Belgian comic artist Peyo (Pierre Culliford) (1924 – 1992) has been touted as the chief creator of Smurfs (or Les Schtroumpfs in French). The character Smurf appeared in a Belgian comic series ‘Johan et Piroulit’ in the episode La Flûte à six trous, in the magazine Le Journal de Spirou in October, 1958. However the idea was born during a casual lunchtime conversation between Peyo (Pierre Culliford) and Andre Franquin (1927 – 1992), another famous Belgian comic artist.

It was summer of 1958 and Peyo and Franquin were having lunch while enjoying their coastal vacations. Suddenly Peyo asked Fran

Pierre Culliford "Peyo" (1924 - 1992)

quin to pass him something but momentarily forgot the name. So he asked, “Give me…….Smurfs“. According to Peyo he had created the word to mean ‘a thin, anything, any thingy’ – whatever. Franquin replied, “Here you have Smurfs, when you are through smurfing, you resmurf it for me”. It became a common joke for them and they spent a few days ‘Smurfing’. In their free time they recited classic french fables by La Fontaine and Racine in their  ‘Smurfed’ versions. It gave them sentences like, “Master Smurf on a smurfed tree had a smurf in his smurf”. And so on…..

Eventually by autumn Smurf had appeared in their comic series and in a few decades it emerged as one of the most successful comic series franchises of all times. An interesting example of where ideas come from.

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

I tried to look at two dimensions of experience of having played in a semi-final. The first dimension is how many semi-finals has the country already played. The logic being, more a team plays in games like semi-final more it’s equipped to play and win such games. Another dimension is the gap between two semi-finals. Here the underlying argument is that if a team plays a semi-final in a consecutive world cup it is mentally more prepared and equipped to win the semi-final.

Given that there have been only nine world cups so far and hence only 18 world cup semi-finals no sophisticated statistical analysis was feasible. However I just did a simple tabulation. I classified winners and losers as per the experience (number of semi-finals played) and continuity (number of years between two semi-finals).

The numbers in brackets in the winners' table indicate teams that went on to win the World Cup.

Some of the conclusions of the analysis are really interesting.

This time we have four semi-finalists. India is playing their fifth semi-final and thus joins the club of teams having played 5 or more semi-finals, which comprises Australia, England, New Zealand and Pakistan. Sri Lanka plays their fourth semi-final and interestingly their third consecutive semi-final. On the other hand New Zealand and Pakistan both are playing their sixth semi-final (the only other nation to have played six times in a world cup semi-final is Australia). Pakistan are playing their semi-final after a gap of 12 years. This is only the fourth such instance. When Australia played against Pakistan in semi-final at Lahore (having played their first semi-final in 1975) , it was for the first time that a team was playing a semi-final after a gap of 12 years. Next it was New Zealand in 1992 and then it was West Indies in 1996. Except Australia both the other teams playing in a semi-final after a gap of 12 years or more, lost the semi-finals. Now let’s see what picture the data juggling shows us.

Apparently, number of semi-finals played prior to the current one doesn’t have much of an impact. One can say that a team playing it’s 4^th, 5^th or 6^th semi-final has a greater chance to win than a debutant. (Interestingly except the first world cup, only twice a semi-final has been won by a country that was playing a semi-final for the first time. India in 1983 and Sri Lanka in 1996. Both went on to win the cup.) Neither the numbers are that strong nor they are quite relevant for making any prediction in this world cup.

What is interesting though is the impact of playing consecutive world cups. Interestingly in semi-finals there has been 15 such instances where a team was playing a semi-final in consecutive world cups, that is the team was in the semi-finals within a span of just 4 years. Let’s call such a team a ‘Continuing’ team. Out of 15 such instances, 10 times the ‘Continuing’ team has won. In fact a when a ‘Continuing’ team plays against a ‘Returning’ team that is returning to the Semi-finals after having missed it for a world cup or two, the ‘Continuing’ team is expected to win. The only exception to this rule has been the semi-final between Australia and Pakistan in 1987, where Australia was playing after 12 years and against Pakistan was a ‘Continuing’ team having played a semi-final in the previous world cup against West Indies. Interestingly out of 9 world cups, 5 times the winner was a team that had played semi-final in the previous occasion. Four times when it didn’t happen so was in 1975 (obviously the first world cup), in 1983 (when India reached semi-finals for the first time and went on to win), in 1987 (Australia playing a semi-final for the first time since the inaugural tournament), and in 1995/96 (Sri Lanka).

