Desicritics Section: BizTech

Changing The Mindset - From Scientists To Entrepreneurs

Ashoka Chakra — Mon, 9 Mar 2009 22:33:52 EDT

There are many reasons for the United States' dominance in science. Freedom to operate, (relative) lack of seniority and sycophancy, and availability of funds are among them. Another reason the US has been in the forefront of technological innovation is that it allows scientists to be entrepreneurs. Take a look at the cluster of innovative companies coming out of Universities in California and Massachusetts and you get the picture. Companies span the gamut of fields, ranging from software to biotechnology. In most countries, this dual role is frowned upon, if not forbidden outright.

Such was the case in India as well. For example, in 2001, Swami Manohar and three colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore invented the Simputer, a simple and cheap hand-held computer. However, being employees of a public entity, they could not commercialize their invention. So Manohar and colleagues left and founded their own company, which was in turn bought out by Geodesic. If they had been in the US, they would have had many options including being on the SAB or even a senior executive of the company while still retaining their academic post.

Indian scientists will now have a similar choice. On 24 February, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research issued regulations that permits researchers at government-funded institutions to hold equity stakes in scientific enterprises and spinoff companies.

Approximately 400,000 scientists, about three-quarters of the scientific work force, are employed at public institutions. By bringing India in line with the United States and other Western nations, the new rules should create an attractive environment for talented faculty. The new rules also permit research institutes to hold equity stakes in commercial enterprises. To facilitate this process, the government will encourage the lateral mobility of researchers between institutes and industry. This would also be good of institutions who could reap tremendous financial rewards from successful spin-offs.

So a talented scientist who comes up with a novel idea won't have to play office politics or be sycophantic to his/her boss any more. They can keep their position and at the same time, start a company.

In this instance, it is good that India is following America's lead.

WorkExp.Com Goes Offline - The Whisper Board for Bad News

Aaman Lamba — Sat, 7 Mar 2009 00:17:55 EST

People have an innate need to share information about things that are important to them in their every day lives. There is also an insatiable curiosity about one's jobs, friends, and family. This explains, in part, why the most heavily trafficked stories online are often the kind that deal with sensational topics. While Dr. Vijay Mallya might be the flavor du jour, a more persistent trend these days is the state of the economy, and more specifically, jobs. Job losses are rising globally, engendering a rising sense of uncertainty.

The need to know, in part, if one's job was relatively safe, is typically fulfilled by asking around. As the saying goes, "If your neighbor loses his job, it's a recession. If you lose your job, it's a depression." The Internet helps drive the dissemination of the state of affairs, and one website, WorkExp, found itself dealing with a surge in traffic from nervous Indians. The site was originally set up with the objective of sharing work experiences, equally positive and negative, but as with the bear market, trafficking in bad news soon overwhelmed the slim sliver of good news. Everything from layoffs to bad managers became grist for the mill, and the site became a must-check site. It even found itself being blocked in various company networks, understandably so, from the perspective of the HR departments as nothing was spared by the anonymous commenters/posters. It became a safety valve, in part, for the stressed employee, serving to reinforce, negatively, his feelings about his company. The Alexa Rank, a poor enough measure as it might be, indicates an occasional surge of attention, such as when the Satyam fiasco broke out.

As leading HR blogger, Gautam Ghosh, put it when he encountered the site:

Today I came across WorkExp , which is primarily a blog consisting of submitted posts by Indian techies about their organizations.

So as a HR person are you ready for the flipside and downside of this kind of transparency. Yes, it'll be messy and not easy to deal with. But this is going to be the new pub where people will share stories, only difference being it will be archived and search-able for posterity.

Unfortunately, this transparency or the 'pub culture' appears to have been contrary to the owner's expectations. They took all content offline, promising a redesign, and declaring they were disappointed with the negativity that had violated the site's founding principles. They posted the following:

This site was started with a view of helping people learn and share experiences, but sadly in its current state it has been reduced to a board where only stones are thrown. Except for one from CTS & one from Bharthi Airtel, NOONE shared their positive experiences :( Which was indeed very sad for the editorial team back here! We are re-designing this site and will be back soon!

