Sujavna 2:54

It is 10am on 30 December 2012
And on this last post during 2012, I add another few ideas for doing things differently.

35. Can we develop and start using hygiene towels or hygiene sprays that can do away with our daily baths. For a city like Mumbai, this would mean a saving of at least 70 million litres of water every day, assuming that one third of its citizens will switch over.

36. Has the time come for developing an all-compassing Global Sports Industry that links up a network of sports academia and research institutions and qualifications, generates and provides employment to millions of sports professionals including athletes, equipment designers and manufacturers, sports medicos, sports infrastructure and sports training outsourcing centres, sports journalists and media commentators?

37. (and this is just an extension of my earlier idea 34) – can we do the same for music album productions?
38. can we have neighbourhood gadget clinics (like we have pet clinics or barber shops), where one could periodically take one’s gadgets such as laptops and mobiles, and get them serviced for gadget continues to provide efficient service to its owner? Such clinics can offer a range of free to premium services at different fee slabs.

39. can more mothers teach and delegate responsibilities to their adolescent sons to cook, wash linen and make beds so that there is more equitable and empathetic shift in gender roles? 

40. And can more fathers teach and inspire their daughters to take up professional careers, that takes them out of the family circle and provides society with greater options to use their skills, while providing women with greater self-respect and financial independence?

I started with a target of 50, and I am happy that I was able to think of 40. Some of them may find acceptance and many may be rejected. (As I am sure a lot of my thoughts on this blog may have found acceptance or rejection). I am happy that this blog has continued in its second year and is poised to go further in its third year in 2013. I wish each of you a very great 2013 with lots of happiness, peace and prosperity and lots of innovative ways of achieving these wonderful values.

Sujavna 2:53

It is 4pm on 23 December 2012.

And I continue to struggle to complete my list of 50 new ways of doing things. But all hope is not lost as yet, since I was able to think of another 11 additions to my earlier lists of 10 and 14:

25. (and this is in the context of the increasing reports of eve-teasing, stalking and molestation of women in India) – can we develop and provide all women with a spray that can instantly turn off sexual desires in men? Perhaps this could even be a powerful stink-perfume or a powerful itch-inducing perfume? So exit pepper sparays enter itch sprays and stink sprays.

26. can all pathological laboratories invest (or perhaps get sponsorships from healthcare companies) in self-help digital kiosks that waiting customers can use to know more about lifestyle diseases, and how to understand the lab reports and what questions they can ask their doctors about treatment and cure? Even pharmacies (retail points for medicines) can offer such kiosk facilities!

27. can all public libraries and public reading rooms be mandated to assign a part of their space for voluntary literacy programmes, voluntary math-literacy programmes and voluntary language coaching programmes so that the impact of such programmes and subsequent use of the libraries are better?

28. can consumer gadget companies such as those selling new-generations of refrigerators, televisions, computers and mobile phones run a free weekend (physical as well as on-line) awareness workshops for consumers on how to understand, choose and use such gadgets efficiently and how to respond when performance problems / incidents are encountered?

29. why can’t companies producing milk and dairy products that use milk-deliver boys to deliver milk satchets daily to millions of customers in cities such as Mumbai, also deliver packaged and safe drinking water (in satchets or bottles) at costs that should be much lower that what is now available in the market in the branded water segment?

30. Public-Private Partnerhips in community policing, based on training and certification provided by police academies and human resources provided by housing societies.

31. Mandating a certain percentage of energy re-chargers of electronic gadgets to use renewable-energy based power-sources (such as solar energy).

32. Review and (doing away) with by the need by various agencies, to collect and store self-attested photocopies of identity documents from customers.

33. Delinking jobs from academic qualifications, except for those jobs in academia and research. Encourage a system of linking jobs with vocational qualifications from professional bodies.

34. Can movie goers take a financial stake in individual movie productions and get fair returns for the funds that they provide, besides getting to enjoy their movies? As an extension, can we have a system of a box-office exchange, where movies are traded for a minimum period of 3 months upto its release (akin to an IPO) and a maximum period of 12 months (going my the term of the longest box-office run).

Hope you are having a great weekend.

Sujavna 2: 50,51, 52

It is 5pm on December 16^th.

And I am continuing to struggle to complete my list of 50 new ways of doing things better. Over the last two weeks, I have struggled to come up with not more than 4 more; perhaps this had to do with my busy travel schedule (if I were to be generous to myself); closer to the truth may be the fat that my lateral thinking capabilities are not as good as I would like to believe. In any case, I list below the four that I have been able to think of.

1.       (and this is an idea that my wife helped me with, and which is already seeing some implementation) – the use of automatic vehicle tracking scanner systems at toll booths across the country and the use of scanned data to for revenue-related and infrastructure-related policy development and implementation.

2.       The development of agriculture export zones (on the lines of software export zones and special (manufacturing) export zones) in the vast hinterlands of India, with technologies that can help grow any food (organically) that is staple in different countries, but where there is limited land and manpower availability.

