Do Innovation contests really foster innovation ?

We frequently hold Innovation contests in educational institutions, industries etc to promote the concept of Innovation and continuous improvement among students and industry personnel. But more frequently than not, these contests do not fetch the real benefit and fails to kindle an innovative mindset among the participants and competitors.

Are these innovation promotion contests or programmes really promoting innovation or hindering it ? What is the impact of competition in the area of innovation ?

In exciting research led by Prof. Reto Hofstetter of University of Lucerne in Switzerland and reported in HBR of July -Aug '21 (click here), it is pointed out that displaying more of innovation ideas is more often than not an inhibitor than a motivator or promoter of Innovation. The Recombinant Growth Theory of Creativity says that seeing others' ideas of innovation, motivates or stimulates new creative thinking in people in related areas or by combining ideas from one area with another idea from a different area. But what we observe is contrary.

Why does this happen ?

Intense competition often increases participant's competitive stress, impeding innovative thinking. Secondly, the thought that others are also vying for the prize diminishes a participant's motivation to be more creative.  The third reason is the fact that submission of competitors workable solutions often become a disincentive for creative thinking.

The way to face this counter innovative tendency (as per the authors) can be to 

• highlight only the top winners, 
• grouping them into four or five areas, 
• avoid jargons like "There is only one winner", 
• by downplaying or masking submitter's identities (to reduce the participants stress and fear of non-performance)  etc..  

This research result runs counter to the experience on Toyota shop floors. In Toyota plants across the world, the Kaizen system of Continuous Improvement is a great motivating tool for the workers to come up with their innovative ideas from their work environment and to showcase them for recognition and overall development of the organisation. Respect for the individual is the key to the success of Toyota system. 

In the western system the focus is on the idea and not the person who has put in the new suggestion / innovation. This could be the difference.

An understanding of this difference now points us to understand the innovation process better and try to eliminate the barriers to innovation across productive systems of the world.

George.

How will organisational management be in a post-Covid world ?

Post Covid, management processes are not going to be as it existed before. We have seen hybrid type of management happening across organisations globally for almost 15 months now, a mix of online and offline management organisational styles.

What are the specific characteristics of the new hybrid management practices ? In a research study done by Harvard Business School Professor William Kerr and his industry colleagues, published in Harvard Business Review June '21, done on 38 senior most professionals from CEOs and Vice Presidents in 5 industry sectors spanning from manufacturing to customer facing service industries in Northern Europe Nordic countries, titled "4 imperatives for managing in the post-Covid world", (click here) some interesting observations were made regarding managing the uncertainty in organisations that have been practicing  and exercising hybrid management systems.

Economic Times from India of October '20 (click here) mentions that the post Covid environment will mostly demand of organisations and employees tech skills, business skills and soft skills as given in the image on the right. 

This is very closely related to what the author experienced  in Alliance School of Business, Bangalore, India. After three months of silent observation from March '20 to June '21, the mode of education switched to online education for about four months before the faculty moved back to campus, while students had the option to attend the classes offline in the classrooms and online from home and hostels. By the middle of April '21 with the second Covid wave getting stronger, the instruction once again moved back from hybrid to online mode. The points discussed here were also felt by the author to be relevant in educational institutions.(the author is teaching in the Bschool).

The points observed were very relevant and is being presented here for the benefit of the public. 

The first point is the fact that while top management may feel good with the hybrid type management system, the middle and junior management feels the system a bit challenging and needs guidance and proper metrics to guide performance. 

The second point talks of managers needing to have better people based skills to interact and motivate the employees.

The third aspect points to a vibrant top management providing centralised guidance, good leadership, clear and shared vision, effective performance measurement and regular followup with other parts of the organisation.

The fourth point mentions that the processes should be crisis proofed, being able to move from independent to hybrid models back and forth number of times.

The learning has been useful for the management in designing better management processes and performance measurement metrics that ensure great motivation and collaboration across functions and hierarchies.

George.

