tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10949767843340819242024-03-07T20:21:55.372-08:00Developing InnovationExploring software innovation in the developing worldRahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-19518082316774069842008-11-22T09:37:00.000-08:002008-11-22T10:17:33.575-08:00Bringing The Global Web To IndiaA few weeks ago I <a href="http://developinginnovation.blogspot.com/2008/10/better-search-in-hindi.html">blogged about search suggestions,</a> a feature that made it easy to enter queries in Indian language scripts. Once you are able to do that and start searching, you'll quickly discover another barrier that non-English speaking users face in India - there just isn't much good content available online. No matter how good the search engine, it can't return relevant information if it doesn't exist! This situation is beginning to change in a few areas -news and entertainment for example - where lots of Indian language websites are being created. However we still have some way to go before the Indic web has enough high-quality content to satisfy all the information needs of users. <br /><br />What can we do in the meantime? Well, Google has an interesting approach to this issue - automatic translation. If you do a search in Hindi and scroll down to the last search result on the first page, you'll see a link to a result that's been translated from English. For example, try querying for <a href="http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=hi&q=%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80+%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%8C%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80&meta=&aq=1&oq=sarkar">सरकारी नौकरी</a> and scroll down to the bottom of the results page. You'll see a link to a translated query result. Clicking on the link takes you to a <a href="http://translate.google.co.in/translate_s?q=%E0%A4%B8%E0%A4%B0%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80+%E0%A4%A8%E0%A5%8C%E0%A4%95%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80&hl=hi&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sl=hi&tl=en&tq=Government+job&sa=X&oi=clir&ct=search_link">translated query results</a> page. Here's how this works:<br /><br />1) We will take your Hindi query - "सरकारी नौकरी" - and translate it into English - "government job".<br />2) We'll then run the English query and get back English results.<br />3) We'll translate those results back into Hindi for you.<br /><br />All these translations are done automatically, using a machine translation engine developed at Google. This technology allows you to translate any text or web page instantly. Here's the Times of India homepage <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftimesofindia.com&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=en&tl=hi">automatically translated into Hindi</a>. Of course, because these are machine-generated translations they will never be as good as human translations (and they can even be quite funny) but the quality should be good enough for you to understand the sense of what you're looking for.<br /><br />A neat and unique way of using technology to help bring information to users, even when it doesn't exist in their language.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-58936461552899241772008-10-22T08:04:00.000-07:002008-10-22T10:28:24.673-07:00Better Search in HindiOne of the core value propositions on the web, and one that is certainly near and dear to Google's heart, is search. Google's mission is to <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.</span><br /><br />For our purposes, the operative words are <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">world </span>and <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">universal</span>. So how do we fulfill this core mission in India, for those who would prefer to interact in their local language rather than in English? Of course our core search technology works across languages and has been adapted to the specific needs of each language. Apart from this there are some specific features we launched on <a href="http://google.co.in/hi">Google Hindi Search</a>. I'd like to showcase one of them here. We launched this in response to the difficulty our users faced in entering Hindi text.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Problem: Hard to enter Hindi text on a regular english keyboard.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Solution:</span> Easy Hindi search in 3 steps - Pictures say it louder than words.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 1:</span> Start typing in English and you'll see Hindi suggestions<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_STiwK9AUzHs/SP9gWvuEGgI/AAAAAAAAA70/8BniGeSuDDM/s1600-h/hindi_search_1.gif"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_STiwK9AUzHs/SP9gWvuEGgI/AAAAAAAAA70/8BniGeSuDDM/s320/hindi_search_1.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5260028833675090434" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 2: Select your query from the drop-down list</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_STiwK9AUzHs/SP9g8wNbmMI/AAAAAAAAA78/cFJ2riLRERY/s1600-h/hindi_search_2.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_STiwK9AUzHs/SP9g8wNbmMI/AAAAAAAAA78/cFJ2riLRERY/s320/hindi_search_2.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5260029486641682626" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Step 3: View the results of your search in Hindi</span><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_STiwK9AUzHs/SP9haexHEVI/AAAAAAAAA8M/_9j8P77Zh30/s1600-h/hindi_search_3.gif"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_STiwK9AUzHs/SP9haexHEVI/AAAAAAAAA8M/_9j8P77Zh30/s320/hindi_search_3.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5260029997355569490" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />We have this feature available in <span style="font-size:-1;"> seven other Indian languages:<br /></span><ul><li><span style="font-size:-1;"><a href="http://www.google.co.in/setprefs?sig=0_EHbCahkY0Zt0xoKNg7qNagrJ6C0=&hl=bn">Bengali</a><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span></span></li><li><span style="font-size:-1;"><a href="http://www.google.co.in/setprefs?sig=0_EHbCahkY0Zt0xoKNg7qNagrJ6C0=&hl=te">Telugu</a></span></li><li><span style="font-size:-1;"><a href="http://www.google.co.in/setprefs?sig=0_EHbCahkY0Zt0xoKNg7qNagrJ6C0=&hl=mr">Marathi</a> </span></li><li><span style="font-size:-1;"><a href="http://www.google.co.in/setprefs?sig=0_EHbCahkY0Zt0xoKNg7qNagrJ6C0=&hl=ta">Tamil</a> </span></li><li><span style="font-size:-1;"><a href="http://www.google.co.in/setprefs?sig=0_EHbCahkY0Zt0xoKNg7qNagrJ6C0=&hl=gu">Gujarati</a> </span></li><li><span style="font-size:-1;"><a href="http://www.google.co.in/setprefs?sig=0_EHbCahkY0Zt0xoKNg7qNagrJ6C0=&hl=kn">Kannada</a></span></li><li><span style="font-size:-1;"><a href="http://www.google.co.in/setprefs?sig=0_EHbCahkY0Zt0xoKNg7qNagrJ6C0=&hl=ml">Malayalam</a></span></li></ul>Happy searching!Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-16776233693346393822008-10-19T00:50:00.000-07:002008-10-19T01:22:27.937-07:00Chicken or Egg?Google India had its first ever <a href="http://code.google.com/intl/en_in/events/developerday/2008/home.html">Google Developer Day</a>, held in Bangalore on October 18th. I spoke about our <a href="http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/documentation/#Transliteration">Indic Transliteration API</a>, which makes it possible to add Indic language tying to any website in a very simple manner. (more about this API and other Indic tools a later post). <br /><br />What struck me as I spoke to the developers at the conference is a sense of uncertainty about the market opportunity for Indic language products and services, so I thought I'd set down some thoughts on how I look at this market.