How many times have you heard?

• He is successful because he has the first mover advantage.
• I have a bright idea. I will seek venture funding and make it BIG!
• There are so many simmilar businesses around? There will be a lot of competition for my new business.

I bet, you must have come across a variant of one of these statements.

They all signify the general perception that a unique idea (or a first mover advantage, or an invention) is the core of a business. Actually this is not true.

Ideas are important. In fact, a business to keep its edge in the industry need to keep re-inventing itself and come up with new ideas, variance, reasons-to-do-business-with and disruptive trends to gain a leading position or maintain his leadership.

Ideas are the fundamental inputs for running a business. They are nothing special. If you cannot think out of the box, or come up with something unique on an ongoing basis, forget about succeeding in this cut-throat competitive economy. It is not for the light hearted ones.

But hold on. The process is execution! There cannot be an output without the process. The output will remain equal to the input if there is no process! It is a pity to see so many people burn midnight oil and hundreds of hours in defining, refining and protecting their idea, but they hardly take the first step forward to execute the same.

History is full of examples where visionary companies have emerged from innovation and smart execution of ideas which were conceived by someone else or invented by someone else.

• Microsoft didnt invented operating systems
• Apple didnt invented GUI
• Google was not the first search engine
• Dell was not the first desktop manufacturer
• Infosys was not the first outsourcing company
• Dhirubhai Ambani didnt set up the first polyster manufacturing unit in the world

The list is endless..

What these guys did and what is important is: See the Gap!

Nothing is perfect. Things happen in a given way which is good, may be better, but never the best. You can always better the effort by finding the gap what makes it imperfect. For a moment think of an “ideal scenario” and how it differs from what you are seeing today in a given context. Are you happy with everything? You cannot be. Its a utopian scenario.

If you see with a consumers’ point of view, you will be able to see a gap almost everywhere, everytime and with everything! So if you want to really make the next big search engine - find the gap - find the pain - find the imperfection. And hey - you have an idea! It’s so easy.

Now whats next!

• Validate your idea. See if it offers value to its stakeholders and create win-win synergy?
• Plan for the execution of the idea, but keep yourself flexible about its implementation and nitty-grittys.
• Plan for the risks. Risks can never be avoided. They can be managed.
• Set achievable targets and take youir first step.

All this really means - Take action!

So, when you can create idea at random (like an idea factory), you can always differenciate. And when you can differenciate and make things better - go ahead and do it. Take action.

Take baby steps. But try to walk. And soon you will be able to run.

Microsoft was a visionary company. It saw the potential in the business of operating systems. It harnessed its power and made it available for masses in form of DOS. They marketed it well and went on from becoming an innovator (mind you - not an inventor) to a world class company.

Google found that people are not getting the right results and they feel frustrated while searching for what they want on internet. They deviced algorithm which solved the problem. I bet when they started off, it was not a code as complex as you will have in spaceships! But they kept innovating, removing gaps as they saw them.

Social networking concept was initially mastered by a site called Friendster. However there are many more websites who have followed the same fundamental principle and improvised on that to achieve more fame and hiher valuation.

I am like a friend to most of my clients. When I speak to them, I always have this advice at the back of my mind. I advise them to do things differently to make it better in small increments based on those small ideas that you can generate at your will. To start taking the first steps towards a better web-application or a better business model. I am a strong advocate of compunding of small improvements done over a period of time to result in a considerable net effect.

So, its all about seeing the gap. Building small bridges and walking over them to leave your competition behind.

I look forward to see you all at the top at the game - ahead of the guys who invented the same.

Best of luck!

Right before lunch, one of my colleagues pointed out that Michael Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of FaceBook (or the biggest rival of Bill Gates when it comes to stealing ideas!) is just 23 years old and Harvard University dropout. Right then another guy stated - “All university dropouts become rich!”

Thats what sweeping generalization is all about.  I heard it for the first time when I read Edward DeBono’s , “How to have a Beautiful Mind“. These are statements in which there seems to be sufficient evidence offered to draw a conclusion, but the conclusion drawn far exceeds what the evidence supports. While it true that many rich and famous people are university dropouts but it never implies that all university dropouts make it big.

