Thinking about Thinking!!!

It’s been a sort of lazy unhurried day, with me doing this and that. Browsing the Internet.. Sketching idle doodles in my imagination.. Many thoughts and memories flashing in my mind!.

And then, in all weirdness pops up this question. Where do all these ideas come from?.

Is there a director sitting inside my brain, crafting a massive orchestra.. Churning out performances as “Thoughts” when I am awake and showing me “Dreams” at night? Do I host some sort of embedded freakish weirdo in my head – doling out “Ideas” according to his whims and idiosyncrasies? Or do these “Ideas” have a mind of their own, sauntering out at their own leisurely pace?.

Sometimes I feel I am a slave to them. I cannot produce them on demand. They only appear out of some fortuitous accident. I can only train my mind to welcome them. Focus on un-focusing my brain, and let the music play…..

What’s the trick? Where do all these ideas come from? Some possible answers:

Maybe it’s the time of the day:
For me, it’s usually the mornings. Sometimes on my commute to work, I can hear many voices talking to me. When sit back and listen to those voices, they give me so many suggestions. Sometimes there are arguments and angry discussions, too many people talking together. The brain is furiously trying to solve unanswered questions, making bits and pieces of a forgotten puzzle fit in together. It’s like you are blank, not thinking of anything in particular.. Some interconnections fire up to give you an entirely new idea. And you have to scramble frantically write it down before it disappears!.

Perhaps it’s in your environment:
We are a complex processed form of the environment around us. Like us, maybe our ideas are also an assimilation of all the people we have met, seen or read about.
Is it some chemical locha, some combination of genes, some sort of cellular mutation ? Or just the madcap in my head fooling around with a magical wand?! Tough question.

Maybe it’s your state of mind:
Ideas come to you only when your mind is free, with no constant drone of to-do lists hammering at the back of your head. For me, it’s very difficult to think out-of-the-box when I have loads of other stuff to do. And when there is a lot of clutter around.

Sometimes it’s in the randomness:
Ideas are like soap bubbles. One moment they are there -all gleamy and shiny, and the next instant “POP”, they disappear!.. And they come back when you least expect them to – while driving your car, taking a bath, or even in the loo! Often they suddenly appear like some phantoms of your past life. Or float in uninvited and uncalled for – like ghosts in the night!!
Maybe there is some method in the madness.Who knows ?

A sense of urgency:
Remember how many “Creative” assignments you have pushed through the door in last minute desperation to make submissions?…A sense of urgency can actually kick start your thinking process. Thinking about extreme things like your own death, or what impact you would have after you are gone can make you extraordinarily creative. If you have a nudging need, don’t abandon it. Think about it. Sit on it. If it doesn’t work out, sleep on it. You might get the solution in dreams! ( Don’t laugh, once I completed an entire chapter for the exam in my dreams, only to wake up and realize that I was asleep all the time!!)

Sometimes it’s Ignorance:
Remember how imaginative we were as kids? Always curious to understand things..Unbiased by preconceived notions, always experimenting without the fear of failure!
But then, we’ve changed. As we grow older, we learn to put things in a pattern. We get addicted to predictability. Anything out of the blue scares us. Education encourages us to organize everything around us into certain boxes, and destroys us. Blame it all on the system my friend – “We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control.”!

So, what do YOU think about thinking?? Give it a thought!

The Great Indian IT tamasha

Not very long ago, I was working on something in office that needed some simple decision making. We had to choose between Plan A and Plan B.

And, the decision wasn’t something very earth shattering like – “Should our company invest in Antarctica?” or “Is it the right time to join the post war reconstruction in Iraq?”
If you think of it – it should have taken hardly 5 minutes. Someone just had to put her foot down and say – OK, Plan B. Period.

But then, oh Boy; you should have seen the number of mails shuttling around to arrive at a decision!. Dense communications with FYIs and FYRs floating upstream, downstream, left, right, in circles, small loops, big loops. No one wanted to kick the bucket on their own, so multiple stakeholders were invited. It was a whole round-we-go-the-mulberry-bush thing!

If you’ve worked in an Indian IT services company, you can probably identify with me when I say this. The task of “decision making” here is as convoluted as the process of finding an eligible groom in the Indian arranged marriage. It is a long drawn process, with loops and hoops, coupled with mountainous processes. Too many opinions and recommendations, too much sharing of responsibilities for the decisions made.

Ok, I don’t want to criticize and say that we should make snap judgments throwing caution to the winds. But focusing too much on insignificant details just adds to the flab.
Is it that we have too much time to spend on too less stuff – “Idle brains exaggerate matters” ??

Fine. A lot of emotional rambling here – let’s cut to the chase.
Here’s what I think is wrong with the Indian IT Industry.

We don’t take risks – Isn’t that the biggest risk of all?

We think too much – Paralysis of Analysis Baby!

We care too much of what others think – Log kya kahenge??!!!

We do not want to leave our comfort zone – I’m a C++ guy, how can I talk about JAVA??

We are afraid to try out anything new – The classical its-not-done-here Syndrome

We skimp like Scrooges – And call it our “Competitive Advantage”!

