Building A Timeless Brand

Engulfed by the tsunami of digital transformation all around us, global markets have turned more uncertain as the way people retrieve, consume, share information has changed. The C suite executives across the globe are keen to sail smart into the future, to succeed and thrive.

IT’s all about defying eternity and creating a timeless brand as disruptive technologies shake the complacency out of archaic systems and processes. So, how is this going to impact the future and what can we do to create a timeless brand? Significantly, this has become a question of survival for enterprises, big or small.

Read on to navigate some of the trends that will shape the industry in the years ahead.

Artificial Intelligence is going to dominate the future as forward thinking leaders will seek higher performance and measurable outcomes. In a bid to outsmart the competition, they will focus on doing more with less for more. This will entail embracing more automation, more predictive analytics, and a higher shift to machine learning and robotics, all aimed at better decision making, optimizing cost, balancing resources and improving productivity. We will see more and more intelligent agents able to perform jobs that require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, and decision-making. From IBM’s Watson, Apple’s Siri, Google Voice Search, Google Brain, Google Translate, Xbox, Netflix, and autonomous cars artificial intelligence has already slowly impacting our lives.

Precision marketing will rule as brands will see their identity continue to have a roller coaster ride with self-learning ‘data driven insights’ transforming their narratives. The radicle shifts in the way buyers look for and consume information and the manner in which they want to be interacted will trigger more granular and integrated customer-centric strategies. As empowered consumers will increasingly expect brands to anticipate and respond to their customized needs quickly, CMOs will strive to aggregate, enrich, and glean real time predictive insights from big data – through offline, online and social sentiment analysis. As the pace of technology development is going to be rapid; marketers need to be in a constant state of test- learn-run experimentation mode, in order to intelligently decide what makes sense for their businesses.

Customer Experience will remain vital to thrive in the intelligent era. This will be accentuated by fundamentally and unpredictable breakthrough in technologies like hybrid Clouds which will force the leaders to seek a deep, scientific understanding of the cognition of the customers.  Armed with novel, real-time, insights - forward thinking leaders will harness advanced customer experience solutions to embrace digitally transformation and differentiate their products and services across all channels, touch points, and interactions.

CMOs will be able to create a single source of customer data and develop ‘persona’ for every marketing process and predict behaviors. In a bid to personalize meaningful experiences, influence, and monetize, the leaders will treat every customer as an individual. This kind of ‘precision marketing’ will entail listening, analyzing, profiling, and engaging customers intelligently across the full client life cycle with the right content in the right context to amplify the brand narrative and deepen the relationship.

The good news is computational advertising is already helping the marketers find the best match between a given user in a given context and a suitable advertisement or content customized for the target. Leaders will also tap emotion detection and analysis tools to generate actionable insights to create new levels of customer intimacy. Recommendation engines can offer thought leadership articles, blogs or videos to on-line audience, based on a prediction of their interests. They can help predict customer preferences, interests and prod them to purchase or influence. Social sentiment analysis tools will see greater adoption.

Leaders will embrace Natural Language Processing and Brain-machine interfaces to measure and track customer focus, engagement, interest, excitement, affinity, relaxation, and stress levels. While still a work in progress, machine perception is a near reality today. Advanced adaptive technologies will help marketers better understand their customers using computer vision, machine hearing, and machine touch. Collaborative research like BRAIN Initiative (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) will help map Brain neurons connections and help gain insight into how the brain’s individual cells and complex neural circuits interact. This will also help future marketers to foster customer loyalty scientifically, and effectively.

The question is how do the smarter leaders embrace such rapid change? As marketing evolves into a fusion of art and science, an open, collaborative, multi-disciplinary, experimental and creative attitude will be needed to sense, influence and serve. IT’s all about being essential to clients, to continually learn, innovate and add sustained value to business and society, and to stay ahead of the curve – Whatever is the Next.

Are we ready to embrace the future?

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula:  The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com

The next wave of machine learning

Athena, the first robot to buy a ticket, flew on a commercial airplane. She recently boarded her flight at Los Angeles International Airport with everyone else in economy. Interesting. Isn't it?

Now, consider this. A team of engineers have designed the world's first bionic man, a walking, talking robot made up of 28 mechanical body parts from 17 international manufacturers. Frank(short for Frankenstein) the bionic man even features a circulatory system and beating heart. Agree, there is a way to go, yet, as man and technology take the digital leap together, they are evolving together in radically new ways.

