How can Artificial Intelligence (AI) help business ?

Having read lots about the benefits of AI and how AI would transform humanity, I was very inquisitive to know in spite of all the hype around AI, have we started using AI in a big way. 

In Dec 2018, I was attending a one day program on AI at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore which had an afternoon session with IBM engineers. Towards the end of their demo, I asked the engineers what were the actual applications of AI by IBM in the present day world, at least in India. The engineer was frank enough and admitted that it was just chatbot applications. 

AI had not matured beyond that at least for the industry. Even after two years, I find other than Google in their Maps, Gmail, search apps, not much AI is available in public domain for people to start using and experience the benefits.

While going through the article AI for the real world by Prof. Davenport and Ronanki in Feb '18, HBR (click here), I was able to understand what were the business benefits of AI and in general what were the AI challenges that global organisations face. 

Why are organistions skeptical of implementing AI when there is so much hype around it, is a question that would naturally come to any manager or engineer working in the industry. 

An anagram IEPPIO is apt for this occasion as per primary research conducted by the HBR paper authors on 250 executives in 152 AI projects, gave the real challenge faced by AI in the real world. 

I - ntegration

E - xpensive

P - oor understanding

P - eople

I - nnovative technology and 

O - verhyped technologies

The world is yet to fully understand the cognitive ability of humans, how humans distinguish one decision from another and in spite of the best intentions, fails completely in this area.

Of course, the technologies are too expensive, which takes it out of the realm of ordinary startups and medium sized organisations. 

We are yet to fully understand the nuances of AI and its applications

We do not yet have the real human resources to support full deployment of AI across organisations

Even though we extrapolate saying what all the technologies can do, we have immaturely developed technologies, ie. over hyping it.

The over hype or over selling of the technology has created a sort of glass palaces in the minds of the public and they expect AI to change the world radically overnight, which is not possible.

Once we know the challenges faced by AI, it makes sense to understand how we can overcome it. 

Understanding the Business benefits of AI

• I mprove
  
• O ptimise internal systems
• F ree workers from monotoinous tasks to do creative work
• B etter understandiong of p[roducts and processes
• C reate new products
• O ptimise external processes like Marketing etc
• P ursue new markets
• C apture new knowledge to venture into new products and processes
• R educe headcount at organisations
  

The potential business benefits of AI is great as how we understand it, the benefits may again increase over time as we progressively understand more features of the AI system. 

All these benefits if exploited well can result in great commercial benefits, besides reducing the boredom and monotony experienced by employees at their workplace.

George..

Role play on Artificial Intelligence in the class

We all know of the very many ways in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing a very important role in our daily lives.  From the very simple search on Google, to replying to our emails on Gmail, to translating docs from one of the popular languages on Google Translate to another language, to the use of Personal Assistants from Amazon, Google, Microsoft or Apple, the uses of AI are varied and colourful. 

One of the biggest challenges for an AI system is to collect enough training data to prepare the AI system to learn and help make correct future decisions. If we start on poor quality training data and low volumes of training data, the output also would be equally poor, incorrect and incompetent.

The availability of large volumes of high quality training data is gives organisation the early mover advantage. 

The entry of Google in the search domain decades back gives it so much of training data and strong algorithms that can help it get the right search output for your search inputs. It will be very difficult for a new search engine incumbent to beat Google in search at least for the next fifty years. 

Maybe a new SEARCH ENGINE player with a 

• radically different approach to AI effectiveness or 
• strong faster processors working on quantum computing or
• ultra fast communication protocol for the results from servers to customer desktops or
  
• an efficient, innovative and quick algorithm may be able to thwart Google.

The role play being designed in the class for students is to help them understand the importance of high quality training data for a high quality AI output. 

What are the different ways in which an organisation can try to collect large volumes of high quality training data in a short time ? (click here for interesting AI based case studies)

Can it collect this training data from 

• different functionally related areas, 
• geographically different areas 
• different set of customers
• equivalent product markets ??

Let us leave it to the ingenuity of the students to tell us from where to collect the training data to help the AI systems take the right decisions .. 

Ref : 1. Ajay Agrawal,Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, How to win with Machine Learning, HBR, Oct '20.

George..

Types of AI

Artificial Intelligence is growing these days and is attractinmg attention of scientists and managers from across the globe.

Referring to the article 7 types of Artificial Intelligence, in Forbes of June 2019 where the seven different types of AI classifications are briefly mentioned.

The basic classification of Artificial Intelligence is of two types based on the likeness to the human mind and the ability to analyse.

According to the classification of AI based on it's likeliness to the human mind, Reactive, Limited Memory, Theory of Mind and Self Aware AI are the different classifications.

1. Reactive AI machines are 

• limited in their applications.
• do not have memory based functionality
• no ability to learn from previously gained experiences
• can only respond to a limited set or combination of inputs
• cannot improve their operations

An example is IBM's famous chess playing Super Computer Deep Blue. 

2. Limited Memory AI is what we observe in chatbots, Personal Assistants like Amazon echo, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri, all self-driving vehicles.

In addition to the capabilities of Reactive Machines, these AI machines can learn from historical data to make use in decision making. Image recognition that makes use of Machine Learning and Deep Learning is an example of this. 

Image Courtesy, Forbes.

3. Theory of Mind AI is futuristic and exist only as a concept or work-in-progress

A Theory of mind AI will be able to better understand the entities by being able to discern the needs, emotions, beliefs and thought processes of the entities it is interacting with.  Theory of Mind AI tries to understand humans better.

4. Self Aware AI is akin to the human brain with all it's rationalising and emotional capabilities.

Though it may takes decades or centuries to fully realise and understand this type of AI, it can change humanity for the better or consign it for doom or disaster. The potential for self-preservation of these AI machines, can take over or spell the end of humanity, which can be a great threat to the world.

The other three types of AI are 

• Artificial Narrow Intelligence which we see in all our current applications with learning capabilities and ability to perform repetitive tasks autonomously using human like capabilities. 
• Artificial General Intelligence is futuristic and is the ability of machines to learn, perceive, understand and function like human beings. They develop competencies across multiple capabilities and domains with reduced learning time to carry out tasks efficiently and accurately.
• Artificial Super Intelligence is the ultimate in AI development. Because of their multi faceted intelligence these machines will be better capable at doing all things better than humans because of their faster memory, data processing, analysis and decision making capabilities. These machines can also spell the doom of humanity, thus being a great risk. 

How can humanity make effective use of these different types of AI to help in growth of humanity and not its doom is a serious question facing human civilization now. Can we, if not control, at least co-exist with AGI or ASi to help humanity for the next millennia ?

George.

Will AI enable a big revolution in the education scenario ?

Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, morals, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include teaching, training, storytelling, discussion and directed research. Wikipedia

The above definition of Education is very vast, sweeping and cuts across the breadth and width of human civilization.  So far we were depending on the human route to enable transfer of skills and knowledge from one generation to the next. With increase in population and the vastness of knowledge that needs to be transferred along with the multiple branches of knowledge that exists today, the correct streamlining of this knowledge, information and skills to the multude of people across the different continents of the world is very daunting. Can AI help to solve this crisis and how ?

I happened to go through couple of international publications in this regard. Ron Schmelzer in July '19, Forbes (click here) shares some ideas of applications of AI in education.  

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help education in many striking ways. It can be used in the following ways.

1. Personalised learning - Instead of providing a single syllabus for all the students, learning will be personalised. What to learn personally, divide learning into small convenient modules for asynchronous learning and asynchronous testing, preparation of custom learning modules and learning material for students. This will also include online interface and feedback from teachers and Professors

2. making use of AI Personal Assistants like Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana, Apple Siri to provide conversation interaction to students that assists in collecting teaching material, educational assistance, setting reminders, alarms, to help answer small queues of students and to help in adaptive learning.

Adaptive learning, also known as adaptive teaching, is an educational method which uses computer algorithms to orchestrate the interaction with the learner and deliver customized resources and learning activities to address the unique needs of each learner. Wikipedia

3. aiding in administrative tasks like admission, examinations etc. that take faculty time away from students. This time can be reallocated to students increasing the faculty student interaction time. With AI Personal assistants taking the rote tasks of admission, institutional information seeking, arranging for field visits , placement activities etc more time is available for faculty to interact with students.

4. breaking barriers, cutting across the quality of the institution, teachers etc., AI systems can help ensure impartial decision making based on academic merit, improving the fairness and quality of the admission process.

An HBR article in Oct '19 by Lasse Rohinianen titled How AI and data would personalise higher education, (click here) talks of personalised learning that can be administered by AI to each student  for unique experiences helping Professors be more effective in teaching. This helps identify early student problems, avoiding students quitting and enabling successful completion. 

Chat bots that interacted with students in the University of Mursia in Spain helped improve the motivation levels of students by 91%. Understanding student interest and preferences, new courses and experiences were introduced to improve student learning, educational experiences, delivering the right knowledge and skills to improve later adult life professional accomplishments.

Chat bots can also help give mental health counseling to students. 

The challenges that were observed were

1. preparing students for tech based world

2. preparing students for digital transformation

3. AI cannot help in imparting creative, cognitive and emotional intelligence skills. This requires human intervention. 

Only Professors can help students by providing guidance, support, mentoring, understand the importance of what is being learnt and its practical applications. AI cannot help in this area.

With the invasion of AI in education, students need to understand how 

1. Algorithms use data to make decisions, 

2. how the data should remain private, 

3. how the data is being used and 

4. the design and development of AI systems.

A human-AI hybrid machine only can finally benefit humanity as a whole ..

George..

What is being customer centered like ?

Customer-centric (also known as client-centric) is a business strategy that's based on putting your customer first and at the core of your business in order to provide a positive experience and build long-term relationships. - superoffice.com 

Happened to read the article in HBR of Oct '18 on 6 ways to build a customer centric culture by Denis Lee Yvon. (click here) 

A company which gives the best product and service to customer will never ever fall short of customers as existing satisfied customers will help new customers to try the product. 

Customer centredness in other words means creating a positive experience for the customers. Getting the operations personnel in the organisation to understand the customer concerns and his/her pain points will help the organisation to understand the organisation better. 

This includes the following points 

1. maximise service / product offerings 

2. build relationships 

3. respect customer preferences 

4. keep cusomer satisfaction at the forefront of business growth 

5. engage with customers in innovative ways to understand customer preferences'

6. include customers in corporate decision making 

7. include customer in futire product/ service planning of the company 

8. involve customer to know his/her pain points in the interaction and try to solve them 

9. give more than what the customer wants or asks for 

10. given quality items and service offerings to customers to ensure repeat purchases 

11. meeting customers in person in fixed time intervals 

As per the above author, the organisation can build a customer centric culture as given below 

1. operationalise customer empathy 

2. hire for customer orientation 

3. decentralise customer insights 

4. facilitate interactions of employees with customers 

5. link employee culture to customer outcomes 

6. tieng employee compensation with customer service, giving employees skin in the game

7. adding strong reverse logistics network to handle customer returns unsatisfied products

 Amazon is said to be one of the best customer centred organisations in the world be it in the case of forward logistics or reverse logistics (returning unliked or poor quality items) without asking a single qiestion. The author heas been a beneficiary of this ASmazon India customer centred approach many a time and is highly appreciative of it.

The amazing growth of Amazon globally is indicative of the extreme customer centred approach it nourishes as part of the company culture.  

A University or a Learning Experience Center ?

When I was reading that Amazon is the most customer centered company in the world, I never expected it to be really obsessed with the customer.  Reading about Amazon and how in 1994, when I was teaching at the Goa govt. Engineering College, after PG in Industrial Engineering  and teaching Information systems to PG students, Bezos had already setup Amazon, after completing BSE from Princeton in 1986. I too completed my BTech in '86 from Govt. Engg college, Trivandrum CET, in India. The similarity is very striking. Bezos went ahead with an entrepreneurial zeal.

Taking a cue from Bezos, I was thinking loud, should we rename Universities as Customer Learning Experience Center. (CLEC) ..

Watch the video at 2012 re:invent meeting interaction .. (click here)

In the above video, Bezos explains the growth of Amazon Web Services, his personal experience with Lean systems, waste removal etc..

Passion and customer centricity are the two great qualities any entrepreneur should have ..

Between customers and competitors,  an entrepreneur should focus on customers..

 

George..

Is Uber a Disruptive or Strategic Innovation ?

The other day I was listening to an HBR podcast by Alexander MacKay, faculty member from Harvard Business School describing Uber's global strategy (click here). 

Uber the ride sharing app introduced by Travis Kalanick in 2009, has now changed to become the world's largest ridesharing app with 2020 revenues of $10 billion and offering 6.2 billion rides annually, ie. 17 million rides daily. It has a market cap of $60 billion presently.

Prof. Clayton Christensen, from Harvard Business School coined the term Disruptive Innovation around 1995 through his book The Innovator's Dilemma.

To qualify as a Disruptive Innovation,  an innovation should 

• start as a low quality product or service at the low end of the market and move slowly over time, disrupting established players at different levels by offering progressively higher quality and satisfaction to the customers
• be offered initially as a cheaper alternative to the existing products or service at the lower end of the market, gradually improving over time in quality and performance dislodging established players.

Uber is not a low quality product and it is not an initial cheaper alternative. Both these reasons disqualify the Uber phenomenon being classified as a disruptive innovation. (click here).

