Muscles of social media

Everybody witnessed Fecebook's and Youtube's role in Obama campaign in presidential election. It was the first time social media was used so effectively in political campaign. I was reading HBR post on how social media is penetrating and how deep it penetrating. This is another example of social media punch http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/06/twitters_new_role_in_south_kor.html

Eight reasons, why we should plant trees in this monsoon

Ashoka the great is not only respected for his sword skills and as great worrier but also for his social administration skills and as a visionary. His love for nature hasn't got the coverage that it deserves. He planted trees in his entire empire and his neighboring countries. And, became the first king in the human history to ban deforestation. It shouldn't come as a surprise to us, it was exactly more than twelve hundred years ago. Probably, there would have been more trees at that time and dense forests but there is no sign of, he took it for granted. And went for huge forestation, planted tree along the roads and also spread the awareness among people. In twelve hundred years only thing that reduced is trees. Population has grown from 150 million to more than 6 billion in these years. That's a serious and enough statistics one should know. If Ashoka the Great can understand importance of plantation at that time, no reason for us to make judgment today. We being part of profound society we need different inspiring reasons every time for everything, so, here are eight candid reasons why we should plant trees in this monsoon

1. MLK Quote

"Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree." - Martin Luther King

When MLK wrote this quote he din't assume that trees aren't good metaphors of hope because it won't have much value after 50 years. Those who think this quote is great and comes from the social hero. This quote deserve at least one tree from everyone of us.

2. Electricity is shortage and rising prices

Everybody loves air cooled but now its comes at higher costs. Load-shading in summer isn't undesirable. No electricity and no air cooled that's not livable condition. Trees can serve you there, they have great capacity of keeping the environment clean cool. Off-course some basics here but you can always dust off the cliché.

3. To be a part of sensitive society

We might have killed too many plants for our convenience just by using abundant use papers and wood. So next time you plant a tree and if you happen to watch them grow you would realize, it takes years to grow a complete tree. That could work as a sensitivity booster for us.

4. You will know what places are left un-constructed

Most places in city are occupied by construction and workplaces. This is best time see which places are leftover. Its delight to see un-constructed place for the people who's trying to purchase flats or plots. That's surely a motivation.

5. Some self-respect

We talk about everything almost everything. We have too many solutions for a single matter. But pragmatic stats doesn’t help as far as course of actions is concerned. This might be opportunity to do some walk the talk and some moral. You might want to talk with your kids next morning with proud that you did something good yesterday.

6. Political advantage

Some of us want to make seek political advantage of everything, so, plantations make a best opportunity to flash news. It helps build good will and people start respecting you for initiating such a noble work. They might not trouble their brains to understand your partisan intentions. For sure you will get some attention for your pompous manifestation.

7. Nature's rescheduling

It's already late but if nature decides to re-estimate deadline of sabotage, your single tree might help the planet. No harm in doing this favor to you and next human genesis.

8. Green color

If we plant more trees results in more greenery, medical science explains you the benefits of green color. It’s helpful for dissolving blood clots, stimulating the brain, it reduces stress and balances and soothes emotion.

No matter what of above inspires you, nothing should stop us from planting trees this monsoon. Raising self above moronic behavior is the biggest challenge of our generation. Time to overcome this phobia and put some time in saving human creed. No voodoo going to happen, it’s you and me.

INnoVEnTION

I had one of the best jog early morning; the reason being, it’s cozy today and little relief from the hit as it was raining in Pune yesterday. While you are in office, it’s hard to keep up and running and most importantly awake. But there are many things that keep me awake, such as Espresso. Well jokes apart and let's get down to the business. The theme: Innovation, lately kind of following me consistently. As it’s been always bugging subject for me to talk and think on. So, I did little research on the subject and thought of documenting it. Also presented this facts and analysis in monthly open house in my current organization. Please check the PowerPoint version of my presentation and you can treat this blog as a narration.

Couple of months back there was a post on company blog by a director, and it was headlining Innovation Vs Invention. Following this post there were very good replies on post. Discussions on lunch table, tea table, and everywhere. Like it inspired everybody it inspired me too. In fact, this was one of the best discussions we have had on company blog so far.

Then we decided to appreciate people with Innovation Award and for that month theme of a monthly magazine was innovation. Definitely that inspired us in many ways to do something innovative in our day to day lives. I think its very success of Web 2.0, when they came up with the idea of blog. A blog can bring such a revolution and I could see that in our company.

Innovation Vs Invention Debate

It’s always a very attractive option of falling into the debate over innovation and invention. Prof. Jan Fagerberg of University of Oslo states in his article that

“Invention is the first occurrence of an idea for a new product or process while innovation is the first attempt to carry it out into practice.”

