Daily Bitz

Hello Readers,

I've moved on to a different blog now, though Corona RP spirits are high. So you can find me at:

www.techrust.com

Cheers

Zoom in. Now.

An average Sumo fighter weighs around 115+ kg!! They eat more than 10,000 calories/day. Do remember they are not just big, but equally powerful, disciplined, fierce, strong, steady and quiet. These wrestlers slam, slap,choke and toss opponents into submission (THUMP!!)..

Yokozuna, the grand champion is equivalent to God; opponents can't stand him more than 10secs! Do make a note of this: 'They are masters in breaking the balance of their rivals' and 'this from of martial arts is not about playing; it originated from fight to death'. They carry no armaments and hide nothing, except emotions..Will power is the most important factor to win and it comes down to instincts and intimidation. They read eyes and judge whether the opponent is scared.



"When the boy was born, like old Spartans, he was inspected. If he would have been small or puny or sickly or misshapen, he would have been discarded. From the time he could stand, he was baptized in the fire of combat. Taught never to retreat, never to surrender. Taught that death on battlefield, in service to Sparta, was the greatest glory he could achieve in his life.' (Extract from movie 300)


Clayton also pointed out similar problems with organisations such as IBM, Sears, Xerox, etc. 'One theme common to all of the failures- these leaders in question were widely regarded as among the best companies in the world! Remember- there's no stupidity in the story anywhere. 'These companies were well-managed, had their competitive advantage, listened well to their customers, invested aggressively in new technologies, and yet still lost their market dominance.'

So I call 'BIG(s)' as 'SUMO FIGHTERS', whereas, I categorize the newer breed under 'BRAVE SPARTANS'.. Also I associate BIG to FAT technologies, which have existed since long. Unfortunately, SAP tops the list.

Q. Is 'Big' advantageous?
A. May be not, else the best companies would not have failed. The best technologies used by SAP would not be losing its shares. They are heavy, strong and steady players in the market but new market entrants are lighter, quicker, smarter, easier, cheaper and effective. Wow!

Q.Can 'Big' balance their capabilities well?
A. Answer again is NO. Sumo(s) need lean management!! They have overgrown, can't manage their resources well and are looking for safe play. Though aggressive, they settle down with very few ideas in vain. If they want to launch new things in market they require immense amount of effort. SUMO also stands for 'Shut Up, Move On' (Paulet al.). In his charismatic work, Paul has specially covered lazy people who need to change their thinking. He specially analyzed the gaps in 'understanding' and advised them to 'create the future than leaving it to chance.' SAP has a lifetime, but they just keep on coming back with upgrades from R/2 to R/3! Business suite 7 has given some ray of hope, but how good it is, we'll see it in a while.

Q. How are Spartans better?
A. They are flawless. They are not re-engineered and neither are they looking for escape zones to build capabilities. They are focused and ready to pierce every possibility. They are born to WIN.

Let me explain this with an example of DELL. It came out with a new business model, which functioned much like a strategy; difficult to copy and trapped the competitors in their own game- Joan Magretta. Looking at Dell's G2 strategy, it kept on short-circuiting the value chain! It did not adopt SAP, but took Best of Breed to play the game..

Q. What is still missing?
A. Focus. Business Suite 7 is just a piece of software with better services. But SAP missed out the point of technology adoption in organisation! If SAP had come out with better services, wrapping everything in a good business model, it could have worked wonders and SAP would have managed to stand ahead in the Que. But, they are lazy.

Q. SPARTANS- how will they rise?
A. Copying from above, "If he would have been small or puny or sickly or misshapen, he would have been discarded." Now here's an acid test. Needs have to be understood, captured and exploited to take advantage. Don't force fit; select the best for your business.

SUMO(s)- Gear up..Getting lean won't take you anywhere. Time for you to go back to basics and start fresh. I don't like the 'sexy image' portrayed by Subaru. Also I don't agree to Shaun Conolly's point, that Judo has better tactics to leverage the benefits. Playing on core competency can give a significant amount of momentum and throw the opponent out of the ring. In fact, David B. Yoffie has adviced in his book 'JUDO STRATEGY', winning in Sumo which can get you ready for mission NEXT!

Can 140 words work like weapon? According to a group of 29 people- Yes they can! I'm talking about Twitter- making huge noise in the microblogging industry and is much flaunted topic among academicians like Clayton, McAfee, etc. They believe that Twitter has disruptive abilities and it can come out with something new. Well, Twitter  claims: "Active users have increased 900% in a year"!

