Serendipity and Learning

I had to give a lecture on Prototyping. This is a difficult task because prototyping is all about doing. But one hour was all we had and a lecture to be delivered. So, here is what I spoke about... Define prototyping beyond the conventional definition Staying away from cliched stories of prototyping Examples of prototyping - offbeat examples Takeaway - we are all creators, makers and tinkerers Examples of not having to prototype Wicked problems versus well defined problems The perfect being the enemy of the good Propensity to not ship (and how companies are working to overcome it) Shortening lifecycles of companies and products Real life examples Methods like Lean start up, Design Thinking How to prototype (methods) And finally, a thought on leading our lives as a prototype!

A few weeks ago I had to go to a doctor for a small orthopaedic condition. I went to the doctor. A junior doctor heard me out, examined me - made me do a series of movements with my arm, asked me to take a <machine test>. Armed with the report, I went to the main doctor who in turn read the report (all normal) and the diagnosis for 30 seconds and sent me packing with some medication and said I might have to come back for some physiotherapy. For a week, nothing happened - the pain came back after the course and no discernible improvement for another week after that and then I decided to to take a second opinion. The second doctor heard me out. He glanced through the report. And made me do a series of movements with the arm. He also gave me a couple of tests to do to check for secondary indicators. And thats it. He had identified my condition- gave it a name. He put me on a physiotherapy regimen for 6 weeks. He said there was no need for any further machine tests of any nature...

This is something that has always intrigued me. Newspaper websites, digital properties - almost always look the same - worldwide. TV sites and digital properties - ditto. Why? The earlier method of printing news was limited by the newsprint and the ads. Now with space no longer an issue (atleast on websites) how is it that it is still organized by print needs? What can a newspaper website potentially look like in future? Today it looks somewhat like a newspaper that is mounted on a website. What if news was organized in terms of current events, recent events and on events where a long form investigation is being done? Why not start with a map and people zoom into the location where they want news about? Why not a world map with users being to click at a country level to begin with? Why not share data and news separately (as in share long form data alongwith news as well). Why not allow users to scroll through a timeline? Or search about incidents - like terrorist incidents. Curren...

The way information is consumed has changed. When we were young, we sat in front of the TV and absorbed all it blared. Or read books. Since I was more of the latter, I had a storehouse of information - which I labelled - Department of Useless Information. This information was not useless - it did enable me to win quizzes and suchlike till I met bigger hoarders of information who I could not defeat. Today, the way information is consumed is over the internet and the Department of useless information gatherers have never had it so good. Except for the arrival of non-googleable quizzes. That means that the internet is a great place to build curiosity - almost like the library of yore - provided of course one uses it for the right things. So, the kid potters around on youtube - mostly on science sites like ASAP science and Ted-ed and suchlike. Soon comes with a question after a round of retail therapy by the parent. Are you happy with the purchase? Well, ya, kind of. Ok. It ...

I read this article today . And while the entire article is worth a read, read this snippet in the picture below. This is the Apple. The same company that set the pace (by and large) for the digital revolution that we now take for granted. Is this Apples xerox moment? Possibly not. But in this it was definitely blindsided by the IOT piece in this manner. And in the light of many people commenting that Apple is not the same post Steve Jobs - this is interesting. For one, nobody is immune from change and transformation. Not Apple. Not even Amazon. This is an interesting example for those who still quote Apple in their management stories :)

The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies  by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson is a very thought provoking book.  Written a few years ago with an acclaimed sequel out - it was a bit dated, but not for me. Much of what they said was thought provoking I felt.  In this age of technology and AI - there is something we perhaps dont realise.  In the book he mentions a concept called the second half the chessboard ( referring to this story ) which in turns relates the human understanding of the exponential function (and then I read about Al Bartlett and his lecture) The second part which clicked was the fact that in general, technology does cause job losses - and it has happened from the chariot drivers times and will happen when self driving cars arrive. It has happened from the bulls in the time of tractors and will happen again in the age of mechanical agriculture.  Yes, some people will be ab...

Something struck me as I was working with someone recently. And the person pointed out that the feedback he got is the same thing that we had discussed a few years ago. This despite the fact that the circumstances had changed, the nature of work was different, the culture was different, the role was better, the future was better - indeed every possible dimension of the situation was diametrically opposite to what it was when he first decided to work on the behaviour. And today, few years later, all other things had changed, but the same behaviour was pointed out. Coming close on the heels of the story of industrial transformation - this story of human behaviour struck me as a great example - of how difficult it is to make changes to ones own behaviour and how it is a studied process that takes quite a lot of determined conscious effort. And as I thought about it I realized that I have encountered this many times in my career both for myself and hearing other talk/recount their o...

