Desicritics Category: BizTech: Innovation

Book Review: The New Age of Innovation by C K Prahalad

Anuradha Goyal — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 08:01:16 EDT

I had to read this book as a part of my professional requirement, to be able to talk about what C K Prahalad and M K Krishnan, the gurus of Innovation have to say in their latest book, The New Age of Innovation. The book obviously has been launched in various cities with the author’s tours, huge publicity on all kinds of media and through paid seminars.

The book talks one major new concept, or rather I would say documents it in the form of a model as this concept had always existed in certain segments. The concept is N=1, R=G. This primarily means that to serve one customer, you have to access / use / leverage global resources, and a corollary to which is that you have to customize the offerings for each customer and cater to their unique requirements. To do this there are certain capacities / capabilities and flexibilities that you need to build in your business systems, in your human capital and your geographical reach. There are two diagrams in the book that summarize the whole book. The first one is a diagram showing a transformation from ‘one organization serving multiple customers’ to ‘many organizations or global resources coming together to serve a single customer’. The second diagram is the house kind of structure which says to enable N=1, R=G, you need to enable your technical architecture and your social architecture. This is all explained in the first two chapters.

In the next three chapters authors explain the technical architecture. They emphasize the need of IT, the commodity and non-commodity part of IT, the needs of analytics and the way analytics can contribute to the insights for next innovations in the organizations, and how legacy systems need to be replaced to make the organization more flexible to accommodate the N=1, R=G model. It presents a case of lot of Indian companies who have adapted this model and have built flexibilities in their systems. He makes a case for the strategic importance of IT and how organizations can not afford to write it off as a commodity.

In the next three chapters he explains the mindset changes that the managers need to go through to accept and be the change that would enable the organization for this new model. It talks about the new requirements in talent management which again needs to be both flexible and mobile. Authors also talk about the role of leadership in bringing in these changes in the organization.

While I like the way the concept has been packaged and presented, I am not sure if I agree with the universality of this concept. It is definitely applicable to service industry, but it had been there in that industry in some basic form. Say in medical services, each case is a unique case and a doctor or a surgeon has to bring different resources, may be from different sources every time to serve the patient. Authors themselves talk about layers in the structure which are commoditized, and these commodity providers obviously do not adhere to this model. They would still go with standard / universal offerings and everything else will be designed according to their standards.

At times the book gives a feeling of being written for IT companies, especially those having their primary base in India. You get to see a lot of their point of views. I wish there were as many cases or examples from old traditional companies who have transformed or remodeled themselves to adapt to the model proposed in the book.

It is an easy reading for anyone who has been a part of business at any point in time, with a lot of case studies and examples.

Public Services and the Public Sector

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:11:28 EDT

There seems to be an inherent assumption that public services such as hospitals, police, roads, infrastructure, garbage collection and so on and so forth have to be provided by the public sector as well, soup to nuts. And this is what bugs the heck out of me.

Recently, at a club for technology, public sector and business executives, a minister came in to talk to us about how the public sector is responding to globalisation. Incidentally, this is a great club, you get to hear some great people and meet even better people. Quite a lot of my knowledge of the public sector provision and senior government workings comes from this wonderful institution, but this time it was a bit of a rambling speech.

What it boiled down to was that globalisation was hitting public services with change on a very dramatic basis while the public sector delivery model was clearly not up to the mark to keep on supporting this. So what he is pushing the public sector to be more risk taking, more entrepreneurial in public service provisioning.

Now, nobody actually objects to public service provision, not if they do not understand what a nation - state is all about. It is about common values, language, culture, geography, history and yes, even public service provision. The fact that there is just one currency note type across the country and everywhere that note is accepted and that it needs public service to make sure that it is fine means that public services are required.

Same with the concept of universal public provision with the post office. In other words, this is a provision which means that the state has to make sure that a letter posted in one part of the country will get to another part of the country, irrespective of the distance travelled, deliveries will be made on regular intervals and so on and so forth. What is actually required is different from country to country. But it is there. Here's a fascinating discussion over what to do with this provision and how to standardise it across Europe. But most importantly is that how do you fund it?

And this is my problem, if the government run public sector does not know how to handle it or provide that public service provision, then instead of trying to get all risk takers and corporatist about it, just put in a regulatory model overseeing the service provision and farm that out to the private sector. Why press the public sector to get excited about this?

Now this is at variance with what is actually happening on the ground. See here for a fascinating story. The private and voluntary sectors are providing a stonking £80 billion of puiblic services, 6% of GDP and I quote:

A government-sponsored study by DeAnne Julius, the economist, revealed on Thursday that those sectors supply a third of public services – everything from National Health Service treatments to bin emptying, IT, back-office functions and RAF pilot training. The market is worth £79bn, employs almost as many people as the NHS and accounts for 6 per cent of gross domestic product, making it a larger industrial sector than pharmaceuticals, automotive or electricity, gas and water. It also has considerable potential for further growth both at home and abroad, the study is expected to conclude.

So the minister and the actual situation on the ground are totally different. And something that I like. Now you might quibble over whether or not the garbage collection is a public service or not but hey, the British public has agreed to do so (and I agree with that) and has outsourced it to private provision while making sure that the service delivery is purchased by government. Neat, no? and as you can see from the article, they are trying to sell this model across the world. Shame the minister did not know about this.

Technorati Tags: Outsourcing, United Kingdom, Public Sector

Book Review: Database in Depth

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Mon, 7 Jul 2008 00:32:13 EDT

One of the most critical components of the IT framework in any organization is unarguably the database. With the consolidation of relational database management systems of different brands, there is a correspondingly demand for knowledgeable Database Administrators of good caliber at the administration end of such a critical component. This book comes as a theoretical shot in the arm for people aiming for such a profile.