The future has arrived. As exponential growth of disruptive artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive computing continues, the dawn of the "conscious machines” seems not too far. Machines that could be loaded with human consciousness, machines that are smarter than us, albeit, with different values, ethics, and virtues…Homo sapiens 2.0?

Going by the digital transformation all around us and the tech breakthroughs robots will rise, and, machines will assume critical control of many human tasks, perhaps sooner than we realize.

A study by Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of Oxford's Program on the Impacts of Future Technology put the matter starkly. In their analysis of over 700 different jobs, almost half could be done by a computer in the future. This wave of computerization could destroy not simply low-wage, low-skill jobs, but also impact the way we work, and live. A human revolution is in the offing. This is possible as power of digital insights is “converging”, and infiltrating all disciplines artificial intelligence, computing and networks, robotics, 3D printing, genomics, and healthcare.

So, are we poised to wrest biology from nature? To develop machines with intelligence that rivals or outstrips our own? Can we manipulate the material world on molecular scales? What happens to humanity, then, when super intelligent robots take over? Will it be the end of the mankind as we know IT? Are we prepared for smartly navigating the post human era?

According to Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest living scientific mind, while the primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have, have proved useful, the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. Humans may not effectively compete with an AI which would take off on its own, re-design itself at an ever increasing rate and reach an intelligence that would surpass that of humans. Limited by slow biological evolution, human race may be superseded.

Tesla/SpaceX founder, futurist and famous industrialist, Elon Musk too recently warned that our sci-fi nightmares about artificial intelligence could actually come true in our lifetimes. He called artificial intelligence humanity's biggest "existential risk" and likening it to "summoning the demon."

Stuart Armstrong from Oxford University’s at the Future of Humanity Institute takes that risk too seriously, as he feels that AI could kill us all, if we don’t take steps to program it right. This resembles an event that's been dubbed the intelligence explosion -- a term used by scientist Irving John Good in a paper outlining the development path for artificial intelligence. For Irving John Good the development of an ultra-intelligent machine could be the "last invention that man need ever make" as after that, humanity would cede innovation and technological development to its smarter progeny.

Not all are skeptical about the future and the positive possibilities and amplification of human capabilities, in every sphere.

Ray Kurzweil, leading futurist and MIT professor, stresses that the exponential growth of artificial intelligence will lead to a technological singularity, a point when machine intelligence will overpower human intelligence. Interestingly, Kurzweil who is also Google’s Director of Engineering, striked back recently against the likes of Musk and Hawking—and in Hawking’s case, even took a bit of a swipe, noting that AI is “helping the disabled (including providing Hawking’s voice).”

Let’s dive deeper... For Demis Hassabis, co-founder of the Google-owned artificial intelligence startup DeepMind, is focused on creating "AI scientists".  It’s all about mimicking human brain, in the form of algorithms and data to retrieve them for tasks it was not previously been programmed to do.

Significantly, The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain too could have far reaching impact beyond new ways to treat, cure and prevent brain disorder. It’s all also about decoding the human brain, and the infinite possibilities and powers that it would bestow.

For instance, Nick Bostrom thinks that super-intelligence could help us solve issues such as disease, poverty, and environmental destruction, and could help us to “enhance” ourselves. In The Second Machine Age, MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee highlight how we build, use, and live with our digital creations will define our success as a civilization in the 21st century.

While the opportunities of AI are unlimited, from helping to cure disease and treating disabilities, to advance renewable energy and bring education to people around the globe - the uncertainty around AI is why we shouldn’t ignore warnings from folks like Hawking et al.

The world needs to watch IT more carefully as the race to conquer human mind intensifies, and so are the tools to win the human consciousness. Individuals, businesses, society and nations must learn to compete smartly with machines.

We need to move beyond the rhetoric of "manufacturing consent" and think conscientiously to explore how the next wave of machine learning will impact the human race? How is this is going to complement human jobs? How the next generation of “digital natives” will leverage their skills in a new labor market? How we will design the future cities when cars are autonomous and so are many of our gadgets? Who will own the rights to our DNA? How our policies can keep pace with accelerating change?




The age of Homo sapiens 2.0 is arriving fast. Digital Gurus like Nicholas Negroponte find no reason to disbelieve that nanobots in our brain might shape the future of learning, and much more as humanity is moving to a post-biological future.

