10 Most Absurd Social Networking sites

This one is very interesting. The report list down 10 most absurd social networking sites

HotEnough.org
Dogster.com (social networking of pet dogs :))
Kirtsy, Geek Match Making, Coolspotters, RedKaraoke.com, Familybuider, Foretal, nclüdr, and Line for Heaven.

Slideshow is here

Ignorance Management

I think it is about Ignorance Management.

Every organization talks about knowledge management - by focussing on knowledge - what we know - we leave lot of areas that we dont know, or may be are not even aware of that we dont know. Hence we need to have Ignorance management - to find out how ignorant we are about past, present and more importantly about future.

Ignorance is bliss - as the saying goes - may be thats true anyway - still - understanding what we dont know - about what we are ignorant and how to use ignorance management practices, may be we shall be better off!

More we Globalize - More Terrorism will increase?

Globalization
Terrorism

The Google Trends shows some sort of correlation
The GIXBANG World that I am studying -
Terrorism and Globalization - how are they related - is there a relation?

Primitive Emotions, Herd mentality and Raging Hormones - The way we make decisions

The clean, mathematical, rational and logical way is the way we make decisions!
Well, the real us make decisions using

• PRIMITIVE EMOTIONS
• HERD MENTALITY
• RAGING HARMONES

Well, this is what scientists and economists are saying - at the link here.

We are irrational and driven by the chemicals we produce inside us due to various stimuli - Can we understand our own chemistry?

The Age of Innovation - Black Swans of 2008

2008 Black Swans

1. Decades/Centuries old financial companies of the world gone off the face of the earth - Lehman and ML { I remember someone associated with ML telling that "we merrily lynch people's money"}
2. US Government buying AIG - The state becomes the savior - open markets, individualism wins, survival of the fittest - What happened to these principles?
3. Old black swans of HP buying EDS - is a smaller one now ..................................

Let us go back to December 2007 - when predicting trends was the fashion - no one - really no one told us 1,2,3 - well! here goes the power of prediction!

The oil price - will go high and high - well 147$/bbl has become 90$/bbl !

The science of innovation will become the output of the age of innovation! We will see the emergence of Innovation science - my prediction for 2008!

entrepreneurship - stick to what works

What is Entrepreneurship (I asked my friend about entrepreneurship - he started Dolcera (The chat script below)
navneet.bhushan says: after things are done then only we say we were doing whatever has happened :)
Lakshmikant says: That's what has to be done in entrepreneurship
Lakshmikant says: just stick to what works
navneet.bhushan says: ok
navneet.bhushan says: meaning try everything and see what is working?
Lakshmikant says: thing is it is hard to know what will work!

Vedic Inventive Principles - BarcampBangalore

Karthik made a presentation at the Barcamp held last weekend at IIM on his interpretation of Vedic Mathematics Sutras as Vedic Inventive Principles. The presentation can be downloaded from the link at Crafitti.

The presentation was well received by the audience - the best part was a small exercise on inventing improvements on the - next whiteboard marker. Here with a combination of TRIZ 9 windows and Vedic Inventive Principles - audience were engaged in impromptu brainstrorming session.

Very interesting thoughts came up due to triggers! I thought may be whiteboard marker should be a glove to be worn in the hand and each finger can be a marker of different color and palm is the duster.

Later on I came home and just like that searched the patent data base - lo and behold - Taiwanese Patent number TW265010 describes the invention - substancial part of the invention -

Crafitti Thought Ignition Paper Series - Customer Value - The Unknown Fundamental

Crafitti TIPS -001-2008- Customer Value Unknown Fundamental - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Crafitti TIPS -001-2008- Customer Value Unknown Fundamental

Barcamp Bangalore IIM 14 September 2008

Karthik had registered himself for the Barcamp BCB 7 and was speaking on Vedic Inventive Principles. This was orginally planned to happen on Saturday. I could not attend the saturday event as I had to attend to some personal exigency. But to my good fortune, Karthik attended another event at IIM on Saturday and re-scheduled his talk on Sunday.
This led me to spend my Sunday at the barcamp at IIM.