But Guys! As much as it is your right to complain and share your bad experience it is also your responsibility in a way to tell what good your company has done for you!

We are over for now! But not out yet!

The retirement of the site will no doubt lead to the disappointment of many vicarious thrill-seekers, but the stance of the editors is to be commended, as they put principles before traffic. Even so, they could have gone with the flow, and become the Yelp.com for the job-hungry. Perhaps a clone will spring up soon enough, one that will satisfy the need to crib about your manager, your company, your work experiences.

America's Foolish CEOs: Medco's Dave Snow Gets The First Award

Ashoka Chakra — Mon, 2 Mar 2009 09:45:46 EST

With the global economy heading south thanks to the tsunami that originated in the USA, many blame capitalism or globalization for all the economic travails. I think it has a lot to do with poor policies and oversight, individual greed, and last, but not the least, stupid CEOs running corporate America.

In the 2001 – 2003 recession, we came across lots of incompetent and/or ethically challenged CEOs and Chairpersons. They include illustrious names such as Ken Lay of Enron (dead of a heart attack before he could be tried) and Bernie Sanders of MCI (in jail for fraud).

This recession has bought to light a new crop. A fascinating list of politicians, celebrities, and CEOs can be found at Time. To this august list, I now nominate Dave Snow of Medco.

For those who do not know what Medco is, it is one of the largest drug re-distributors. To keep it simple, it buys drugs from pharmaceutical companies and sells it to retail chains such as Rite Aid. It profits from being a middleman.

Dave Snow recently wrote in a blog in the Wall Street Journal about his ideas and his interview was published on Jan 16, 2009. To quote from the WSJ:

Snow said the time has come for doctors to follow set protocols on how to treat patients, and to be paid based on whether they do it. Basically, ‘If X, then do Y,’ and ‘If Y, then do Z,’ sort of stuff. Snow concedes the public doesn’t trust the private sector to come up with these kinds of rules. So he wants some smart folks to get together in an “apolitical” body like the Fed, and do it themselves. “I’m fine with this big, national board creating this standard,” Snow says.

It is obvious that Snow has no clue how medicine is practiced. Patients and their disease do not read textbooks and come with single, well-defined problems. The permutations and combinations of problems are literally endless. For example, a patient with a headache could have a bullet in his head (true, happened to a patient of mine) or a tumor (alas, also true) or anything in between. If the patient has other issues such as weight problems, hypertension, etc, the possibilities are infinite with no set formula that can be designed. How would Snow handle so many permutations and combinations? Does he plan to install an IBM supercomputer in each physician’s office? Good for IBM and outsourcing for India, but it won’t help patients much. As this financial crisis has shown, mathematical quant formulas fail in complex environments, and a patient is about as complex a microenvironment as possible.

In addition, Snow wants the government to step in with an “apolitical” body like the Fed. Maybe the ‘body’ would also be just as adept in handling doctor’s offices as the Fed has been in handling the economy? I can see a diabetic suffering from hyperglycemia for 5 years, followed by hypoglycemia (just like interest rates) at which point the unfortunate individual would be pushing weeds.

It is obvious to any person with a scintilla of sense that Snow’s ideas are nonsensical. I have only one question. How do people like this become CEOs?

Butchermania

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:38:12 EST

It was an invite to attend a luncheon of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. But this time, the luncheon was at the Worshipful Company of Butchers. A beautiful place. Unfortunately, I had to take a call in the middle so I was shown into an office.

Here’s the back of a leather backed chair with the logo emblazoned on it.

Here’s me during the call, with the laptop open. Can you see the chair? Beautiful handiwork.

The luncheon was held in the Great Hall.

