Category Archives: Business

There are many problems out there that are not that apparent. Many times it happens that the consumers, the people for whom you are creating your product (or service), do not sense the problem. They don’t feel the need of that something which you think might make their lives so much better. There are numerous examples that come to mind. Take Lotus 1-2-3 for example. No one ever asked for a spreadsheet software. No one thought that they will be using one. Some smart engineers created it, some software savvy marketers associated a marketing need for it and today no information worker can live without a spreadsheet software.

The most important thing to consider here is how to make people realize that they should use this product. When you are creating product with a vision in mind to solve a not so apparent problem, the best way to go about marketing it is with the help of mavens. Find a set of early adopters who share the vision with you. Involve these people in product development. Talk to them. Listen to them. Make them feel a part of the grand mission. Give them the product at attractive deals. They will help you market the product further. They will make other realize that the problem your product is solving does exist and how the product is solving that and help you cross the chasm.

Graphical User Interface or GUI is said to be one of the great innovations of the 1980s. Whoever saw GUI on a computer during that time was wow-ed by the interface and its capabilities. Few years later, GUI became a very common part of computing interface. People started to expect that in a computer. Then came touch. People were wow-ed by touch terminals at airports. Now it has become ubiquitous for all tasks like ticketing, getting quick information etc. Similar progression will continue for innovations in the future. All that is happening here is yesterday’s wow are becoming today’s expected and in the same spirit, today’s wow will become tomorrow’s expected.

Wi-fi receivers in laptop, touch on cellphones and broadband in homes were all wows yesterday and became expected today. Similarly if wi-fi in planes, 3D movies and civilian space expedition are wows today, they are very likely to become expected tomorrow. And there are some things that are unimaginable today that will become wow tomorrow and people will start expecting them the day after.

Bottom-line, don’t rest on your laurels if you were able to wow the world on one occasion. Your customers will start expecting that from you and there will be many clones lined up to cash on that tomorrow. Keep reinventing and wow them again and again. This in some ways explains the success of Apple. They stayed true to their address–1 Infinite loop–by forming an infinite loop of innovations over the last decade. They regularly come up with the next wow product just when people start expecting their last breakthrough product from them and their competitors. In a nutshell, key to success is to stay on top of the industry by continuous innovation.

Open application platforms in the technological landscape has proven to be one of the most successful ways to attract individuals and companies to create applications to serve several niche markets and increase the value of the platform. Whether it is Windows, iPhone or Facebook, each of these application platforms have gained a lot of value by letting anyone and everyone write software applications on these platforms. What has this to do with encouraging social investment?

Let’s map some roles here. Think of the $120 billion market as the platform for social investments. The individual developers or development companies are the companies that work to provide services like education, health care, commerce and so on to the people in this pool. Just like investors invest in the companies developing applications on the platforms, investors – both public and private – will invest in the companies providing the services to the people.

It sounds really straight forward, so what is needed to obtain this flow of social investments? First and foremost is the process in place for companies to get a holistic view of the market. It is apparent that return on investment here is largely based on volume, so to make it attractive we need a process in place for the larger mass across boundaries to take advantage of this development i.e. there should be a way for the services to attain scale. Technology can play a major role in enabling this holistic view. Technology can provide seamless flow of  best practices, take a prototype of development in one place and scale it everywhere and provide transparency in the entire process.

This transparency brings us to the next point. That point is investments. We can look at investments in a couple of ways. First is financial investments. Investors putting in capital should be able to see their investment at work and should be able to project return of investments – both tangible and intangible – and providing a transparent system will enable them to see these returns and encourage larger investments. Second form of investment is in the form of resources. There are many companies in the consumer products world that have a massive reach in this market. They have a functioning machinery that can play a big role in providing scale to development and improve the overall rate of return. This can be cellphone companies spreading their networks across remote areas to provide everyone access to affordable form of communication, and through that easy access to education. Or you can think of it as Fast Moving Consumer Goods companies using their network to distribute medicines and health care products around the world. These kind of investment in resources is essential to attract social investment in the market.

To conclude, I believe if we draw analogies from an industry and an approach that has proven successful time and again, we can attract development and investment in the social enterprise world to attain long-term sustainable growth and prosperity.

What do Hulu and Orbitz have in common? These are two great companies that started with backing from super powers in an oligopolistic industry. Orbitz is an online travel agency that was started by five major airlines in 2000 to compete against Travelocity (a Sabre reservation service venture gaining dominance in the consumer travel industry) and Expedia (founded by Microsoft). Orbitz was a very timely move by the airlines to play their role in the growing online travel agencies business and an attempt to reduce the Global Distribution System (GDS) fee.

