Friday, December 09, 2005

Experience Economy

Companies used to focus on making new, better, or cheaper products and services--and then selling them in the marketplace. Now, the game is to create wonderful and emotional experiences for consumers around whatever is being sold. It’s the experience that counts, not the product. While that business model has long been the preserve of cult-like brands such as Starbucks and Apple, it’s fast becoming the norm in all industries. The goal: to build communities of passionate and loyal consumers.


What management thinkers B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore first identified as The Experience Economy several years ago has finally come to pass.

Businessweek Dec 7 2005

Friday, December 02, 2005

Content creator pays for end user's access to technlogy.

A collect call is a well established idea in telecom. This idea might just work in software. I am not sure if such an attempt has been made in technolgy sector.

The conventional model is that you buy Application software to create, edit business documents. Next you send an attachment of you document to the recipient.


Now I am beginning to wonder if the "Collect call" Idea can be applied to software?

Imagine that you are a big corporation and you can afford expensive software, so you buy the authoring software. In the conventional situation the reciever of the document should have the same application software to read your document.

Suppose you have embeded the permissions into the document such that the reader can just plug in a password and start editing the document without haveing to purchase the application software.

The user basically has a free verison of your application software which does not allow authoring but only reading, now with permissions set he can have access to funtionality , the usage of which has been payied for by the sender.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Ownership of Digital Content.

Banks are allowed to keep lockers and customers have to right to store anything in them. i.e the source of your assest are not questioned at the Banks.

Now if have a few Gigs of content , then the service provider should not question me as to how I have come into the possesion. So as to host the content.

This should be the case, but Digital rights managements look to certify the owner ship of Digital data. what happens when I buy a softcopy of a music piece and then decide to Gift the piece to a friend.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

I, Cringely . NerdTV08

I, Cringely . NerdTV . Transcript | PBS: "Bob: What were some of your big successes?

Avram: Mine personally? I would have to say now we have to separate strategic success from financial success or whatever. Broadcast.com was a huge win for us financially 'cause we sold it to - we were the first people in there. We were the first people in Verisign. I think we put a million dollars in. We took out, I don't remember exactly, but it would be well over 500 million dollars.

Bob: Wow."

Sunday, November 13, 2005

The end of the age of the techie?

Gartner said that IT jobs will be influenced by four major trends:

• Jobs in technology infrastructure and services will decline in end-user organizations and grow in service, hardware and software companies, but many of those jobs will be in developing economies.

• Business intelligence, online consumer services and collaboration will grow in user companies, systems integrators and consulting companies.

• There will be opportunities in process design and management in terms of competitive business processes, design of process automation and operational processes.

• Relationship and sourcing management will gain ground, demanding strengths in managing "intangibles" and managing geographically distributed parties with different work outcomes and cultures.

More at News.com

Friday, August 12, 2005

India's Software Dream Run Is Far From Over

The local Indian software service providers : The median wage for a seasoned language programmer is $11,423 a year in India, according to a survey by Seattle-based PayScale; it's $83,000 in the U.S


Nasscom Article

A Web Revolution - AJAX

I have been using Google Maps , Gmail. I just got started on Orkut. A lot of talk has been going around on the fundamental changes that are going on the Internet. The most noticeable was the usability of web applications. Google has been able to deliver lightning fast access to mail with some of the cleverst use of Javascripts.



Defining Ajax

Ajax isn’t a technology. It’s really several technologies, each flourishing in its own right, coming together in powerful new ways. Ajax incorporates:

* standards-based presentation using XHTML and CSS;
* dynamic display and interaction using the Document Object Model;
* data interchange and manipulation using XML and XSLT;
* asynchronous data retrieval using XMLHttpRequest;
* and JavaScript binding everything together.

U can read the whole article here:

www.adaptivepath.com

Monday, March 28, 2005

Star performer, Competence, Incompetence, Mediocrity!

It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. And yet most people—especially most teachers and most organizations—concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and time should go instead to making a competent person into a star performer.

My own search engine

The number of search sites is also skyrocketing, as the technological barrier for search has been lowered. In December, Manning Publications published Lucene in Action, a guide to creating search engines with open-source software called Lucene, which is already used on singer Bob Dylan's Web site. Armed with this book, the average programmer can create a search engine in less than a day, says co-author Erik Hatcher.

www.businessweek.com/technology/



Monday, March 14, 2005

Outsourcing Innovation

Sweeping Overhaul
India is emerging as a heavyweight in design, too. The top players in making the country world-class in software development, including HCL and Wipro, are expected to help India boost its contract R&D revenues from $1 billion a year now to $8 billion in three years. One of Wipro's many labs is in a modest office off dusty, congested Hosur Road in Bangalore. There, 1,000 young engineers partitioned into brightly lit pods jammed with circuit boards, chips, and steel housings hunch over 26 development projects. Among them is a hands-free telephone system that attaches to the visor of a European sports car. At another pod, designers tinker with a full dashboard embedded with a satellite navigation system. Inside other Wipro labs in Bangalore, engineers are designing prototypes for everything from high-definition TVs to satellite set-top boxes

Complete article:

www.businessweek.com/magazine/

Thursday, February 10, 2005

How much is your salary worth??

One Singaporean worker
costs as much as …
3 … in Malaysia
8 … in Thailand
13 … in China
18 … in India.”

Source: The Straits Times/08.18.03

Big Mergers!!

Are Big Mergers Successful!

“When asked to name just one big merger that had lived up to expectations, Leon Cooperman, former cochairman of Goldman Sachs’ Investment Policy Committee, answered: I’m sure there are success stories out there, but at this moment I draw a blank.”

Mark Sirower, The Synergy Trap

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Are U Talented enough???

WHY “TALENT” MATTERS …

Came across this quote from Microsoft’s former chief scientist, Nathan Myhrvold:
“The top software developers are more productive than average software developers not by a factor of 10X or 100X or even 1000X, but by 10,000X.

How bad oraganizations are in dealing with PEOPLE.

BELIEVE IT AND WEEP …

Some terribly dispiriting figures from a Harris Poll of 23,000 full-time U.S. workers in key industries.

Herewith a sample:

37% have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve;

20% are “enthusiastic” about their team’s goals. [TP: could the sample include the U.S. Olympic basketball team?];

15% feel their organization enables them to execute key goals;

15% describe their organization as a “high-trust environment;”

10% believe the organization holds people “accountable for results.” (And so on.)


Management & Leadership!!

I have always been facinated about differences in middle management and leaders.

My thoughts-
Management - you spend shorter time in learning how things are done and implement them on day to day basis.

Leaders - They see what can be, bring about changes in perception . Their advise last longer , like an old fav mp3.



Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

Peter F. Drucker

Business , Economics & People.

The Future Creative Employee!!!

“The past few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind—computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBAs who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.” —Dan Pink, A Whole New Mind

- From www.tompeters.com