I want to be an Entrepreneur (a chicken and egg story)

The other day, over a random lunchtime conversation with this very interesting startup Rechargion that is working on Clean Energy Solutions (Na-ion and Li-S batteries as an example), we were discussing the startup eco- system in India. And someone at the table said they were very impressed that increasingly now one sees people at final placement sessions of premier engineering institutes opting out of placement, saying “we want to be entrepreneurs”.

I’ve seen many such kids too – bright young things with unicorn shaped dreams fuelled by the Flipkarts and the Zomatos…..and this is great – maybe finally the onset of the Silicon Valley-isation of India.

My only issue with many of these, however – they want to entrepreneurs, but have no idea! And I don’t mean idea about what it entails to BE an entrepreneur (which is gruelling back-breaking disheartening work most of the times – before exciting/ rewarding payoffs MAYBE), but, – they have NO idea WHAT they want to do – not a problem they have identified that needs a solution, not a better(faster/ more convenient/ easier/ cheaper…) way to do things, not…

Made me look up the definition of “entrepreneur” – the simplest one (top hit on google) says – An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks, enjoying most of the rewards. I did like this one though – an innovator who brings forth economic development through new combinations of factors of production. Another one that said – someone who sees an opportunity and creates a business to exploit it.

That’s the point I’m making – identifying the opportunity – WHAT is it that you’re trying to do / what is the pain point that you’re solving for/ the gap you are addressing/ the technology you are introducing, or, harder still, the need you’re creating….And, of course, is there a market for it? or, can you create a market for it?

It can’t be – I want to be an entrepreneur – just because I think I should – and poof! (like Raju ban gaya gentleman!) I mean – come on yaar, chicken se pehle egg hai ki nahi?

Ofcourse there needs to be passion, and competitiveness, and risk apetite, and discipline, and fire in the belly, and skin in the game – all these buzz words one hears in the VC world – and then the stars have to align! par, anda tou chahiye na!

(Unpopular opinion) – but this reminds of my problem with the creativity/ innovation workshops one used to attend in the corporate world – I mean, I get that you can enable creativity and encourage innovation, you can provide a toolkit for ideation and a facilitative environment to hone creativity, and to teach thinking outside the box, but there has to be a problem you are trying to solve (or an opportunity you are addressing! (don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying process improvement ideas can’t come from brainstorming or all the other tools, I’m just not sure that creation of an opportunity is something that can be taught. The opportunity/ that idea/ that spark – HAS to come from the person wanting to be the entrepreneur.

So I guess today’s question is  – What do you think is the pre requisite to be an entrepreneur. Is it enough that someone WANTS to become one (so has the bent of mind and the resilience)…

#foodforthought

On 18 hour work days and Quiet Quitting

I get Shantanu Deshpande. I really do – maybe its generational, maybe its just a type; but I have more than a sneaking fellow feeling for him. So does the husband. And so do/ did Roger Federer, Steve Jobs, Indira Gandhi and Amitabh Bachchan.

I mean, I now lead a life which I worry is a very bad example to my kids in how checked out it is – I walk 15k steps a day while taking dog for ambulatory walks; read (and re read) old comfortable books (like Blytons and Potters and Heyers) while generating HUGE tsundoku; attend music groups; avidly follow cooking trends (on that topic – butter boards: yes or no?); clock 8 hours plus on average on several devices; and drink copious amounts of beer on weekends. Thankfully, the husband’s lifestyle is the exact opposite – his day begins at like 5 am-ish, and ends at 1 am-ish – with maybe an hour and a half for other stuff like eating; walking dog. The rest – he is working. (Except for the drinking on weekends). I’m hoping the kids learn from the dad even if they aspire to the mom.

But, this lifestyle of mine came AFTER years of backbreaking slogging – of, in fact, much more than 18 hour workdays – and that, irrespective of whether I worked in a privately held Indian business, a Multinational Corporation, or of course my own venture. I think I’ve recorded this somewhere earlier: when we were running our start-up; given it was in the early days of digital media – so, a very new domain, and completely new roles at entrepreneurship for us partners, also new geographies that were not co- located, we needed to have really long hours, and often, undefined work scope. It was NOT easy – but, as I told some teams who were complaining about the long work hours – ‘nothing you can say about unreasonable hours will astonish me, as I’ve done all this and more’….

So I now feel reasonably guiltless about my life of leisure – I think it is well earned – I’ve paid my dues and am now reaping the reward – the reward is compounded by the fact that I don’t really have a hugely expensive lifestyle and am very happy to just smell the roses as it were.

I think our generation (and definitely those before us) had this very strict effort and reward code – you work hard, you get your reward (in money/ in time/ in success whatever). It was generally acknowledged and proven that you didn’t get good marks unless you slogged, and that meant you didn’t get admissions into good colleges, and that meant you didn’t get good jobs, and that meant you didn’t make good money and that meant you didn’t have a good lifestyle. It was fairly direct correlation, and fairly organic growth.

Also, it was a waterfall sequence related to life cycle stages – work at one phase/ family at the next/ retirement and attendant benefits at the next. And, at the overlapping stages, it entailed constant juggling.

But, I think times have changed drastically (at least in urban middle class cohorts). Maybe it’s the culture of instant gratification, (no waiting in line at STD booth for calls/ hungry at 2 am? just order swiggy/ spent too much this semester? a click and mom wires money…). Maybe it’s the wave of cool start ups – with so many unicorns around that enable exponential payoffs and reward, the newer generations want a non correlated effort-reward equation. As I see it, the newer younger workforce is not willing to submit one’s life at the altar of their jobs.

Hence the uproar on Shantanu Deshpande’s edict (and his subsequent resignation). Hence quiet quitting. Hence the workation trend. Hence the shortening median tenure at a single job (down from 36 odd months to 18 now).

The good part about this – the fact that this generation wants ownership of their time. They feel they are multi dimensional, they want to explore different parts of themselves, and they do not necessarily feel that money is equal to success.

They probably also feel that hard is not equal to smart – which is valid – one doesn’t necessarily want everyone slogging at stuff that could be done quicker/ better – technology now works tirelessly at enabling that very thing. 

The problem with this however is when this desire translates to a work ethic that makes the job just the job, when the commitment/ the drive for excellence/ the passion is not only lacking, it is considered not a good thing. Because, lets face it – there ARE times when you need the 18 hour work day – it’s not ideal, but it’s unavoidable. Because, unicorns and stock options notwithstanding, earning money is not easy – it takes long, unremitting hours very often. And, one has to strike a balance between ensuring good physical and mental health, and giving one’s all to what you are doing.

So, one has to wonder – it’s great that the current generation is making things easier for itself and that hedonism is a quasi virtue, and definitely that folks are prioritising health over everything. But, in the process, are we creating a less hardy/ more entitled generation? When chips are down, will this generation be able to cope? Or am I just too old and cynical? Food for Thought.

Mind your language/ Keeping Up with the Zoomers

Playlist my DD made to introduce me to music she thinks I will like

So apparently one stagnates in music listening at about 33 years of age  – ie, you don’t really broaden your musical horizons once you hit your 30s. I think this is largely true for me – with any additions to my 60s/ 70s music playlist being because of a live concert I attended, or something I learned in a class or for a performance (hence very experiential), or something my kids made me listen to (that poor Avicii was one of those – so also are Mumford and Sons and Arctic Monkeys and Brendon Urie).

Sometimes my friend Rupa, who has two very trendy young adults at home, sends me recos – Prateek Kuhad was one such name (which I learned later put me in the august company of Barack Obama).  

Having said that, when you see a name cropping up in all your kids’ friends’ Instagram pages again and again (yes, I’m stalker mom!), and then see that same name walk away with five Grammies, you know its time to listen to that artist. Hence, on a lazy summer day, I try and search for Billie Eilish (“unapologetically dark, weird, and angsty, Billie Eilish is the anti-pop-star her generation deserves”). DD happens to be looking over my shoulder as I do that, and she says – “ok, listen to “Bad Guy””. And then follows it up with this astounding remark – “Ma, did you know that this video got the most viewed comment on youtube” Huh? What? Say again? This sentence is sooooo weird on so many different levels!  A) A comment on youtube gets viewed? Why??? b) It gets viewed (now) 2.9 million times!!!!!!! woah. What’s WRONG with people? C) The comment is – “I’m the bald guy” by Seth Everman – huh???? Duh? Srsly????? D) Why does the whole world know about this???

I BET I’m the only person of my generation who knows this (I tested this hypothesis, and it was true)….

I thought this, combined with the strange times we live in, is a good time to do a follow up on my old post of new words in the dictionary. Many of these are just Gen Z slang that is interesting/ baffling – I have been stuck with one GenZ-er at home during lockdown so have had many educational episodes about this. Some are words that current affairs have given rise to – may even be in existence for a while, but either weren’t topical earlier, or I hadn’t registered them. I should add, they are mostly words or phrases that I have come across recently in my reading, that I have had to google or ask DDs for the meaning of. In some cases, it is words I have known and used, but only recently discovered the interesting origin of.

As I listed them, they kind of naturally fell into a few clusters:

Phrases where meanings can be kind of derived (or at least understood because they are similar to earlier slang)

Lit – When something is amazing, “popping”, high-energy, or otherwise great. It could also be used to mean intoxicated or drunk (boomer equivalent was loaded I guess in that context)

Fam/ Squad – Used to describe those you consider close friends. DD texts on this group of family friends – “Hey fam, see I made lit chicken”.

