is the third-most congested city in Asia. A 34% speed improvement means proportionally less idle fuel burn, fewer vehicles on road at peak, and lower emissions. This experiment is live in India, on Indian roads, using Indian traffic data. It has not been replicated in a single other city. That is a policy failure, not a technology gap.

The missing link: the metro-bus handshake

India's metros are engineering achievements stranded by a coordination failure. When a metro arrives at a station, the connecting bus has often already left. The next one comes in 20 minutes. The rational commuter buys a two-wheeler. Repeat across millions of households and you have the primary driver of private vehicle proliferation in Indian cities. Not preference for private vehicles. A rational response to an unreliable alternative.

The fix: mandate every metro authority and city bus corporation to share live scheduling APIs. Build one app where metro arrivals are connected to bus departures at exit gates. If a metro is delayed 8 minutes, the feeder bus waits 8 minutes. Helsinki's MaaS system achieved measurable modal shift away from private vehicles within 18 months. The technology exists. The barrier is a government order for two agencies to share data.

Structural shift: make smooth driving financially rewarding

Usage-based motor insurance links your premium to how aggressively you drive. Calmer, smoother drivers pay less. Already live in the UK, Italy, and the US. IRDAI issued a framework for it in India. Adoption is negligible. Make it the default option at new vehicle registration.

Stop-start aggressive driving burns 20 to 30% more fuel per kilometre than smooth driving at the same average speed. No fiscal cost to government. The market does the behaviour change work. Aggressive driving becomes expensive. Smooth driving becomes rewarding.

The accountability gap that kills every reform

Well-intentioned traffic reforms die in India for one consistent reason: the system asks citizens to change behaviour while delivering nothing in return. Roads stay broken for months. Signals malfunction and nobody fixes them. Encroachments return within 30 days of clearance. The rational citizen response is disengagement. Why follow lane discipline in a system that does not maintain lanes?

Every city that launches a traffic reform programme must publish a live dashboard. Not a quarterly PDF. A URL, updated daily: junction speeds, signal uptime, last-mile wait times, complaint response times. When Delhi's air quality data became visible in real time, it changed political behaviour overnight. Visible government performance creates accountability that no audit committee can replicate.

And let us be honest about what Indians are actually capable of. UPI transformed payment behaviour for 400 million people in 36 months. Kumbh Mela manages 40 million people with extraordinary coordination. Swachh Bharat changed how cleanliness is discussed publicly. The common thread: the environment was designed for compliance, and compliance was made visible and rewarding. Traffic is the one domain where India designed chaos and then blamed the commuter.

"Indians do not lack civic sense. India lacks civic system design."

The political opportunity hiding in plain sight

Every intervention above is visible, attributable, and fast-acting. A commuter who saves 25 minutes daily knows exactly why. A family whose petrol bill drops notices immediately. This is not like fiscal consolidation or monetary policy, where benefits are diffuse and nobody knows whom to thank. Traffic improvement is personal, daily, and unmistakable.

PM Modi's call to reduce fuel dependence is correct and urgent. The fastest path to meaningful reduction is not waiting for EV penetration to cross 30%, which is a decade away at current adoption rates. It is closing the daily haemorrhage on existing roads, with existing vehicles, using interventions already proven in Indian cities. Three targets that would make this real:

Average urban speed above 25 kmph in India's 20 largest cities by December 2027.
Last-mile transit wait time under 8 minutes at every metro station by March 2027.
A formal, government-commissioned national estimate of urban idle fuel waste, published within 6 months.

That last one costs almost nothing. And the number it produces will be so large, so concrete, and so undeniable that it will do more for urban transport reform than any smart city budget line ever has.

The bottom line

India spends roughly $150 billion a year on imported crude. Every $10 per barrel rise adds approximately Rs 1 lakh crore to that bill. We control nothing that happens in Tehran or Tel Aviv. We control everything about whether a bus stop is illegally placed in a merge lane in Baner. We control everything about whether Bengaluru's proven ATCS system gets mandated in Hyderabad, Chennai, and Ahmedabad. We control everything about whether metro and bus schedules are finally coordinated.

The fixes are not glamorous. They do not require satellite imagery or billion-dollar command centres. They require a work order, a coordination meeting between two government departments, and a political leader who decides that the daily suffering of 100 million urban commuters is a national economic priority, not a local municipal complaint.

We have known about this problem since 1996. We have proof it is solvable, from our own roads, our own cities, our own engineers. The only thing missing is the decision that it matters enough to act on.

That decision is now overdue.

Sources and research basis

TomTom Traffic Index 2024 — Kolkata (most congested in Asia), Bengaluru, Pune rankings and speed data

Karnataka government, Minister Priyank Kharge, October 2024 — Rs 20,000 Cr annual Bengaluru congestion cost

BCG / Uber "Unlocking Cities" study — $22 Bn annual peak-hour loss across Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata

CRRI / PCRA Delhi, 1996 — 4,22,000 litres per day idle fuel at signals; Rs 245 Cr per year (first formal national benchmark)

Transportation Research Part D, 2018 (ScienceDirect) — 9,036 L per day idle fuel loss at 11 Delhi intersections

Studies across Indore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Agartala — consistent idle fuel waste pattern across Indian cities

BATCS, Bengaluru Traffic Police and C-DAC, 2024-25 — 15-20% travel time reduction; 16-61% speed gain; 20% throughput improvement; 10% emission drop (Deccan Herald, 2025)

Pune Trafficure / Google India, February 2026 — 550 zones; 20 to 26.8 kmph speed improvement (Bridge Chronicle, 2026)

CNBC / Rystad Energy, March 2026 — India sources approximately 50% crude via Strait of Hormuz; 90% import dependency

HDFC Bank — $10 per barrel rise widens India current account deficit by 40-50 basis points

Helsinki MaaS / Whim app — modal shift outcomes from multimodal integration

IRDAI — Usage-based insurance regulatory framework, India

Braess's Paradox — Dietrich Braess (1968); urban road capacity literature

Note: A formal government-commissioned national estimate of urban idle fuel waste does not currently exist at scale. This article calls for one as a first policy step.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-holding-a-glass-jar-with-paper-bills-7009857/

The Gratification Trap: How Modern Life Is Making us Obese, Ambitious, and Exhausted All at Once

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Sat, 16 May 2026 09:06:32 +0000

The Evening I Caught Myself — and Couldn't Explain It

I caught myself doing something the other evening that I'm slightly embarrassed to admit.

I had opened YouTube to watch a video on a topic I actually wanted to learn about. Something I had deliberately searched for. Good speaker, interesting subject. And within maybe 90 seconds, without even consciously deciding to, I had switched to Shorts.

Not because the video was bad. Just because 20 minutes suddenly felt... long.

I put the phone down and just sat with that for a bit. Because that's a strange thing, isn't it? To find 20 minutes too much. My grandfather used to sit with the newspaper for an hour every morning. Just the newspaper. No second screen. No background music. An hour. And he wasn't considered a particularly patient man.

Something has changed. And I don't think we talk about it clearly enough.

How the Brain's Reward System Was Built, and What It Was Built For

Here's the thing about our brains, they are fundamentally wired for reward.

Every action that once helped us survive, finding food, nurturing relationships, building shelter, creating; triggered a dopamine response. A small chemical signal that said: that was good, do it again. This isn't a design flaw. For hundreds of thousands of years, it was the most elegant survival system imaginable.

And for most of that time, the world cooperated. Gratification was proportionate to effort. You farmed, you ate. You invested in a relationship over years, you experienced companionship. The gap between effort and reward was built into the fabric of daily life. You didn't choose to delay gratification. The world simply didn't offer any other kind.

The Marshmallow Experiment and Why It Still Matters

In the late 1960s, a Stanford psychologist named Walter Mischel ran a deceptively simple experiment. He sat children in a room, placed a marshmallow in front of them, and said: you can eat this now, or wait 15 minutes and get two. Then he left the room.

What followed was, honestly, the most relatable footage in the history of psychology. Kids covering their eyes. Smelling the marshmallow. Singing to themselves. Desperately trying to not eat the thing sitting right in front of them.

But here's what made it significant. Mischel followed these children for decades. And the ones who waited, who chose the second marshmallow, went on to have measurably better outcomes across almost every dimension of life. Academic performance. Health. Relationships. Career. The ability to delay gratification, it turns out, is one of the strongest predictors of a good life that science has ever found.

Which makes what's happening right now particularly worth paying attention to.

The Two Forces Pulling Your Mind in Opposite Directions

Look at the world around you. Really look at it.

Every billboard you pass is telling you that what you have isn't enough. Every influencer post is a carefully lit reminder of the life you haven't built yet. Every algorithm-fed comparison - the salary, the apartment, the body, the career milestone - is designed to activate that gap between where you are and where you're told you should be. A 2023 Ipsos study found that over 70% of urban professionals feel pressure to earn significantly more than they currently do. Seventy percent. That's not ambition - that's ambient anxiety with a salary attached.

And this pressure isn't imaginary. The modern world genuinely rewards ambition. If you want to build anything meaningful - a career, a business, a skill, even a body you're proud of - it requires what psychologist Angela Duckworth calls grit. Sustained effort over time toward something that won't reward you today or tomorrow or probably next month either. Her research showed that grit predicted success better than IQ in almost every domain she studied.

Grit is, at its core, the repeated choice of the second marshmallow.

Now here's the part that gets me.

At the exact same time that the world is demanding this kind of patience from you — it is also, deliberately and profitably, destroying your capacity for it.

How Instant Gratification Became the Default Setting

Entertainment — from Two-Hour Films to Eight-Second Attention Spans

Think about entertainment for a moment.

Twenty years ago, if you wanted to watch something, you sat down and watched it. The whole thing. A film was two hours. A cricket match was a day. A TV series made you wait an entire week between episodes - and you did, because that was simply how it worked. The waiting was part of the experience. Honestly, it might have been part of what made it feel special.

