Jasbir Ryait's comments posted to TRIZ India Yahoo group

It is a pleasure to get the following email from Jasbir Ryait, Chairman of GS Auto International. This was posted to the TRIZ India Yahoo group (trizindia@yahoogroups.co.in). Jasbir has been one of the earliest TRIZ proponents and really an innovator in true sense. His company has grown leaps and bounds over the years - Getting comments from him indicates that we are arriving in Innovation Community. Thanks Jasbir, Look forward to more interactions!


Hi all,

I reproduce below what Navneet Bhushan has written about triz thinking on his blog….and would like to add my comments below:
TRIZ THINKING
May be the whole idea of TRIZ - trying to craft a theory of inventing if I may, one need to look at - Altshuller talks about following main points1. Focus on Function2. Describe Ideality3. Look at resources - in and around4. Study Contradictions - Merging of Extremes5. Learn from past solutions - knowledge - inventive principles6. Study what happens to various systems as they evolve - study evolution of systems and predict next stage of your system based on other such evolutionary trends7. Do everything systematically - step by step.Let us look at what some others are sayingKaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking by Shingo (Cross posting from my other Blog)Kaizen and the art of creative thinking the new book by the co-creator of Toyota Production System - popularized as Lean Thinking, promises to be an important journey through the Lean Thinking. It is indeed a culmination of years of exprience which goes deep in the execution by thinking through - rather than management theories pushed through the organization - which is the regular way the change is forced on th enterprises. Just quoting the text at the link aboveKaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking The Scientific Thinking MechanismBy Shigeo Shingo Edited by Norman Bodek, Collin McLoughin, Tracy Epley Even the greatest idea can become meaningless in the rush to judgment. To gauge an idea as feasible we must cut our ties to the status quo and find the balance between constructive criticism and judgment. Within that balance we will uncover crucial input for making our ideas a reality.Do download the chapter freely available at Chapter 5 It is called from ideas to reality. It promises to be the solution to last week's objections that people had during the barkamp on "what comes in the way of idea generation".It will be interesting for us to understand the differences and similarities in these two systems - coming from Russia and Japan independently and from two different sources as well (TRIZ from inventions, Lean from producing world class automobiles)


8) THE LAWS OF CAUSALITY: a) For every effect, there is at least one cause.
b) Every cause produces both negative and positive effect.
9) THE ABSTRACT THINKING: The breakthroughs/ innovations occur while iterating between lower and upper levels of abstraction. It is during this iteration process that contradictions get resolved(For the time being)

Warm Regards,

Jasbir Singh Ryait
CHAIRMANGS AUTO INTERNATIONAL LTD,
GS ESTATE, GT ROAD ,
LUDHIANA-141010INDIA

What Are Best Triz-For-Software Sources?

This was the question posed at TRIZ-JOURNAL.

My response that I posted to the question - I am cross posting below.

Hi Eric,
The best source of information for TRIZ for software innovation in my opinion will always be "Yet to come". Having said that I would like to add that TRIZ as a philosophy as well as theory can be applied as such to any problem - it is artificial to distinguish between fields, for example, software, manufacturing, automotive etc. At the higher level all fields are similar as per TRIZ. I will go to the extent that may be at some higher level they may be same, it is really the problem of abstraction - which we need to overcome in our mind.
So in essence what I am saying is all existing sources of information for TRIZ can be sources of software innovation. Let us say about evolutionary trends - TRIZ recognized some trends in systems. Cant we study and find what are the trends in Information Technology - let us say, (A) Information Representation - Bits, Bytes, Hexadecimal, Mnemonics (assembly language), Higher Level languages, data variables, data structures, files, data bases, distributed data bases, knowledge bases, XML, etc (B) Information Processing - Data, information, knowledge (rules), business intelligence, extracting co-relations, data visualization, Decision enabling knowledge (C) Information Communication - data communication, information networks, knowledge networks, social computing. Now if we add what are the methods to perform all these functions we have codified the IT knowledge for software development engineers.
Let us look at TRIZ concept of IDEALITY - TRIZ talks about ideality as function achived without cost and no adverse impact to the system. For software systems, ideality assumes a slightly different meaning - which we are discussing at TRIZ INDIA FORUM (http://trizindiaforum.blogspot.com/2007/11/triz-thinking-ideal-software-system.html - Software as you know (Mythical Man Month, brooks) is an representation of conceptual construct. Since the function of a software system itself evolves over time and since there is no static definition of function of s software system, it becomes imperative to look at system structure - the ideal system is the so called least coupled system of highly cohesive software elements. This lead us to concepts of coupling and cohesion which are anyway fundamental to Software design.
In essence my response is that instead of looking for sources on TRIZ for software it may be more appropriate to understand TRIZ and then see how software systems can be designed using TRIZ concepts.
My two cents!
Navneet

Category Theory - Developing complex modularized spread sheets

Oxford, UK, Category Theory - a branch of mathematics has been used by a researcher Jocelyn Paine to set up a Web-based software library for Excel users.

It is very interesting to see the spreadsheet horror stories at this link that prompted Paine to create the robust modularized web based excel library.

Only time will tell how the experiment goes. It may be of value if each module comes up with clear documentation about who did it for what purpose and what errors have been rectified. May be a Wiki approach can help. Can this be a web service - just thinking aloud?

Anyway Paine has an (Dot) org site at http://www.spreadsheet-parts.org/

His before and after modularity cartoons also I liked. The quotes on why modularize are also of interest

Balaji's Joy of Innovation

I met Balaji at CII Innovation Summit held in June 2007 at Bangalore. He had a stall on his invention on paper file tracker technology.

We exchanged some emails on the CII summit as well as our reactions to what transpired. Since I shifted to Chennai in September, I was hoping to meet him someday. It is indeed a pleasure to receive an email from him regarding an event he is organizing on the Amazon Web Services Business Model and its evangilist from Amazon, Jinesh Varia, who is visiting India during first week of December 2007. I reproduce the email verbatim for others to see the work that Balaji has been doing and if others want to leverage Jinesh presence in India they can also get the benefit.

