Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

Steve Jobs, one of the most creative entrepreneurs of the 20th century, the man who single-handedly revolutionized many lives, the man who has left a deep impact on the computer industry, software industry, motion pictures (animation movies) and the music industry, is no more.

He was diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer in the year 2004. A year later while delivering Commencement Address at Stanford University, he shared his experience of being diagnosed with cancer and of being dangerously close to death. Reflecting upon those moments this is what he had to say, “

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. …..Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary……Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked; there is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Good Bye to the man who always followed his heart.

Source : http://mashable.com

It was in news yesterday that a village in India named Shivnagar, changed it’s name to ‘Snapdeal.com’-Nagar. When I read the headline, my reaction was, ‘What? How much would they have paid to sponsor the entire village? For how long?’

However, I soon realized that my hypotheses were absolutely wrong. As TechCrunch pointed out, it wasn’t a cheap marketing stunt. Truth is that the village itself changed its name as a sign of gratitude towards the company.

Shivnagar is a small impoverished village in the state of Uttarpradesh in northern India. Like many other villages in this region, Shivnagar also suffers from poverty, lack of infrastructure and lack of attention from authorities. Villagers get electricity only for a couple of hours every day and there has been an acute lack of drinking water in the village. Kunal Bahl, Founder of Snapdeal.com – India’s answer to Groupon (And the leader in Indian market) – got to know about this village from one his employees. He decided to help the villagers by installing 15 hand pumps across the village. The act didn’t cost the company more than $5000 but had a profound impact on lives of the villagers. Finally villagers, decided to change the name of the village from Shiv Nagar to ‘Snapdeal.com’ Nagar. (Nagar meaning Town/City in languages of  Sanskrit-family).

Research on Strategy for dealing with ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ (Prahlad, 2002) has explored different sources of value creation in low-income or poor markets. (Sanchez & Ricart, 2010). One such source of value creation could actually be the business model itself. Sanchez and Ricart (2010) have shown that in low-income markets, firms may choose an interactive business model, whereby the firm would not just interact but establish strong relations with fringe stakeholders and seek long term positive impact. The philanthropic gesture of Snapdeal, despite being a truly altruistic deed, will definitely bring about positive results for the company in the long run. These positive results may not be visible in the bottomline numbers but would be in terms of positive social capital that the company would build up. Many Indian companies have in recent times, shown a greater inclination towards indulging in community initiatives and bringing in fringe stakeholders within the purview of their business models. Yes Bank, the fastest growing private sector Bank, for example has an initiative called ‘Yes-Community‘ wherein they organize ‘micro-events’ in their branches for people living in the neighborhood and try to help them about prevention of pollution, management of waste and more efficient energy management. Positive signs indeed!!

Prahalad, C. (2002). Strategies for the Bottom of the Economic Pyramid: India as a Source of Innovation Reflections: The SoL Journal, 3 (4), 6-17 DOI: 10.1162/152417302760127192

Sanchez, Pablo and Ricart, Joan Enric (2010). Business model innovation and sources of value creation in low-income markets. European Management Review, 7 (3), 138-154 DOI: 10.1057/emr.2010.16

This rather interesting piece of research carried out by Ruby T. Nadler, Rahel Rabi and John Paul Minda (2010), showed that positive mood helps an individual achieve a greater cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility, in other words, being more skilful at performing cognitive tasks which involve greater analysis, imagination and hypothesizing. In order to test impact of mood on cognitive flexibility they carried out an experiment where they used Youtube videos.  I personally haven’t heard of Youtube videos being put to academic use. I am sure there are people who do that.

For ‘Positive mood’ they used the Laughing baby video, for ‘Neutral mood’ they used the Antique Roadshow video and for ‘Negative mood’ they used a Chinese earthquake report video. I am embedding here a laughing baby video – I am not sure if it’s the same that was used in the experiment.

So if you are a boss and if you catch your subordinate watching youtube at work, don’t worry. Immediately after the video is over, give him/her a challenging task and you should get good results. After all he/she will have a his/her mind in a much better shape. But do make sure, that videos are positive ones!!