My Take

• The energy level in the camp - really good!
• The content - could be little more wider!
• The techniness - of how to do things - could also be compensated by more science - why are things the way they are! (May be that is my preference)
• Missing deeper ideas - the real gems are sort of beneath the surface - pure energy without the aspirational and design direction leads to lot of waste and one gets the feeling the wealth of the young minds is being taken away!

The Specifics
1. Making Money by Blogging : I reached half way through the talk on sponsored content on your blog and how to monetize your blog by writing sponsored content. The speaker talked very convincingly about how to earn more and more money by writing the blog for someone's furniture sale and any product review - give in to crap!
The speaker made lot of sense about making money on the fly - however - the utter uselessness of it was missed by many. If some one pays me for my blog - I make money - I would be not only happy - I would like to work that out so that I spent regular hours blogging. However, if someone tell me to write about - a particular store or a particular product and based on number of words I will get so many dollars (USD), I dont think I have the stomach for this. If you need to know - here are his links!
2. Contextualized Location based Mobile Pictures - AirMe's presentation by Apporva was very interesting. The airme's single click contextualized mobile picture upload to flixter and other open picture sites - has the potential to change many of the mobile users usage of cameras on mobile! We thought we will have a discussion with AirMe on some further thoughts! Lets see.....
3. Movie about Start of the Start - A film was made by some budding entrepreneurs or may be students (am not sure) about lessons learned by existing entrepreneurs who has build their business to some extent now
a) http://www.lifeblob.com/ entrepreneur said -

• need to balance finance+ technology + marketing
• Lonliness is part of the start - cope up with it!
• Get a Mentor
• Close a Business - if it is not working - with satisfaction

b) http://www.muziboo.com/ entrepreneur said -

• Word of Mouth has its limitations
• Get Marketing Budget
• Think about Value Proposition

c) http://www.tringme.com/ entrepreneur said -

• Lots of careful planning
• Passion
• If dont want to come out of comfort zone - dont do
• No Distraction - Complete Focus
• Patience
• Believe in your product
• Stay Connected (dont get isolated)
• Be ready for delays of all kinds

d) http://www.redbus.in/ entrepreneur said -

• Life style changes
• Attitude should be to learn
• Biz Ethics
• Ready for Huge Pressures

4. Vedic Inventive Principles - These are the type of topics I would like to see more and participate also, not because Karthik did it, but the fact that it was focussed on doing something at the end - the ideation exercise - that was really the value (I will write a separate post on that next)

5. The Marriage and Relationship - We left this presentation in between - as the four penalists could not decide what the hell they wanna speak about and who is the single speaker! Might have been interesting - but we somehow felt like watching a TV Reality Game Show where the participants fight with each other and the judges as well - Is that staged on TV?

Modeling Globalizing Innovation Complexity

I have been struggling to make a model of Globalizing Innovation Complexity (GIX)

Using a freely available system dynamics modeling and simulation tool I am trying to look at the factors impacting GIX and their interrelationships.

This is work in progress - hence it will be good to get inputs from all!

Innovation Ignition Workshops by Crafitti Consulting - this month in Bangalore

CRAFITTI CONSULTING (www.crafitti.com) offers two days of Innovation Ignition workshops on our world-class frameworks developed and practiced to solve business and technical problems in large global organizations. These comprehensive frameworks are being offered for the first time in India in workshop settings.

Workshop 1:
Lean Inventive Systems Thinking – A Framework for transformation
September 26, 2008
Hotel Ramanashree, Richmond Road, Bangalore, India

Workshop 2:
Advanced Patent Analysis using TRIZ and other concepts
September 27, 2008
Hotel Ramanashree, Richmond Road, Bangalore, India


Are you, your team, your organization or your business
Impacted by rapid increase in Globalization?
Impacted by explosive increase in complexity?
Overwhelmed by continuous pressure to think out of box?
Faced with decision paralysis due to information de-coherence?
Feeling the heat of unknown competitors doing unprecedented things to eat away your business?
Trying to make sense of Patents and underlying value in Patents?

If most of your answers are YES, these workshops will help you find answers.