My earlier writing in this area has made the situation very clear. (click here) Taking the case of the Indian Space research programme. Starting in 1961, it started growing, slowly disrupting the launch of low earth orbit (LEO) satellite launch market dominated by ESA etc and then in 2007, through Chandrayaan 1 to the moon disrupted major players like ESA and China Aerospace, and then in 2013 with the launch of Mangalyaan to the planet Mars disrupted NASA in terms of cost and reliable technology. ISRO has not been able to do any major space disruptions of late, but it has come to be globally recognised as a space power to be reckoned by other space powers. The cost disruption initiated by ISRO at one tenth the cost of similar missions from NASA or ESA, in the planetary missions market is indeed laudable.

Tesla has been slowly disrupting the transportation scene through the launch of their electric cars. The Kochi international airport running on solar energy is slowly started disrupting the 10 million annual traffic airports, slowly building to 50 million annual traffic and then to 95 million, slowly disrupting the Jacksonville airport in US.

This article from medium (click here) explains the salient features of disruptive innovation, even though it says Uber is a disruptive innovation. Developments in AI, self driving cars, IoT applications are all going to disrupt the world in the coming days in ways humanity has not even dreamt before.

I have come up with a question set to decide whether an innovation is disruptive or strategic . Try to answer the following questions. 

1. Is there a large unmet, untapped market in need of the product or service because available goods and service are priced high for the uptrend markets ?
2. Is your product or service lesser priced than the market leaders ?
3. Is your product or service now able to meet the demand from the low quality segment of the market ?
4. Is there potential for the product or process to grow to satisfy higher end needs customers ?
5. Can the market leader drop or stoop down to your level and kick you out of the market by offering a similar low cost product or service ?

If the answers to the first four questions are YES and to the last question is NO, then your product or service is in line for a disruptive innovation. Finally we see, it is the reach, acceptance and the cost of the product or service that plays an important role to disrupt the leader and topple the apple cart. 

George..

Lean strategy and Lean Operations ..

We have heard of Lean Operations and Lean Manufacturing. What is the exact difference between these two terms. 

While Lean Operations talks of generally actions that help to improve value, reduce waste and tools to track value additions and waste reduction, Lean strategy looks at the bigger picture of how value improvement and waste reduction actions can help optimise costs and actions and help align with the organisational objective of product, sectoral and market leadership.

While going through the article Lean Strategy (click here) in HBR March '16, by HBS faculty member David Collis, the distinction is made amply clear. Getting Lean Operations to align with organisational objhectives is pretty tough and requires careful understanding of organisational processes and optimisation efforts.

This is different from the environmental strategy an organisation may adopt. click here

Is Digital Transformation about technology or talent ?

This is a very interesting question that came up while having a discussion with my faculty colleagues on the necessity of including Digital transformation topics into an advanced MBA course curriculum, like we have at Alliance School of Business, Bangalore. I am sure Indian Institutes of Management in their different campuses and XLRI, Bajaj Institutes will get to learn a lot from our experiences as and when we share them with the public. 

The other day I was going through an HBR paper titled Digital transformation is about talent, not technology (click here) by Becky and Tomas in May '20 issue. It was really an eye opener.

Innovation is otherwise called Creative Destruction. Technological Innovation and people talent go hand in hand. One may have the best technological innovation, but if the right people are not available to deploy the technology, the technology is of no use. 

Which are the other areas to concentrate for a successful digital transformation ?

• As much as technology plays a big role in Digital Transformation, it is also about investing in training people. 
• Focus on the soft skills of people of offering sup[port and the right motivation to employees 
• As all the time, the chnage should get full support from the top management and in fact should be driven by the top management.
• Data Insights available from the analysis of data using algorithms should be acted upon to take advantage. Data is the new Oxygen for the industry.
• Digital transformations are not bound to be successful from the word go, it can fail, but fail fast, so that corrective actions can be resorted to. If failing fast is not possible, learn slow and succeed slowly should be the guiding principle.

The above points lead us to the conclusion that Digital Transformation is much as about developing the right talent, as it is about having the right technology.

George..

Intro case on SCM

This case from Business India on the challenges faced by the Indian dairy industry, by Mother Dairy in Delhi, is a good intro case to Supply chain management, taken from the text book on SCM written by Prof. B. Mahadevan from Production and Operations area of IIM Bangalore .

Even though it is more than six years old, this is an excellent case to explain to the students the need for Supply Chain Management, on the complexities faced by the Indian supply chains, especially how complicated is the dairy supply chain in India. The extent of uncertainties, the varied players, the transportation and storage complexities is really an eye opener for students. 

I circulate copies in the class and students respond wonderfully whenever I have taken this case to introduce SCM to the students.

A big thanks to Business India and Prof. Mahadevan from IIMB.

George

Story of Amazon - How Bezos' built one of the world's most valuable companies

 A phenomenon that is catching up with the millennials these days across the world is online shopping (B2C) and the one name that facilitates all these hue and cry in the online domain is nothing but Amazon.

I happened to listen to a HBR podcast (Nov '20 click here) on the same topic and which has also been put up as a Google podcast (click here) where HBR interviews Harvard Business School Professor Sunil Gupta.

Amazon (worth $1.6 trillion) Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos is worth $184.6 billion in 2020. How can a company be so successful and source of rage for youngsters and technologists the world over ?

Bezos' 3 strong points are given here

• Customer focus and the resultant data insights
• Logistics (Operational and Supply Chain) excellence and 
• Focus on technology

Amazon is a service oriented company. In services, we lay great emphasis on customer focus. What makes Amazon stand out from other service comp[anies that also focus on customers is the OBSESSION WITH CUSTOMERS.

We see our customers as invited guests to a party and we are the hosts. And it is our duty to make the customer experience a little bit better - Jeff Bezos

Leadership style

What is special about Bezos' leadership and communication styles ?

• Long term focus
• Customer focus
• Willing to experiment, fail, learn and innovate

His communication style is never messages or emails, it is writing 6 page long memos, distributed just minutes before the meeting, which everyone reads and discusses together. 

While most of the CEOs focus on the next quarter or the next, Bezos goes a step further, he is planning now what the company will be doing after 5 years. This long term focus is  helping him in getting the right acquisitions and product introduction like for instance the Kindle and Amazon echo series of AI based Personal Assistants. 

His very popular HR strategy has been to recruit and surround oneself with people smarted than one is. 

Issues :

Has Amazon given a ear to the packaging wastage and the resulting damage to the environment ?. Not yet. 

Amazon wants its employees to go out of the way to make the customer experience always the best, resulting in some compromises when it comes to treating employees. 

How is Amazon planning to integrate the mom and pop stores which they are replacing these days. Amazon does not have a clear answer to that too.

George..

During Covid times, has employee productivity declined ?