3.       The rationalisation of tax systems – whereby every cheque and credit card transaction is automatically taxed at 1% (0.5% debited from payer and 0.5% from payee) and every cash withdrawal from bank is automatically taxed at 2% (this higher tax is to discourage cash transactions) on withdrawee. The benefits are self-evident.

4.       Democratic institutions need to be mandated to include 50% of the elected representatives to be under 35 years and to include 50% women.

      Hope you are having a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:48 & 49

It is 11 am on 25 November 2012

Today I will attempt to write on 50 new ways of doing things better in a world that is starved of resources. I hope my lateral thinking capabilities can meet this challenge. I start with the first list of 10 new ideas, and hope that I will be able to generate a complete list in the next few blogs.

So my list, with no order of importance, is as follows:

1.       Schools and Colleges could run all 3 shifts with retired teachers and administrators as well as talented senior students augmenting the staff resources and the 1^st shift students cross-subsidising the 2^nd and 3^rd shifts of less-privileged students.

2.       Schools and Colleges offer their classroom space and infrastructure after normal hours, for commercial use and use the income from such rents to maintain and augment their teaching infrastructure. Designing easily-convertible paraphernalia for teaching and non-teaching use would be required.

3.       I have mentioned this in one of my earlier blogs, but it is worth repeating – public services such as post offices, pharmacies, and government offices should be operational 24 x7x365 by using economically-weak students who could be paid stipends for the hours they spend.

4.       Public entertainment centres, such as cinema theatres and multiplexes, could offer their infrastructure for public seminars, NGO events, during non-box-office periods as part of their CSR initiatives.

5.       Hygiene and Safety Audits become mandatory for every commercial activity and large communities (with residents numbering over 100 family-units) and a combination of incentives and taxes based on the audits ensure that hygiene and safety performance is of a high standard.

6.       Move away from individual family kitchens (that result in dispersed inefficient energy use systems and ineffective control of nutritional requirements) to a system of centralised large-format kitchens that are able to efficiently manufacture, procure, process and distribute foods and drinks to consumers as and when they want using economies of scale.

7.       Newspapers and magazines to be distributed only digitally, to the consumers’ TV, PC  or mobile screens. Even for those that do not have such gadgets, public libraries will have such facilities and provide a service of viewing news and magazines, free for the public.

8.       A password locker application on mobile handsets that can retrieve passwords in under a minute, remind users with timely alerts about need to renew passwords. There could also be a new insurance product that insures one against material and intangible losses upon password hacking.

9.       A system by which passports are embedded with biometric data that can be scanned and verified by placing the passport on an aircraft’s door alongside a physical biometric verification gadget that will then match and send data to both departure and arrival countries and so obviates the need for visa processing and monitoring of illegal immigration.

10.   Capture of intermittent sound energy from rock concerts and high-decibel firecrackers and conversion and storage of such captured energy into electrical power.

Wishing you a good weekend. My next blog will be on 8 December.

Sujavna 2:46&47

It is 11am on November 18 2012

And apologies for missing out on last week’s blog. Hope all of you had a great week and those of you who celebrate Diwali had a joyous celebration.

Can we consider community radio as a great innovation in the context of universal healthcare? Most of us would not think so, as radio has been around long enough and a great number of government-sponsored social welfare programs have used the medium to communicate. And some healthcare professionals (especially clinical physicians) have strong opinions on what all can go wrong with the use of this medium. And yet, I was excited by a presentation made by a catholic priest who spoke at a healthcare conference on why he strongly believes that the community radio station that he runs in a Tier 3 city in India has been as much of an innovation as tele-medicine, and perhaps even more as there is a strong participation of the most-important stakeholder – the patient! The moot point is that when one defines innovation as a creative approach to deliver value to stakeholders through sustainable ways (whether one uses technology or not), then the priest does have a case that needs immense appreciation. To me, the excitement is not just in the Quilon community radio case, but in how the model can be replicated in the next 500 communities across India. What innovations will be required to get a buy-in from government, clinical physicians and last-mile health workers to adopt and adapt such successes?

The loss of life and property in Gaza strip which continues to be a main part of media coverage of incidents in Israel and Palestine, leave me to wonder as to whether politics and centralized-governance could have been the worst innovations in human existence. Is there still a scope for lateral thinking to provide long-lasting peace for this region? Am I right in thinking that the United Nations has failed in its duty to manage peace in this region and is it time for this body to acknowledge its failure and use a threat of an economic embargo of this region in 3 years time unless the leaders of Israel and Palestine agree to, and complete implementation of a political settlement of all disputes that can be monitored by the world body.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend and a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:45

It is 11am on Nov 4 2012.

It encourages me a lot to know that there are hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings across the world who continue to exercise their faculties to innovate and improvise on solutions that impact their individual livelihoods, and I am also inspired to realize that there are people like Peter Neumann, who in his eightieth year continues to think laterally on possible innovations that will make computers and computer networks resiliently adaptive in terms of security. I recently read a report on how this pioneer in applied mathematics and computing is leading teams that are asking questions such as “How do you kill the computer to save it?”