Tweeting affects daily habits and may become a part of life; but why? Have you seen people messaging on phone? They are ubiquitous and everybody likes tweeting as it is cheap. Now shift the messaging power from phone to blog and with help of Web2.0 start exploiting the entire chain. Reach out 100s of users or a bunch of people you want to and reap solid benefits of connectivity.

Let's see what others have to say:

1. Last May I used the Twitter micro-blogging service and made a post every time I managed my Diabetes 

2. Its this mixture of blogging, RSS and social networking that makes twitter so appealing 

3. Twitter as news source: Short and effective say- former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated !!

4. Updates from all over the world: Chinese blogger Zhou "Zhuola" Shuguang used Twitter to write from the Olympic games in Beijing. 

5. Out of control: Reality Check: Terrorists Using Twitter? 

6. Customer Service 2.0 

7. Politics 2.0 

I have mixed feelings for a tool like this now. May be this technology is catching up like fire, but there are sad reactions  when it comes to tweeting. Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, claimed Yammer   as "The best communication and productivity tool available in the market today." Well no one wants to write huge mails for quick communication! So, you need something fast and optimal. Microblogging helps. It helps new generation kids to keep up and form fast networks.

Coming to the crux. How can Govt. use it?

1. Get quick updates- Network with people in common network in govt pool. I call it Tribalisation!

2. Provide freedom of expression- Everyone can explain in few words- they'll be crisp and expressive.

3. Understand what people really want- Example of Politics 2.0, shown above, clearly highlight this point.

4. Get deep and know the problem- People have started speaking on a network. Now Govt. should be able to track whether people are getting infected with cold, fire, water shortage, traffic break down, riots, etc.

In short GOVT. CAN BE PROACTIVE before everything falls apart.. This is not an advertisement for microblogging, but we can definitely exploit a powerful tech tool to uncover many problems.. Think about it.

Reengineering: An ultra-hyped term, flaunted by all experts since 90's, and overused by B-School students these days. I'll get to the real meaning of it soon.

Engineering is kewl, why do "re-engineering" ? I used to think it was another word for "re-working"? No that does not make it re-engineering! Even if I succeed in adding new scientific approach why should I call it re-engineering? It is simple improvement. Let me call not confuse you and call this new improvement : "Improved Engineering" or "Better Engineering". But I fall back to the same space of engineering in a new way.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”
Did you catch my mistake? I missed out the entire process of improved engineering!

Q. Is this new way of engineering called "Reengineering"?
A. Do you say that shape of moon is semi-circle as it was semi-eclipsed when you saw it? Point is Reengineering has much more to do than simply improve things.

Let me go back to where it started from. U.S. economy was sinking when Japanese had started eroding their markets by getting better products at cheaper price and better service. It was time to re-invent the same thing, but in a different way. In an innovative way with only one thing in mind: SUCCESS. That's when Re-engineering was born and typically changed the way things were done.

Take a very simple example of DELL. Even if you've not purchased your computer from DeLL, you must have heard about it. They came up with this idea: sell cheap, at lowest price, with quality service. Its new busienss model involved eBusiness plugged in with B2C strategy. They did not reach market in conventional way and started selling computers online. Soon, it became a market leader. It re-invented the entire process of selling computers. It brought a revolution.

The roots of Reengineering is so powerful that it can leave you with only one choice- SUCCESS. This breed is built only for SUCCESS. But, if you distort the new idea with a bad strategy, you'll never reap benefits and it wont be reengineering at all.

Q. Can it give quick results?
A. No. A wrong notion in heads of senior executives: 'do anything and get quick results'. Quantity has nothing to do with quality at this point. But, if you come up with an attitude to reengineer things, you will definitely take lead as shown in the example above.

Q. Why can't a good idea bring success? Say IT is used as a weapon now a days. Web2.0 is creating disruption!
A. I'll copy my answer from Hammer and Champy's book: Reengineering the Corporation- A Manifesto for Business Revolution

" From its inception, reengineering has been a close partner of information technology. Technology enables the process that are essence of reengineering to be redesigned. The two have symbiotic relationship:

• Without reengineering, IT delivers little payoff, and
  
• Without IT, little Reengineering can be done.

The most reengineering-related technology of the last 5 years has been ERP, an integrated software system that supports not only your individual functional area but complete business process." That's why we say : BPR+ERP= COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.