Can you see the table plan? pretty complicated. I was sitting half way up the middle table on the left. Then, after the call, I hot footed it back to the lunch. The food was absolutely delicious. The Angus Beef was so smooth, I think it has to be rated to be one of the best steaks I have eaten in London. But to be expected, if you dont get good beef in the Butcher’s hall, where else would you get it?

I took a sneaky picture of the main window as I was leaving. Can you see the stained glass showing the butchers on the bottom? The top window shows the various animals which are used in the trade, like sheep, lambs, cattle, etc. It was full of grandees and thus felt a bit embarrassed in clicking away…

But outside the hall, down the stairs and the hall has the most amazing dioramas. This was showing a butchers diorama, with cuts of beef, pork and lamb hanging.

I am afraid this photograph did not come out quite right, but shows some kind of a letter of patent relating to the fact that the Princess Royal became some kind of member.

Turning my head, there was another diorama with a huge cleaver on the top.

Took a close-up of the note. There are two flags, first the flag of New Zealand and then the flag of the United Kingdom, some kind of an association, I guess, established in 1809. It says:

“This chopper was used by Mr. Edward Jeffreys at Buckinghamd Palace to cut up the first New Zealand Lamb carcasse shipped to the United Kingdom in the S.S.Dunedin and presented to Her Majesty Queen Victoria in May 1882”

Pretty neat, no? to capture all this history? I know this is not big news or a big historical event, but it actually is very big news once you think about it. This lamb trade has impacted the history, economy, and culture of New Zealand for more than 100 years. And this cleaver was there when the trade was born.

Another diorama with the tools of the trade.

Here’s the Hall.

And here’s the Smithfield Market where you would get the butcher’s with their stalls.

And on the way, saw this, the Kinky Barber, who gives you a beer with every haircut! :) As long as you dont worry about the type of haircut, you should be happy with the beer :).

But lets take a side trip, its the history which interested me. The history of this company goes back to 975AD. Now that’s impressive and goes deep back into the hoary mists of time. When we eat a steak or a chop, do we know that there is this level of history of professional attention paid to how to deal with meat? I did not. This company is deeply involved with the meat industry, it deals with a variety of industry issues ranging from hides to food hygiene, etc.

It is a fine art, this bit about dealing with meat. You simply cannot kill an animal and hack it about. Oh! no. You have to know the physiology of animals and there is a whole terminology around which cuts of beef comes from where?

I was taught how to carve meat by my ma, she used to hunt in her childhood with my grandfather. So dealing with poultry, goat and beef was very interesting. It was almost like surgery. Which you should not find surprising, after all, for quite a long period of time, barbers and butchers used to be the surgeons of those ages. Anyway, it was quite interesting to sit there looking around at the crests, the stained windows, and know one was sitting amongst the ghosts of butchers past for a thousand years. The next time one see’s a big juicy medium rare sirloin steak on the plate, one would know that there is quite a strong possibility that the way it was prepared had some links of some sort to the Worshipful Company of Butchers.

The full slide show here.

Technorati Tags: London,History,Buildings,Animals

Frankenstein or Frankincense Crops?

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:23:01 EST

Here is a quite interesting story about GM foods. Personally speaking, I like the idea of having more GM food around the world. Just because the prices are falling a bit, does not mean that the pressure for more food has gone away. The middle classes of the world are demanding higher quality food, meat and the lot. They still need to be fed and watered. Given the lack of additional farm land, water, the only thing to do is to improve productivity of the existing cropland. GM foods provides one with a way to do this. Here are some interesting quotes:

The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) said the global area of GM crops increased from 114m ha in 2007 to 125m ha in 2008, producing a harvest worth $7.5bn. The number of farmers planting GM crops rose from 12m in 22 countries to 13.3m in 25 countries.
Clive James, ISAAA chairman, said the most significant development last year was the first commercial planting of biotech crops in two African countries: maize in Egypt and cotton in Burkina Faso. Both crops contain “Bt genes” from bacteria, which kill insect pests. In 2007 South Africa had been the only country on the continent with GM plants (cotton, maize and soya).