<br /><br />The opportunity.<br /><ul><li>In an <a href="http://developinginnovation.blogspot.com/2008/09/india-by-numbers.html">earlier post</a>, I outlined some of the demographic and socioeconomic statistics that set the context for this opportunity. Bottom-line: India is getting richer and more literate at a much faster pace than its learning English. <br /></li><li>In every country around the world, as the internet provided compelling content and applications in local languages, people found value in them. This is true across Europe, Asia and the Americas. There is no reason to think India is different.<br /></li></ul><br />The ecosystem<br /><ul><li>The bottleneck is this: people won't go online until hey find value, and the value creators (content producers, application developers) won't make the investment until they find people online. How to break this logjam?</li><li>If we look at how the internet developed in the US, it may provide a useful analogy. For the purposes of our discussion, we can break down this evolution into three phases.</li><li>First came content. This was mostly produced by communities people who had a passion for putting up content they cared about. Traffic and monetization was mot the motivation.</li><li>Second came growing readership as people started discovering this content. This set off a virtuous cycle in which content eventually because a viable, monetizatable business.</li><li>Third (and final) were the application developers who could now focus on moving the online experience beyond passive consumption of information to interactivity, community building, service delivery and a host of other innovations.</li></ul>The Indic market was stuck in phase one for a long time, and (I believe) has just recently entered phase two. There are some signs to back this up - the growing number of newspapers launching online editions in local languages, the growth in the number of tools available for entering local language text using an english keyboard (<a href="http://www.google.co.in/transliterate/indic">Google</a>, <a href="http://quillpad.in/hindi/">Quillpad</a> among others).<br /><br />Are you ready?Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-46655368401442281302008-09-20T23:06:00.000-07:002008-09-20T23:51:04.178-07:00Improving Lives Through SearchOne of the most common questions I'm asked when I talk to people about building products and services in Indian languages is, "Why?" The unspoken thought behind the question: those who don't know English in India are dealing with more basic sorts of problems - web search is a luxury that can have only tangential impact in their lives.<br /><br />I beg to differ.<br /><br />One of the most powerful features of the web is the democratization of access to information. With the web, consumers can be free of value-extracting middlemen and brokers of information. With the web, consumers can reduce information asymmetry. That isn't a luxury - it's a powerful tool to improve lives. <br /><br />Imagine a sick child, and parents who have no easy access to medical care. The web can yield information to understand symptoms and help parents provide basic treatment. Imagine a bright school student who attends a poorly-run and managed school that will ill-prepare her for college and the job market. If this student could access educational content online, it could transform her life prospects.<br /><br />Search can improve lives. And it helps those people most who have the least access to alternative sources of information - typically those lower down in the socio-economic ladder.<br /><br />One of the things I like to do is to read Google's <a href="http://www.google.com/press/testimonials.html">customer testimonials</a> from time to time. I've reproduced a few below. This isn't a pitch for Google - you can replace "Google" with the more generic "search" and the message is equally powerful.<br /><p> <span style=""> <b>Message from: </b></span><b><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 51);">Abigail</span></b><span style=""> </span></p><p><span style="">"Google helped me discover that my daughter's strange medical problems are part of a rare genetic syndrome that most of her doctors had never heard of. Her doctors diagnosed her after I brought them the information, and my discovery helped her cardiologist diagnose another patient with the same syndrome. Because of my daughter's new diagnosis, we have uncovered other dangerous but treatable problems that we wouldn't have known about until they caused her serious damage. So, I'm very grateful to the people at Google who made all of this possible. Thank you."</span></p><p><span style=""><b>Message from: </b></span><b><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 51);">Ann</span></b> <span style=""> </span> </p><p><span style="">"I just wanted to let you know that Google may well have saved my life. My sons and I were walking home from having eaten out. A half block from my house, I felt this pressure building in my chest. Immediately, I thought, 'heart attack' and ran through how I'd been feeling that the day (I had been nauseated). My first thought was, 'confirm suspicions,' and immediately, upon arriving home, I went to Google and typed in 'heart attack.' I kept thinking, 'you only have minutes...' I found a site that listed symptoms. Indeed, I was having a heart attack. I was at the Albany fire station within minutes. Five baby aspirin later, and a few squirts of nitro and I was in the ambulance on my way to the hospital. The good news is, I have no residual damage. My heart is back to normal. Thank you for providing the Google search engine. I'm sure my recovery was complete because of the speed within which I was able to get help."<br /></span></p><p><span style=""><b>Message from: </b></span><b><span style="color: rgb(0, 102, 51);">Laura</span></b></p> <p><span style="">"Last year my daughter, who was a senior in high school, was afraid of failing her math final. I did a search on Google and came up with more than one method of explaining the formulas...She passed the final and ended up with a B in the class instead of a C. "</span></p>Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-52504472661035001412008-09-12T22:26:00.000-07:002008-09-12T22:35:27.934-07:00OnashamsakalOn this festive occasion, I'd like to wish all Malayalees <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onam">Onashamsakal</a>. To celebrate the occasion, Google just launched a <a href="http://news.google.co.in/news?ned=ml_in">News edition in Malayalam</a>. You can learn more by reading our post on the <a href="http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-news-in-malayalam.html">Google News blog</a>. Of course, if you're looking for more information on onam or on any other subject, in Malayalam, you can also use <a href="http://www.google.co.in/intl/ml/">Malayalam search</a>. It's very easy to type in Malayalam using a normal english keyboard: you start typing Malayalam words in english, and we will generate Malayalam suggestions for you to select as your query.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-17017335109707754582008-09-11T04:24:00.000-07:002008-09-11T04:48:53.809-07:00India by the NumbersAs I mentioned in my previous post, one of the areas I focus on is Indian language products and services. The basic thesis is this: India has a huge population of people who should be using the internet but are not. One of the primary barriers to usage is language: the internet is a fairly unfriendly place in India if you don't speak English. Let's try removing or lowering this barrier, and the internet becomes useful for a much larger group of people. I'll elaborate on each of these points in subsequent posts, but for now, let's look at some numbers* (you could quibble about some of these e.g. literacy numbers supplied by state governments may be inflated, but they are in range of the true number):<br /><ul><li>Total population: 1.2 billion</li><li>Total literate population: 650 million</li><li>Total middle class population: 350 million</li><li>Total newspaper readership: 200 million</li><li>Total vernacular newspaper readership: 180 million (90% of total)<br /></li><li>Total English-speaking population: 80 million (self-identified as speaking as first- or second-language in the 2001 census)</li><li>Total online population: 40 - 50 million</li></ul>If you (quite reasonably) assume that pretty much everyone who is online in India today speaks English, then the low internet user base makes sense - it's more than a 50% penetration among English-speakers, and zero among the other 93% of the population.