Jinesh's Travel Wiki is at this link. Balaji's email to me - (Thanks Balaji for remembering me)


Dear Navneet,
Amazon Web Services(AWS) http://aws.amazon.com as you are aware is an interesting web scale computing building block. It has high disruptive potential to unleash the creativity of startups.
More than the technical innovation, the business innovation of AWS be it pricing or community building will be of interest to you. There is going to be an informal meetup with Amazon Web Services Evangalist Jinesh Varia on Dec 13 http://awschennai.pbwiki.com. I invite you to participate in the meetup to get a feel of startup action around AWS in Chennai.
If your interested in AWS is more enterprise oriented, you are welcome to check out Jinesh''s India trip wiki http://evangelists.wetpaint.com/page/Jinesh+Varia+India+Dec+2007?mail=1127&t=anon and schedule a meeting to suit your requirement.

Jinesh,
Navneet is an Innovation thought leader and is Vice President & Head - Innovation Labs, Hexaware Technologies. He is old school enough to have countless publication to his credit and new school enough to embrace and experiment with unconference phenomenon. In short right
kind of person to pitch the benefits of AWS. Check out his blog to get an idea of what I meanhttp://innovationcrafting.blogspot.com/.

Regards.
-Balaji S.
Blog: http://labsji.wordpress.com

Art of Creative Thinking - from co-creator of Toyota Production System

Kaizen and the art of creative thinking the new book by the co-creator of Toyota Production System - popularized as Lean Thinking, promises to be an important journey through the Lean Thinking. It is indeed a culmination of years of exprience which goes deep in the execution by thinking through - rather than management theories pushed through the organization - which is the regular way the change is forced on th enterprises. Just quoting the text at the link above

Kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking The Scientific Thinking Mechanism
By Shigeo Shingo Edited by Norman Bodek, Collin McLoughin, Tracy Epley

Even the greatest idea can become meaningless in the rush to judgment. To gauge an idea as feasible we must cut our ties to the status quo and find the balance between constructive criticism and judgment. Within that balance we will uncover crucial input for making our ideas a reality.

Do download the chapter freely available at Chapter 5 It is called from ideas to reality. It promises to be the solution to last week's objections that people had during the barkamp on "what comes in the way of idea generation".

Barcamp - the KM Unconference

kamp-blr - the unconference at Bangalore on Knowledge Management was an eye-opener for me. It was indeed the difference between the so called conference and unconference (the structured agenda versus evolving self-organizing agenda of the unconference) which was of interest. Although the difference did not play out to the extent I thought it will, considering the newness of concept may be it requires more practice. Nevertheless, hats off to the people who made this happen - there is whole bunch of them. It indeed will be my privilege to be part of the same crowd.

I made following presentation - but to make this presentation I really had to struggle. Morning my laptop conked off. It was not ready to access the OS - it is amazing how at the specific moment it went off - Kaput. Prakash, my friend helped me with his laptop, luckily I had some presentations with me in the USB memory stick which I collected together to make a - pot pourrie presentation.

Globalizing Innovation Complexity - Creating Wealth in GIXBang world

One intereting event at the end of the day was what was termed Knowledge Cafe - the details are described at Murali's Blog. The question was interesting " what comes in the way of idea generation" - My mind looked at the root of an idea - it has to be some sort of thought - which itself comes to us through some experience. Well once experiences (which can be problems, crisis, normal behaviour, something unique or extraordinary etc) becomes thoughts they can develop into ideas. Obviously it is not about ideas in the mind - the whole problem of Intellectual property is related to so called idea-expression dichotomy - ideas need to be articulated and should be expressed to be considered generated. People mentioned the past experience in an enterprise inhibits people to express ideas again - the psychological safety is an issue most of the enterprises.

However to my mind it is really following two issues

1. There are not enough varied experiences for people to have richness of understanding of reality
2. There is not enough imagination if you have experiences to link one experience with another to generate thoughts that become an idea and then get articulated

Second part was - what should the enterprise do to increase the hinderances - well make it an experience based learning

Let people get into varied experiences - more variety they have more likelihood of ideas - plus enable them with to generate more ideas by providing them capabilities to link multiple experiences.

Learning Enterprise is a really the framework for success!

From the Old Thoughts - Future of Warfare

Almost a decade back I wrote the following chapter the starting point of my book called "Future of Warfare - A search for Military Doctrine". Since the book never came out of my mind, yet the chapters are there - I will share them here... readers can may be peep into my history
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1 Warfare

War is a matter of vital importance to the state

Sun Tzu

1.1 Introduction

Despite the centuries of civilisation, human race is not able to avoid war. Wars will remain till human beings exist. Therefore, to study ways of avoiding, prosecuting if imposed, sustaining and supporting wars is an essential activity of a modern nation. The present day knowledge-based world will influence the way the wars will be carried out in future. These wars will be greatly affected by the fundamental changes taking place in the global geo-strategic environment and the increasing role of political, cultural and socio-economic factors in the overall security equations. However, technology will have sweeping influence on future wars. Therefore, to understand future warfare, it is not only necessary to understand the unpredictable, uncertain and unknown domains in which our world is rapidly moving, but also to assess the revolutionary ways in which the technological developments will influence future warfare.

This book predicts and analyses the alternative future structures of the world and ways to deal with them in the framework of a military doctrine. The advances taking place in information technology, military electronics, surveillance capabilities and precision guidance should be exploited to the full extent within the formulation of the new doctrine. The fact should be understood that the present day military hardware such as aircraft, ships and tanks have been reduced to the status of only a platform for carrying precision guided munitions, sensors and missiles. Unless these platforms are enmeshed and integrated in the nation-wide security system, their value is minimal. Therefore, the key to the future is integration. The military doctrine should encompass and bind together the whole spectrum of diverse forces into an effective whole that can be used as a capable striking force that no enemy force can match.

