Virtual Goods, Real Money

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. – Henry David Thoreau

Susan Wu, Charles River Venture initiated a Virtual Goods Conference.

3PointD has a very comprehensive coverage of the event.

I see Jeff Barr twittering about finding new cloths and socks for the Tonight Live event. He must be happy to shell out the money coz he is an active participant.

I have seen the effect of a good dress during my first unconference in secondlife. Kate Trgovac(Katicus Sparrow in SL), got full value for the money she invested on her remarkable dress to play the hostess for the event.
In matter of time, the passive participants will also become conscious of their dress and other virtual goods that go with them. [They will want to look good on the 'coverage' ]

Thus, Susan’s hypestat that the Virtual Goods market is USD 1.5 billion and growing passes the first level reality check.

The real venture capital companies will be focusing on the platform providers and there can be very interesting deal flows by making the virtual worlds inter-operable. [Will interoperability create the deal? or will the deals create the interoperability? let us see...]

I see an opportunity for pure virtual currency/virtual goods based Venture Capital( or Virtual Capital?) firm. It will be lot of learning and lot of fun, money will follow soon enough! Just thinking aloud. I might assemble one soon enough.

Interesting quote from the event( By Susan, on importance of third party empowerment/power of secondary markets):

The reason Google, eBay, Amazon, exist is because they lower the barrier for entrepreneurship.

India IT Growth a Stagnation Trap; India Design Community Next?

In my recent Bangalore visit, I was really taken aback by the rampant growth and the intellectual stagnation brought out ironically by the IT boom.

My old time friend who was in between jobs was sulking like a child refusing to go to school at the prospect of reporting to work in a well branded multi-national. He was saying, the growth will be kind of automatic and there will be a lot of internal leg pulling and politics on the way. Hmmm….

Another surprising thing I noticed in the conversation with the engineering elite working for top companies(accenture, motorola, infy etc) is that they are not very conversant with the world changing trends and developments, say for example, web2.0 and the democratization of tech in general. More than the lack of awareness, I was taken aback by the apathy: They simply don’t care. That is sure sign of stagnation.

In this context the observation by Ashwini Deshpande of Elephant Design, who gave an interesting talk at the India Innovation Summit has lot of relevance. Hope the design community wakes up to the perils:

At the end of my session, I got a question from one of the designers
in the audience. He wanted to know whether we will see exponential
growth in design in India just like what happened to IT. I would
repeat my answer: Nowhere in the world has design seen the kind of
exponential growth that IT is experiencing. Let us not have that
illusion. Design is not going to be a quantity game: neither in
terms of number of people nor in consulting revenues. In every
developed country where design has been around for years, it is
still a virtue of quality. That said, I also believe we are standing
on a dangerous spot right now. World has woken up to the fact that
India can offer design services. IT in India made the decision of
accepting back-end work as a start. Indian IT companies have had to
work very hard to break out of the image of cheap back-end services.
If we make the same mistake & welcome back-end design services, we
may not ever come out of it as we will never have the strength of
numbers. So let us not…

The choice of quantity over quality by the IT industry has put it in a (negative)spiral. There is a major manpower scramble and there is poor quality due to that. And the spiral reinforces itself.
The choices made by IT pioneers were at a different point in time, when, it was customary to have slides ready about Taj Mahal, snakes and tigers ready during a outsourcing biz pitch. Now it is a different window of opportunity and will the India Design Community learn from the experience of the IT community?

Bonus Links
India/Bangalore is unattractive for hi-tech startups like Riya.com to the extent of closing down Bangalore office.
Fastcompany on Philips design unit: With iPod, and iPhone success of of Apple, Design is the new mantra. And IT types love new mantra from their clients. Just amplifies Ashwini’s concern that Design in India is in a ‘dangerous’ point.

Amazon Web Services Chat 21 June 2007

The AWS chat is getting interesting. Today there were some useful tips. I learned that with libsocondlife it is possible to upload textures on to SL without the L$10 tax! Cool.
Connecting with other Mturk enthusiasts was an added bonus.