Innovation requires bold experimentation, and even the most successful of innovators fumble and fail in some of their experiments. I was reminded about this simple home-truth yesterday when I attended a fusion music concert by India’s well-acclaimed Santoor (an Indian string instrument) exponent Rahul Sharma who attempted to fuse his music with South African saxophonist Buddy Wells and Carnatic music Kanjira (a percussion instrument) exponent SelvaGanesh. The experiment can at best be described as “not a disaster”. But music lovers would clearly have realized the potential for such a fusion of instruments by noticing what was wrong in the choice of the compositions! And therein, I realized, lies the beauty of experimentation – it gives an enormous opportunity to learn and improve and perfect!

Wishing you all a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:44

It is 1145am on Sunday 28 October 2012.

Do survival instincts in human beings help in them being more innovative or do they make lateral thinking more difficult and far-fetched? Are our brains and cognitive processes wired-up so much that unless we are trained in the art of lateral-thinking, we do not use such faculties even in the worst of emergencies?

The exponents of jugaad innovation would probably argue that the case is otherwise and human beings exposed to a set of challenges will always innovate and come up with the most optimal of solutions, but a cursory glance at the challenges that face us in terms of healthcare, security and economic inclusion tell us another story.

So where does the truth lie? I am most interested in knowing more on how you feel about the questions that I pose today.

Wishing you a great weekend and a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:43

It is 6am on 26 October 2012

And I apologise for missing out on last Sunday’s post. I was away managing an exhibition of British interior design products and services.

But even as I was caught up with my work, I have been following up on the Indian media’s unrelenting reports of corruption allegations against top politicians as well as the travails of India’s brand-savvy Kingfisher airlines. And I think both provide us with much to introspect. While I am aware that my blogs usually focus on innovation and lateral thinking, I would like to deviate a little bit today.

Take the case of corruption allegations – even as a high-stakes game is being played by all political players, to wash dirty linen in public, I am surprised that none of India’s stalwart leaders even have the basic decency to offer a general apology to the Indian public, for allowing corruption to implode under their watch. Shouldn’t this be the basic starting point for any true political movement in a democracy?

As to the case of Kingfisher Airlines – I hear a lot about the great KF brand and how selling the brand could bring in much-needed cash to the company. It is indeed a shame that brand experts forget basic home-truths about brand values – an important basic truth is that the strength of a brand is in a proposition that customers aspire to derive from it, and the day that aspiration turns insipid, the brand loses its value. And that day for KF came, when its operations became unreliable due to its financial mismanagement! I wonder why simple global laws of bankruptcy are not being applied.

Hope you are having a great week and looking forward to connecting with you again this Sunday.

Sujavna 2:42

It is 11am on 13 October 2012

And another round of festivals are about to begin the next week (the 9-day festival of Navratri and Dasserah as well as Eid) and another round of opportunities for lateral thinking and innovatively-responsible celebrations seems to have been missed. In fact my dear wife remarked the other day that it does not take rocket science to provide contraptions that obviates the need to dig up roads for erecting pandals and decorative light fixtures. She also had a bright spark of an idea that the 9 nights of Navratri could be celebrated keeping in mind nine different segments of a community.

I could see great merit in extrapolating her suggestions to evolve a new concept of the festival itself – that of thanksgiving to (1) security agency personnel, (2) teachers, (3) craftsmen such as masons, carpenters, electricians, tailors, plumbers and garage mechanics, (4) retailers and wholesalers such as grocers, (5) health-workers such as doctors, nurses, pharmacists and paramedics, (6) farmers, hunters and fishermen, (7) media persons such as news reporters, (8) transport agency personnel such as bus drivers and rail motormen, auto-rickshaw and taxi drivers, cargo handlers, courier agency personnel, and (9) entertainment providers such as musicians, theatre artistes, dancers, story-tellers.

I am sure you may have other wonderful ideas on how to celebrate festivals in an innovatively-responsible and contemporary manner. Please share the same with me.

Wishing you a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:41

It is 1125am on the 7^th of October 2012.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention (and by extension innovation), but they assume that there is an abundance of patience that accompanies the desire to fulfil the wants. The alternate (and this seems to be the road more often travelled) is the use of brute force.

But, are there other alternates to meet “needs” that go beyond innovation or war? How far have we innovated to reduce or even remove “needs”? Certainly religion and spiritualism seem to have lost their USP to most of us as options that can liberate us from the endless quest for self-gratification. This is in no way an acknowledgement that consumerism and materialism have won. In fact they seem to have reached a stage where their most ardent fans (the big businesses and capitalism as we know today) are struggling to chart pathways that can sustain their success. The universal laws of entropy (read: there is no free lunch!) have started extracting their pound of flesh.

Perhaps we are all at a cusp in our evolution, with a need to innovate on our metaphysical understanding of our existential relationship with this planet and this universe. There may be a need to develop new philosophical institutions that can govern and guide us to survive beyond what our current understanding portends!

Have a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:40

The clock on my wall approaches the 4pm mark on this Sunday the 30th of October 2012.