Let’s see if any other team has been in a similar situation as the semi-finalists of this World Cup and what has been the result.

• India : India is playing its 5^th semi-final and that too after a gap of 8 years. Two teams have been in a similar situation before. New Zealand in the previous world cup – and they lost in the semi and Pakistan in 1999 (they won the semi-final against New Zealand with absolute dominance and went on to lose in the final to Australia).

• Pakistan: Pakistan is playing it’s 6^th world cup semi-final after a gap of 12 years. No other team has been precisely in the same situation. However Australia has experienced both these dimensions in two different world cups. In 1987 Australia was playing after a gap of 12 years and went on to win the world cup. While Australia again, played its 6^th semi-final in the previous world cup (but after a gap of 4 years only) and once again they won the world cup.

• Sri Lanka : After Australia, Sri Lanka could be the most successful world cup campaigner in last four world cups. In fact, Sri Lanka are playing their third consecutive world cup semi-final.

• New Zealand : New Zealand are playing their 6^th world cup semi-final and are playing after a gap of four years. In a similar situation like Australia in the previous world cup. Australia was the eventual champion.

However there are a few interesting facts that every team can rely upon for moral support.

1. For Pakistan & New Zealand supporters : Except England in 1979, no team has ever managed to win a semi-final on the home soil. (England in 1975, 1983; India in 1987; Pakistan in 1987; New Zealand in 1992)
2. For Sri Lanka supporters: New Zealand has never won  a World Cup semi-final.
3. For Indian supporters : India has never lost to Pakistan in a world cup game.

Berlanga - El Maestro

Learning a new language can open windows to an entirely new world of arts, culture and literature.  I have been tremendously benefited from learning Spanish. One of the things I have discovered is wonderful classic Spanish cinema. I will always be indebted to my Cinema expert friend Raúl, for introducing me, among many other facets of world cinema, to the wonderful world of Luís García Berlanga.

Last year José Luis López Vázquez passed away. Last month we lost Manuel Alexandre and now the sad demise of Berlanga! Three doyens of the previous generation of Spanish cinema have died recently. Berlanga in his own right is the most important director of Pre-Almodóvar generation in Spanish Cinema and according to some critics, the best Spanish director ever. Today, Pedro Almodóvar is the face of Spanish Cinema internationally. But he could hone his skills and express himself in a democratic, modern and economically growing  Spain. Berlanga didn’t have that luxury. Berlanga had to show his art during an era of Franco’s totalitarian regime, when freedom of expression was probably limited.  Probably that need to voice his ideas and severe limitations thereon, taught Berlanga the art of subtlety. That’s what makes his movies so special. He was not someone who wanted to shout out loud, his anger, frustrations and complaints. He was someone who just wanted to whisper. Yes! He just wanted to whisper.  That was his forté. Subtle messages – stark realities wrapped in the cloak of simplicity and satire. He was a wizard of whispers.

I am just supposing that it was restriction and censorship that brought out the best of his craft. I haven’t seen all his movies. Especially the ones he made in post-Franco era.  Out of those ones, I have seen only ‘La Vaquilla’ and so I cannot make an objective analysis. But at least ‘La Vaquilla’ lacked sharpness of El Vedugo, Placido, Los Jueves Milagro etc. Berlanga tried to find stories hidden in the mundane routine of common people. His actors were not like Bardem, Banderas or Penelope; full of glee and glamour. His protagonists were Pepe Isebert, José Luis López Vazquez, Cassen and Manuel Alexandre. These were not stars with crowd pulling charisma and exotic beauty. These were humble actors, who started their careers doing theatre on streets, moving from village to village, entertaining the middle class of a country slowly healing wounds of a cruel civil war. They were ‘cómicos’. They were precisely what Berlanga needed to tell his stories; funny, humble, simple and very good at their craft.

Berlanga’s movies are also like a visual anthropological encyclopaedia for mid-20th century, Spanish society. His movies reflect a deep love for people around him. His movies frequently featured customs, rituals and festivals of people in Spanish villages. Movies like Plácido, Calabuch, La Vaquilla and Los Jueves Milagro have eloquent and elaborate scenes about festivities and rural lives in old Spain. Maybe he knew that someday his country will change. It will change so much that nobody will remember what it was like just half a century ago. That’s why he passionately captured his times, his people and their routine uninteresting lives on screen.

