Month: July 2009

It is a question I am asked by many people. Why am I not more active on the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Other than republishing my RSS feed, I don’t tend to do much else – atleast for now. My answer has two parts: lack of time, and need for chunky time in what I do.In a way, both are related.

Unlike most others, I update my blog daily. Blogging may be considered an older generation of technology given the 140-char economy that  we now seem to be in, but I still like to write in a bit more depth than the cryptic one-liners. (Same goes for my reading habits.) Also, I like to have chunky uninterrupted time at work for what I am doing. Email and SMS/mobile calls are anyways there. I don’t want to add to it with the preesure to respond to many more interruptions (even though some of them may be useful).

I think in this instant, quick and short response world we are starting to miss out on deep thinking, interaction and engagement. Maybe I will change in the time to come, but for now, I am quite happy with the way things are. Is this a sign of age? Perhaps!

My last two visits to Delhi have both been on Indigo Airlines (to and fro). I have been impressed with their punctuality and fares. Only one of the flights was delayed by about 30+ mins. They tend to be quite focused on ensuring a quick start – sometimes moving out a few minutes before the scheduled time. (I also took Indigo to and from Banaglore – which makes it six flights on them in a row.)

The new Delhi terminal is very impressive. Plenty of check-in counters, shops, departure gates and food outlets.  And yet, when it comes to boarding, I still cannot understand why we are bus-ed around. Couldn’t they have made aerobridges? (The same is true for Mumbai also.) Or, maybe it was the lack of space that prevented them doing so. Anyway, it is a good start – we have been 30 years behind the world with our airports, and are now only 20 years behind.

Every so often, I will rapidly read a few fiction books. I read two recently — “The Defector” by Daniel Silva, and “The Apostle” by Brad Thor. Of these, I liked the former more. The Defector is centred around the Israeli spy-assassin Gabriel Allon. I had earlier read “Moscow Rules” and had quite liked that. The book is quite a page turner (on the Kindle it becomes the “Next Page button pressing”). The Apostle (a Scot Harvath novel) was comparatively more than a bit disappointing.

On a related note, I also read David Baldacci’s “First Family” a couple months ago, and didn’t find that as exciting as some of his earlier works.

A few weeks ago, I was taking a 1:45 pm flight to Bangalore. I left office at 12:15 pm – on a normal day, the airport (about 12 kms) is a 30-minute drive at that time of the day. Little did I know that the Shiv Sena was out in full force on a weekday afternoon protesting against MHADA at Bandra. The result was that all the approach roads from South Mumbai were absolutely packed with traffic with huge backups. A police inpsector suggested that it wasn’t going to clear up for a couple hours.

I got out from the car, took a taxi in the reverse direction to the Matunga train station, caught a train to Vile Parle, and then incentivsed one of the auto drivers to get me quickly to the airport (after three of his ilk declined to do the journey). I reached the airport counter at 1:20 pm, a few minutes before they would have closed it – the flight was on time.

I met someone else on the flight who also just about made it in time — it took him two hours to do the 18 km journey from South Mumbai.

I really think if we are going to move along as a nation we need to get paste these morchas and bandhs — they are a complete nuisance and waste of time, and cause great inconvenience. Everyone has a right to protest, but not at the cost of causing grief to many others.  Or, we can stay resigned to the “This is India” syndrome.

One of the first things I learnt during my first Communications course at Columbia University during my Masters was the M/M/1 Queue Model. Simply put, it states that it is much more efficient to have a single queue when there are multiple servers.  The person at the head of the queue goes to the first free server. This optimises (minimises) wait time for every one.

The security check at the new terminal in the Mumbai airport  (amongset zillions of other places) does exactly the opposite. There is a separate queue for each combo of baggage screening machine and the security personnel who check you. On a recent Monday morning, I happened to be stuck on one of the slow moving lines and couldn’t help wondering about a lesson I had learnt more the two decades ago!