Improving AI integrity

Artificial Intelligence can basically be classified into two branches, one that uses established algorithms to help make decisions (but no learning also called reactive AI machines that work on fixed algorithms) and the other which learns from the data supplied to it to help make intelligent decisions (also called narrow artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning etc.).

A hard fact we need to understand is that an AI is only as good as the data it is fed on or tested called the learning data and test data, usually in the ratio of 3:1 ... If there were humans on Mars, the AI which works with earthlings may not be effective with Martians, so simple .. The AI which was developed was fed on data on this earth. As such since we do not know how Martians (if they exist) would react to different stimuli, we cannot develop an AI systems that is all encompassing and universal.

Since AI is getting to be very widely used across domains and functions in the future, we need to figure what types of training data was the model fed on and for how long, what was the testing data the model was tested on, who supervised the learning etc.

Can faulty inputs to the model lead to faulty decisions ? It is very much possible, deficient learning data set or testing data set or an oversight could have corrupted or influenced the final AI based decision that was made. Have we ever thought what would be resulting implications of a faulty decision by AI ?

For example if we look at the pharma industry, US Federal Drug Administration, the most toughest pharma testing and passing authority in the world, does Randomised Control Trial experiments many a time in different settings before finally accepting or rejecting the  drug or molecule.would be then released for the public consumption.

The randomised control trial (RCT) is a trial in which subjects are randomly assigned to one of two groups: one (the experimental group) receiving the intervention that is being tested, and the other (the comparison group or control) receiving an alternative (conventional) treatment                                                     - www.bmj.com

 If the RCT experiments have worked well for the global pharma industry, ensuring integrity, reliability and accountability in the process, why should it not work for the AI industry to check for the integrity, the utility, reliability,  completeness and applicability of the software before it is released for the consumption to the people of world. 

If nations can collaborate in this direction, or UN taking the lead in this case, we can avoid grave mistakes and accidents that would befall the world because of traps, drawbacks and shortcomings in the software that have escaped the eyes of the regulator. 

This article in part derives its origin to the article in HBR of June 2021 titled  We should test AI the way FDA tests medicines by Carissa Veliz.

George..

Will the new Hambantota port change global supply chain equations ?

Colombo is the nearest port to the world's most busiest Asia-Europe main sea trade channel. To decongest the Colombo port on a study by Canadian International Developmental Agency through SNC Lavlin, the Sri Lankan government in 2010 proposed to start a new port south of Colombo at Hambantota, 200 kms south of Colombo. 

 

Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse(L) and Sirisena

The Kochi or Vizhinjam port, including the container handling port in Vallaarpaadam, Kochi situated in the state of Kerala in the southern tip of India, do not have capacity to be major hubs of global merchandise flowing in this route in the present circumstances. Understanding this drawback of the Indian port, grabbing the initiative on the recommendation of the Canadian consulting firm SNC Lavlin and the Danish engineering firm Ramboll in 2006, the Mahinda Rajapakse government in Sri Lanka decided to build the Hambantota port on a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer basis.

When both India and US refused to collaborate with Sri Lanka in terms of funds and technology, as it affected their commercial interests in the region, the Sri Lankan government had to approach the international community for help. Sensing a great business opportunity,  China under it's One Border One Road initiative of 2005 forwarded a 15 year repayment period loan of $300 million from Chinese Exim Bank in 2007 at a soft rate of 6.3% which kickstarted the project. 

At the same time Sri Lanka also issued an international bond for $300 million at 8.25% interest to collect more investment for the project. We have to understand that these were gravely excess financial repayment commitments that the small island state of Sri Lanka was taking upon itself, hoping that the new port would bring in additional revenues to help it repay. 

Everything went fine, the first phase was completed in 3 years on time. In 2012 contrary to advice by the project building firm, Danish engineering co. Ramboll, without waiting for revenues from phase 1 port to stablilise, Rajapakse govt decided to go ahead with the second phase container port. This time Rajapakse govt went for a loan of $757 million from China Exim Bank, at 2% interest. Rajapakse even named the port after himself.

