He trains India's poorest students for the IIT

From Rediff.com: Read full article here. His father, a post office clerk in Bihar, couldn't afford private schooling for his children. So, Anand Kumar studied at a Hindi medium government school where, at an early age, he fell in love with mathematics. During graduation, he submitted papers on Numbers Theory that were published in UK's Mathematical Spectrum and The Mathematical Gazette.... (Read full article here.)

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Blinds.com - Periodic table of marketing

Credits: Blinds.com
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Facebook For Nonprofits

Facebook 101 For Nonprofits

View more presentations from frank barry.

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Seth Godin - The bandwidth-sync correlation

Link to Article: Click here. Read on to have a cool analysis of the ways we handle information in our heads(?!). A pic from Seth's post (linked to his post):

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Sharpening some tools?!

Now this is 'also' a good way to look at things that happened in my German and Japanese language courses. My mind went through a series of experiences that we undergo as kids, but never notice. The experiences made me renew my methods of memorizing, practicing, implementing (in short, naturalizing) the process of learning something new. It also helped my brain to correlate seemingly unconnected events that helped me in the process of learning. The differences between Japanese and German are wide in terms of the way of communication, the mannerism used, the characters and pronunciations, and the business etiquette.

It was not a new experience to learn a new language in both cases, given the kind of experiences I have with languages in India. I speak with my wife (my significant half!) using Marathi and Hindi, with my parents in Oriya and English, and with friends in Bengali (Score - 3/5), Bahasa (Indonesian; am very weak in this though!), and with taxi folks using Kannada, Tamil, and/or Telugu (In Telugu, I know expletives, 'How are you' with related conversations, and 'I Love You!')!! Apart from this, at office, I have a team white-board called 'Words of the Day' which I maintain in Japanese and German - this was after an in-house inter-cultural training.

In all this, the point I want to say is that it creates a state of mind that allows encryption/decryption abilities to be honed. It helps improve your emotion-switching skills (which is really important in daily business communication) and also helps you increase your failure/success-handling abilities (think, how!?). It makes you look at fellows in a totally different way (remember, I said 'different'). My ears/eyes/hands and mind got together once more - probably, in this fast world, we really forget to sharpen our basic skills. This was the way I used a seemingly boring matter (for an adult) learning newer languages into something that will help me sharpen my learning speed.

The world is beautiful with (human) emotions. Even animals have emotions (think about babies too!). And I feel excited to know some stuff in sign-language as well (I love spending time with special kids.)

[See a wiki stuff on 'How to learn a new language' Disclaimer! - Don't think I agree to everything on that - everyone is unique in their disability in learning!! ]

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The Concise Guide to Economics

The Concise Guide to Economics

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Andy Bruce - The Golden Rules of Innovation

Full Article Here

Brief: Like any other core business process there are some 'rules' of innovation management which will maximise the probability of success. These come under what we call "The 6 Ps":

PLANNING - Innovation must be linked to strategy

• Successful leaders link core business processes to their strategic goals and annual business planning targets, and innovation is no exception. Use a product-market matrix to clarify the extent and direction of your innovation. Without a strategic direction you run the risk of coming up with innovations that run counter to your businesses best interests! (Read more..)
  

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Social Media Marketing - Anis Khan

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Dearth of Product Companies in India - repeat call!?

One of my articles published on the NSRCEL Blog

We were lucky as well as unlucky to have missed the industrial revolution during its birth pangs - we got the stuff once it was already in a shape in the west. If it was the first car that was made or the first record player that played music, the entirety of products came up in some form in the west. This had a dual effect of having some form of product on the one hand (acceleration of technology use in the society) and forgetting to develop newer products in the country. We always had a thought that the product gets developed in the west and then it is migrated in an appropriate form to countries like India. (In fact, if a Indian product really comes up, it is not looked at with the same respect as the one born outside the country!) And now with folks like Friedmann singing about the services industry, the media and the public in general are in a euphoria of being the services capital of the globe, forgetting and unfortunately, ignoring the importance of product development in India. The number of original products developed in India has been very less, in comparison to the other aspects of industry. Well, we need to look at the long term effects of this assumed 'high'!

Whether it be post-independence economic policies, or a rush to get richer quicker by providing services (rather than wait for the full development cycle of a product), there are numerous reasons to look at. But the time has come when indegenous products from India have to be honored, with services being looked as the cream on the milk.

How do you think most developed countries have been able to remain competitive? According to NSF (National Science Foundation, USA), “High-technology industries are driving economic growth around the world”.

Although a lot has started happening in encouraging products as the main motive for development, we have to push the pedal harder. “Even during the recent, slow-growth, ‘post-bubble’ period (2000–03), high-technology industry continued to lead global growth at about four times the rate of all other manufacturing industries.”