And my thoughts linger upon human attributes such as animosity and friendship, strangeness and familiarity. Is there a case for innovations in the art and science of managing these attributes? If so how far have we gone down these roads?

When and how do our enemies turn into our well-wishers? Are our friends usually our hidden liabilities; if so, how do we minimise the impact without losing on the friendship? How does one endear oneself to strangers and also make them “walk your talk”?

Does the art and science of diplomacy have fail-proof approaches for all of the above? If history teaches us something, the answer is that diplomacy gives us some tools but does not always succeed – so what alternatives do we have? Is there a lesson that we can imbibe from circus-animal training?

I think individuals and business entities, alike, need more innovative approaches to make more friends and influence them to buy into their vision; and certainly more efforts are needed by one and all to experiment for success.

Hope you are having a great weekend and wishing you a great first week of October.

Sujavna 2:39

It is 630pm on the 23^rd of September 2012.

How does a teacher effectively engage the attention of, and excite the interest levels of those students who are “back-benchers” (I was recently advised that the politically-correct terms that we use for such students is to call them “pupils with low learning behavioural patterns”)?

I am glad to know that technology does provide solutions, and was recently fortunate enough to get a demonstration of one such solution from a start-up Anglo-American joint venture called 3DHub. (Check out on YouTube for over 57 videos of how this technology helps learn and teach).

What I am now keen to know is how such technologies and solutions can be extended on a commercial (yet affordable) basis to leapfrog the primary and secondary school education systems in Asian and African countries and benefit teachers and pupils in these countries. What innovations in delivery models need to be piloted? Will the Microsoft model of bundling operating software do the trick, as governments work with makers of tablets to deliver affordable systems to millions of schools?

Hope you are having a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:38

As the clock strikes 8am on the 16^th of September

And as I prepare myself to take a flight out of Mumbai to London, I am reminded about all of those small and daily things in human life that still need improvement, and where lateral thinking can really work wonders.

For instance what new ways of securing overseas travel insurance will result in retrieving the insurance information easy for both the insured as well as his nominee? And how can one get a fail-proof method of checking that one’s luggage is well-within the airline’s restrictions on weight and dimensions?

Perhaps these will occupy my thoughts as I undertake the nine hour flight – unless the cabin entertainment is really exciting!

Have a great weekend and a greater wee ahead!

Sujavna 2:37

It is 7am on 8^th September 2012

Two interesting sets of advice on fostering a culture of innovation (that I learnt during the week that went by) have great relevance for the governance challenge that the Indian political establishment seems to be going through.

I located the first set of advice in a book on Frugal Innovation (the book is titled Jugaad Innovation and is authored by Navi Rajdou, Jaideep Parbhu and Simone Ahuja). While discussing how the principle of thinking and acting flexibly has been a core characteristic of jugaad innovators, the authors advocate strongly on why organisations and entrepreneurs need to FAIL CHEAP, FAIL FAST and FAIL OFTEN to succeed.

The second set of advice can be found in a 2010 HBR blog by Tony Schwartz, who was then commenting on six secrets to creating a culture of innovation. I refer to the second secret that Tony has encapsulated wonderfully as “CREATIVITY CAN BE SYSTEMATIC”, wherein he delineates on how the well-defined stages of “first-insight”, “saturation”, “incubation”, “illumination” and “verification” do not always unfold predictably, but do certainly provide the most-effective roadmap for creativity.

Now why do I think both these sets of advice are relevant for the Indian political establishment? When you see that politics (as is currently practiced by all major parties) is entrenched in a very inflexible approach of “my way or the highway”, when you realize that political leaders do not want to be seen as failing and when you feel a vacuum in direct communications from political parties, which leads you to believe that there is no effort at incubating and verifying their ideologies and political stands, it is then you realize that there is a huge effort required by the political establishment in India to innovate.

Hope you are having a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:36

As the clock strikes 6am on 2^nd September 2012

And as I prepare myself to attend the celebrations of the marriage engagement of a nephew (Indian marriages are celebrated right from the time they are arranged by their parents right through the actual marriage and many many times afterwards!), my thoughts linger on the myriads of innovations that have been made in the treatment and cure of human ailments. While being eternally grateful for these, I also wonder why there the same levels of ingenuity and resourcefulness have not been applied to the problems of the families and friends of patients who need to manage the situations that they find themselves in due to the illnesses of the patients? How do we incentivise innovators of medical-care systems to include such aspects?

And oh, thanks for those of you who have responded to my last post on what innovations have taken place in the fields of the science and art of interpreting and capitalising on human emotions and psychology. I will follow up on the suggested readings.

Wishing you a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:35

It is 800pm on the 26^th of August 2012

The media this week, once again sought to bring to our notice, the helplessness that human societies face, due to the ease and prevalence of an arms-culture in most parts of civilised society - I refer to the incident at the Empire State Building in Ney York.

Why has human ingenuity not yet mastered the art and science of detecting (in real-time) when anger and hatred cross some thresholds and converting these emotions to outcomes that contribute to our understanding of riddles and puzzles (say!) about our Universe.