Has the Covid time brought about improvement in employee productivity as they are working from home or has it lowered the employee productivity ? This is an interesting aspect which we would be interested in knowing as almost everybody in the knowledge based industry has been working from home for almost eight months now.

In cutting edge research conducted by Professors from Harvard Business School and New York University it is reported that while the best corportations have reported improvement in productivity during the Covid times, the majority of organisations have reported fall in productivity.  We all were under the impression that Work from Home has reduced the stress employees undergo daily going to office / work (saved on an average 48.5 mins time for each employee) and hence the productivity would increase, but that has not been the case.

Employee productivity depends on three important factors, 

• time
• talent (human resources) and 
• energy
  

The time each employee dedicates to productive work, the talent he displays while engaged in his work and finally the discretionary energy the employee is willing to give to the company while carrying out his work.

The amount of talent and energy an employee spends at work also brings in another aspect of work, the engagement.

As per research conducted by Eric Garton and Micheal Mankins and reported in HBR of December 2020 (click here) 

• an engaged employee is found to be 40% more productive than a normal employee (satisfied worker) and
• an inspired employee is found to be 55% more productive than an engaged employee. 

In the best organisations, Covid time has resulted in improvement of productivity by almost 20%. Because of virtual attendance, talented employees are able to be part of multiple teams across geographies enabling their contribution at different places at the same time, resulting in better attainment of organisational objectives and hence improvement in productivity.  

But most of the organisations have reported drop in productivity as the organisations have lost talent and have not been able to inspire their employees due to many reasons, mainly due to family pressure, medical emergencies at home, the caution and care at home against catching Covid infection may have dampened the eagerness of employees to give their best.

Sagging energy levels of the employees have been found the biggest cause for drop in productivity and efforts by organisations to improve the energy levels have not had great effort except in some organisations like Adobe. Adobe has been able to tap into the discretionary energy of the employees evident by a high employee engagement score by giving the employees a no-layoff pledge, an extra day off in a month and by updating them with frequent updates on Covid and their business. 

Final Outcome: 

While the best organisations have experienced an improvement in productivity of 5-8%, other organisations have experienced a drop in productivity of 3-6% due to wasteful ways of working, inefficient collaboration and decreased levels of employee engagement.

The important learning we get from the above study is that employee engagement has suffered badly during these Covid times. We look forward to better employee engagement measures by organisations to improve employee morale and productivity in future.

George..

How can one do effective Decision Making ?

 All managers are day in and day out making decisions, decisions that have great impact on the running of the organisations. It is said that Jeff Bezoz makes only 4-5 decisions a day, the rest he leaves it to his subordinates. It is because , taking only 4-5 decisions will help Jeff to take the right decision and not be clouded by the pressures of decision making. Prioritisation is thus a very important point of Decision making.

While researching more into decision making I( came acros this very recent article in Harvard Business Review , Dec 2020, How to avoid rushing to solutions when problem solving, (click here) by Daniel Markovitz. 

The author cites 4 points

1. practicing going to the problem site and realising the problem. The Japanese call it Genchi Genbutsu.

2. Frame the problem properly. It is said that Einstein once said, if you have 1 hour to solve a problem, he would spend the first 55 minutes trying to frame the problem well and the last 5 minutes trying to solve it. The more time we spend trying to understand the problem from different perspectives, as given in the top pictorial, the better it is, as it will help pinpoint the exact problem and help with use of the right tools to solve it.

3. Think backwards (or find the root cause) one of the best and most effective tools is the Ishikawa daigram (fishbone diagram)

4. Ask Why many times, (5 Whys) to arrive at the root cause of the problem. More often than not, we address the symptoms than the actual problems. When we ask Why many times we move from the sphere of symptoms to the sphere of causes and finally the root cause. Some problems may get solved in two or three whys, while some others may take us to 5 or 6 Whys.

The Japanese after arriving at the root problem, take the right decisions to see that the issue or problem does not recur and IS SOLVED ONCE AND FOR EVER. 

So the next time, we come across serious decision making, try to follow these steps which will help us take effective decisions to solve the problem.

George

Daily build release of Ubuntu 21.04 ..

The opening screen of the daily build release of Ubuntu Linux 21.04 Hirsute Hippo slated for final release on 22 April 2021. This is a non - Long term support OS, ie. it will be supported only for 5 months from its release with official updates.

My experience with this futuristic OS is excellent. I would rate it as **** (4 star).

 

After using for almost 4 hours this afternoon with Youtube video and audio, newspaper sites for colour reproduction, google sites, colourful websites to assess coiour reproduction, I can only say that this Ubuntu 21.04 is an excellent futuristic OS. 

The office suite is Libre office, though it is a bit slow on older computers, it is very efficient and powerful omn my machine. 

 

Negative points : (only one I could note)

 

1. The release does not have a wide collection of software, no VLC player, no GIMP ...

The OS comes with a small set of software, was sized at 3.1 GB, and I am using it as a Linux OS on USB system on my new ADATA (Taiwan make) USB, that I ordered at Amazon this morning and got delivered by 3 PM.

 

I have been trying different versions of Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Manjaro, Lubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Suse and what not, this OS beats them all. It is so very fast. My system is a HP (2012 make) laptop HP 430, has 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, Intel i3 processor ...

What I can briefly tell about this OS, which is at the testing phase and not yet released, (to be released on April 22, 2021) is that this is a cool, fast. no problems OS. This is sure to beat all other Linux OS which will get released soon. 

Since I have this on my new ADATA nUSB drive, I shall be checking on my office system tomorrow. 

 

These are the different steps involved in the final relase stated in April 2021. (click here)

George..

 

Ageing of humanity, an opportunity for Startups .. ..

All of us at one point of time have to get old. While the young believe they have many more years to get old, the old people are living through the experience. 

Ageing is the process during which structural and functional changes accumulate in an organism as a result of the passage of time. The changes manifest as a decline from the organism's peak fertility and physiological functions until death. - Nature, click here

It is said that the aged people of the world, aged 60+ hold a majority of all wealth worldwide and they have a spending potential of approximately $15 trillion. Refer HBR article When no one retires, Paul Irving, Nov, 18.  (click here). Given the developments in human life expectancy, it is not very far that people will live for 100-120 years.

"Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears." - John Lennon

As per the World Health Organisation (WHO) (click here), by 2050, about 2 billion of the 10 billion people on planet earth (20%) would be elderly people of the age 60 years and above. The interesting aspect is that 80% of the aged people will be in the developing and less developed countries. 

If the country looks at the elderly as a liability, it will be looking at solutions, instead the governments should look at elderly people as great resources that can be tapped or extract value for more years, which will warrant a decent treatment of the people than the one meted out now.

Are we neglecting the elderly people ? Are we looking at them as people who are in the last days of their career, ready to step into the coffins ?