<br /><br />We need to build the Indian language web. Who's in?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">* (Sources: 2001 Indian Census and 2006 National Readership Survey)</span>Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-17871907275939563382008-09-08T08:28:00.002-07:002008-09-08T10:24:59.520-07:00Hello? Testing.. 1... 2... 3Is this thing still on? <br /><br />My last blog post (before this one) was exactly sixteen months ago! It's amazing how time flies. I blogged back in April of 2007 about our imminent move from the Bay Area to Bangalore. Well, the move happened, and my wife and I have been in Bangalore since May last year. What with getting used to a new city, a new job (Product Manager at Google), a new social life (or lack thereof), blogging took a back seat.<br /><br />What's pretty neat is that in the time that I've been away, I've actually been working on many of the themes that I've blogged about: product innovation in developing countries. My focus during the last sixteen months has been on Google's Indic language strategy and figuring out how best to bridge the language barriers that make the internet so daunting for the vast majority of India's population.<br /><br />I hope to pick up where I left off in May last year. Is it possible to resuscitate a blog after a year? I hope so. I'd like to revive this blog, share my thoughts and ideas, and get your feedback. In the meantime, take a look at some of the stuff <a href="http://labs.google.co.in">Google is doing in India</a>.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-20837171817661473242007-05-07T14:33:00.000-07:002007-05-07T14:37:48.676-07:00Shift HappensNeat slideshow on technological and political shifts. It just won the "<a href="http://www.slideshare.net/contests/contest-details">World's Best Presentation Contest</a>" at SlideShare.<br /><br /><br /><object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="https://s3.amazonaws.com:443/slideshare/ssplayer.swf?id=33834&doc=shift-happens-33834-906" height="348" width="425"><param name="movie" value="https://s3.amazonaws.com:443/slideshare/ssplayer.swf?id=33834&doc=shift-happens-33834-906"></object>Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-26522828755473476832007-05-06T21:14:00.000-07:002007-05-06T21:27:16.749-07:00Survey of India's Consumer MarketMcKinsey's Global Institute has just released a <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/india_consumer_market/executive_summary.asp">report on India's consumer market</a>. There is an executive summary as well as the full report, available for free download (although you may need to register yourself to access these). The study projects the growth and changes in the composition of India's consumer markets from today through 2025. The highlights include the following projections about the market in 2025:<br /><br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">India will be the fifth biggest consumer market.</span> If India continues on its current high-growth path over the next two decades, income levels will triple, and India will climb from its position as the twelfth-largest consumer market today to become the world's fifth-largest consumer market by 2025.</li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">The middle class will increase tenfold. </span> As Indian incomes rise, the shape of the country's income pyramid will also change dramatically. Over 291 million people will move from desperate poverty to a more sustainable life, and India's middle class will swell by more than ten times from its current size of 50 million to 583 million people.<br /></li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Marked shift away from basics towards discretionary spending. </span>Indian spending patterns will evolve, with basic necessities such as food and apparel declining in relative importance and categories such as communications and health care growing rapidly.<br /></li></ul><span class="txt"></span>The full report has a wealth of data that will be a useful reference for anyone interested in the Indian consumer market.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-81488217265052623782007-05-06T13:08:00.000-07:002007-05-06T13:21:13.895-07:00The 2007 e-Readiness RankingsThe Economist, along with IBM, has published this year's assessment of the state of information and communications technology in 70 different countries. The rankings, which have been published since 2000, measures a wide range of factors that collectively aim to measure the ability of a country to benefit from investments in information technology and communications infrastructure. The complete report is <a href="http://www.eiu.com/site_info.asp?info_name=eiu_2007_e_readiness_rankings">available here</a> (it's free and you don't need a subscription to the Economist). It's an interesting read.<br /><br />A couple of facts from the rankings:<br /><ul><li>Denmark is the highest ranked, while the US and Sweden are tied for second place.<br /></li><li>The highest ranked developing countries are Estonia and Slovenia, at 28 and 29, respectively.</li><li>Among the large developing countries, South Africa is the highest ranked at 35, followed by Turkey at 42 and Brazil at 43.</li><li>Among the BRIC countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, Brazil is the stand-out at 43. India, China and Russia are grouped more or less together at 54, 56 and 57 respectively.</li></ul>The methodology used the generate the ranking is interesting and illustrative into what drives adoption of technology at a macro level. The rankings used the following six criteria, listed below along with their weight in the overall calculation:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Consumer and business adoption (25%).</span> Per capita spending on IT, levels of e-commerce activity.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Connectivity and technological infrastructre (20%).</span> Access, availability and cost of internet access.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Business Environment (15%). </span> General business climate, including political stability, taxation, labor policies and opennes to investment.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Social and cultural environment. (15%).</span> Literacy, training, and more generally, the "capacity" to ulitize the technology if it is available.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Government policy and vision (15%).</span> Government adoption of information technology, online procurement, public services online.</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Legal environment (10%). </span> Ease of new business creation, intellectual property protection.</li></ul>Interestingly, India ranks higher than China or Russia despite having a significantly poorer score for connectivity and infrastructure. It scores much higher in the legal environment and government policy and vision criteria, pushing up its overall rank.