Take another example, if you have worked with 2 outsourcing companies and got your fingers burnt , does it conclude that all software companies in India are bad? There is a lot of evidence that most terrorists are from Islamic nations, does it mean that all Islamic nations are terrorists? The conclusion drawn is just too exaggerating based on the evidence used.

We come across these statement everyday in our lives and as managers its very important for us to understand its implications. Sweeping Generalizations are far too common and they disable open-minded thinking which is important for decision making.

Dot com boom is back and this time it is dot 2.0 boom!

VentureOne released its official 2nd Quarter liquidity data and facts are undeniable that venture capital funding has reached its peak since 2001. The important thing to notice is that the amount of money getting invested is lesser this time as investors tread cautiously and the blind gold rush has not started yet.

I have compiled my own charts from the data and presented it below, basically I have compared the aggregate of money raised in Q1 and Q2 by Software and Information Services company through 2000 to 2007.

Did anyone notice that software companies are raising significantly lesser amout of money than information services in comparison to 2000?

With time, as any other business, paper-news industry is also looking for new ways of expansion. They have started experimenting with the digital medium recently. Here is an example: digital.guardian.co.uk/demo/

[via: pageplane.com]

I was reading about the Web Design in general and came across an interview with Rob Weychert in designinterviews.com. Here he talked about various issues Web/Graphic design as any other web designer. But the best part of this interview is the section where he explained about the significance of CSS design and why it is so popular. There is nothing new he said, but the noticeable thing is how simply he explained it. It’s really a great read for those who wants to have the basics right!

“Why do think CSS design is becoming so popular among web designers when tables are just as easy?”

It has less to do with what’s easy than it has to do with what’s appropriate. The web standards movement, which has championed the use of CSS, encourages designers and developers to keep structure (XHTML), presentation (CSS), and behavior (JavaScript) separate. The primary reason for this is to maintain the purely structural nature of the HTML markup, which was never intended to be a design tool.

The benefits of coding this way are numerous. For one thing, using CSS for layout instead of tables is much more efficient. A single CSS file can control the look of an entire site, whereas using tables for layout requires an excess of repetitive, superfluous code. This not only increases a site’s collective file size exponentially, it makes it a lot more work to maintain. Even more important than making things easier for yourself, though, is making things easier for your site’s users, and web standards have that angle covered as well. For instance, when it’s not cluttered by unnecessary presentational code like font tags and misused tables, properly semantic HTML is much more easily understood by search engines, mobile devices, and assistive technologies used by disabled people.

Google has announced a new service today which allows its advertisers to publish print media ads from its adwords interface.

Here is how google says it will work:

Advertisers and agencies access Google Print Ads through the AdWords interface and interactively plan a targeted media buy-in up to hundreds of newspapers across the United States. Once they have identified target newspapers, they enter a bid for the available ad space and upload a creative. Newspaper publishers then view the bids, and either approve or reject them, with an option to provide direct feedback to the advertisers. Detailed reports and electronic tear-sheets provide accountability, and Google automates billing and payments for further transactional efficiency

Unfortunately this service is available for US advertisers only. I can’t seem to follow the reason or see the constraint which locked print ads to US based advertisers only. We can be organizations which has advertising dollars, and who want to advertise in local newspapers, why should we prevented from doing that? We would have been very happy if the service was available in India, not that we would use it but we will be happy to know that we can use it

Another striking thing is that, aren’t newspapers supposed to have a standard rate card for purchasing ads? Given this and the fact that newspaper advertising is already declining (notice that the papers are thinner?), what benefit is there for the consumer to bid for ads when they can buy it at list price from the newspapers directly? The only way to force customer to bid is when Google has exclusive contracts with these newspapers which I think is not possible as it will lead to anti-trust. Clearly, a benefit to newspapers is that they can lower the buying rates based on the current inventory and thus they have better chances of 100% booking.

One more thing, Haven’t Google already killed or atleast seriously injured the newspaper advertising business? Why suddenly venture into non-internet based revenue model? It was the nemesis to newspaper advertising and this new model is bewildering!