For almost all the database products in use today, the foundational paper remains E.F. Codd's Derivability, Redundancy, and Consistency of Relations Stored in Large Data Banks. One of the important objectives of this book is to clarify the relational theory to practitioners. The author of the present book was one of the colleagues of E.F. Codd and has a much clearer understanding of the original paper as well as developments on it through to the present day. The author of this book along with Hugh Darwen has a formal proposal for the basics of future DBMS.

In the book under review, there is a very clear explanation of the theoretical concepts and their working without getting convoluted with particular implementations of the theory. Based on the components of the relational model throughout the beginning chapters, the eighth chapter gives the full-fledged definition of the relational model. It is defined in terms of five components that are discussed in the preceding chapters.

A must read portion of the book is the foreword by Jonathan Gennick giving the key reasons why any database practitioner should have this book in their collection. There is a warning for the reader though that they approach the book with the intent of learning, as the prose sometimes gets difficult to understand and needs multiple readings to get the point.

One of the only curiosities that the reviewer has is how the author of the present book would analyze the various branded implementations currently in the market in a sort of comparative study. Any such article would make a very interesting read indeed.

The Apple iPhone 3G: How Steve Jobs Fooled Me

Sakshi Juneja — Sat, 5 Jul 2008 03:45:12 EDT

Undoubtedly the iPhone is one of the sweetest inventions in recent times. Well at least in my books. And I wouldn't be wrong in stating, countless others share the same view. Released on 29th June 2007 (in the US), in matter of weeks the world was gripped in its craze. I remember constantly eyeing eBay iPhone sellers, looking for that 'one' perfect deal. The temporary trauma that came along with my iPhone package still lingers - let's just say I still have nightmares about paperweight iPhones.

All that was then, the iPhone is now old news. What is in the news however is its rejuvenated version – the iPhone 3G.

The 3G model is yet to be released (a week from now to be precise) and I know tons of folks who can't wait to get their hands on this beauty. Yours truly included, I mean after all it does fall within my "all things sexy" category.

Besides all the new features such as the two colour options (Black/White), 16 GB option, 2 megapixels camera, 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, App store and Microsoft Exchange, the most attractive bit of all is its marketed price; $199 for 8 GB model & $299 for 16 GB model. Now when converted into Indian rupees, the amount sounds easy on the ears and the pocket.

But if you go by this report you will realize things are not always what they seem, especially good things.

The iPhone 3G will cost Rs 20,000 in India - the costliest in the world.

The iPhone 3G will be free in the UK as it's subsidised by O2, a service provider; it's 1 Euro (Rs 70) in Germany, again subsidised by T-mobile and costs US$ 199 (Rs 8,557) in the USA, thanks to AT&T. The phone costs US$ 350 (Rs 15,050) in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and the Philippines. It is not available in Dubai. [Link]

And if like me you too are thinking of purchasing this baby for a lesser price via the ever-enterprising eBay or requesting your chacha's wife's grandfather's cousin's grandson to send you US-made maal – well then, my darling, you are in for a disappointment.

US buyers will have to purchase a service contract with AT&T before leaving the store; you cannot buy it online. The phone has to be activated within 30 days or the buyer will be penalized. You cannot cancel the two-year contract with AT&T. Either a cancellation fee of 175$ (Rs 7,525) will be charged or the phone has to be returned.

And for my buddies in US of A who are jumping with joy (and mocking us poor souls back home) thinking about the dream figure; here's a news flash for ya.

(Only) if you're "upgrade eligible" (log into your AT&T account to see if you are), you'll be able to buy the new iPhone for the discounted price of $199 for the 8GB version or $299 (INR 8,584.86) for the 16GB (INR 12,898.86) model. (AT&T is somewhat vague about the eligibility criteria, although your credit history and the time remaining on your contract are factors.) You'll also have to pay an $18 "upgrade fee."

If you're not eligible for the discount, you'll have to fork over extra for an "early upgrade"-$399 for the 8GB iPhone 3G or $499 for the 16GB model. Ouch.

AT&T also says that a "no-commitment" (read: no contract) iPhone 3G will be available soon, at $599 for the 8GB version and or $699 for the 16GB handset. Pricey, but hey- no two-year contract.

Unfortunately, AT&T won't offer the new iPhone on a prepaid basis, at least not at launch. [Link]

Ha Ha Ha.

On a serious note though, personally speaking, shelling Rs. 20,000 on an officially purchased iPhone isn't much. In 2006 I had bought an unofficial Sony Ericsson W900i for 25 grand and it didn't have half the features present in the 3G iPhone. Also when you compare it to high-Nokia models currently in the market, the price of an iPhone is comparatively quite low.

So it only seems wiser to buy an official piece, the only drawback – can you wait for another 3 months?

(*Picture Source : Apple Inc)

Tech Review: Vysr - A Lookup Bar, Not A Toolbar

Rajiv Renganathan — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:14:57 EDT

I found Vysr from FastCompay.TV's demo-cum-interview of Guda Venkatesh (Alumnus of IIT, Kanpur). Vysr is a new toolbar released in beta for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. It aims to enhance the browsing experience by giving easy access to popular services like Google News, Wikipedia, YouTube, MapQuest and others (called Apps) within the current view of the Webpage. Even better, it adds a context of the selected text to these apps. What this means is that you can select "abc" on a webpage and click on the Wikipedia app on Vysr. An in-page display shows the Wikipedia page on "abc". I like that! This acts like a lookup within the scope of my current webpage rather than opening another window or tab. Hence, I call it a Lookup bar, rather than a Tool bar.

