Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

Inspired by work done by Phonethics, I also thought I would create some characters. And some lives. Here is the first draft.

Koncious Kapoor

KK is our typical metrosexual Indian. He belongs to a very small time in UP and his is the first family to have stepped out of their town. They hence have an elevated status amongst their peers. Kconcious Kapoor has studied in a boarding school and although he has a modernish outlook towards life, he is still conscious of his background and upbringing. Like any typical young Indian, he wants to get rich quick, become famous and is really scared of facing an audience.

Khoob Bai

Everyone knows that KB is 35ish, claims to be 25ish, looks 30ish and is 45ish in real. She does everything including cleaning utensils, scrubbing floors, acting as the informal communication channel between young lovers, delivering gossip and obviously peeping on personal affairs of her employers. She knows more secrets than the FBI, CIA, RAW, The Mossad, MI6 and KGB combined. And she keeps dropping hints about her (in)famous access to information. She promises her loyalty to everyone but she is loyal to only one thing - money.

Totaram Sharma

better known as Sharma Ji in his colony and Sharma Babu in his office. He is a struggling middle aged government employee who has been a clerk since last 30 years and has seen two salary hikes and one promotion. He is a perpetual landmark on his office canvas. All the kids in his colony hate him for his never ending cribbing about noise and ruckus that these kids make. He has two teenaged daughters that add to his agony in life. He is also known for speaking for hours without making any sense at all.

Toofan Kumar

is in a perpetual state of hurry. He is rushing for something or the other. He even talks as fast as he walks. Folklore has it that he was last seen relaxing when he was standing in the visa queue to US of A. He thinks that world today is full of opportunists and he needs to do something about it. He feels very passionately about all the popular social causes and actively participates in debates around these. Motive is not to save trees or prevent child abuse but to pave a road for his political dreams. And of course the visa was rejected.

Happy Singh

is a typical surd. Happy go lucky, content and hungry - all three at the same time. Thanks to his beard, no one knows where his smile begins and ends. Or if he is smiling at all. He is on the heavier side and has an insatiable appetite. Every time he sees a cow, goat, chicken or any other animal of edible quality, his hunger pangs strike him. He is still single with no immediate plans or chances either. His family lives in Ludhiana and thus he has all the money he needs to live comfortably without working.

This has potential to become a huge business by itself. Not on the lines of what Phonethics is doing but something else. Keep watching.

Cast Away is an awesome movie. You see it and you come back with two things.  One, Tom Hanks survives the lonely island. And Two, he is a FedEx employee and he delivers that Wilson ball in the end.

Then there is a book called How Starbucks saved my life. You read the book and you again remember two things. One is making tough decisions. And two how Starbucks helped a guy discover what he wanted in life.

Both these, the movie and the book are awesome pieces of entertainment. People have seen these, talked about these and recommended these to their friends. On a standalone basis both of them are pieces of art. And most probably, both were original productions created by individuals without any influence by the company they talk about. And this is where the idea comes. What if both of them were sponsored and paid by the company they talk about?

I have been thinking about a company that creates these branded entertainment products for money. Obviously there are limitations and issues but none that stops the company from flourishing. Please note that this is very different from product placements in media. This is creating the product first and then inserting the brand.

Business Need: Advertising as we know it, would be dead very soon. People would start filtering advertisements automatically and recommendations from influences would start loosing meaning. then what? The solution lies in creating media around brand. Think of The Truman Show done at a smaller scale.

Possible Entertainment Options: This could be a very very long list. Starting with movies, television shows, radio shows to print media (newspaper, magazines, books, travelogues etc.) to interactive media (Internet, blogs, websites), others (computer games, hotspots, retail). The list is long.

Problem Areas: There are quite a few. Biggest one is obsolescence. Once an entertainment outlet is used for a brand, it becomes difficult to innovate and use the same medium for another brand. Then there are other petty issues like it being very expensive for brands. We are talking about professional book writers, movie makers, gaming companies working on the brand. We can explore cheaper options like blogs and websites but how many consumers of a brand like say Rin, be on Internet? They would be on TV for sure.

A lot more thought needs to go in place. I have about 4 more pages of random thoughts and comments. If anyone is interesting in talking more about it, please let me know and I shall share those docs.

Any opinions? thoughts?

Yesterday I was reading The Ambler Warning by Robert Ludlum and he talks about this interesting 1v1 dilemma. Act vs Analyze.

There are basically two kinds of people. People who analyze and people who act.