Today? YouTube Shorts. Instagram Reels. TikTok. Content specifically engineered to deliver maximum stimulation in minimum time. Microsoft's research found that the average human attention span dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds by 2015. Eight seconds!

This didn't happen by accident. There are entire teams of engineers and behavioural scientists whose job is to make sure you don't stop scrolling. Every autoplay, every notification, every "just one more" is the product of deliberate design. You're not weak for finding it hard to resist. You're just up against a lot of very smart people who get paid to understand your brain better than you do.

Food : When your hunger is no longer yours

And then there's food. Oh, food.

Most of us have been there. It's late. The day is done. And almost without deciding to, the phone is out and food is being ordered.

Not because of real hunger, the kind that builds over hours. It's more of a restlessness that needed somewhere to go. A vague pull toward something. And within three taps, without planning, without really deciding, food is on its way.

That frictionless path from impulse to order is not accidental. It is the product of extraordinary engineering. Over 60% of calories in most modern diets now come from ultra-processed foods (Monteiro et al., BMJ, 2019). Your appetite, in a very real sense, is no longer entirely yours. It's been studied, mapped, and targeted.

Resisting it isn't a matter of willpower. It's fighting a billion-dollar R&D budget with your bare hands.

The Collision - Ambition Meets Addiction

So here's where we've landed, and I want you to feel the full weight of this collision.

The world is simultaneously telling you to want more, and training you to wait less.

To be ambitious and to expect everything immediately.

To build something that takes years while making it harder every day to focus for 20 minutes.

Isn't that a strange thing to do to a person? To light a fire under their ambition and pour water on their patience at the same time? And yet that is precisely the environment most of us are living inside, every single day.

We didn't sit down and decide to become impatient. We were optimised into it. One notification, one autoplay, one 10-minute delivery at a time.

The WHO's 2022 Mental Health Report found that anxiety and depression rose by over 25% globally, most sharply among people aged 15 to 35 - the first generation raised entirely inside this system. That restless, never-enough, always-slightly-behind feeling that so many people describe? It has a structural explanation. It's not you failing to be grateful enough. It's two enormous forces playing tennis with your nervous system, and you're the ball.

What This Looks Like for the Generation Growing Up Inside It

And if you're reading this as a parent, or someone a little older - the next time you watch a teenager scroll past something and immediately switch to something else, resist the instinct to call it laziness. They didn't choose this architecture. It was built around them before they had the judgment to question it. The same forces act on all of us. They just started earlier, with fewer defences, and more of their identity still being formed. That's not an excuse. But it is an explanation worth sitting with.

One Thing Worth Trying - Not a System, Just a Practice

So what do you do?

I'm genuinely not sure I have the full answer. And I'm a little suspicious of anyone who says they do. Because this is a genuinely hard problem, and clean solutions to hard problems usually mean someone has skipped a step.

But here's what I've found useful, for what it's worth.

Pick one domain. Just one. And defend it.

Not all of them. That's exhausting and probably unsustainable. Just one corner of your life where you don't let the instant-gratification machine win. Where you practice, regularly and deliberately, the experience of wanting something and staying with that wanting long enough for it to become something real.

For me it's reading. I decided that reading is the one place I don't switch to Shorts when it gets slow. No half-reading while a podcast plays in the background. Just the book and the time it takes. It sounds almost embarrassingly small. But it does something important. It reminds me, again and again, that I can wait. That the second marshmallow is real. That not everything worth having arrives in 90 seconds.

The point isn't reading specifically. The point is having at least one place the algorithm hasn't reached.

Maybe for you it's cooking a meal from scratch once a week instead of ordering in. Maybe it's finishing a film instead of switching after 20 minutes. Maybe it's writing something, anything by hand. The activity matters less than the practice underneath it: choosing to stay when every signal around you is saying leave.

The Tension Isn't Going Away But You Can Name It

The two forces aren't going away. If anything, they're getting stronger. The aspiration machine will keep running. The dopamine economy will keep optimising. That uncomfortable tension, the restlessness, the FOMO, the feeling of being simultaneously too much and not enough, may simply be the defining inner weather of our era.

But weather you can name is different from weather that controls you.

And that maybe is where it starts.

What's the one domain you'd defend? I'm curious. Not rhetorically, I'd actually like to know. Your the comments section to share your thoughts and plan.

References: Mischel, W. et al. (1989), Science; Duckworth, A. et al. (2007), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Monteiro, C. et al. (2019), BMJ; Microsoft Attention Spans Research Report (2015); WHO World Mental Health Report (2022); Harari, Y.N., Sapiens (2011); Ipsos Global Aspirations Survey (2023)

The Life Span of Innovation: How Ideas Evolve and Obsolete

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 04:56:00 +0000

The Lifespan of Innovation: From Ideation to Obsolescence

Innovation drives progress, but like all things, it has a lifespan. Every innovation follows a natural cycle from groundbreaking ideas to widespread adoption and eventual obsolescence. This post delves into the journey of innovation and explores ways to prolong its relevance.

What Defines the Life Span of Innovation?

The life span of an innovation is shaped by its relevance, adaptability, and impact over time. Innovations often begin as ideas that solve specific problems or meet unmet needs.

As time passes, newer solutions can replace older innovations, moving them toward obsolescence. This cycle typically consists of:

Ideation: The innovation is conceived, addressing a gap or offering an improved solution.
Adoption: As people recognize its value, the innovation gains traction and popularity.
Saturation: Growth slows as the innovation becomes widespread and loses its novelty.
Obsolescence: Newer innovations take over, making the older ones redundant.

Examples of Innovation Lifespans

1. Tata Docomo’s Per-Second Billing

Ideation: Tata Docomo revolutionized India’s telecom industry by introducing per-second billing, challenging the traditional per-minute billing model.
Adoption: Customers loved the transparency and affordability, making Tata Docomo a household name in no time.
Saturation: Competitors quickly adopted the same billing strategy, eroding Tata Docomo’s unique edge.
Obsolescence: Over time, the telecom market shifted focus to data-centric services, sidelining the initial innovation.

2. The Compact Disc (CD)

Ideation: CDs replaced cassette tapes, offering better sound quality and durability in the 1980s.
Adoption: By the 1990s, CDs became the dominant format for music storage and distribution.
Saturation: Digital music downloads and platforms like iTunes overtook CDs.
Obsolescence: Streaming services like Spotify made CDs nearly obsolete.

3. Blackberry Smartphones

Ideation: Blackberry’s secure, email-focused smartphones became indispensable for professionals in the early 2000s.
Adoption: Its popularity soared, earning a loyal customer base.
Saturation: Competitors like Apple and Android offered superior features and app ecosystems.
Obsolescence: Blackberry eventually exited the market, unable to keep up with changing consumer expectations.

How to Extend the Life Span of an Innovation

While obsolescence is inevitable, innovators can take steps to prolong the relevance of their creations:

Continuous Improvement
Regularly enhance the product to stay competitive and meet evolving needs.
Diversification
Adapt the innovation for new applications or markets to expand its appeal.
Ecosystem Building
Develop a support system around the innovation, as Apple did with the App Store, to increase its value. Discover how building an ecosystem can sustain and enhance innovation over time in my post on Do You Have an Ecosystem to Support Your Innovation?.
Customer-Centric Evolution
Stay connected with users to shape the innovation’s future based on their preferences and challenges.

Conclusion

The life span of an innovation is a journey from ideation to obsolescence, but it’s not set in stone. With strategic thinking and adaptability, innovators can extend their creations' relevance and leave a lasting legacy.

What are your thoughts on the lifespan of innovation? Have you encountered examples like Tata Docomo or Blackberry? Share your insights in the comments below!

Building an Ecosystem to Support Your Innovation: Key Strategies and Insights

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 04:51:00 +0000

The Ecosystem That Powers Innovation: A Perspective

Innovation has never been as hyped as it is today. Innovation is at the heart of everything from technology to academia, pharmaceuticals to government policies, energy generation to fashion. It’s reshaping how we live, work, and interact with the world around us.

This post is dedicated to innovators striving to push boundaries. While I’m not an “Innovation Guru,” I want to share a perspective that might change how you approach innovation.

The drive to innovate often stems from a strong emotional force, like frustration or anger. In this post, I explore how such emotions can fuel innovation when paired with a supportive ecosystem. Read more in Harness Anger as a Tool for Innovation.

The Trigger for This Post

Recently, I downloaded an app called Culinary Treats. Privacy-conscious as I am, I usually avoid turning on location services on my smartphone. Yet, this app compelled me to change. Why?

The app uses location data to find nearby eateries offering discounts, like 15% off your bill. That’s a compelling trade-off for a privacy-minded person like me. I was willing to compromise—for savings.

This got me thinking about the power of ecosystems in driving innovation and adoption.

Strategies to Monetize Innovation

To effectively monetize innovation, two primary strategies come to mind:

Customer-Centric Innovation
Build solutions based on what customers want. This is the most common approach and can lead to quick adoption but is often easy for competitors to replicate.
Ecosystem-Centric Innovation
Create an ecosystem around your innovation. Unlike standalone solutions, ecosystems are harder to replicate, offering a competitive edge and acting as a barrier to entry for rivals.

Why Focus on Ecosystems?

Adopting new, innovative ideas often requires users to change their habits—learning, unlearning, and adapting. Without a strong perceived benefit, customers might resist change.

A well-designed ecosystem enhances the perceived value of innovation, encouraging customers to embrace it. It:

Amplifies Benefits: The ecosystem magnifies the value of the core innovation.
Transforms Reluctance into Advocacy: A hesitant user becomes a promoter when the ecosystem delivers added value.
Fosters Loyalty: Customers are drawn to the collective benefits, not just the individual solution.