Fire – Something that is cool (oh well, or hot) and amazing.  “The chicken was fire.” The boomer slang equivalent of “fire” is “groovy” – though groovy normally implied music. “That album is groovy.”

Goals – A term used to describe what someone wants in their life (I’ve seen it most often in comments on Insta – “Couple goals, squad goals”, or just “Goals”). 

Mood – Used as “same here”/ relatable/ summing up one’s life. Example: “That old man is such a mood.”, or just “mood”! (GenZ is certainly economical with words)

Hangry – Hungry + angry (anger usually a result of the hunger) – every mum knows this one, it just took Gen Z to coin a word for it. I would have also used Slangry (sleepy + angry). (Umm, apparently ”Horngry” is another popular term)

Gucci – Comes from the high-end fashion brand. Another way to say “good,” “chill,” or “awesome.” For example: “Is that fine with you?” “Yeah brother, it’s Gucci.” Incidentally, brother does not mean male sibling – it is just a form of address

Flex – Knowingly flaunt and show off, or, the thing being shown off . “That car’s a flex.” 

No cap – Seriously. “I could really do with a burger right now no cap.”

Netflix party – A virtual hangout zone where folks watch the same shows or movies together (I was lulled into thinking one could watch each other like VR or something – much to my disappointment, my daughter watched the same show many miles across a sea, while we watched it at home. The only difference, one could text each other at appropriate moments to say – oooh this scene is so lit! 

Hipster Babu

Hipster – While the word can be traced back to the 1930s, with the “hip” person being the one who knew all about, say, jazz; interestingly, for the Gen Z, all millenials are hipsters. Every generation needs a derisive label for their trendy young people – the peace-loving boomers in the 1960s were hippies (some scholars speculate that “hipster” became “hippie,” before then coming back again). But this one is a reverse trend – Millennials in the 2010s became vintage flannel and skinny jean-wearing/ retro-tech loving hipsters. My older daughter, when she had her very annoying “messy bun” hairdo, was called “hipster babu” by my younger daughter and her friends.

 

Smol – Extremely small and cute; or, extremely large and cute in an ironic way. Basically, just cute. I always thought this was a bad spelling thing when I saw it on the kids’ posts – but no, its genuine!

Doggo/Pupper – Yes, dog – every gen must say ordinary things differently I guess.

Henlo – A dog’s way of saying “hello”.  

Queen/Kween – You use this phrase to hype your friends or yourself.  “YAAAS QUEEN”

Adulting – its the millenials/ Gen Z doing adult things such as paying bills, getting insurance, getting a job etc. (my older one and her friends constantly bewail adulting. Specially when cooking/ doing laundry)

Finsta – Short for “fake Instagram.” A second Instagram account that someone has, typically used for memes, inside jokes, etc., only for the eyes of close friends. ALL the kids I pride myself on being friends with on Insta, have finstas – and NONE OF THEM accepts my invites for those accounts 😦

Basic – Refers to someone who is unoriginal and only follows mainstream trends. One has to say this as “ya’ basic” apparently – a famous moment of the Gen Z fave show the Good Place. 

Can’t even – An expression that denotes various emotional responses when a person can’t comprehend what was said or what’s happening. “Ms. X. is going on and on in English. Zahaan is snoring. Im dying, I can’t even!”

Boujee – Someone who enjoys the lavish and extravagant things in life. One assumes this is derived from Bourgeois/ Bourgeoisie (with similar insulting overtones) – but with nuances of middle class vs. lavish

 Flashpacking – Backpacking with a slightly larger budget. Sometimes, also known as “champagne backpacking.”

Mankini – A brief one-piece bathing garment for men, with a T-back. Interestingly, in my old list, I had featured Burquini.

Muffin Top : A roll of fat visible above the top of a pair of women’s tight-fitting low-waisted trousers. (That’s me, even in high waisted not tight fitting trousers)

Grocerant – Any store selling a retail food item that is ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat. 

Voluntold – The exact opposite of volunteering. Always used in reference to an unpleasant task to which you have been assigned by your boss. “Her mother voluntold her for the job”

And last, but not the least: 

Clap Those Cheeks – A euphemism for sex

 

Strange Gen Z phrases that I have learnt from DDs/ their friends and my family now uses as common lingo – albeit wrongly very often

No U – A deflection, NO U is a sarcastic way of pointing out that the Original Poster’s [OP] comments apply more to himself and not to the one he/she/they are trolling. Sometimes is also used kindly – as in Insta, a pretty picture has – “hawwwttttieee”, and then the OP says “No U”.

OK Boomer : Generation Z’s dismissive response to suggestions from anybody older. A suitable riposte nowadays for Gen Z could be, Ok Zoomer – which is, however, very “cringe”. 

Slaps – Positive term for anything cool, but most frequently used to describe a good song: “That song really slaps.”

Stan – A “stalker fan.” You’re not just a fan; you’re a huge fan on the verge of stalking (but not in a creepy way!). As our friend Gaurav, who loves geeky facts, gleefully told my DD at the end of a Gen Z slang education session, it originated from an Eminem song of the same name. It is however, used more, for some odd reason, with a plural first person pronoun. So, “we stan Sangita auntie”!

Tea – The scoop or gossip. “Spill the tea.” “Tea” is also used when one is agreeing with a point someone has just said. “Last night was a mess. “Tea.” The boomer slang equivalent of “tea” is “the skinny.” 

Thicc – Pleasantly plump; curvy in the right places (especially the butt or thighs). This is my favourite Gen Z word – just because a) it applies to me, and b) its so delightful! 

VSCO Girl – A really “basic” white girl who usually has a hydro flask and a metal straw; uses terms like “sksksks”; wears shell necklaces, scrunchies, oversized t-shirts, short shorts, and Birkenstocks; and talks a lot about saving the turtles. They’re named after a picture editing app called VSCO (pronounced visco).

Salty – To be “salty” is to be annoyed, upset, or bitter, usually about something minor. The boomer slang equivalent of “salty” is “ticked off.”

Bop/Banger – If a song is really good or enjoyable, it’s a “bop” or a “banger”. The usage is contentious in my household – my VERY boomer husband (even by my standards) has been trying to get this right – with various attempts of – “A, this is a bopping song”, evoking gales of mirth from A

Cancelled – If someone does something the internet deems “problematic”, they are “cancelled”. When Divit was bullying my nephew Ben, the girls said, “Divit is cancelled”. “Trump needs to get cancelled already.” However, Cancel culture = Boycotting/ Removing something or someone out of your life, usually following a controversial or offensive statement. This can get quite toxic as you can imagine

Yeet = Throw Out. Used beautifully by a young friend while teaching History to DD.

Yeet – coming originally from basketball, it meant an exclamation of excitement, approval, surprise, or all-around energy. But now it has morphed to also meaning – “throwing out”.

 

 

 

Abbreviations. Yes, more of! We did say this is the age of economy – “soz” has become a family catchphrase.

Hmu – An acronym for “hit me up” which could refer to hanging out, texting, or talking on the phone.

Fr – Short for for real. Example: “I mean it, fr.”

Tfw – Short for that feel(ing) when. “Tfw you’re ready for lockdown to end but the Corona stat reaches half a million”

W = Short for “win”. “Today I got out of bed at noon and that’s a W for me.”

ITL – “Invited to leave”; that is, firing someone.

UTTR – “Up and to the right”, like a graph of a trend of growth pre Corona

GAFA – Google Amazon Facebook apple

Af = Short for as f**k. Means “extremely”. “I’m tired af.” This one, given the context, I couldn’t even guess at (I kept thinking – after the fact???) – so I asked DD – and she was like, ma, I’m not going to say it!

Idgaf – yes you got it – I don’t give a f@$k. (Also a song by Dua Lipa)

TERFs – Coined in 2008 by Viv Smythe, ‘terf’ is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. Implies those who reject that trans women are women, assert the exclusion of trans women from women’s spaces and are opposed to transgender rights legislation. In the spotlight recently due to Rowling’s recent transphobic tweet, ‘Terf’ became the most searched query on Google

 

Technology led phrases

Pwned – Having origins in video game culture, “pwned” is used to imply that someone has been controlled or compromised (kind of like owned – o and p are next to each other on the keypad). “Have I Been Pwned” is a website that allows Internet users to check whether their personal data has been hacked into.

Ambient computing –  Ambient computing refers to technologies that allow people to use a computer without realizing they’re doing it – its a combination of hardware, software, user experience and machine/human interaction and learning – a variety of technologies, including motion tracking, speech recognition, gestures, wearables, and artificial intelligence to achieve this goal. 

“Vision” from the Avengers Series – Super Intelligence done well 

Super intelligence –  An intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills. It could be a digital computer, an ensemble of networked computers or cultured cortical tissue. Elon Musk fears it – says could be a immortal dictator/ more dangerous than nuclear warheads. Bill Gates endorses this view.

Slide Into Their DMs – A phrase used to signify that one wants to send a flirtatious message over social media.

@ me next time – This term originated on Twitter, where you could “subtweet” someone, that is, talk about them indirectly. Telling someone to “@” you is telling them to stop being shady and talk to you directly 

Derp – Used as a substitute for speech regarded as meaningless or stupid, or to comment on a foolish or stupid action. Derp is often used for a character or an act (derping) not crucial to the story-telling, primarily in rage comics. Derp comes with facial expressions and has a female counterpart named Derpina.

Noob – A person who is inexperienced in a particular sphere or activity, especially computing. The word came from “newbie”. It almost became the millionth word of the English language in 2009, a title that went to “Web 2.0” instead.