I guess we will soon see more about how this story unfolds - my message to newspapers is simple - If you can’t beat em, join em!

Which do you prefer most - Microsoft or Opensource? 

As educated, rational and data-driven people, we take pride in our ability to think logically or atleast believe that our decisions are based on sound judgment. I am currently reading Malcolm Gladwell’s , Blink , which talks about the Warren Harding error. This error refers to America’s 29th president, a man so distinguished-looking that once, at a banquet, a supporter cried out, “Why, the SOB looks like a senator!” Though he radiated presidential charm, Harding was actually best at playing poker and golf, drinking and chasing women. Gladwell calls him one of the worst presidents in American history.

This book is basically about snap judgments or rapid congnitions which the author refers to as “Thin Slicing” . He argues that our mind has a pattern seeking behavior, which allows our brain to get past any irrelevant stuff and “zero in” on the the stuff that really matters. This behavior has a dark side as it allows us to fall for a person’s mannerisms, appearances and this is when our rational brain succumbs to visual traps.

Ram charan in his book, Know How also pointed out the potential problem of this “thin slicing”. He stated that leaders often try to look for pattern in things where none exists and this leads to erroneous judgement. This often to leads people to compare China of today to Japan of 80s or predict the success of a business or point at somebody and say - “he is going to make it big someday”

In order to expose our unconscious biases towards things, psychologists at Harvard University came up with IAT. This is an acronym that stands for Implicit Association Test. IAT helps us examine two things, First, we might not always be willing to share our private attitudes with others. Second, we may not be aware of some of our own attitudes. Your results on the IAT may include both components of control and awareness.

Here is what IAT has to say about this:

Psychologists understand that people may not say what’s on their minds either because they are unwilling or because they are unable to do so. For example, if asked “How much do you smoke?” a smoker who smokes 4 packs a day may purposely report smoking only 2 packs a day because they are embarrassed to admit the correct number. Or, the smoker may simply not answer the question, regarding it as a private matter. (These are examples of being unwilling to report a known answer.) But it is also possible that a smoker who smokes 4 packs a day may report smoking only 2 packs because they honestly believe they only smoke about 2 packs a day. (Unknowingly giving an incorrect answer is sometimes called self-deception; this illustrates being unable to give the desired answer)

So, what has IAT got to do with Microsoft vs. Opensource?

The answer is - do you know if you actually have a bias towards either Microsoft or opensource? Well the take a test on Harvard website to find this out. The results may surprise you.

Microsoft vs. Opensource is the current featured test on https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

I take great pleasure to announce that Indus Net Technologies have joined hands with Expectrum Solutions of Kolkata to form a joint venture company - Customer First.

Customer First has been incorporated to deliver cutting edge Microsoft technology solutions to customers worldwide on the .NET framework (ASP.net, VB.net and C#).

Customer First had a great headstart as it got the existing marketing infrastructure of Indus Net Technologies. The team size is already in double digits and revenue forecast for this financial year is approximately $250K (INR 10 millions). However, we consider our client feedback as a measure of success, which has been very positive.

So, if you have a .NET framework (ASP.net, VB.net or C#) project to outsource, contact us straight away without any hesitation. You will have solid references to verify and convince yourself about our capabilities and level of committment.

We, at Customer First look forward to serve you.

Note: If you are an existing Indus Net Technologies customer, please contact your Account Manager. If you are new to Indus Net Technologies, send us an email to script@script2please.com and we will put you in touch with a capable consultant who can take care of your project requirements.

Google has sponsored  a project for the Master’s program at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute for development of a new-age social networking platform. While the big goal is to transform online social networking, the current objective is to build a working prototype whose goal is :

To create a system for users to seamlessly share, view, and respond to many types of social content across multiple networks

For this purpose they conducted a research on usage of social networking websites and here is what they have to say:

• Gender: Men prefer entertainment while women prefer to focus on connections.
• Age: Older users want something productive while younger users want something social.
• Strength of Online Relationships: The Internet supports acquaintance relationships much better than close friendships

While I would love to argue here, but I will give them the benefit of doubt becuase the purpose is social networking which is not strictly limited to business networking. Here are some more points which I think are very revealing:

• Similarity and interests become more important online than physical proximity
• Social network usage is contagious. People join on a single suggestion, but require more motivation to continue use.
• The connections listed in any single online service are incomplete.
• Simple connections do not mirror the complex nature of real relationships

I interpret this in following ways:

• Building regional social networking sites is not a good idea but building a social networking site around a niche interest may be a success recipe.
• You need to be innovative in order to get people to come to your site often.
• Seeing someone with only 5 connections does not mean that they are not socially active.
• Relationships are dynamic, thus the testimonials that you see from 6 months back may not be valid today. Infact, I think all sites should allow a more dynamic rating of user profiles.

You can see the published list of features over here.

I think the greatest point about socialstream will be that it will allow integration and aggregration all community channels like Youtube and Blogger. Basically, it means that if I am your contact and I update a blog post on blogger or upload a video on YouTube, you are going it see it right from the SocialStream.

I am not sure if the application is also intended to capture content from places outside google network but they have hinted thats its on their radar by saying:

Socialstream would be based on a unified social network (USN), a single network that provides social data to other sites as a service. A service model allows many social networks to be linked together, letting them share both content and the nature of the relationships of the people who use them. A USN would, in practice, be invisible. All participating sites would simply share information through it. While the centralization of social information would enhance all applications that use it, the USN’s own interface would be very simple, perhaps only focusing on preferences and privacy controls that applied everywhere. Socialstream represents one possible way of accessing the information spread across participating networks.

Well, realistically speaking, SocialStream is still a university project and its not indicated whether or not it will be adopted by Google. Lets keep a watchout for it anyways !

Web Applications is all about having a constant internet connection. The traditional methods of GET and POST requires the page to refresh everytime you need to interact with the database and it posed serious limitations on how web based applications were used and delivered. Then came AJAX, it brought with it the capacity to interact with the database without having to reload/refresh the page. It gave desktop type look and feel to web applications and it fuelled the whole Web 2.0 revolution. But still , you need a live connection with the database and the webserver in order for it to work.

How about a situation when you update the website offline and then synchronize it online ? Would’nt your web application work just like desktop application? Yummy..!

Google is attempting to answer the prayers by releasing Google Gears. Its basically a browser extension available for IE 6+ and Firefox 1.5+ that promises to make web applications work offline. It consists of three crucial components:

1. A local server to cache on-line server resources like Images, HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc
2. A local database (SQLite) to store and access data from within a browser
3. A threading mechanism, to make applications perform better by doing expensive operations in the background

The official gears website states that they are working on creating the plugin available for browsers like Safari on Mac OS X but any tentative release date is not yet publicly available. Gears is not a plug and play thing, its an API available via a browser plug-in, thus, it means that in order to benefit from offline caching , the website needs to invoke the API explicitly.

Having a database in a plug-in does not means that its of little use, this is infact a full-featured database which means you can have a lot of relational tables, perform complex queries using joins or use full-text search features. A security feature also ensures that the database can only be by domain for which it was created, thus chances of hacking is not there.

Here is the big question  - Will Gears get Hot ? Personally I dont think this will get much attention from business community becuase of following reasons:

1. Its a plug-in which needs to be installed explicitly, not all users will want to do that.
2. It adds another layer of abstraction to the system which is very complex to handle.
3. You need to download the data before you can use it offline, synchronization operations are very complex becuase they are dependent on persistent internet connection. Add multi-user update to it and you got a whole new dimension of problem to think of.  Dont take this point lightly, if you have a multi-user, multi-point update scenario then handing offline updates will be a nightmare from hell.
4. The whole notion of off-line is not going to live after another 3 years of so. 50% of US is already on broadband.

So why did google build it?

That a tricky question, But I think offline update of adverts, keywords etc by individual advertisers may have something to do with it.  The advertisers wont mind a plugin and google wont mind freeing up some server resources from all the those reports which will be generated offline. Talk about a win-win situation ;)

Anyways, for now gears is comfortably sitting inside my browser. May be someday, while wandering across the internet, I will bump into a real gears application. If it does’nt happen anytime soon then , I will have to un-install it.