Example: Apple’s App Store and iTunes

Apple’s success with iTunes and the App Store demonstrates the transformative power of ecosystems.

iTunes: Offers the largest library of songs, creating immense value for users.
App Store: Brings together developers to create innovative apps, turning the iPhone into more than just a phone.

The App Store ecosystem has turned the iPhone into a stethoscope for doctors, a banking tool, and a retail platform. This ecosystem elevated the iPhone far beyond its original purpose.

Contrast this with Microsoft’s Windows Phone. Its lack of apps created a vicious cycle—customers avoided the platform because of limited apps, and developers avoided it due to a lack of users. This highlights how an ecosystem can make or break innovation.

Conclusion

For innovators, the challenge lies in being creative and building an ecosystem that amplifies their innovation’s significance. A robust ecosystem transforms an idea into a movement, giving it identity and longevity.

What’s your take on building ecosystems to support innovation? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Building an ecosystem is crucial for sustaining innovation, but what happens when innovation reaches its peak? Learn more about the stages an innovation goes through and how ecosystems prolong its relevance in my post on the Life Span of Innovation.

How can you use your Anger to be Innovative

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Sat, 22 Apr 2023 10:56:00 +0000

Our lives are all about the actions that we take. An inaction is also a form of action. To take any action, we have to spend energy.

For example, my mental energy was invested in thinking about the content of this post. And physical energy was invested in the time I spent sitting and typing this article.

In this post, I want to talk about the fundamental form of energy that we all possess "Our Anger"

Anger is energy in an undiluted form. And so it can be molded, it can be channelized, it can be harnessed.

Anger, like fire, possesses a dual nature. Uncontrolled, it can be destructive; yet, when channeled constructively, it provides warmth, energy, and the impetus for progress

To understand why I say so, let's first understand what is Anger and why do we get Angry?

Why do we get Angry

Recall the last time you experienced Anger!

You were driving to the office and didn't want to get stuck in traffic, but you did get stuck, and that irritated you.

You want the kids to behave in a certain way, but they do not, which angers you.

Your boss doesn't listen to what you have to say and that makes you angry,

You read an article about corruption and that triggers an angry response in you...

In all the above cases, you got angry because your expectations were unmet...

Anger - The Trigger for Innovation

The world we live in is not a perfect place and many problems need to be solved. Organizations, communities, and government bodies are always looking for Innovation to solve these problems. But,

To solve a problem, we need a trigger; I feel that trigger is anger.

When we get angry about some issue, it means we have seen a gap. A gap between what can be done and what is available, a gap between expectations and reality.

And these gap needs to be filled.

Our Anger indicates to us that there are unsolved problems that are waiting for an answer. In other words, there is an untapped opportunity, the opportunity that can be tapped through Innovation.

How to Use Anger as a Tool for Innovation

Pinpoint the Source of Irritation
- Anger frequently signals an underlying problem. Interrogate your frustration: What is deficient? What is causing this discontent? This introspection often serves as the genesis of innovation.
Channel the Energy Into Questions
- Instead of reacting impulsively, use your anger to fuel curiosity:
  - Why does this problem exist?
  - What could be done differently?
  - What would the ideal solution look like?
Break the Rules (Creatively)
- Anger disrupts the status quo—it’s a sign that the current system isn’t working. Use that momentum to think beyond the obvious. Innovation thrives when we challenge assumptions and explore new possibilities.
Prototype Your Solution
- Turn your frustration into action. Sketch out ideas, build a prototype, or test a new approach. Use the energy of anger to keep pushing forward, even when obstacles arise.
Collaborate and Iterate
- Share your ideas with others and invite feedback. Anger might spark the initial idea, but collaboration refines it into a viable innovation.

The Innovation Cycle: Problem → Frustration → Breakthrough

Throughout history, anger has fueled countless innovations:

The Wright Brothers were frustrated by the lack of human flight—they turned that frustration into the airplane.
Elon Musk has repeatedly channeled his anger at inefficiencies into groundbreaking innovations, from Tesla to SpaceX.
Your Next Breakthrough could be waiting in the problem that’s making you angry today.

Turning Frustration into Impact: Anger can be a powerful driver of innovation, but without the right ecosystem to support and shape that energy, impactful solutions might never see the light of day. Explore how an innovation ecosystem plays a pivotal role in channeling ideas into reality in my post on Do You Have an Ecosystem to Support Your Innovation?.

Conclusion

Anger is more than an emotion—it’s a tool. It’s raw energy that highlights what’s not working and pushes us to find solutions. The key is not to suppress it but to channel it into creativity and action.

The next time you feel anger rising, don’t dismiss it. Lean into it. Ask yourself: What’s broken? What could be better? Then, use that energy to innovate.

Remember: frustration is the seed of every great idea, and anger is the fuel that helps it grow.

How Spirituality Quotient paves way for Success instead of Stress and Frustration

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Sun, 20 Nov 2022 07:17:00 +0000

Every moment of our life, we are taking action. Some actions are conscious while others (like breathing) are taken without our full attention. Not taking any action is also an action. And, every action has an outcome.

The goal of this post

When taking an action, generally, we have a fair idea of the outcome. We have some expectations about the outcome, and we have perceived the benefits of the outcome.

At times, the outcome is as per our expectations ⌣ and so we are motivated to continue the action.

But many times, we do not get the desired outcomes. And this could be a difficult situation.

Let us start our journey by taking the example of this blog.

I have taken the action of writing this blog. Now, the outcome of this action could be

1. That this article is liked by the audience and it adds to my credibility as a Blogger

2. That the article simply goes unnoticed. A few people read it, but it does not create any impact.

3. That the article receives negative reviews and this pushes down my motivation to become a blogger.

Through this post, I aim to propose the Spiritual Quotient (SQ) as an effective tool to handle situation where our motivation is low as the outcome of the action is not as per our expectations. The SQ can help us not only handle such situation but also bounce back.

Before we go ahead and understand the significance of the Spiritual Quotient in Success, we have to understand the equation of Action and the Outcome.

Understanding the Equation of Action

To take any action, we need 3 things

1. Skills

2. Tools/Resources - These could be both human and non-human resources

2. Energy

The metric used to measure how capable are we to take an action is known to us as

IQ - The Intelligence Quotient

IQ helps us in taking action. A good IQ means you are better equipped, you have analytical capabilities, and you have the required skills to complete the action.

But, because we are not alone in this world, many times we need to work with others to complete an action. Also, our actions have an impact on others and others' actions have an impact on ours.

So, the other skill that we require to take action is the EQ - The Emotional Quotient

EQ helps us in interacting with our fellow humans to carry on with the action

Going back to my example of writing this blog post, my action is the blog post.

And the expected outcome is that the blogpost would be liked by you, my readers. I expect it to have a positive impact on your lives and so I hope that you will like it and share it with your friends and family. And thus my reader base will grow.

Till the time, your actions are bearing fruits as per your expectations. It is all good.

If my audience base grows, I taste some degree of success and that motivates me to continue writing.

What is the need for a Spiritual Quotient?

But when the action results in an outcome we have not expected, things start becoming challenging.

Now, it becomes difficult to continue with the action as you start losing motivation, you start losing confidence, and you start wondering what it is that you are doing wrong.

So even after trying for a few years, If I do not manage to grow a substantial base of readers, I would wonder if I should continue with my blog or not. Isn't it?

My blog is just an example. It could be any action that we take.

To continue taking an action, we need some idea of what is there in the future? Are we on the right path? What are the adjustments and enhancements that we need to do before we take the next step? We need some clarity and some direction. Isn't it?

And at times, this clarity, this direction is just not there. It is missing. It is not available how hard you try.

And many of us simply give up, and we stop taking action.

This means, probably we let go off the opportunity to achieve our goals and dreams, we let go off the opportunity to exploit our full potential and create a positive impact.

I say, in this kind of situation, where there is no clarity, there is no sense of direction, and there is no motivation to continue further, we need the next skill. That is the Spiritual Quotient (SQ).

SQ - Spiritual Quotient helps us in dealing with outcomes that are not as per our expectations.

SQ allows you to introspect and put things into the right perspective.

Without a strong SQ, it is possible that the unexpected outcome fogs your mind and you end in a spiral of negative thoughts - resulting eventually in depression.

The perspective that we need to use to evaluate your action and its outcome is that you and your life are bigger than any action and the associated outcome.

And this is because the outcome of action follows this equation

Outcome = Your action + Unknown variables

How Spiritual Quotient helps us to bounce back

And we need to appreciate and accept the significance of these Unknown variables. That is the whole idea of the Spiritual quotient.

You are no longer driven by your Ego thinking that your action only determines the outcome. You accept the fact that the outcome of your action is impacted by variables that are unknown to you and are not in your control.

This perspective helps you to deal with unexpected outcomes. You are aware of the fact that there are other things at play. You are no longer afraid to lose. All you could do this to learn from the outcome and improve your skills and capabilities.

The fear of losing is no longer occupying your mind space. And so your mental energy is free and it can be channelized on the action and nothing else. Thus with each iteration, your action is becoming better and better.

But making this perspective a thinking habit is easier said than done. A strong SQ helps us in building this thinking habit.

Summary

If your SQ is weak, it impacts the EQ and IQ and thus ensures the outcome of our actions is generally not as per our expectations.

A strong SQ helps you in dealing with unexpected outcomes. It makes you flexible enough to change your route and continue your journey. The flexibility allows your IQ and EQ to be widened and thus continue on your journey with the renewed IQ and EQ.

Do let me know your feedback. Feel free to share your personal experiences and how you dealt with them. Do not hesitate to share this article with your friends and family if you think it is worthy.

The easiest way to improve EQ is to watch out our Intentions when dealing with others

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 08:05:00 +0000

EQ (Emotional Quotient) is one of the key traits of a Leader in the modern world. There was a time when the IQ was the hero, but now EQ is at the top.