The ones who analyze things are in great demand. Most of managers, consultants, experts are generally the ones who analyze. They look at any situation with an analyzing mind, often use decision trees, rely on expertise and use tools to find solutions to the problems they are facing. Their motivation is to make a rational decision and they need an anchor to base their decision on. Ambiguity does not have any place in these decisions. They have created and live by terms like water-tight, rational decisions etc.

And then there is a second breed of people. People who act. They do. They are the ones who don’t really understand, cant really explain and don’t believe in analysis, research and other frivolities around decision-making. They claim that they just know when a thing is correct and when something is missing. They use words like gut feel, guess work, spur-of-the-moment, knew-it-all-along etc. These people are more likely to be sportsmen, entrepreneurs etc. who rather live on the edge than to wait in the conference rooms or meeting halls.

You could be someone who either acts or analyzes. There is nothing wrong on picking either. Its all about personal comfort (and breaking away from it).

Me, I have relied all my life on analysis. I think its about time I move on to action (wow a discovery… Action comes from Act).

Related list of 1v1s
- 1v1: Excellence vs Mediocrity
- 1v1: Expert vs Employee
- 1v1: Popular vs Pertinent

Even after all these years of the so-called IT revolution, India is still struggling for a business/company that has created intellectual capital and has thus created a true enterprise with roots in research and development. I think its about time to take stock and figure out why.

No one would dispute that India has all it takes to create sustainable, world-class IP businesses. We have the requisite manpower. We have the intellectual prowess. We have the infrastructure (at least at few places). And we have people who can be effective leaders and mentors. All the pieces of jigsaw puzzles are there. Someone just needs to put all of them at one place at the same time.

This is where the story becomes interesting. People are scattered across geography and time. And these pieces don’t know that they are parts of something bigger and they all can play a role. Even if they realize that they can take their ideas to fruition, they don’t know where and how to find complementary skill-sets. We need something, a system probably to help these people come together.

Reminds me of classical markets. Every buyer knows that they will find the best sellers at the market place and every seller knows that they will find the most generous and knowledgeable buyers at the market. Everyone converges to the market and everyone goes back happy.

A look at all great places to work would reveal that people thrive in presence of great minds around them. Everyone learns off each other and collectively the tribe becomes stronger. Starting with Microsoft, moving on to Google and now Facebook, most technology people want to be at a place where they can be pushed and challenged by their peers and they can enrich their experiences. Microsoft, Google and Facebook are like above-mentioned markets. Programmers, Coders, Managers and even Chefs are jumping the gun and looking for better place. A place where all great minds converge and learn off each other and grow individually (and obviously to a place that gives them stock options).

India today needs someone to create such markets that enables people with complementary skills to come together and get them start talking to each other. Events like barCamps, OCC, MOMO and websites like VentureWoods, pluggd.In are doing it to some extent.

And now the questions. Are they really sufficient? Are they enabling people spread across geographies to come together? More importantly so these people have complementary skill sets? Any critics? Thoughts? Opinions?

P.S.: The title might be an misnomer …

Date: 29th March 2008
Loc: SJSOM, IIT Mumbai
Agenda: None :)

And this “none” agenda makes a barcamp an interesting place to go. I was there for Mumbai Barcamp 2 also and I met few good people there. Hope to bump into more people this time. Also, last time, I saw a lot of people and companies walking in herds and trying to create things without even knowing “the why” question. Hope things change this time around.

Register: http://barcampmumbai.org/BCM3_registrants

As of now 200 people have registered already. Keep watching this space for more.

Update: As on 26th March, more than 400 registrations. Looks promising.

Third in series after Popular vs Pertinent, Expert vs Employee.

Excellence vs Mediocrity

You can either pursue excellence or remain a mediocre.

A mediocre by definition is someone engaging in an act where objective is to finish the task rather than to complete it with best of abilities. Often, shortcuts are used and outcomes are ordinary. Borrowed wisdom is put to work and original thought process takes a back seat.

Excellence is where the objective is to compete with oneself. Idea is to create something out of the world even though the objective is well defined. Excellence could be in way you work, in way you opine of things or even the way you execute. People who pursue excellence sleep easy and tight.

Mediocrity vs Excellence in one line: The pursuit of excellence creates original thoughts that a mediocre person would put to use.

Both these are more about an attitude rather than expertise or availability of resources. And once you start the pursuit of excellence, its very easy to fall in the trap and move back to mediocrity. By definition, most of the human population falls in the mediocre category and funny thing is that they dont even realize it.

You can pursue only one at a time. You could be mediocre or you could be excellent. What are you?

Introducing Idea Economy.