After a long time I found some time to get through a book. I took a book that had been chosen by my current company's CTO as a recommended book for reading - "DEC is dead, Long live DEC". The book consists of three major sections taking about DEC's culture, its decline and then the lessons learned.
I have just started with the second section. The first one was interesting. I suppose many of today's top high-tech companies inherit a lot of legacy from DEC. I suppose what Ken Olsen would have done in today's high growth, high fluctuating environment. Possibly creating a DEC out in today's rapidly changing world would be really difficult.
Personally, I felt that this book gives a lot of insight into how a technically-oriented company led by a techie would span out into. I suppose management takes a bit of back seat in these type of companies and attitude comes to the forefront. I have seen a lot of MBAs in the HR departments of many IT companies. I strongly recommend them to read this section to understand how a techie culture would be. It is more towards getting things done, solving problems, fixing issues rather than a "do this in this manner", " come through this channel", etc.
Tracy Gibbons writes a chapter on DEC's other legacy - about how DEC influenced the society as a whole. It's an interesting read. Access the full chapter online at Tracy's consultancy site.
Showing posts with label innovation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label innovation. Show all posts
Exemplary Leadership
One of the company VP's visited our site yesterday. I report into his group. He is a veteran in the industry and switched his career to this present one about three years before but after what he calls "a blessed" 25 years.
Even as a VP, he is very technical about what his group is doing. Being in the semiconductor space, understanding technical stuff is itself a big effort for anyone at the Executive level. Inspite of him, coming into this role only about three years back, he had amassed a wealth of information and it was like an engineer talking to an engineer - not the regular managerial stuff.
Apart from his visit, what I like is the weekly mails he sends out. This is quite a different mail - he updates everyone under his umbrella with what is going on - this gives a better picture of where our company is headed, how our products progress, what each group does, what are the major tasks that were addressed over the week, what are the plans ahead, etc. Sending out a mail like this one serves a lot of purpose - you get to know what is happening at the high level, how the various teams interact, how your specific work affects the company, what is your importance and responsibility in the company, etc. Communications like these boost the morale of the people and also bring in a lot of enthusiasm and drive from each person.
Rather than getting a job done without details, if there is lucid communication on what is going on and where you fit in - it really helps you to understand your work and get more out of you. There you go - a great example of the importance of communication that eventually grades how good you are as a leader.
On the other hand, I have an immediate manager who is totally opposite - more on that later !!!
Even as a VP, he is very technical about what his group is doing. Being in the semiconductor space, understanding technical stuff is itself a big effort for anyone at the Executive level. Inspite of him, coming into this role only about three years back, he had amassed a wealth of information and it was like an engineer talking to an engineer - not the regular managerial stuff.
Apart from his visit, what I like is the weekly mails he sends out. This is quite a different mail - he updates everyone under his umbrella with what is going on - this gives a better picture of where our company is headed, how our products progress, what each group does, what are the major tasks that were addressed over the week, what are the plans ahead, etc. Sending out a mail like this one serves a lot of purpose - you get to know what is happening at the high level, how the various teams interact, how your specific work affects the company, what is your importance and responsibility in the company, etc. Communications like these boost the morale of the people and also bring in a lot of enthusiasm and drive from each person.
Rather than getting a job done without details, if there is lucid communication on what is going on and where you fit in - it really helps you to understand your work and get more out of you. There you go - a great example of the importance of communication that eventually grades how good you are as a leader.
On the other hand, I have an immediate manager who is totally opposite - more on that later !!!
Better employee ...
After a long time, I met with a couple of my friends who had been my course/lab mates during my MS program(s). It was a nice time having a chat about many thoughts that traversed our mind. During the chat, one of my friends pointed towards why you should not employ many people in a project. I liked it very much. ....
1. Employees become productive.
2. Employees get to be more responsible.
3. Employees get to recognised and be given due importance.
4. Profit can be shared among lesser number of employees.
... Net, the employee turns to understand the importance of a project, does challenging things, learns more and is also being rewarded more.
I see this in contrast to many companies who tend to bloat their presence just by increasing the headcount. I hope these companies don't start off a race and contribute towards a Bubble 2.0!!!