The positioning of Vysr is different too. Vysr does not take away valuable real estate in your browser. It is well positioned in the bottom right corner. It is also easier to enable or disable with just a click, without having to search through the browser menus.

For developers, they plan to release a set of APIs. I'm looking forward to designing a Vysr app to search for shopping deals in India with DealSearchMaadi.com and stock analysis with Stockoogle.in.

Apart from the developer API, here is my wish list:

1. Google Web search app. (How could they forget this in the first place?)

2. The bar gets longer as I choose more apps. I would like to have a Windows quick launch bar's double-arrow styled option that on clicking, pops up the other apps.

3. Geo-focused apps, especially for India for local weather, maps, stocks, news, search etc.

I would ve interested to see if Vysr is capable of replacing my Google toolbar over a period of time, also considering the possibility of Google using its toolbar to sketch Google Trends!

Book Review: Making Things Happen

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sat, 7 Jun 2008 09:33:34 EDT

In Making Things Happen we have an “in-your-face” text from Scott Berkun. While case studies are an integral part of any (project) management handbook, the author had used anecdotes and virtualized examples from his extensive experience in the IT giant Microsoft to good effect as a continuous logic and before you know it you have finished reading the book.

The idea that project management is an art is a powerful one and in spite of the availability of many tools and techniques like XP (Extreme Programming) and Agile project management, hard-pressed Project Managers would definitely like the sage advice of people in as much or more difficult situations they face on a daily basis as part of the job responsibilities.

One of the impressive treatments is in the way that the author has brought focus to the various technical terms used in project management on a regular basis. Consider then that the author has explained the differences between the term vision (referring to defining of high-level goals) to team goals (which is the subset of vision and requires a greater explanation) and individual goals (the responsibilities of an individual in the team). While all project managers may have felt the need to jot down their thoughts and share it with others of their species, this is a very practical way to look at the definitions.

One more phrase that I found very interesting is “analysis paralysis”. This is interpreted as the phenomenon where people are analyzing obsessively, in the desperate belief that if one there was enough data, the decision would resolve itself. In real-time this could be due to the inability of a project manager to confront the issue due to possibly lack of enough authority, team-members could exit and hence a better data is required for more options. The delay in this case is something most of us would have seen sometime or the other from people in responsibility in the organizations.

To summarize, the book would make for a pleasant read to the project manager. The exercises at end of each chapter are very useful and going through them almost gives the feeling of being in a real-time management class.

The World Congress of Information Technology 2008, Malaysia

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 13:28:10 EDT

I had the honour of attending and speaking at the WCIT 2008 conference in Malaysia and here are some rather disjointed notes that I had while listening to the speakers. I tried to clean it up, but again, apologies for not being able to make this very professional indeed.

Monday

The conference center is big! And I got lost in the exhibition hall. Quite an impressive setup. So then finally managed to extricate myself from poking into the guts of various exciting electronics bits, went looking to find the plenary hall, and found myself sitting in the hall looking at an ant hill of activity. I could not imagine how on earth will they manage to fit 3200 people and assorted volunteers and managers into this hall but they sure did.

Typically, there was the media scrum when a Prime Minister arrives....We were welcomed by 40 children welcoming us in 40 languages representing 90 odd countries here, but the language used through out the conference is English. Curious, no? the prevalence of English in the world?

He also said that UK and South Korea are behind Malaysia in the World Competitiveness Index, and I can well believe it. Although checking the Global Competitiveness Report here seems like the results are different. Perhaps he is talking about this report. Anyway, mere quibbling. And now the PM has left and literally the front 1/4th of the hall has emptied! Some more speeches about WITSA.

Then Dr. Craig Bennett, Chairman of Intel, started talking about how we have a billion people on the Internet and now we have to get the next billion on the Internet as well. He said that four factors are important for knowledge based economic development

Physical access to technology
connection to internet and connectivity
content targeted at local population
education on how to use the tool

He said that a well educated teacher is the magic and not the PC in the classroom. He showed a video about a Nigerian school which has embraced technology but said technology again is not really the only answer.

He talked about taking a holistic viewpoint, what's the point of giving a $200 PC while the monthly connectivity costs are $250 per month in many countries, 100kb monthly cost in Japan is 6 cents, 50 cents in USA and more than 80 dollars in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now you can get an idea how tough it will be to get these people on the intranet or to roll out the broadband revolution to them (more about the exception being that of India later on).

He talked about how Pakistan is being used as an example of pushing broadband and network connectivity out into the sticks. 60mm dollars is the budget, rolling out in untouched areas in Pakistan, he invited a Pakistani chap to the stage who is the CEO of the public company which is helping to push this (didn't catch the name). Connectivity is a challenge. Satellite is way too expensive. Fiber is the only way. Rolling out fiber is tough, so tehsils where its not remunerative for private companies, this company gives money and offers seed capital, it helps to improve the business case for the private firm. This was a good step. The Pakistani chap said that Govt should not be involved that much in this business, put power to public private consortiums or just private firms, give them a stake in the business and then it will work. But I am not holding my breath, I want to know whether connectivity actually helps or would more investment in say better teacher training help?

He video conferenced a doctor from Brazil into us, how location differences for patients versus diagnostics versus doctors versus care had disappeared, and this tele-medicine actually is helping far more people than medicine and doctors were previously. Then there was some corporate stuff with some kids brought on stage and it ended. It was a bit too slick and the questions with the kids was too obvious and that left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Such a senior chap shouldn't need such kind of gimmicks to play around with such an important topic, we are all adults, you don't have to take us to be children or idiots to play that game.

