Month: March 2006

The Big Picture

Jack Covert writes about what Ram Charan has to say:

Ram coaches people on how to get to the bigger picture. As he says, “The ability to construct and act upon the mental model of the big picture requires plenty of practice. The essence of the skill is to find patterns from among a wide variety of trends and to posit the missing ingredients that could catalyze convergence.”

He then provides, six questions to help get to the big picture. In his words, “One simple way to begin is by asking yourself a series of six questions, exploring the ideas with colleagues and peers: 1. What is happening in the world today? 2. What does it mean for others? 3. What does it mean for us? 4. What would have to happen first (for the results we want to occur)? 5. What do we have to do to play a role? 6. What do we do next?”

He finally conclues by saying, “But the ability to perceive trends quickly, or even to make sense of them, will not automatically guarantee success. Rather, success depends on the rigor and discipline applied to the entire process of envisioning the changes, deducing specific actions, and implementing the plan.”

Great Leaders

[via 800-CEO-READ Blog] Fast Company has an article by Bill Breen based on a forthcoming book by Harvard Business School professors Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria.

In an interview, Nohria identified three prototypical leadership types — the entrepreneurial leader, the leader as manager, and the charismatic leader — and showed how each used their contextual intelligence to thrive in their times. “Leaders and those who aspire to lead benefit from having a sense of history,” he says. “Not because history repeats itself. History’s real value is that it allows you to imagine what’s possible.”

Business in Rural India

[via The Indian Economy Blog] Washington Post writes:

Started in late 2000, Project Shakti has extended Hindustan Lever’s reach into 80,000 of India’s 638,000 villages, on top of about 100,000 served by conventional distribution methods, according to Dalip Sehgal, the company’s director of new ventures. The project accounts for nearly 15 percent of rural sales. The women typically earn between $16 and $22 per month, often doubling their household income, and tend to use the extra money to educate their children.
…
Hindustan Lever is not alone in recognizing the vast potential for profits in rural India. As urban markets become saturated, more businesses are retooling their marketing strategies, and in many cases their products, to target rural consumers with tiny incomes but rising aspirations fueled by the media and other forces, according to experts.
…
“In four to five years the rural market will be a major sector that is well beyond anyone’s imagination,” said Rajesh Shukla, principal economist for the National Council of Applied Economic Research in New Delhi. “Nobody was expecting this was going to happen.”

Games and Imagination

Will Wright writes:

Now an entire generation has grown up with a different set of games than any before it – and it plays these games in different ways. Just watch a kid with a new videogame. The last thing they do is read the manual. Instead, they pick up the controller and start mashing buttons to see what happens. This isn’t a random process; it’s the essence of the scientific method. Through trial and error, players build a model of the underlying game based on empirical evidence collected through play. As the players refine this model, they begin to master the game world. It’s a rapid cycle of hypothesis, experiment, and analysis. And it’s a fundamentally different take on problem-solving than the linear, read-the-manual-first approach of their parents.

Bridging Global Digital Divide

[via Atanu Dey] The Seattle Times writes:

The digital divide is becoming less like a crack and more like a canyon.

More computers are produced than ever before, but they’re even more concentrated in rich, developed countries than 10 years ago, according to new research by the University of Washington.
…
The findings lend another voice to the debate over how to bring technology to the developing world.

While poorer countries tend to get computers much like hand-me-down clothing, cheaper mobile technology has spread relatively quickly.

“Most people around the world will experience new information technologies through their mobile-phone browsers,” Howard said. “Computers are still priced out of reach for most people.”

PayPal Mobile

Carlo Longino writes:

The problem with PayPal is that by trying to be more than just a payment mechanism, theyre adding complexity in to payments. Their separate accounts and systems adds in an additional layer between users credit cards and bank accounts and the people theyre trying to pay. Thats why paying via reverse billing is so popular with consumers its incredibly easy. No new account, no extra bill, they just pay.

The breakthrough this market is waiting for isnt PayPal sorry, folks at least not in this incantation. Its still a touchless IC platform that supports both physical and online purchases. Whats holding back mobile payments currently, for the most part, is that operator revenue share.

City Wi-Fi Networks

WSJ writes:

Cities and small localities across the country have started offering their residents cheap or even free access to the Internet either because their areas aren’t reached by regional telecom providers or because the available offerings in their areas are too pricey.

More than 50 municipalities around the country have already built such systems, and a similar number are at some stage in the process, including Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco and Houston, according to Esme Vos, founder of the Web site http://www.muniwireless.com, which tracks such projects nationally. By 2010, ABI Research forecasts a $1.2 billion market for the wireless technology used in the city systems.

Tellme’s Success

Business Week writes:

Tellme’s software and network help users search for information via wireline and wireless phones. Its technology powers automated voice-directory assistance on more than 1 billion calls a year placed via the wireless networks operated by Verizon (VZ) and Cingular.

Tellme’s speech-recognition technology helps E*Trade (ET) customers navigate voice menus for stock quotes and automates American Airlines baggage claims. Want ringtones? Movie tickets? Tellme helps you do that too — all over the phone. Tellme “has matured and demonstrated its ability to handle large accounts successfully,” says Forrester Research analyst Elizabeth Herrell.

World Wide Event Web

Ramesh Jain elaborates on the themes we are building on in SEraja:

Visualize a web in which each node represents an event. This event could be an old event, may be live at this time, or a future event. Also, this event is not only someones description of the event or some statistics related to it. It is the event, brought to you by one or more cameras, microphones, infrared sensors, or any other technology that lets you experience the event. Of course it could also be text reports or previews of the event. For each event, all the data and information from sensors, documents, and other sources is united and available to the user independent of the media. The user then experiences the preferred parts of a particular event in the preferred medium.

In this vision, following true Web philosophy, all events are treated equally. The archived video of a News event, such as President Bush announcing the start of the War against Terror, is accessible in the same way as your sons first soccer game. The source can be anything from CNN to a local elementary school in Tibuktu whatever or whoever generates an event and considers it worth hosting on the Web will be able to do that. We believe that this EventWeb will be of great interest to current web users for many applications. Many sporting events, meetings, lectures, concerts, and numerous other events that are currently captured using only a few photos and sparse text pages, will use rich media and provide rich experience to users. If you see how fast poscasting is progressing, then you know that the mobile camera is likely to become a rich source of eventcasting in a few years. We see the beginning of this vision already. Sensors are now being connected to form networks for various Internet applications. And Webcams are putting live experiences from a sushi bar in San Francisco to an ant colony in Lansing, Michigan. In short, we are witnessing the beginnings of the EventWeb, just as about a decade ago we saw the DocumentWeb emerge.