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-81344498349141761482007-05-03T11:00:00.000-07:002007-05-03T10:14:16.326-07:00How Do You Really Feel?While on the subject of Stanley Milgram, there is another very interesting experimental technique he pioneered which I think is directly relevant to product managers and marketers. The issue is: how can you determine how people truly feel about something? Asking them (e.g. via surveys or focus groups) can be problematic and all sorts of biases may be introduced. For instance, how you frame the question has a strong impact on the results (nice little example of framing bias by Paul Kedrosky <a href="http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2007/04/18/the_right_real.html">here</a>).<br /><br />While market analysts can adjust for these biases in some cases, things become particularly troublesome when the questions are more personal and/or sensitive. People tend to respond in accordance with a social desireability bias, which basically means they will tell you what they believe to be a more socially acceptable response, rather than what they really think. How do you estimate the amount of popular support for white supremacy or neo-Nazi groups? Almost no one who holds such a view will own up to it. Election polls in many countries severely understate the support for extremist political parties for the same reason (including the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_2002">famous 2002 French election</a> in which the extreme right winger Jean-Marie Le Pen came second in the preliminary round of voting - a shocking result. In the United States, a rough analogy would be if David Duke won the Republican primary).<br /><br />Milgram devised a particularly clever experimental technique that attempted to deal with these types of issues. It was called the <span style="font-weight: bold;">"lost-letter" technique</span>, and it worked as follows. Milgram would address letters to a fictitious group whose affiliation would be clear from its name (e.g. "Society For The Advancement of White Supremacy"). The letters would be stamped and addressed to a Post Office box that Milgram set up ahead of time. Hundreds of these letters would then be placed at selected locations, looking like they had somehow got lost and just needed to be placed in a mailbox to be sent along its way. He then monitored the Post Office Box to see how many letters came in.<br /><br />Milgram guessed that a degree of sympathy for the organization mentioned on the envelope would make it more likely that someone would actually send the letter on its way rather than ignore it. And the anonymous and indirect nature of the transaction would make it a lot easier to act on your true feelings about an issue, not just a socially accepted feeling. To factor out the "noise" from non-responses and other random events, Milgram would do the same thing with another set of letters, this time addressed to a completely neutral sounding organization (e.g. "Industrial Corp, Inc."). This would be the control data against which the responses from the sensitive letter could be measured. The greater the response, the more the support for a particular viewpoint.<br /><br />The responses to the various sets of letters he tested with were not particularly revelatory. It's the technique that was his real accomplishment, not the results of the experiment.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-3729174251275200482007-05-02T18:18:00.000-07:002007-05-02T19:12:49.890-07:00Stanley Milgram and The First Social NetworkI just finished reading a very interesting biography of the pioneering (and controversial) social psychologist Stanley Milgram. He is most famous for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment">Obedience to Authority</a> experiments, whose aim was to measure the willingness of people to obey authority figures, even when those orders are in direct conflict with their own moral sense. A detailed article about the experiment can be found <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment">here</a>, but a quick summary is this: the subject was brought into a laboratory-like setting and told to administer progressively stronger electric currents to a "victim" (actually an actor), all for the advancement of science. In an unexpected, and somewhat depressing, result, Milgram found that a full two-thirds of all subjects would administer even lethal does of the current when told to do so by the "scientist" (also an actor) even when the victim was in obvious physical distress. We are far more susceptible to manipulation by authority than we are aware. The numbers broadly hold in many variations of the experiments, and in many different countries.<br /><br />More relevant to technology and development, Milgram was also a pioneer in social networks. Many decades before orkut, myspace or linkedin, Milgram researched the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_world_phenomenon">Small World Phenomenon</a>, which says that the world is much more connected than people think, and any two people can be linked together by a relatively short chain of acquaintances. In fact, he first came up with the famous "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon">six degrees of separation</a>" idea when he found that the length of the chain connecting two pepople is, on average, six. Milgram conducted his experiments in the sixties. Today, with the rise of online social networking tools, mobile communications and cheap transportation, I wonder whether we are actually at "five degrees of separation" and trending lower.<br /><br />To see the six degrees idea in action, check out the <a href="http://oracleofbacon.org/index.html">Oracle of Bacon</a>. Type in any actor's name (past, present, any country, any language) and it will show you how they are connected to the actor Kevin Bacon. It's really hard to find a more than three links, and almost impossible to find more than four links. A generalized version is <a href="http://www.cinfn.com/">here</a>: you specify both actors and the links are calculated for you.<br /><br />Milgram is a fascinating character and a brilliant observer of the human condition. I am still processing some of his insights. More to come.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-23535708565243769642007-04-22T16:50:00.000-07:002007-04-22T16:51:07.663-07:00The Deployment Post MortemYour product just released. Customers are buying your product in droves and they love it. It saves them time and money, makes them better at their work, and it even slices bread!<br /><br />That's wonderful and these moments are what we Product Managers live for. However, things don't always go according to plan. What happens when things don't go so well? Inevitably, a customer deployment will go poorly. They won't be happy with your product, and may even uninstall it. What can you do in a situation like this? One approach is what I will call the Leo Tolstoy approach. The great writer said: "All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." In other words, treat the failure as an outlier, an anomaly, rely on your customer support to patch things up as best they can, and move on.<br /><br />A better approach is to look at the failure as an early-warning mechanism. This is your opportunity to understand whether the failure is indeed an anomaly (as some will inevitably turn out to be) or whether it points to a systemic problem that you need to take steps to address. As Product Managers, we are attuned to issues in the field and actively search for patterns or trends that point to a broader problem. Depending on the type of problem, PM's should have a checklist handy to make sure they get the information they need. The two most common types of issues I have come across are:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Failure in the field.</span> The software caused an outage in the customer's IT environment. A PM checklist should include:<br /><ul><li>What was the problem exactly? Get a detailed explanation.