1. Employees become productive.
2. Employees get to be more responsible.
3. Employees get to recognised and be given due importance.
4. Profit can be shared among lesser number of employees.
... Net, the employee turns to understand the importance of a project, does challenging things, learns more and is also being rewarded more.
I see this in contrast to many companies who tend to bloat their presence just by increasing the headcount. I hope these companies don't start off a race and contribute towards a Bubble 2.0!!!
Affordable Rights
Seems Moser Baer is coming out with a plethora of titles on Indian movies. This is great for two reasons - one the DVD / CD prices of the titles will be very cheap - in the range of 30-50 rupees. Second, at this price, we get the original one with the proper rights for the title. Way to go Moser Baer!!! - I think the company, can go a bit more in extending their presence online by publishing a catalog of available titles, under continuous update process.
If MB can come to this stage where they can give the titles with appropriate rights at this cheap prices, what were the others doing till now? Eating the customers' money? I'm not certain what deals MB made with the title owners, but if MB can bring the titles at this price, any one could. I hope there are lot of DVD/Cd burning companies who can negotiate the price with the title owners and look into bringing more titles in the future. This would certainly generate a lot of revenue, lot of sales of consumer electronics and will certainly bring down the piracy seen in India in the media sector.
Bringing the needs of customers to a stage where they are affordable without any hassles is a great way to capture the market. Hope I'll get a lot more movies in the future from MB and others who might venture into this.
If MB can come to this stage where they can give the titles with appropriate rights at this cheap prices, what were the others doing till now? Eating the customers' money? I'm not certain what deals MB made with the title owners, but if MB can bring the titles at this price, any one could. I hope there are lot of DVD/Cd burning companies who can negotiate the price with the title owners and look into bringing more titles in the future. This would certainly generate a lot of revenue, lot of sales of consumer electronics and will certainly bring down the piracy seen in India in the media sector.
Bringing the needs of customers to a stage where they are affordable without any hassles is a great way to capture the market. Hope I'll get a lot more movies in the future from MB and others who might venture into this.
Solitude
Recently came across the article "The Call for Solitude" - I appreciate the importance of having a solitude once at regular intervals - this gives me an oppurtunity to spend some time in a calm and serene environment sans any distrubance to think and introspect more. Getting time for oneself is becoming very difficult in this wired and weird world.
Getting the lone time is only in our hands ....When we decide to make certain that we need time to introspect and improve ourselves, we should consider this zero hour as time well spent in getting us to the next level. A few factors that we can do to get this time .....
1. Get out from the regular commotion.
2. Alienate yourself from any electronic gadgets.
3. Get a few sheets of paper and pencil/pen.
4. Have some nice music flowing in the background - something that is smooth and enhances the brain activity.
5. Try to spend atleast 30-45 mins trying to question on what you are doing and how you can go forward.
I had been practising this type of solitude till a few years back. It was really great. I generally used to listen to a music cd with water flowing / go near a lake / fountain and I would get some nice time to be near nature for some time. Once in a while, I also take some long walks, so that I have time to get to know more about myself.
With increasing responsibilties - personal & professional-wise, I hope I can get some more of this solitude in the near future to more forward ahead.
Getting the lone time is only in our hands ....When we decide to make certain that we need time to introspect and improve ourselves, we should consider this zero hour as time well spent in getting us to the next level. A few factors that we can do to get this time .....
1. Get out from the regular commotion.
2. Alienate yourself from any electronic gadgets.
3. Get a few sheets of paper and pencil/pen.
4. Have some nice music flowing in the background - something that is smooth and enhances the brain activity.
5. Try to spend atleast 30-45 mins trying to question on what you are doing and how you can go forward.
I had been practising this type of solitude till a few years back. It was really great. I generally used to listen to a music cd with water flowing / go near a lake / fountain and I would get some nice time to be near nature for some time. Once in a while, I also take some long walks, so that I have time to get to know more about myself.
With increasing responsibilties - personal & professional-wise, I hope I can get some more of this solitude in the near future to more forward ahead.