Nadler RT, Rabi R, & Minda JP (2010). Better mood and better performance: learning rule-described categories is enhanced by positive mood. Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS, 21 (12), 1770-6 PMID: 20974709

However, Wave optimists, who were an obvious minority, finally accepted defeat with Google itself announcing suspension of Wave. The main reason for its suspension according to Google has been lack of user acceptance. This entire episode leaves us with two questions. One, why Wave didn’t succeed, given the user-base that Google enjoys? Two, Is Google hurrying in pulling the plug? Is it a right strategy to altogether abandon the innovation for lack of acceptance? Karim Lakhani of HBS has hailed Google’s decision saying that, “…….admitting failure and moving on is another key lesson in managing innovation.” He further adds, ” The ability to (quickly) shut down failing projects and reallocate intellectual and financial resources to other more promising endeavors is critical to innovation success as it releases individuals and budgets to take on the next big challenge. “

We don’t know what are the internal investment criteria at Google.  But the signal that this decision gives is that Google is both ambitious and ruthless with itself at the same time. On one hand, it doesn’t hesitate in launching highly ambitious tools like Wave and on the other doesn’t hesitate in abandoning it if it doesn’t perform well enough. The only mystery here is, what is that ‘performance criteria’ in a tool as radically innovative as Wave. Or, is it simply the performance of Wave, or is it a change in the product portfolio strategy? Shall we soon see features of Wave being integrated into other Google products? Well, only time will tell. As of now, as Google Wave and the Users’ manual to Google Wave both, are history. But as the author of its Users’ manual, Gina Trapani said, we can also say, “…I respect any product that shoots as high as Wave did, even if it misses in the market.”

For some academic work on a similar question, have a look at Agarwal, Rajshree; Bayus, Berry & Tripsas, Mary. 2005. ‘Abandoning Innovation in an Emerging Industry. ‘ Working Paper and also the paper that I am citing below.

Sanjay Jain, & Kamalini Ramdas (2005). Up or out—or stay put? Product positioning in an evolving technology environment Production and Operations Management, 14 (3), 362-376 : 10.1111/j.1937-5956.2005.tb00030.x

The same is true for individuals. More options one generates, greater the quantity of ideas you keep with yourself, better it is. This helps not just in situations where you have to look for a particular solution for a problem, but it might as well be helpful in situations like, creation of an artwork. This video, which is an excerpt from a documentary, ‘Joan Rivers : A Piece of Work’. In this video Joan, who is a famous stand-up comedienne explains how she organizes her jokes. Research has shown that for individual as well as organizations, it’s important to have more options, stored in the ‘memory’ so that it helps them ‘improvise’ whenever need arises.

Well, so if you are an artist, remember to retain all the spontaneous ideas that you generate, in an organized manner so that you can refer to them whenever need arises.

References

Osborn, AF (1953). Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem Solving Book

Moorman, C., & Miner, A. (1998). Organizational Improvisation and Organizational Memory The Academy of Management Review, 23 (4) DOI: 10.2307/259058

Khandwalla, Pradip (2003). Lifelong Creativity Book

Fun Theory campaign was all about motivating people to come up with creative solutions to mundane issues. However, the idea was, how can a social/behavioral problem be solved by making it fun to deal with? For example, we all know that people should obey speed limits on city streets as well as on highways, but still many don’t obey speed limits. Can we make more people obey speed limits by making it fun to do? We all are advised by doctors, friends and colleagues that we should use stairs instead of escalators or elevators, still we don’t. Can we make more people take stairs by making it fun to do so? Can we make more kids clean up their rooms by making it fun to do so?

Volkswagen’s Fun Theory campaign got many interesting viral video entries in response to this.  This entire campaign has touched on two important aspects of creativity. First, the assumption that fun or enjoyment is an integral part of creative behavior. In my Creativity workshops or Negotiation classes, I have observed a ‘circular’ relationship between fun and creativity. In other words, when a participant seeks joy, he starts getting ideas that are out of the box. On the other hand, at times, even though seeking joy might not be the main objective, when participants are able to come up with very creative solutions, they always qualify their experience as ‘fun’.