Vanity Metrics – Vanity metrics are an outdated form of measurement on social media like the followers on your account or the number of likes on a post. 

Micro-moments – The moment that people turn to a device to get immediate information that will help them to make a decision, resolve a problem, buy something or go somewhere. 

Seenzone/ Ghosting – Seeing a message but not replying ; if done frequently, normally is a precursor of ghosting – which I ending communication without warning

 

Topical Phrases 

Snowflake Generation – The young adults of the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient, living in a cocoon of righteousness, and more prone to taking offence (hypersensitive)  than previous generations. It came from GenX parents calling their children unique (or snowflakes). Now a favoured phrase of some tabloids for expressing generic disdain for young people who are behaving differently from people older than them (young people are having less sex, or drinking less alcohol, or having less fun.) 

Fatberg – A very large mass of solid waste in a sewerage system, consisting especially of congealed fat and personal hygiene products that have been flushed down toilets.

Outrospection – (coined by Roman Krznaric) A method in which you get to know oneself by stepping outside of yourself, developing relationships and empathetic thinking with others. 

Poverty Porn – also known as development porn, famine porn, or stereotype porn, has been defined as “any type of media, be it written, photographed or filmed, which exploits the poor’s condition in order to generate the necessary sympathy for selling newspapers, increasing charitable donations, or support for a given cause”. Ed Sheeran was unwittingly guilty of poverty porn in his 2017 plea for the poor for Comic Relief, as hero-Ed narrates his sorrow while the camera zooms on nameless children sleeping rough on a beach. 

Weasel Words – Words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated.

Some new words in Oxfordenglish dictionary:

Mentionitis – A tendency towards repeatedly or habitually mentioning something, esp. the name of a person one is attracted to or infatuated with, regardless of its relevance to the topic of conversation.

Freegan – A person who believes it is wrong to throw away food when millions of people around the world are hungry. They only eat food they can get for free, which would usually have been thrown out or waste. Often freegans rely on food found in supermarket dumpsters.

Microaggressions – A term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioural, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative prejudicial slights and insults toward any group, particularly culturally marginalized groups – “for a black person, you are beautiful”. Long ago, a colleague told me, meaning this as a compliment, “you work like a man”.

Gaslighting – Undermine someone by psychological means such that they doubt their own sanity. Oxford Dictionaries named it one of the most popular words of 2018: The phrase originated from a 1938 mystery thriller written by British playwright Patrick Hamilton called Gas Light, made into a popular movie in 1944 starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. In the film, husband Gregory manipulates his adoring, trusting wife Paula into believing she can no longer trust her own perceptions of reality. In one pivotal scene, Gregory causes the gaslights in the house to flicker by turning them on in the attic of the house. Yet when Paula asks why the gaslights are flickering, he insists that it’s not really happening and that it’s all in her mind, causing her to doubt her self-perception. Hence the term “gaslighting” was born.

My daughter recently accused me of gaslighting her about her singing – it was not pretty. Trump’s rhetoric , specially about immigration, and the pandemic, has all been gaslighting.

Virtue Signalling – The sharing of one’s point of view on a social or political issue, often on social media, in order to garner praise or acknowledgment of one’s righteousness from others who share that point of view, or to passively rebuke those who do not. In an era where keeping silent is probably as much a crime as expressing your opinion on, say, social media, what demarcates virtue signalling and passionate expression of solidarity?

Red pilling – Becoming enlightened to the truth about reality, especially a truth that is difficult to accept or exposes disillusions. Red pill is especially used among anti-feminist and white supremacist groups to refer to “waking up” to the truth that women and liberal politics are oppressing men and white people. Elon Musk recently tweeted “take the red pill” – arguably indicating a greater rightward shift in his political views. 

Colorism – Specially relevant now given HUL’s dropping the word “fair” from its iconic product, colorism is a bit different from racism in that it can refer to prejudge based on shades of colour even amongst the same race  – “wanted tall fair educated girl for marriage”

Bi-erasure – Bisexual erasure or bisexual invisibility is the tendency to ignore, remove, falsify, or reexplain evidence of bisexuality.

I must confess a recent blooper of mine in context – not quite having internalised the gender spectrum (with ABC News having found 58 gender option in Facebook’s new move) , I was confused between bisexual and pansexual. Took the DD to explain.

Lumbersexual – A “not-so-manly” man dressing like a lumberjack (although a lot more refined) and sporting a beard that has the volume of a lumberjacks beard and the groom of a hipster, cashing in on the “rugged, outdoor stereotype”. Interestingly enough, my earlier list had gastrosexual.

Holacracy – A system of corporate governance whereby members of a team or business form distinct, autonomous, yet symbiotic, teams to accomplish tasks and company goals. Corporate hierarchy is discarded in favor of a flat organizational structure where all workers have an equal voice while simultaneously answering to the direction of shared authority. Zappos.com, with 1,500 employees, is the largest company to adopt Holacracy

 

Coronavirus Lexicon.

In this context, the very word pandemic was for me not such a frequently used/ heard one. So also, social distancing, when I first heard it, I thought was witty. Now ofcourse, it’s our way of life. Coronapocalyse/ Coronageddon are kind of obvious. Index Patient and Super Spreader also became common usage. The few new words I found interesting/ funny were:

Infodemic – an excessive amount of information about a problem, which is sometimes incorrect and can have a negative effect on finding a solution

Doom scrolling – constantly refreshing our feeds for the latest news about the pandemic

Miss Rona  – Gen Z call the virus itself “Miss Rona” or simply, “The Rona.” IN a bit of gallows humour, it was also more callously called the “Boomer Remover.” Now of course the virus seems less ageist.

Wfh = wifi hell = wear fear heroically

Pancession – a pandemic-associated widespread economic recession

Coronaverse – The now prevailing socio-economic order

Coronanoia – paranoia induced by conditions obtaining in the pandemic

Covidiot / moronavirus – slang insult for someone who disregards healthy and safety guidelines about the novel coronavirus.

Quarantini/ Coronarita  – The original quarantini referred to a martini-like cocktail mixed with vitamin C-based dietary supplements. Now these are cocktails made at home with available ingredients

Isobar – a home bar stocked, displayed and/or depleted in confinement

Zoombombing – amid security concerns for zoom, it is basically hacking into. Zoom conference

Zumping – A blend of dump and Zoom, zumping is when you break up with someone over a video conferencing service.

Fomites: inanimate objects whose surfaces can become contaminated with pathogens when touched by the carrier of an infection and can then transmit the pathogens to those who next touch the surfaces

Covexit – The strategy for exiting lockdown

Blursday – An unspecified day because of lockdown’s disorientating effect on time

Infits – outfits worn in conditions of confinement

Quaranqueens – a woman excelling during lockdown, particularly one excessively cleaning and tidying

Smizing – Smiling with the eyes, as when wearing a facemask

Elbump – an elbow contact in place of handshaking or other physical greeting

Coronadodge – swerving to avoid passers-by to comply with distance restrictions

 

Plain Confusing Phrases (that common sense would tell you should mean something else)

OTP – Not the annoying One Time Password, this one stands for “One True Pairing;” , or, your favourite “ship” (Some 5 years ago, I was the “kween” of an old friends’ reunion, when I explain “ship” to them – Virushka/ Brangelina being the ones they could relate to).

Instagram baddie – A woman who always look flawless. 

Let’s Get This Bread! – A pep talk expression similar to “Let’s do this! We got this, guys!” 

Sksksksksksksks – the new Gen Z sign of laughter, replacing “hahahaha.” (similar to a fam squad we once had, which due to the initials, was unimaginatively named sknsrkms)

Snacc – An attractive person; someone that looks so good that you want to eat them for a snack.  

Fit – Shortened version of outfit. “She had on a fire fit at the party.” The boomer slang equivalent of “fit” is “threads.” 

Wig – Something amazing – so shock inciting that one’s wig flies off! (maybe that’s why the “I’m bald guy comment” got viewed so often) The very colourless boomer slang equivalent of “wig” maybe, is “fab”? 

Creps – Not something you eat, it’s Sneakers.

Dank – Not dark, but of high quality. For example: “Did you see those dank memes I sent you?”

Dzaddy – an attractive man. (“Did you see how good he looks today?” “Yeah, what a dzaddy!” ) Electra complex, much?

G – A term of endearment you’d use with a friend or acquaintance. “What’s up my G?” Short for “gangster” or “gangsta”. Huh??? Really?

Hard – When something is really cool. “Have you seen his new shoes?” “Yeah those are hard!” Same as Lit or Fire, but less comprehensible in usage

E-boy/-girl – Gen Z’s hybrid version of emo/goth. A style that includes wearing a lot of black, neon and chains, drawing small black hearts drawn under their eyes, using a lot of blush, and having bangs. Millennials usually think the “e” stands for emo, but it actually stands for “electronic”.

As I was finishing up this list, I chanced upon the New words in Oxford English dictionary. Some that I did not know of (and could never have figured out) are:

Bagel – To beat (an opponent) by a score of six games to love in a set. 

Chop-chop – Bribery and corruption in public life; misappropriation or embezzlement of funds. 

Franger – A condom

Noonie – The female genitals; the vulva or vagina (mainly Brit usage)

Jam – Among homosexual people, designating a heterosexual person 

Tokunbo – Denoting an imported second-hand product, esp. a car

My UFO – a memory blanket

UFO – In knitting, sewing, quilting, etc,  an unfinished piece of work; a project left uncompleted.