The book "Hit Refresh" by Satya Nadella talks about how he used Empathy to refresh the culture at Microsoft and instilled new energy and a new sense of purpose in the company.

In this post, I want to discuss a simple technique to improve EQ.

I am not a researcher or an academician, so whatever I write is based on my experience and observation. And it has worked for me.

To start with let us define EQ so that we all are on the same page.
What is EQ?

In simple words, EQ can be defined as being aware of our own emotions. i.e we are aware of what we speak, how we feel, and what makes us feel the way we are feeling.

The idea is, by being aware of our own state of mind and emotions, we would be able to understand others as well. And when we are equipped to understand others, we can engage with them empathetically.

This is the theory.

That is, it defines the What and Why part of EQ. But I am concerned about the "How" part.

How can I engage with others empathetically?

The solution that has worked for me is "Watching my Intentions".

We deal with people all the time; In our personal lives and in professional career.

During the interaction with others, at times, we are being told what to do and at times we are telling others, what they should do.

This is a continuous process.

The point where Leadership comes into picture and so EQ becomes important is when you are telling others what to do - what is your Intention then?

Let me take an example to explain this.

Let us say you are a Team lead and one of the freshman who joined your team recently is lagging behind in performance. And so you decide to talk to him about it.

There are 2 ways in which the discussion could be carried.

1. Talk about the potential

You could talk about the potential you see in the freshman. You help him understand how his current performance is not matching his potential. You enquire if there are any issues or challenges at work, at home. You offer to help him in every way possible so that his performance could be improved.

2. Talk about the performance gap

The other approach is you call up the freshman and talk about the deficiencies in the performance. You talk about the short-falls in his/her and how you are in the line of fire because of it. You ask the freshman to buckle up or be ready for the consequences.

It is no rocket science to understand the difference between the 2 discussion approaches.

The relationship between Emotional Intelligence and Intentions

In approach 1, you are probably agitated with the performance dip and you feel it can be improved and so you are talking to the freshman. You are trying to understand if there are any challenges and solve them so that the freshman can perform better. You are concerned about the results and also the freshman. And probably, the freshman is feeling the pressure but he/she is also feeling that you can be approached if needed. And it is comforting isn't it. We all want to have some support system to fall back on in tough situations.

In approach 2, you are probably agitated with the performance dip and you simply put it all on the freshman. You are not showing any concern. You are not interested to know if there is something that is bothering the freshman which is impacting the performance. The freshman is feeling belittled in this approach. He/she is feeling lonely in the battle.

Maybe you didn't mean to belittle the freshman. But that's how he/she has felt.

And the ability to understand how the other might feel is Empathy, the cornerstone of EQ. Isn't it?

So, to be more empathetic, one has to be conscious, be mindful of the conversation, the action and its impact on the other person.

It doesn't happen overnight but with practice, it does happen.

In summary, better EQ is an outcome of being mindful and being conscious of the actions and their impact on other people.

Do share your what you feel about EQ and what are the methods you use to improve it...

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Lessons on Work ethics while getting my shoes polished

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 19:00:00 +0000

Recently, I went to a roadside cobbler(mochi) to get my shoes polished.

I am trying to use the mobile phone as less as possible so I put it in my pocket and watching the cobbler work.

After watching leisurely for a few minutes, I got seriously interested in his work.

He was working on my shoes with the utmost sincerity.

He took out the lace of my shows and de-dusted them.

He offered me his slippers while I wait to get my shoes polished.

He applied a dash of polish to it to bring back the black color.

He applied a layer of wax and then a layer of polish.

The shows were shining bright like new.

I paid him money and while walking back, I thought this guy doesn't expect Appreciation. He doesn't expect a hike. There might not be any change in his life even if he continues to work with the same ethics for his entire life. He will only get what the market rate for shoe polish is.

And I started drawing parallels to how we typically work.

We too do quality work but there are expectations associated with it. Take out the carrots of salary hike and promotions and we might be least concerned with quality in our work.

For the cobbler, doing quality work is his survival. If he doesn't do, he will surely lose customers. But if he does quality work, there is no guarantee that he will get more customers. Such is the irnoy of being in survival mode.

As they say, the problems that we crib out are elite class problems. Because they are not associated with our survival, they are associated with our expectations and aspirations...

I am trying to say we shouldn't expect hike and promotion at work, I am just trying to highlight the work ethic of the roadside cobbler and significance of it for his survival.

Every time I feel like not giving my 100%, I think about the cobbler and how he works...

Maybe this is leadership and what is called as lead without a title

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

AI, Objectivity and Subjectivity

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 10:23:00 +0000

Objectivity helps to quantify things and thus easily measure, scale, and explain them

Subjectivity is important to understand the context. Depending upon the context, the objective values of things change.

The Loss of objectivity is obvious and can be detected easily...

The loss of subjectivity is difficult to detect. Loss of subjectivity while achieving Objectivity is like the saying "Operation successful but the patient died"

One could say, the modern economical growth at the expense of the Environment is an example...

Human Intelligence in understanding this difference between Subjectivity and Objectivity and continuously balancing them

In AI, intelligence is in the form of math, in the form of models made out of complex math equations...

This allows adding Objectivity to the Machines very easily.

But what about Subjectivity?

Subjectivity has to be converted into objectivity.

We humans have been fuzzy operators...Using our gut to take emergency decisions while using deep thinking for more other aspects. And there may be a complete disconnect here. What you do in an emergency might be very different from a normal situation. Isn't it?

But with AI the intelligence is concretized as per the model and the data.

So as AI increasing becomes part of our lives, maybe the freedom to make decisions on subjectivity will be reduced. We will have to abide by the intelligence of the machines too...

What you think?

How to stay committed to the plans and be successful? Focus on these 3 aspects

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 13:26:00 +0000

What is Commitment?

When we say - "I am committed to fitness", we are saying that -

We are channelizing our energies and efforts into getting fit.

That's what commitment means.

You can replace fitness with a relationship and still the meaning of "commitment" remains the same. You can replace relationships with say reskilling/upskilling and the meaning of commitment still remains the same.

Our lives are enriched by our family, the people we work with, our personal goals, our experiences and so we are committed to multiple things at any point in time.

The issue is, we tend to falter in many commitments. It happens to all of us all the time.

And this puzzled me.

I started to think if there is something that can be done so that once we are committed to something, we stick to it. The number of failed commitments is minimized.

The answer that I came up with is this post.

Why do we fail in our commitments?

In simple words, we quit or we miss our commitments because we do not have enough motivation to continue.

And the reasons for the dwindled motivation level could be many.

So, the journey of understanding commitment is basically a journey to understand the variables that impact Motivation.

I feel Commitment or the motivation required to stay committed is an outcome of the amalgamation of 3 following human traits

Conviction
Acceptance
Intention

The role of Conviction in Commitment

As per the dictionary, the meaning of conviction is - a firmly held belief or opinion.

And that's what it is :)

In our case, if we are fully convinced about the action that we are taking, we have increased our chances our being committed to the task. And to be fully convinced, the action has to touch our core beliefs and values.

For example, when you commit yourself to fitness,

is it because you are fully convinced about the benefits of being fit? Or

is it because everybody around you is talking about fitness and so you jumped in too?

Starting something by getting inspired by others are absolutely fine, but then it should be converted into your own firm belief in fitness. Else, there is a high probability that you will quit the fitness program as you lack the motivation required to follow the disciplined diet and workout regime.

Motivation is the outcome of your conviction about the action you are taking.

How Acceptance impact Commitment?

When we take an action, there is for sure an outcome. The outcome that we anticipate, the outcome that we expect is our Goal.

But then, the outcome might not be what you expected.

And how you manage this situation is the test of your commitment.

When the outcomes are not favorable or to state more dramatically when our goals are shattered, how do we accept it is the question?

Do we see it as a temporary setback, learn from it, and thus improve our skills and beliefs?Or

do we see it as a grave mistake and decide not to try something of this sort again?

How do we accept the setback is what decides if the setback will help us learn and strengthen our commitment or will it push us into a shell and thus make us quit.

Continuing our fitness example, let us say you have thought that by working out and the following the diet, you will lose XYZ kilos in 3 months. And, that did not happen :(

Do you quit the fitness program thinking you will not be able to lose weight?

say you take a break (if needed), consult experts and get into action again. And Stay committed to the fitness goal.

There is no right or wrong here. What you feel is right is right and what you feel is wrong is wrong.

How Intention impacts commitment

The intention is a more subtle and often ignored aspects of the commitment.

Intention could be considered a part of the conviction, but it has a huge impact on commitment and so we are talking about it separately.

Intention is basically the reason behind the action that you are committed to.

In our example, the fundamental question is why did you join the fitness program, is it because you want to get fit or is it because you are trying to outsmart a friend/peer/sibling of yours.

The question looks similar to the once we discussed in the "Conviction" part. But there is a subtle difference. Here, the focus is to decipher the reason behind your conviction.

Again, there is no right or wrong here. Every reason is a reason and your reasons are right for you.

We are talking about intentions because when the going gets tough, the intention is what will provide the necessary motivation.

If the intention was just to outsmart somebody or it was FOMO, then tough situations will get better of you. But if the intention is pure, you will manage to have the motivation to sail through difficult times.

Summary

By focussing on conviction, you are clear about the reasons for your commitment.
By focussing on acceptance, you are preparing yourself to handle the unexpected situation and you ensure your motivation doesn't take a nosedive
By focussing on the intention, you are double-checking on the reasons for your commitment.

In short, we are creating a virtual loop such that the motivation levels are not impacted and thus our probability of staying committed is increased.

Hope this article helps your stay committed to your goals and you enjoy grand success.

Do share your feedback in the comments...