A war, statistically speaking, is a rare event. It is also an exceedingly costly and disruptive form of interaction between people and states. A war indicates that level of bilateral relationship between two states, which exists from the time, first mobilisation of troops is called for against the other side till peace is reached. This view of war implying only active armed conflict however is a restrictive definition. Here it is assumed that war/conflict is in operation, from the moment a state decides upon a policy of armed resistance or inclination to counter an external/ internal threat with military ramifications, to the time the solution of the active threat is achieved or it is made dormant. Modern day wars have been defined at three levels of increasing intensity though not necessarily increasing complexity and duration (See Fig. 1). At the first level is the most prevalent form of warfare, i.e., Low Intensity Conflict (LIC). The LIC is defined as a conflict between irregular forces, mercenaries, revolutionaries, terrorists, etc and the regular, conventional armed forces of a nation. The biggest challenge facing the conventionally armed forces of a nation, which are trained and equipped for fighting against the conventionally armed forces of the enemy, is to deal with LIC. The Mid Intensity Conflict (MIC) is the conventional warfare that is indoctrinated in the regular armed forces of the world. With the advent of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), the chances of High Intensity Conflict (HIC), which is defined as a conflict involving WMDs, are increasing. As is evident from Fig 1., the probability of occurrence of a LIC is high and also the duration of such conflicts is more. This is due to the fact that LIC is a continuous process, which the armed forces all over the world have found hard to contain. The probability of WMD based HIC is low compared to LIC/MIC. However, a threat which this spectrum misses out is the possibility that, WMDs may fall in the hands of irregulars engaged in an LIC. This will bring the conflict to HIC levels, where the nation fighting the insurgents or irregulars will suffer. Therefore, the armed forces of a modern nation need equipment, force structure and doctrines to deal with threats at all three levels of intensity. These armed forces should strive to achieve a balanced force structure to deal with hi-tech conventional threats from other forces and to deal with low to medium technology LICs on the other hand.

A basic question that arises, however, is that why do people fight? What are the causes of conflicts? Why do we need to maintain considerable armed forces and spend huge amounts on their maintenance? To answer these questions, we have to look into the history of warfare.

1.2 Warfare - Historical perspective

Once the basic needs of humans are full-filled, there starts a striving for control and power. Human beings have a natural requirement to control everything as per their whims and fancies. This egoistic controlling itch, generates an inclination for hoarding of resources which are required by other beings. The resources include land, wealth, pleasures of all sorts and knowledge. The person having more of these resources can control the lives of more human beings. This ability to accumulate resources and hence control other lives, creates 'power'. Once the human beings realised that power is the ultimate tool, which can serve their ego, the wars on this planet started. War is ultimately a conflict to gain more power.

Every nation strive to become more powerful in this world. However, the three legs of power i.e., economics, military and knowledge capabilities of respective nations orders the power structure of the world. A nation which is economically strong, militarily strong and controlling more knowledge resources is more strong than the one who has less economic, military and knowledge capabilities. Therefore, to capture more power every nation strives for more economic, military and knowledge strengths. At each of these dimensions and paths to power, every nation encounters many other nations. This striving to gain relative power advantage creates the possibilities of conflicts and wars.

History is replete with many wars, however, each of these wars and conflicts can be attributed to a conflict for more power- be it economic, military or knowledge. It must be mentioned here, that knowledge in this context is taken as a broad term encompassing religion as well as political ideology. The power seekers have been enveloping their naked lust for more power by calling their competitors and their targets as threats to their national interests or objectives. The interest of a nation may be in conflict with the interest of another nation. If the two nations have equal power and geographical proximity, or a nation has capability to project its power in the geographic proximity of the other nation, then the chance of conflicts are high between the two countries. If a weaker power is threatened by a strong power, it calls for help from another strong power to counter the threat. It so happened in most of the cases, that the power coming to the rescue of the weaker nation started controlling it. This process led to the formation of power blocks within the world geo-political structures and hence the world was divided into major power blocks controlled by a big power and each such block was in confrontation with the other.

Writing on the reasons and trends of major wars of the 20^th Century, Stoessinger [ ] presents the following observations:

No nation that began a war in this century, emerged a winner

Outbreak of war depended to a major extent on the personality of leaders

Most important single precipitating factor in the outbreak of war is misperception. Such distortion may manifest itself in four different ways:

In a leader's image of himself

A leader's view of his adversary's character

A leader's view of his adversary's intentions towards itself

A leader's view of his adversary's capabilities and power

Most national leaders on the brink of war expected victory after a brief and triumphant campaign

When a leader on the brink of war believes that his adversary will attack him, the chances of war are fairly high. When both leaders share this precipitation about each other's intent, war becomes a virtual certainty

It is not the actual distribution of power that precipitates war, it is the way in which a leader thinks that power is distributed.

The way a nation fights a war is dependent upon its history, present power alliances, terrain and technology. Historically speaking, warfare has always been a regular way of living for many nations. The nature of warfare has also changed as the world has evolved.

Traditionally functions in wars have been analysed as – Planning, Execution and Logistics [ ]. These functions are superimposed on two operational areas of warfare i.e., strategic and tactical. There are grey overlaps between strategic and tactical areas reflected in diverse definitions of strategy and tactics. However, in the war continuum – strategy is concerned more with `planning’ – with only a small excursion in `execution’, whereas tactics starts at the fringes of planning and is mainly exercised in the execution of battle [ ]. Planning involves three main phases – formulation of war policy, acquisition of strategic intelligence and the movement phase involving mobilisation, allocation and distribution of material resources and preliminary deployment of forces. Execution was concerned with two phases i.e., movement and `destruction’.

Tactics has been concerned with two important elements – weapon power and the capability and speed of keeping it moving in battle. This traditional concept of fire-and-movement has been the basic tactical principle throughout the ages. However, most commanders have given more importance to fire power than movement. This has resulted in wars of attrition when the opponent commander has also given the same emphasis. However, with judicious movement of weapon / weapon system the exclusive fire-power based tactics have been defeated. Superiority of fire-power as a means of victory has been the major requirements of British Commanders (e.g. Montgomery’s campaign). It is the capability to combine movement along with firepower that has proved to be the major downfall of weapon power based tactics.

Since the traditional military campaign were mostly based on ground with minor air support, the terrain or ground on the battlefield played a major role. Based on terrain, the basic formation of armies i.e., how they are deployed on the battlefield, were line, the column and the square [ ]. Each formation had its own advantages and disadvantages – and the commanders had to choose their formations taking into account the tasks to be performed by the armies.