It is a good forum to make feature requests and connect with other developers and listen to their ideas, concerns and have fun.
Today Ryan Mahoski/Drunsen Deadlight brainstormed about a audio wikipedia built based on Mturk and telephone based service 1-900-WIKIPEDIA. [ Initially it started as 1-800-WIKIPEDIA, then it evolved into 1-900-WIKIPEDIA - permium telephoney service to charge the end user] Interesting!

I requested a Mturk sandbox feature: Replicate the qualifications from the main Mturk on to the sandbox so that it is easy to test with qualifications.

Neil Foley: India Innovation Summit

Neil Foley: India Innovation Summit

Originally uploaded by labsji

Neil is an accomplished designer. Titan watches are designed by him. I was impressed by the (apple) fruit holder he designed ‘to unclutter’ the fruit bowl!

The presentation was bit of a drag due to some voice problems and mostly due to it being the last presentation on a very long day. Me, Mine, My Design line also did not help much.

Erehwon Innovation Consulting @ India Innovation Summit

I recently attended the India Innovation Summit an event organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry. The biggest discovery for me was the Knowledge Partner of the event, Erehwon Innovation Consulting. The way they have organized the content of the event and the people around it was impressive. It sends a strong signal that they know what they are talking about. And they are here for the long haul.
A little digging at the web site and their brochure reveals that their strong point is tapping the Human Element:

Human beings are essentially fragile in nature and tend to keep losing steam and energy, especially when faced with huge legacies and barriers. Renewing mindsets and energy is critical to succeeding with innovation.
…
This human element IS ALMOST NEVER taken into account. Which is why innovation fails.

I would have passed it as a “Oh Yeah?!” – yet another insincere speak just to con the potential client. But they walked the talk when they called in Anil Sainani to share his amazing story of family business unification. I was able to see that Parvathi Menon was literally fighting her tears sitting on the stage when Anil reached high point in his story.

I see a genuine interest in Innovation with the people I happen to interact viz., Jaideep, Mandeep, Ranjan, Buupendra( who in one phrase – ‘Change the Story.’ – amazed me!).

With the whole web2.0 phenomenon stressing the importance of human factors, their Quantum Innovation(QI) formula might just make the biggies ‘get it’. Hmmm let us see…

Too bad no one at Erehwon blogs!

Bonus Links:
India Innovation Summit 2007 ‘official blog?!’ at blogspot.
Bit of rant by Navaneet Bhushan on how the event could be better(of course with some ‘promotion’ too.
India innovation – The problem of “we” factor – By Prakasan K, TRIZit

Ashwini Deshpande, Elephant Design@ India Innovation Summit

The world is flat, The market is an elephant, And we are blind.

Not to worry, Ashwini Deshpande and her spirited/playful team at Elephant Strategy + Design are there to help you discover the contours of your market. But beware they will sneak an Elephant motif or two in your logo, product, or brochure!
Ashwini gave an inspiring talk on how her design company employs an eight fold path to deliver innovation Root2Fruit for their clients.

The talk was part of banquet session of the India Innovation Summit 2007 organized by the CII. The content was put together by Erehwon Innovation Consulting, the knowledge partner of the event. Each of the method had an anchor punch line and was elaborated with an Elephant client story.

I was very impressed by the BeckSeal story – too bad I’m not able to locate the product online. The story starts when BeckIndia came to Elephant Desing for a package artwork change. BeckSeal was a supplier for M-seal before it was acquired by Mahindra & Mahindra. So they had a lot of capacity for making the epoxy putty. When M&M did not source the putty from BeckSeal, it went to the market with a ditto product with ditto packaging. Obviously the revenues were nothing to write home about. Elephant as a strategy company offered to ‘Ask the users’ on BeckSeal’s behalf. Elephant figured out that the users are annoyed with the mess of mixing, the smell, and not being able to use fractional quantity of the product.
Elephant’s team came up with a Revelon lipstick like co-extruded epoxy-putty dispenser for BeckSeal thereby positioning it in a totally different high premium segment of the market.
Another impressive innovation method discussed was “Non contextual benchmarking” illustrated by a Bajaj Service stations transformed from a greasy shack to a sophisticated experience. The metaphor employed for the transformation was Intensive Care Unit(ICU) and/or a 5-star kitchen. The results are there for everyone to see. The transformation paid off within months rather than years.
The punch-line method was: “Dont wait for a brief” where they took the initiative on their own and designed an identity for the city they call their home. And as with all good karma got rewarded handsomely in time.