I wouldn’t write here about his movies in detail. Just because I am not sure I know them well enough. I watched ‘El Verdugo’ – arguably Berlanga’s and Spanish film history’s best movie ever – for the first time in 2007, I watched it again in 2009 and finally I watched it last week. Every time I have discovered something new, something fascinating. Same happened when I watched ‘La Vaquilla’ and ‘Plácido’ for the second time. Berlanga’s subtlety is so fantastic, every time you watch his movie you peel off a new layer and a new meaning, a new message emerges from within. His movies were whispers and whispers can be celebrated through whispers only. In the free and democratic world where we live probably Berlanga’s movies may be lost in the maze of memories. But someday, when some curious mind would like to know, ‘what happens when singing is banned?’, one would discover the music in Berlanga’s whispers.

RIP Maestro Berlanga! The wizard of whispers!

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

The study also mentions that creative people share certain psychological traits (e.g. ability to make bizarre associations) with schizophrenics due to Dopamine D2 receptor genes. Dr. Frederik Ullén and his research team basically studied the brain and the Dopamine D2 receptors. Dopamine receptor genes are linked to the ability for divergent thought. In the mentioned study, people who showed higher levels of creativity (divergent thinking) also showed a lower density of Dopamine D2 receptors in thalamus, which is also a trait commonly found among the schizophrenic. Thalamus (see the image) is that part of brain which filters and relays information before it reaches cortex, where cognition and reasoning take place. Lower density of D2 receptors means less filterning and a greater flow of information, which in turn increases the possibility of more bizarre associations and imaginations.

So if you’re crazy, you might be creative; and vice-versa!!! or in the words of Dr. Frederik Ullén, “Thinking outside the box might be facilitated by having a somewhat less intact box”.

Reference

de Manzano O, Cervenka S, Karabanov A, Farde L, & Ullén F (2010). Thinking outside a less intact box: thalamic dopamine D2 receptor densities are negatively related to psychometric creativity in healthy individuals. PloS one, 5 (5) PMID: 20498850

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.

George Orwell - Courtsey : http://www.George-Orwell.org

Sometime ago I came across an interesting essay by self-anointed provocateur Christopher Hitchens about Animal Farm, an evergreen masterpiece by George Orwell.  The essay talks about the book’s birth, teething problems and everlasting relevance. However, what caught my attention was this paragraph taken from Orwell’s own introduction to the book.

“ . . for the past ten years I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement. On my return from Spain I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone . . . However, the actual details of the story did not come to me for some time until one day (I was then living in a small village) I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.”

This is a very interesting example. An acute need to express something – continuous search for a medium to do it – and a situation providing the ultimate ‘illumination’. Wolfgang Kohler, a Gestalt Psychologist, pointed out that an insight is the result of a dynamic interaction between the person and the situation. Many of us nurture similar desires to express several ideas, opinions etc. However, the reason why many of us cannot convert a ‘raw’ idea into a ‘product’, is because of this lack of ‘dynamic interaction’. We fail to interact with our situation. We fail to read our surroundings. So many stories, poems, novels, haikus, dramas are floating all around us. George Orwell can read it. I can’t. Do you?

How can we learn to interact with our situations? Certain mental habits may facilitate this. A persistent quest – ‘Prichchha’ – a persistent habit of questioning – a persistent habit of noting down details could help. Many studies in Psychology have found that a dialectical mind – a questioning mind – an observing mind – brings out better insights. Albert Rothenberg studied 22 Nobel Laureates, and found that the common differentiating factor among them was a dialectical mind – constantly looking for gaps, the unexplained, the contradictory, the anomalous, the odd.

Maybe we should also develop this quality – who knows – our masterpiece might just be lying next to us.

References.

Khandwalla, Pradip (2003). Lifelong Creativity. Chapter 6. Pages 90-92. Tata McGraw-Hill, India.

Kohler, Wolfang (1947). Gestalt Psychology

Rothenberg, Albert (1996). “The Janusian process in scientific creativity”, Creativity Research Journal. Vol.9(2&3), pp. 207-231

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.