Desicritics Section: BizTech

Book Review - Gamestorming by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo

Shanti — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:18:14 EDT

I have to admit that the minute I heard the name of the book, Gamestorming, I signed up to review it. Being completely un-initiated as I was in techniques like this, by the virtue of being in consulting all my life (until now), the name of the book grabbed me with it's promise of new avenues of knowledge opening up in front of me.

I was definitely not disappointed.

Gamestorming describes a series of games - a game being a kind of a play (interaction between parties) with a predefined game space, boundaries, rules for interaction, physical artifacts and a goal - that help people tasked with coming up with creative solutions to problems. The book was such an interesting read that I ended up finishing it within two days. Even though the read was quick, the concepts put forth by the book are definitely sticky in my mind and I see myself constantly reaching for some of them either consciously or not.

One of the greatest points in favor of the book is the fact that the authors not only describe the games, they also lay out certain best practices and principles that allow someone who wants to try the techniques out follow a decently defined path in becoming a good "game organizer". The authors also describe ways to "design" your own games from the scratch or as a hybrid on the games provided, allowing users to practically do anything they want to solve their unique problems.

As my introduction into the world of gamestorming (an obvious play on the word brainstorming), the book lead me around quite well and I will be using a lot of these techniques in my immediate work environment.

A Debate Over Climate Change

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 04:22:43 EDT

We had a presentation on climate change in the office and I just want to pick up on one part of it. Here is the particular slide.

Let me explain the slide first. The X axis shows GDP growth while the Y axis shows the Emissions CO2 per capita. So you end up with (a) Lesser Developed, (b) Industrialising, © Industrialised, and (d) Low Carbon Economy. The last fourth quadrant being the nirvana land, yes?

So what’s the trajectory like? If we do nothing, then the red line is operational and we will keep on going up the increased wealth with increased emissions route. The parallel bottom descending lines from the red line to the dark blue line are due to green new deals, a climate change deal if you will. The top light blue line relates to a catastrophic climate event which will pull the entire world or the country back into lesser developed status while the yellow line exhibits what will happen if we have a technological breakthrough via carbon sequestration or some other fancy technology.

This is just an illustrative slide to show what potential trajectories there can be, but I have 3 issues

1. cost: This slide does not talk about what will be the impact of adopting the green deals or the geo engineering technical solutions. If you factor that in, then the optimistic blue line at the bottom will be pulled up sharply increasing the trend line. In other words, if a country like India has to actually pay for carbon storage or other carbon emission technologies, it can very well decrease its growth rate.

2. combination: There is a strong possibility that all four elements are simultaneously applied, we can have growth, we can have new green deals, we can have geo engineering and we can end up with a catastrophic climate event such as typhoons or cyclones or something like that. Then where do we go? In other words, the choice is frankly now out of our hands.

3. Other factors such as water shortage: What happens if we have a catastrophic non climate event such as volcanic eruptions? Or severe drought? or water shortage? What then?

I further pointed out that the cost of getting people to work on this via the private sector seems to be a bit wonky, the PE ratio’s of green tech companies are hovering around the 60-100 mark. That’s ridiculous. What on earth are those valuations telling me? That’s a clear and present danger of a huge bubble.

So I am going to sit this one out I am afraid, not very clear and until and unless there is more clarity, not going to invest in this sector. This doesnt mean that I am going to stop my attempts to reduce pollution and the like, that’s on the supply side but on the demand and fixing side? Jury is still out.

Book Review: Friends with Benefits

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:47:27 EDT

We are experiencing the explosive growth of internet and its impact on our lives in ways unimaginable until few decades back. The 32-bit IPv4 is forecasted by various sources to be exhausted by 2011. Technically, these kinds of forecasts have required various solutions such as the 128 bit IPv6 protocol, reclaiming unused IP space,etc.

The large and growing usage of internet technologies of various types has required the development of newer marketing tools and strategies. That is where Friends With Benefits likely fits in. It highlights the major aspects of social media marketing and is filled with examples, tips and tricks in a good readable style.

There is some good examples and tips given to improve knowledge sharing while maintaining the authenticity of the source. In this regard, the authors explain the skillful use of creative commons license to share material online.

The authors give out some really useful tips on using online forums and following netiquette. There is also some useful suggestions to make use of popular social news sites such as Digg, Slashdot and StumbleUpon.