I associate reengineering with a 'needle'; has no edge, but digs fast into enemy's flesh, bleed him painfully with no choice and leaves with high amount of damage. As the enemy won't have strength to fight back you can take the lead. A word of note- you have to time the attack, prepare well, and understand your enemy in advance (Art of War).

My RSS feed pinged me to catch up with hot list from delicious. My eyes got hold of Tweepler.com. I thought it was another Twitter coming up, or may be even better (though I called it worse at this time, you will read how wrong I was) with help of web2.0, but then I patiently watched its video to see what's going on.

Some more questions started eating me after seeing the features.
Why is it in the hot-list?
Why is this thing catching up like fire?
We already have Twitter and so many users working on it, why do we need another one?

Q. Technology is taking me on the ride. True?
A. False.

Q. Can you Explain?
A. Let me Come back to features and start relating ideas to theory of web 2.0. Look at this feature: You can put things into 3 different baskets. Why does a user need different baskets? Simple- Organize. I call it Users "Taking Control".

Now the feature of web2.0 is to create a new value, which Tweepler did. But it also helped users to "manage" their data. Now that's called taking control. You have tons of junk data and you need to bring order now. Simple allegory to this is: You need to clean your room after a week, else you forget where you put your keys and start throwing things around. Thanks to web2.0, which is sipler to handle. Virtual world is easier to take control.

Q. Wow! I'm in full control. Right?
A. Wrong. I'll explain this in 3 simple steps to explain the process:

1. Create value: To create something new- you first cut yourself loose and innovate. Come up with out of-box ideas and float it well in the market which helps the customer to find VALUE.

My friend, PSP, explained me this by a simple example from De-Bono's approach: Can you create idea out of toothbrush and wheels? First thing I said was- CRAZY. But then I started working on the idea. He helped me and explained that the new idea can be useful to think of a new-ice-wheels, where friction can be increased. Wow! may be tyre threads came from here. But let me move on to explain the next step after Innovation/ Creation. Also don't forget no matter what you create, user should derive value out of it. 'The more -the better'.

2. Capture Value: You may have 1000s of ideas in mind, but you implement only 1. Why is that? Simple- you understood it well and captured that particular idea. Apply this to CRM. Just say, to capture hotlist ideas, you tagged something in Digg, putting 'hot' things in a common basket. This helps you over a period of time when you meet others, who also chose 'Tweepler' by tagging the idea. Now, what CRM helped me to do is- Capture all your data and the things which are meaningful to you.

'Google Ad' is the best example to answer this. When you search something on Google ( or "Google it"), it gives you all relevant advertisements around the things you've searched for in the past (don't be hurt if you didn't know that). But, in simple words, they captured all your ideas to give better service. Type my name and you can find me on Linked-In! Now you know how..

3. Control Value: The idea of taking control has floated since human mind has come to existence. It's so badly in-built in humans that we get stuck with obduracy than going out for new things.

I call it "Chicken- Egg" problem. You cut yourself loose to get something new and get stuck with it to take control. You may debate- what's important- Loose or Controlled? Since both are important it's a tough job to evaluate. But anyways, since Twitter did something new, Tweepler did it better by empowering users to control/ manage. It helped the user to reach stage 3. I'm not worried about the new cycle, which I call as "Disruptive Cycle", but now user managed to get things right in cycle 1.

Quick Recap: To be a Leader follow 3 simple steps of Disruptive cycle:

1. Create value
2. Capture value
3. Control value

That's how a busy life may look like:

Your automated widget alarm wakes you up at 7am and plays your favorite song. Lumbering out of the bed you may reach for the bespoke toothbrush and read the news from your rsstroom reader on the porcelain. Your custom feed made you remember that it's your cousin's b'day and you need to send her the best flowers. By the time you put your shoes, with anti-vibration technology, on and get ready for a jog, you take out the iGadget from your pocket and plug it in your ears. The iTunes in iGadget would have finished loading latest podcast on share market released this morning from CNN news so that you could keep yourself updated with detailed news. After you come back, you realize that you couldn't sleep well as you had not finished analyzing yesterday's business plan. Immediately you take out a wireless reading device and make a note of important things in iGadget. You're ready to have a quick breakfast and you recieved a quick mail from M&S saying that you had purchased the lilly basket on your cousin's 13th b'day and this year they've managed to get the prettiest yellow roses in the town. You could order without looking in your eWallet as your account information was with the supplier and they knew what was the best thing you could buy at the moment. You sit back in your ultra fast 2-seater Electric car and open your iGadget and synchronize the navigation areas. Let me tell you what this iGadget is all about!

iGadget is a simple stupid device which may sound hi-fi for me now! This device can be folded to plug in your ear and opened to create 3D projection image.