And it’s much clear argument in the debate! What is significant here is the intention. Inventions are necessity driven and innovations are commerce driven. There are many explanations on this particular debate. There are many examples where you can distinguish the difference between invention and innovation vividly but there are some situations where you can’t make a difference at all. First audio recording device could be invention and iPod is the innovation. Many inventions help other inventions to happen. Magnetic tape was used for the recording of sounds in the first attempt of experiment and invention of magnetic tape proves to be the mother invention to the audio recording device.

My experience

I’ must be in fifth grade when I learned the story of Eureka, and Archimedes, first scientist I learned about. And for some reason I started believing that Innovations are only science’s babies. Until, you are not science graduate or postgraduate you can’t be innovator or inventor. But after four years, when I learned Indian percussion instrument Tabla and read more about music and instruments. Basically, Amir Khusrau invented a Table out of single Pakhawaj in 13^th century and that turns out to be made a huge independent league for the instrument.

History wasn’t my favorite subject when I was in school, but lately my realization of my lack of history knowledge leads me to read history. I was reading about the Indus Valley Civilization and the factors that helped its growth. The invention of irrigation around 4500 BCE was one of the major factors that led to planned infrastructure. People were migrating from once place to another place in search of water. Major time of a year they used to spend in migration related activities. When irrigation invented people was started settling down in the valley. Migrants from many places came together, shared cultures, values and ideas.

Sometimes, I think we could learn more about innovation and people from human history. Growth of Indus Valley civilization was accelerated by the invention of irrigation around 4500 BCE and that led to further planned infrastructure.

There are some great examples of how innovations can have socio-cultural effects. A Nobel prize winner Norman Borlaug saved over a billion people worldwide from starvation from his research popularly known as “Green revolution”. Where he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease-resistant wheat varieties. As a result of his innovation India Pakistan and Mexico became not only food sufficient but also exporters of the wheat.

Corporate and innovation

In corporate world if you want it or not you have to innovate that’s way to survive in a competition, whether it is a product or service or process. I always think of analogy of what tax is to employee innovation is to companies. Long terms benefits but there is always reluctance. Consumers becoming more aware and high-tech, expectation graph keep hitting the roof. So there is tremendous pressure on companies and executives to redefine products and services.

Poka-yoke is one of major design process innovation that happened in Japan. Innovated by Shigeo Shingo. Basically it advocates mistake proofing systems. Process or equipment should be build in way operator shouldn’t make mistake in using it. This idea was so exciting everybody used it with both hands. Some examples are USB sockets, floppy drives, and SIM card used in cellular phones.

Some frameworks leverage innovations. Take an example of web, from its Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. paradigm shift happened in the use of technologies and business models. New standards, frameworks, tools, products, protocols and new businesses have emerged as part of this drive. This journey has been fast and furious for the corporates. Not only for internet companies but also for engineering and manufacturing giants, local restaurants, retailers, media companies, export and import businesses and many more because of the need of using internet for being efficient and effective. Story doesn’t stop here; specifications are being laid out for Web 3.0 and even 4.0. That means innovation is inevitable. Strategic brains consistently have to think on how the market will behave with these dynamics in coming years.

Driving innovation

Creativity is the force works behind innovation and confidence and support is the creativity booster. Giving confidence to the people in believing their ideas helps people become Innovator. Blame is the biggest killer of any innovative idea. What if it doesn’t work, you get the blame. That’s discouraging. Mistakes should be allowed to make and considerate amount of tolerant in the work environment. Appreciations of idea and free time. A golden piece of advice that William McKinght, chairman of 3M in 1948 gave in his three paragraph note, even today it makes completely sense. He writes

“As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way.

Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs.

Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it's essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.”

- William McKnight, 3M Chairman, 1948

He suggested 15% of their time should be invested in the interests of employee whatever they want and that created Richard Drew. Richard Drew invented masking tape and cellophane tape. For almost decades nobody used the concept effectively. And Google came along used this concept effectively and went little further and made 20% free time concept and allowed their employees to work on the passions they want to pursue.

50% of Google’s products evolved from this 20% time.

Innovation a personal responsibility

Innovation is majorly influenced by our habits. If our day to day habits doesn’t challenge status quo, it’s just the talk we could do. It happens not only with respect to innovation, it happens to everything whether it’s an environment damage or poverty or anything. We just do a talk, no substantial effort and no results. Everything boils down to habits; the way we perform our duties or regular work. Not only creativity but organized approach of bringing it into a reality is what makes its possible. Precisely, its a team work of right brain and left brain.

Busy people will have always hard time innovating something, but lazy ones have a high chances of success. Well that’s true and not true. When I think of Archimedes, he had hard time getting solution for a crown measurement problem, when he was pushing too hard. And when he was tired of trying and wanted to relax in a bath tub Eureka happened. And don’t you think, this gives us a mantra! Relax and think, don’t rush, don’t do quick fixes. Think and question and again think. Eureka will happen for sure.

Thanks for reading !

Note : Send me an email at shinde.sushil@gmail.com for PPT. Use MS Office 2007, to get the best of animation.