Lifelogging
Came across the article in FastCompany about the novel and innovative method in which Gordon Bell of Microsoft is focusing on to record each and every possible moment in his day-to-day activities. Digitizing each of these information - whether from the SenseCam, mails, written communication, discussions, etc. - and storing this itself a huge task. Add sorting these and searching for relevant information, then the complexity starts to increase. Data warehousing at the personal level!!!
Analysing what this concept could bring if everyone had it is a nice talk to fill in over a cup of tea.
First, for me, this can help me log all the thought process that my mind tends to undergo. Sometimes, very rarely, I get a new idea and ponder over it. Then I forget about this, when I have no relevant storage recording my thoughts. I suppose this will be a welcome tool for a lot of inventors and innovators. - Yes, you have notes and scrap books, but sometimes, you can't record everything your mind everything in words as it thinks - speaking out into a mic or seeing it through a camera, correlating things together make up a lot of sense and brings in a new perspective to understanding things and exploring them more.
Second, this will be helpful for students as it can allow them to recall lectures and discussions. This might give a chance to improve upon their memory, trying to recall what the Professor actually meant and what is needed out of it.
Next for a layman, most of the time, we fumble upon a face and then, our mind goes into the hunting spree of trying to figure out where we actually crossed that face in our past. Trying to have a sample of all the encounters we had, this would give us more choice to recollect the face, and the surrounding in which the person had come in contact with us.
This might seem a total recall, but inspite of Gordon and his colleagues working it out as a prototype, I still have a few thoughts on how this could be improved more - possibly they have something on these lines already ...
1. Face recognition - or some image search not by words, but by the content of the image would be helpful.
2. Tagging the information will be helpful for sorting.
3. Trying to have distributed storage of the information will be great.
4. Ability to log in the information using wireless and also retrieving the info wirelessly would improve the accessibility to a great extent.
These are the small things that come to my mind - wish I can have this technology at the earliest at the consumer level - this will benefit the community at large.
And here is the article from Atlantic Journal mentioned in the FastCompany article.
Analysing what this concept could bring if everyone had it is a nice talk to fill in over a cup of tea.
First, for me, this can help me log all the thought process that my mind tends to undergo. Sometimes, very rarely, I get a new idea and ponder over it. Then I forget about this, when I have no relevant storage recording my thoughts. I suppose this will be a welcome tool for a lot of inventors and innovators. - Yes, you have notes and scrap books, but sometimes, you can't record everything your mind everything in words as it thinks - speaking out into a mic or seeing it through a camera, correlating things together make up a lot of sense and brings in a new perspective to understanding things and exploring them more.
Second, this will be helpful for students as it can allow them to recall lectures and discussions. This might give a chance to improve upon their memory, trying to recall what the Professor actually meant and what is needed out of it.
Next for a layman, most of the time, we fumble upon a face and then, our mind goes into the hunting spree of trying to figure out where we actually crossed that face in our past. Trying to have a sample of all the encounters we had, this would give us more choice to recollect the face, and the surrounding in which the person had come in contact with us.
This might seem a total recall, but inspite of Gordon and his colleagues working it out as a prototype, I still have a few thoughts on how this could be improved more - possibly they have something on these lines already ...
1. Face recognition - or some image search not by words, but by the content of the image would be helpful.
2. Tagging the information will be helpful for sorting.
3. Trying to have distributed storage of the information will be great.
4. Ability to log in the information using wireless and also retrieving the info wirelessly would improve the accessibility to a great extent.
These are the small things that come to my mind - wish I can have this technology at the earliest at the consumer level - this will benefit the community at large.
And here is the article from Atlantic Journal mentioned in the FastCompany article.
Boosting Solaris
I was reading this interview focusing on multi-sided markets, recently. This one really struck me to think how Solaris can grow more - I'm an ardent fan of Solaris and I suppose that this great operating system is still not understood to a great extent.
A few things that Solaris can do to gain more importance and value ...
1. Since the source code is already open sourced, Sun should start o evalgalise more on the product and its features - it already has blogs and articles and some communities opened and moving on - what would be more better is call a meet of driver folks - give them a challenge to write drivers for more fancy peripherals - when this happens, there starts to be an adrenaline flow in the community to see what the OS offers - also, many companies would also try to leverage this to come and say that their product is being supported on Solaris. When products get supported on an OS and the OS supports the product, they go hand-in-hand to talk lot about the OS as well as the product.