2 Key Insights to launch successful products - From 2 years of Entrepreneurial experience

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 07:26:00 +0000

I started my Entrepreneurial journey in Jun-2018 and it has been 2 years now.

And I can say without any doubt that the last 2 years have been the most action-filled days of my life. There is never a dull moment.

At times, yes only at times (I hope I will get more such calls :)), I get phone calls seeking advice on starting up a company from friends or friends of friends. And, I have shared only 2 things with them.

It has resonated with them and so I thought, I will write a post about it.

What is the foundation of a successful Business

The foundation of a successful business, a start-up or a product in an organization is laid on 2 pillars

1. A product/services for which there are buyers and they are willing to pay.
2. The product/service should be built/developed within a given timeframe and budget

Failing to do any one of these will hit the potential of the business being successful.

And the following 2 insights from my Entrepreneurial journey are focussed on strengthening these pillars.

Insight 1 - Customers and their needs are multi-layered
Insight 2 - Pick up the toughest task first

Insight 1 - Customers and their needs are multi-layered.

One cannot build a product/service without understanding who is willing to buy the product/service and "WHY".

But, when we are hit by an idea, our excitement is at its peak and we want to get into action right away. And generally, we don't invest enough time and effort on this point.

Thanks to the internet, various concepts like Customer segments, Lean startup, Product management strategy, Agile, Hook framework, Business model canvas, etc. Are known to us or at least have been heard and read. And so, no, I am not going to repeat them. I have used these concepts and continue doing so.

I have realized that each customer segment can have further segmentation and this process goes on. We do customer segmentation all the time, but is it being done deep enough that you have picked up the target segment.

For example, My start-up - www.thinkcerti.com is in the Business of helping IT professional reskill and upskill easily. To do so, we recommend personalized learning paths to IT professionals.

So, the target Customers for my start-up are IT professionals. The first level of segmentation would be Freshers and Experienced professionals. At this level, you can realize that these guys need to reskill/upskill and so you could stop segmentation here.

And that's the trap I want to highlight in this post.

We need to do further segmentation because we need to understand

When do folks from these segments need to reskill/upskill?
And when the need comes, how are they fulfilling it today?

If you fail to understand when the Customer need arises and how is it fulfilled, you will fail to find the magical "product-market" fit. Understanding what is Customer need is the key here.

And I have come up with TACSI model to decipher Customer needs and its posted here.

So, as an Entrepreneur, as a Product Manager, it is very essential to keep on segmenting the customers until you pinpoint the segment of people who have the need that you want to fulfill.

The the focus of this exercise should be the need and not the product/service. The product/service is developed based on understanding the needs of this specific segment.

At the end of this exercise, the expected results are

You will get a clear picture of who is your customer.
You will get a clear picture of their needs
You will get a clear picture of the Persona of the customer
You can use the above information to build your product/service
And build a business model around it.

Failing to do this deep Customer segmentation is a sure shot way to lose time and money.

Insight 2 - Pick up the toughest task first

Once you have understood the customer needs, you would want to get the ball rolling.

You will create a plan of action, a project plan, a task list, and get going.

The tasks that we have to do to build the product/service can be simply categorized as easy and complex.

And we tend to pick up the easy tasks first. Because we are comfortable with them and we can see we are making progress.

And here is where the second trap lies.

In general, the toughest task(s) are the heart of the product. We must get a hang of it at the start.

We need to understand what makes the task complex.

Is it technical feasibility,

is it a lack of clarity about what needs to be done.

By picking up the toughest task, you might feel anxious and uncertain, but it is good and cost-effective to face this anxiety in the early days then later in the journey.

When you pick up to work on the toughest task and If you realize, technical feasibility is the issue, you might want to do some POC, trials to decipher the complexity. Your hiring could be aligned accordingly.

Or If the issue is a lack of clarity on what needs to be done or why are we doing this, congratulations. You saved yourself from heading straight to a pitfall.

Meeting the beast head-on at the start and domesticating it is the best way to move forward. When you understand what you are dealing with, you can allocate resources accordingly.

I hope you enjoyed reading this and these insights help you in your journey. Do share your views in the comments section

To fight fake news, leverage what is spreading it - The Crowd

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 12:39:00 +0000

The issue of fake news is the unwelcomed side-effect of Social Media and Connected World...

The fake news issue is impacting elections and thus Democracy - the very fabric of modern society. The fake news issue is used to spread hatred, misguide people, and to cheat people.

The power that spreads fake news is - Us, we the people, the crowd, the masses.

So why can't we design a solution that allows the crowd to stop the spread of fake news? In this post, I propose a solution to fight fake news using Crowdsourcing.

The power of Crowdsourcing

The power of crowdsourcing is everywhere to see. In the modern digital world, we are the content creator and consumers.

We have Wikipedia because people volunteered to add articles. We have open-source software because people volunteered to release it on platforms like Github.

The businesses are using crowdsourcing to solve some of the most intriguing challenges through crowdsourcing platforms like Innocentive.

Some of the most innovative start-ups are getting funded on crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter.

And this triggered the thought process in my mind to come up with the following solution.

The Solution to Fight Fake news using Crowdsourcing

The solution is simple. Empower the users to decide what is fake and what is not.

A high-level structure of the solution would be

Use crowdsourcing to Fight fake news

Fake news tagging - The way social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter allows people to like and share posts. It should another button to tag article/post as fake. People are encouraged to use this tag.
Check if its really fake news - The articles that have got tagged as Fake news beyond a threshold limit is then pushed for the next level of scrutiny. The tagged articles can be reviewed by Human experts at the next level. It can also be used as a dataset for the AI-driven fake news detection tools.
Gamify the approach - Stackoverflow, Github, Quora, reddit are some of the most successful communities. And their success is due to their organized community management approach. They have used crowdsourcing and a point-based approach to keep the community healthy and growing. The same approach is recommended to manage the community that is helping in the fight against Fake news.
The user is given credit points based on the final decision of the article. If the articles are fake, the user gets points and his credibility is increased. If the article is not fake, the user doesn’t get any points. The user should be able to display their points and badges on their profile, website, blog, etc.

Hopefully, over a while, the power of the crowd takes over and the fake news is weeded out.

A potential loophole and the solution

The people who spread fake news are geniuses. They will find out a way to sabotage this mechanism by tagging genuine articles as fake or tagging fake articles are genuine.

To take care of this situation, the threshold value can be used.

If articles are tagged as fake or genuine beyond certain %, then the next level of scrutiny is required. Based on the next level outcome, the tagging should be made void and the user who tagged should be barred from anymore tagging.

Do you any ideas to fight fake news, do share them using the comments. Let us make this conversation.

Let us fight fake news together...

Covid-19 thoughts - Creating a Family fund similar to PM Cares fund

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 05:17:00 +0000

The Covid-19 imposed times are challenging for all of us. Some of us are infected, some of us have lost dear ones, some of us have suffered setbacks in business, some of us have been laid off, and some of us are mentally impacted by the lockdown.
In short, this Covid-19 event has impacted every person on this planet directly or indirectly. And probably, this is happening for the first time in history.

In such testing times, to survive, having a strong emotional and financial support system is very critical.

And emotional wellness and financial wellness are connected to each other to some extent.
For middle-class and lower-middle-class folks like us, not having money to pay bills is one of the key reasons for stress and anxiety. And the fear of losing jobs and business is adding to this anxiety.

There is a possibility that some of us are in need of some financial help. For some, it could be easy to go and talk to friends and family, but for others, it might not be. The reasons for this could be many.

You might not want to ask for help to avoid embarrassment, and you might not have anyone financially strong in the immediate family. This could be our own imagination. Why somebody thinks in a particular way is a different discussion and not the agenda of this post.

The fact is that there is someone in our family who needs help and there are people who are ready to help. But the connection is not being established between the two.

So, is there a solution here. The solution should allow one to get help without the stigma of asking for help.

To come to a solution, let us draw a parallel to the banking system. If I need money, I would go to the bank and take a loan if it is possible. We do not feel embarrassed to take a loan from the bank.

So why don’t we create a family fund similar to PM Cares Fund

The design of the Family Fund - It is similar to PM Cares fund

This solution is used everywhere. There are trusts and foundations that are formed to financially help retired army officers, families of deceased army personnel, and so on.

The idea here is to create a similar trust or fund specifically for the family members.
When I say family, I am not limiting myself to the immediate family or siblings. We could include uncles, aunts, and whoever you trust shares the same values. It is like any other voluntary club. People of the same interests and values join similar clubs.

How will the Family fund work

All the members of the family join willingly and contribute a certain amount to the trust.

There is no compulsion on the amount of money to be contributed. Remember, the agenda is to help. The amount of money contributed by a member is not known to others. It is all anonymous. The idea is to help without focusing on the name.

The money of the trust is managed by a professional bank. This is a new revenue stream for banks.

Based on the need, the members of the trust can withdraw money from the fund anonymously. The bank will know, but the trust members will not. One of the purposes was to avoid the stigma of asking for monetary help.

We could list down the situations in which the trust members are allowed to withdraw

To ensure everybody benefits, there could be terms and conditions on withdrawal limit/situation.

A key essence of a caring family is that we are there for each other in times of need. And I believe the Family Fund is a solution that helps in realizing this essence.

Do let me know what you guys think...

Leadership is decision making. Here are 2 simple frameworks to make better decisions

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Sun, 31 May 2020 16:30:00 +0000

We all are making decisions all the time and we want to make better decisions or right decisions. Every decision has an associated outcome. If the outcome aligns to our expectations, we say the decision was right.  Else we say the decision making could have been better.

Being in Leadership position is all about decision-making.

Being an Entrepreneur, I am making decisions all the time. 
I was making decisions earlier also, but the number of decisions I am making now are much more. And the impact of those decisions has increased a lot now. 