It is too early to say those things, because the longevity of people is increasing these days. With reduced hunger and better availability of food and proteins, the average human body and brain is more active. Other than lifestyle diseases, the probability of people dying out of hunger or food deficiencies is very limited. This has been one of the greatest contributions of the modern day science and economic developments following it. 

The pictorial of the ageing population is courtesy United Nations. 

While going through an interesting article cited above in the November 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review titled, When no one retires, by Paul Irving, the following points came to my mind. All figures are for 2020.

Global GDP (PPP)
IMF $130 trillion
World Bank $135 trillion

Global GDP (nominal)
IMF $83 trillion
World Bank $87 trillion

Global spending potential of people aged 60+ will be $15 trillion (by 2020). ie. about 18% of global GDP will be from the 60+ age group of elderly people.

People aged 60+ hold majority of wealth worldwide.

Ref: Irving, Paul, When no one retires, HBR, Nov '18.

Another interesting point to note is the average age of Nobel Prize winners of the world is 62 years, ie. a person is at the peak of his intellectual career only after the age of 60. This is the time when world over, people are asked to retire. The 2017 Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Prof. John Goodenough from University of Texas, US for invention of the Lithium-ion battery received the prestigious recognition at the age of 97 years.

All the above illustrations tell us that old age is not for retirement, but one where one can be more intellectually active and contribute to society in many ways that can benefit society.

Startups need to re-look in this sector of serving elderly people by means of providing 

• better health care and solutions 

• better use of assistive technologies
  

• better transportation / mobility  solutions 

• safe management of personal funds 

• better exercising solutions 

• better tech awareness to use gadgets and services 

• better home management services 

• better old age home management 
  

• better eyesight management  

Let us not look down on the elderly, they point us  to great business opportunities in trying to serve them.

George.

How to bring about innovative thinking ?

Innovation brings value and growth in societies. Were it not for the innovation of the steam engine and electricity or to more recently the digital computer, humans would not have been able to achieve this growth and economic prosperity. We  hear about the need to bring Innovation to our workplace, lifestyle, but we have struggled to bring it around. 

As we know any product, process or service that adds value to the user of that product, process or service, is an innovation. 

Recently in research conducted by Scott Kirsner on 270 corporate leaders in Strategy, Innovation and Research and Development roles, titled The biggest obstacles to Innovation in large companies  and reported in HBR July '18, (click here), it was found that internal politics and turf wars were the biggest obstacles to Innovation in large companies. Poor adaption of new emerging technologies, especially AI, Blockchain, IOT etc were at #6. Lack of budget was at #4 while lack of strategy and vision was at #5. 

The top three reasons cited as responsible for lack of innovation in large companies were, (as given in the pictorial) 

1. Politics / turf wars, 
2. cultural issues and 
3. inability to act on critical signals

This calls for serious introspection as to what promotes and what holds back innovation. It also gives an idea of where one needs to actually concentrate to promote innovation in organisations. 

Innovation is basically of three types - Product, Process and Business Model (click here). All our thought processes of Innovation will be included in either the product, process or the business model.

If then, what is exactly Innovation ? 

• Does it reduce your efforts or inputs  ?
  
• Does it improve the outputs ?
  
• Does it incorporate modern technology ?
  
• Does it improve convenience ?
  
• Does it improve the speed of process and delivery ?
  
• Does it improve the quality ?
  
• Does it entail bringing around a new product or a process ?
  
• Does it improve safety ?
  
• Does it reduce pollution ?
  
• Does it help build sustainable environment ?
  
• Does it bring better value to customer ?
  

The answer is many .. Innovation encompasses all these thought processes.   

Most organisations try to promote a fearless, creative environment that helps employees think innovative. Apple and Google have gone to the extreme, by earmarking about 10-20% of their time for working on innovative products and services, that may in the future be adopted across the organisation for the benefit of humanity that could bring more value to society.

Referring to the article in HBR of Dec '19 by Scott, Paul, Rahul and Natalie, Breaking down the barriers to Innovation, (click here), the authors have listed out a tool called BEAN, Behaviour Enabler, Artifact and Nudge that the authors claim will enable innovation.

Behaviour Enables are tools or processes that make it easier for people to do different creative things

Artifacts are things that one can see and touch that will support the new behaviour

Nudges are tactics that promote change through indirect suggestion and reinforcement.

In the research carried out by the authors they have identified five features exhibited by innovative organisations, they are given by the anagram F-A-C-E-S

1. Focus on deeply understanding customers' needs, unstated needs and desires

2. Assume there is a better way of doing everything

3. Collaborate across and beyond organisations, often cross-pollinating

4. Empower people to take considered risks, voice dissenting opinion and seek extra funds to continue with their ideas

5. Believe that Success comes after rapid experimentation, failing often, iterating fast with the spirit of perseverance

Some of the barriers that stand in the way of Innovation can be given in the following points, again given by the interesting Anagram, T-I-D-E-S

1. Lack of Time

2. Interia, lack of infrastructure nd support

3. Doing things Differently

4. High Expenses or cost and possible punishment

5. Poor Innovative Skills

One major handicap of businesses is that they are organised to deliver predictable, reliable results.

The Development Bank of Singapore (DBS Bank Ltd) often had meetings which got extended, wasting hours of time and resources for the bank and the employees. They came out with an effective BEAN called MOJO, Meeting Owner - Joyful Observer, meeting owner being a senior officer and the Joyful owner being a junior officer , the two people together saw that meetings ended on time and saved the bank lot of money and resources. 

BEANS in general have to be simple words or expressions that are eye catching and simple - (approximated by another anagram, R-E-S-I-S-T)

• REINFORCING
• FUNNY and EXCITING
  
• SIMPLE
• PRACTICAL and IMPLEMENTABLE
• CONSISTENT and STEADY
  
• TRACKABLE

An organisation can have any number of BEANS for the different areas, proceses or actions and functions that need to be innovated.

In Alliance University Bangalore, India, we have arrived at a number of such BEANS, for example,

• Faculty need to be PIQS (Precise, Quick and Short), 
• classes have be IN-IT-EX (Interesting, Interactive and Exciting), 
• Quizzes need to be SH-EET (Short and Sweet), 
• Projects need to be PR-IN-EX (PRactical, INteractive and EXciting)

The advantage in this approach is that the faculty and students have now come to enjoy the teaching and learning experience.

Telehealth challenges in treating the elderly

Tele health has pervaded and is supporting the elderly by giving them excellent care by means of popular video apps like Apple Facetime, Android Whatsapp, Google Meet, Zoom, Skype etc. But are these technologies available to the needy patients and if available, are the elderly patients in a physical and mental condition or literate enough to be using these apps comfortably. 

I happened to read the HBR article "4 strategies to make tele health work for elderly patients" in Nov 2020. (click here) It was interesting to read as it is very much relevant to the present times. We see the elderly suffering due to lack of awareness and access to the modern tele health gadgets.