References –

1. http://hbr.org/

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/

3. http://open-your-innovation.com/2009/09/28/invention-is-not-innovation/

Salute to the master

Sachin makes history today again, highest runs in an one day match inning. In an Indian way I would say “mind blasting” knock. It’s always a treat to see Sachin playing but this kind of comes after years. I was thrilled by the news since I was in the office. Once Viv Richards said about Sachin "He is 99.5 percent perfect. I'd pay to see him." This knock is very close to his standards, love him watching and making ball go over the rope effortlessly.

I shared this news with my friends in Philadelphia, US. I have been telling them about Sachin since last two years. They also follow him now and whenever something like happens they always send me emails. A very good friend of mine sent me email saying

“he bludgeoned 25 fours and three sixes in a stunning 200 off 147 balls.I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like he dominated!" - Elgin Akarsoy

A small experiment

On my recent visit to my village, I conducted a workshops for high school students. In one, I was talking to the students regarding career planning, vocational courses available and study disciplines. Being in the rural zones they have very less access to any information. Generally, they start working/earning right after SSC. After knowing that there are so many courses available they were so excited and more curious. Also I’ve conducted another workshop on quicker mathematics. Yesterday, I got the call from one of their teachers saying that ‘students are doing calculation so fast that I’m feeling outdated’. I dint expect how little contribution or talk could affect students so positively.

Keep hanging there…

Gym is one of passions. One of the reasons I love exercise is that, it makes me feel good about my body and everything else I take as a dividend. But this post is not on a gym or exercise. I wanted to share one incident in my gym at Baner. Amol, my gym instructor is one of those strict instructors. Heavy weights are his favorites. As everyone of us knows push-ups and pull-ups are one of the toughest body exercise, specially pull-ups. It’s horrible when you are new to the gym world. You go against gravity with extra your pounds and you feel like you are about to break your arms.

On some Monday morning two boys came in and I think it was their first day in the gym. After warm up instructor took them to the pull-up bar and asked them to do pull-ups. Both were little clumsy because they weren’t aware of the fact of pull-ups. So, Amol demonstrated then “how to” of it. Still none of them was ready to take up the challenge. In the moment instructor asked one of the boy to hang up the bar and asked him to do pull-ups, exactly the way he demonstrated. That boy hardly could do a single repetition. Instructor asked another boy to do the same, he even wasn’t even lucky to do one. Then instructor said, “you won’t be able to strengthen your upper body if you can’t do the pull-ups. Let me give you a tip, even if you can’t make a single repetition, keep hanging there. Your arms will become stronger, they will get used your body weight and it will stretch your body as well. “ I’ve no idea about these beginners but this conversation did strike me like anything. His words were swinging in my head for a week. Then I realized, we do exactly same in our life, if we can’t be successful in the first attempt in new experiment, we never try it again, and we give up. If vulnerable boys would give up, they won’t be able strengthen their body. And If they keep hanging everyday up the bar, someday they will start pulling their body up against the gravity.

Open Religion

Whenever I hear the word “Open” that makes me take a pause. Since, I started as my career as a Java developer I’m happen to listen this word very often but some or other way and most of the time it was “open source”. As a part Java community I’m a fan of open source, open development ideas, open frameworks, best practices and so on. Open source is continuous disciplined process of design, development, upgrades, ideas and frameworks. Doing it collaboratively to make life easier of the developers and reduce cost of product or increase the profit of the organization. And world has become so interdependent collaboration is the way it has to be done, where you can have thousands of idea flowing into the single thing. World best mind working together to make something that they are not paid for. I was always inspired by the fact that how open source phenomenon is working today. Probably, it’s one of the most important invention of our generation where ideas can flow freely, regardless of the place, gender, status, and where your profile doesn’t matter. How successful that communication is though it’s not a one organization. Corporate spends lot of money on the managing the people and training them. Can we say here that people can manage themselves when they are motivated by the common purpose.

I thought how interesting it would be if this paradigm could be applied to the religions. That might sound a wild idea initially but as you go through the post it might makes sense to you. I’m interested in different cultures, naturally religion is one of favorites subjects of my research. What makes me more curious is that how group of people believe in the same discipline and follow it for centuries. There has to be some magic behind it, although when group of people come together magic is something that is supposed to happen. If our ancestor would have had internet all regions would have lot more mature than it is today. They would have created religious scripts in a way where it makes sense to all. And that would have contributed to common thought process. Books and scripts can speak about history, heroic stories, rules and limits. But it would be interesting to see new age technology helping religions to adopt their new Avatars. Nothing has changed the world so radically in the human history like internet which brings people together under the protocol of collaboration. These, new age religion would be very dynamic. They will be composed of changing thoughts, in synchronization with socio-culture, socio-economic approaches and practices.

What world need today is love, common sense, awareness, education, transparent communication and openness. We need to move in the direction of what makes sense.

Didn't the idea of Open Religion really pissed you off?