Is this article dated by a few years - because it seems, that with people like Mahindra, Tata and Bharat Forge, we do have a product oriented approach!? Well, this article, is not really dated - it is just a reminder for the intense focus that we need to have when we go ahead with products. The definition of product from being a physical entity has been shattered. We need to have the central idea that can materialize into a definite form, and that can by itself sustain the services industry that we are proud of.

To quote a random internet user (login Dharma - no link):

Its hard to build product companies when the markets for these products are elsewhere. Now, with India emerging as a major market for high-tech products/services, its only a matter of time before we have some product-based entrepreneurial success stories coming out of India. I personally know several different entrepreneurs in B’lore working on ambitious product ventures. What is needed now is a combination of (1) govt regulation, (2) infrastructure development, and (3) seed/early-stage support from “mentor” funds/VCs to nurture this budding ecosystem. The service companies have done a great job building up Brand India, and the folks who have made lots of money in the process have an unique opportunity to give back to Indian IT by helping with (3) above.

We do not want to undermine the software services companies - they have contributed brilliantly to the economy - we just should not over-enthusiastic with this and tend to lose a product oriented approach.

Again, quoting Sramana Mitra, in an address to IITians:

In the last decade, IT has sucked all other engineering disciplines dry of their best minds. Even the IIT Civil Engineers and Mechanical Engineers are writing low-level software for Oracle or IBM. If you continue at this rate, none of the other major disciplines will get their rightful share of leadership that is your responsibility to provide.

This may look like a repeat call for a product based economy - but in today's world, it does have its significance.

Any thoughts!?

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Managing Wikis in Business

Penny Edwards, who primarily contributes at his Wordpress Blog, did a study in 2007 about the acceptance, usability and popularity of Wikis in business environments. We are two years beyond the date that he first published his report. Now, (in agreement with Penny!) Wikis have gained remarkably more acceptance - take for example, the site for Startup Saturday Bangalore http://network.headstart.in/projects/startup-saturday-bangalore/project-home.

To quote Penny,

The study investigates how businesses can manage wikis to facilitate collaboration in the workplace. In doing so, it describes a process framework for managing wiki implementations and analyses how ‘learning organisation’ themes can aid in that process. It also considers whether a wiki can act as more than a mere technological enabler for wider information dissemination, by providing an independent mechanism whose management and widespread use can encourage organisational learning.

and later,

It also indicates that wikis have provided platforms for collaborative and emergent behaviour, enabling people to work/communicate more efficiently and effectively, learn from past experience and share knowledge/ideas in organisational contexts that are not averse to collaboration. Whilst it has not been possible to conclude whether changes to organisational learning characteristics have resulted from wikis’ fostering of such collaborative/emergent behaviour, or will become more pronounced as wikis mature, it does highlight scope for longitudinal research in this area.

Today, many organizations use wiki engines for anything you'd use a content management system for - more than likely in their intranet. Wikis are an excellent entry-level content management system because they are easy to edit, require very little training and no specialized software (other than the browser and web server). Wiki is also being used for document version management in many organizations.

"Wiki" (/wiːkiː/) is a Hawaiian word for "fast". "Wiki" can be expanded as "What I Know Is," but this is a backronym. Wikimapia, Wiki Mind Maps, MediaWiki, Educational Wikis, Social Wikis and Corporate Wikis  - we have a lot of proof that people have understood the evolution of wikis.

                                    

Penny Edwards has done a good job reviewing wikis in business - you can access the report published by him at Final Report – Managing Wikis in Business – September 2007.

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Secondary Intelligence

Is not the internet a source of intelligence for anyone who is connected? My friend didn't know much about pregnancy - and it was not more than 15 minutes during which he could get enough and relevant information on the topic. What do you call this extra source of knowledge that is available on the Net?

Now comes a twist. If the Internet had a life of its own (in fact, it does have, to a large extent!), 'it' knows a lot more than any single individual. Right? And if this information could be understood well by the machines (after all, the whole of the Internet lives on numerous computers), given the fact that most of the relevant knowledge is 'well-organized' or being attempted to make it better organized, how much more powerful is the Internet than any group of human beings!! And add to the fact that this body of knowledge is being updated every moment, with predictions that the whole online knowledge base can double in just about 11 hours. Much of this knowledge is just data, including personal and critical information.

I am more amazed than scared. I am visualizing the Internet as a big 'speaking tree' which has answers (both right and wrong) to almost everything. And is the 'speaking tree' evolves to a 'decision making tree' (which is damn simple), and then to a 'thinking and decision making entity', things start becoming interesting. In today's times where a micro-processor can easily program itself, things do not look difficult when the Internet is something that simulates/emulates a human. (Simulating a dog is far interesting - I find humans are a crazy species!) Later, based on reaction based decision making, this evolved entity may or may not be great for humans! Also, if a human can control this new entity, this would be a new situation - humans are one of the greatest enemies of themselves. Remember the comparison between a human and a virus in the movie 'Matrix'?

Imagine typing in some stuff to search on the Internet, and getting a message like 'why do you think you want to know about this?'!! ;-)