Most of the elderly "digital alien" patients may be aware but not as conversant with the technology as the younger "digital native" population. This raises issues regarding usage and utility of these applications for the elderly people, who critically need them during the Covid times.

Challenges faced by the elderly are given below with possible solutions

1. Not able to use the technology because of limited digital literacy

2. No access to the technology or equipment due to economic reasons or being in remote locations

3. Medical conditions preventing self use of these tech gadgets like blindness, Alzheimer's disease

4. Patients who need full time care and monitoring as they are physically unable to manage on their own

5. Patients are unable to prevent bystanders or public from misusing their weakness and not reporting to the authorities in case of any violation.

The remedies that can be applied are as given below. 

1. seeking help of a close family member who is digitally literate to operate the equipment

2. the government could provide the equipment on loan which could be returned after use

3. government could engage helpers or nurses if no family member of the patient is available to help or the patient needs full time attention

4. the ward nurses and attendants need to be more ethically trained to help and not exploit needy patients

I have been aware of cases in Bangalore, India where nurses from St. Johns Medical College have made visits to homes of Covid patents if they find it difficult to visit hospitals.  This may not be a viable option for all cases.

Putting the onus on the government systems to take care of the elderly and needy when close family members are not available does not work all the time, due to the already strained ways in which the existing government systems are functioning, due to lack of funds, modern equipment and good leadership policies.

Project CHIP (Connected Home over IP) ..

 While in the 80s, we saw the Internet move from text interface to the 90s when it moved to video and graphics, world wide web (WWW) and now at the beginning of the 3 rd decade of the 21 st century we find control going over to voice and the rise of Virtual Assistants from Amazon Echo, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri, we are getting prepared to an exciting UI for these AI based Virtual Assistants that can carry out voice to text and reverse conversion.

Project CHIP (Connected Home over IP) which was suggested in Dec 2019 is an industry group working on connected smart homes with Amazon, Google and Apple along with the Zigbee alliance which is between Ikea, Samsung and Philips. Together the global giants with other players like Schneider will be able to make a great impact in the smart home market.

Project CHIP is a Connected Home over IP is an open-sourced, royalty-free home automation connectivity standard project which features compatibility among different smart home and Internet of things products and software. Wikipedia 

What are they planning to deliver ?

Adoption of a new royalty free connectivity standard that ensures better compatibility between smart home products with higher security is the main objective of this alliance. 

What is the advantage for the world through this alliance ?

1. Since it is open source, there will no royalty for connecting and using different networked products across ecosystems, ensuring inexpensive, convenient, free access and usage between home networked systems.

2. Being standardised, it ensures rapid adoption and wide usage. Just like the open source TCP/IP helped make Internet accessible for everybody, the project CHIP protocols will make it easy for organisations across the world to start collaborate using these protocols and provide vallued added end products to the customer (like e-commerce was enabled by www and TCP/IP).

3. Being cheap and low cost connectivity standards, it can promote fast development of poorer areas of the world

4, It can bring about great developments in healthcare and medical diagnosis without the interference of expert doctors

5. It can bring about revolution in improving productivity  in agriculture ending the food grain shortage

Over time, more uses will be exposed and innovated leading to better quality of human life.

George..

 

Administering Digital Health - Challenges of healthcare post Covid..

Healthcare professionals the world over during this Covid time are getting engaged with their patients through the Internet, the process is commonly called Telehealth. We see healthcare professionals interacting with patients and the public through different communication means, Whatsapp, ZOOM calls etc. 

Adaption of digital technologies in the healthcare sector is majorly observed in areas such as 

• customer engagement - engaging with patients
  
• care coordination - delivering personalised patient care
  
• improvements in remote work capabilities - distance is not an issue as I can get checked by doctors from Harvard Medical school or from from my nearest Public Health Centre
• expansion of the use of telemedicine - doctors checking patients using digital tools and prescribing medicines and procedures, even going to the extent of carrying out medical / surgical procedures over the Internet
  

Lisa and Lawrencein their HBR paper of November '20 "The pitfalls of telehealth and how to avoid them" (click here) points out the main issues in the field of telehealth globally. Healthcare issues all over the world during this Covid time have been very challenging. These are mainly related to access, while the rich are able to access the best doctors, disparities in access exist for vulnerable population, racial and ethnic divisions, elderly, low income and less educated groups in both the developed, developing and less developed countries of the world.

The medical professionals are also facing great challenges both in terms of 

• video fatigue, 
• longer work days 
• erosion of work life boundaries resulting in burnout and 
• work life disruption. 

Proper exercise of telemedicine results in good telehealth. Telehealth is very popular and very effective these days except for the above problems. People above the age of 65 years, black and hispanic patients, (like the tribals and backward classes in India) are less likely to use telehealth as their Internet access is also limited. 

In all probability, post Covid, the digital health systems we have been exposed to presently will stay and be part of our daily interactions. Our medical experience is going to be of a hybrid nature. It will be observed in the following four areas.

1. Better customer engagement
2. Care coordination
3. Improvement in remote work capabilities and
4. Expansion in the use of telemedicine
   

Some of the most popular applications of digital interventions in the Healthcare sector as highlighted in the HBR September 2020 paper titled 4 steps to digitize healthcare for the long term, by Siemens Healthineers (click here) are 

• electronic intensive care units (eICUs), 
• 
  home monitoring of patients, 
• virtual forward triage, 
• remote care 
• digital communication.

Siemens outlines four steps to have a smooth digital health transition. 

1. manage data as a strategic asset, both clinical and operational data need to be separated with proper security protocols applied
   
2. empower data-driven decisions deploying AI tools to make sense of patient data and operational data to help take the right decisions
   
3. connect care teams and patients including home monitoring with secure tele-consulting
   
4. build a learning health system with aligned incentives, learning from past experiences, with a commitment to digital transformation
   

The article by Lisa and Lawrence mentioned above, "The pitfalls of telehealth and how to avoid them, in HBR, November 2020, mentions the challenges experienced by healthcare professionals and patients.

1. Different telehealth systems in different countries and different hospitals in the same country, both in private and public sector raises issues of inter-operability, which needs to be addressed and reduced. Standardisation of processes, procedures, equipments can help a lot in this regard.

2. Provide all means to improve the communications between healthcare providers, professionals and patients, better communication can remove all non-standardisation problems

3. enhancing the relationships between the providers, doctors and the patients, by way of frequent meetings, sharing of knowledge

4. improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare by having hygienic tools, reliable equipments, machines and qualified and experienced healthcare professionals

Healthcare systems post Covid will see a great change with more telehealth opportunities appearing across the horizon, which is here to stay.