 

By 2014, trouble began, when the international clientele did not find the port attractive enough, the ships calling in the port declined which affected the revenue generation from the port. With limited funds at it's disposal, the Sri Lankan govt had no other option but to approach the Chinese govt and  companies for help.

In the sudden elections announced by  President Rajapakse, his deputy turned foe, Sirisena became the new President of Sri Lanka in 2015. (in picture courtesy Reuters, Rajapakse is seated on the left with Sirisena). In the financial problems that ensued, Sri Lankan government decided for a bail out after approaching the IMF and decided to lease the port to an experienced company. The lot fell on Chinese Merchants who infused $1.12 billion into the port and was given the rights to operated the port for a 99 year lease.

 

Under the garb of a debt trap getting the Hambantota port in Sri Lanka in its control, it is feared, the Chinese, like the European colonial powers of the 17-18th century, is surreptitiously expanding its neo-colonial aspirations.. 

Now that an important port has passed over to Chinese hands which is also in the Indian Ocean, how will this translate to better ocean movement for sea based traffic ? The US and India are worried beyond the supply chain borders as they feel China could effectively strangle global sea trade and progressively control sea and land trade across Asia and Europe, following the One Border One Road Initiative of 2005.

As per Chinese leaders, this is part of the OBOR, One Border One Road initiative from Chinese President Xi Jin Ping, to partly revive the old Chinese silk land route 2000 years back, connecting China with Europe. 

On OBOR : The longest train journey on the OBOR route was completed over 17 days in January of 2017 covering 8000 miles from Beijing to London.  (click here for my earlier writing on the OBOR initiative from China). The Hampantota port is surprisingly part of this OBOR.

The Sri Lankan government under Rajapakse and later Sirisena may have carried out the work in right earnest, but the economic burden from poor traffic resulted in port control changing hands with China winning the bid to run the port and taking lease of the port for the next 99 years. 

The world does not have a clear picture where the global maritime trade is heading to and who will have the final control over trade on the seas of the world in the next hundred years. Is China expanding globally and taking control of ports for a good reason or otherwise, only time will tell.  We have to wait and see. In the mean time, it will be great opportunity and low costs for global supply chains between Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. 

George.. (pictures courtesy New York Times, Atlantic.com and Google Maps)

Ref : 

1. Deborah Brotigam and Meg Rithmire, The Chinese debt trap is a myth, The Atlantic, February, 2021 (click here)

2. Maria Abi-Habib, How China got Sri Lanka to cough up a port, New York Times, June 2018. (click here)

How big is the Solar trash problem ?

We have been seeing very fast introduction of solar energy by installing solar panels across the world.

In 2019 China, US and India continued to the world's largest solar energy generators with 205 GW, 76 GW and 43 GW installed solar capacity in the respective countries. Most of these installations have begun generating energy only by mid 2000.  Given the panel life of 25 years, we can expect a great disposal problem of solar panels into the future.

US saw 13 GW home solar installation in 2019 which jumped to 19 GW in 2020. In US with almost 19 GW of domestic solar installations, it is feared that by 2025, because of early replacement there would be almost 315,000 T trash generated. 

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) predicts that the e-waste generated by renewable energy sources by 2050 would be to the tune of 76 million tonnes (Ref HBR June 2021, The Dark side of solar power by Atasu, Durran and Wassenhowe click here).

With costs dropping every year and efficiency on new panels increasing by 0.5% every year, (on fixed panels efficiencies reduce by 1% every year becauseoftheprogressive deteriorationof the glass coatings) people preferring to replace less efficient panels with more efficient panels at low costs is high. The present efficiencies of solar panels are between 18-19 %.

The figure on the right (taken from HBR June '21) is an indication of the trash which is generated in US domestic installations with old installations serving their life in green colour against early replacements in red colour.

Since the financial returns from early replacement is attractive for domestic consumers, they tend to do early replacement and this is going to generate the maximum solar trash.

On an average about 90 tonnes of solar equipment are needed for each MW of solar power generated. Considering about 19 GW is the total domestic solar power generation in US alone, imagine the weight of solar panels that would have to be disposed in the next 5-10 years. Over the next four years it is going to be 315,000 tonnes.