2. Try to organise another event wherein a sort of hacking is allowed so that the OS code is hacked to run on embedded and other hardware plattforms other than being just a SPARC & x86 only product. When more platforms come in, people seem to get the idea of the vastness the OS can be on.
3. Try to engage the student community more - this is where we have the future developers - especially connect more with colleges/ Universities in countries like India & China where there is a huge base of software development. When students start to understand the OS in their college level, it becomes easy for them as future developers to hack the OS and bring it to a more better level.
Wow, love the one with Dtrace, ZFS, and etc.
A few things that Solaris can do to gain more importance and value ...
1. Since the source code is already open sourced, Sun should start o evalgalise more on the product and its features - it already has blogs and articles and some communities opened and moving on - what would be more better is call a meet of driver folks - give them a challenge to write drivers for more fancy peripherals - when this happens, there starts to be an adrenaline flow in the community to see what the OS offers - also, many companies would also try to leverage this to come and say that their product is being supported on Solaris. When products get supported on an OS and the OS supports the product, they go hand-in-hand to talk lot about the OS as well as the product.
2. Try to organise another event wherein a sort of hacking is allowed so that the OS code is hacked to run on embedded and other hardware plattforms other than being just a SPARC & x86 only product. When more platforms come in, people seem to get the idea of the vastness the OS can be on.
3. Try to engage the student community more - this is where we have the future developers - especially connect more with colleges/ Universities in countries like India & China where there is a huge base of software development. When students start to understand the OS in their college level, it becomes easy for them as future developers to hack the OS and bring it to a more better level.
Wow, love the one with Dtrace, ZFS, and etc.
Innovation
Last week, I had some time off to read a couple of papers. This time, I took to papers from Strategy+Business. I liked the kind of topics they cover and I was hooked on when I saw a paper from C.K.Prahalad. I had wanted to read his books, but quality time to read a book that needs a lot of thinking was well off my agenda, atleast now!
I grabbed the paper on 'The Innovation Sandbox' and there was a lot of zen in that. Strewn with examples of how lost cost innovation mattered, he was once again getting to the point of where innovation really made sense to make a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Quoting the results from Jaifpur Foot, Narayana Hrudayala & Aravind Hospitals, he had given a new world on innovation and entrepreneurship that is coming along targetting at the people at the bottom of the pyramid. Even Tata's new concept of $20 hotels was discussed and it seems that all these really make up a great new world of innovation. The world is Flat - but it might be more better than being a flat. The World might be tilting towards business aimed at the pyramid concept.
This was the same thing being disussed by Netcore CEO, Rajesh Jain, in his interview with K@W. Here he states that the new mobile business in India is aimed at people who have the "mobile only" rather than the "mobile first" or "PC first" segment - makes sense.
I also had some time to go through the paper "Innovators without borders" paper - seems there will a flat world, but flat from a bird's eye, but it will not be flat when it comes to reality - atleast when you see software and IT being concentrated in India, engineering being concentrated in Germany and research being held up in US. - can we really call this flat?
I grabbed the paper on 'The Innovation Sandbox' and there was a lot of zen in that. Strewn with examples of how lost cost innovation mattered, he was once again getting to the point of where innovation really made sense to make a fortune at the bottom of the pyramid. Quoting the results from Jaifpur Foot, Narayana Hrudayala & Aravind Hospitals, he had given a new world on innovation and entrepreneurship that is coming along targetting at the people at the bottom of the pyramid. Even Tata's new concept of $20 hotels was discussed and it seems that all these really make up a great new world of innovation. The world is Flat - but it might be more better than being a flat. The World might be tilting towards business aimed at the pyramid concept.
This was the same thing being disussed by Netcore CEO, Rajesh Jain, in his interview with K@W. Here he states that the new mobile business in India is aimed at people who have the "mobile only" rather than the "mobile first" or "PC first" segment - makes sense.
I also had some time to go through the paper "Innovators without borders" paper - seems there will a flat world, but flat from a bird's eye, but it will not be flat when it comes to reality - atleast when you see software and IT being concentrated in India, engineering being concentrated in Germany and research being held up in US. - can we really call this flat?
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