And so I was looking for simple yet effective tools to make better decisions. 

In fact, I made some not so good decisions and that forced me to look for tools. In this post I am sharing 2 tools that have worked for me. 

The process of Decision Making

Any decision making involves 2 steps
1. Understanding the present state
2. Anticipating the future or Outcome of the decision

And to carry out these 2 steps, we rely on
1. Information/Data
To understand the current situation
To understand the impact of the decision
2. Intuition/Experience
To make better sense of data
To judge if the data/information is good enough
The 2 frameworks we discuss in this post are for managing Information/Data part of the decision making process. 

We are focusing on the Information/Data part of decision making as Information is accessible to everybody. Whereas the Intuition/Experience is person dependent and improving it is a different ball game. 

Decision making process

The significance of the 2 frameworks
The frameworks we discuss in this post help us in 
Organizing the information
Consciously makes us think from different perspectives
A pre-requisite for Informed Decision making is gathering, filtering and organizing information. 

With the context set, lets start out journey...

Significance and Characteristics of Information

The information/data has to cover 2 aspects. It has to be as 
Accurate as possible and 
Generalized as possible. 
For example, in deciding what would could a vaccine for the Coronavirus(covid-19),  
We want to know the characteristics of the virus as much as possible - this is accuracy.

We want to many different symptoms as possible so that we understand the impact of the virus on the human body.  - this is generalization

The vaccine thus developed will help in curing the maximum number of patients. Isn't it. 

Lets say we were not able to get the data about all the symptoms and we developed a vaccine. There is a possibility that the patient who had the symptoms which we missed out will not be cured. And in fact, this means we have failed in accurately understanding the virus.

So how do we ensure the information we have is as accurate as possible and is as generalized as possible.

I have found these 2 frameworks to be useful
5W-1h + why not approach
6 thinking hats
Frameworks for better decision making

5W - 1H

5W and 1H stands for 

What
Whom
Why
Where
When
And How
Why not
I added "why not" to this list.

5W-1H approach allows me to focus on the accuracy of the information. The focus of any start-up is to build product/services that the Customer are willing to use and pay for. In product management, we call it the Desirability aspect of the product/service. 
The question is how do we know what are customers are willing to use and pay. 

       How do I use it.

For a given feature/service, I gather all the information that is available to me based on assumptions, surveys, experiments, discussions.  And I put it in an excel sheet that consists of column 5W-1H and why not. I added why not to list to bring the Devils advocate aspect to the analysis.

I then use this excel sheet to discuss stuff like the Marketing plan, Sales approach and Development prioritization.

6 thinking hats

With the accuracy part covered, we want to look at the generalization part. 

The 6 thinking hats is an approach to broaden the scope of thinking beyond the obvious - good/bad, right/wrong. 

  HAT

  What are we thinking about

  BLUE

  "The Big Picture"

  WHITE

  "Facts & Information"

  RED

  "Feelings & Emotions"

  BLACK

  "Critical Judgement"

  YELLOW

  "Positive"

  GREEN

  "New Ideas"

   How do I use it

For a given feature/service, I consciously wear each hat and think about that feature/service. The purpose here is to think as wide as possible about the feature/service. 

Putting this into practice

We have rolled out a Skill Fitment Test service to help job seekers prepare for the future in this lock down. We will use this service as sample to test the 2 frameworks.

Lets start with 5W-1H

Why - to help the job seekers checkout their skills fitment to the market needs

Whom - The Skills Fitment test is meant for the job seekers 

When - Job seekers who are looking for job/job change

What - And they want to understand skills gap and plan their learning effort

Where - Online

How - As simple as possible, by entering current skills and registering online for free

Why not - Because the job seekers 
Are not looking for job change or any skills assessment
Don't know us and so are skeptical about our skills assessment test 

Lets think wider using 6 thinking hats
Blue Hat - Focus on the Big picture
We want to help the Job Seekers excel in their Career. And for that, they have to reskill/upskill. The Skill fitment test is a good way to spread awareness about the skills gap. And thus show the significance of our career roadmap service
White Hat - Focus on the Facts and Information 
70% of the Indian IT professionals need to be reskilled, and there is less awareness about this fact. 
Red Hat - Focus on the Feeling and Emotions 
As a team, We are excited about the new service rollout. The development team is also confident about completing it in time. The service is low on complexity scale.

After completing the Skill fitment test, the job seeker will have clear idea of what he/she needs to learn. And thus enjoy Career growth 
Black Hat - Focus on critical judgement 
Why job seekers might not use our Skill fitment test service.
The job seekers might be expecting technical questions in an assessment. And we are not asking any technical questions. 
The job seekers might not want to get stressed knowing the skill gap if they are already in a job. And the perceived job loss threat is minimal.
Yellow Hat - Focus on Positive aspects
The proactive folks would be happy to use the service and plan for their Career ahead. 
Green Hat - Focus on the New ideas
We can ask the job seeker if he/she is interested in a technical and topic specific assessment. This way, we can link the Role and Technology specific skills test/quiz to the generic skills fitment test. 

The key findings from this exercise are the 
answers for the Why not point
The answers for the Green hat - New Ideas point

How is the discussion carried out

I carry out this exercise with the team and/or with myself depending upon the situation and the need. 
The idea is not make everybody learn these frameworks and make it a bureaucratic process. 

With the team

During the discussion with the team, I keep these frameworks in my mind.  And try to cover all the points of the frameworks so that I get as much as information as possible. And if there is something missing, we know what is missing. 

Apart from this, the exercise also helps in making the team feel that they valued. They feel they are a part of the Product journey and their opinion matters. It also helps them see the Product Roadmap. And this makes them understand the impact of their work on the product and the customers.

Hope you have enjoy reading this post...

Do you find decision making challenging, what tools and techniques do you use to make better decisions. Do share your insights. Lets make this a conversational topic and make better decision together.

Covid -19 infected 2020 - Year to reboot for high performance

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Thu, 28 May 2020 07:48:00 +0000

One of the most common troubleshooting technique used for our electronic devices like smartphones, computers, laptops , servers is reboot/restart.

This has proven to be quite effective to handle performance issues of the devices.

Regular Maintenance is Must

A common reason for performance drop in devices is the clutter that keeps on getting in the device memory as we are using it. When we reboot/restart the device, the temporary memory is cleared. And so often, the performance issue is cleared.

This act is a part of the process called as Regular Maintenance in the IT world.

Without regular maintenance, the device will not perform at its peak. We all must have seen some communication from our banks about scheduled downtime of systems for regular maintenance.

We need regular maintenance like our devices

We are like these devices. We also need regular maintenance. Vacation, family time, partying, hobbies are various ways and means of achieving this regular maintenance.

The other technique that has to be used for our regular maintenance is contemplation and reflection. And for this we need solitude.

We cannot contemplate when we are in Disney land, we cannot contemplate when are we watching our favorite super hero movie.

So the challenge of modern life is finding solitude or as we call it these days - "me-time".

The lock-down imposed by Covid-19 has given us this "me-time". Of course, we wouldn't want the "me-time" in the form of Covid-19.

But, now that we are in this situation, lets make the best use of it to prepare for the future. I understand that for many of who us who have lost jobs, lost dear ones to Covid, suffering from Covid-19

How am I Rebooting

I am using Covid-19 to reflect on the big decisions that I have taken in my life, their outcomes, my mistakes, my learning and what I could take it in the future.

I am reflecting on my regrets, my complexes, my shortcomings and see what can I do to overcome them.

I am reflecting on the happy times. The moments when somebody said thank you to me, I want to understand those patterns or habits and carry out them more frequently in the future.

I am reskilling/upskilling my self so that I am prepared for the post lock-down situation.

In short, lets use Covid-19 to reboot our lives, trash out the junk, strengthen the habits that are working, form new habits, acquire new skills and be prepared for the future.

Image by 95C from Pixabay

Shouldn't we measure the mid-career professionals differently

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Wed, 20 May 2020 07:08:00 +0000

The IT Companies are struggling to handle the mid career professionals. These folks are considered as organizational fat that needs to be reduced and so are in the line of fire.

In this post, I want to go through an approach which could help the organizations look differently at professionals who are in mid-career stage.

To start the discussion, let us understand what an organization's workforce is meant to do. The workforce is supposed to do 2 things primarily

Make Strategy
Execute the strategy

The top management makes the strategy and the workforce at the lower levels are busy in executing it.

The performance evaluation of the employees is done based on this.

The top management is generally evaluated based on revenue targets. The lower level is evaluated on the basis of the amount of work done and the quality of the work done.

The so called mid management (People who are not developers but are not in strategy making either) is doing a critical role. And it of ensuring that the strategy is executed well. We could call it as monitoring execution and managing efficiency.

Monitoring execution and Managing Efficiency

But this is often overlooked and under estimated. And the reason is the intangible nature of the outcome of the role.

If a project is completed on time and within budget, how can you quantify the effort of the project manager in the success of the project? You can say the Developers did a good job by looking at the low defects and the number of hours used to complete the work.

When the project starts making money, the management strategy will prove to be right. What about the project manager?

Traditionally, the mid management folks are evaluated based on targets and/or based on work done. And this is where the clarity of their impact is lost.

They are being measured using either the strategy parameters or the execution parameters.

A new approach to look at mid-career professionals

To understand the significance of the mid-management in the organization, there is a need to create a specific evaluation criteria

for measuring efficiency and
to measure monitoring of execution.

This approach will help the organization quantify the impact of good project management, delivery management in the top-line and bottom-line.

And over a period of time, a bench mark can be set to quantify the meaning of good project management/delivery management.

The point is to create a structure such that the monitoring and managing skills which are intangible in nature are measured and quantified.

Pointers for evaluation criteria

To start with, a simple solution is to create a scale from 1 to 5 and measure the efforts of the Project managers on at least the following 3 variables. The Variables can be broken down further based on the Project needs and the Organizations needs.