 

 

 

 

 

As I end this long list, I thought of who would appreciate this post – and I realised that it probably will be folks of my generation really. I found this news item about a teacher who compiled a list of Gen z slang very relatable.  – teaching done right

Ofcourse, Gen Z is not the only gen with slangs – in the spirit of weasel words, Boomers probably invented meaningless corporate speak. Infact my DD gets her own back on bopping/ bantering dad when she gets him with #thematic #skininthegame. 

As Eilish would say, “Don’t say thank you or please; I do what I want when I’m wanting to”

Going BatShit Crazy

So it’s apocalypse now. Almost. Financial markets have tumbled, Airlines and the travel industry are going bankrupt, toilet paper, sanitisers and masks have run out on shop aisles, and grocery stores are seeing huge lines in the U.S. This of course as only a secondary fallout to the massive scale of the human tragedy – hundreds of thousands infected, nearly ten thousand dead, and many many overworked and fatigued heathcare workers.

But a few interesting things that the CoronaVirus turned inside out:

Yesterday’s super unicorn Uber is now taboo – in today’s world of social distancing, any behaviour that involves sharing resources, is forbidden. So, no co-working/ no co living/ no airbnb. 

From Trump rooting for the wall separating the U.S. and Mexico, Mexico is now shutting its borders to the U.S. All of history, the underdeveloped/ underdogs African countries are now moving to restrict visitors from Europe and the world. 

Equity analysts are becoming epidemiologists just like their becoming super specialist psephologists just prior to Elections (this despite the 2003 JPMorgan wildly unvalidated predictions about the SARS epidemic)  

Ibuprofen is no longer a good medicine – there are studies to show a correlation between higher seriousness of disease pathways in Italy and treatment with Ibuprofen. 

Even Terrorists are curbing travel and terror plans – “The Isis terrorist group is steering clear of Europe because of the coronavirus. Having previously urged its supporters to attack European cities, the group is now advising members to “stay away from the land of the epidemic” in case they become infected,” The Times of London reports.

Ice cream is bad for you, hot water is good!  KFC has pulled out a “fingerlickin’ good” chicken campaign based on people licking their fingers while eating on hygiene grounds.

Many companies are pivoting to meet the business demands – LVMH is using its perfume and cosmetics factories to manufacture free hand sanitisers, restaurants and food companies are now doing “to-go” packets, and free food distribution. 

Haircuts are being managed with long sticks, and many folks will now follow me on #embracingtheirgreys (there are memes floating around on the real hair colour of people now being revealed)

Interestingly, there was this large fear on technology probably making a lot of jobs redundant due to automation – except for “human touch point” ones like the creative arts, nursing, sports etc. Now, those are the industries facing the biggest threats – Broadway shut down, so did Disney, the IPL got postponed, the WTA tour got cancelled, so did football, basketball, F1 fixtures, the French Open, and maybe even the Olympics – all “experiences” are grinding to a halt.

There is a lesson here of the David vs. Goliath variety – we were chasing BIG – bigger TV screens, bigger houses, economies of scale – and then, the entire human race has been brought to its knees by a micro-organism, the size of like a 100 nano microns! (thats 0.000000001 cm!!)

With divorce rates in China on the rise thanks to stay at home mandates, Welcome to Love in the time of Corona – with the possible future generation of coronials and quaranteens. 

Bouncers, Googlies and Swinging From the Fences

I REALLY like Bill Gates. I mean, REALLY REALLY like him. (I don’t much like his PCs, though I’m definitely the generation that uses MSOffice far more than Google docs which my daughters use). But I really like him.

I like that he started Microsoft when he was 20. That he was the richest guy in the world for many years. That he quit when ahead and started philanthropy actively. That he doesn’t plan to leave his wealth to his kids. That he has really middle class values as a parent. That he plays these cute games for Match for Africa fund raisers with Roger Federer, who is another guy I REALLY like. That the ceiling of his large home library is engraved with a quotation from The Great Gatsby. Oh, and that his house has the Judy Garland red slippers from the Wizard of Oz, and the costumes from the Sound of Music. And a trampoline room. And is called Xanadu. 

I like that when he was a kid, “he preferred to stay in his room where he would shout “I’m thinking” when his mother asked what he was doing”. That when automating his school’s class-scheduling system, Gates modified the code so that he was placed in classes with “a disproportionate number of interesting girls”. That his algorithm for pancake sorting held the record as the fastest version for over 30 years. That he chose a pre-law major but took mathematics and graduate level computer science courses at Harvard, but dropped out after 2 years. That he is colour blind.

All this despite his combative personal style, and his controversial Anti trust actions.

But I like MOST the work that he and Melinda are doing with the Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private charitable foundation.

Their recent annual letter has seen much accolade, and also generated much criticism. But for me, there were a few interesting lessons to take away. 

A) The Smartness of Pivot : The startup eco system will tell you that success almost warrants frequent pivots from the original idea – in a marketplace that is changing every second, the original idea you began with may need several mods, and sometimes complete turnarounds before it sees acceptance. Bill and Melinda seem to exemplify this in their letter – they have changed their strategy in education in the U.S. , from granting scholarships to a few very bright people to funding larger areas – the entire public school system in the U.S., therefore. “Our goal is to help make a huge difference for all U.S. students, so we’ve pivoted most of our work from scholarships to areas that can have more impact for more students”

Similarly, in HIV treatment, the focus from daily preventive vaginal gel , that would be effective if adherence was sound, but is not; to a longer lasting treatment – where compliance is easier, and therefore efficacy is higher. “We’re looking for new treatments that can be taken less frequently, as much as a year apart”

This also leads me to the next lesson:

B) The Power of Admitting Failure/ Saying sorry:  “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison

I read some criticism on this year’s letter, some of it directed at the fact that so much of what the Gates did apparently hasn’t worked. Honestly, a) it’s their (ok, and some other folks like Warren Buffet’s) money primarily. And b) actually, at least they are being upfront and admitting failure – which for celebrities like them, must be a big deal. I think partly, this failure is almost mandatory in the model the Gates are following – hence the “swinging for the fences” analogy. By definition, one will either hit home run, or strike out! But also, somewhere within it, the Gates have defined the slot that their foundation and other philanthropic organisations need to occupy. “At its best, philanthropy takes risks that governments can’t and corporations won’t. Governments need to focus most of their resources on scaling proven solutions. Businesses have fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders. But foundations like ours have the freedom to test out ideas that might not otherwise get tried, some of which may lead to breakthroughs”. 

This then leads to the “why” of the slower success in Education that the Gates have seen. And that is, that

C) Education is the basic welfare activity, but maybe the toughest to execute:

I recently also watched a ted talk by Atishi Marlena (apparently after Marx and Lenin), a member of the Parliamentary Affairs committee for AAP, a Rhodes Scholar, and one of the key people behind the Education Reforms that Government School in Delhi have seen. It’s impressive to say the least (and a must watch if you haven’t yet), (After all, FLOTUS Melania attended a Happiness Class in Delhi and is continuing to tweet about her Indian experience! ). But a striking fact is the one about dignity to the public school classroom – and that being the backbone to any reform. 

The Gates’ letter says the same thing. “In 2001, … Deborah Meier …Her book The Power of Their Ideas helped me understand why public schools are not only an important equalizer but the engine of a thriving democracy. A democracy requires equal participation from everyone, she writes. That means when our public schools fail to prepare students to fully participate in public life, they fail our country, too.”

I think the biggest pity in India is that the basics of Health, Education, Infrastructure and Utilities like Electricity, Water, Roads, Transport and above all Safety that the government should be guaranteeing is not happening, and hence philanthropy is stepping in where the government needs to.

The Gates go on to explain why their educational reforms have had lukewarm success. And it is largely because of the issue of:

D) Localisation: “Businesses that scale and those that don’t scale… It became clear to us that scaling in education doesn’t mean getting the same solution out to everyone. Our work needed to be tailored to the specific needs of teachers and students in the places we were trying to reach. We’ve shifted our primary focus in K-12 to locally driven solutions identified by networks of schools. Our hope is that these Networks for School Improvement will increase the number of Black, Latinx, and low-income students who graduate from high school and pursue postsecondary opportunities.”

This is an essential lessons that global/ multinational companies learn/ need to learn. One apparently that Microsoft hasn’t learnt that well in its gaming business. But, many others have – the most reputed being Nestle (goat’s milk instead of cow’s milk and loquat, gouge used as ingredients in China; matcha flavour KitKat in Japan); McDonald’s (Paneer Wrap; Veg only restaurants in India); Coke (Coke friends campaign having been customised to suit the needs of the local markets). But also Netflix, who showed rapid expansion in international markets due largely to their local language sub titles, dubbed version content, and originals. They’ve even localized the app navigation and UI for different countries. 

The Gates Foundation realised that they needed local solutions grounded in reality to meet the challenges of education. It wasn’t all the fault of a single global approach though. Education is tricky. As they say – “But one thing that makes improving education tricky is that even among people who work on the issue, there isn’t much agreement on what works and what doesn’t. In global health, we know that if children receive the measles vaccine, they will be protected against the disease, which means they’re more likely to survive. But there’s no consensus on cause and effect in education. Are charter schools good or bad? Should the school day be shorter or longer? Is this lesson plan for fractions better than that one? Educators haven’t been able to answer those questions with enough certainty to establish clear best practices. It’s also hard to isolate any single intervention and say it made all the difference. Getting a child through high school requires at least 13 years of instruction enabled by hundreds of teachers, administrators, and local, state, and national policymakers. The process is so cumulative that changing the ultimate outcome requires intervention at many different stages.”