The matrix is all around you. From consumerism to groupthink...it is all around you. At work, it is there at the watercooler. In life, it is on Facebook and other social media. It is there in meetings. It is there in convention and ideas. It is there everywhere. It is the matrix. Take consumerism for example... They all say, be yourself. See the ads for any product. They are all the same - from insurance to Do this, do that. Buy me to be happy. Try this to be happy - while telling you that happiness is not in the buying - it is in the experience - and slyly selling you experiences on the side. In Home Sapiens, the author terms this as romantic consumerism - and it is funny that those who espouse exactly this are often at the pinnacle of it as well...There is romance in consumption (of goods, experience, products, services). There is a strong 'matrix' at work as well - from the organization culture to accepted behaviors and so on...In a good sense it is the cult...

And a fiction book sneaks into my book review section... Recommended by a friend, this book is a bittersweet read set in Sweden. And written in an endearing manner. Especially the earlier chapters - that move along at a languid pace without hurrying you up - and the clock that goes back and forth. Takes a few chapters to get used to...but by then you are rooting for the protagonist with whatever he is upto. The story is beautiful - Ove in some parts is like the older generation. That generation for whom, the work alone is what mattered...he has a routine that he follows every single day come rain or sun...he will fight over rules with people...like a stubborn pig...he likes to do things, not talk... The 4 main characters are well formed. I liked the writing style - the dry, wry humour - it is a style that I wish I could write. The simplicity of the protagonist Ove  appealed to me - usually the protagonist is the one who does everything - in this case, it is he who is the s...

Many years ago, when I was a newbie in my corporate life, our team was managing an xl sheet. And I was looking at the xl sheet when my boss told me, well, that is basically used an electronic ledger. It is not a real xls. Indeed, another of our colleagues had this adage, “it is not an xls until it has atleast 1 pivot table”. It took us a few weeks of cleaning the records to harness some part of the analysis powers of xl and then we figured out what we could do with it. As I read The second machine age, in that it says, how when Steam engines were the prime source of power in factories, the factories were often driven by a huge steam engine and all machines were connected to it via different shafts to derive power from the engine. This meant that the orientation of a factory was largely vertical due to mechanical reasons of machines having to be closer to the steam engine (above and below). When factories switched to electric power, the layouts continued for a while (almost 30...

The digital native in my family was reading an Agatha Christie book. "Whats a carriage? Does it mean a horse drawn carriage?" "Perhaps yes, that’s what it should mean in Agatha Christie times, though it is possible it is also a motor carriage." I was about to continue the story of how carriage became car and so on, before which he said "But how does this carriage have so many parts – second class carriage, smoking carriage and all that?" "Oh, then it should be a train" Yes, it is a train, I read a little further So many words that have a specific meaning for us have no meaning for digital natives. It is the same for every generation – many words lose meanings and many words acquire meanings. In my generation, a lot of our mother tongue words have gone – we no longer use them – which is sad – separate story for some other time. As this digital native generation comes into the workplace...

During our generation, our parents coped with the advent of the washing machine. Why washing machine and why not TV or refrigerator or Internet? Because the washing machine made them do a particular chore differently. Clothes which were hitherto washed by hand had to be washed by a machine. They were not sure if this was good or bad. There were rumours that clothes would be damaged by them. There were rumours that people died because of washing machines. There was of course proof that washing machines were not cleaning clothes as good their maids would. All in all it was a difficult transition. Washing machines saved time. And also saved water - by and large - if used in the right load and configuration. But the quality of the work was still suspect. Most people figured that it worked and in a generation, people adapted it. Now, this generation (as much as they consider themselves progressive as compared to the previous generation, like every other generation), is facing the same ...

I am a little late to this party - Homo Sapiens by Yuval Noah Hariri is the kind of book I love to read. Takes up a concept - human evolution  - about which we think we know everything and then turns it upside down bit by bit. How humans became agriculturists from foragers? (some interesting answers there) What happened to the other human species? (Yes, there were other human species and what happened to them is not pretty) What happened to large mammals when they were encountered by humans? How did civilizations die? What made certain civilizations prosper? What has this got to do with the work we do? I feel that a lot of what humans have undergone in their evolutionary journey over millions of years stays with them as they take up jobs in the corporate jungle as hunters and foragers or agriculturists or whatever. A lot of our behaviour stems from there and at some level it is important to understand this evolutionary journey. All in all, a wonderful book to read -...