Can we depend on digital health tools to help us in this initiative ? Shirley and Mitesh in their article in HBR Nov '20, "Digital health tools offer new opportunities for personalised care", (click here) give us lot of ideas on this. The biggest change going to happen is in the area of personalised medical care that can be given to the patient in his or her home. 

In the study reported in the above article, digital health initiatives administered on a control group and three other groups with different personal health initiatives helped reiterate the fact that just like in service industries, we tend to deliver personalised experiences to the customer, in the same way, we need to be personal with each patient in administering digital health initiatives. We need to understand what suits each customer, according to their physical activity status and deliver them personal digital health initiatives.

George..

Planning to innovate ?? - take your first steps in Sustainability.

Sustainability is a great buzzword in industry today. But is following sustainability taxing for the industry or an opportunity ? The paper in HBR Why sustainability is now the key driver of innovation by Ram Nidumolu, CK Prahlad and MR Rangaswami in HBR, Sept, 2009 (click here) is an interesting writing to understand how organisations can voluntarily take steps for sustainability and be innovation trail blazers for the other players in the industry.

The authors mention what are the first steps and how any organisation can start its first steps at Innovation. It need not be from research and development or production or any similar industry area. The first steps can be from the area of sustainability, identify areas where there are violations in terms of environmental standards and propose actions to meet those environmental standards. Those can be the first baby steps any organisation takes in the area of innovation. The paper speaks of how sustainability could be the first innovation steps in any organisation and how that innovation can help the organisation to create industry standards, take the first mover advantage and set standards for others to follow.

By treating sustainability as a goal today, early movers will develop competencies that rivals will be hard-pressed to match. That competitive advantage will stand them in good stead, because sustainability will always be an integral part of development.

Stage 1 - viewing compliance as an opportunity
It is easy to comply with low level; sustainability requirements. But it is difficult and tough to comply with high level sustainability requirements.

Stage 2 - Making Value chains sustainable
The actions taken to get the value chains sustainable has to start from ther supply chain.

Supply chain - Along with many sustainable practices, using Carbon management technologies aim to manage anthropogenic releases of greenhouse gases, such as those associated with the combustion of fossil fuel use, in an effort to mitigate the potential impacts of these emissions on climate systems. 

Operations - ensuring that the different operations in the organisation, with suppliers, distributors etc are sustainable
Workplaces - Work From Home and Telecommuting options bring in gret benefits to the organisations both in terms of saving on energy, transportation costs, utilities, rentals and so on.
Returns - Returned items more frequently than not, almost 70% are in working condition. These returned items instead of throwing away can be used in demo, training centres or can be cannibalised to recover costly parts that can be reused.

When companies start environmental sustainability programs, they unknowingly take the lead with their competitors in these areas of innovation. This gives the organisations great confidence and an advantageous lead over their competitors. These innovation initiatives also help uncover the monetary benefits that waste reduction and energy efficiency can deliver. This gives the organisations definite and  measurable lead and advantage over their competitors.

Stage 3 - Designing sustainable products and services
Along with the existing product line, companies can plan to design new products that are environmentally sustainable. These products though will take some time to establish itself, can definitely give an upper hand to the organisations vis-a-vis its competitors.

Stage 4 - Developing new business models
Recovering the useful items from the waste materials can help organisations to start new business lines from these new products, giving them ample time over their competitors to innovate and offer superior products and services.

Stage 5 - Creating next-practice platforms -
Organisations that practice sustainable solutions in their daily operations finally end up with their employees getting competitive and coming up with daring innovations that can change the manufacturing ecosystem itself, creating next practice platforms.

Taking this first step in innovation, the sustainability initiative will definitely give the organisation a competitive edge over competitors. With more competitors carrying out their own novel environmental strategies, the earth itself will benefit.

George..

Improving the Machine Learning algorithm - Getting an upstart

Artificial Intelligence is the field of the future. It is going to pervade all spheres of human activity. The earlier one gains access to the terms and tools of using AI and Machine Learning, the better one can remain in the forefront.

Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can access data and use it learn for themselves. - expertsystem.com

Machine Learning is completely algorithm, data and feedback based. The output of the Machine Learning system is the output of the interaction of data and feedback with the algorithm. 

One of the best examples of Machine Learning is the Google Maps. When we look at how to improve the Machine Learning algorithm that improves the predictive behavior of the system, we need to look at the following steps and analyses

1. the driving routes, 
2. number of vehicles using the Google Maps software, 
3. alternate routes available
4. how fast one can collect this data through the communications network, 
5. how fast it can be processed, 
6. how fast can the feedback be collected and 
7. how effectively can this feedback be recursively used to improve the algorithm

This is just one example of Artificial Intelligence /  Machine Learning application in the modern day life.  Analysing Radiographic images is another area where AI is already finding use.

So the best way to improve the machine learning is to find ways 

1. to improve the algorithm based on which the Machine learning happens
2. getting access to reliable, accurate, disparate and varied source of training data and
3. gaining access to faster and effective feedback loop based on which the algorithm improves further
4. provide best quality output results that are effective
   
5. gain access to competitive advantage in sourcing data, and feedback

In Machine Learning we cannot deliver less quality results like in products, it can only be less effective output or prediction. Since Machine Learning is self learning and adaptive, if we give it access to large amounts of quality data and feedback, naturally the output predictions also will be of high quality.

Gaining the Competitive edge is vital in the Machine Learning area as the saying goes, the winner takes it all. 

Each player distinguish himself and his AI services by 

1. identifying sources that can give data and feedback that has not been accessed, 
2. identifying sources of data and feedback that are slow and hence has not been accessed, 
3. identifying sources of data and feedback that are not in a readable form 

The player who has access to large quantities of data and feedback and having an efficient algorithm that adapts to the changing times,. will finally get the upper hand in the coming years. 

The article by Ajay Agarwal et al, "How to win with Machine Learning", HBR, Oct 2020 (click here) gave a good insight into writing this article. 

George..

Structuring an organisation for Innovation

In the digital world from the early 50s, we have seen digital computers starting as centralised Mainframes, Mini. In the early 80s we saw a great innovation, the advent of the desktop computer.

Later on in 2007 we saw another innovation, the mobile phone had computing capabilities, smart phone in 2016, wesee the mobile phone also getting great photography capabilities.  

In the software side, the advent of iTunes in the early 2000 was indeed a great game changer for the music industry.

Frequently we opine that Innovation is a function of individual characteristics, subject expertise and organisation motivation. But rarely we look at the organisation structure that can can aid innovation.

Recently while researching through the Harvard Business Review on Innovation, I happened to see this article in the latest November-December 2020 issue of HBR titled "How Apple is organised for Innovation". (click here). It was an aye pener for me to understand how organisation structure can influence Innovation in the organisation. 