Historically wars were based on the ground forces ability to destroy enemy armies in frontal attacks and manoeuvre battles to flank attacks. Most of the time the ranges at which the battles took place were within few kilometres of the attacker's visual ranges. With the induction of tanks and mechanical infantry – traditional eye ball to eye ball conflict shifted to a movement based warfare. Tank symbolised the fire and movement tactics. However, many commanders used the tanks as in old age concept of protected fire power. The mobility aspect of tank was exploited by Germans in World War II. The blitzkrieg tactics of Germany proved that tanks could not only be used to achieve a break-through where traditional methods of heavy pounding by artillery fire and subsequent assault by waves of infantry had failed, but were also capable of independent mobile operation to force a decision. The Germans were able to defeat a numerically superior force by piercing the enemy position at a few selected points, followed by swift thrusts to effect deep penetration and destruction of main body of the enemy forces. The blitzkrieg attacks were based on the theory of infiltration [ ]. The blitzkrieg, when compared to traditional warfare of hitting the enemy at each level, halting one’s armour so that flank formations can catch up and then moving forward to the next line of enemy defences, performed much better only because the doctrine underlying the fire and movement tactics was exploited to the full.

A major problem of providing artillery fire-power to the armoured formations, once they have penetrated deep inside enemy was solved by the use of tactical bomber aircraft. Aircraft assumed the role of flying artillery and thus was seen more as an extension of traditional artillery. The concentrated panzer divisions of German army utilised the armour formation for the deep penetrations. These formations were able to defeat the linear defences of traditional defence forces. These tactics indicated an important point that one should realise throughout, that the aim of war is not merely to inflict maximum casualties on the enemy but it is to defeat the enemy.

German Panzer divisions met their match in Russians, who evolved a new form of defence doctrine against massed armoured thrusts. Once the armour thrusts have taken place, Russians instead of retreating the front, re-organised in their own territory in small pockets. These small areas were used as strong castles against enemy armour formations and mobile units were dispatched to frustrate the incoming armour formation. This counter offensive was also based on fire and defence movement. This was a major shift from the linear static defence doctrine to a dynamic defence doctrine. British used armour to seek and destroy enemy armour, whereas Germans used armour against non-armoured forces, thus making the major difference between victory and loss. Role of armour for independent tank action was proved wasteful, whereas it is in conjunction with all arms co-operation that the armour achieved its major task of infiltrating at a high speed and going in for strategic targets.

It can be seen that traditional warfare has not freed itself from vagaries and intricacies of terrain and it is based on fire and movement doctrine used by armour formations. Air power was used only as an extension of artillery.

1.3 Current Wars

In the present world scenarios, the type of wars that are being fought is a reflection of a shift in societies of the world. Information Technology (IT) has brought the awareness level of a common man to almost to the highest professional in respective fields. The common man of this decade is more aware than say the common man of two decades before. The level of his awareness of the world around him, has increased at a remarkable pace. This awareness has created in his mind the irrelevance of wars. Also, it is very difficult to fool him with lies. Hence, initiating and justifying a conventional war against any country by the rulers of a country has become exceedingly difficult. Therefore, the current world is seeing less of conventional wars or what we call the mid intensity conflicts.

However, an individual has become more aware of his basic rights with the continuous information explosion. The comparison with other societies makes him strive for more from his own political system. With this, his reason for fighting for himself or his local group (which is based most of the times on his religion rather than his nation) has increased due to competition from the other such groups. This awareness in him is increasing his urge for more power. Hence, individuals tries to organise religion based groups, however small, so as to carve a leadership position for them. Once these groups are created they tend to fight/attack other groups for justifying the necessity of their existence. This lead to an exponential growth in the number of conflicts which are termed as low intensity conflicts. When such conflicts are supported from outside (through financial, moral and material support) the problems for a nation increases manifolds. To counter such LICs is the major challenge that the world armies are facing today. Another factor that has fuelled this trend is the end of cold war. The melt down of the bi-polar world has resurfaced the age old ethnic religious conflicts that were dormant during the cold war years [ ].

The reluctance of big powers to give away their Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) is the major factor for the proliferation of WMD. This increasing trend is going to continue unless the big powers agree to live in a Nuclear Weapons Free World. Until that happens the world will continue to live under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. There are two ways in which the world can free itself from nuclear weapons. One is to let everyone develop these weapons. Once all the countries have exhausted their limited national budgets on building and maintaining sufficient nuclear weapons, then will start the process of freeing the world from these weapons. Another way is to eliminate WMDs from the countries possessing these weapons. There is a strong possibility of freeing the world from WMDs in today’s scenario, when the number of countries who possess these WMDs or are in the process of acquiring them, are less than ten. Once this number increases, which is likely to occur, it will become increasingly difficult to eliminate WMDs from the world.

Hence the two trends of increasing LICs and proliferation of WMDs are shaping the nature of current wars. These wars are living in an imitable world characterised by demise of bi-polarity, increasing reluctance on the part of political leadership to resort to wars due to more awareness of individuals, almost revolutionary impact of Information Technology (IT) on the society in uncountable ways through multiple dimensions and increasing intellectual contributions in evolving the new way of warfare.

Air Land Battle Doctrine and its many variants is the intellectual fabric on which the current wars of higher powers are being designed. For lesser powers, the fruits of such high-end resource-intensive doctrine are not available due to budget and technological constraints. Hence, these powers are evolving their own doctrines making the U.S. doctrines as the basis with which to compare their capabilities. It is highly unlikely that U.S. is going to give away the immense lead that it enjoys over other powers. But other powers are going to strive for achieving near parity with U.S. This trend of inventing the new Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) is going to shape the nature of future wars. In current wars, air power has assumed three distinct roles – one is the traditional role of its support of ground forces, the second is the possible role of attacking the enemy through air force before the ground offensive or counter offensive actually starts. This second concept is exemplified by the 1991 Gulf war, when U.S. and allies heavily pounded Iraqi forces for about 6 weeks before the actual ground action by U.S. forces started for only a few days. The third possible shift in the role of air power as a distinct force attacking the enemy force and achieving the mission of enemy destruction or halting the enemy forward movement by the use of air power alone. This is the recently emerging trend [ ].