E) Last Mile – Is the proverbial holy grail. This is where many companies fail. And many others make the cut as successes. Flipkart made such inroads into the Indian market, due largely to its logistics that was able to reach customers, aided by its revolutionary COD policy. In sharp contrast, most government welfare schemes do not benefit the real beneficiaries, ending instead in the coffers of the infamous middlemen. (The Direct Benefit Transfer schemes by the government were actually policy measures to eliminate middlemen and have technology enabled last mile benefits, but the efficacy still has gaps). The Gates Foundation is no different. “Today, 86 percent of children around the world receive basic immunizations. …But reaching the last 14 percent is going to be much harder than reaching the first 86 percent. The children in this group are some of the most marginalized children in the world….Frustratingly, some live just a few hundred meters from a health facility but are invisible to the health system”

This is a real lesson for any business – the focus to the last mile has to be out of context and Pareto – otherwise the balance efforts go waste. 

F) The Benefit of collaboration – I only last week wrote this piece on cooptition, which is kind of what the Gates are rooting for also. They are very bullish on Gavi – the vaccine alliance; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, DREAMS, The Global Polio Eradication Fund amongst others. “We worked with the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and UNICEF to create Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Gavi brings together governments and other organizations to raise funds to buy vaccines and support low-income countries as they deliver them to children……Rather than focus on one-size-fits-all solutions, our foundation wants to create opportunities for schools to learn from each other. What worked at North-Grand won’t work everywhere. That’s why it’s important that other schools in other networks share their success stories, too”

G) Accident of birth – These are dark times across the world as we see increasing levels of intolerance and homophobia. People are fighting, even killing on grounds of religion, caste, colour, sex, behaviour, attitude, and sometimes for no reason at all. In these times, it is really important to remember that if it were not for an accident of birth, you could very well be the person you are hating on! As Melinda said, “I met a woman who asked me to take her newborn home with me because she couldn’t imagine how she could afford to take care of him. I met sex workers in Thailand who helped me understand that if I had been born in their place, I, too, would do whatever it took to feed my family”. This fact was brought home to me quite powerfully the other day when my mother in law’s caregiver, a Koran reading, namaz offering muslim girl, last Friday requested me to take her to a Sai Baba mandir and then a hanuman mandir – she said that when she first ran away from home to Bombay, she prayed at these temples and was able to keep herself safe and well fed. So much for different Gods! I saw a really powerful visual today that in fact my mum had put on Facebook that underscores this really well. 

H) Strategy vs. Execution – Bill and Melinda made the clear distinction between the 2 –  “To be clear, the risks we take are different from the ones the true heroes of global progress take all the time: the health workers who brave war zones to get vaccines to children who need them, the teachers who sign up to work in the most challenging schools, the women in the world’s poorest places who stand up against cultural norms and traditions designed to keep them down. What they do requires personal sacrifices we never have to make—and we try to honor them by supporting innovations that might one day make their lives easier”. Given their influence and wealth, and given many even large problems require local or micro solutions, this is an optimal route. I think for us in everyday lives, and certainly in professional ones, we have to differentiate between doing vs. managing and decide where is time best spent. Narayan Murthy once said, we Indians are very poor at execution. 

Some other quotes that struck me as relevant from the letter were:

– “Disease is both a symptom and a cause of inequality, while public education is a driver of equality”

– “When more women have a voice in the rooms where decisions are made, more of those decisions will benefit all of us…. that our economies are built on the back of women’s unpaid labor”

– “Tackling climate change is going to demand historic levels of global cooperation, unprecedented amounts of innovation in nearly every sector of the economy, widespread deployment of today’s clean-energy solutions like solar and wind, and a concerted effort to work with the people who are most vulnerable to a warmer world”. By the way, my daughter along with her friends and what looked like pretty much the whole of Bristol recently attended Greta’s Climate strike. Here are some pictures – its heartening to see what a single girl started due to the power of her belief. 

Climate March Bristol

So, power to the Gates Foundation. May their fence swingers result in hitting all balls out of the park. I must also confess that I read their older annual letters for the first time – and actually, they haven’t been saying anything startlingly different – its a narrative thats been ongoing in different forms but is therefore at least consistent.

I have to end with a photo of my husband with Bono. This was at the Global Fund conference last year, where Bill Gates also participated obviously. He says it was a selfie taking opportunity choice between Gates and Bono – he chose the latter much to my daughters’ delight, and my despair. (To be fair, his logic was that I can meet Gates again but Bono maybe never)

Co-optition, The Quest for Access, or, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam

Narayana Heart Centre at M S Ramaiah Memorial Hospital

We moved houses a few months ago, and I needed to go to a completely new hospital for a check up. Imagine my surprise (and relief actually), when I saw the Cardiac Care department at M S Ramaiah, a large, old and reputed Hospital and Medical College, run by – Narayana Hrudayalaya, also a large, reputed and old Cardiac Care Hospital started by the eminent Dr. Devi Shetty! Now, this was a hospital I was very familiar with. It was hugely reassuring to get my check ups done there – and even see the familiar blue saree for the customer service folks – almost like being home. 

It set me thinking about the world now collaborating in newer ways, even with erstwhile competitors, in a bid to win access to customers. (I saw later that the Oncology centre at Ramaiah was run by HCG, a cancer specialist).

Narayana itself, from being headquartered almost outside of Bangalore in a large “health city’, has of late started smaller branch centres all over at least south and south east Bangalore. And now, this shop in shop in Ramaiah!

So this is smart business, right, exemplifying a few business imperatives:

A) Core competency specialisation 

B) Outsourcing of non core work to other experts

C) Competition changing to Co-optition (or, everything being fair in love, war and business)

And right then, I saw pop up on my screen, an ad for a sale at Nykaa, an online turned clicks and mortar retailer of beauty and personal care products (a retailer that my teenage daughter had first told me about some 4-5 years ago as her friends were all buying discounted toiletries and make up from there), of products by Fable Street, another online retailer that sells very attractive work wear clothes and accessories (this one run by an IIM alumna). 

It kind of messed with my brain for a bit (I mean, I understand cross usage of channel, but direct competitors using each other as channels?), till I reasoned that this was the true value of the market place model that Amazon had pioneered. (An article I read recently put the figure of third party sales from Amazon at 58% of total revenue). This is Amazon’s stated intent of “helping independent retailers meet the needs of Amazon customers around the globe”. I think Amazon really made the transition from an e-tailer to a channel provider to a technology company very very smoothly and logically.

So what scenarios work best for this co-optition, or collaboration amongst competitors:

A) Multi party Industry nature collaborations

This is normally for Big Problems – setting standards/ fighting common causes like climate change/ defence and security/ energy/ epidemics/ education/ poverty. 

For example, at the recent NRF 2020, one of the biggest panels featured executives from Target, Chipotle, and Best Buy who discussed the power of cyber security industry collaboration. 

Similarly, Facebook, Amazon, Google and more met with WHO recently to figure out how to stop misinformation on the dreaded Coronavirus. 

Or, in 2013/14 post the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, consortiums were formed between Walmart, H&M, Zara, Nike, Adidas to ensure safety and better working conditions for their workers 

Open source was probably the earliest version of this co-optition – where varying competing organisations would come together for development. 

IOT is a great area nowadays which needs to see, and is slowly seeing, collaboration between competitors to develop platforms and utilities for seamless customer experiences. Recently, Google, Apple and Amazon, probably the most acrimonious competitors amongst tech giants, unveiled a smart home collaboration, Connected Home over IP. This is inviting device manufacturers, silicon providers and developers across the smart home industry to join and develop new connectivity standards. 

Another area is self drive cars – the trio of Ford, GM and Toyota has formed what they are calling the Automated Vehicle Safety Consortium

Ofcourse, when competitors work together, data security/ patent protection become critical areas, and most companies work well on solving for those. In case of any leaks, these collaborations dissolve.

B) Collaboration between select parties to develop new technologies/ products; to address client needs, or to fight a common competitor: 

Probably the most celebrated example of co-opetition success is the 2004 Sony-Samsung JV to develop and produce LCD panels for flat-screen TVs.  “Bravia” and “Bordeaux” came out of this collaboration, more than doubling the combined market share of these two companies.

In 2012, Harvard University and MIT formed EDX, a non-profit organisation that provides free online courses, each investing $US30 million. By end 2019, there were about 20 million students that it had served. 

In 2017, a consortium of automakers including Ford, Toyota and Suzuki, planned to develop standards for in-vehicle car telematics as an alternative to Google’s Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay. 

In 2016, Facebook, Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft came together to create a historic partnership on AI. Apple, Google, Facebook, participated in a twitter data sharing project in 2019.  Google supported Mozilla (Firefox web-browser), a rival to Google Chrome, in order to limit the expanding influence of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Apple Safari. At Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event in Aug 2019, the company announced four partnerships – of which Microsoft was one, to bundle its Android apps on the Note 10.

Even in the B2B world of tech services that I was briefly a part of, one has seen big competitors work together to win a large contract. TCS in 2018 was in talks with Wipro and Infosys to market its automation software Ignio, though nothing really fructified as Wipro ran the AI platform Holmes and Infosys its Nia.

In tech industries, the need for co-opetition is felt more due to the pace of evolution of technology, shorter life-cycle and high R&D costs. The cost of introducing new technology can be prohibitive for one company. Another perspective could be that these partnerships are short-term co-branding and marketing opportunities.