</li><li>Was it due to an unexpected software/hardware configuration? </li><li>Was the configuration explicitly not supported? If so, why was it installed? Where did our internal process fail?</li><li>Was the configuration explicitly supported? If so, go back to problem determination. What must be done to include this use-case in future QA plans?<br /></li><li>Was the configuration neither explicitly supported nor unsupported? If so, is this a configuration we did not expect to see and did not plan for? Is it an unusual combination that we're unlikely to see again? If it is likely we will see it again we should add to QA plans. In the case that this is a fairly common configuration that was not part of the QA plan, we need to go back and revisit the entire QA process. How closely does the QA test matrix map to what is encountered in the field? Do we need to do more research to ensure adequate QA coverage?<br /></li><li>In the problem determination phase, as we uncover the root cause, can we generalize the effects? I.e. Could the same problem manifest itself in other ways? How to we prevent those other problems as well?</li><li>Once we understand the root cause, can we generalize a "graceful degradation" principle from it? Can we build in checks so that when faced with an analogous unknown situation, the software is able to adhust or "degrade" its functionality rather than cause an outage?<br /></li></ul><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mismatched expectations. </span> The product works as specified, but it doesn't do what the customer thought it would do. They don't see value in the product. A PM checklist should include:<br /><ul><li>Did we oversell or overpromise product functionality? If we did, this could point to at least two different problems:<br /></li><li>If we oversold, was it because the sales force was not trained adequately to know exactly what the product does and does not do? We will then need to work out a more comprehensive training plan for the sales team.</li><li>If we oversold, was it because the sales team felt cornered into "improvising" in the field? This could be an early signal that the product is not meeting the needs of the target market very well, and the sales team feels pressured into setting unrealistic expectations.<br /></li><li>Figuring out whether it is a training issue or a product mismatch issue is extremely important - one can be fixed relatively easily, the other may require major realignment.</li><li>Did we demonstrate value? Even if the product is implemented and works flawlessly, did the customer realize the benefits and/or return on investment they were looking for? <br /></li><li>If the customer did realize benefits, but is not aware of them or unable to articulate them, then we need to showcase these benefits better and make it easy for the customer to see it. Perhaps this needs additional reports, a dashboard, or some set of running statistics that enables customers to quantify the value they have received.</li><li>If they did not realize their expected benefits, why not? If the software was meant to replace some manual activity, is the manual activity still being carried out? Is there duplication of effort because some component was not correctly or adequately integrated?</li></ul><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-56365718208195871902007-04-22T13:32:00.000-07:002007-04-22T13:37:33.155-07:00Product Bytes NewsletterI've been a fan of Rich Mironov's newsletter, <a href="http://www.mironov.com/articles/topical">Product Bytes</a>, for a couple of years now and wanted to provide a link to it for anyone who may be interested. It's a refreshingly BS-free take on the art and science of Product Management, and I always learn something new in every issue. It's a bit skewed towards enterprise software, reflecting Rich's long experience in that area, but I think the basic ideas apply quite broadly.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-36350954192295595422007-04-20T17:03:00.000-07:002007-04-20T17:49:39.370-07:00Long BetsThe Ladies Home Journal from December 1900 contained an article listing predictions for the year 2000. The author writes:<br /><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><blockquote>These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible. Yet, they have come from the most learned and conservative minds in America. To the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone, asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001 - a century from now. These opinions I have carefully transcribed.</blockquote></span></span></span>Some of the more remarkable themes:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Telecommunications:</span> "Man will See Around the World. Persons and things of all kinds will be brought within focus of cameras connected electrically with screens at opposite ends of circuits, thousands of miles at a span."<br /></li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Spy satellites:</span> "Balloons and flying machines will carry telescopes of one-hundred-mile vision with camera attachments, photographing an enemy within that radius. These photographs as distinct and large as if taken from across the street, will be lowered to the commanding officer in charge of troops below."</li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Genetically modified food:</span> "peas as large as beets" and "strawberries as large as apples."</li></ul>There were some exercises in wishful thinking, such as the view that we would all be athletic and fit in a hundred years:<span style="font-family:Arial;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span></span></span><br /><blockquote>Gymnastics will begin in the nursery, where toys and games will be designed to strengthen the muscles. Exercise will be compulsory in the schools. Every school, college and community will have a complete gymnasium. All cities will have public gymnasiums. A man or woman unable to walk ten miles at a stretch will be regarded as a weakling."<br /></blockquote>We'll try to get there in 2100. And my favorite, the somewhat mystifying prediction:<br /><blockquote>There will be No C, X or Q in our every-day alphabet. They will be abandoned because unnecessary.<br /></blockquote>The full article is <a href="http://www.yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm">available here</a>.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-80958738725221931222007-04-19T09:35:00.000-07:002007-04-19T10:01:02.015-07:00Fight Poverty with ConnectivityThe notion that large-scale handouts of aid hasn't worked to alleviate poverty is well documented. In the worst case, it enriches corrupt, autocratic kleptocracies (e.g. as it did with Mobutu in Zaire). More commonly it's simply wasted because the institutions necessary to use it are not effective, and a sort of low-grade ineffeciency and corruption takes hold. Even the biggest provider of such development aid, the World Bank, has now recognized that aid must be linked to governance to be successful (championed by Paul Wolfowitz, whose current woes do not invalidate this notion).<br /><br />The basic underlying lesson, according to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iqbal_Quadir">Iqbal Qadir</a>, founder of <a href="http://grameenphone.com">GrameenPhone</a><a href="http://grameenphone.com">,</a> is that poverty can be reduced only by empowering individuals, not governments. His own involvement in setting up a cell phone company in rural Bangladesh is testament to the individual-centered, connectivity-based model of economic development. Qadir is currently a director at the <a href="http://web.mit.edu/de/what.html">MIT Center for Developmental Entrepreneurship</a>, which has already <a href="http://web.mit.edu/de/success.html">brought to market</a> several innovative products for developing economies.