With all this data how much of the solar trash are we ready to do green processing or help enter the circular economy and how much would be disposed in landfills. 

The initial deign of these solar panels should include materials that are not bound to create great environmental damage. The government should provide subsidies for green disposal. Manufacturers should be given the responsibility of disposing of the end of life products to ensure green power generation across the country.

Circular economy measures to extend the life of the products is a sure way to handle the trash problem and make it manageable in the near future.

George.

Garbologist Jabir Karat ..

A TED talk on Green Worms .. 

https://youtu.be/Il4G5vePR-8

This is a TED video of a waste management, garbologist expert in trashonomics, an ecopreneur, waste recycler Jabir Karat. 1 crore turnover monthly working out of kerala, TN, Kar, Andhra, Goa. 

He handles 8.5 lakh kgs of waste daily and employs 220 people. Out of 100 kgs of dry waste he handles, he recovers almost 97 kgs of products which he sells on average Rs 8 / kg. (with unbelievable recovery rates of 97%, not great rocket science ..)

There are many scrap collectors, but he is not a scrap collector but a waste collector, still lower status ..

A TED talk on Green Worms .. 

https://youtu.be/Il4G5vePR-8

His second TEDx talk .. 

https://youtu.be/O1KYOFM6xNQ

George 

Akio Toyoda's advice to the centennial batch at Babson College, 2019.

It was great listening to the youtube video of Akio Toyoda, CEO of Toyota Motors co. He is a third generation Toyoda family member to lead the company.

These are his advice of 15 interesting points for the passing out 2019 MBA batch from Babson College (click here).

1. Find out what makes you happy

2. Don't screw it up, be positive and look up to it

3. Don't take it for granted, one has to work hard

4. Embrace change, don't run from it.

5. Do the right thing, the money will follow

6. Try new things even if you are old

7. Never give up being a student, keep learning new things

8. Find people who inspire you, follow them

9. Be a global citizen, respect all people

10. Care about the environment, the planet

11.Try to understand other parts of the world

12. Don't worry, be warm to others

13. Decide what you stand for, the values and your interests.

14. Find one's own guiding light or values let it inspire every decision one makes

15. Follow the Toyota way of integrity, humility and respect for others.

I am sure students around the world will find this advice by Akio Toyoda worth following.

Ecological disaster off Colombo coast

The fire and subsequent sinking of the X-press Pearl, the 4 month old Singapore based container ship was a true ecological disaster. 

Almost 25 days after it got sunk, the 15,000 container ship X-press Pearl that entered service in February of 2021 registered in Singapore, gross tonnage of 31,650 T, the ecological damage it does to the waters and sea coast of Sri Lanka and possible parts of Indonesia and India are quite grave.

Thousands of tonnes of plastic pellet debris have been removed from the Sri Lankan coastsouth of Colombo.

It was a dangerous cargo of Nitric acid in the ship that stated leaking which resulted in the fire and the subsequent gutting and sinking of the ship. If the Port authorities at Hamdad Qatar or Jebel Ali UAE had heeded to their earlier request in right earnest, this major ecological disaster in this part of Asia could have been avoided.

The ship that sank to the bottom of the Indian ocean at a depth of 68 metres, now poses a risk as the items inside its fully loaded 15,000 containers containing almost 31,600 tonnes of merchandise from medicines, plastic pellets (nurdles), machinery, flowers, eatables etc.. could leak out for years together.

How long will this pollution last ? Experts say this could be a disaster on the Sri Lankan coast for many years to come.

The picture are taken courtesy Washington Post. The picture on the right gives the extent of spill that has even reached the shores of Indonesia.

The major learning one can get from this accident are majorly three

1. Never mix dangerous chemicals cargo along with other cargo on commercial container ships.

2. Liquid chemicals containers need to have double walls to prevent leakages

3. Liquid chemicals containers should be arranged to the sides of the cargo hold to make it easy for identification and unloading in case of a mishap.