How efficiently were the resources utilized,
How promptly were the stakeholders updated and thus escalations were avoided.
What are the pro-active actions take to control budget over run and ensure timely completion of tasks

Of course, this is not an excuse to cover up the reskilling/upskilling needs for folks in mid-career stage. The approach proposed in this post should be used to measure the impact of the project managers on the Project success.

Reskilling/Upskilling is the need of the hour. We cannot escape from it and so nobody should try to escape from it.

Do let me know if the proposed approach makes sense.

Happy to take the discussion further based on your comments, views and feedback

Featured Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

6 Key Takeaways from Andrew Ng's Neural Networks and Deep Learning Course

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 07:00:00 +0000

I recently completed Andrew Ng's 'Neural Networks and Deep Learning' course on Coursera, which comprehensively introduces neural networks, a fundamental aspect of machine learning and AI.

My Goal: My aim in doing the course was to understand neural networks and deep learning and get hands-on experience in building a neural network.

I wrote this blog post to concretize my understanding of the concepts I learned about neural networks and share some insights with people like you who are planning to understand neural networks.

By reading this post, you will

Be able to decide if you should enroll in the course. Of course, this post will not be the sole reason for your decision.
Understand the basics of a neural network: The 6 points mentioned in this post are the key elements of any neural network. Even if you do not enroll in the course, by reading this you will have a basic understanding of neural networks.

So, the following are the 6 things I learned about neural networks in the course.

What is a Neural network?

Data Science is all about finding patterns in data and creating mathematical models of the pattern.

Neural networks are computational models inspired by the human brain's architecture. In neural networks, the basic idea is to use multiple layers stacked together such that the algorithm can better learn the pattern that defines the underlying object in the training dataset.

Each layer is a mathematical function.

Each layer processes the input and gives out an output which acts as an input to the next layer and so on.

What is the difference between using a neural network and a plain algorithm?

The training set is processed by more than 1 layer.
In a neural network, the algorithm tries to learn on its own and so there are 2 steps.
First is the forward propagation, which is used to make predictions and the second is backward propagation which is used to adjust weights, enhancing learning efficiency.

This reminded me of the concept of Feedback amplifier in Physics learned in school.

What is deep learning?g

It is a marketing term used for neural networks with more than 1 hidden layer. Deep learning refers to neural networks with multiple hidden layers, enabling the modeling of complex data representations. This depth allows the network to learn hierarchical features, making it effective for tasks like image and speech recognition

What is Vectorization

It is all about using pre-compiled C code for performing operations on entire arrays or matrices simultaneously with high performance. Neural network uses numpy arrays and vectorization is one of the reasons that makes training neural networks in reasonable time possible.

The math behind Neural works

The course delves into the mathematical foundations of neural networks, including calculus for gradient computations, linear algebra for matrix operations, and optimization techniques essential for effective model training.

It is very exciting to see the math formulae being converted into Python code to build the neural network. And it actually works :)

Broadcasting in python

This has been the most difficult concept to understand in the entire course. The second would be the calculus.

Broadcasting in Python's NumPy library allows arithmetic operations on arrays of different shapes by automatically expanding their dimensions as needed. This feature simplifies code and enhances computational efficiency in neural network implementations

Hope you enjoyed reading the post and learned the basics of neural networks.

Do share your feedback in the comments section.

Neural networks, like most innovations, have a lifecycle of adoption and evolution. If you're curious about how technologies evolve and sustain relevance, explore my post on the Life Span of Innovation. It offers a perspective on the factors that drive innovation longevity in the tech world.

Neural networks are a powerful innovation, but their true potential unfolds when supported by a robust ecosystem. Dive into my article on Do You Have an Ecosystem to Support Your Innovation? to understand how ecosystems drive adoption and maximize impact.

This is how Passion prepares you for success

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Sun, 08 Mar 2020 14:11:00 +0000

Do what you like to do,

Do things that you are passionate about

Do things that you love to do

These are the most common self-help tip given by life coaches, given by people who are successful and who are inspirational to us.

I was intrigued by these advises and I thought why passion is so important. This post is the answer that I found.

I have been in certain jobs where I was not passion about the job. And I was always looking at ways to get out of the tasks. I was trying to find excuses. I could say it now because I am doing reverse engineering.

At that time, I thought I was doing everything I can and the things I didn't want to do were not my job. But the reality is that I didn't like that work and so was trying to push it away.

This is what happens when you do things you are not passionate about. You tend to avoid it.

In our jobs, we are either building something or fixing something.

As a software engineer, I am building a software or fixing a software.

If you are a doctor, you are treating a patient or building a healthy society by sharing your knowledge of medicine and encouraging people to be fit and healthy.

If you are a teacher, you are fixing the knowledge gap of the students or building their skills base.

And to carry out our respective jobs well, we need to provide right solutions.

And to provide right solutions, we have to go deeper and understand the actual need.

To understand the actual need, we have to pay attention, we have to be focused on the task.

For example, for a doctor to give right diagnosis, he/she has to understand the symptoms, co-relate with what is the season and what is the geography you are living in and so on to come to a conclusion. If there was no attention paid to these factors, there is possibility that the diagnosis will be incorrect. Isn't it?

So,

when you are doing something you are passionate, you are aligning your mental and physical energies to focus on the task at hands. You are ready to go deeper and discover stuff. You are ready to trade the unknown path and learn.

When you are not loving what you do, you are signalling your mind and body to avoid it.

Its not rocket science to know that we are successful when we give our 100%. Isn't it?

And we can give our 100% to what we are doing when our mind and body are in sync. Passion is the glue that connects the body and mind and allow you to give your 100% to the task at hand.

Be passionate and be successful.

Do share what you guys think...

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Productivity, Happiness and Stress relief - Secrets in 20 TED talks

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 07:05:00 +0000

To make my travel interesting and easier, I often rely on TED talks. Sharing a list of 20 top TED that changed my perspective about very common topics of Modern life - Productivity, Happiness and Stress Relief. I reiterate the word "changed my perspective" because these talks didn't offer direct and easy solution. Rather they forced me to think deeper, think differently.

Hope you enjoy the journey....

The energy of thought | Penny Zenker | TEDxPSUBehrend - Must watch

TEDxPortsmouth - Dr. Alan Watkins - Being Brilliant Every Single Day (Part 1) - Must watch

Hacking your brain for happiness | James Doty | TEDxSacramento

Happy Brain: How to Overcome Our Neural Predispositions to Suffering | Amit Sood, MD | TEDxUNI - Must watch

What is a Thought? How the Brain Creates New Ideas | Henning Beck | TEDxHHL

How to make stress your friend | Kelly McGonigal - Must watch

The first 20 hours -- how to learn anything | Josh Kaufman | TEDxCSU - Must watch

The Indian approach to business: Devdutt Pattanaik at TEDxGateway 2013 - Must watch

How do the poor see life? Uneducated, not stupid | Rajen Makhijani | TEDxNTU - Must watch

What Makes Some Brains More Focused Than Others? | Marvin Chun | TEDxKFAS

Are you a giver or a taker? | Adam Grant

Math is the hidden secret to understanding the world | Roger Antonsen

You are contagious | Vanessa Van Edwards | TEDxLondon

How to fix the exhausted brain | Brady Wilson | TEDxMississauga

The secret to self control | Jonathan Bricker | TEDxRainier

The greatest TED Talk ever sold - Morgan Spurlock - Must watch

The surprising habits of original thinkers | Adam Grant - Must watch

The paradox of choice | Barry Schwartz - Must watch

How to get your ideas to spread | Seth Godin

Leading in the VUCA world - How the Armed Forces do it | RAGHU RAMAN | TEDxIITBHU - Must watch

What if the Voice assistant is humanized?

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Sun, 06 Jan 2019 18:23:00 +0000

I was travelling with a friend who knew the route to our destination. I had Google maps on too. But I was following my friends directions.

So every time I took a different turn, Google maps would say "OK" and then direct me again. This kept on happening a few times. And my friend and I thought, what if Google maps assistant is humanized?

It would have behaved like a friend. And so, the conversation between the voice assistant and me would have been something like this...

The first time I didn't follow its direction, it would be been nice in suggesting the route to follow.

The second time I disobey the directions, the voice assistant's temper would have gone up a

little but still in control.

The third time, and the voice assistant would have used a slang to address me and said "*****, what the **** are you doing?

The fourth time, it would have been like. You know the route so you go on...I am not bothered now. And go in standby mode.

And if I switch on Google maps in the next trip, it would have said " you think you are a smart **** so figure out your on your own. I am am not telling you directions until you treat me."

Are you Online or Being Safe Online? An Infographic

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 13:35:00 +0000

How #TrueCaller can help reduce telephonic frauds

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 13:44:00 +0000

A cocktail of ignorance and greediness is what you need to become a telephonic fraud victim. I saved myself from being one a few days back. What follows in this blog post is the short transcript of the fraudulent call and what is the solution to prevent people from being telephonic fraud victims.

The trap formation

I received a call from a mobile number saying it was from Citibank. They wanted to credit cash in my account for the reward points that have expired on my card. I redeem my reward points on time and so this was the first trigger in mind to be careful on this call. Still, to understand the modus operandi of the caller, I continued with the call.

I said I never let my rewards point expire, I redeem there as soon as they are available for redemption. But the lady on the other end was smart. She said that we know you redeem your fuel points but this is about the reward points on the other spends that you make. This was a lie. I have been using the card for more than 5 years and I know how it works. But it was getting interesting so I played the nerd. Let's see what these guys say to fool people.

Breach of Security Level 1

She wanted to go ahead with verification by asking me the last 8 digits of the card. I said, generally, for verification, you guys ask only the last 4 digits. She agreed to this and said, I have your entire card number and if you give me last 8 digits, it will not make any difference. I went ahead and gave my number. This was the breach of Security level 1 that one should never reveal the card number.