<br /><br />See below for a talk that Mr. Qadir gave at the TED conference in 2005, explaining his ideas about ending poverty through connectivity. (If you don't see the embedded video,<a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/79"> click here</a>).<br /><br /><br /><br /><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0" id="VE_Player" align="middle" height="285" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf"><param name="FlashVars" value="bgColor=FFFFFF&file=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/movies/IQBALQUADIR_high.flv&autoPlay=false&fullscreenURL=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/fullscreen.html&forcePlay=false&logo=&allowFullscreen=true"><param name="quality" value="high"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF"><param name="scale" value="noscale"><param name="wmode" value="window"><embed src="http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swf" flashvars="bgColor=FFFFFF&file=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/movies/IQBALQUADIR_high.flv&autoPlay=false&fullscreenURL=http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/fullscreen.html&forcePlay=false&logo=&allowFullscreen=true" quality="high" allowscriptaccess="always" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" scale="noscale" wmode="window" name="VE_Player" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" align="middle" height="285" width="320"></embed></object>Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-83485809955631341342007-04-11T15:40:00.000-07:002007-04-11T15:43:45.625-07:00Living La Vida LocalThings are different here. The first thing I noticed were the number of "IIT <insert>" bumper stickers. Around here there are more IIT bumper stickers than for all other colleges put together! The pool in our building is full of Indian kids splashing about while their parents call out to them protectively in Hindi, Gujarati or Tamil. And the once-familiar sight of clothes hanging out to dry on window ledges and balconies, is once again common.<br /><br />We can walk to not one, but two, different Indian grocery stores. Steaming hot platefuls of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idli">idli</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosa">dosa</a> are available in abundance - and cheaply! My wife and I love <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Kerala">Keralan food</a>, so we were delighted when we found a great little place with fantastic pepper-fried chicken. Even though we don't have kids, our friends in the neighborhood tell us about the cultural center they take their kids to on the weekends - to learn Indian classical music and dance. For us less cultural pursuits, like watching <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499375/">Guru</a>, suffice. Or, if we feel like staying in, we can go pick up an Indian movie at the local video store. <br /><br />No, I'm not back in Bangalore - we live in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunnyvale%2C_California">Sunnyvale, CA</a>! Although it wasn't planned this way, it's turned out to be a great transitional place for us when we moved from San Francisco last year, and get ready to move to Bangalore next month. Sunnyvale and Fremont in the East Bay are the two centers of Indian life in the Bay Area. Everyone planning to relocate from here to India, whether Indian or not, should come and spend a couple of months here to make the transition smoother!Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-83805017521485985742007-04-09T20:30:00.000-07:002007-04-09T20:31:05.416-07:00CodaNow that I'm moving to India in a few weeks, I find myself reflecting on the fifteen or so years I have spent in the US. When I left India in 1991, it was a country that bears little resemblance to the country I will return to next month.<br /><br />The most apparent changes are the superficial ones: glitzy shopping malls (there were none in 1991) and the profusion of cable TV networks (there was no cable TV in 1991), among others. There are deeper changes too. The one that strikes me more than anything else is the sense of possibility and confidence I see in today's high school and college students. When I was in high school, the limitless possibilities that follow from rapid economic expansion was not something we really conceived of in any meaningful manner.<br /><br />A nice little illustration of all this can be found in the foreign exchange situation then, and now. In 1991, right was I was getting ready to leave for the US, India's balance of payments weaknesses suddenly caused a crisis. The government was close to defaulting on its debt, and foreign exchange reserves had dropped to about three weeks worth of imports - about $6 billion. As part of a package of reforms, India moved from a fixed to a floating exchange rate, which immediately caused a severe devaluation. I remember my father being quite upset, as my education in the US suddenly became 50% more expensive than it had been a month before!<br />(If you're interested, you can read more about the 1991 currency crisis in this <a href="http://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/staffp/2002/03/pdf/cerra.pdf">IMF paper</a>).<br /><br />Contrast that to today. For those of you who deal in India-US cross border issues, you're probably already aware of the rupee's appreciation against the dollar over the last six months. In fact, the rupee is at an at an <a href="http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/04/04/ap3581720.html">8-year high</a> against the dollar.<br /><br />Take a look at this exchange rate chart from Oct 06 to today:<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp3.blogger.com/_STiwK9AUzHs/RhsCK4Mz-7I/AAAAAAAAARQ/osp89ijhlCQ/s1600-h/INR_USD.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp3.blogger.com/_STiwK9AUzHs/RhsCK4Mz-7I/AAAAAAAAARQ/osp89ijhlCQ/s320/INR_USD.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5051633792934214578" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />The rupee has appreciated from 45.7 per USD in October last year, to 42.6 per USD currently. Foreign exchange reserves have ballooned to almost $200 billion today. It's a world away from 1991.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-40616308133436325012007-04-09T13:57:00.000-07:002007-04-09T13:58:41.026-07:00Long Lived by DesignPicking up where <a href="http://developinginnovation.blogspot.com/2007/04/microsoft-word-v-200.html">my last post</a> left off, the issue of data longevity is specially important to developing economies where the process of digitizing government records and making government services available online is just beginning. The lessons to be learned from data loss from the early adopters in more developed economies should be taken to heart.<br /><br />There's no question that this is a well-understood problem and many projects are tackling different aspects of it. For example, open standards such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument">ODF</a> reduce the risk of unreadable data. Digitization and hosting of content by service providers offloads the problem from individual consumers to service providers who are, presumably, better suited to deal with it. At the cutting edge, there's even talk of <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,130429/article.html">using bacteria for long-term data storage</a>!<br /><br />My point is not that adequate steps are not being taken. My point is that product design should incorporate principles with longevity in mind. What might these principles look like? A great place to start is by looking at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now">Clock of the Long Now</a>, conceived by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Daniel_Hillis">Danny Hillis</a> (of Thinking Machines fame). As he explains the genesis of the project:<br /><br /><blockquote> <p>I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every one hundred years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years. If I hurry I should finish the clock in time to see the cuckoo come out for the first time.