The rescue efforts for such accidents  will have to be an international one coordinated across different countries. The oil spill off Florida coast after explosion on 20 April 2010 of the Deep Water Horizon oil drilling platform of British Petroleum, caused massive damage of about 1300 miles of Florida coast (BP got away with just a $4 billion fine). 

Let us not allow this spill of plastic pellets and other items including medicines, machinery etc pose a great damage to the South Asian waters in the years to come. Click here for the Washington Post report ..

George

Start working with Alexa Artificial Intelligence..

We are all upbeat and at times, a bit unsure and tensed at how Artificial Intelligence  can impact our lives in the future. One of the very first and basic AI devices in our homes is the Amazon Alexa first generation, even though now it has graduated to the fourth generation. The capability or skills have increased over the past five years since the introduction to more than 100,000.

Let me narrate an incident that describes how effective AI is going to be in our present life. 

When my son was young around 3 years of age, around the mid nineties, to play nursery rhymes, we had to either sing it ourselves or play the audio cassette in our Philips audio system at home, provided we had the right cassette, else had to go to the audio store in the town and buy one cassette, bring it home, play and and listen to it.

But fast forward to the 20s of the twenty first century, when my sister in Mumbai wants nursery rhymes in any language to teach her grandson, she just has to ask her home Alexa, play English nursery rhymes and there comes unlimited English nursery rhymes. What a great convenience. !!

What convenient it is. This is the convenience AI is bound to bring to our lives.

This writing is only to understand the AI capability of Alexa .. Were it not for the AI capability, there is nothing exciting about Alexa. But that is what it is - eerything about AI.

What are the specific AI capabilities of Alexa ?

Its ability to synthesise speech into text and vice versa which is the first and foremost capability, besides its ability to use this text to search the Internet databases like wikipedia and output information, first a text and synthesise it back as audio. 

At a very initial assessment, we find till date Alexa has more than 100,000 skills for public use.

Amazon Alexa AI is capable of 

• voice synthesis and interaction
  
• doing music playback
  
• making to-do lists
  
• setting alarms
• streaming podcasts
  
• playing audio books
  
• providing weather, traffic, sports, and other real-time information
• provide news
• control several smart devices using itself as a home automation system.
• home security (at a fee)
  

We all agree electricity has made a great change in our lives today. Were it not for Benjamin Franklin's invention in the 1750s of electricity, many of the luxuries and conveniences we enjoy these days would not have existed. 

From the lighting in our homes to the refrigerators, to the fans, air conditioners, induction stoves, microwave ovens, televisions, audio- video systems, industrial heavy duty motors and machines,  what not, even the computers and the Internet would not have been possible.

A similar change we are expecting now with the introduction of AI to our life. We cannot even dream about the change AI will bring in our lives. 

My sister does not have to switch on the record player, take the nursery rhyme record, switch on the power, and start the player, she just has to ask the Alexa AI pod in a corner of her front room, Alexa, play English nursery rhymes and there it goes with nursery rhymes in a long list for hours together with no repetition ..

When I have to write a new document or a case, I just write the main ideas as a Google doc and Google AI guides me slowly with ideas on the grammar, sentence formation and spellings to help me arrive at the best formatted text. Writing a case is barely a 3 -4 hour exercise for me from the earlier 8-10 hour exercise.

Click here for the 30 best Alexa skills of the 100,000 plus it has that can entice you for hours together and could come handy at any time. 

With the passing years, three years after Amazon initially ventured into this area, Google too has the Google Home AI, progressively disrupting the AI scenario across the world and being a forerunner of AI adoption. Amazon has a 20 year edge over other companies in this area. (click here for the Forbes article).

Click here to find the HBR article by Alex Kantrowitz to find how Amazon automated it's work and put it's people to better use.

George..

Is the world at the threshold of an exponential productivity growth ?

We are now living in a world where due to the Covid pandemic the economy is down, the economic recovery does not look promising anytime in the near future and technology developments are slow to pick up. We are used to the terms of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Internet of Things, Augmented and virtual reality etc. but these technological changes are not picking up the way it should be. 