When the super intelligent machines rise, we’ll surely need to be ready for them. Are we ready for the human revolution?

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula:  The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com

Lemon, Chilies & Culture Marketing

As cultural tuning increases the likelihood of effective persuasion, the challenge is how marketers can create effective persuasion and messaging to positively influence the buying behavior

Kumar picks up a ‘thread of fresh lemon and chilies’ from a street vendor near his computer hardware store which he owns. He then hangs the ‘threaded charm’ above the entrance to the store as a talisman. If you happen to walk in the streets of India, on a Saturday, you can’t miss this familiar sight - shops, houses, auto rickshaws and trucks hanging threads of lemon & chilies. No, they are not meant for salad, but are there to ward off the evil eyes.

On the contrary, red Swastika (as depicted above), a symbol of auspiciousness in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism connoting good luck,

One may call it superstitions, blind-belief system or heights of ignorance. Yet, this indicates how strangely culture is rooted deep into the human psyche. To make matters complex there is a high degree of arbitrariness that lends meaning to such abstract symbolism. While there are interesting differences among cultures regarding conceptual associations that constitute meaning, this has emerged as a potent tool to influence the minds for marketers.

In every society, these hidden culture codes or structures make their mark. Hidden, as often, we are not aware of these ‘culture markers’ or pay little attention to them, yet, they shape our behaviour, and our decisions. Such codes deal with strongly held beliefs, and manifest highly, even though those who use them tend to be unaware of them.

While codes vary in scope from the universal to the local, deciphering the same can lead to novel insights to drive audience activated content marketing programs rich in persuasive precision. This is important as by default we humans are meaning-generating and meaning-interpreting animals, besides whatever else we are. What this means is coding text and decoding the phenomena around us, we endlessly, produce and consume interpretations.

Let’s consider, Barbie doll. The name carries a lot of meaning because a Barbie doll has long been an icon in society. What comes to your mind or to your little girl, literally, when you think of Barbie Doll? What does it denotes to you? How would you describe it literally? A trendy toy doll, first marketed in 1959, that was 11.5 inches high, had measurements of 5.25 inches at the bust, 3.0 inches at the waist, and 4.25 inches at the hips.

Although it is a children’s toy, what a Barbie doll could connote or codify to a girl is a woman with a perfect body and exonerating beauty. This is also about a dreamland of princesses, fairies, fashion, shopping, friends, relationships and party-times. For some critics, the great popularity of the doll marks the end of motherhood as a dominant role for little girls, as Barbie spends her time as a "courtesan," buying clothes and having relationships with Ken and other dolls. She does not prepare little girls to be mothers, as earlier dolls did, dolls the girls could treat as babies, imitating their mothers' roles. One can construe that the doll and its variants are symbolic codified content which is designed to engage and influence the young minds, appealing to the inner realm of the psyche.

Forward thinking marketers are adept at successfully tapping cultural awareness, cultural intelligence and cultural sensitivity. As cultural tuning increases the likelihood of effective persuasion, the challenge is how marketers can create effective persuasion and messaging to positively influence the buying behaviour of the customer as an individual.

For content producers and marketers, often the greatest challenge is synergizing their own codes and the codes of the audiences, who often decode them differently from the way the creators intended. The result: aberrant decoding, leading to diluted impact, and messages getting lost in the clutter and noise.

Creating culture markers that are embedded deep in the content can strike immediate chord with the audience. Using these codes and driving greater mindshare based on an evolving mass of covert meanings and associations can increase audience affinity and loyalty. Leveraging the unconscious universe of language and assumptions shared by producers and consumers of messages can help create a targeted brand mix.

The hidden part of the iceberg is a brand’s cultural unconscious made up of associations, similarities and significant differences that opens the doors to the unconscious mind in the individual. Winning the influence warfare calls for a peaceful plunge into the psyche.

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula:  The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com

You, Me and Miss Social

We, Homo sapiens, have evolved a lot, from scribbling wall paintings in ‘caves’ to online ‘social media’ posts. One thing hasn’t changed much, though - the craving for being needed, loved and belonged. So, is there anything anti-social about social media?