What innovations have contributed to the sciences of human psychology and the art of interpreting human emotions (both in the context of individuals as well as communities)? I think I will need to read more on these subjects and improve my own understanding on the same. Any suggestions as to where I can begin?

Sujavna 2:34

It is 1pm on the 19^th of August 2012

Can a confused mind turn one into a poet? And will the extent of poetic excellence be a true reflection of the state of confusion in one’s mind? Well, check the following out to gauge how confused I am today!

Twinkle Twinkle binary stars

How I wonder if there are inter-stellar wars?

Widely dispersed lightyears away

Have you ever witnessed life as gay

As humans on Earth who (at the same time) fight and play

Calm and gentle avuncular moons

Have you seen so many goons

Ruder than comets that crashlanded on you

These humans, when will they ever learn, I rue!

Is there some trick of innovation that exists?

Somewhere in this universe, which one enlists

So all of mankind loses jealousy and hatred

And becomes Universally Progressive, instead!

Wishing you a great weekend.

Sujavna2:33

It is 2pm on the 12^th of August 2012

What does one do when one has spent an entire day at a conference that is themed as Mobile Innovation Conference, attended by leading companies and entrepreneurs in the mobile space, and not two lines are spoken or presented about either the need to innovate, or the successes of innovation in this space, then you know that it is going to be a long battle for consumers of mobile services and products. Why do I find telecom operators, mobile content developers, content aggregators and regulatory agencies still debating about share of economic spoils, ownership of customers even after so many years of seeing good growth?

In fact the fact that there is very little innovative development of products and services that excite all genres of customers to pull them and use them, is a sad reflection of lopsided priorities by every player in this segment.

What are your views?

Sujavna 2:32

At 1230pm on the 5^th of August 2012,

I lazily stretch my imagination to explore if there can be more innovative ways by which

(a) parents, especially mothers, can be taught to stop worrying about their children who are well-past their teens,

(b) school teachers and administrative officials can be taught to encourage more participation by themselves and their students in community development projects,

(c) government bureaucrats can be taught that they can be both humane and successful at the same time, non-corrupt and efficient simultaneously, and

(d) businessmen can be taught that profit-making and philanthropy can both be exciting and satisfying propositions.

Well how can I become more innovative that my lazy thoughts lead to purposeful enterprises? Hmmm.....

Have a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:31

At around 1100am on Sunday 29^th July 2012,

My thoughts keep revolving around two sets of information bytes that I was fortunate to receive during the week that went by. While there is no apparent connect between the two sets, I continue to doubt if they are indeed unrelated.

The first set of information relates to, how the world of commerce, especially the Indian part, is managing to acquire and manage intellectual property, and what challenges it continues to face in the process. Impressive indeed, when one listens to the systems being evolved or adopted, especially the collaborative work between the regulators, government agencies, judicial agencies, the legal communities and the innovators, themselves!  And the second set of information relates to the failure of monsoons and the resulting prospects of a drought situation in India. Media reports paint a gloomy picture of an adverse economic impact as well as dire sustenance nightmares for millions of marginal farmers.

So where do I see the link between the two? To me the connection is the unevenness of institutionalised innovations happening in the government and corporate segments.

For starters, the need to innovate and ensure that the 24x7 systems that are being established to institutionalise innovation, in most of the leading corporate businesses in India, are also replicated within the entire hierarchical pyramids within Indian government agencies.

Why cannot industry captains such as Adi Godrej, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Kiran Mazumdar, Anand Mahindra, Ratan Tata, Azim Premji, Chanda Kochar, and others spend 1 fortnight every quarter adopting “non-related” government departments or agencies to mentor young bureaucrats to become 360 degree leaders and enthuse them to be more innovative? Perhaps they can also encourage their own senior colleagues to actively scout for similar roles with performance appraisals being tagged to such initiatives.

Any takers? Any rebuttals? Happy to know your views, so please share them with me.

Sujavna 2:30

It is 830pm on a humid Sunday evening (22^nd July 2012)

Having talked about disruptive innovation in the educational system last week, I wanted to know if such instances have taken place in India; and as I researched, I was surprised to learn that, while commentators have assessed the innovation regimes in India as either “uneven”, “jugaad” and in a recent case (by Nesta, UK) as “frugal”, none have bothered to study the disruptive nature of innovation in India.

So perhaps there is more work to do and I think I will be busy researching this aspect in the coming weeks. I will report back if I do find something interesting, but certainly I would welcome any insights from you too.

Wishing you a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:29

As the clock strikes 12 noon on 15^th July 2012,

I am quite excited to know that it is not enough to conceptualise on disruptive strategies, but the disruption has to be executed with excellence and finesse. Shombit Sengupta (check out www.shiningconsulting.com) comments on this in his FE column “from the discomfort zone”.

While I generally agree to excellence and finesse as desirable values in strategy-implementation, I belong to the group that firmly believes that the world is still in an era where disruptive strategies are yet to become main-stream and commonplace and strategy formulation followed by calibrated strategy rollouts are even fewer and farther apart. So my thought for today is focused on the question: Can we have a disruptive innovation across our secondary school, undergraduate and graduate education systems that can help facilitate the “mainstreaming” of disruptive creation of products, processes, governance systems and socio-economic experimentation?