Pharma sees a lot of these in a bid to discover and trial new cures – In 2014, Pfizer and Merck collaborated on a study evaluating a novel Anti Cancer regimen. More recently, in 2019, Pfizer and Merck KGaA, joined BioXcel Therapeutics in its clinical collaboration with Nektar Therapeutics, creating a partnership to assess a triple combination therapy in pancreatic cancer. And then in 2020, Genome & Company entered into a clinical trial collaboration and supply agreement with Merck KGaA, and Pfizer to evaluate the safety, tolerability, biological and clinical activities of some combination therapies, in multiple cancer indications.

The risks of collaborating with rivals might seem huge but a study by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute found that co-optition, when it lasted from three to five years, had more than a 50% chance of mutually reducing company costs.

But co-optition is not really new – There have been enough examples in History, as well as in ancient legends, mythology and fiction of strategic collaboration between enemies to defeat a rival enemy.

In India, the Rajputs occasionally united against foreign invaders – once under Bappa Rawal, then under Shakti Kumar of Mewar and Jaypal Tomar roughly in the 11th/ 12th century. Once the foreign invasions stopped, the Rajputs fought each other.  Then, the rajputs under Rana Sanga managed to defend their confederation against Sultanates of Malwa, Gujarat and also Ibrahim Lodi, Sultan of Delhi.

Some historians think that Rana Sanga also invited Babur to fight against Ibrahim Lodhi, plotting that he himself would move over to Delhi after both warring sides were weakened. As it happened, Babur was very strong, he defeated Rana Sanga, and started the Mughal Dynasty. 

Globally, while the US and the Soviet Union had not exactly been friends in the times before the WWII, it was their collaboration as allies that had a large part in defeating Nazi Germany. 

Hagrid Looking at the Giant Colony

Pic Credit

Recent popular fiction e.g. Harry Potter, saw both the Dark Lord’s side and the Order of the Phoenix wanting to ally with the giants to defeat the other side (this despite a fair degree of mistreatment accorded to the giants ordinarily by both sides). Ultimately, the Giants joined the Death Eaters. In the famous Game Of Thrones, Starks, Arryns and Targaryens allied with a few key House of Lannister members like Tyrion and Jamie and fought against the White Walkers, the army of dead in the battle of Winterfell.

Why go so far – Indian Politics sees a lot of co-optition – in 2018, the Karnataka state assembly elections saw a farcical situation when the party with the majority (BJP) first claimed the right to form the government, but then had to resign as its two competitors (The Congress which actually had the least votes, and the JD(S)) formed a post poll alliance and staked claim – it is another matter that the government didn’t last very long.

Apparently, in the NASCAR world, co-optition means one racer helping another by working together to go faster until the last lap, before they start competing against each other.

In teen patti/ cards, one has side shows with a competitor in a group to ensure the larger enemy gets slain.

Side Show in Teen Patti

 As the iconic Godfather line said, “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”

C) Cost Optimization/ Capacity Sharing 

Don’t even get me started about this – the hardware guys want to make software and vice versa, the gaming guys are making voice assistants and so on and so forth. And competitors supply parts and components to direct competitors while their finished goods are fighting for share of wallet! It’s all over the place, and hugely incestuous! 

Apple and Samsung for heaven’s sake! While Samsung’s Galaxy and Apple’s iPhone are arch rivals, Samsung at the same time continues to be one of Apple’s main suppliers of screens.

Microsoft and Intel were “married” to each other for ever it seemed (their Wintel alliance) till the advent of mobile technologies created a split. 

The Star Alliance network of competing airlines, which included Air New Zealand, Thai, United, Air China, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines, to name a few, was established to save on logistics, marketing and ticketing costs . But we travellers benefitted also as can share loyalty points :).

Peugeot Citroen and Toyota used to have an arrangement to share components for their city cars to the extent that critics said it was one car with three names.

And then there is branding/ white labelling in retail, and actually tech services. Essentially everybody plays happy families in order to lower the burden of capital intensive businesses.

Happy Families / Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam

D) Arising from a partner eco system  

Then there are the companies who are building entire eco systems – Salesforce was one of the earliest. Now there is Amazon Web Services. And the participants in these eco systems are competitors but benefit from the network. I mentor an AWS / cloud computing consulting services startup called Rapyder – they do good work, have a solid client base, and are growing excitingly. Obviously helped on by AWS. Don’t yet exploit the advantage of co-optition – but could very soon. 

In the social impact sector, there are platforms like Lets Do Some Good run by my ex business partner. Her concept when she started was to weed out the inefficiencies of “random acts of kindness” (e.g., too much funding and CSR efforts going to a school close to many corporates, and none going to one a little distance away), and give small NGOs and ISR folks the ability to synergise their efforts. Cooperatives and marketplaces are other such instances – Social Alpha, as an example, has incubated a farmer cooperative called Farmveda, that has enabled better market access and profits directly to a network of farmers in the South of India. Similarly, a market place called Habba, run by RangDe, that enables artisans to sell and reap the benefits of their crafts. Many countries do this, e.g New Zealand enables its wine growers export their products  – all constituents can be viewed as competitors, but in the cooperative model, they leverage a common entity to come together for “the greater good” and enjoy the benefits. 

(As an aside, while the greater good, also known as win -win is a really praiseworthy ambition, it can have very dark results as we know – after all, Hitler convinced a vast population that homophobia of various kinds was for the greater good. In recent times, a good metaphor for Hitler has been Grindelwald of the Fantastic Beasts/ Harry Potter franchise. Anyway, this is a deviation…)

Grindelwald giving the Greater Good Speech

E) Access to a whole new world

This is the pure commercial/ channel play, cross sell to allow mutual benefit, ensuring ubiquity of a familiar brand. The online world made this possible – when instead of customers needing to go destination shopping (including for medical services – a la me going to Narayana), they expected manufacturers and service providers to come to them. The battle for access became fiercer – with players realising the benefit of selective partnerships to ensure visibility across forums – the power of decision then lay in the customer’s hand, influenced less by “location”, and more by other factors – it really became survival of the fittest.

Vimeo, a competitor to youtube one would have thought, allowed publishing of its videos to youtube (as well as others like Facebook/ Linkedin etc) via its “publish to social” feature  – this maybe underlines Vimeo’s shift from a video content making company to one that is making tools for content makers and publishers.

Microsoft offers Xbox games via Xbox live – on Nintendo Switch – its a partnership that is mutually beneficial, though there are claims that it may be ending soon. (It started with Minecraft, and post that, despite ongoing “exclusives” for each platform, the gaming companies started collaborating for better access. Sony has less incentive for this partnership, but there is certainly cross play gaming going on).

SAP used to run Oracle database  and  Microsoft Office is available on Apple computers (Macs and iPads). Similarly, Apple and Amazon combine for Kindle – Apple has a kindle app for iPads, which one would think is counter intuitive. But this is because Apple needs content for its devices, while Amazon needs people to buy more and more (e) books. In this case, it is because the strategic imperatives are different for the competitors for the collaboration.  

Samsung and Apple have tied up for TV services, an area where both have been slow to grow.  

This cooptition also helps small scale companies scale up by pooling resources too (a bit like the cooperative model, but not wider/ multiparty). It’s a rising tide, that raises all boats. 

Overall, there is a time, place and reason for competition, and then one for collaboration – and increasingly, as we are seeing, the same two people can be competitors or collaborators. The world is becoming one large happy family – the Upanishads called it Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. 

As Abraham Lincoln said, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”, and (not to be outdone), Sigmund Freud said “an intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable to my emotional life…not infrequently…friend and enemy have coincided in the same person”

And as my daughter would say, Ma, duh! Frenemies! 

The Circle of Life – Some insights from a Hospital Stay

So, Ija, my 89 year old mother in law had a stroke (right cerebral infarct with left cerebral bleed) last week. After 10 days spent at the hospital, we brought her home yesterday – she has been lying unresponsive in bed since last Monday morning. Obviously, this was a period of worry and frustration for us, but also of observation and reflection. A few thoughts emerged:

A) Old Was Truly Gold – It’s a truism, but the age old mantras of Clean air, Organic food and Simple living really worked. This is preaching to the converted largely, but the fact remains that urban upper middle class living nowadays is the pits. My in laws lived in a small hilly border town called Pithoragarh most of their lives. Like most hill folk of that time, they ate simple, locally grown vegetarian food supplemented with lots of dairy twice a day; woke up at 4 am and slept at 8pm, walked everywhere; didn’t overwork and didn’t party. Result – ija at nearly 90 was walking, talking, eating, bathing independently till Sunday evening – she held sway over,  in fact terrorised a household comprised of sons, daughters in law, grandchildren, household help and guests. Even now, when she has been bedridden for nearly two weeks, her vitals are strong and working perfectly fine. This, despite having had two strokes some 15 years ago, losing speech as a result, and then recovering from it to regale us with many tales of her brain haemorrhage and other illnesses.