</p> </blockquote> This seemingly quirky endeavor is actually a deeply insightful way to examine our notion of time and its impact on technological progress. Hillis lays out a list of design principles for his 10,000 year clock.<br /><ul><li><i>Longevity</i>: The clock should be accurate even after 10,000 years, and must not contain valuable parts (such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone" title="Gemstone">jewels</a>, expensive metals, or special alloys) that might be looted.</li></ul><ul><li><i>Maintainability</i>: Future generations should be able to keep the clock working, if necessary, with nothing more advanced than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Age" title="Bronze Age">Bronze Age</a> tools and materials.</li></ul><ul><li><i>Transparency</i>: The clock should be understandable without stopping or disassembling it; no functionality should be opaque.</li></ul><ul><li><i>Evolvability</i>: It should be possible to improve the clock over time.</li></ul><ul><li><i>Scalability</i>: To ensure that the final, large, clock will work properly, smaller prototypes must be built and tested.</li></ul>These principles seem to me to be broadly applicable. If your product, software or hardware, may be used for any duration longer than five years, you would do well to consider each of these issues (adapted for your specific situation) and how you plan to address them in your product.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-42658295057999146342007-04-08T17:06:00.000-07:002007-04-08T17:46:30.831-07:00Microsoft Office v. 2100?Those of us who have an interest in technology and want to build widely adopted products will do well to consider the issue of longevity. Building products with a long-term view is a good practice in itself; but also thinking long-term yields design requirements that tend to be beneficial for the overall product.<br /><br />As an example, consider the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book">Domesday Book</a>, a comprehensive survey of England, commissioned by William I of England, and completed in the year 1086. The book still survives and can be viewed in Britain's National Archives. Today, more than 900 years later, the book is readable, understandable, and provides valuable historical, social and economic insights to historians and scholars. Inspired by the Domesday Book, the BBC undertook to create a similar survey of England in 1986. The contents were stored as 12-inch video discs (remember those?) which are now obsolete. The digital version of the Domesday book lasted all of 20 years!<br /><br />Think about how much of the information generated in the last 40 years or so is already lost to us. Data created in some proprietary format for which the program is no longer available, or stored in obsolete media which can no longer be read. Clearly we generate a lot more content that we did before, and perhaps not all of it needs to be preserved. However, since there is no way to distinguish what should be preserved from what should not (and who gets to decide this anyway?), they are treated identically. There are groups, such as the<a href="http://www.dpconline.org/graphics/index.html"> Digital Preservation Coalition</a>, based in the UK (started as an attempt to save the 1986 version of the Domesday book as their top priority!) that are tackling the issue. But a lot more remains to be done.<br /><br />Even more important than preservation efforts are design principles that allow for the creation of long-lived content. Products designed with longevity principles in mind are the only proactive and scalable way to solve the problem. Preservation will always be a reactive and expensive fall-back option and will never offer a complete solution to the problem.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-40324631161505709282007-04-03T09:57:00.000-07:002007-04-03T10:13:35.757-07:00How Not to Get a JobSome time ago, I blogged about <a href="http://developinginnovation.blogspot.com/2007/01/connect-with-your-passion.html">connecting with your passion</a> to find the best job opportunity for you, and also about <a href="http://developinginnovation.blogspot.com/2007/02/hr-innovation-story-so-far.html">innovation in recruiting techniques</a> that enable companies to find these passionate people.<br /><br />In an interesting, and unintentionally humorous, example of what *NOT* to do, a colleague actually received this cover letter from a job applicant today:<br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-size:100%;"></span></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-size:100%;">To Whom It May Concern:<span style=""> </span><i style=""><span style=""> </span></i><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style=""><span style=""><o:p> </o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><i style=""><span style=""><o:p> </o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:courier new;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style=""> </span>This is an opportunity I've been searching for. I carefully have been selecting what Company’s to send my Resume. I’m honored to send my resume to your Company and possibly be considered as a team member. My skills along with personality make a perfect match for what you’re seeking. I look forward to meeting with you to discuss my future with your company. I'm confident, coach able, persistent, and consistent in achieving success independently or with a company that has a positive direction. Please call me so we can discuss a time to meet.<o:p></o:p></span></p></blockquote><br />While I have no idea what this person's situation is, or how qualified he is for the position, this is a letter that is guaranteed to lead to failure. What was astounding was that it came through a recruiter! How could this have made it past even the most cursory due diligence? While this is obviously an extreme example, I've seen more polished cover letters that say essentially the same thing. Where's the passion?Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-70879239358139779262007-04-02T15:30:00.000-07:002007-04-02T17:10:32.543-07:00The Decoy EffectI just finished reading "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684819066/sr=ARRAY%280x621a20f4%29/qid=ARRAY%280x62615db4%29/ref=dp_proddesc_1/104-7032340-2655956?ie=UTF8&n=283155&amp;amp;amp;qid=1175550431&qid=1175550431&sr=8-4&sr=8-4">A Beautiful Mind</a>" about the game theorist John Nash. If you haven't read the book, or seen the movie, I highly recommend that you do. Nash's life is as dramatic as it gets: genius, fame, tragedy and finally redemption.<br /><br />Game theory is an interesting, if somewhat dispiriting, lens with which to view decision-making processes. It's astonishing how predictable we are. Even when we're unpredictable, we tend to be unpredictable in a systematic (i.e. predictable) manner.<br /><br />How does any of this relate to software, technology and innovation? Only this: I think it provides a useful set of tools for product managers and marketers to have at their disposal as they think about their target markets and adoption of their products. There's one interesting example that I remembered reading about in grad school. It's a phenomenon called "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoy_effect">The Decoy Effect</a>" and provides an insight into how consumers value different attributes in a given product set. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoy_effect">wikipedia article</a> explains it very well so I won't discuss this in any more detail here. <br /><br />Thinking about current products within this framework can be a clarifying experience. As an example, consider the market for web-based meetings<span style="font-weight: bold;">.