Have a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:28

It is 1100am on 8^th July 2012.

Why should mundane chores and activities become mundane in the first place? Can there be some triggers that will let us know when a particular activity probably crosses the thresholds of “novelty” and “fine-tuning” phases? And can we evolve standardised process-guidelines that will let people (those carrying out or benefiting from these activities), re-design their “soon-to-become” mundane tasks, less onerous and more exciting?

Does Disneyland offer us some solutions here? How does a janitor at any of Disney’s parks overcome lethargy that can only normally result from her/his mundane daily tasks? How does Disneyland management innovate in making the job of a janitor more exciting for the job-holder and still ensure consistently high-quality services for those visitors who may need to use the restroom / washroom facilities?

Are there examples out there in government establishments (such as employment exchanges) that demonstrate the feasibility of re-design of services that make them interesting for the employees as well as satisfying for the customers?

As I ponder on these questions, I hope that you may have some answers and insights to share with me.

Wishing you a very good weekend and a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:27

It is 1145am on 1^st July 2012.

And I am delighted to know that there are many persons who can articulate soundly the arguments for sustainable development, even when there are “file-pushing” bureaucrats and “self-serving” politicians who adeptly confuse the rest of us with platitudes. One such articulate , and perhaps an argumentative Indian is Dr Sunita Narain, Director-General of the Centre for Science and Environment, who has captured the dilemma of the conclusions of the Rio+20 Summit neatly, when she says – “ why the fight against the Right for Status Quo or Business As Usual of both developed and developing nations” is an important and necessary first-principle even as we agree to the other first-principle of a common but differentiated responsibility to tackle environmental challenges caused by development.

But I would like to ask Sunita and others of her ilk a question? Are we asking ourselves the right questions at Summits such as Rio+20?  Perhaps, the assumptions about development and acceptance of current economic indices as representative of development, and the resulting hypothesis about environmental impact indices, themselves preclude any normative solutions; and therefore there is an immediate need that an entirely new set of economic development indices and resulting environmental impact indices need to be postulated at such conferences and experimental economies that are governed by such models be piloted under multilateral charters. Can India and China take a lead on such innovative efforts? Can organisations such as CESE become bold enough to postulate such new economic and environmental models?

Wishing you a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:26

As the hands on my clock dial move across the 1145am coordinates on 24^th June 2012,

My thoughts linger on an interesting news item that was reported by the print media in Mumbai last Tuesday. It mentioned that a Dutch firm has been selected to carry out deepwater dredging for a ports project in Mumbai. The interesting part of the report was that the company’s bid was much lower (8% lower) than the estimated cost by the project proponent and their consultants.

And this is what is keeping my brain cells charged - if large infrastructure projects can incentivise project contractors with completion performance bonuses as part of the contract, would it not also be an appropriate incentive if project bidders include in their bids, rebates in bids for timely project approval and clearance approvals and other facilities that will ensure projects are begun and managed effectively by them. These may be termed Clearance Performance Rebates in financial bids.

Humour, as I have understood, takes many forms – from wry to belligerent, from chirpy to dark, from pun to prank and many more. But has humour helped in driving innovations? Or have there been attempts at innovation that have become a staple for jokes? If you have some views on this please share these with me.

Wishing you a great weekend and an even greater week ahead.

Sujavna 2:25

It is 630pm on a wet Sunday afternoon here in Mumbai.

And as I had spent most of the afternoon following up on a nephew’s engagement and marriage arrangements, I keep wondering about all the innovations that must have taken place around the institution of marriage. What were these and what prompted these innovations? Have these innovations been more focused on making the rituals more “humane” and “comfortable”? or have there been lateral thoughts on alternate forms of achieving “wedded bliss”?

Do you have any ideas on this subject? Please share them with me. I look forward to a great week ahead and hope that you are having a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:24

It is 1230pm on 10^th June 2012.

And I want to continue with expanding my lateral thoughts for the monsoon season.

Has there been any structured analysis done on how an urban economy such as Mumbai performs during the monsoon seasons? What are the known losses to the city’s economy during 3 months of rains, which sectors suffer the most losses and why? What are the economic gains that the city benefits because of the rains, which economic sectors benefit and why? Are there some economic activities that need to be timed for the rainy seasons for maximising returns, if so what are these? What would happen if we selectively close some economic sectors during the monsoon season or reengineer the resources in these sectors to deliver different outputs during these 3 months? In short can we think of a morphological change to Mumbai’s economic profile for the monsoons and get a net positive benefit? If yes, what should this change look like and how can we implement such a change with minimum disruptions to human existence?

What do you think? I hope you are having a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:23

It is well past the deadline for the 23^rd edition of my blog for 2012

And I apologise for missing on last week’s blog.

So what did I want to communicate last Sunday to you? It had something to do with the impending monsoons, the early showers and the apprehensions of road users in Mumbai, about the potholes that they need to navigate for the next 3 months.