B) It REALLY is all about the people – A Hospital, just like, but even more than other service oriented institutions like schools and banks, is run by the people – it is not just the doctors, who of course are very important, but the rest of the staff. Nurses (and that entire eco system) are probably even more important than doctors. So are the ward staff, the cleaning staff, the security, the ambulance staff, the food deliverers, the Physio therapists, the admin, the cash and billing staff, the counsellors, the dieticians – the entire jing bang. Ramaiah Memorial Hospital was an example of an institution where we met excellence all around. Every single interaction with the staff, from the security guard outside the ICU, who went out of his way to check status of arrival of stretcher for MRI, and gave us numbers of key people to call; to the physiotherapist girls who not only exercised ija’s stiff neck and limbs, but also took care to give me, my sister in law and the new caregiver girl we hired, clear, lucid and reasonable instructions for her care post hospital; to the catering guy who made sure and delivered food we wanted as and when we wanted; to ambulance folks who called several numbers to ensure they were ready and waiting when ija was ready to be taken home – these micro “moments of truth” were what led to delight in customer interaction. Infact, on a previous visit to the same hospital with ija, the guard outside the dental hospital had been extremely helpful – when my husband offered him a tip, he flat refused – saying this is my duty sir. This is unprecedented in India, where most things do not work without a bribe or a bakhshish! All of this brings home the importance of training and investing in the second and third in commands in an organisation. That is the only way to make sure a system is sustainable. Leadership is very important, but so is the workforce. For example, in Ivy League colleges, the undergrad classes are really taught by TAs – but that is possible only because they admit the best/ the cream of the students. Similarly, MS Ramaiah has integrated its supply chain backwards – they have nursing training college, also medical college – so their hiring pipeline is always full (a lesson many schools and other organisations can learn).  

C) But Process is King – The thing is, people with the best intention in the world, cannot make a scale institution work unless there are rock solid processes – that is the reason why large multinational corporates funded economies like India, which then entered new phases of development because of their process expertise. Ramaiah has not only the people to make even a hospital stay almost pleasurable (and certainly reassuring), its processes are also world class. They have a clear role definitions with accountability, but also supervisors with different spans of control for  every job. This includes the staff who cleans and dusts every room – the cleaning supervisor actually slid open the windows to ija’s palliative care room, swept a finger on the sill in classical housewife style, and showed the smear of dust on his glove with this “a-ha” glint on his eyes to the hapless dusting guy. (Ija would have been proud)! The ambulance folks (driver/ stretcher bears) – had a supervisor too, who apparently makes sure that every ambulance experience is seamless – according to him, they fire from 10 -15 staff every day on grounds of incompetence. Of course, they also pay top salary. There are floating staff that take care of redundancy – the head of the Palliative Care Unit was absent for a couple days, but she had a second in command, and then another lady who generally adds as PR dogsbody, but acted like a great customer touch point in her absence. 

D) “Sung” Heroes – The Medical profession is often reviled and sometimes blessed, but it really needs supreme appreciation – How difficult is it to tell patient after patient, and caregiver after caregiver, that there is no hope! How difficult is it to go on performing a job again and again, and saving lives, despite the odds of lives getting lost in the process. I just bought this book This is Going to Hurt, an account of a doctor, who gave it up because of sad incidents. Doctors have this incredibly hard entrance exam, then they study for many many years, and then intern for many many hard hours, and then do this very very very very hard job. They have all my respect, and long may their tribe last. Despite much evidence to the contrary, and of course many malpractices, for a good doctor, medicine needs to be more a vocation than a profession/ means of income.

Murphyisms

E) Murphy’s law is real – This insight was the result of a conversation I had with a deeply philosophical security guard outside the Palliative Care Unit. Hailing from Hyderabad, he told me he had experience of patient care at the ICU, but he had quit that department when the SARS outbreak happened. He told me triumphantly that it was now the Coronavirus that was reaching epidemic proportions, and wasn’t it a good thing he had shifted to the Palliative Care! Having explained to me the benefits of an air bed over a water bed, and the correct setting for maximum patient comfort for both, he waxed eloquent on the dollops of ghee that people of the older times would eat – that being the reason why they grew so robust. He vented about the chicken available nowadays, which were being given injections to grow from scrawny beings to 3 kg fat hens; and the mushrooms which were being manufactured in machines – and said, no wonder there are illnesses aplenty. After a longish conversation about many life and death theories, he told me that I should pray to Allah that I never be brought to the hospital in a stretcher or a wheelchair. On my saying yes, that’s what everyone hopes for, but no one has control over, he nodded sagely and said – that is correct, madam! Later, when I was going home, I met him in the elevator and asked he me – “oota aita” (have you eaten).  When I asked him if he had, he told me, “duniya ka asool hai ki jab kuch nahi chahiye tou duniya poochti hai, aur jab bhookh lagti hai, tou koi nahi poochta.” A very Murphy Law-ish statement from the mouth of a security guard. 

F) Ancillary services – A while ago, I watched an interesting movie called Tumhari Sulu – was a refreshing take on a middle class ambitious housewife who first, by an interesting spate of circumstances, tried being a sexy chatline host much to her family’s horror, and then, after a series of unfortunate incidents, began a catering service , supplying amongst others the radio channel she was working at. Similarly, a Hospital spawns a whole host of ancillary services. Medical supplies rental, nursing attendant supply, catering service….the whole Nursing Homecare industry is one that we saw closely. Essentially, in a world where people have the ability to pay, the gaps for services are so many – and still so difficult to fill. The global geriatric services market is estimated to be at about 900 billionish USD according to a report by GMI. As per Cyber Media Research’s analysis, in 2016, the home healthcare industry in India stood at $3.20 billion and is expected to grow to $6.21 billion by 2020. By 2050, the elderly population is likely to increase by three times to reach around 300 million, accounting for 20% of the country’s total population. There are many providers – Bangalore based Portea being a big professionally run one. But clearly many smaller ones are jumping in. After all, body shopping is something we do well. The Homecare service seems to see margins of 50% and upwards, relying on caregivers from Bengal, Odisha and Kerala, Karnataka – these are barely trained, needy girls (and I assume boys) on whom you leave the daily care of your loved ones.

G) Melanin’s Rule – Skin colour is really an obsession with us Indians (and of course across the world). The very very sweet well meaning nurses looking after ija would repeatedly say – “she is a white beauty”. I felt like quoting MLK back at them all the time “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”. Its another matter that the white beauty comment would have made ija very happy – she has often told me about the skin whitening afghan snow cream she used daily for skincare. I am so so happy about the recent penalty proposed on skin colour related ads. And the fact that my daughters’ generation at least is actively rejecting these racist norms. 

H) The Flip Side of Influence – We Indians are so used to battling the odds to turn them into our favour in all circumstances, that we look for “Influence” always. So it happened to my husband and me when we first admitted Ija to the ICU. Feeling very lost, and unable to quite gauge accurately the true state of affairs because of our inexperience, we of course asked around if anyone had any “contacts” at the hospital. A bunch of folks responded. We were satisfied. But, the whole thing escalated – some one asked someone else and then someone else, and the matter reached the top folks at the hospital. In no time, we were called by the ICU staff and asked why we were unhappy with the service at the hospital, why we had complained, did we not get the counselling, etc etc. Caught completely by surprise, and embarrassed to the hilt, we spent many minutes clarifying that this was Chinese Whispers at work – and they were just the victims of well meaning helpers! Anyway, we got away with filling some feedback forms, but learnt a valuable lesson on not overusing resources at the wrong time. 

I) Self Worth vs. Humility – While sitting in Ija’s room, I was typing out a response to an urgent, important email. A young intern came in to return ija’s discharge summary paper which she had borrowed. When I asked her to place it in the file please, she said – no, I can’t do it. Im very busy. I guess I looked shocked – as she then said, we have many patients to see, and we can’t do these things. I guess she was right (my point had merely been – since you are placing it on top anyway, just open the file and place it aside) – but it reinforced an important point to me. This is about confidence in self/ or a heightened sense of one’s value – it is trait that I totally lack (I have been told several times by several diverse people the I have no ego – its not something that I am ashamed of, but neither is it something that I would necessarily teach my kids). My husband (and his brother, a senior doctor) – have it in spades. They are always about making something grand/ the big picture/ inflation/ larger than life… what have you. It stands them in good stead – my husband refuses to sign a deal with anyone unless it meats the bare threshold of valuation he has set for the company. My brother in law starts most conversations with strangers saying – do you know who I am – I was Senior Officer in so-and-so etc etc. My in laws had immense pride in being Bhatt from Bishadh, an uchcha koti brahmin; my mother has immense pride in her daughter’s accomplishments. My ex business partner smoke screened our capabilities to clients very often – saying we know/ have done much more than we actually had. Clever business? Yes, totally! Marketing? Maybe. Respect Generation guarantor? Sometimes. Good, bad, or ugly? Can’t really say. This also amplifies real or imagined slights (how did I not get a large room/ how dare the CEO not come and meet me)…but for sure, it is better than to be on the flip side of the coin. The number of conversations I have had with my daughter who is in college far away, in the wee hours of the night, to allay fears of – I have no friends/ I am not likeable/ I am dumb, is not funny. Just messes with her head, and ensures that the therapy/ mental health medicine industry is thriving. I am guessing a good state of being is confidence in self based on actual traits, behaviours and achievements; yet enough humility to acknowledge other people’s traits, behaviours and achievements. Tough balance!

J) Minimalism and Focus – This is the era of decluttering – many a preacher is giving gyan on mindfulness, on simplicity, on getting down to the basics. Celebrities are getting huge views and followerships on recycled clothing. Home schooling a big thing. Single home ownership/ single car ownership/ sharing rooms is being taught as a big lessons. No air travel/ dry shopping free months/ vintage shops are trending globally. My husband’s firm Social Alpha incubates a company called Bare necessities, which works on zero waste processes. All this, apart from urban brouhaha, is really good for the environment and just generally plain old common sense. But, somehow, the real value of paring down one’s life to the bare necessities comes when you have a loved one in hospital – all needs become wants – and all wants become don’t wants. You realise the bs about relationships is not bs. You rue the phone call you didn’t make, or the fight you did have, with parents and other friends and family. You say – God, I’ll feed a 100 children; or I’ll give up Rajnigandha, if you make my m-i-l well again. All external trappings evaporate in the face of adversity – my friend who lost her husband very young says this well – one life to live – may as well be true to what you really really want to do and what is important to you. 