</span> There are two major players: <a href="http://webex.com/">Webex </a>and <a href="https://www.gotomeeting.com/">GoToMeeting</a>. Customers value two attributes: ease of use (to set up as well as to participate in meetings) and collaboration features. Based on my experience with both products, Webex is harder to use but has more powerful collaboration features than GoToMeeting. What sort of decoy product would increase adoption of Webex over GoToMeeting? What about vice-versa?<br /><br />By the way, the decoy effect can be used in a wide variety of circumstances. Take a look at this <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/01/AR2007040100973.html">fascinating article</a> in the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/01/AR2007040100973.html">Washington Post</a> about the decoy effect applied to the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-82968964116981505332007-03-31T09:37:00.000-07:002007-03-31T11:33:19.169-07:00Sector Watch: India's Entertainment & Media IndustryAt a time of flux in the entertainment and media industries in the United States and elsewhere (declining subscriber base for print media, disintermediation from internet video hosting), the Indian market is experiencing heady growth.According to a <a href="http://www.ficci.com/news/viewnews1.asp?news_id=1002">newly-released report</a>, co-authored by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), the Indian Media and Entertainment industry is expected to grow from its current size of $9.7 billion to $22 billion by 2011, a compound annual growth rate of 18%.<br /><br />The table below summarizes the components of this growth. Some of the numbers are almost certainly understated. For example, the size of the music industry is probably distorted by piracy, while the internet advertising market is distorted because of a lack of reliable reporting services.<br /><br /><iframe width='500' height='300' frameborder='0'src='http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pDAXIMFDcr7N0EzSPaHH0cw&output=html&gid=0&single=true&widget=true'></iframe>Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-54891990072175459582007-03-29T07:32:00.000-07:002007-03-29T07:49:23.444-07:00I'm Back (With News)My apologies for the long silence. I've been working through some recent developments in my professional life. In fact, they pertain to the focus of this blog, so I will share them here. If you've read this blog with any regularity, you know that I am very optimistic about India's growth prospects over the next 25-30 years. Sustained growth for 25+ years is transformative - we've already seen how 15 years of growth (since the 1991 reforms) have utterly changed the urban landscape. This is arguably the most profound development globally that I will witness in my lifetime. I'd like to participate in it, and help where I can, rather than watching from afar (in my case, from the Bay Area in California).<br /><br />With that in mind, my wife and I have decided to move to India. We will leave the Bay Area in a couple of months, and move to Bangalore. I will join the <a href="http://www.google.co.in/jobs/sw-bangalore.html">Google office in Bangalore</a> (they're hiring!) as a Product Manager. It's an exciting role, in a great company, at a time of enormous opportunity. I can't wait to get started!<br /><br />I intend to keep blogging, during and after the transition to India. I hope that the changed perspective I can bring from being on the ground in India will be useful.<br /><br />Thank you all for your patience during the long period of silence. I'm back in the blogosphere and would love to hear from you! Send me your comments and thoughts! In particular, if any of you have moved from the US to India, I would love to get your advice as we plan our move back.Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1094976784334081924.post-82477982814955045842007-03-11T11:34:00.000-07:002007-03-11T11:34:49.823-07:00All Together Now....<a href="http://willprice.blogspot.com/">Will Price </a>(who is fast becoming one of my favorite bloggers) has <a href="http://willprice.blogspot.com/2007/03/you-can-multi-task-but-your-company.html">another great post</a> on the virtues of alignment. The key point he makes is that entrepreneurs can context-switch effortlessly, but that same capability cannot (and should not) be expected of the organization as a whole. In fact, this is the key test of the maturity of an early-stage company founder.<br /><br />When your company starts out, you are hunting for validation, for a niche. You conduct small-scale experiments, involving marketing campaigns and product prototypes/demos. You then gather feedback and hopefully find a segment or two where the value proposition is easy to demonstrate, the need is urgent, and there is money available to solve the problem. You then double down on those segments. First, work your tail off to get anchor, referenceable customers, and then use those to streamline and accelerate the sales process. All the while, the product team is conducting small-scale experiments to identify the next couple of segments to target.<br /><br />At least, that's how things should go. In practice, this discipline is very hard to achieve, and organizational alignment falls directly as a consequence of not following this disciplined approach. I've seen a couple of key areas that lead to a lack of alignment in the organization:<br /><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Failure to set up clear, time-bound success (and failure) criteria. </span> Early-stage companies do need to experiment; its unclear up front in most cases where you should be selling your product, who the ideal customer is etc. However, too often these experiments are not controlled. Without an up-front definition of when to consider the experiment a success, and when to walk away, its too easy to be led into one rat-hole after another, where success is just over the horizon, just one demo away. A common case is when you're able to get a toe-hold into a large enterprise and keep trying to accommodate their every request for information, for endless meetings, for product enhancements etc, without a clear idea of the end game. While the sale may eventually happen, the opportunity cost for the organization is immense.</li></ul><ul><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Trying to do too much.</span> You've conducted a couple of experiments, and found a couple of areas in which your product might add value. However, these areas don't have a lot to do with each other. You might rationalize this away and find connections where none really exist, but really you know that you've come to a key decision-point. Do I invest in solving problem X or problem Y? The thing is: you have to pick and quickly align the organization behind your choice. If you don't, the default trajectory is that there will be people in the organization who try to solve each problem, and the organization eventually splinters.<br /></li></ul>Alignment is relatively easy to test for: ask your marketing and sales people what they think the company does. Then ask your engineers. Ask the back office folks: finance, adminsitration, HR. Ask your customers. Ask analysts and the press. Ask them once every quarter. If the responses are roughly the same, then congratulations! You've kept the organization aligned. If not, don't fool yourself - you've got a serious problem and you need to address it as quickly as possible. Alignment is relatively easy to test for, but I don't see it happening too often. Could it be because we don't particularly want to know the answer?Rahulhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16567400574616640958noreply@blogger.com