Hulu is an online video streaming company founded by Disney, NBC Universal and News Corp to compete against YouTube, iTunes and a slew of other online streaming services. This was a very sensible move on part of the networks. Online video streaming was catching up and instead of getting cannibalized by someone else, they entered the space without losing much of the focus on their core business.

It is interesting to look at the strategy adopted by these big companies (airlines and networks in case of Orbitz and Hulu respectively) in an oligopolistic industry. Why do they help start a new company to do something like this? Why not do it in-house? There are a few good reasons behind this strategy. First, cross-platform integration is very important. A customer wants a flight ticket or want to watch a television show. They care less as to which airlines (in most cases) they are flying or the television network the show is on. They tend to go to one stop shop where they can get it all. Second critical reason is that a start-up has no baggage or legacy to support. They can start fresh and focus on what’s latest and run with time. Another important thing is the coolness factor. Start-ups can do something innovative without a lot of bureaucracy. They can hire great talent and be nimble. This, irrespective of whatever a CEO sitting in an ivory tower says, is very hard for a big corporation.

Starting a new venture in oligopolistic industries has its positives and negatives for entrepreneurs. On one hand you are dependent on long-term support of your parent super powers for survival and success, but on the other hand you get a head start, security and an excellent opportunity to hedge risks. All in all, it’s great to build a start-up with connections if you can get it right!

Search engines today are the gateway to the web. Nine out of ten times you start your journey on Internet through search engines. Search Engine Optimization is a multi-billion dollar business because people reach your website through the back door using a search engine more often than through your home page. Google’s dominance in the search engine world is unquestioned with the company controlling about 70% of the market share.

Competition brings the best in you. With Microsoft trying to catch-up in the search world, there’s going to be more innovation and excitement in this space than ever before. With Google’s dominance and control in the search market, Microsoft is trying hard to change the game with Google ready to fight in the new field. Bing, the Microsoft’s search engine, is going for an application based approach to search. The idea is that when you do a search, you don’t just find the results, pick one and get out of there, but stay there and do much more. This application based approach is now becoming more visible in both Google and Bing.

So what does this mean and where is it going? We all have seen simple applications running in search engines. A weather application to show the weather right in there, a dictionary, a stock price, match scores etc. What do these applications do? They give you the basic information right upfront and you have an option to dive in to get more detailed information. Now extend it to other things. One of the most popular ones is news. Get the news headlines before leaving the search platform and dig deeper if you want the details.

Bing and Google are competing to extend it further. Take video for example. How would you like to see a 30 second preview of the video before clicking on it, loading it and watching it? That can be done by building a video player application inside the search engine. How about shopping? Why not find reviews, compare prices and see special offers right at one place before going out and making the purchase? Books: get the abstract before going out and purchasing it. Movies: view trailer, read reviews, see show times and buy tickets at the same place. There can be an application for everything you can think of in the search engine.

There are many advantages of application based approach to search. One of the biggest advantages is a better display which in turn converts into saving time to find the right result faster. The implicit feedback loop is important for accuracy of a search engine. The more time you spend in a search engine, the more opportunity for the search engine to learn about you, what you want and improve the results and applications. There’s an obvious business advantage as well. More time spent in search engine is proportional to more opportunity to target the audience with targeted advertisements.

Google has very well set simplicity as the new black. So the biggest caveat while playing with anything in search is to make sure the simplicity is maintained. Users today are used to getting results packaged in a clean user interface and to be successful in search space, you got to make sure simplicity is not compromised.

One of the hottest territories in the technology industry today is the e-books market. New readers (or multi-purpose devices with reader functionality) are getting launched in quick succession and big players are entering the fray. With heavyweights like Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, HP and Dell competing to sell the devices that can serve the purpose of an e-book reader, it’s too early to call who will stack on the top of the lot. The first mover advantage here is arguable, but “multi-device application” advantage is certainly not.

Amazon has adapted, what we can call, a “multi-device application” strategy which can work  big time in its favor. It has decoupled the Kindle application with the Kindle hardware, i.e. the software application that you use to read the books on Kindle e-book reader is available for a slew of other platforms including Windows, iPad and Android for free. So an e-book that you buy from Amazon can be read not only on Kindle, but on virtually any device you own.

