Sujavna 3:25

1110 hrs/Sunday 30 June 2013

Last Thursday, I was fortunate to acquaint myself of how Indian IT and ITES companies are enthusiastically embracing the commercial opportunities that BIG DATA ANALYTICS offers; the occasion was an interesting conference that was organised by Nasscom in Hyderabad – and yet, I came away with a sense of disappointment that there seems to be no innovative approaches by either the government or the industry body or, for that matter, even the individual companies, for influencing the global expansion of this business segment and for ensuring that Indian consumers of Big Data and Indian Data Scientists will continue to remain the global fulcrum for this sector. The approaches, unfortunately and insipidly, continue to revolve around just increasing the share of providing services to global Bid Data spenders!

While on the subject of Big Data and Analytics, a few interesting thoughts crosses my mind – what non-corporate uses of Big Data can be opportunities for Data Scientists in a country such as India? I list a few below (even though I do admit that I am not even sure if these fall in the gamut of Big Data Analytics!), and encourage you to list others. Will large Indian ITES providers with business interests in Big Data be ready to invest in these areas, perhaps as PPP projects?

·         Census of Natural Resources (Natural Resource Accounting and Management)

·         General Elections  - Party  and Part Nominee Campaigns and Performance Analytics vis-a-vis Local, Regional and National Issues and Promises and Realtime and Near- Realtime socio-political trends analysis.

·         Crime Pattern Recognition and Crime Management (including crimes that are not registered).

·         Realtime Impact Studies on Government Spends for large Subsidies and Small Subsidies.

Hope you are having a great weekend. Signing off here......

Sujavna 3:24

1225 hrs/Sunday 23 June 2013

The week that went by, was indeed a calamitous one for several hundred thousands (perhaps even millions) of residents and travellers who had to face nature’s fury in the sub-himalayan stretches of India. The fatalities are estimated to have crossed a thousand!

I am not sure what sort of insurance claims are possible in these circumstances, and if possible, to what extent these can ameliorate the losses (both economic and psychological). But what I am keen to know is how insurance sector – insurance companies and the insurance regulator - has been innovating (or indeed if any have already innovated!) in their business product offerings or in their customer service processes, or indeed, in their marketing and promotional processes, or even in their CSR initiatives, so as to reinforce messages that they exist for their customers, at times of dire need.

It is also a matter of importance to know if insurance companies have been, as part of their CSR initiatives, contributing any part of their net profit to the government’s disaster relief funds, or indeed if they have been actively investing in raising the capacities of their customers and the general public to manage prevention of large-scale disasters? For example, do travel insurance companies work with local governments, hotels, restaurants, tour operators and public/private transport companies to provide regular advisories on how to correctly and realistically evaluate the risks to travel and what risk-mitigation options are available and what help is available to adopt these options?

In short, should insurance companies be collaborating more widely, to innovate in risk-prevention and risk mitigation projects and technologies, which raises their own brand equity and profitability (an apparent contradiction, but not necessarily true!).

Any views?

Sujavna 3:23

1255 hrs/Sunday 16 June 2013

The week that went by saw intense debates and passionate arguments for and against the need for governments to spy for the security of their citizens and for protection of national economic interests.

What interests me, is not the debates themselves (I see nothing new in the crux of the arguments!), but the absence of any acknowledgement, that while technological innovations have taken the dimensions of spying to unprecedented levels, no appropriate innovations are being attempted in the international systems of justice to balance their impact on human rights or national economic sovereign rights. And if, indeed, there have been such innovative initiatives, very little media attention has been focused on them! Perhaps the custodians of our rights (the national and international courts of justice) owe us all some answers as to what they have been proactively doing and what innovations in approaches they see as the way forward.

Wishing you a great week ahead......

Sujavna 3:22

1215 hrs/Sunday 09 June 2013

Do innovations have a place for steering an organisation to remould itself into a shape that it was in about a decade back, but with a greater chance to add value to its stakeholders even as it retains its core value-systems?

The question is one that one needs to attempt answering, as there are increasing instances of corporate entities, political parties and sports administrations that seem to have been caught into a vortex of conflicting demands of profit-maximisation, power-centralisation vis-a-vis equitable and sustainable growth, governance and the continuance of relevance to core stakeholder communities. Just look at the challenges being faced by cricket administration in India, the debates on Eurozone or the internal contradictions that India’s principal opposition party BJP is facing, and you will agree that “innovating backwards” to move forward is something worthy of exploration!

Any views on the potency of such an approach, and if any examples exist that one can learn from?

Signing off here....

Sujavna 3:21

1145 hrs/Sunday 02 June 2013

Why should we Leverage it for civil society’s aspirations towards good governance?

Will it Augment an organisation’s capacities for innovation and growth?

Should it always depend on Technology’s ubiquitous presence?

Does it need an Empirical substantiation to prove its worthiness?

How does it Relate to logical deductions for its successful application?

Do we know for sure that it Always succeeds?

Where can we Learn more about how to become its addicts?

This morning, these are some of the questions that keep running in my mind about LATERAL THINKING. And as I contemplate on these, I realize that even as there seem to be easy answers, there are also no straightforward ones; and each question can lead us into a quagmire of debatable answers. Have you ever wondered why human beings have still not mastered this seemingly simple concept to resolve the challenges that they face in their daily lives?

Signing off here...