Look at some of the benefits:

Of the cumulative economic gains of $44bn over 10 years of growing GM crops, the report attributed 44 per cent to yield increases and 56 per cent to reduced production costs, including the use of 359,000 tonnes less pesticide.

Now isn't that just peachy? Good stuff to read that not only you increase productivity, but production costs are reduced and less pesticide is used therefore reducing pollution as well. Yes, there are quite a lot of issues in this relating to the sale of patented seeds, potential for gene mutation, and the lot, but I think the risks are well worth it. Here is a good report from Friends of the Earth as a counterpoint to this argument. Anyway, I really dont want to get into a head banging argument about this.

One thing which is quite interesting is that if you increase the usage of GM foods, then the sustainability size factor of farms reduces as well. What do I mean by this? Well, in vast swathes of the world, you will see that the actual plot sizes are tiny. Plus with more and more children, the plots of land become smaller and smaller down every generation, till the end where the land is practically too small to support even one family and poverty increases dramatically. But with increase in crop productivity, less production costs, the level at which land sizes are no longer sustainable or able to support even one family increases. So for countries like India and China, this is good news indeed.

But beyond that, countries are now getting desperate for food security. Here’s a great example of what South Korea is planning to do in Madagascar. I quote:

South Korea's Daewoo Logistics this week announced that it had negotiated a 99-year lease on some 3.2 million acres of farmland on the dirt-poor tropical island of Madagascar…….Daewoo plans to put about three quarters of it under corn. The remainder will be used to produce palm oil — a key commodity for the global biofuels market. A Daewoo manager, Hong Jong-wan, told the Financial Times that the crops would "ensure our food security" and would use "totally undeveloped land which had been left untouched."

Here is another example of how Saudi Arabia is doing the same in Pakistan. I quote:

To this end, the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the Bahrainis have been in talks with Egypt, Pakistan, Ukraine, Sudan, Turkey, Yemen, South Africa, the Philippines and Thailand to buy up or rent arable land and expand agricultural production in these countries.

This is actually good, I dont have an issue with this. This is pushing investments in poorer countries and combined with new types of crops, the food situation in the world will get a desperately needed fillip. So instead of these crops being Frankenstein type of horror for the world, I suspect they will more be frankincense.

Technorati Tags: agriculture, India, Egypt

Social Networking & Billu

Manasa Pamaraju — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:51:59 EST

After a long hiatus of four months, we went to a movie on Valentine’s Day. The movie was Billu Barber. Not particularly a celebration activity for V Day, but merely the fact that me and hubs got the time to go to a movie and also the fact that this movie theatre is the closest to our lil abode.

Having cleared that, let me get on with Billu. It is a run of the mill story with two long lost supposed friends. One becomes extremely rich and famous - Sahid Khan (or King Khan) and the other remains where he was - Billu, as barber, tied down with family responsibilities and difficulties. Their paths cross in a small village named Budbuda. The King Khan is there to shoot for his film (wonder why, when all he does there is some space setting and fights, nothing rural). Here starts the social networking bit.

In today’s world, it is not enough to be well educated or well qualified to go up the ladder, it is all about who you know and hence what you can do. Social capital can be defined as:
• Resources available in and through personal and business networks
o Information, ideas, leads
o Emotional support, goodwill, trust, cooperation, power, influence
• Potential resources inherent in an actor’s set of social ties

Hence, coming back to the movie, Billu also reaps some advantages. Simply based on the rumour that Billu is the famous actor’s friend, things change drastically for him. Some of the changes are:
• Billu couldn’t pay the school fees for his children and now the school authorities come to his home to tell him that his children’s education would be funded till 12th standard - IF (there always is an ‘IF’) he brings the famous actor to the school function
• Billu’s barber shop is in dire straits. He hasn’t been able to spruce it up like his competitor, but the man persists. With the “supposed” new ties, he has a line of unending customers to gain - Sahid Khan’s hairstyle and the village bigwig sponsors new equipment for his shop - Once again, IF Billu can introduce the village bigwig to the superstar
• Billu’s wife is now seen with envy and her social status is elevated over night.

