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

 

Mice, Men & Robots

If you are NOT young, and happening, then this is not for you. If you don’t rate yourself as Gen-Y, then stop reading this. If you think mice don’t have the DNA to think, then this is not for you, either.

Feeling thirsty? Open a can of Coke… You are not just quenching your thirst, but your subconscious is unsuspectingly gulping calories of intentional brand promise of ‘opening happiness’.

Consciously, one would never associate a soft drink company to the claim of refreshing the world, inspiring moments of optimism and happiness, and creating value to make a difference. Yet, we fall prey, and drink, often unknowingly, getting hooked on to a product or service – the temptation is irresistible.

The reason: beneath the surface structure of text or content, lies deeply embedded the hidden subliminal message/s that acts as a cue to directly connect with people across cultures, religion, and geos.

The positive association that Coca-Cola alludes to is the universal desire of the human race for a lasting happiness. At the core of this lies learning by association, and igniting a habit formation, by offering messages that satiates the intuitive needs.

Remember, how B F Skinner, the great psychologist, succeeded in ‘conditioning mice’ to press a bar in response to the presence of a light by providing reinforce like food. This tells us how one’s behavior could be changed by the use of reinforcement given after the desired response.

Science has progressed a lot since then, but the principle of conditioning increasingly holds a great promise in motivating people, instilling positive buying behavior. This is important as new forms of technologies are invading the minds of consumers, each moment, creating new paradigms.

At first, computers could count. Today, they are programmed to follow “if this, then that.” Next they will need to discover and learn on their own, not just as a search engine, but proactively. The Internet of Things is evolving from information portals to interactive social and mobile channels to creating influence - shaping attitudes and behaviors.

Self-learning robots can track human psyche to mine and tailor ‘delicious chunks of information’ that can bait you into eating more seductive data that satisfies your inner needs.

What is special about this is perhaps even you yourself are not aware of these special needs that you crave for, yet the cognitive machines do, better than you. Powered by natural language capabilities and rich text analytics, mimicking how people think, they are going to transform the perception industry sooner than one could think of.

Studies reveal that subliminal messaging activates specific regions of the brain despite participants being unaware. Operating at a level below an individual's threshold for conscious perception, subliminal messages get well entrenched into the brain, and trigger a positive response when you see a cue. This has a domino effect.

Certainly, the confluence of big data, social, mobility and analytics, gives unprecedented opportunities for Chief Marketer to think beyond the obvious, manage and manufacture consent. The data harvested from social channels can show useful insights into a person’s personal life; their family members, their likes, their shopping habits, cell phone activity, loyalty cards.

So, next time you ‘like’ something on Facebook or purchase online, just remember, you are being watched. You are being monitored, and managed outside your conscious awareness.

Robots are on their way. Make no mistake - the subliminal marketing is here to stay. There will be divergence of opinions, but the idea is perhaps more significant than the reality.

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