US, one of the most developed countries of the world is in fact showing a change. The economy is slowing and the strangle hold of Covid is slightly getting released these days, resulting in people being able to move freely and businesses being able to reopen and start their activities afresh with new vigour and strength. 

Three factors are prominent here -

Factor 1 - J type of economic growth

Factor 2 - technological progress

Factor 3 - consolidation impact of Covid

When we look at J type change in the economy, it indicates to us that initially the pace of change is very slow, dragging for years together, this years growth depending on the previous year's growth and then suddenly we come across change, at blistering pace, at exponential pace.

If we look at the J curve the growth is unrestricted while in the S type curve, the growth is restricted, plateauing after some time.

The predictions are that the US economy is heading for a J growth curve now. If the global economy  also follows the US economy, of course after lot of the present political upheavals happening in different parts of the world are tackled well, we can look forward to a period of high growth and a period of plenty across the world.

The other reasons supporting a positive growth of the US economy is a surge in technology growths. The benefits of AI is slowly getting spread across various sectors of the society and industry. This is sure to bring great rates of growth and productivity improvement. 

Combined with this is a third factor of the restructuring of the global economy that is happening now. The pandemic and its early withdrawal can lead to lasting benefits. When the world was just getting to realise the benefits of remote work or Work from Home in a time of ten years, the pandemic has compressed this time period and allowed all of us to experience the benefit of working from home early enough. ,

Though Eric Brianjolfsson and Georgios in their Technology Review article of June '21, The Coming Productivity Boom, (click here), mentions that this is symbolic of US, the author of this article in India also after doing a preliminary industry research, has come to the same conclusion in India too. 

The benefits of the J type of growth in economy, combined with consolidation of technology benefits and early life style changes effected by Covid, is pressing the whole world into a period of growth and development in the next ten years. It is more than any wishful thinking ...

George.

Are mRNA vaccines more effective ?

This Covid season has been one of trepidation and fear. We are shocked to hear death news of our relatives and friends who have passed away due to this virus attack in our country and around the world. 

Considering the days of Spanish flu virus in 1920s. Those days we never had the vaccines for virus. But in the modern days we have vaccines. Interesting research is happening around the world. 

The picture on the right gives the popular vaccines that are in use around the world to fight the Covid 19 virus, since Dec 2020. 

A ribonucleic acid vaccine or messenger RNA vaccine is a type of vaccine that uses a copy of the genetic material from a natural molecule called messenger RNA to produce an immune response - wikipedia.

"The mRNA vaccine revolution is just beginning | WIRED UK" click here 

Covishield vaccine (from Oxford AstraZeneca)  uses a virus of another disease, a flu virus, not exactly Covid 19 virus to trigger an immune response from the human body. Flu virus still kills about 300,000 people globally every year. This is the virus vector approach.

Covaxin vaccine used in India is got from weakened Covid 19 viruses (got from horse blood, horses were given mild doses of Covid 19 vaccine earlier to generate antibodies and the almost dead virus). This is the active approach

Messenger Ribonucleicacid (mRNA) vaccines use biotechnology tools to trigger body responses against the Cobid 19 virus without allowing any virus vector or almost dead virus to enter the body. This is an indirect approach that fools the human body using genetic materials like RNA into generating antibodies to achieve necessary immunity.

While ordinary serum based (viral vector or almost dead virii) vaccines give immunity only for specific diseases, mRNA vaccines can be used  to generate immunity for a general class of virus. That is a great promise in treating a large class of viral diseases like flu, HIV etc . 

 

This technology which is being researched and tested out in many labs across the world for finding a cure to HIV (a more complex virus than Covid 19) has been for the first time tested on people for immunity against Covid 19 and is found to give upto 90% immunity for 1 dose and 95% for 2 doses. 