To summarize the review, a practically useful book for this topic very much in 'beta' state. The authors themselves acknowledge the still evolving nature of this medium. Some more positive addition to this book could be more examples similar to tubetastic and techcrunch

Book Review: Rework

sh zakeer — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:01:24 EDT

Most of us wouldn't hesitate to agree to the fact that, business book writings are filled with fillers and jargons. This makes business books not only a boring read, but also has less mass appeal.

With Rework, it is time to rethink our opinions about business books. Written by the founders of a Robust and Innovative software company 37 Signals, Rework not only claims to “change the way you work forever,” but also proves itself true, in every chapter of this fine and simple book.

Written in a very straightforward style, the book covers the alpha and omega of starting and running a business. The book is filled with so many amazing advices, that it captivates its readers till the end, and keeps them thinking that all the ideas and strategies, that they had about, how to run a business, is obsolete.

Some of the practices the authors present will make you question, whether it will really work for your business. They say:

Under do your competition
Meetings are toxic
Planning is guessing
Fire the workaholics, and many more things.

But the most interesting part is, these words of advice and theories are what they have developed and adopted in their company, to make them a great success story in the business world.

If you are a business owner, or want to start a company of your own, then this book is for you. With just 273 pages, this book makes a very easy read.

At the end, as the book says, “Change the way you work forever.”

Diesel Pricing Decontrol - Will Diesel Car Demand Decrease?

Ashish — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:09:49 EDT

The Indian Government went in for a partial decontrol of the prices of fuels, with giving a full decontrol of the price of petrol (and promising that future prices will be linked to international prices of crude); the prices for diesel have not been fully decontrolled, and the prices for cooking gas and kerosene have been kept away from decontrol although the prices may have been increased. The Government has been able to do this since politically the opposition is not at a very high pitch with the BJP still in some amount of disarray and no other opposition of any note.

Now, the Government is making noises about moving away from price decontrol over diesel. This is something that is much more serious than the decontrol of petrol. Petrol is perceived as the fuel for individual vehicles (and thus increase in the budget for those who can afford private vehicles), while diesel is the fuel used for the transport sector, for trucks, smaller carrier vehicles, and even for a number of goods trains that are not hauled by electric engines. The normal impact of a hike in the price of diesel is an increase in the rate of inflation, which is why the Government seems to be speaking about price decontrol of diesel, in order to gauge whether it can ride out the impending political storm.

If the price of diesel is decontrolled and it is increased, then a potential impact is to the sales of cars with diesel engines. Over the past many years, the quality level of diesel engines has increased to the extent that they are being used in cars without much of an impact, with performance in areas such as pollution, vibration, cleanliness, etc, being comparable to that of diesel engines, and the fuel efficiency being higher. This is however balanced by the fact that diesel engine cars are priced higher than petrol engine cars, and it is only the lower price of diesel that is a huge factor in the increasing sales of diesel engine cars.

Now, when the price of diesel could potentially get closer to that of petrol, would people still be willing to give the premium that they currently give for diesel engines. I would think not, so if you are looking to buy a new car, consider that there is a high probability that the price of diesel will get much closer to that of petrol.

Bank Risks - Show Me The Money And Who Owns It

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 8 Jun 2010 00:03:18 EDT

Over the past couple of years, there has been a steadily rising crescendo of voices, initiatives, conferences and papers, all concentrating on enhancing and improving the regulatory framework around the banks so as to avoid another banking crisis. By and large, all of the initiatives and suggestions concentrate on the risk element of the bank’s portfolios. Whether they related to the portfolio being too big (too big to fail), having badly designed instruments (toxic debt and credit instruments), bad remuneration policies (the brouhaha over bonuses), separation of prop trading from deposit making (the Volker plan aka Glass Steagal v 2.0), to globally coordinated regulation to improved liquidity standards and the like. What has not been considered, at least the little bits that I have read, is the factor of bank corporate governance. Thankfully, a recent paper sheds some light on this issue.

The authors find that bank risk taking varies positively with the comparative power of shareholders within the corporate governance structure of each bank. Their sample has 279 publicly listed banks across 48 countries, so it’s pretty much a global study of the top banking firms in the world. In other words, you can pretty much take these outcomes to the bank (if you excuse the rather laboured pun) and generalise the results. The bank corporate governance is defined as relating to control rights and cash flow rights usually expressed in terms of one large shareholder having more than 10% of voting rights. If there is no single shareholder with more than 10% of voting rights, then it’s considered to be widely held. So what they find is that banks with a single large shareholder have a statistically significant greater bank risk and this is, surprisingly so, holding for all the 48 countries in the sample. No outliers at all. Policy implications are simple, regulators should also aim to get banks to diversify their shareholding, so that there is no single shareholder who manages to have banks hold greater risk than usual.