There are times when I wonder why we need to reinvent solutions to problems the world has figured out and solved. We have enough other problems to worry about than trying to be creative with wrong solutions. Or, is it simply our TII (“This is India”) Syndrome?!

This is a series from November 2006:

Understanding two-sided markets is especially critical for entrepreneurs and managers in the Internet and mobile space. One of the dominant models that has emerged over the years is that of giving away services for free. While this has been around for some time, the Internet provides scale which would never otherwise have been possible previously. The combination of “software engines” and contextual advertising has made Google a powerhouse on the Internet. The next big opportunity is on the mobile. What will be the equivalent on the mobile Internet – where screen-size limitations and user impatience could potentially limit advertising. I can imagine mobile content (ringtones, wallpapers and games) being offered for free at a not-too-distant future – subsidised by advertising. This can shift power from mobile operators in India who keep a lion’s share of the end-user charges to platform providers who can build direct-to-consumer relationships and enable advertisers to connect with this audience.

This week’s links:

• The “Free” Business Model: by Bill Gurley. “If a disruptive competitor can offer a product or service similar to yours for ‘free,’ and if they can make enough money to keep the lights on, then you likely have a problem.”
• Apple, RIM Outsmart Phone Market: from The Wall Street Journal. “Apple and BlackBerry’s Research In Motion…accounted for only 3% of all cellphones sold in the world last year but 35% of operating profits, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Brian Modoff. The disparity will become even starker this year when, he estimates, the two will take 5% of the market in unit terms but 58% of total operating profits.”
• India 2039: An affluent society in one generation: An Asian Development Bank report.
• The 2009 Shift Index: by John Hagel and John Seely Brown. “Wouldn’t it be better, we asked ourselves, if we could somehow quantify this Big Shift, and find a way to measure the rate and magnitude of the long-term changes happening in this epochal time?  And so began the pursuit of developing the 2009 Shift Index.”

I did a presentation recently on Education. Here it is.

The Differentiation

The Foundation will be different from existing think tanks in at least two different ways: (a) It will focus on developing policy ideas for practical real-life issues, rather than engage in mere theoretical pursuits, and (b) Engaging with policy makers and opinion leaders will be an integral part of its mandate, and it will be judged by the direct impact it will make in shaping the policy discourse in the country.

This Foundation will institutionalise the process of public policy research and intervention outside of the Government machinery. It will do so by employing and engaging the best minds under one umbrella, aggregating valuable information and ideas relevant for India, initiating debates in the intelligentsia and civil society and influencing the collective conscious of legislators and bureaucrats. It will be intellectually best in class and a constructive source of inputs on all important areas of legislation and policy making. It will aim to become the fountain head of all policy research and decision making in this country.

It will distinguish itself from other Think Tanks by its “result-oriented” (outcome focused) approach to policy intervention. The effectiveness of its output will be measured in a scientific manner and employee benefits will be linked to it. It will only have a guiding philosophy, and will have no pre-defined political affiliation. It will be accountable to its trustees and the country.

The Objectives and Activities

The two main objectives of the Foundation are:

• Research and propose new policy alternatives to address pressing national issues.
• Disseminate the work of the Foundation widely, especially with a view to directly impacting the course and content of national policy.

The Foundation will take up a number of activities:

• Undertake research studies on existing policies of the government, both at the central and state level, with a view to examining the impact of such policies, and suggest alternative approaches where such policies are not delivering in the desired manner.
• Initiate studies to propose new policies over and above what governments might have so far considered. This is expected to address the problem of short term thinking that is often prevalent in governments, at the cost of long term strategic planning.
• Hold consultations, seminars, closed door sessions with policy makers, conferences on important national issues to stimulate debate and guide the policy process. Engage with formal (TV shows / appearances etc) and informal media for large scale dissemination and outreach.
• Engage with and convene meetings with key policy makers (MPs / MLAs & beauracracy) and opinion leaders to shape national policy.

The Foundation expects to demonstrate tangible results within the first few years of its operation. The Foundation will try and forge links with like-minded individuals and institutions globally.

Tomorrow: The Differentiation