There are polite IFs, which require her to get a picture of the star or autograph or in one case, his handkerchief (I wonder if men today carry such a thing anymore)

So, the rise in Billu’s social status and the respect and advantages he is now able to enjoy is due to the “supposed” social connection that he has with this superstar. I wouldn’t want to tell what actually happens in the movie, but the climax dragged on and it was too obvious towards the end. All through, director Priyadarshan has maintained a light and funny script that has kept the audiences quite lively.

I enjoyed the movie, primarily because I am a die-hard SRK fan and loved him on screen. Yes, it is for die-hard Shah Rukh fans! But then, it is definitely not one of his or Irfan Khan’s best performances. You really don’t have to see this movie. The reason this movie kept me interested is because of this social networking connection that a lot of Bollywood movies sport.

It is not an observation out of the blue that - “People who do better are somehow better connected” and yes, towards the end, it is left for us, the poor audience to understand that Billu’s life has changed, for the better, due to his - Social Network.

The Grand Bailout- Part 2

Blokesablogin — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 19:41:54 EST

The Senate and Congress haggled while Mr. President went public, spurring support for his Stimulus Bill. Mr. Bush's TARP has yet to be accounted for and we have gone ahead and approved yet another colossal spending bill. In Tamil we say- jaan pona enna muzham pona enna- meaning once you lost a foot who cares if you lost a yard? Right now in America we pass bills to pay bills with printed bills! Now here is a wonderful way to teach children homonyms.

What is interesting to me, being in California, is that our state budget also is on the floor of the house. Unlike Mr. President's gentle but firm arm wrestling tactics, using his powerful oratory skills, Mr. Governor is unable to budge the folks in Sacramento with his real muscle power! He threatened them with no pay if they did not approve the state budget by this week and they are still out until this Friday.

Mr. President will give us some money back, and if I went to college, some tax credit. Being a 1.2 income family, we certainly fall within the eligibility of being "middle class", as defined by the President.

Sacramento will take away my check from the President as we will pay 1% more sales tax and a 5% surcharge on personal income tax. DMV fees will double and gas will go up by 12 cents/ gal. The irony cannot be missed. The democrats in DC are lowering taxes while the republicans here are raising them!

While the local drama continues, the national drama has been sealed and delivered for Mr. president to sign. He is thrilled that this Stimulus Bill is ready by Lincoln's B-day, today.

The State should get some relief from DC. The rise in taxes here will wipe out the tax relief check we will get from the President. Oh well, life continues...

Human Cloning - The Clone Wars

Ashoka Chakra — Sun, 8 Feb 2009 08:30:29 EST

Seeing double seems to have acquired a new meaning lately, thanks to the controversy over cloning. After all, cloning is an issue that tests our very sense of identity and therefore it is critical that this be looked at carefully. There seem to be two aspects to this controversy: animal cloning and human cloning.

There appears to be a consensus that animal cloning is acceptable so long as it satisfies the need for human medical and scientific advancement. The present purpose of cloning animals is for animals to serve as modern organ factories -- a combination of Orwell's Animal Farm (in reverse) and Chaplin's Modern Times. The mental image is of a factory with grunting cloned pigs rolling on the conveyor belt to be slaughtered, and their organs harvested to be sent to hospitals for transplantation. To many, this is the price that animals pay for not being at the top of the evolutionary scale. The rationale is that if we can kill them to eat them, surely we can clone them and harvest them. Except for the animal right activists, unfortunately very few seem to be bothered by this.