I was a bit impressed with what he had to say, but what he had to say was crucial (leave aside all the silly posturing and even more silly marketing of Intel stuff). His point was, throwing money at technology and expecting better performance from students was wrong, the idea is to teach the teachers to be better, that will provide better results than thousands of PC's and laptops.

Nothing much to note for the next few sessions. The post lunch session for the Ministerial panel was a bit interesting. Mainly because you could see how various governments approached this entire idea of information technology. You know what was the most disappointing? It was the Philippines MP. She came across as a complete Neanderthal, saying that in many parts of her constituency, there is no electricity power anyway, forget about PC's, and it was a whine. The Philippines government should really have thought that through. The Malaysian government minister and other ministers were smart, they obviously were pushing their countries and with due reason, telling us, the corporate folks, what we wanted to hear..., but Philippines? Pathetic. She is a blot on that country's face.

The next wireless broadband session made me go to sleep. Pure and simple, those two Romanian scientists, bright as they were, made me doze off specially when they started talking about antenna design, and specially after that excellent lunch.

Woke up to an excellent presentation by Professor Takenaka. He talked about how he was made the Minister for Finance in Japan by a certain Lionheart PM of Japan. Fascinating tale of how he took on the entrenched might of bureaucrats and financial institutions and won. And I well believe him, given some down sides, generally that time was brilliant, it still shows that even in a consensual driven society such as Japan, you can still have mavericks who hire mavericks who really make a huge difference! Brilliant fellow. Unfortunately he was not allowed to fulfill his destiny and do all that he wanted to do but there you go, he literally broke the back of the Japanese economic stalemate. I was personally quite impressed but I suspect that quite a lot were not as he was talking more about economics and finance than IT. The IT piece came way afterwards, a little bit and as an after thought.

Then we had Bill Gates in a hologram talking about Microsoft and then Dr. Zhang also, not very clear about what, was flagging badly by that time.... and then we went off back to the hotel, did some more emails and then some calls back home and then off to dinner, again, dinner was brilliant, and pigged out and came back and went to snore, i mean sleep.

Tuesday

The day started with perhaps one of the most interesting panel discussions I have ever attended. It was to do with how to produce innovation and creativity and what can be done to enhance it. These were the people there.

- Arnold Gay, Anchor, CNBC - Moderator
- Kamil Othman, Vice President, Multimedia Development Corporation
- Fritz Attaway, Executive Vice President, Motion Picture Association of America
- Terry Thoren, Chief Executive Officer, Rocket Fish Studios

You cannot get a better collection of people talking about the most creative of industries, motion pictures and a very educational and interesting debate happened. Terry said that the world is changing, Malaysia has twin towers now while USA no longer has it. Who knows what's going to happen in the future? He has severe distaste for politics but great admiration for tech, people, process, creativity, etc

Kamil went into deep details on how to build an innovative industry? Animation in Malaysia. Disappointing take up, long way to go, to make a Walt Disney, you need to start with one million children drawing in grade 8. You cannot create a flash laboratory, shove people in there and wait on the other side of the Lab waiting for Toy Story or Cinderella to drop out of the other side. It has to be started from the very basic levels, people cannot look down on the arts which they do at this moment.

Monetisation of opportunities and content is a challenge, how do you do it? look around you, all countries are pushing people to get educated and into the knowledge sciences, but not all people are thus inclined. Many people simply do not like mathematics or technology. Some people want to study arts, or paint or simply do not have the mathematical skills. What do you do to them? Those who want to write poems? How does he get paid? or fed?

There were conversations around how to create a movie or animated film, quite interesting to see how Hollywood and Silicon Valley literally took decades to develop, you cannot do that just by throwing technology at it. Quite thought provoking indeed. Perhaps one could question whether it is possible to force people to become creative? Or can you just provide the infrastructure and let them get on with it? or is it just let people be, and trust in them to come up with the goods?

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The next session had more ministers but I was quite interested and taken by A Raja, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, India. I have to admit, I was quite cynical at first knowing about Indian politicians, but was very impressed to see what he had to say about it all, how they are powering ahead with the licence's, what mistakes they made, how the process of governance is happening, who gets to approve what? and so on and so forth. Pretty good and well, I will think that what he is saying is right, because I have experienced the mobile phone revolution in India.

As usual, it has to be different. Rest of the world goes through scientific revolution, industrial revolution, then wars then dial up then broadband and mobile, India starts off with revolutions in 3000 years BC, then has fun, then goes into decline, then starts off with a revolution in Y2K and then the next revolution is mobile and mobile internet and mobile commerce is bigger now, how strange and unique... Very curious, loads to think about there. The technology trajectories of these two countries, based upon what Dr. Jiren of China said, are so different. One wonders what will happen in the future.

Incidentally, there was a gentleman from Saudi Arabia who made me think of the previous session. He spoke on about how much money has been pumped into the industry in Saudi Arabia, the emergence of knowledge cities, and the like. Not impressed at all. Not at all impressed. Setting up a knowledge city and throwing money at it does not solve the problem of creativity or having knowledge industries. For that, you need to have creativity at the school level. They have to inquire and challenge everything. Can you imagine something like that happening in Saudi Arabia? Which is the reason why I couldn't take it any more and went outside to grab a coffee. Perhaps the organisers should have kept coffee on tap, this was crazy, they dont want the participants to keep awake? dont they know we drink coffee by the gallon?