K) New Normal – As we now slowly get used to a bed ridden mum, we have to adjust to our new normal. At each stage, one has changes, and one adjusts. When ija first came to live with us, we made minor modifications in life style – gave up eating meat; our evening outings together as a family stopped… When my daughter went to college, a room became vacant, uninterrupted sleep became a thing of the past and the voice data usage shot through the skies. So did stress and heart medication. Now when ija is semi comatose, we have a new full time member of our household (her attendant), her room smells like a hospital, bed sores and secretion cleaning have become frequent search terms, and the mixie is being overused. This, after all, is life! As I was telling a friend who lost her dad recently, and then is nursing her mother through a stroke (thankfully mashi is recovering) while we were grieving about the loss of another friend’s mother suddenly just as she was rehabilitating her father in law, we are now at that stage of life. In our late teens, we were all only about college admissions and exams, in our twenties we were all job hunting and then partying; then it was promotions/ marriage/ home ownership/ parenthood/ their schooling/ empty nesting – and now ofcourse as our parents are all becoming geriatrics, we are seeing their illness and, eventually their end. This is, truly, the circle of life

The Problem With Context

Jack and Jill

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“I do not fear truth. I welcome it. But I wish all of my facts to be in their proper context”: Gordon B Hinckley

Growing Up, my marketing 101 lesson taught me “Customer is King”. The Father of India, and probably its best known global personality, Mahatma Gandhi, said – “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

However, It could be argued in today’s world that the all important C word is being replaced with another C word – Context. So, now, Context is king – mainly, because Context is what allows an organization to understand its (first C word) Customer better.

We as prospects, shoppers, switchers; movie goers, diners, Home owners, Business people, car drivers, facebook users, are today cumulatively generating Yottabytes (10^24) of data, which is going to increase very soon to Brontobytes (10^27)! Intelligent organisations are (or atleast are thinking of, and if not, then should be thinking of) investing in technology, infrastructure and analytic decision processes to use this data for higher revenue generation as well as cost optimization. Context, the accumulated historical data generated by people, places, and things, is almost a mandatory component of these analytic processes.

In simple, laymen terms – context makes up the circumstances in which an event or an idea is set, and that therefore is what makes something clearer to you —

– Does listening to a special song make you think of a special person or a special situation? That’s context! (As “The way you look tonight” was Julia Roberts’ and Dermot Mulroney’s “special song” in My Best Friend’s Wedding)

– Think of nursery rhymes – when you delve deep into them or take them out of context of being repeatable pieces of music for kids, they are fairly disturbing! (Jack broke his crown? Humpty couldn’t be put back again? Whoaaa!!!)

For the traditional marketing folks, context analytics is a bit similar to behavioural + psychographic segmentation in the good ole fashioned days, and not just demographic – so, you add parameters of date/ time/ purchase event/ mood/ place/ company/ actions/ attitudes/ usage etc., and layer them in – to create better profiles of people/ events/ data….

When you marry Context with Data, you trigger unique, new relationships between hitherto unrelated data points – this helps you derive trends and patterns – and generates new business opportunities. Context makes data become richer, more meaningful. Someone very famously once said “Context is worth 80 IQ points”

Conversely, without Context, business conclusions might be flawed. It’s the old analogy of “knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad”

So, is data and context a marriage made in heaven?

I would say, it is certainly high on the “will not make the divorce courts within the next 6 months – ok, 2 years” side of the coin, but, like all relationships, it needs work! One of the thing that contextual analytics ends up doing, counter intuitively, is still not giving the whole picture (A bit like the blind men and elephant story – where, depending on CONTEXT, each blind man ascribed a different name to the elephant – thus describing a piece part of it, but no one realized it was an elephant)

So, what then is the secret sauce required to turn this marriage into one made in heaven?

a) Disruptive Discovery: An inherent flaw in most predictive analytics algorithms – whether based on big data or not, is that their results are incremental – because what you know/ what has happened/ inbuilt assumptions – i.e., CONTEXT are what predict the future, they will to a certain extent pre-determine the outcome of the prediction.

As a friend said, facebook always recommends Metallica to me when because like Iron Maiden – it doesn’t realize that I also like Jazz! Similarly, Amazon always shows me more Nora Roberts – as I bought some romance once, and leaves a huge opportunity gap because it doesn’t realize that I have bought say a Khaled Hosseini elsewhere!

Not sure how many of you read this hilarious piece that was circulating recently on how “liking” everything on facebook for 2 days turned the news feed into a strange animal! Much recommended for an empathetic laugh

A good case study in how pre ordained behaviors, or context, or for that matter assumptions, to a certain extent skew actual results can be read here (a pithy commentary on Windows 8’s failure)

b) Response Timeliness: This one again is a bit counter intuitive. Experts and proponents of context analytics would say – but PART of context is the real time nature of the tracking! One is continuously refreshing data with newer and newer inputs, that turns the context richer and richer that then gives better and better outputs — and on and on and on.

The tragedy, however, is that while most organisations are (or atleast are thinking of, or if not, then should be thinking of) collecting and processing data on a real time basis, the RESPONSE to a lot of this data is NOT real time – why? Mainly because it CANNOT be! They don’t have the capabilities – this is the classical bottleneck/ the Blackwell’s limiting factor/ the critical path in the Gantt chart!

As a parent, I realized very early on that the concept of “quality time” that was created to essentially rationalize lack of adequate time spent with kids by working parents was a lot of bs. It fell into shambles the minute my tearful 1 ½ year old asked me – “when I fell down and was bleeding so much, where were you”!!

As business people, we also know the value of being at the right place at the right time. This time criticality determines a lot of what we do – how we behave as consumers – what time we eat, when we exercise, when we buy… – but also how we plan say marketing promotions, or budget calendars, or for that matter the pitch to the HR guy for a raise!

As one of my fav musicians George Harrison said:
“It’s being here now that’s important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.”

What this then means in the big data world is, that when a customer sends out data – you translate it into a signal/ information/ wisdom – and then you jolly well figure out a way to respond to it at the time that the signal is asking for a response! May be immediately, may be a few days later – but, figure it out! Use the context, to not only tell you parts of the elephant, but the whole mammoth! So, its not only to find out what you can sell to the customer and where – but when/ and how quickly to lend a sympathetic ear/ when to fix a broken washing machine or a crashed site!!

Unless you can gear up your response mechanism to be time dynamic and responsive, all that context married to your data – is going to —- to use the marriage analogy – not produce a baby!!!

c) The Human Touch – AI, the Internet of Things and all automation notwithstanding, atleast for now, we humans are just wired to need human intervention

a. This is because technology is still flawed – Watson notwithstanding, most humans actually instinctively and judgementally can scan a wide breadth of data and more or less give reasonably accurate judgements – after all, that is what experience and seniority lend to a man.

b.Man is a social animal after all – most of us want, nay need, human contact – a good case is customer service. Automated responses just don’t cut it for many – they want to talk to a real person, the more serious the issue, the higher the need for human contact (maybe shortly that “real person” will also be a drone, but that’s besides the point).

After all, how else but due to a human would you see these 2 really delightful examples of ‘customer service” interactions – one by a Netflix representative, and this one by an amazon guy.

Make no mistakes, human beings could just as easily make bad mistakes – like seen in this http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/15/5901057/comcast-call-cancel-service-ryan-block!

But, by and large, if one could only afford it, human beings would be the best response mechanism.

All in all, its great to see the progress made due to big data and the Internet of Things etc, but the organization who can take the best of the context plus data marriage, and add the disruption, the time criticality and the human interface element would be the one on which I would put my money!

All Hail The New KPI Metric: SOS (Share of Screen)

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Back in the days of yore, we all ran after this big metric – its the one that decided supremacy in the market, was an indicator of your competitive strength, was the clue to your competitor’s revenue and profit – was all important in fact. This was Market Share. Battles were won and lost, careers made and shattered, increments and bonuses decided on the basis of the measly decimal points that audit reports showed one had garnered over previous quarters/ years. Oh btw, one ALWAYS debated audited MS figures – since your own calculations ALWAYS showed yours higher than your competitors’!

On the media front, which was more output related always (as opposed to outcome – some would argue it’s still that way), the ruling metric was Share of Voice (SOV) – this was how many GRPs you had gained as opposed to your competitors (in the PR world, the equivalent was impressions/ mentions). So, was a measure of reach/ frequency and negotiation skills.

On Screen Apps

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But, in today’s mobile first / m-commerce world, these are arguably outdated figures to chase – what matters is what “Share of Screen” or SOS you have received – in other words,
– Was your app downloaded or not
– If yes, how often is it being used
– For what periods of time is it being used
– In comparison, if your competitor’s app being used more?
– Or, as in the case of retailers, is an aggregator/ pure e commerce app like amazon/ Flipkart being used instead of yours?

(Look at how Target’s Cartwheel app is helping the retailer recover a fair amount of ground it has lost of late)

Fitting actually, that Amazon called its live customer service on demand app button “Mayday” – after all, its guaranteeing Amazon higher SOS!