Breach of Security Level 2

Happy that I gave her my card number, she went ahead and initiated a transaction. She told me that I will receive an SMS with a code. This SMS confirms that I have received the money. I did receive the SMS in few seconds. But instead of saying "Money is credited" the SMS read " transaction initiated". I enquired about this and she said it’s the standard text in the SMS and nothing to worry about. My suspicion grew stronger. Though this was the breach of Security level 2, I still had one more security level before I am duped. So I gave the code received in the SMS.

Never breach the Security Level 3

The only thing that stopped her from using my card was the CVV number. This is the last security measure. If this is broken, nothing stops her from using my card. And this is how she tried to trap me and get the CVV number. She said, there is one last step of verification. She said, there is a 7 digit number on the back of my card and for verification purpose, I have to give her the last 3 digits. I couldn’t take any more risk and so I disconnected the call. I have not yet received the call again. Nor has there been any transaction on my card.

I shared this incident with my friend and colleagues. They said this has happened to their friends and families. Some of them were victims of such calls.

TrueCaller could be the answer

This incident forced me to think if any mobile app can protect people from such calls. The app can help in creating awareness about the callers with fraudulent motives. And TrueCaller flashed in my mind.

TrueCaller could roll out a Corporate service. The Businesses enrolled for service gets their number tagged as verified. The Logo and the name of the business should be shown as caller identity. No other number should be allowed to use the name of the business. If anybody registers a number with the same name, the number should be reported for verification.

What do you think about this service? Will it be useful? Is this service available in TrueCaller currently? Do share your comments...

Interactive Newspaper : A case for Augmented Reality

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 05:20:00 +0000

The boundaries between the virtual world and the physical world are growing thin. Thanks to technologies like Augmented Reality(AR) and Virtual Reality(VR). By using VR, we can experience the wonders of the world like never before without moving out of your couch.

This post is to discuss an Innovative use case of AR for the newspapers.

The Newspaper is a part of breakfast...

Though we all are going digital in a big way, there are many things that are favorite in their physical form. The Newspaper one such thing (I guess so) and it is an integral part of our lives. For many people, breakfast is incomplete without the newspaper. I am one of them. I spend some time going through the newspaper in the morning with my breakfast.

While I am taking my daily dose of news, I often feel like sharing certain articles on my social networks. For example, this article is super interesting. It is about a man who still receives postcards. Around 150 postcards delivered every day at his doorsteps. Isn't that an interesting read?Aren't you inclined to know more about this man?

I thought my followers on Twitter would love reading this. My friends on Facebook will enjoy this. And my colleagues on LinkedIn will appreciate that everything old is not dead. The Whatsapp, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger generation will find this article amusing.

But there was no way I could share it directly. I had to take the pain of unlocking my phone, type the headline in Google search, go to the link and then share it.

What is an Interactive newspaper? Create a link between the physical and virtual world.

I thought there should be a better way of doing this. The aim is to create a link between the physical and the digital world. The need is to design a simple and innovative mechanism to share articles being read in the physical newspaper in the virtual world.

For me, this is a strong case for Augmented reality. The Augmented reality adds the interactivity.

A QR-code can be the link between physical and virtual world. It will be simplest yet effective solution here.

Let's say with every article, there is a QR code. Anybody who wants to share the article just needs to the scan the QR code. He will be taken to the article link and whoohoo...you do whatever you want to. The QR codes are small and so will not consume much of the costly ad space.

Business case for Interactive newspaper

Now that we have a problem and a solution, let us try and build a business case for the Interactive newspaper

Let us say 100 people use this technology to share the article in the digital world. Each of this 100 people has 100 followers/friends on their social networks. Say 50% of the followers were not aware of the article as

they are not subscribed to the newspaper or
they are yet to read this or
they didn’t notice it.

And now they have read it because it has been shared by their friend.

As a result of the sharing mechanism, the article has got additional traffic. Thus, the newspaper has got more visitors and so increased opportunities of revenue generation. Are the publishing houses listening?

Have you felt the need to share the news from the newspaper on your social network? Do you believe the Interactive Newspaper will be effective? What more features should be added?

Do you use the comments section to make this post interactive...

What is probably the biggest business risk for SME segment?

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Mon, 26 Dec 2016 11:58:00 +0000

One of the biggest product fiascos of recent times has been the Maggi ban. Check this Quora page to know why Maggi was banned if you don’t know. The impact of this ban is such that the entire Instant noodles market got shrunk by half. Check out this report on EconomicTimes for details. Analysts, it will take Nestle 3 years to recover the losses due to this ban. Maggi is a known name and Nestle is a big company. Hence the company and the market have spent the time to understand the impact of the ban. But such cases keep happening in other sectors too. Non-hygienic food joints and their stories are not uncommon. The focus of this post is to analyze and understand the impact of SMEs hurting the customer trust and its impact on the market.

How the Risks for big brands are different?

When customers buy your products and services. They invest their trust in you in the form of money. By continuously striving to keep quality standards high, over a period of time, you create a brand for your business. Once you are a brand, people know the product or service by your brand. iPhone, Nike, Google, Mercedez, Ferrari are some examples of iconic brands.

For a brand, by any chance, if the customer is not happy with the product or service, it hurts the business. But often only theirs and helps the competition. This article shows how ITC gained due to Maggi ban.

What is the risk if you are an SME?

But you if are an SME and/or if your business is in the unorganized sector, the risk to your business is not only from your quality misses but also from your peers. When you are not a brand and customers invest their trust, they are taking a leap of faith as they need the product. And incidentally, you are their best bet at that moment. If the customer lands on the wrong side by taking this leap of faith, the entire industry is hurt.

Let's take an example, you are traveling on a train and you are hungry. You saw a Bhel wala and bought it. But it turned out to be bad. The next time you travel and you hungry and see a bhel wala, Your mind will be flashed with the bad experience and you will check if there is any other alternative. You will think of avoiding the bhel. Though it is quite possible that this vendor makes extraordinary Bhel. But you want to play safe, you don’t want to stay hungry and lose money. So you are looking for options and avoid the Bhel.

What is the risk mitigation plan?

Often focus on short term goals results in quality being ignored. A bhel wala wants to make the maximum possible money during the train trip and is not worried about customer loyalty. He neither expects to see you again nor he cares about customer experience. But by doing so the Bhel wala has hurt the business of his peers too. This analogy is applicable everywhere. One seller hurts the customer's trust and the future prospects of the entire industry are dented. So when businesses form unions to protect their interests, they should also fight for maintaining basic quality standards within the fraternity. They have to set a basic datum and ensure everybody sticks to the benchmark.

Share your thoughts

Are you an SME and have experienced a negative business due to a peer hurting customer sentiments? are you a customer who avoided certain services or products due to a bad experience? Do share your thoughts and let us mitigate the risk together...

There is Company mission, why not Company literature

noreply@blogger.com (Siddharth) — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 07:41:00 +0000

In my post, Isn't the Corporate Library due for Disruption, I emphasized on the makeover of Corporate Library and how it can help the Company achieve its goals.

In this post, I will go a step further and talk about what literature should be a part of the Library. To appreciate the link of literature with the success of the company, we have to look at the mental make-up of the basic resource of company i.e the manpower. Let's start...

The Perception problem

Enterprises are driven by people and people are driven by their perceptions (the way in which something is regarded, understood, or interpreted).

A company will be successful if it delivers on its promises. If it's agile enough to adapt to market conditions. If it's bold enough to take risks. And the manpower of the company is working hard to transform the "if" into "is". i.e the company keeps its promises, the company is agile and the company takes risks. This transformation is dependent on the culture (the ideas, customs, and social behavior of a particular people or society) of the company. And culture and perceptions are interlinked.

So, for the success of the company, it is inevitable to ensure that the culture and people perceptions are aligned with the company mission.

The gaps in Employee communication process

The corporates have known this fact for long. And so the companies do spend effort in aligning people perceptions through induction programs, through training, through mission statements, through the frequent messages from the leadership team, through newsletters and blogs.

The key challenge of this approach is that the employees do not have control on the frequency and content of the message.

Typically, the newsletters and blogs of leaders are one way. They talk about what they want and employees are expected to follow.

Every employee has his own perceptions based on the experiences he has had. For an individual, it is impossible to experience everything. Hence he might not be able to relate to the message from the leadership team. And so the purpose of communication from leadership is not fully served.

So how do we fill this gap? How does a company build the perceptions aligned to its vision?

This is where the corporate library and the books come into the picture.

How do books help change the perceptions?

One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.

Books are treasures of others experiences, others thought process. Books let you experience things beyond the boundaries of physical boundaries of location and time. If you want to understand the challenges of climbing Mount Everest, the second best way to do is to read a book written by a climber. Of course, the first option is to try climbing.

Align perceptions to company mission through Company literature

The Company literature is basically a collection of books that every employee is encouraged to read.

The collection of Company literature is composed of

the books the leaders are reading,

the books that have inspired the leaders,

The books that the leaders want to read

With the company literature, the communication channel between the leaders and the employees with a context set by the books. It opens up discussion threads between leaders and the employees about the content of the book. Connections among the readers are established which otherwise wouldn't have been possible due to different skills or projects.

Do share your feedback about Corporate literature. Do you see a value in this approach? As always, comments are most welcome.

References

Quote courtesy - http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/books

Research links on Culture and perception - http://cognitionandculture.net/blog/simons-blog/culture-and-perception

HAT	What are we thinking about
BLUE	"The Big Picture"
WHITE	"Facts & Information"
RED	"Feelings & Emotions"
BLACK	"Critical Judgement"
YELLOW	"Positive"
GREEN	"New Ideas"

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