 

Hold on. This is not the love story of Adam, Eve and the forbidden fruit. This is about you, me and Miss Social (media), in the context of present times, where technology has invaded our personal lives like never before. Step on to the era of Services like Instagram, Google Plus, Twitter and Facebook which encourage users to share from the rooftop every life event as material to be viewed and commented on.

 

Strange, isn’t it? Love and relationships have turned buttons of “likes” - and so are self-expressions. Indeed, in a fast paced world, isolated from real one-on-one relationship, the enigma is stark clear. While the average adult Facebook user has more than 300 friends, in reality, research indicates, average adult has far fewer friends - perhaps just a couple of good ones, in many cases.

Scratch the surface, and dig deeper into the consciousness. What do you see? We have mutated into a species that will invariably have its fingers on a digital device or keyboard at all times. Look at the irony, cut off from the real world and avoiding actual human contact, we still claim to be high on the social, glued on to the touch screens.

Our happiness has become a measure of the number of “likes” we get on that new FB photo. We feel elated when we get too many RT’s on that tweet of ours? Often, we “like” or “RT” a friend’s post or tweet with a latent desire of being reciprocated in return.  We have started rating our popularity and clout in terms of the “followers” we have.

The reason: Our actions on Social Media sites are acting as a potent tool to gratify our inherent desire to be ‘needed’ in the ever increasing tsunami of information, nuclear families, stressed lives and aching hearts. In an increasingly connected world, may be your lonely hearts and minds are gasping for an iota of “attention and recognition.” So much so that there is an unspoken war out there to own that fraction of that attention span.

Behind the pink social status of carefully selected, ever happy ‘photos, and ‘texts’ lies the rising emptiness and isolations of real-life social belongingness. So, strong is the charm of social forums that unknowingly you get addicted to “likes” on social media as an affirmation of your identity. Indeed, fame is now reduced to its most basic ingredient: public attention.

Look at the paradox, friendship and love becomes a score keeping of the “likes”, “followers” or “RTs”. The real humor is “all is well” on social media. Often, everyone is happy. And, there are a thousand ways to flaunt happiness and self-worth, at the click of a button or filter.

Yet, there is little “social” about the social media. For instance, we don’t have to have a face-to-face discussion to end a relationship; it can all be done with a click of a button, just Unfriend. Perhaps this one-button-does-everything mentality that we’re now so used to is making us less social (or social, pun intended) and more insensitive to the feelings of others. The question is does it allude to the existential crisis that has infected us in today’s fast paced life?

Well! Who among us has never experienced the desire to be liked, a bit more, just a little bit more than others? Indeed, deep within us lies an inherent trait which craves for a constant reassurance of being loved, recognized and needed. And, this desire sprouts right from the cradle to the grave. There's a very human need for intimate, one-to-one communications.

The concern though is social media helps fuel feelings of isolation, anxiety and self-doubt to an extent. Some research indicates that the longer people spent on Facebook each week, the more they agreed that everyone else was happier, prettier and had better lives.

Being on the short end of someone’s social media endorsements can create feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, and irritation, while being too generous with your own social media praise can feel one-sided when left unreciprocated. Often, it can facilitate jealousy and suspicion in romantic relationships and open up new modes for stalking and harassment.

Ironically, a fear of missing out (FOMO) on something better can make you miss out on all the things you do have going on in your life right now. This anxiety tends to cause compulsive behaviors, like checking out other social situations even as you are in the middle of one currently. Unfortunately, FOMO can lead to many acquaintances but no close friends.

Think about it. While we might think social success looks like an endless envy-inducing Instagram feed, isn’t it actually about connecting with other people in a way that feeds your soul?

For some, social media is the place where your ‘psyche’ and ‘social capital’ by virtue of your relationship traces is stripped and searched, and reduced to data that is aggregated, sliced, diced and ‘used’ to mint money or mold minds. Isn’t it a strange feeling when Facebook enters your private address book with WhatsApp. To some, this gives rise to the notion of users losing control of their information to advertisers and third-party platforms.

Take a pause. What happens to the invasion of privacy as the uninhibited culture of 'say everything' from vacations to break-ups to what I had for dinner last night? Careless self-revelations have run havoc in the past. Careers have been ruined, childhoods and marriages destroyed, privacy invaded and exploited, all in the name of sharing.

Did you hear this? Recently, a counter movement of users has formed, deciding to leave social networks by quitting their accounts (i.e., virtual identity suicide) driven by privacy concerns.