The issue of human cloning seems to be a different matter altogether. It is an issue that pits scientists and medics against religious leaders and politicians (with plenty of crossover between the groups). The subliminal question appears to be -- if God creates an individual human (however indirectly) can there be more than one of that individual at the same time? Would that second individual have a soul? If not, do we want soul-less beings amongst us? If the duplicate had a soul, where did that soul come from? Certainly it would not come from the traditional route assumed in most, if not all, religions of the world. If two identical beings did exist at the same time, it implies that the first one is not unique, with attendant implications on life and creation as a whole. No wonder the strongest opposition to human cloning comes from the creationists amongst us.

As can be expected, there are many counter arguments. Some say that human cloning is justified for scientific progress. Others would say that cloning is justified for the medical benefits it could provide -- stem cells, haplo-identical organs, etc. Finally, there are some that seek immortality, through cloning. After all, if one can buy a stairway to heaven, cloning is certainly a step in the right direction.

Like many complex issues (such as abortion), there are many points to consider. These considerations need time. However, when science moves faster than our hearts and minds do, the luxury of time is absent where we can cogitate and ponder over these issues. It is unlikely that there ever will be a consensus on human cloning, but whatever the decision made, at least all sides would have had their say and the issue thoroughly explored.

Maybe we could learn from Dolly, the world's first mammal cloned by the Roslin Institute in Scotland on Feb. 23, 1997. She was euthanized on February 14th, 2003 (Valentines Day), well short of her normal lifespan after being diagnosed with progressive lung disease. The premature death of the famous clone raises the issue of over whether animal cloned from adults inevitably produces flawed copies. There are now hundreds of animal clones around the world, including cows, pigs, mice and goats, many of them appearing robust and healthy. But many attempts to clone animals have ended in failure. Deformed fetuses have died in the womb with oversized organs, while others were born dead. Still others died days after birth, some twice as large as they should have been.

Dolly's body has been promised to the National Museum of Scotland and will eventually be put on display in Edinburgh. Will a similar fate befall cloned humans?

So, to go back to the question - to clone or not to clone, I’d say wait. Till we figure out the science, the morality, and the ethics. It is too important an issue to rush into.

Is China a Threat to Indian IT Outsourcing?

itonion — Sun, 8 Feb 2009 00:46:48 EST

Amidst the buzz in the Indian IT industry, articles have started to prop on whether India is a safe destination for outsourcing. The next obvious question is whether China will use the current situation to grab a piece out of the outsourcing deals. McKinsey has reported that China has an opportunity to grow its outsourcing industry at this juncture. It cites the reason that, in this economic crisis, many companies in the world are now looking to cut the costs by outsourcing their IT operations and China can benefit from this move. Along with this opportunity, the recent happenings in the Indian IT industry can be a bonus for China.

But, can China really pull deals that are being outsourced to India? Where exactly does it stand in IT Outsourcing? As of today, the Chinese IT sector is relying heavily on projects from the booming manufacturing industries in China and also from neighboring Japan. Since China's manufacturing sector (the heart of its economy) has slowed down due to less demand for exports, the government has identified the outsourcing industry as the next engine and has vowed to pull foreign money to China through outsourcing. Also, it has planned to improve the small-sized companies to grow from their current proposition by awarding them projects and by building cities and towns dedicated to the outsourcing industry. But when it comes to projects from US and Europe, Chinese companies were working on low-end applications and testing projects. When Western companies released products, Chinese companies were asked to test them before the deployment.

Now, things are changing. Companies have started working on mid-size application development projects which is very essential for developing domain knowledge and for getting bigger deals. Today, many of these development projects come to China from Japan and Korea. Also, if things improve, China can be a good alternative to companies that wants to de-risk their outsourcing strategy. Earlier today, SAP North Asia chairman joined Neusoft, the biggest Chinese outsourcing company. He is expected to oversee the International business. Neusoft on its website has called graduates and professionals to undergo its SAP training program. The Chinese companies are desperate on getting multinational deals to prove their expertise. All they need now is one success story in a complex enterprise project, which will trigger the next wave in their IT industry.