But then, there is a different angle to this. If the regulations are too onerous, then the utility value of holding a bank reduces because of increased capital requirements, and therefore existing owners can be tempted to increase risk to show greater returns. And the authors find that this behaviour is exacerbated when there is a single large shareholder in the bank. In other words, just increasing the requirement to hold more capital may not make the banking sector less risky if there are banks with large single shareholders. By how much you ask? The regression figures show that for widely held banks, for every 1 standard deviation increase in capital stringency, bank risk falls by 0.3 standard deviations, but increases by 0.1 standard deviations if the bank has a single large shareholder.

More worryingly, the authors find that capital requirements no longer have a robust direct link with banking stability and posit that this is due to the lack of attention paid to bank governance elements. Putting it in another way, it is crucial for regulators to factor in the bank governance elements in their analysis of the efficacy of proposed bank regulations. If they do not, then their attempts to reduce bank risk will be compromised at best and be ineffectual or even negative at worst.

Quite an interesting paper.

(Laeven Luc and Levine Ross, 2009, Bank Governance, regulation and risk taking, Journal of Financial Economics, 93, pp 259-275.)

Photo Essay: Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Thu, 20 May 2010 07:39:20 EDT

The worshipful companies in London are trade guilds. I belong to the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists and that means I am a freeman of the City of London. It sounds more impressive than anything else or an actual benefit, but it allows me to elect representatives and do some more bits and bobs. But back in the middle ages, this provided the professional structure of the city, allowed the city to stand up to the monarchy and established the beginnings of a middle class. There are 107 companies and some of them are really interesting. Here’s a photo essay which relates to the makers of playing cards.

This display case is in the Guildhall, the seat of the Lord Mayor of the City of London.

This document is the Charter forming the company which was formally provided by King Charles I (yes, the same fellow who lost his head) in 1628 and just below the document are the two seals of the company. You can click on every photo here to see a larger resolution of the photograph.

Interestingly, from this date on, all imports of foreign playing cards was stopped and customs officials were told to confiscate the items. Protectionism, eh? Works every time! Anyway, they protected the trade and in return, the company paid two shillings per gross of playing cards to the King and further one shilling per gross to the officer who sealed the pack of cards. This payment continued till 1960. Shows how extraordinarily long lived these taxes are. Can you imagine? This is the coat of arms of the company. You can actually see the painting of Charles I on the top.

Here are some examples of the playing cards that were made. But by and large, the company now concentrates on charity and educational activities along with some card related activities such as Bridge Competitions.

Some more examples, from the left, a commemoration of the sailing of the Mayflower in 1620, the first moon ride by the astronauts of Apollo 15, Halley’s Comet (see the red comet at the top of the 3rd card?) and finally the circumnavigation of the world by balloon. You might think that this is an anachronism, but playing cards contain a fascinating history of human kind, with the paintings on them being a great record of human activity. See the wiki entry on this topic, absolutely spell binding. How they arrived in Europe from China and India via the Middle East is a fascinating journey. How these cards were used not just for playing, but were also used for making political statements, etc. And then from there we now end up with a situation that you and I play FreeCell and solitaire on our computers. The Worshipful Company played a small but crucial part in this part of Human History.

Changing Ingredients of an Optimist

Suresh Naig — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:22:20 EDT

It was a class room with all its paraphernalia of glass board, chalk pieces, duster, desks for students and a small elevated stage for the lecturer too and yet with a difference. Instead of the students paying for the lectures, the students were paid to sit in the class; the lecturers went over board to ensure that the students learnt every bit of a thing being taught and the students were a pampered lot. It was the training program for newly recruited medical representatives of a large company in late 70’s and I was one of the students. The 30 days intensive training covered the whole gamut of pharmaceutical selling, involving product knowledge, human anatomy and physiology, pharmacology and marketing techniques.

