Category Archives: Technology

I wrote this post about four years back while doing my MBA at Columbia Business School. For some reason (don’t remember why), didn’t publish it. So putting it out now.

This week reinforced my belief in the reach and impact of technology. It’s across industries and continents. It spans different walks of life and touches people in different ways. But the common element is that it has more impact than ever before. Here’s a recap of four events/cases this week shed light on how technology is playing a critical role in various industries.

Paul Calello, CEO of Credit Suisse investment banking division gave a talk on leadership and state of financial markets. He was asked what is the next big thing that will influence the market. His one word answer was technology. He went on to explain how technology can increase transparency, make it more practical to put forth checks in place and help make better decisions than ever before.

In supply chain management class, the case study for the week was Zara success story. One sentence reasoning behind Zara’s success is its heavy investments in information technology and automated infrastructure. The amazing infrastructure Zara has put in place to have a rapid inventory update every six weeks (less than half the time taken by a typical competitor in the space) is heavily dependent on connectivity and automation in supply chain management.

Next was a simulations exercise for Statistics class to find out a bond which is more profitable and less risky than a bunch of specified stocks. In other words, statistical regression using computing power to solve an otherwise a complex looking problem.

Lastly, a talk on Google’s impact on creating the massive digital library. Very interesting to see two contradicting sides of impact technology was having on an industry. On the brighter side, the knowledge was going to be universally available to anyone interested in leveraging it. On the darker side, activities like piracy will grow and the revenue hit on publishers will in turn have an impact on authors motivation.

I have always been a believer in technology and its power. I strongly believe in the idea that it’s the application of technology in innovative ways that is going to have a lasting impact for many years to come.

Social media has taken the ease of expressing oneself to a whole new level. People express their opinion on everything from an everyday product to a television show to an event to a movement. Issues are discussed, recommendations are made and reviews are shared to make this world more connected than ever before. This provides a whole new challenge to measure and learn about what the opinion flow is from a market research perspective.

Lets talk about an interesting question of “how much”. The point is simple, do you like something enough to go for it? Or on the other hand, do you despise something so much that you will recommend against it? You might like a product, but not enough to buy it. Or in a more interesting case, in deciding whether to see a movie or not, you might dislike the actor, but like the plot enough to sit through it for a couple of hours.

The important thing lies in the sophistication of analysis. You got to understand the difference between people being on the fence or on either side of the fence. But the more important thing is to understand how strongly have people formed their opinion. Metaphorically speaking, how tall is the fence to let people cross from one side to the other. The next step is to figure out the reason behind an opinion and factors that can play a role in impacting that opinion. 

The beauty of market research techniques developed by MavenMagnet is to understand the degree of likeness people have about a certain topic without putting them in a box. This provides us the capability to extract patterns, form key takeaways and make actionable recommendations to help in making critical business decisions. 

Human beings are obsessed to know the future. What’s going to happen is something that excites people and in some cases helps them make decisions. The business of prediction, what the future holds, is a multi-billion dollar industry. It ranges from predicting the stock price of a company to success of a product launch to opening of a movie to outcome of a match-up.

Big data gives us immense power to more accurately provide indications for the future. The large number of conversations happening online act like an unparalleled source of information. The heart of dealing with big data lies in the analysis of this data. A combination of technological processing and expert observation leads to generating patterns with rich insights and takeaways  that in-turn lead to indications for the future.

MavenMagnet’s primary focus is to identify the reasons behind every takeaway or prediction. The key drivers and barriers defining the success or failure of an entity. The top influencers who are making or breaking a reputation and will play a role in the future. The best steps you can take to prevent a negative tide or ride a positive wave.

Everything apart, if a prediction is not supported with a reason, it’s worthless. If there’s nothing that can help you improve the fortune of your entity or impact what’s going to happen, it makes very little sense. Of course there’s keeping your fingers crossed for a positive surprise…another thing we humans are obsessed with!

If you look at two extreme outcomes for an innovative product, it either goes on to revolutionize an industry or is ignored by the consumers till someone who is a better product developer and marketer comes and takes a second look at it. The latter is supported by one of those excuses that people use to justify a failed product in the past when they see a successful one today: well we did it 10 years back, though it was not a big success at that time because we were ahead of time.

A product fails when either you have not done the innovation right or you were not able to market the product right. There are many things that go in innovative product development. For a product to be successful, it should be usable, priced to justify the value and should meet the infrastructure constraints. It should have something significant enough for the consumer to care for it.

Many innovative products play on the front of changing the consumers’ mindset. That’s where marketing enters the picture. Marketing is the most essential thing that defines the success or failure of a product. Every good product that gets successful has a great marketing behind it. Marketing for a product starts at the very inception of the product development process. It brings the consumer lens to the product. Answers the questions like what problem are you solving? Are you supplementing something or complementing something? Are you messaging it correctly to your consumers?

If a product is not up to the mark, it will not survive. Work on getting it right. But if your product is the best thing out there, get the right marketing in place. That will accelerate the time enough so that you are not ahead of time.

Sprint and marathon, the two forms of running requiring very different skills. Both are challenging, both are goal-oriented and both require a whole lot of training. But it’s quite apparent that the two are as different as they can be.

Can a sprinter become a marathon runner? The challenge here is you cannot run a bunch of sprints one after the other and combine them to make a marathon run. It just doesn’t work like that. Couple of core reasons being planning and perseverance. A marathon runner has to plan and run the whole 26 miles. Train for it. Conserve the energy to finish it. Be persistent to continue at several points on the way when the common human instinct is to give up. And the most important thing, for someone who has been a sprinter, is to take the leap and give up sprinting to become a marathon runner.

The same principle of sprint vs. marathon applies to a business. Any start-up is a sprinter’s heaven. You run one sprint after the other. You release one product after the other. You put something out there, test the waters, update it and go for the next thing. A great way to run fast and try different things. But for a start-up to be a viable business, you need to be persistent. If you believe in your product, you got to stick to it to make it better everyday and go the whole way. You need to plan for it, bring the right people on board and keep the ball rolling. In other words, you got to get ready to run the marathon.

Competition is a prerequisite for Innovation. Competition motivates the leader to out innovate and stay ahead in the game. It makes the companies doing the catch-up to think outside the box to beat the leaders. A business lacking competition often stagnates because there is no need to innovate.

There are several examples where competition has led to innovation and lack of competition has led to stagnation in the same industry. The best one that comes to mind is the web browser industry. In mid 90s, the browser industry had fierce competition between Netscape, Microsoft and a few other players. Between 1995 and 2001, both Netscape and Microsoft came out with six versions of their browsers out-innovating each other over and over again with new releases every few months. Eventually Netscape became less relevant and IE captured about 90% of the market. For the next five years starting 2001, there was literally no innovation in the web browser industry till new browsers like Mozilla, Firefox and later Chrome started becoming relevant. It took Microsoft five years to come up with IE7 in 2006. And since then, competition has fueled innovation for the three big players coming out with new features in the browser every few months.

The same dynamics is visible in many spaces, be it video games, cell phones, hybrid cars or social media. There are always lot of other factors in play like macro-economic conditions, state of the broader industry etc., but competition is the driver when it comes to innovation.