Q. Is it a hybrid computer?
A. Nope. It is stupid device and helps to do 1 simple activity: Connect to super wi-fi.

Q. Where did your Windows come from? And what about the softwares?
A. Simple- They've come from cloud. Right from OS, widgets, videos, podcasts, RSS to latest business reports and analytic report, all are at one place with help pf Web3.0

Q. So this device is going to make the future?
A. Yes- why not! Latest computing abilities have grown exponentially and everything has been automated now.

Q. Is this ethical? I would look more like a machine and live my virtual life more than real.
A. You're right as well. Matrix will be realized and AI will speed it up.

Q. Why do you say that?
A. Entire world is man made and so are the problems. When people do not have a moment to smile and sit together, share their feelings, express themselves freely and empathize for a moment, their virtual life, though complex than ever before, will help them realize lot of things. They will make their own creative virtual world.

My last line may be also become tomorrow's prophecy:

Brain rules and Feelings die..Cry Cry Cry

Spent entire day reading and sitting on the old chair which I used to claim as comfortable few days back. Felt that speed of clock was enormously fast and my friend told me that my cognition abilities can be slow if I don't relax. Phew..

All I recall is talking to my best friends and watch videos on You tube other than boring stuff. Though it made me feel bit 'saddu', my pal was polite to say I wasn't. Apparently at 7:30pm I realized I have butterflies in stomach and I couldn't sit on the "hot seat" anymore. But it's been like this since so many days..

Finally I settled down watching an episode of HIMYM and heard some music on radio galaxy.."Valentine's Day approaching", announced DJ, switching the song - 'the girl is so dangerous'. What's happening?! Thought of running off to gym & swim to kill loneliness and avoid going nuts..Sorry,but late 2day

Walked to Business School at 10:30 am with few happy notes in mind: it's snowing outside and I'm seeing it for the first time! Bright minds swerved around coffee shop with Big ideas to move the world. Met my team and almost wrapped up my assignment. Suddenly I got attracted to TV in MBS(W) and saw share markets crumbling down and global recession hitting the job market. Big ideas- I thought again!

Moved to my favorite place in MBS- the Eddie Davis Library, where I am blogging from right now. It's not all about books, but also about ambiance and inspiration. Placed my laptop on sofa and settled down with a Financial Times. News went in favor of my ambition, but I was unhappy to see MBS rank slipping down from 4 to 10. Also I was stirred to see market reports and analysts shouting that markets are not going to improve before 2010 and job cuts will be maximum by the time I start hunting job desperately, i.e. 2009.

Bright mind- competing. Big idEas- emerging. Little soldier "Blogging". And now I look outside the glass panes, hidden behind semi-opened white curtains, and see- bright green field, trees without leaves and sky which is not blue. I tell myself- seasons come and go, so will this. I'll make my move and prepare for tomorrow.

3 hours and 6 slides. Slow..Very Slow, but what did I achieve? I got this:

http://app.sliderocket.com/app/FullPlayer.aspx?id=AD8CE434-C9B8-52A5-19F4-7880E9EAFB3A

I used web3.0 technology to make a New Age presentation and was busy tinkering with the new technology tool to see how it improved my life! But remember 3hrs..

What I learned from this small experiment is that I can be cReAtiVe in my presentation and don't need any software preloaded on the machine. But I do need a hi-speed internet connection and fast processor to access the Rich Internet Application.

My 5 yr. old laptop with 768 Ram (256+512upgraded) suffered blue screen death and got stuck very often due to low processing speed. Everytime I hit Ctrl+Alt+Esc my processor acknowledged 100% usage! My Mexican friend tried accessing this page but found the page loading very slowly; he loves multi-tasking and opens several web browzers at a time and doesn't care about the processor but the final verdict is slow and rich experience. Moreover how do I present my ideas where there is no internet? I recall all my lecturers depending on their pen drives rather than virtual drive, popularly known as p: drive, given by the university. So I say web3.0 is still young as a child and has a long way to go before it can be completely exploited. I say, "When the hot water vaporizes- Clouds will be formed". Now it's just a matter of time.