Ashwini in much demand on her way out rushing to the Airport: Cheers to her for making design a regular biz in India, making Pune a Design destination.

Impressive quote:
“Find purpose, Means will follow – M K Gandhi” seen on the last slide of the show. Lot of attitude!

Business As Family Unifier::Anil Sainani@ India Innovation Summit

Indian movies are abound with stories where a song unites a family. At the India Innovation Summit 2007, the banquet session featured a family story of how business motivations and business management principles were applied to unite a family of six brothers and their families.
The India Innovation Summit is an yearly event organized by Confederation of Indian Industries. The content for the event is put together by Erehwon Innovation Consulting a bunch of passionate Innovation enthusiasts making a living by evangelizing innovation in big organizations.

Anil Sainani is a ex-civil-servant presently running his consulting business on family (biz)governance. He systematically presented the story of how one of his brothers refused the splitting up of the family wealth and initiated a reunification of the family for health wealth and happiness for all in the family. Interestingly, they borrowed a few simple management methods to guide them through the journey from ambient apathy as starting point to Awaken, Preserve, Be Happy as their destination.

The primary motivation of the initiator(Sunil) of the reunification was business and growth. Yet the end result was much better that anyone bargained for. After the brothers agreed in principle to reunite, they took six months to study books and formed a task force to initiate actions. Their initial pitch was, ‘If 81,000 Tatas can reform and become remarkable why not we just 21 of us?’ After six months of preparatory activities they launched a 28 day intensive program for the actual unification. Much of it was educating, emotional cleansing and enrollment for vision 2005. The members responded to the vision with enthusiasm. And started sharing their individual visions and plans that align with the overall family vision. Health was the first area to get attention. The vision implementation team ensured that everyone got together for the morning walk at 6 am for a 30min walk. Cool! To cut a long story short, Success, Happiness, Prosperity followed!

An interesting quotes from the talk:
“It is not easy to convince the wife on such issues”

“Death does not follow chronological order”

Bonus Links
Kellog School of Management:Center for Family Enterprise
Family Business Governance:ISB Insight. ( interestingly, the family unification story is used as a case study by ISB)
Anil Sainani on Transparent Tendering in Indian Railways ( Not sure if it is the same Anil)

Showcasing Paper File Tracking at India Innovation Summit

From 14 June to 18 June I went missing from Chennai scene. I was invited by DSIR to participate in the India Innovation Summit 2007. The event was organized by CII(Confederation of Indian Industry) and the content was mostly assembled by Erehwon Innovation Consulting.
As part of TePP support for my ‘Electronic Tagging of Book Like objects’ project – which resulted in the paper file tracking system, I was provided a nice stall at the conference. My stall was right opposite Accenture and Motorola. Interestingly they both featured RFID based solutions.

The stalls were strategically located at the lobby of the auditorium just off the networking area. There sessions were planned such that there were enough break time for networking, that worked in my favor. Frankly I was surprised by the response. Everyone who gave a patient hearing wished me success in a very genuine way. I am throughly impressed and blown away by the response.


The CII team has done a good job of taking care of details to the last dot. I’m particularly thankful for Mrs Sudha Srikanth for a very warm coordination.

The Accenture stall displayed a heart monitoring vest.

The Motorola geeks were showcasing podcasting and a phone based electronic purse. Very interesting stuff! But the way the geeks were intensely fiddling their laptops rather than go out of the way to make a conversation with the passers by made me LOL. Just reinforces the Motorola stereotype, good at engineering bad at marketing! Oh wait a minute, that is their marketing schitik!

Bonus Links
Tepp Innovator’s Blog at Blogspot.
CII India Innovation Summit blog.

Pmarca

Marc Andreessen is blogging.

About hiring, firing, venture capital and of course blogging. Productivity p0rn, and 2c on bubble2 too. Interesting!

RedMonster at PodWorks.in Graffiti Board

The graffiti board of PodWorks.in has a Red Monster like a GapingVoid BlueMonster!

Grafiti board speaks volumes of the events success!

During WikiCamp, Wiki2Booklet featured the BlueMonster.