1.4 Future Wars

The hi-end future wars (involving U.S. and other super powers) are going to be anywhere any-time wars [ ]. The fronts (battle, theatre and war) will vanish and will be replaced by whole five dimensional expanse of our existence i.e., the space, air, land, sea surface and under water. The war in each dimension will have trans-dimensional impacts due to remarkable jointness between the war making elements. The clarity of goals will make the necessity of elimination of enemy obsolete. The attrition warfare of the yester- years will be replaced by the disruption warfare, where the intent is to control information flow and information edge. These hi-end wars may not occur at all. The conflicts of future are most likely to be conflicts which will be messy, irregular and revolving around the rise of highly networked non-state actors, whose principal targets may, in many cases, be states [ ]. The technology will revolutionise the dynamics and attributes of new conflicts – with increasing decentralised attacks with over-lapping offence and defence capabilities. Strategic aims may shift from destruction to disruption. Possibility of a nexus between political and criminal actors with large overtones of terrorism and insurgency is going to require forces that can win the future information based conflicts.

There is a need to study the influence of information revolution on the structure of future world to take care of unanticipated and multi-dimensional threats. This influence will impact the traditional ideologies, objectives, doctrines and organisational structures. The dynamics of future wars should be studied for extracting and evolving the military doctrine and force structures by peeping through the window of future world. However, it is important to address the necessity of looking at the war doctrine for a force.

1.5 Need for a Military Doctrine

For the purpose of this book, the military doctrine is defined as a comprehensive system of views and procedures for conduct of future wars including various military operations, established by military experts, technologists and armed forces, in the likely threat environment, and within the purview of present force structures. This doctrine is subject to periodic reviews and analysis and is evolved taking into account the dynamic geo-political, economic and technological trends in the world scenarios. Also such a doctrine should be freely available as a comprehensive document, so as to give a common basis for decision making at all level of military and defence hierarchy of the nation.

With the availability of such a document the armed forces can visualize their force structures, technology influences and missions within the muti-dimensional milieu of the future war scenarios. Such a military doctrine should have a political, technoogical and economic basis coming out of the national vision for security and guarding the interests of the nation. The political basis should clearly mention the situations and reasons when the armed forces of the nation will be called upon for a military action. The technological requirements of such military actions based on the missions and tasks of various armed forces constituting the military of action should be clearly spelled out. The industry, economy, foreign policy and military of the nation should be geared to provide necessary capabilities and resources to the armed forces for carrying out the assigned tasks.

It must be mentioned here that technology, muscle power, raw courage, quality of armed troops, weapon systems or organised forces alone cannot guarantee victory in the future wars. A coherent well developed vision of future war to viable and usable operational concepts coupled with proper training, agile leadership, and technological backing is needed for the non-linear, high speed, more lethal and highly uncertain battlefields of the future.

Management and Creativity

This is a very interesting topic. It so happens that three of my Blogger friends have posted on similar topic but taking opposite stances and I just quote them below:

Prashant Joglekar says, Too many executives are complacent grazing animals only too ready to shy away from new ideas.

Karthik says why Management and Creation are difficult partners in bed ...

Pankaj says one needs to align projects (including new projects) with Corporate startegy as reflected in Balanced Score Cards.

Suresh in his comments on Karthik's post says - these are superficial differences

What am I saying? At this point - I really dont know?

BARCAMP @ Bangalore

Last week I attended the CII KM Summit - The summit was overall excellent. However the concept of unconferences stood out. I havent participated in any unconference before.

As a person who experiments more than continue the same way of doing my work, I immediately jumped to get in the first unconference I could - which is happening tomorrow @ Bangalore. Although this is in Knowledge Management space, and knowledge may not be only way to innovate, in fact according to Taleb (Black Swan, again!) knowledge is actually a hinderance to change/innovation, yet I am excited to be part of Kamp-blr, my first unconference.

I am also speaking - provided there are audience on the following topic - Globalizing Innovation Complexity - Wealth Generation in the GIXBang World!

Lets see - how it goes!
will share my experiences once I have gone through - although (once again Taleb, Black Swan) Narrative is typically a far cry from reality - I will narrate the experience without connecting the events. Quoting Taleb," I will King Died and Queen Died" rather than " King died and then Queen died in sorrow"!

How do you consume Media?

There was time when I used to read books, articles in very short span of time. There was a time when whatever printed paper I could lay my hands on - I used to consume. There was an almost obsessive media consumption habbit - the print media that I used to consume.

Then came the media on the computer screen, media on television screens, media on websites, pdfs, now we have the wikies and the blogs. If I really try to read a big fat novel now on paper print - I have a feeling I will take 10 times more duration than I used to do earlier.

The attention span is going rapidly down - down and down. The new screens are the 2 inches screens on my mobile - thats the media that that I will have - what can I read there.
There is a need for byte size media consumption. The New industry is how to create small crisp clear messages to be printed as small consumable capsules - well the age of large detailed reports, papers and books is slowly dwindling - Yet the variety that I am reading today is far more than I was reading earlier -

The width has increased exponentially -

We are entering the age of micro-media This link indicates the emergence of what the author says micro-behaviours.

ChangeThis

ChangeThis is creating a new kind of media. Seth Godin says - Show some respect is the message at Changethis.

There is an amazing list of Manifestos created by thought leaders - doers and believers who want to change the world ....

My suggestion: If you are not on Changethis - you are not participating in the new world - get up and connect, contribute at ChangeThis!

Outsourcing News

The following three news items worth pondering

1. Design gets hot in outsourcing game building design and architecture services are also being delivered from remote locations. Companies are looking at expanding outsourcing scope from the basic processes to deeper and wider processes

2. IT job outsourcing irk Australians Every Outsourcing deal will impact someone or other - Change impacts status quo anyway

3. Mechanics Tell United: Don't Outsource Mileage Plus, Aircraft Maintenance "Outsourcing Airplane Maintenance Is a Turkey."