But why did DDB take up the theme of Fun for a Volkswagen theme? Volkswagen had introduced Bluemotion technology in 2006 and wanted to generate widespread interest around that. Bluemotion technology’s theme was that of reducing environmental impact without compromising the joy of driving. Volkswagen asked DDB to design a campaign around a theme. DDB saw that Volkswagen was actually solving a problem, by making it more fun to do. DDB decided to carry out experiments in different spheres of our lives where a problem was solved by making it fun to deal with. DDB’s decision to deal with actual ‘Fun’ videos and not going for traditional advertising paid off. It generated massive interest and in the end DDB rightfully grabbed the Cyber Grand Prix.

Another insight that can be drawn here is the effective use of media in making use of, what can be termed as, ‘social creativity’.  This campaign does show the possibility of using creativity of people in solving a common problem, by being able to create the appropriate platform.

One of the most popular Fun theory experiments is the one, now known as, ‘Piano Stairs’. Here is the video, look at it and enjoy.

I Don't Cry for You, Argentina

Tremendous rivalry between Latin American neighbors, Brazil and Argentina is providing inspiration to some businessmen for coming up with new creative marketing schemes.

Boteco Olé, a bar well recommended to the Cariocas to go and watch world cup soccer games, has an interesting marketing gimic. It offers free beer shots to all those who are present, when Brazil scores. Understood! So what? Well, they also have a special offer for games played by Argentina. They offer free Beer shots (or chopes as they call it), for every Goal scored against Argentina. So far rivals of Argentina have troubled the bartender just once (S.Korea Vs. Argentina)  though.   The title of this scheme is…’não choro por ti, Argentina‘ (I don’t cry for you, Argentina).   An interesting twist on Evita!

Source : www.hardware.sk

Larrabee is dead! Intel has announced one of the most ambitious graphics ventures’ demise on a blog post by Bill Kircos, Intel’s Director of product and technology . Intel didn’t announce it explicitly though, but fFortunately, Ryan Smith at Anandtech has deciphered it for us.

Four years ago rumours surfaced that ‘a shadowy organization called Larrabee Development Group‘ had launched itself to do the unthinkable in the High-end graphics chip industry. It had decided to take head on the two big crocodiles of the pond, namely NVidia and AMD. However, Job vacancy postings on Intel’s website did little to hide that Larrabee was an Intel venture. After a few months Intel proudly announced launch of Larrabee, a multi-core processor design which was supposed to compete with other GPGPU based (General Purpose Graphic Processing Unit) future products from competitors NVIDIA and AMD. Larrabee was supposed to be something like a combination of GPU/CPU. A chip that would have a full programmability of a CPU and throughput computing feature of a GPU. (see image below)

However, Intel’s foray into producing a Multi-core GPGPU Chip didn’t bother Nvidia and AMD much. On the contrary their strategies were not at all affected by Intel’s apparent plans. Both of them rather steadily went ahead with their strategy of Integrated Graphics.

After missing their initial product launch deadlines, last December Intel delayed the Graphic Processor launch and decided to downsize Larrabee to Software Development Platform. The product was now slated to arrive sometime in 2010. However Bill Kircos in his blog at Intel’s website has discretely written, “We will not bring a discrete graphics product to market, at least in the short-term.”

This means, Larrabee – the product is not coming to shelf. This case brings us back to the issue of abandoning innovation that was discussed here at Creatologue in the light of Microsoft’s abandonment of Courier. However, Larrabee’s case is quite peculiar. Larrabee, if it would have been launched would have been quite a radically innovative product. As is shown in the  image below.

What Intel has done by abandoning Larrabee is effectively imitating its competitors by focusing on Integrated Graphics rather than thinking about a CPU/GPU hybrid.

It would really be interesting to explore when a company might abandon a radical innovation project? One obvious reason was that it wasn’t giving expected results. But then, in an uncharted technology category, it will always be difficult to estimate performance. On the other hand, while its competitors in the graphics processing segment, have a strong presence, especially NVIDIA being stronger in gaming segment, overall Intel is incomparably bigger than these competitors. Given it’s size Intel shouldn’t worry about economies of scale or scope. The only other probable expectation is shift in strategic importance of the innovation (Agarwal, Barry and Tripsas, 2005). Why such a touted innovation lost its importance before it could see the light of the day, only time will tell.