And that had me desiring for innovations in materials technologies that will provide us with self-healing roads as soon as the levels of fractures in road surface cross a threshold limit. And talking of self-healing roads, why not also think of self-healing building structures such as rooftops and exterior walls which will prevent water seepage during rains?

Sujavna 2:22

It is 12 noon on 27^th May 2012.

What would a world that comprised of only women as the homosapien species? Which of the existing industries will become extinct (the valentine day card industry?) and what new industries will be spawned? How will the healthcare and skincare industry be impacted? How will religious institutions adapt and evolve? Will the world be a much better, environmentally-more-responsible, more democratic and more inclusive (or more autocratic? More exclusive) place than it is today?

These are some questions that we all need to seriously ask ourselves, because, as was recently reported, we are very close (probably in the next 20 years) to the goal of “virgin-reproductions” – a  reproductive process wherein two ovarian cells can be fused to create an embryo which is transferred to the uterus for producing a girl child. Innovations in reproductive technologies are making this a reality, so it may be time that we also seriously thought of innovations in sociological systems to prepare ourselves for such an eventuality and ensure that what may be lost in terms diversity is compensated in terms of a more wiser society.

I leave you to ponder on what these innovations need to be and wish you a great weekend and a greater week ahead.

It is 11am on 20^th May 2012.

A year ago, I had blogged on the theme of “un-deifying” our TV news readers, making them more human to TV viewers and also bring out excellence in humour (which Indian audiences surely need more of!)? I had then wondered and asked - how about getting all the main news readers of various Indian TV channels into a room once week, and ask them to read the breaking news that they had reported during the week, but using a different context and making a parody of the situation!.

But a year later, I am wondering if I have been far ahead of our times! The furore, last week,  in India’s Parliament over a cartoon that was published 60 years ago lampooning some statesmen of those times, makes me doubt if we do indeed have the maturity and the sense of humour to implement my suggestion. Perhaps, it requires more lateral thinking to win over our politicians and get them to show more maturity and have better sense of humour!

Yes, Robert Frosts’ words are as true today as they were when he penned that he still has miles to go before he sleeps. I think we need many many more cartoons drawn and jokes shared before we learn how to laugh at ourselves.

Wishing you a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:20

As the clock strikes 5pm on 13^th May 2012,

I keep wondering if there isn’t a less complex way to celebrate the excellence in teamwork or crown the individual skills and  the perseverance of our sportsman and athletes, than getting them all to participate in what has become a “once in 4 years” extravaganza called the Olympics!

I do acknowledge the quintessential debate of expenditure versus development and expenditure versus public diplomacy that usually accompanies such large-scale global events, but my interest is in knowing if there could be other innovative ways by which the world can achieve the Olympics ideals and objectives?  Isn’t it time to start the debate about what changes in the Olympics “business-model” and “organisational-model” can actually help reinforce and reinvigorate nations to achieve these ideals and objectives in a 21^st century context? And how can any future Olympics Organising Committee ensure that the benefits from Sports are truly widespread and how can it make the Games truly “inclusive” – that all nations and peoples can comfortably aspire to participate in an “equal” manner?

I leave these thoughts with you for the week ahead. Hope you are having a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:19

At 1000am on 6^th May 2012,

My mind is obsessively dwelling on an observation that I have been making while inside the aircrafts on the past several flights that I have undertaken. It is about the awkwardly clumsy manner in which flight attendants attempt to serve in-flight food/snacks to passengers, especially if the flight duration is short. Don’t airlines look at innovations and use lateral thinking to make the lives of their cabin crew and those of their customers better?

Firstly the design of the container boxes that are used to stock the food trays and transport them along the aisles! It looks like these were designed many decades back when air travel was undertaken by far fewer numbers, all cabin crew were agile and nimble “twenty somethings”, and customers more patient. And then to the whole process of serving food! Today one is more likely to see mid-aged flight attendants call out across to another colleague across the aisle for a replenishing a particular type of food packet (veg / non-veg), or rush towards the end of the flight to nervously pour tea or coffee into a plastic cup. It is also a common sight to see the clumsiness and long-winded process for collecting the trays and cups back, and putting them away into the container boxes. This also leaves very little time and flexibility for the cabin crew to serve in other ways to passengers who may need help (to think that for a whole 45 minutes that food is being served, passengers are dissuaded from walking up or down the aisles even to go to the toilet!).       

So where is the solution or set of solutions?

To begin with, I strongly suggest that the day for re-designing of the container box to accommodate for easy storage, retrieval and reloading of food trays, at chest height of the cabin crew, clear labelling of tray compartments using colour codes, as well as automating through a system of levers and pulleys, the internal movement of tray compartments so that the physical back-breaking efforts of cabin crew (to withdraw trays or load back empty trays) are minimised, has arrived. It is all not rocket-science and would not be capital intensive.

There could be other sets of solutions that are employee-friendly, customer-friendly and environment-friendly. All it needs is for all stakeholders to think laterally and collaborate.