Take out any book on Entrepreneurship or Creativity, and the problems I listed above would top the list of Innovation killers. Isn’t this a huge cause for concern?
Now is a time when everyone is talking about Innovation. Hailed as a game changer, innovation is destined to transform the world. Shouldn’t it be on top of our priority list?

Innovation, I agree, is not easy. Not for the faint hearted, it’s only for the risk takers who are willing to dare. Innovation, my non-vegeterian friends would say is like mutton curry. Delectable, enticing and yummy to look at; but incredibly difficult to digest!.

When every company ensures to have innovation somewhere in its tagline, or have innovation splashed all over its website. My question as an insider; where is this so called innovation in Indian IT companies?

Our IT service culture breeds Innovation killers amongst us. We are afraid to stand out of the herd, we want to be innovative, but in a very non risky conventional way (what was that? ).
With Process.. Process.. Process hammered into our heads, we are genetically programmed to work like risk averse automatons the moment we enter this industry.

When the US debt is downgraded, we begin tottering like a pile of dominoes.

When will we learn to stand on our own feet?..

When will we have something new to offer to the world?..

When will we become action oriented and stop working like machines and morons?

Are we even destined to come out of this rut?

Only the Narayan Murthys, Azim Premjis and Vineet Nayars of the world can say.

Mortals like me can only pray.
Amen.

Shopping “Experiences”!!

You have walked into your favorite music store across the street. Just as you pick up a Justin Bieber album off the shelf, digital trackers embedded in the walls identify the album with its RFID tag. A Plasma panel at the store begins to play the latest video of the pop star. As you walk towards the screen to watch this video, sensors in the store track your movements, and a high definition Prosilica camera captures your picture, feeding it to complex algorithms that morph these images. Within seconds, you are pleasantly surprised to see yourself inside the TV screen in the video, gyrating right beside the teen pop star!

Delighted with the experience, you begin to explore the rest of the store. As you move down the aisles, biometric iris recognition software detects your digital identity, and instantly downloads your past purchase and publicly available social networking history into the store’s central database. Eye motion sensors identify which shelf you are looking at, and LCD panels display the message – You “liked” Enrique’s Insomniac on Facebook, would you like to check out his new album “Euphoria” ? Your friend Maria has already bought it, and 59 buddies flashed it on Twitter!!

Well, if you thought all this was a page out of a science fiction book, then think again. This is not a futuristic wish anymore, and sophisticated technologies like these are already being deployed in retail stores right now. With the advent of Web 2.0 and advanced digital electronics, consumer retail has morphed dramatically. Leapfrogging into the future, innovation in IT is now making the customer the center of this “Digital Universe”.

The new age consumer with deep pockets and short attention spans is now more individualistic and much harder to please. With razor thin margins and a consuming need for differentiation, retailers are increasingly pushed towards cutting-edge innovation. Retailing giants like Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Tesco have already boarded the bandwagon, and the others have no choice but to follow. The key is to involve consumers at an emotional and sensory level, and shoppers are now spoilt for choice.

Retailers are now leveraging IT to enhance the end user experience, reduce costs, manage growth and capture multicultural markets. IT innovation is being used to have a consumer centric view to solve problems, achieve creative differentiation and provide complete solutions to task oriented shoppers. In this era of Do-It-for-me marketing, consumers demand retailers to speed up their transactions, driving changes in store concepts, and providing faster and convenient transaction processing and payment.

“Ethnography is the new core competence” remarked Andrew Jones in his book “Innovation acid test”. This has never been more true than now! . Working closely with market research, “knowledge activists” now explore the innovative aspects of any business proposition by cognizing customer intelligence. Corporations compete to identify and “Catch a wave”, creating opportunities to generate growth and fantastic financial performance. Digital immersive technologies like Augmented Reality are being used to integrate branding and entertainment with customer experiences, offering services that resonates with the target customer.

When you look for avenues of innovation in retail, the opportunities are endless. Starting from the use of RFID to measure inventory, warehousing, distribution operations and the supply chain, to providing an enhanced shopping experience for product and brand differentiation, IT can be used as an enabler at every step. All that we need is an imagination to sell the dream!

Augmented technology can be used in storefronts to entice shoppers. Interactive Ads will allow shoppers to “try out” something even before they walk into the store. Large screen kiosks installed at store entrances will empower shoppers to search or quickly browse through the product selection. Digital signage can be used to deliver personalized messages to shoppers, using RFID tags to identify which items they are carrying through the store. Brands stocked in that store can advertise in these digital signs, creating new revenue streams. Mobile coupons are already being used by Starbucks and Target to enhance repeat business. Customers are sent personalized messages alerting them of offers at the store. These services can be customized with location based services, and serve as key drivers of store traffic.

Indeed, IT will now allow us to peer into the living rooms of our customers, data mining their inner desires, and making it available on the supermarket shelves. The IT revolution captures the social entrepreneurship and individualistic spirit of these times. Bill Bryson, a best-selling American author has aptly captured the essence of this era – “We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls”!!