The three newsitems on outsourcing gives the Globalizing Innovation Complexity (GIX) Bang world viewpoint

1. Globally Distributed Enterprises are the norm now
2. Transition and change will impact many existing structures
3. Instead of resisiting the change - people who embrace the change and adapt to it by embracing change will thrive

Ways to Kill Ideas

The realinnovation article is very interesting - it is titled Ten Ways to Inhibit Innovation - the 10 ways are (1) Criticize (2) Ban Brainstorms (3) Hoard problems (4) Efficiency focus not Innovation (5) Overwork (6) Adhere to Plan (7) Punish Mistakes (8) Do Not Look Outside (9) Promote Like people (10) Do Not Train.

Well to the list we can add following 40 idea killer phrases (from
Reference: “What A Great Idea” by Charles “Chick” Thompson, 1992, HarperCollins Publishers)


1. "Yes, but. . . "
2. "We tried that before."
3. "That's irrelevant."
4. "We haven't got the manpower."
5. "Obviously, you misread my request."
6. "Don't rock the boat!"
7. "The boss (or competition) will eat you alive."
8. "Don't waste time thinking."
9. "Great idea, but not for us."
10. "It'll never fly."
11. "Don't be ridiculous."
12. "People don't want change."
13. "It's not in the budget."
14. "Put it in writing."
15. "It will be more trouble than it's worth."
16. "It isn't your responsibility."
17. "That's not in your job description."
18. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."
19. "Let's stick with what works."C
20. "We've done all right so far."
21. "The boss will never go for it."
22. "It's too far ahead of the times."
23. . . . laughter. . .
24. . . . suppressed laughter. . .
25. . . . condescending grin. . .
26. . . . dirty looks. . .
27. "Don't fight city hall!"
28. "I'm the one who gets paid to think."
29. "What will people say?"
30. "Get a committee to look into that."
31. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
32. "You have got to be kidding."
33. "No!"
34. "We've always done it this way."
35. "It's all right in theory. . . but. . ."
36. "Be practical!"
37. "Do you realize the paperwork it will create?"
38. "Because I said so."
39. "I'll get back to you."
40. . . . silence. .

Modular Genes

The whole question of evolution is perplexing to most of us. How information gets transferred from generation to generation - we know through genetic processes. The New finding reported at the Science Daily gives some sort of explanation -

It is the Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT). Well when HGT and dynamic environment combine we get modularized genetic encoding.

I quote from the article " Like modular furniture that can be rearranged in different functional patterns, modular genes are standardized components that lend themselves to flexible rearrangement, and this genetic modularity arises spontaneously because of the selective pressure of a changing environment and the existence of horizontal gene transfer."

Practicing Complexity Theory for Organization Design

Complexity Theory as a framework for organization management is becoming the new buzz word - it is the lexicon that new ways of organization are really - on its own. No control No hierarchies - flat structures.

What is needed in the new world is a way to create common collaborative mentality as well as the infrastuctures - well the link above gives peep into a consulting firm in Wales.

The leaderless organization - developing on its own through open collaboration is the future - no it is the current - and if your oragnization has more than 3-4 layers - please revisit it immediately -

the old hierarchical structures of last millennium are going off!!!!!

Results from social networking - LinkedIn

Ellen Domb asked me the value/results of LinkedIn so far that I have realized, this was in response to my invitation for her to connect on LinkedIn.

Hello, Navneet: I have not yet (2 years) seen any useful results from LinkedIn, but I'm willing to try the experiment of joining networks. Have you gotten any good results from it?

My answer:

Hi Ellen, The most useful results have been recommendations from my colleagues - without me asking them - that I think is a great result - a feedback where people who mattered to you actually give their opinion in a free and uncluttered manner.

2. Ability to mine my friends's friends networks is also an interesting result - knowing who know whom - a kind of connection map - may be when you have an idea you can create a Tipping Point by connecting to people who can propagate it- Mavens, Connectors and salesmen (as per Gladwell's Tipping point)

3. I asked some questions on Lean product development - and amazing responses I received from all over the world.

4. I am also a member of Ryze and a friend asked me to get into Facebook as well. - I think the social networking and social computing is the future - what with all the web 2.0 becoming what people call the enterprise 2.0 .

In my view - usefulness can be in multiple dimensions - emotional, financial as well as functional - Knowing that I know so many and knowing that so many know me - that I exist - gives me a great high - may be its a fundamental craving for recognition - however these tools are making an individual capable of changing the world :)

I think the question was very interesting and hence I posted it on my blog as well!

Gaming Industry is the Thriving Force

Gaming Industry is rapidly moving up and up - lot of activity as reported here

Reasons - 1. Industry Consolidation 2. Big Global Media Companies moving in 3. Numbers are moving up at a rapid pace - $33B to $47B 4. Coming recession Gaming will be left last - robustness built in

What is the pie for Indian software industry in the games that we need to get in! I believe this is really an area that will demand rapid innovation and more focussed gaming solutions using web 2.0 - may be? and why not web 3.0 the semantic web incorporated inside... Well business model is second - first is the conceptual model... Anyone listening?

Lean Mentality is the Ticket

Womarck says - Honda follows Toyota, software guys are hated by hardware guys - and the integrated solutions are the future - of course he also is selling his book Lean Solutions

It is really how to collaborate - the software guys collaborate through non-facial communications - even in the web2.0 - the second life talks about virtual worlds - the automotive -hardward engineers want face to face collaboration - physical feel - the way they touch things

these two extremes need to collaborate - I think this is a major problem to be solved - How to bring physical engineers and knowledge engineers together to create the next generation products - may be TRIZ can help?

Small Aim is a Crime

About two months back I was in Mumbai on office work - in the evening I met Prashant Joglekar - an unbelievable passionate man - very passionate about Innovation and TRIZ. Although we had interacted before over emails, it was the first time we were meeting. He came all the way from his home to meet me at my hotel- which in a city like Mumbai, is a very tough task - I believe. Over the dinner, he gifted me a book by India's ex-president, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. It is titled Ignited Minds - Unleashing the power within India.