Now, as a competitor to India, China has a long way to travel to catch up on deals that are currently awarded to Indian companies. Having understood the booming manufacturing sector in China, Indian companies like TCS, Infosys, Satyam have setup shop in china to pull projects from the Chinese Industries. Some Indian companies even bought small sized Chinese companies, to understand the market and to merge themselves into the Chinese culture. These companies serve as threatening competitors to the home grown companies. Also, though Chinese companies get projects from the Western clients, the development work is more of product development (like networks, embedded systems etc..). For example, the biggest outsourcing company Neusoft, according to its website, offers IT services on Network support, back office, data center and asset management. But, to thrive with an Indian competitor, the companies should get projects that are executed in the in-house IT department of their clients. These kind of ADM(Application, development and Maintenance) projects generate money and also help in acquiring further development projects. They also help to gain knowledge in that particular business.

Another important factor where China has both advantage and disadvantage is 'cost' The per hour rate offered by Chinese is less than India's rate, about 30% less. But there are a lot of hidden costs which includes communication issues (More time, more rate), knowledge transfer time, data security protection and regulatory issues. These issues demand a completely new strategy for the companies to kick start their outsourcing plans.

The key issue in the Chinese IT industry today is the number of skilled professionals with good experience. Although, the number of computer graduates is more than India, the experienced professionals are far less and that prevents them from acquiring the big pie. Chinese companies are badly in need of senior project managers and they are looking outside China to recruit or poach them. More than 80% of the IT professionals in China have less than 5 yrs of experience ( 42% with less than 2 yrs). This was the situation in India, a few years ago. But as the market grows, maybe in another 10 years China will compete heavily with he Indian clients. At the same time, India would have produced more experienced professionals with higher domain (Finance, Retail, Telecom etc..) and architecture experience. But you cannot compare the China's current stage with India's early years. Indians' entrepreneurial approach helped to create thousands of small software companies, which later helped to produce skilled professionals. Also, the Y2K problem definitely served as a break point. Though, the Chinese are growing steadily, the backing of Chinese government is so strong that it can be a great trigger. Working under the multiple government projects in various domains will definitely improve their skill level.

If the Chinese companies grow at the current rate, there are more probable chances of India and China collaborating in the future. There are two main reasons:

1) Indian IT professionals' knowledge and global experience will be a great asset. Not using it will be a great mistake or it cannot be ignored

2) Indian companies' presence in China.

Today, Indian companies like Infosys and TCS have a good reputation in Chinese markets. For example, the website www.seecoco.com is a hub for the IT pros in China. Here they discuss about their company, Salary etc. Already, Infosys is third in the satisfaction survey and even Satyam is ranked among the top 10. Here,it should be noted that, Indian companies are now only in the investment stage. In future, you can see a great level of cultural mixture in these companies.

Considering the Pros and Cons, China cannot be definitely ignored in the outsourcing industry. So is India. We will see India gaining domain and execution expertise over the years and China growing on technical side. So, it is not India or China. It is India and China. After all, the Dragon and the Elephant can never fight against each other.

Innovation - That Strange Mythical Animal

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sat, 7 Feb 2009 05:16:13 EST

It was an interesting email that I got from Google Alerts. I have an alert setup for “innovation” as a keyword. The interesting thing is that I get the most interesting and curious hits on that keyword. As it so happens, on the same email, I got referred to a Businessweek article on innovation and another article on how Nortel could not save itself from bankruptcy despite investing heavily in innovation.

Innovation is a tough thing. What exactly is it? Something to do with new things? OK, lets run with it for now. But everybody and his dog wants to be known as innovative. Nothing wrong with it at all. But just like every buzz word, it needs to be treated carefully. People can get into all this innovation business too much and then forget about the basics of business. The two articles given above are interesting examples of this phenomena.