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The next topic was rather dry, Dr. Mobius talked about where the next hotspots will be. And I lost my notes on this lecture so this part is a bit vague. I remember him showing loads of graphs about where and when returns are made. It was an asset management view, so was a bit dry. Still, was a bit interesting, specially around the returns of the various sectors in the Asian economy. That is much that I remember... if and when I get my hands on his slide deck, and have time to read it again, will comment...

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For the next session, I went to the "Asia, the destination of choice for Shared Services and Outsourcing" session.

- Dato’ Narayanan Kanan, Senior Vice-President, Multimedia Development Corporation – Moderator
- Michael F. Corbett, Chairman of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals
- Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, NASSCOM
- David Wong, Chairman, Outsourcing Malaysia
- Stephen Braim, Vice President Governmental Programs, IBM Asia Pacific

Very interesting, Michael spoke about the impact of the US elections on international outsourcing. I was, frankly a bit puzzled by that kind of emphasis. For two reasons. The first aspect is that the actual number of jobs which are dependent upon the classical aspect of outsourcing is reducing, and the second aspect is, did he really think that the elections will make a tiny bit of difference? Obviously yes, but I am rather disappointed that it was more American rather than International. Also, I was a bit saddened that there was no discussions about international aspects, taxation, technology which allows remote working, etc.

But overall, it was quite interesting, there was discussion about education and how that will help in various countries. What Malaysia is trying to do. What the IBM view was from the perspective of government initiatives and education and so on and so forth. But also, I was a bit disappointed that most people's perspective was the next 8 - 12 months, not more. Still, lets go to lunch, was feeling quite hungry now.

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Over lunch, we had a speech by Dr. Rowe, where he was talking about how the worlds of virtual reality and real life reality meet and how they work together. Quite an interesting topic and he spoke quite a lot about his own personal experiences and the like. But not much about real life applications. I then sent him an email afterwards, and this is what I said to him.

At ABN AMRO, we used Second Life to actually recruit, it was very challenging and interesting but it ultimately failed because of lack of regulatory frameworks. Ended up with 5.5 FTE dedicated to Second Life but then scaled back.
We also used a virtual world to help mentoring. Such as when we have just 2 IT employees in Uzbekistan, then how do I get the junior chap mentored? So we setup a virtual world where mentors and mentee's can congregate in a persistent state across the world. This helps in knowledge capture and better employee retention.
My friend from BP is using a virtual world to track every employee in complex and potentially dangerous plants. This location tracking and graphical display of every employee is used for fire, safety, evacuation and training purposes.

Second life and other virtual lives have become really challenging world and are throwing up some seriously challenging questions for us, again which have not been fully explored just yet.

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Unfortunately, I missed the next slot because we had to go and get powdered up for our session at 3. Not much to speak about in there, check out the slide deck. Also managed to miss out a large proportion of the next presentation from Dr. Pachauri because we were supposed to be in a room answering questions. But did manage to catch snippets of his talk. Quite interesting.

I had to take an office phone call so managed to miss out on the next one as well. So that was that. Nice dinner, watched a charity auction, observed some very nice and lovely looking ladies. This lady was standing 2 feet away from me. Very fragrant. Nice hair even.

Wednesday

This day was going to be challenging, specially since it was also the Champions League Final day.

The day started with me taking breakfast in the Trader Hotel Lounge, where I had been put up, its just next door to the KLCC so very convenient indeed. So took some pictures from the 34th floor lounge while having breakfast.

Here are the twin towers, at the base you can see the gigantic 6 story mall with two wings. It is absolutely stonkingly huge, that mall. Anyway, the twin towers, and the very well landscaped park around the buildings. The building on the left of the twin towers is the Mandarin Oriental where many other guests were also put up.

Then the day started with two debates on the future of the Internet. A deep discussion erupted over the net neutrality issue. To be honest, I have never really thought about it till I was forced to sit and listen to these two debates. Not that I have really firmed up my thoughts but the question is, who pays for the internet? It is my firm belief that nothing is free in this world, somebody will ultimately pay, either the taxpayer, stockholder, consumer, today you or tomorrow in the form of your child. Somebody has to pay. So this idea that the net is free is frankly stupid and more worryingly, it shows a childish view of the world.

Also, the idea that a communications network will or should be free is against human history. Do you think that the pigeon post was free to everybody? or the pony express allowed everybody to send stuff over? or how about the fact that letters still cost to send stuff to each other? Or the fact that we have public and private ownership over the postal system? Or the fact that we have regulations governing what can and cannot be sent over the posts? Or how about the fact that online classifieds are killing newspapers? Or how about the issue that emails are killing the postal system? So when we do not have any issues over that, why do we suddenly end up having an issue over the net neutrality aspect? Here is a good overview article. Very complicated matter, but I suspect it will end up like we have the health service. A Universal service provision which will provide some kind of a basic internet, which is slow and unreliable, while a paid for internet which is better and faster. Pretty much common compared to other industries, if you ask me.

Then there was a discussion about Silicon Valley, it started in 1940's, it took 10 years to know, 10 years to come, 20 years to investment, etc. etc. Takes a heck of a long time to start developing an industry. See what Taiwan did, took them decades to get to it but get to it they did. Now they are the champions, and almost every PC in the world has some Taiwanese components in it.

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Next session I had to miss, then popped into the Mexico session for a few just to realise that they were talking about near shoring. I mean, d'oh, get on with the programme, people are now in the 5th generation of out sourcing and we are still in the terminology of the 1st generation. Crikey! that made me so depressed that I went back to the room and started my calls. Also had a quick bite to eat in the room itself, couldn't’get out of the calls but went back to catch the next great debate.

