Reality Bytes - Wired Perspectives #AnandKumarPadmanaban

It is human nature to fear the unknown and be very comfortable with the known but the times are such that to grow, you would need to constantly expand your comfort zone and explore unknowns ... This is a great story which illustrates this ..... In the late 1800s there was a thriving ice industry in the Northeastern part of the US. Companies would cut blocks of ice from frozen lakes and ponds and sell them around the world. The largest single shipment was 200 tons that was shipped to India. 100 tons got there un-melted, but this was enough to make a profit. These ice harvesters, however, were put out of business by companies that invented mechanical ice makers. It was no longer necessary to cut and ship ice because companies could make it in any city during any season. These ice makers, however, were put out of business by refrigerator companies. If it was convenient to make ice at a manufacturing plant, imagine how much better it was to make ice and create cold storage in everyo...

As I meet and mentor startups and other SME's the one challenge I keep looking for is how are they addressing and tracking their critical paths on the work they do ... most of the time I find that the focus is on the symptom rather than the cause or the plan is very loose and vague ...  I thought that having a visual guide to help build your own KPI's maybe a good way to help anybody working on a project or a project idea or a startup to track their progress or lack of it ....

We recently ran a Pitch fine tuning event at Indian Institute Of Management, Bangalore, India and while the participants did OK, I realized that we seem to have forgotten how to tell a story .... quoting the celebrated entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk ... “People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.” Storytelling is a powerful strategy for building personal relationships, as well as building relationships with your customers and potential customers, and for providing these customers with positive experiences. Storytelling is an age-old concept that brings people together and keeps them engaged. Person-to-person connections are at the center of any successful business and interpersonal relationships and connections are basic needs.  Even in business, we need to know and feel that we are dealing with a real person.  No matter what business you are in or what kind of per...

Imagine if your phone could call up your near and dear once it senses that you are not being normal in terms of the activities you do or in terms of your dexterity or mobility ? Imagine if your computer could call the tech support chap since it senses that your hard drive is going to crash ? Welcome to the world of Artificial Intelligent (AI) Systems . I read a gartner report that 85% of customer interactions are projected to be managed without a human by 2020, I also read that more than 1.6 B USD has been invested into AI uptil last year . AI has been around for a very long time ( right from my engineering school days) but of late has been garnering a lot of interest. I have to hazard a guess and state that it’s because of lower cost of computing and storage including cloud computing and big data concepts. AI can be referred to as the brain , an intelligent agent in an autonomous entity.  AI typically encompasses machine learning, natural language processing and understa...

2017 has started off and it is the time for writing up your new year resolutions ... and NO, I am NOT going to bore you with advice and other perspective but just going to give you a succinct list of possible things you can think about as you make your way through 2017 ....hope this helps ... Surround yourself with people you truly enjoy being in the company of and stop being judgemental (including yourself), choose being happy over being right Say ‘thank you’, Smile more and be kind Be comfortable with silence and listen to understand, not to respond or retort Prioritize yourself and procrastinate only when absolutely essential Be Mindful - Feel your breath Hope you can think through and make these subtle adjustments ... Have a good 2017 Stay blessed ...

Decisions need data and analysis and the ability to make the right decisions, especially in resource intensive sectors like IT are posing an interesting challenge. The difference between a right decision and the wrong decision could run into thousands of dollars or more and added to that the net cost of the investment gone wrong in terms of business inefficiencies and business lost. Some key questions which typically arise are Value (including “intangible” benefits)?  Risk Management How do I know whether one IT investment is “better” than another (IT or otherwise)?      How do I know when to stop analyzing, accept some risk, and make a decision?   How do I know viability of approach ?         Applied Information Economics (AIE) is the practical application of mathematical models and scientific measurements in order to optimize decisions in uncertain  investment environments. In IT, measuring wha...

There is a great possibility that ideas could be destroying your organization. Puzzled? Join the gang as I was too until I read the article creativity in not enough. Ideas for the sake of ideas without rigorous implementation models and follow up lead to organizational chaos.  Typically successful ideation models have proven to be successful when the organization insider, the apparent conformist has driven an idea through evaluation, implementation and follow up.  This Harvard Business Review article is a thought provoking article on this topic ... Here is the synopis of the article ....