My son has been on World of Warcraft for the past 4 years now and has a good little business running there. So I have a fair idea of what is happening there. He has also managed to rope in my little princess as a magic maid, so that promises to be a good story one day. Anyway, I do appreciate the points made in the article about how WoW has managed to incorporate basic principles of innovation into its game so that it is doing brilliantly. I quote some of the main principles that the authors quote as lessons from the game:

Reduce barriers to entry and to early advancement
Provide clear and rich metrics to assess performance
Keep raising the bar
Don't neglect intrinsic motivations
Provide opportunities to develop tacit knowledge, but do not neglect broader knowledge exchange
Create opportunities for teams to self-organize around challenging performance targets
Encourage frequent and rigorous performance feedback
Create an environment that rewards new dispositions

But I have a bit of an issue here, and that is that the principles seems to be driven from the story and then generalised. To put it in another way, if I had to pick up these principles and plonk it into any other business, i can, very easily, but does that mean that my old business has suddenly become innovative? Or that innovation starts gushing from each pore? No, obviously not. None of these principles are wrong at all. But at end of the day, people have to keep a a laser eye out on the main business of selling profitably.

Which brings us to the second example, that of Nortel. Nortel did everything that these principles said should be done. It turned its attention to new products, it brought in imaginative thinkers, changed its investment policy, new products were gushing out, strategy was changed, people were let go and new people hired, and so on and so forth. But does this mean that they did wrong? No, just that their basic idea of migrating the firm into a new world of web 2.0 was simply not good enough. It just bombed. As a matter of fact, you could point towards its debt load but then again, they already had $2.6 billion in cash. That again was not enough to save it from going under provided its products were good enough to provide a good cashflow. Which it didn't.

Depending upon which product category you refer to, innovative products have a very high failure rate, ranging from 40% to 90% (as reported in the HBR – June 2006 edition). When you are talking about such a high failure rate, to maintain innovative capability is paramount. You have to dust yourself off and keep on working. In a recent research paper where innovation was studied with respect to Sun, what is normally held to be an innovative company. After one of their products bombed, the researchers coin what is called as Innovation Trauma. This manifests itself by disillusionment, cynicism and contagious demotivation.

So what do you do to improve matters? The researchers suggest that individuals who were championing and pushing innovative products should be given time to disengage from their previous work. Second, they need to conduct post-mortems on the failure to find out why that happened and if they can learn from the results. Third, this postmortem is best if its done collaboratively by the original team or a team of some sort, an innovation anonymous, if you will. Fourth, seed the failure aspects into a new project so that the old failure is uplifted by the excitement of the new project while the new project is calibrated downwards by the caution of the old failed project. Expectations management.

So what do you do? Here’s something that we are trying to do. The British Political system is pushing heavily on the idea that Britain has to become an innovative idea. Pretty good stuff, but how do you deal with innovation? I have recently been invited to join a group on Innovation which will assist in coming up with strategies to improve the UK innovation footprint. It is not easy. Actually, anybody can come up with a good idea. Ideas are dime a dozen, but to get from the idea stage to a company which is stand alone, has some cash in the bank, has a good order book with some good client companies, ah!, now that’s the holy grail.

So what we are hoping to do is to provide that bit of a helping hand from the corporate and government sides. If a small firm does have a good idea, we will get together and try to do two things, (1) try to assist in framing the new idea as something that is innovative in terms of resolving a business problem and (2) try to assist by championing it inside our firms. Obviously no money and all that stuff, but in my experience, innovators fall in love with the idea rather than how it will resolve the problem.

They forget that we are in business to sell (anything, potatoes, widgets, credit cards, etc.) to somebody who can pay for it. Do not want to go into detail, but the idea has to be something that somebody is willing to push his hands into his back pocket and put out money. So despite having great ideas, if you forget the basic elements of selling and making products that will sell, all those innovative ideas will be useless.

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