Prashant wrote, " Dear Navneet, you will enjoy this".

Well, having had the privilege of working directly with Dr Kalam when he was Head of DRDO, where I worked as a scientist, and having read his earlier books, I had no doubt that it will be a book that I will enjoy.

I am reading this small book - having seen the book umpteen times in book stores not buying it as I was always lured by other books on my interests, it is indeed a pleasant surprise that prashant was able to pin point what book I would not have bought! Thats a challenge for many of my other friends who said that they wanted to gift me a book but were not sure whether I have bought the book before - I have this irritating habbit of buying books everywhere - irritating to my wife - definitely :).

Well, Ignited Minds is a book to be cherished - t0 be imbibed, to be understood, to become one with the dream. Dr. Kalam writes a poem at the end - and I would like to reproduce one stanza - which makes you feel how our minds should grow out of what we crave in our daily life. Kalam says,

As a young citizen of India,
armed with technology, knowledge and love for my Nation,
I realize, small aim is a crime

Indeed - small aim is a crime. Aim high - as big as one can. This is an amazing meme.

Another gem from the same poem

the ignited soul compared to any other resource,
is the most powerful resource
on the earth, above the earth and under the earth.

I sincerely believe we all have a role to play, in the new world that is embarking on the journey ahead -

Thanks Prashant for the gift of ignited minds! it is indeed a treasure!

Life wants to happen

The USD 25000, Wolfram Prize for the following question "if someone could prove or disprove that a very simple theoretical computer called a Turing machine, with just six variations in its rule base, could perform all known computations, making it a "universal computer." - The universality of Turing machine has been proved by Alex Smith, 20, an undergraduate student studying electronic and computer engineering at the University of Birmingham in the UK.

It proves (still mathematicians have to thrash it out) that simple rules can indeed produce complex systems - which is what most of Wolfram's work - the creator of Mathematica, has been. Life wants to emerge - Nature wants to create continuously - unless we let her do it.

Well is there a lesson for the corporate world - yes - find out the rules of work that help emerge ideas and solutions for long term benefits

Complexification for Design for Complexity

Complexification for solving problems is a 180 degrees shift from reductionistic approach to problem solving.

If you have a problem - can you make it more complex by some means - how (1) add other adjacent problems to it (2) add Supersystem problems to it (3) add future problems to it (4) add past problems to it (5) increase the number of variables rather than cluster or reduce (6) increase the dimensionality of connections between problems elements ... many ways exist to complexify the problem, situation and scenario.

This further takes us to the field of systems thinking - everything is connected to everything else - in this scenario how do we separate the problem to study - all problem solving frameworks necessarily be models of reality crafted for study and solution- as otherwise it is not possible to delve into solution.

However, in the new world, more and more realization in many fields are emerging on complex systems - when small immediate interactions between systems elements create system properties that are not trivially attributed to the low level interactions - the so called emergent properties of the complex systems.

So in stead of making your problems simple -make it very c0mplex - and mind you - the optimal solution may emerge which is the simplicity on the other side of complexity! :)

Bibliography

Some references of papers and books (there may be some repetitions)

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• Chavez T and Dion G.R., Using Decision Engineering to Achieve Short Predictable Lead Time at Sun Microsystems, Inc., Cycle Time Research, Vol. 4, No. 1, 1998.
• Dahan E., Reducing Technical Uncertainty in Product and Process Development through Parallel Design of Prototypes, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, 1998
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• Wu S., A Probabilistic Model of Set-Based Design, MIT Undergraduate Journal of Mathematics
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Humble approach to learning

The Chairman of Indian Boston Consulting group writing in the economic times says we need a new approach to learning - less reductionistic more systemic and more humble approach.

Just to shift the focus - learning is natural if we are humble - because we believe we know much less and unknown is to be explored and learned as much as we can, however, learning is not natural if we have the arrogance of knowledge - This is a paradox - by learning you acquire knowledge and unfortunately the arrogance of knowing as well, which actually hinders further learning.

Learning matters in a universe which is evolutionary. However, the intelligent design theorists will have a different view saying universe is too complex to be evolved without divine intervention.

I am becoming convinced of the other way round - method - instead of reductionistic can we use complexification as a way of solving problems and hence learning. How do we complexify a system? As soon as one starts looking at we get into various system parameters to make it more complex. May be complexification is need in GIXBang world to solve problems. Also reaching the other side of compelxity - it is Simple there - however one need to transcends the complex.

Employee First Policy - HCL

"Being unique is no more a desire, but a mandate" - This is an interesting line from HCL's New CEO -

There is something happening with this communication engine - suddenly more press on this from the company itself. May be it is the urgency of communication that will propel the shift to new policies - I remember reading sometimes back that the company is talking of new business models - outcome, output and device based rather than transaction or billing rate based models.

Further this value based model has to be designed very quickly - so that we change the mindset of the industry. It is a long way to go - however we dont have time - hence rapid transformation is the key!

Design for Complexity

The recent insight from Gartner, "Business innovation will come from organizational openness" doesnt seemto be much of a new thing. Everyone talks about it.

The problem is how do we design the enterprise for openness. The enterprises where mental images and experiences are governed by close door, close loop, tight control, command and control hierarchical structures that were prevalent in last millennium, - how does one open the eyes of the organization big wigs - who by keeping the tight control are hellbent on killing the enterprise that they painstakingly built in the last century.

The Design for Complexity is a possible way ahead. What I mean is that shift the way we solve problems - we do it by dividing problems into smaller problems the so called reductionistic approach to solve problems. By increasing multi-dimensional horizontal links in the enterprise we will be increasing the complexity and hence in the eyes of the control freaks - the chaos. Well,Chaos to your eyes dear CXO's is nothing but value when it comes to enterprise in the new world.

Let the employees own the entrprise - not the management - as anyway they know what it is that is best in the given context - Management should perform an important function of designing theorganization so that employees can learn and create. The new HCL policy - if it is really translated - The Employee First policy is absolutely fantastic in this sense - However one small caveat- it is in contrast to customer first not management first - therein may be lie the nemesis of the policy as well -
Please redo it like this - Employees First. Customer Second and Management Last!