During the part of training one HR manager (he was known as Personnel manager then) regularly took classes to motivate us towards higher performance. One day he had kept a glass of water on the table filled to the brim. He had defined it as “a glass full of water” and after emptying half the content from the glass he asked us to define it. Majority of us said it was “half empty” and a small few said it was “half full”. I was a part of the majority. The personnel manager was in his best elements and he eloquently continued his lecture for the next 45 minutes explaining the implications of “half empty” and “half full”. The gist of his lecture was, a “half full” person is an optimist and a “half empty” person is a pessimist. Being a part of majority who said it was “half empty”, I could not accept myself as a pessimist and it was working in my mind for a very long time.

Almost after 2 decades it was my turn to train newly recruited sales personnel, of course in a different organisation. I repeated the age old improvisation of a glass and water to communicate optimism and pessimism among the young ones. By then it had gained so much of popularity, everyone said it was “half full”. I went for the onslaught castigating all the people as compromisers and a person with compromising attitude could never be an optimist. I continued my lecture, ‘a person who could be happy with a half filled glass when there is scope for a full glass can never be an optimist. When one accepts less as satiating he is a compromiser and a compromiser can never be an optimist. Marketing is a battle and you either win or lose. A half won battle is a lost battle like a half filled glass cannot be a full glass. For an optimist the glass is either full or nil and a person who is happy with a half full glass can compromise with a mediocre performance. What we need is superlative performers and not a person who could accept mediocrity”.

The whole class was stunned and did not know how to react. When the class dispersed for lunch, I could see confusion writ largely on everyone’s face struggling to fathom what they were, optimists or pessimists.

Mobile Phones in India: Disappointing Fare

Abhishek — Sun, 9 May 2010 18:09:55 EDT

The mobile revolution in India is truly here. Even of you discount the hyperbole about millions of subscribers joining in every month, still it accounts for increasing tele-density over the past years.

This write up remains solely my opinion about the state of mobile phones. No one phone can claim itself to be an "ideal phone". No one phone can justify the price tag that it charges either.

India follows a unique model where in the subscribers independently opt in for a handset of their choice unlike other countries where the cost of the phone is "subsidized" by the locked in plans. As a result, a "blockbuster" handset is a boon for the phone company which can substantially add to the coffers. Therefore, most of the manufacturers prefer to tie "exclusive" deals with phone companies; it also sets in a parallel "hacker" world to "jailbreak" the handsets which effectively "frees" up the phone from restrictive norms.

In India, the co-branding is a recent phenomenon. It started with Blackberry's various avatars and due to it's "exclusive deals", they charged premium over it. This ensured that those who had enough deep pockets to flaunt their shiny handsets were able to "access" them. This opened up new revenue streams for data based plans for the Indian companies. Recently, Airtel has launched "network enabled" phones to stay connected to social networking taking the fad to the next level.

Here lies the rub. Despite the huge potential, most of the phones sold are often below par in terms of performance and their high costs are factored in to recover their huge advertising costs.

There are many competing mobile platforms for consumption and each one of them has it's merits and demerits. There is no final answer whether the iPhone OS or Google's Android or even the old venerable Symbian or new kid on block Maemo Linux is the "ultimate". Each one has it's quirks and the ultimate buyer's decision is a result of various factors. Be it price and the "looks" of the handset. Or even the after sales service. Or the peer factor.

There is no ONE answer.

Yet, coming back to where I started from. This is definitely a biased opinionated write up. If we dissect Nokia, I have faced enough frustration on with it because of the outdated Symbian OS that comes even in it's "latest touch screen" handsets. There is none in particular that is in the cross hair of my opinionated write up but it is taking in excessively long to refurbish or polish the overall look. There is consistent UI across it's handsets which may simplify the user experience but offers no "joy" of discovery if one "upgrades" to the newer more expensive handset.

I am against the Windows Mobile Platform due to "ideological reasons" (I strongly support Open Source Software) as well as the fact that the ones running it are extremely user unfriendly or buggy. I have seen the hardware slowing down in performance and overall pathetic experience. Again, this remains my own opinion and the readers may or may not agree with the same.

I have never owned an Apple iPhone or Google's Android but with the reviews online and "limited feedback" from their owners, I feel that they remain another idea worth exploration and represent significant advance in the way mobile phones are used as "smartphones". There is no easy answer to which platform "triumphs" over the other as they are under constant innovation and evolution.

Yet, in India, even though the "latest" is available either via authorized retail channels or the "chor bazars" peddling "imported fare", the biggest issue is that of "touch". At time of writing this, Nokia doesn't even have a contact channel except a web feedback form with no confirmation whether the mail sent to them is actually delivered. I have never received any confirmation nor any reply for many of their handsets that I have purchased and sorely needed an after sales contact.