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Not much to report on other than the fact that one of the guests (I told you, lost all my notes because my stupid My Documents folder decided that it wants to forget all about my previous history and start afresh to synch...). said that the adoption of energy efficiency standards by California means that the energy usage per citizen has now leveled off compared to other states. But if you think about it, the lesson from this is to start imposing energy standards more and more, get people challenged to be smarter about their energy usage. So while the usage will rise, but it will level off at some point!, interesting, no?

So I went looking for some data. What does this tell you? Well, it did make me go hmmmm. We are actually seeing a dip in the energy consumption per capita in North and South America, albeit from a relatively high level. Delving deeper into North America, Canada and Mexico are showing an increase while, very surprisingly, USA is dipping down and decreasing. How curious. 40 countries out of 134 countries actually showed a dip in energy consumption between 2000 and 2003. Some of them were obviously banana republics which were facing economic downturns such as Zimbabwe, or contractions such as Argentina, Ivory Coast, Bolivia, Eritrea, etc.

But what explains this reduction for countries as varied as Belgium, Brazil, Australia, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, UAE, United Kingdom and USA? Can it be that despite increasing populations, their energy efficiency is improving? Dont take my word for it, check out the data. It is from the IEA even, so would be ok as well. Population information from the United Nations.

The next topic was the most interesting one, so I will put up another dedicated post for it. Came out to grab a coffee before going back in and saw that the sky was cloudy, the KL Tower was nearly hidden under clouds. Unfortunately, all the photographs with the top of the tower hidden did not come out, but hope you can make out the onion dome in the back being hazy in the mist.

One of the living legends of the internet age, Dr Vinton Cerf, Vice-president & Chief Internet Evangelists, Google, spoke on the topic of "Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century". This was the final presentation of the WCIT and the entire hall was absolutely crowded, people were standing on the aisles waiting to hear that great man.

He talked about the future of the internet. Said that the internet penetration around the world is strange. Asia, Middle East and Africa are bad or low or both. Only 20% of the world is connected. He used the World Population Reports from the UN about the 2300 figures and displayed them, some interesting rises and dips. I presume he is talking about this report. See the graph on page 19 of the report. High scenario shows a horrifying 36 billion people on the planet, with a medium one of less than 10 billion. Bloody interesting report but this is not the place to go into it.

He talked about how only 20% are connected to the internet and more will grow. Incidentally, I found it much easier to observe him up on the main screen rather than watch him on the far left. Which begs the question, if this was webcast, then I wouldn't have traveled to Malaysia.... (theoretical question...). Which made me go off into a different train of thought.

My facebook, orkut, myspace, etc. accounts are nothing but very primitive clones of myself. I cannot be everywhere, so my primitive clones operate on my behalf. Just like my email system does and my voicemail system does. As a matter of fact, my home is also a sort of a clone. It has an address which is independent of me. People can communicate with me on an asynchronous basis and I can get back to them whenever. So when people are writing something on my facebook wall, are they communicating with me? or with my clone?

Say I have an active Second Life account. Is that me or is that my clone? Or both? I feed those clones with information and they act/react based upon my preferences. So I can be in another place via my robot/clone and get back information to me when it is convenient to me. I do not have to be face to face with you to get information. You can email/voicemail me and I can pick it up at my convenience.

If I communicate with my son online in Second Life via both our avatars while we are both across the world, am I still his father? to what extent? How about love? Can I show my love to him? via that medium? How does he know that it is me? Or if I was seeing Dr. Cerf across the world on a webcast, how would I know it is him? Just because somebody said so? identity problems galore. Does this mean that more friends you have, more your identify is confirmed? Like an amazon or ebay seller, more positive recommendations, the better is the identity and better is the trust. What do I do when I am dealing with a financial institution? Curiously, microcredit or microfinance rests on this premise, it lends money to people on the basis of guarantors from their community. So a person has to be social and know people and be trusted by them in order to get money. Bit different from my neural network Kohonen map based credit scoring model, eh? But I digress.

He talked about IPv6 (a network address for every device on this planet and then some, even some for your socks..), better search engines. He said something that I will come back to, he said that the monetisation and earning potential online will be less and the current business models will have to change.

He also talked about BIT rot, how on earth will you manage to open a Powerpoint 1997 file in Windows 3000? Forget about that old a problem, here is my problem. I wanted to dig out some research that I had done way back in 1990. I did not have the files here in London so had to wait till I got back to home and went to poked through my old cupboard. Besides the nostalgic kick, I finally found the floppy disks. 5 1/4 inch floppy disks to be precise. I have also operated the 8 inch floppy disk but well, the data that I had was in two formats, Lotus 1-2-3 and dbase. I remember sitting back on my haunches, looking at the dusty pile of floppies, and thinking back to those hours and days that I spent in typing in the financial data of the companies and did the basic analysis. Do you know, I even managed to calculate multiple regression on the damn things in there? Anyway, for all purposes, that data is now lost to me. I do not have a floppy drive anywhere near me, none of the 4 home pc's have it. I have an old laptop which has a floppy drive but it is 8 1/2 inch drive, not the older 5 1/4th inch drive. So I am stiffed.

Fast forward today. Financial institutions are supposed to keep data for up to 10 years. So your transactions and your records are supposed to be kept nicely and carefully within the firm for 10 years. Now the transactions are processed, on an average, via 10 odd applications. There can be many more depending upon the country and product but just think about it, 10 applications, multiple operating systems, multiple upgrades, multiple hardware requirements, multiple network systems, multiple servers, so many different types of technology stacks, and we have to maintain a record of this. Within 5 years, it becomes a major issue to keep up to date with technology, we are talking about 100's of years? No bloody way.