What’s on your mind?  Whatever…Who cares? Love it or hate it, you can’t avoid a date with Miss Social.

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula:  The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com

 

Sailing Smart during Tough Times

To succeed and thrive in this era of rapid change, one needs to think and act ambidextrous. What this means is inculcating a Janus like spirit, a strong vision of the future rooted in the social context of the present.

How does one sail smart during tough times? Which is a more critical arsenal, marketing or innovation for business success? Such questions become more pertinent, as growing economic turbulence, and shrunk technology life cycles have made austerity the new normal and continual innovation the imperative for survival.

However hard one may try, there is no escape from resolving the above dilemma which we often face. Yes, this is all about the paradox of exploiting the present and exploring the future. And, this calls for honing  new skills, a set of hybrid skills, a multidisciplinary approach, rooted strongly in adaptive collaboration, and constant experimentation. The future demands a new breed of knowledge workers: who combine broad understanding of business with deep practical execution in a functional area.

To succeed and thrive in this era of rapid change, one needs to think and act ambidextrous. What this means is inculcating a Janus like spirit, a strong vision of the future rooted in the social context of the present. Where strategy and execution are a continuum of the same river, and transcend the narrow barriers of the execution trap. The metaphor of the two-faced god ancient Roman God, Janus connotes transitions and transformation as he looks to the future and to the past.

The real challenge lies in accomplishing this balance of past, present and future, mastering the science of exploring new avenues and the art of exploiting existing ones. Indeed, this is easier said than done. While Ambidexterity is tough to master, individuals, businesses, and nations alike have little choice, but to improve their Janus Quotient (JQ). This is more relevant to a country like India, which has slipped to a dismal rank of 66 in the global innovation index.

What is required is blending the traditional arsenal of the vision, risk tolerance, adaptive spirit and agility needed to score early-mover edge with a persistent focus on futuristic skills to outsmart competition.

To infuse ambidexterity, we must understand the diversity and dynamism of our environment and implement the appropriate approach. Each approach requires a different set of interventions and implies a radicle shift that can helps us make that uncanny choice at the right time to stimulate incremental or disruptive ideas that resides at the intersection of invention and insight.

Regardless of which approach we choose, we just need an ounce of common sense to catalyze success. The problem is in today’s fast paced life, common sense has become very uncommon, almost facing extinction. Indeed, the biggest truths are simplest. Yet, we miss them past in the mundane grind. It is high time, we start asking questions like kids, without any biases, and look beyond the obvious for answers.

A perfect Janus’s Quotient (JQ) calls for thinking outside the box, empowering the bottom of the pyramid, and creating value in a social context, for ourselves, businesses and society. Empowerment is the key words as a flock of choice less doers at the grassroots can have a crippling effect. A balanced exploratory and exploitative approach is a precursor to this. This holds true whether we are focusing on personal goals, or experimenting with new products, process or business models that impact business and societal progress.

Make no mistake. Only innovation will help us differentiate, to score competitive edge, one country from the next, as well as one economy from the next.  And, those equipped with the right skills will set and lead the innovation agenda. For instance, marketing and innovation can be thought as a two sides of the same coin that work in synergy to accelerate a firm’s success. This is vital as many marketing managers often dream up creative campaigns to drive top-line sales but shy away from the balance sheet impact of their promotional programs.

Calibrating success in a world where information rules necessities starting gathering and contextualizing the data, drawing rich insights, and using these insights to create relevant, personalized, targeted experiences that help enhance the productivity and deliver on metrics to drive success. The best way is to break the inertia and start small as real innovation is about incremental gains, not always about world-changing discoveries.

This will pave way for adaptability, scalability and sustainability of ideas that matter, and can act as catalysts for accelerating .the progress of the human race. We just have to work as a global community to embrace open collaboration, and take the leap to the future. Are we ready?

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula:  The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com

How can we make India an Innovation Powerhouse?

“Do earthquakes have a name, just like hurricanes?” Meghana asked her science teacher.  The 8 year child was curious. The teacher got furious, “don’t ask silly questions.” The kid, shy at the rebuttal, was not sure, if she asked a wrong question.  The teacher asked Suketu, a student of the same class, “what are the states of matter.” “The five states of matter are solid, liquid, gas, plasma and Bose-Einstein condensate,” replied the child. Teacher got angry, “Matter has three states: solid, liquid and gas.” she shouts, “Be attentive, follow your textbooks.”