Their "customer care" is clueless and their service locations (at least the ones I have visited) are dingy cubby holes. The same is the story for other handset manufacturers like Sony Erricson (which seems to have "lost" the case and interest) in developing a strong foothold in Indian market.

Even though, they have "exclusive showrooms", at best one gets only a dummy mock up to give the "feel" of the product without any product demo. That is the time when the handsets can be compared and the buyer would actually get the 'feel' of the product in real time.

I can vouchsafe for Nokia which aims to "cultivate" bloggers in order to get the "word" around. The "newer handset" gets to the blogger/s who are most favorably disposed to the company. As a result, the biased opinion gets around peddled as the "coolest thing" on earth. Then comes the high price points because most of the phones are only assembled with dirt cheap electronics imported from elsewhere.

There needs to be a course correction and we as customers need to "demand" better services and products from them.

Software Review: Ubuntu 10.04 - Late Night Thoughts

Abhishek — Sat, 1 May 2010 11:53:11 EDT

Awaiting a highly anticipated release from Canonical, Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) has been hailed as the best Linux release ever. There has been enough written about it but I am adding to it as a non technical user.

I need to have everything working out of the box. Why would someone need to fire up terminal, type in inane command lines and expect something magical to come up? When I had shifted the to Linux platform (after being fed up of Windows and Apple Mac being way beyond my resources), there was hardly any distro worth mentioning except for Suse Linux. Yet, in those days, it was an expensive proposition; one had to pay for it. The Internet was not so pervasive and broadband was just another word.

As my awareness grew, I realized that it was very difficult to get adequate software for my needs. It was then during the course of discussions, Debian was mentioned and I needed to look no further. Ubuntu's earliest release came bundled with a bunch of free CD's which was indeed a revelation of all sorts. I haven't looked back since then.

Over the years (5 years to be precise), Ubuntu has blossomed into a full blown "movement". The community has grown and there is a huge ecosystem around it. Obviously, comparison's with other competing operating systems are imminent.

Apple Macintosh has kept a tight leash on the hardware it supports. It is akin to a single vendor lock in which means that with every new release, there is always "something better". It works in a way as an "incentive" to "upgrade" but this option remains limited to committed fan boys and a small user base given the premium it commands. Minor incremental improvements in processor speed or "better improved interface" is hardly any qualification to crow about on fancy home pages. Apple has persisted with "leaked media releases" and aggressive marketing to make itself "relevant".

Microsoft has stuck on with "FUD campaigns" and bullying the Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) because the margins are thin for volume sales. It also helps as MS underwrites advertising campaigns for OEM's (which "recommend" Windows). The "Wintel" (Windows and Intel) combination has dominated desktop space for all we know much to the "loss of other systems" because it violates the right to choose.

From this "buzz" and factors working against it, Ubuntu has literally brought Linux in the mainstream. This is important because it has increased focus on the Free Open Source software, artists releasing their artwork on "open license" and releasing songs free of restrictions and making money too in the process, design factor improving with leaps and bounds and all the more improved overall performance on various platforms. Which means, irrespective of the combination of processor or motherboard or various accessories attached to your computer, there is someone toiling hard to make it work for you.

This brings me back to my choice. I made a conscious decision to stick to Linux, explore it and I am elated to have Ubuntu "work out of box". Wifi, Bluetooth, Web Cam...you name it, it works. Add to that, the design factor which has improved markedly over the previous versions(from brown "human theme" to much usable "purple theme"). With the release of Gnome 3 Shell (already in the repos), the next version of Ubuntu (10.10) promises to the be a revelation in terms of practical eye candy and tightly integrated applications. Compiz fusion already adds spunk to existing releases; just a matter of few clicks though to turn it "on".

Ubuntu One service is a focus on the "cloud" to encourage back up and synchronize files across various devices. With it's "me-menu", there is an increased focus on the social networking integrated out of box with the desktop panels. I am sure that it would go a long way not only to entice new users but would see more focus in the ensuing releases.

Ultimately, it boils down to a personal choice. Ubuntu should focus on the mobile devices where it would be more than adequate for fledgling Windows Mobile. With a cloud based service, design and oomph factor and a DRM free music store, it is time Ubuntu (and more specifically Linux and Free Open Source Software) to come in the mainstream.

The future holds the key. It is the present which is making all the difference now though.