Museums are now struggling with electronic art. I could have taken those disks to a museum but they are also facing problems. Here's a great paper written in 2001 and the problem has become even worse now.

He also talked about the inter-planetary internet. That just blew my mind away but it needs much more thought before I can write more about it, its not fully comprehended yet. Anyway, he got a standing ovation at the end. I ran to attend his Q&A after getting distracted by an email, but still managed to get to the hall to ask him a question. I asked him, you have talked so much about what will happen in 2035 and 2300, the physical shape of the internet, the devices, the penetration rates, and and and. What do you think would be the value system, the monetary framework, the price formation or who will pay for it all? It was obvious that I had asked a wrong question immediately because it did not go anywhere fast. I did ask some follow up questions, but he is a great man, he had to rush off to meet somebody else.

This is my problem. I am supposed to think about what's going to happen in 5 years time in the financial world. This is what I am seeing currently. People who are in the 15-25 years of age category, the great unwashed herd who will be our future employees and customers, are not that well versed in value creation online. And why would they be? Look at what kids do online these days. He watches movies, plays songs, plays games, chats with people, participates in joint coding, and so on and so forth. Almost all of this is free or stolen. His email is free, his programming language is free, songs and movies are free, his video is from YouTube, his chatting is free via text and messenger, his voice is free over VoIP. So all these assets that these kids are using, they are all free at this moment.

So I am most certainly not surprised that they do not know the value of online assets. So when you ask them, how much are you worth? or how much will you work for? or how much do you wish to charge for your ideas? or how much funding will you need for your great online idea? no idea. And that is the issue that I am struggling with. In 5 or 10 years, the link between physical work, money and online assets will be inextricably broken. So how much would I pay a coder? How much would Microsoft pay a programmer when most online assets are free?

My son said something to me today that completely blew me away. He said that he will go create some online jewels and armour in World of Warcraft as birthday gifts for his friend who lives 5 houses down. No money, no nothing, just pure and simple virtual asset formation, entertainment and happiness increased but with no reference to money at all. Deeply worrying.

So to go back to Dr. Cerf, on what basis will anybody pay for a book in 2300? or a share in the company making Windows 3000? or the ability to write code? Or to create a powerpoint presentation? I do not have an answer, but I didn't get one either. I will be struggling with this as part of my job as well, but I am seriously not sure what the answer is. We saw some amazing valuation modeling during the internet boom. But they did put a value on an intangible asset, no? It was a bad value, but a value none the less. Also goes to the heart of what Mark to Market is all about. If this is all too philosophical, think about this, my son is happier getting a World of Warcraft spell rather than an intricately carved wooden box which I got for him.....Should I have gone to the local electronic fair in Kuala Lumpur and bought a user-id/password for him instead? How would I judge what is a fair amount to pay? I have no idea whatsoever. No reference points at all.

That brought me to the end of the conference. The last day, Thursday, was a trip to Cyberjaya and Putrajaya, the IT and administrative hubs of the country, but dont think that fits in here, so you can see some pictures here. I have also written another essay on my observations on Malaysia and that should be published soon as well. End of the day, fascinating indeed and perhaps it was appropriate that that brought my professional career stint with technology to an end, now its moving back into the front office. But technology will remain with me, either with my shareholder, customer or employees. Food for thought, will try to attend the next one in 2010 in Amsterdam.

Technorati Tags: Technology,Internet,Web 2.0

Book Review: Hacking - The Art of Exploitation

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sun, 1 Jun 2008 10:35:55 EDT

Experience is the best teacher, goes the old saying. Students and learners of C and assembly are often stuck with the seemingly abstract implementations of these programming languages. Being the closest to the execution on the machine is also requiring an intimate knowledge of the way that the 0s and 1s are getting manipulated within all the circuitry.

In Hacking - The Art of Exploitation, starting with each and every basic of the programming from control structure, pointers, typecasting to file access and permissions, function pointers, etc., the discussion is moving on to the various scenarios and examples of general exploitation techniques, networking exploitation, countermeasures and cryptology. The main thing about the treatment of the subject matter is that the clarity of thinking of the author is very prominent. As it is, the large number of domains that a hacker has to encompass do sometimes put to stretch the understanding required. Understanding the basics provided in the step-by step manner is really the implementation of a divide and conquer strategy.

There is also an extensive portion dedicated to cryptology. Quite a few of the texts dedicated to cryptology require the reader to go across for some other book dedicated to information theory for a back-and-forth approach across the two to gather the concept. In this topic especially, the positioning of the examples seamlessly with the concept explanation is a big plus point.

Hacking as a word is very different in different contexts. Thus we have the derivative words cracker and script kiddie. For those looking to have a beginning to the world of optimum coding and extensive knowledge about the nook and crannies of the system, here is a book that does justice. There is a very practical accompaniment of a bootable Live CD to learn the code and examples as well as experiment without risking corruption for the stable OS on a typical desktop.

The book is really recommended not only to the experts looking to have a addition of ways to solve the problems but to the beginner programmers and computer science students who are faced with the problem to imagine real-life problems to understand the various programming techniques.