Typically organisation at the time of starting are organised on functions, like Production, Planning, Marketing, HR, Finance, Accounts , Shipping etc... Bur a organisation grows, we find functional organisation become cumbersome and problemmatic , resulting in complex communication structures and often missed communication, resulting in sub-optimal decision making. As the organisation grows in size, products and plants, the senior management then takes the decision to reorganise on products, business units or divisions. The basic functions get replicated in all these divisional or plant organisations.

While researching I was fascinated to read how Apple Corp, has grown from its starting on April Fool's day in 1976 to the present day to turn in revenues of $260 billion, generating profits of $55 billion and with a market cap seven times to $1817 billion. (click here for Fortune site).

Apple Computers, Inc. was founded on April 1, 1976, by college dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who brought to the new company a vision of changing the way people viewed computers. Jobs and Wozniak wanted to make computers small enough for people to have them in their homes or offices.

From 1976 since the start of Apple to 1985 when Jobs was kicked out of Apple Macintosh program. The Macintosh was getting popular and the author had the good opportunity to work on the Macintosh in Goa Engineering College. 

What is interesting is to know how after Steve Jobs rejoined the company in 1997, 12 years after being chuckded out, it had revenues of $ 7 billion. By 2020 the revenues have grown to $260 billion, app 37x in a matter of 23 years.

When Steve Jobs died in 2011, the organisation  had grown 15x to $108 billion in a matter of 14 years . After Time Cook took over in 2011 till 2020 in 9 years, the organisation has grown only 2.4 x.

We need to understand that this growth of Apple has happened over the last 50 years, during the growth of the digital age. Steve Jobs took the lead in exploiting digital tools and technology to take a company from scratch to a numero uno technology company of the world in 44 years. 

What has not changed in Apple over these 44 years has been the organisation structure style. It initially was functionally organised and even to this day with $260 billion revenue, still continues to be functionally organised. Corporations that have grown this size all have changed their structure to be based on products, business units or divisions.  

How has Apple managed to stick to the functional organisation style and still give exceptionally innovative products and outstanding usiness performance ?

Three leadership characteristics are vital here

1. Deep functional expertise of the members and leaders of teams

2. Immersion in deep details desired by customer, even going beyond.

3. Willingness to debate collaboratively across the organisation

Apple's leaders are all deeply knowledgeable in their specialised areas. Also the deep passion in their field of expertise and an unflinching commitment to give the best to the customer, whether he wants it or is aware of it or not at an affordable cost. combines with the willingness to challenge existing ideas and be willing to accept new ideas from the system have all been great inputs to the success of the organisation to a great extent.

For an Apple insider, this may not be apparent and visible, but for an outsider, the innovation process is interesting. While from 1997 to 2011, we find breakthrough innovation was happening in Apple, post Steve Jobs' tenure, the innovation is mainly incremental. Apple is yet to come up with a breakthrough product that can set a whole new industry following. Apple has been incrementally innovating it's earlier products. Like for instance the portrait mode in the camera that was made popular from the 2016 model of iPhone 7 onwards.  

Why has Cook not been able to bring in a major breakthrough in the innovation process at Apple in the last 9 years ?  We find only incremental innovations happening on the existing product. Does it require another person of the calibre of Jobs, different from Cook, to pursue with developers and know customer needs, likes and dislikes well to come up with a breakthrough innovation ?

But is one dependent only on breakthrough innovation all the time to succeed ? Take the example of Toyota, the Japanese automotive giant. Toyota never believed in breakthrough innovation, it has all the time carried out incremental innovation and is undoubtedly one of the largest automobile companies of the world. 

Is incremental innovation better than breakthrough innovation ?         

Citing research on Procter and Gamble and other small Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) by Marcel Corstgens et al published in MIT Sloan Management Review and reported in HBR, (click here), it is found that though P&G spends a massive $1 billion every year on R&D, rarely has it come up with any radical or breakthrough innovation compared to the relatively small Reckitt Benckiser that has reported small gains over five to eight years in  it's product line, resulting in slow and steady rise in profit and sales. McDonalds and Heinz have also reported small benefits with incremental innovation. Companies with large R&D budgets have only reduction in costs, improving profits than small companies who are achieving small definite gains taking them confidently forward.

How can organisations now in their advanced stages of growth organised on division or product line, realign to the functional style and innovate is an interesting point to be considered. The Apple's example was to demonstrate how innovation was supported in Apple with the functional organisation structure.

George ..

Transition to a Work From Anywhere (WFA) culture ..

Happened to listen to a podcast from a HBS Associate Prof. Raj Chaudhury as part of my lectures to students on the Work From Home (WFH) culture.  My interest was particularly high after reading reports from the press that Tata Consultancy Services, the IT giant from India employing almost 4.5 lakh employees and headquartered in Mumbai was seriously thinking of shifting most of its employees to work from home option. TCS is a top employer globally, and has 453,540 employees representing 147 nationalities across 46 countries. 

 
TCS was honored as one of the Fortune Best Big Companies to Work For in 2020. TCS 25x25 policy speaks of less than 25 percent of employees coming to office at any point of time and employees spending less than 25% of their time in the office. Secure Borderless Workspace of TCS is thus a great way to work post-Covid. Many organisations around the world are observing how TCS is able to perform and if the experiment turns successful, may turn to the WFA option.

Work from Home is what TCS is trying to propagate. But Prof. Raj Chaudhary is trying to speak of a still advanced concept Work From Anywhere (WFA). (click here..) Prof. Raj Chaudhary quotes of the US Patent Office deploying this policy from early 2015 and reported a 4.4 % increase in productivity. 

Knowledge workers are specially benefitting from this arrangement as they have the flexibility t work independently from either home or anywhere within the country or outside.

The five Organisational processes that get affedted by this WFA policy are given below -

1. communication 
2. sharing knowledge 
3. socialising 
4. measuring productivity 
5. data privacy and regulation

The benefits to the organisation and employees are manifold as given below

• Freedom to live and work from anywhere in the world
• Better quality of life
• Closer to family
• Greater recreational opportunities
• Move to healthy suburbs instead of living in crowded urban  spaces
• Lower rentals for the organisation and as well as employees,

Liiving in top end spots like Koramangala, JP Nagar etc in bangalore can pull any person behind by as much as INR 30 - 40K every month as rent, while in Bangalore suburbs rents are as low as INR 6000 and even lower in the villages. 

Working on the cloud server and secure communication channels help ease the communication problem. Organising weekly get to-gethers where attendees are selected randomly across hierarchy in circulation, with top management in attendance is a great way to socialise. Since there are no fixed hours of working, employees can work across geographies and time zones without much of adjustment from home. 

Weekends with family and away from work gives relaxation to employees.

Gitlab after implementing WFA policy was able to report $18,000 benefits for each employee.

 The main benefit of this policy in countries like India is going to be reduction in traffic on roads, less pressure on urbanisation and pollution.