Reference

Agarwal, Rajshree; Bayus, Berry & Tripsas, Mary. 2005. ‘Abandoning Innovation in an Emerging Industry. ‘ Working Paper.

Tipping Point talks about sudden widespread diffusion of ideas. In sociology there have been several attempts to study the phenomenon of diffusion of new ideas across people.

However, I came across something quite interesting while watching an extremely entertaining musical comedy, ‘Love me Tonight‘ (1932), directed by Rouben Mamoulian, one of the most innovative Movie Directors ever. The video embedded below is a wonderful example of ‘Diffusion’. It shows wonderfully how a song that was born in a conversation ends up reaching the army, and eventually the princess.

And the song is great! If you don’t start humming the tune after watching the video, I’ll pay your money back. So enjoy the video, while I go back to envying Gladwell.

Microsoft Courier (courtsey : http://www.engadget.com)

Last Thursday several Gadget lovers mourned with deep pain when Engadget wrote about sad premature demise of Microsoft Courier. It kind of made almost every Microsoft Fan (Who are an absolute minority now) a bit sad. Rumours about Microsot developing a dual-screen tablet started last September, and soon it’s images and even videos were leaked out. Microsoft however never confirmed it officially, until it decided to scrap the project.

The question however is, why would Microsoft abandon such an interesting product? Before Apple launched iPad nobody was sure of utility or commercial appeal of a Tablet PC. However, Apple’s iPad is one of the most successful début products in our recent memory. In the very first month of it’s launch it has sold 1 Mn units. Vladislav Savov at Engadget writes, “Steve (Jobs) told us it’d be revolutionary, and if sales are the measure of a device’s success, then the iPad seems to be well on track to validating its creator’s bold claims.” Now when future of Tablet Computing was looking so rosy, why Microsoft abandoned something, that was already creating some excitement among Techies?

Microsoft Courier is an interesting case of a proactive exit. There is lot of academic work on Innovation and Innovation system however there is not sufficient research available on abandonment of innovations. As it’s important for companies to know, how and when to commit to an innovation, it’s equally important to know, when to abandon an innovation.  Research suggests that a company might abandon to pursue a new product, in case (i) the market doesn’t move according to its expectations or (ii) the planned innovation is not strategically important for the company.  I found another interesting explanation in an article by Sanjay Jain and Kamalini Ramdas (2005). Using examples from Videogame industry they elaborate on what they have termed as a pace keeping approach to product development. In Videogame consoles, the development cycle ranges from two to five years, whereas the development cycle for graphics processing unit (GPU), which is a core underlying technology, takes about six months. In an industry like this, where core technology evolves much faster than the product, at times it makes sense to abandon a new product development, just because it’s neither easy nor profitable to keep pace with rapidly advancing technology.

Going back to the Microsoft Courier, do we really believe that this was a reason? In this case, it seems more the problem of ‘Apps’ rather than core technology. After successful launch of iPad, most of the applications developers have strongly invested their efforts, energy and creativity in developing killer Apps for iPad. Any new Tablet, with a different platform than iPad, could face a temporary ‘Apps-Drought’. In an article in March, Fastcompany had predicted a similar outcome based on the same logic.

We don’t know, and probably would never know why Courier was shelved. Maybe Bill, The Gates has some other surprises up his sleeve. Maybe Microsoft just lost interest in Courier. Maybe it was just pure bureaucratic problem of ‘cost overruns’ etc etc. The bottomline is Courier will never be a reality. A dream, that never came true!

So here is a video of a wonder product, you never had!

References

(1) Agarwal, Rajshree; Bayus, Berry & Tripsas, Mary. 2005. ‘Abandoning Innovation in an Emerging Industry. ‘ Working Paper.

(2) Jain, S., K. Ramdas. 2005. Up or out—or stay put? Product positioning in an evolving technology environment. Production and Operations Management 14(3) 362–376.