Narayana Murthy on Entrepreneurship

Intrepid — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:43:06 EDT

I was privileged to attend an interview of N R Narayana Murthy, the co-founder of Infosys Technologies. The interview session was part of a "Leaders and Learners" session organized by TIE at Welingkar's Institute in Mumbai. Murthy was interviewed by Anuradha Sengupta of CNBC TV18, and a select panel of entrepreneurs. Then the forum was thrown open to questions asked by the audience. Here were some of the key takeaways from this brilliant and humor-filled session:

Q. What does it take to start your own venture?
NM: You need 4 things before you can think of starting your own venture:
1. Idea. The key idea or concept of the service or product you want to sell in the market
2. Market value of the idea. You must have a basic level of confidence in the fact that the market values your product and is willing to pay for it.
3. Team. You must have a team of complementary skillsets - so identify your own strengths, and find people who have different, but complementary strengths.
4. High aspirations. You must be someone who sets his/her sights high, and is willing to work very hard to achieve those aspirations.

Q. What must a startup do for branding?
NM: Do unusual things. Infosys has always attracted the press and positive publicity by doing unusual things, which interest people.

Q. Who were your idols or people you looked up to?
NM: When we started our business, there were already well-established business leaders who had founded and expanded their companies while sticking to sound ethical principles - JRD Tata, even Mr. Birla, TVS, Mr. Kirloskar. Of course, by that time Bill Gates had also become well-known. Intel was one of the foremost examples of success for most security companies to follow.

Q. What is a non-negotiable component when starting your own business?
NM: A sound value system. You have to lead by example, you must walk the talk, eat your own dogfood. Only when will your team trust you implicitly, and only then will they deliver and help achieve the common goals.

Q. What are the characteristics of a successful entrepreneur?
1. Ability to work with other people and work in a team
2. Passion and will to persevere
3. High degree of optimism
4. High aspirations for oneself and for the company
5. Ability to put long-term interest ahead of short-term benefit

Q. How do you judge the value of your idea?
NM: You should be able to express your idea and its value to the market in a simple sentence. Not a compound sentence, nor a complex sentence.

Q. How do you attract and retain talent?
The leadership must articulate a grand vision - an exciting future. This will create a challenging work culture and attract future leaders to the company. The vision must be a story that is compelling, believable, and intrigues and excites the minds of the team members.

Q. What do you think about work-life balance?
I remember K V Kamath's answer to this question: first let's make a life, then think about work-life balance. I don't understand the concept of a work-life balance.

Q. How do you define success, and at what stage did you consider yourself successful, and why?
NM: I have thought a lot on this subject, and my definition of a successful person is one who when he/she walks into a room, people's eyes light up. If he/she brings a smile to people's faces, then irrespective of whether that person is educated, not educated, self-employed, employed, I would still consider that person to be successful. And going by that definition, I am still not sure whether I would consider myself as being successful.

Interestingly, Murthy's favorite books are Richard Feynmann's Lectures on Physics, and History of Mathematics vols 1,2,3.

E-Governance and Grassroots Governance

Shantanu Dutta — Wed, 14 May 2008 10:45:49 EDT

When I engaged the services of a smart, suave lawyer to draft the Trust Deed that I had to register, I thought that I was being smart. Getting good legal advice to have the paper work sewn up well seemed to be a good move. Drafting the deed well was the main half of the story; registering the deed itself would be child’s play afterwards; or so I thought. I was wrong.

Whereas the lawyer had drafted any number of Trust Deeds and drafted mine too in a jiffy, registering the deed turned out to be a nightmare. A visit to the sub-registrar’s office to register a document – any document at all is the best possible proof that if any job at can be performed by machines and computers, they should be asked to do so without any further ado and interaction with human beings is best kept at the irreducible minimum.

The first sight to greet you as you approach the sub registrar’s office is a slew of soft drink and bottled water sellers. That sight ought to make any one’s heart quiver; for if such sellers abound like vultures, it only means that there is a market for their wares in the form of indeterminable delays.

Once you alight, you are in the midst of what can best be called a maze with all sorts of people milling around – clients, petty shopkeepers, hangers on and tough looking people in tight T Shirts. Although there are enough signage; the one most prominent is one advising the client to “beware of touts”. And yet with no clear reception counter or window or help desk, and a swarming crowd trying to find its way through the chaos, the only one who knows the drill to get the job done with as little delay as possible is the tout. Getting your job done without a tout’s help in that run down office where the babu sits behind shuttered windows under a fan and the client lines up under the blazing sun without the pretense of even a canopy is like trying to cross the Sahara desert without map or compass.

I remember the times before e-ticketing in the railways became common when the bookings were all manual. Whenever we went on summer breaks, the first job to do was to make a trip to the railway station to book the return ticket. The process took effectively the whole day and was fraught with uncertainty as the bookings were made manually on a giant ledger and with the queue moving at a snail’s pace, there was no assurance that by the time, one reached the head of the queue, the ticket one sought would still be available.

If there is one area where e-governance has made a difference to a whole lot of people, it is in the area of railway bookings. Another may be banking, especially the adoption of core banking by many of the public sector banks. Several embassies have reduced human contact and give online appointments for visa interviews and other related formalities which too are of help. But what is surprising is that despite a few proven successes in improved governance; the government has not demonstrated the political will to extend IT solutions to other government offices that the public have to visit.

The sight of unsightly and ill manned offices with unhelpful clerks in the National Capital and confused clients roaming around under the raging noon day sun surrounded by touts and other unidentifiable characters who seemingly can “fix” any thing is enough to undermine any good that the government might have done in other areas. If e-governance is the panacea of the future, it is much more so at the places where the public congregates to interface with the government and is met with uncouth, sour faced clerks than in the Prime Minister’s office and other such high profile establishments. E-governance needs to expand at the grassroots and do so quickly.