What say you?

Complexity in the GIXBang world

Just revisited some of my presentations and come out with the following points
RAPID EXPLOSION IN COMPLEXITY

What are the things Increasing
Number of alternatives
Time pressure
Need for analysis
Information de-coherence
Connections
Networks

What is going down or constrained

Human Processing Limits (The Magic Number 7 ± 2)
Framing Limits
Confidence

The trends and observations

§Connections create Value and Dependencies create complexity
§ Future is approaching us Faster than History is leaving us!
§ Increasing distance between user requirements of what they really need versus what they want.
§With every choice we make today we Kill many possible futures

So what ...

MAKE YOUR ENTERPRISE SELF-ORGANIZING BY DESIGNING TIPPING POINTS ....

Revisiting Co Creationization

This is becoming a need now - customer co-creationization. I keep on thinking of the US Ivy league professor in 2005 August and the team members who could not see - when I uttered may be we need to brain strom with our customers to find out what we should be doing. I realize thats the way it is anyway.

Besides, self-boasting "I told u so" feeling, the co-creationization as a trend is becoming the need now. As can be seen from Kraft foods and Dell's explanation -

Further nails in the coffin of the existing I make, advertise, sell, and force my products and services on my customers syndrome are coming in the form of diminishing ad dollars available, as quoted by Executive from NBC "There are not going to be enough advertising dollars in the marketplace - no matter how clever we are, no matter what the format is"

India playing in content creation in big way is another trend as mentioned by ZEE TV Mogul Subhash Chandra

Well all the ingredients are here - we need to move from (An Ad in Indian TV) Bol India Bol (Talk India Talk) to Do India Do ....

Wanderings of the Mind

Black Swan - I am living with the book over past many weeks - as I read it, it gives me an almost fantastic feeling of liberation from my own knowledge. It also verifies many observations and nullifies many knowledge management theories.

Platonicity has created a fantastic way of narrating things with causality - it has taken the human mind to where it is, it has taken us to science and engineering to causes and effects, yet we dont know at any time - is this action is done definitely, all the time, accurately the result witll be that.

What to do then?

Post Facto knowledge is always constructed narrative. Taleb in Black Swan states, " .... History appear in hindsight to be far more explainable than it actually was - or is"...

This kills the Data based inferences that our SIX SIGMA FRIENDS are used to force us to follow. Dear friends - Observe and create more experiences and may be we can be richer in our solutions rather than ask people to collect data, than create data Analytics!

What a waste is Normal Distribution? as per Taleb in Black Swan.

If you are not reading the book, pleas start it today. (By the way, I am not the author's representative :)

TRIZ INDIA FORUM

So it is there Now! The TRIZ INDIA FORUM has been launched on 1st November 2007. How did it happen? Prakasan created the BLOG and it is now available for all of us to discuss TRIZ and Innovation from and for India. Why India? Why TRIZ only for Innovation?

India because I believe India is the world's Innovation Tipping Point now. It is going to create multiple impacts in a decade or so and the Globe will looking at the Innovation Leadership from India, if it is not already looking at it. I remember someone wrote in 1980's, the world jungle will not be same if The Dragon and The Elephant get out of their slumber. Well last decade has seen both China and India reaching the centre stage for the world in multiple respects.

The simple reason why India works is the inherent complexity of India to absorb and respond to more complexity that the world is creating. India thrives in complexity and thats a fantastic situation to be in.

However, India also has problems of being a constrained by many ills. The solutions lies in exploring Innovation systematically. It will only happen through a country wide initiative to take us to the stage where we define the new world that we want to inhabit.

We believe that Theory of Inventive Problem Solving - the TRIZ or at least TRIZ Thinking is the vehicle to catapult India into future.

We Invite all readers to join in this journey @ TRIZ INDIA FORUM.

Modelless fashion show - Holographic images

There are two parts to the upcoming modelless fashionshow as described in businessweek. First is the absence of models - yet humanless images carry the eerily real clothes in front of live audience. Second message is that it is not about the models per se but the clothes they are displaying - which for me is a new message - as so far the glimpses of fashion shows that I have been privileged to see - I felt its a model show - models happen to use some piece of processed papyrus to show themselves to the audience. At least people like me will know that the show is actually about clothes Now.

Implication of the holgraphic projection in my opinion are - Holographic conferencing - Holoferencing and peopleless product experience to potential customers. The car that you want to buy will start and run in front of you in your home for you to savour how does it really look like. The experience in your drawing room will be real - eerily real.

I am sure the dating and relationship site owners will be first to embrace these technologies and quickly, before other less exciting businesses understand the value and design applications.

Incidently this is the 100th post of the year 2007. Which is amazing, this year has made me realize the power and excitement of blogging. I realize that I enjoy this!

Offshoring in the Cost-Flat world

The new world is becoming not only flat - providing level playing field to all, but also cost-flat - levelling the cost of doing work in different places of the world. This COST-FLAT GLOBE is already seeing interesting impact on the offshoring work or globally distributed work. Offshoring is not dead and not on life support as proclaimed by some

In fact instead of cost - the value proposition of offshoring by leveraging multiple geographies and mindset gives one a greater advantage - how can one have business running 24x7. Work needs to follow the Sun as it completes its round of the earth. It is not about Cost, it is about 24 hours enterprise availability, amalgamation of variations provided by multiple geographies and leveraging ideas generated by minds that are engineered differently in multiple geograpghies.

Second wave of offshoring as per the article here is the globalization of consumer services. Where tutoring and butler services can be offshored - Really?

Innovation - From front line troops

It is becoming painfully clear that we are underutilizing the human capital that we have in our companies - simply because the potentially most fertile and important minds are never asked to think and ideate - they are force to just do - execution is the key - some Gurus proclaim.

Yes execution if the key - dear top and middle management - it is for you. Let your front line troops tell you what we should do - involve them in organization journey - they will take you to the next level - not you thinking about something - mandating it and forcing people to follow - Here comes a verification of sorts of the grassroot innovation that needs to be inculcated in the enterprises - from Bangkok