Hoping that airlines are already working at such solutions, I wish you all a more comfortable and pleasant flights in the future. Wishing you also a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:18

The clock on my wall shows it is 15 minutes past noon on the 29^th of April 2012.

And I am desperately trying not to succumb to the temptation of writing about the miserable two days that I spent last week - attending what was meant to be an internal strategy conference aimed at helping my organisations’ teams to have greater ambition, deliver more excellence and generate more impact - and what it finally turned out, which was, at best, a reaffirmation of team-spirit!

So how does an organisation institutionalise the development of leaders who can inspire? How can it realize in a timely manner, that there are leadership issues! Where can it learn that 360 degree leadership does not absolve its Board-level leaders from performing as leaders? Is there a right way to re-engineering leadership, and how does an organisation ensure that such changes provide sustainable improvements across all spokes of a balanced scorecard of performance against objectives? Who “bells the cat” if the organisation is not in a crisis-mode? Does “whistle-blowing” really help, especially, when leaders are perceived through much of the rank and file as “nincompoops”, but a culture of survival dictates the internal communication ethos?

And how where and how does innovation step in, in such environments? Can any come from inside the organisation, or will this have to be externally driven? Whether externally-driven or internally-evolved, what are the risks that have will need to be managed? And to sum up all these questions, do we have enough of case studies that can illustrate the cost-benefits for organisations that have gone through innovations that changed, for them, the entire leadership paradigms and helped them move into a new orbit of success?

As I ponder on these questions, I know that I have a lot of work cut out for me to just understand the basics of leadership challenges in today’s world.

Sujavna 2:17

It’s 1030am on 22^nd April 2012.

As I had promised last Sunday, let me share with you how I did make an effort at using logic and counter-logic to direct my actions during the week that went past.

The first opportunity to pursue this line of analysis was the unexpected “puncture” of one of the tyres of my car, just as I reached my office early on Monday morning. It was a day that was scheduled for an entire day of back-to-back meetings from 8am until 5 pm at the workplace. Conventional logic, suggested that, having reached my office and parked my car safely, and because it was very early in the morning for any garage to be open, I should go about my work scheduled commitments and leave the change of the tyre to the next day – after all I could call a taxi to take me home in the evening; counter-logic, though, demanded that with the rest of the week also requiring me to be reasonably mobile for various meetings and social visits, the most sensible option was to call up a local garage or my car-service provider to send someone to change the tyre and instruct me as to what to do with the damaged tyre – even if that means that I may have to be disturbed in the midst of a meeting to receive the mechanic and provide instructions. I opted for the latter and called my car-service provider, who turned out to be very efficient and customer-friendly. Not only did he send a mechanic to change the tyres within 15 minutes of my call, but his mechanic was well-trained to do the job without needing more than 3 minutes of my total time to provide instructions. The surprise element was to become aware that the car-service company operated 24x7, have the capabilities to respond within 15 minutes of a customer-service order – all of which were not a part of my service contract, and I could come to know this as I had opted to pursue a counter-logic option. (It is nowhere my case that counter-logic always provides a better solution, but counter-logic will lead to understanding the dimensions of an issue and a solution better, and also bring out unknown facts about the environments that we take for granted).

Hope you also had a great week and are having a great weekend.           

Sujavna 2:16

It is 12 noon on 15^th April 2012.

Hello there, how is this Sunday turning out for you? Is it yet another Sunday for you and you are doing the same things that you do every Sunday or is it an extra-ordinary Sunday, where your day is moving along in directions that you did not anticipate?

In either case, have you wondered (and better still, acted!) on how you could turn this Sunday (and perhaps all of next week) into a period in which you use some lateral thinking and achieve a lot more, but the additional bits of achievement, have all positively given you, not only “a feel good factor”, but also “satisfaction of using an analytical process of logic: counter-logic”.

If you have, I would be delighted to hear about your experience. And, I promise, I will share my experience in my next blog.

Wishing you a great Sunday, and an even greater week ahead.

Sujavna 2:15

It is 0730pm hrs on 8^th April 2012

As the aromas of a wonderful meal that is being prepared in the kitchen waft into the living room and catalyse my cravings for a delicious supper, my mind also wanders to the cacophony of ideas that were being bandied about at a conference last week, by some of the leading bankers and politicians of India as their singular contribution to institutionalising financial inclusion in India. What was singular about the whole cacophony was that there was not a shred of evidence that the captains of Indian public sector banking industry and their political bosses are attempting to demonstrate some innovation in their approach. Nothing more than a push factor towards registering new accounts and not a shred of evidence of considering how to instigate and use the pull factor.

And so I wonder:

As a child I was educated

To believe of just one divide.

‘Twas an arithmetic operation that denoted

How to share and put aside.

Now when I am old

I am being told -

There are other divides

Economic, Digital, Communal, Lingual, Political, Financial

Yet to find some common sides

They offer little hope for anyone at all

But De Bonos boys will with their Hat

Generate the multipliers to annul the Divisors

And make the world indeed become Flat.

Hope your Easter weekend is turning out to be a great one.