Katalin Kariko, pictured here, working at the University of Pennysylvania, is one of the global experts on the mRNA vaccine. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, both of mRNA origin, have come out of the efforts of Katalin's team to create a vaccine for HIV ( a more complex protein). Hope the mRNA technology is made available to the people of the world in the times of Covid. If the mRNA technology based vaccine is made available to the people of the world, many people will benefit. 

The other great benefit of mRNA vaccines is the speed at which this can be manufactured compared to the other serum based or viral vector based vaccines. This is a real blessing in times of pandemic like the one we are experiencing now. 

 

Understanding mRNA vaccines (from cdc.gov) click here ..

Going back in history, the author recollects the days of his father, in Mavelikara, Kerala, India around 1918, when the Spanish flu virus hit the world and in a span of nine years up to 1927, killed almost 70 million people in the world (4.7% of the world population of 1500 million then.). He is still alive at 97, (he was not born when the Spanish flu first hit in 1918) and recollects his mother recounting, how during those days when there were no modern communication or means of transportation, science technology not having developed so much, how they have suffered and grieved loss of their loved ones. How critical the situation would have been then ?
 

If we extrapolate the figure of 4.7% casualty to the present global population of 7800 million, it translates to 367 million people.  But globally we are at present at just 3.8 million. God forbid there be more deaths. But the figure is very shocking. Given that the vaccination rates are increasing and the emergence of variants has not been that damaging,  we still see a glimmer of hope in the near future when things would be in control.

 

George..

 

Office work scenario, post pandemic ..

The world has changed post pandemic, more so regarding the way people work. When I check up with my colleagues working in IT companies, some of them have not gone to the office for more than a year and are comfortably working from home, though definitely bored..

I was naturally interested in the new work scenario and while going through the latest HBR article in this regard was surprised to find the future work spaces to be very flexible.  One definite point we have observed is that whatever changes have happened have happened for the good. The work from Home or Work from Anywhere concept is here to stay.

Click here for the article Five models for the post pandemic workplace, HBR, June '21 by Daniel Davis 

As per the research conducted by the HBR author Daniel Davis, the future workplaces are going to be one of the following

• As it is : the original workplaces before the pandemic, which has completely changed. It is very difficult for the world to go back to those days.
• Club house model - people visit the office only when they need to collaborate. Else they can work from home and complete their piece of the work.
• Activity based working - involves employee coming to the office but do not have fixed workplaces. They will keep moving from table to meeting rooms to conference halls to tea rooms etc. Accordingly the size of the office can also be reduced.
  
• Hub and spoke - In this style of working, the employees will be working in satellite offices away from the city centre, dropping into the main offices only once or twice in a week as need arises. The main city centre office can now be small with less rents. 
• Work-from-Anywhere model - this is what we are currently pursuing and this is the model being considered. In situations where customer interaction will be needed, the meetings can be held at a place of convenience of the participants either at the customer premises or anywhere, it seems convenient. The organisation benefits from not having expensive real estate in the city centre. 

Field work involving manufacturing, projects, physical retailing, agriculture, food processing, customer service, healthcare, tourism, hospitality, supply chain management, logistics , transportation etc. involves direct involvement of the service provider and service recipient and hence needs live interaction. The office interaction in alll these cases will continue to be any one of these above five models. 

What this means for the future real estate business, travel and tourism, transportation industry etc is beyond any wild guesses we can do today. The advent of AI, IoT, Robotics, AR and VR will change the world for ever.

A link from The Conversation on work place trends of 2021 is available here .. Picture courtesy, The Conversation.

George..

 

Waiting for IBM 2 nm tech ..

The Apple A12 Bionic from Taiwan Semiconductor Mfg Co. (TSMC) works on 7 nm technology. 

We are at the threshold of IBM's 2 nm chip technology guaranteeing speeds of upto 10Ghz in each core from the present day speed of 2 Ghz and great fuel efficiency giving upto 4 days battery life on a single charge .. 😳😳👏👏

The  2018 ARM  Snapdragon 865 working on 7 nm technology has 4 cores working at 1.8 Ghz, 3 at 2.42 Ghz and one at 2.84 Ghz.