These are real-life stories from a premier school in Mumbai, which show the deep malice that plagues our education system, where we seldom inspire our kids to think outside the text books. Make no mistake. These are not isolated instances, but a reflection of how an insensitive attitude stifles scientific spirit in children.

The good news is the new kids on the block are empowered. Many of them have easy access to information on their tabs and personal laptops. Their learning is not confined to the text books. They trust their teachers, but would also like to validate what is being taught in the class. They want to speak their mind. The world is their classroom. The question is: are we doing our part to nurture a scientific spirit in our kids? Or, are we acting as impediment

Often, limited by our own understanding, we impose ignorance in the name of education. The result: a crippled mind, a product of rote education, which refuses to think. Take it to a higher plane, look at the scientific and technology ecosystem, and you realize how innovation - a vital pillar for human progress, is getting killed by bureaucracy, and politics. True, red tape kills innovation

Consider this. India ranked 66th in the Global Innovation Index 2013 among 142 nations, published by Cornell University, INSEAD, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) as a knowledge partner. Not a great distinction to have, for sure. Isn’t it embarrassing?

This is the same nation on which the great American scientist Albert Einstein once commented “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made."

Today, the real reason for concern is the falling standard of scientific research:  while India's contribution to the global output has increased, it still remains only at a modest level with no sign of a major upward swing in quantity or quality. How can we overcome this?

Perhaps, we should take a break from the monotonous rat race of the mundane life? Pause, and think. What could be the cause of our plastic approach to knowledge absorption and diffusion? How do we rid the science and technology of red-tapes? How can we add more value to the business, society and the planet? While the reasons might be many, one element which will find resonance in one and all is the ‘erosion of scientific temperament’ across discipline. Agree?

We take pride in being one the most intelligent of the living species. Yet, we have stopped challenging our grey cells much. We have stopped thinking afresh, thinking disruptively, confined to conformity.  Rightly said, a man flattened by conformity stays down for good. Knowledge is all about treading the path of unknown, exploring truth, and speaking fearlessly about conformity.

We must ‘think’ global. We must think beyond the paradigm of Jugaad. It’s time to take a multidisciplinary approach, transcend the horizon, and explore new answers to resolve our challenges in manufacturing, education, healthcare,  economics, agriculture, politics, and ‘natural resources’ such as water or energy. It’s time to develop new products, services, and business model.

And, behold, Information is the Next Natural Resource. We need to be cognizant of the ocean of data all around us. Key decisions about computing, manufacturing or marketing will no longer be decided by intuition but by predictive analytics using elements of the social media network such as cloud data, mobile information, and big data– converging together. Gleaning the right insights from this Big Data will decide the winners and the losers of the future, and pave way for sustainable development.

This necessitate that we keep our eyes and ears open, and nurture a scientific temperament. Scientific temper is a way of life - an individual and social process of thinking and acting - which include questioning, observing, testing, hypothesizing, analyzing, and communicating. We must catalyze innovation diffusion right at the bottom of the pyramid. And, this can begin at home, even amongst kids.

Our schools can serve as innovation hubs, if we equip our students with the ‘right information’ and encourage them to unshackle their thoughts. How about having lessons on IP right at the school level, and introducing a helpdesk to file a patent. Let each one, file one. Let there be no doubt. Incentivizing innovation will acts as a potent tool and can transform any nation into an economic superpower - creating more jobs, more wealth and improving the living standards for all.

At the social and enterprise level we must collaborate to free the management of science and technology from the thickets of bureaucracy. All our problems could be settled easily if we were only willing to think.  The trouble is we often resort to all sorts of excuses in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work. The danger is progress stops once an individual, enterprise or nation loses its spirit of pioneering. To accelerate our success, we must double our failure rate, and tirelessly experiment in pursuit of the truth.

As a scientific ecosystem, the government, industry, academia, and public private partnership must come together to invest much more in people, institutions and infrastructure, and harvest the benefits of inclusive innovation to achieve dramatic economic growth.

This is high time we join hands to infuse an open, collaborative approach into the ecosystem and find answers to the unknown. Questioning is the only precursor to spark this. 

Let Innovation thrive!!!

The Blogger is Kiran Kumar Yellupula. The views expressed here are purely personal. Please share your feedback at mediavalue@yahoo.com