This multi-device functionality together with other value propositions of Amazon has given it a big advantage. Amazon has got the biggest collection of books in its e-bookstore. Books is their forte. Book buying experience on Amazon is second to none. They have strong customer relationship and command unparalleled trust when it comes to books. And when you can buy a book from Amazon and read it on any device, the probability is really high for customers to use their store.

Amazon enjoys advantage, something similar to what Microsoft did with its Windows operating system back in its early days. Microsoft distributed Windows openly to run with different processors and computers made by all PC makers, making it the platform of choice for application developers and the end users. Similarly Amazon is distributing books to be read on any device, no matter who’s selling the device. This will likely give the Kindle maker an edge and could make it the e-bookstore of choice for the end users. There’s one catch, Amazon better make money selling e-books.

The one thing that really helped Microsoft capture the personal computer market was its strategy to focus on software that goes on computers made by any computer manufacturer from IBM to Dell. That’s been the company’s strategy which has proven great for it over the years. Windows became the platform of choice for application developers due to its great reach in turn making it irreplaceable for the PC users. Apple on the other hand made really great Macs by developing both the machine and the software that goes on it. A semi-closed ecosystem with a handful of application makers (like Microsoft Office) making software for it. Apple found its niche in the cool and trendy crowd consisting of students, designers and artists.

Bring in the mobile space. The very strategy that worked against Apple in computers playing field is now proving to be its most valued asset. Apple is a company that controls end-to-end development of its mobile phone. It controls all three key elements of the phone – hardware, software and the chip component. This gives Apple an unprecedented advantage in providing integrated user experience. Apple is able to remove any friction between hardware and software. Adding the chip development expertise to this provides Apple accuracy in estimating the processor performance and map it to feature development. The out of the box experience that FaceTime delivers is one of the first examples of how vertical integration is going to do wonders for Apple.

The only other company that has all three elements of mobile phone under its control is Samsung. Samsung, the world’s largest conglomerate, has great expertise in chip development and hardware manufacturing. Samsung manufactured phones running Windows Mobile software have been around for a while, but Samsung launched its bada platform for mobile devices in late 2009 to have complete end-to-end presence in the mobile world and Samsung Wave became the first bada based phone to enter the market a few months back. All the elements coming together positions Samsung perfectly to be a challenger in providing vertically integrated experience on the mobile platform.

Now moving on to talk about the emerging markets. Mobile phone market is growing at a tremendous pace in the developing countries. India and China each have more mobile phone users than the total population of United States. If at one end a smartphone costs more than the monthly income of many people in these countries, it is a wannabe gadget for the growing middle class. While iPhone fanaticism is catching up in these countries as well, no one can dispute the unparalleled hold Samsung’s got in the Asian markets. Samsung has one of the most efficient marketing machinery and brand presence in the electronics market out there. This positions it strongly against Apple et al to get smartphone market share in these countries.

There’s still a while to go before calling out the winner in the mobile devices world. Apple, with its genius design and development of iPhone and iPad, has captivated the imagination of everyone from consumers to competition. But it will be interesting to see how Samsung and others fare in there in the coming years and what role the emerging markets will play in deciding the fate of these companies.

Information overflow is one of the biggest problems in the world. Today you can find a lot of information about any topic anywhere (well “almost” anywhere) instantly. There is abundance of information which has created a problem in itself i.e. how to use it without losing key data points? Companies have made fortunes by organizing, presenting and searching information.

Information abundance and availability has done great for the world. It has leveled the playing field in many ways. People can make informed decisions. You get the breaking news the same time as anyone else in the world. You can analyze the archives from years back just like anyone else. But even after having access to the same information some people can make better decisions than others. That’s because  just having information is not enough. The important thing is how can you leverage the available information?

Information can be leveraged by converting it into knowledge. Knowledge is a result derived out of the information through perception, learning and reasoning. Knowledge is precious.  It is actionable. The differentiating factor lies in how well you are able to extract the knowledge out of the information to make critical decision, how well can you apply the learning from historical scenarios to predict the future and how well you can apply analytical reasoning to reach to the optimal results.

Technology that plays a major role in organizing the information plays an equally important role in converting it into knowledge. Complex algorithms that would adapt with usage plays a critical role in knowledge generation. Another important element in this process is human input to absorb the knowledge and make decisions. The idea is to process the information and synthesize the data to derive intelligent conclusions. This is more of a cyclical than a linear process. A process where information flows in and gets processed, knowledge is extracted, decisions are made and the processing algorithm and decision-making process gets adapted based on efficacy of the results. The adapted infrastructure is used to further take information and produce knowledge.