Do you think
“Decision Making” is your one of your teams’ core strength?
“Problem Solving” and “Innovation” are embedded in your teams’ attitude?
Your team manages to avoid getting into crisis most of the time?
You know the value that you are creating or delivering to your customer?
You are sufficiently leveraging Patent information openly available to build your business and technology?

If most of your answers are NO, these workshops will help you find answers.


To register, kindly fill the attached registration form and send it to us at info@crafitti.com.
Questions or comments? Email us at info@crafitti.com or call at +91-80-41688077.
For news on upcoming events at Crafitti, do visit www.crafitti.com.
Please feel free to forward this email on to your colleagues and friends who might be interested!

BIG Thinkers India Series

Karthik has given me info about the Yahoo Big Thinkers series happening today in BANGALORE.

And Guess What - Duncan J Watts is the speaker - I have been reading his books and especially the math laden first book called SMALL WORLDS......
Fascinating!
Looking forward to the session!

7 Months ClustrMap Hits to InnovationCrafting

Number of hits to InnovationCrafting from 9 Feb 2008 - 9 September 2008 (7 Months period) is 4122! - This means every month I get about 586Hits! This is about 20 hits per day!

I am planning to restart the clock from today! This time I think it will give me the true sense of readers from all over the world - and also give some sort of idea about am I getting same set of readers or different sets!

Another problem is since u might have subscribed my blog - you may not visit the site at all. So really this may not be the true measure of the reach - nevertheless - i can track how many readers came and from where!

A BIG THANKS TO ALL THE CONTRIBUTORS and READERS to INNOVATIONCRAFTING!

Innovation Defined!

"Do something. Do something to that, and then do
something to that. Pretty soon you’ve got
something. "

—Jasper Johns, painter

I think this definition of innovation is close to my heart!

Crafitti Article published at realinnovation.com - Patent Strategy

It is with great pleasure and pride - I am writing this post!

One of Crafitti's papers has been published at the realinnovation site. Please look at the link here.

Karthik's paper on "Holistic Patent Strategy for Maximum Value" explains the key value determinants for maximizing the value of a patent. We started Crafitti about few months back and we can already see how things are going to move ahead in innovation and IP consulting space.

Please be on lookout for more thoughts from Crafitti - we are continuing our journey in pursuing what we really believe in - a model of continuous co-creation!

Recent Questions - from Blogs that I connect to

I have been reading blogs of some of my colleagues and friends - regularly. Sometimes I connect with them - or the minds connect with my mind in very interesting ways.

Sunil Raghunathan in his Blogpost explains Reverse Offshoring of IT Services
Then he asks what should be done to stop this in the next blog entry.
As a purely intellectual excercise and seeing the power of randon triggers - I thought let me look at what other bloggers in my blogroll list are writing and use these as a trigger to come up with solutions to the above problem.

1.) Lets look at Karthik's blog - WoW- he writes on
Business Technology - co-innovation space .... and I quote,"However more often than not, the quadrant of co-innovation remains untouched, invisible, unthinkable, infeasible and is tagged as foolish, impractical, futuristic and taboo.The co-innovation quadrant is the region of maximum value. Can we reach it faster? Can we aim not to be satisfied with a business++ / technology++ approach?"

2.) Lets look at Prashant's blog - WoW - He writes on
Indian Innovations –Crowd Management at Kumbha Mela ....... and I quote,"There was total influx of 20 million people during this mela. As per the Guinness Book of World Records, the sangam mela becomes the largest township on earth." He ends the articulation as, "Mela proceeding went well without a single stampede incidence. Can we not take pride in this achievement? Salute to Mr. Alok Sharma and all the organizers of Melas and also to all the pilgrims. It is a classic case of Innovations & discipline which always go hand in hand. "

3.) Lets look at Balaji's Blog -WoW - He writes on
Prof Athish Chattaopadhyay on Marketing Plan .....and I quote, "Athish encouraged us to change the product centric view to customer centric view. Then he made a case for systematic approach to marketing. And walked us through the set of questions to ask ourself to come up with a plan."

I will continue this exercise - of finding answers to questions posted in the blogo-social system. But initial solution directions are following
1. Shift productcentricity to customercentricity
2. Manage Scale through innovation and discipline
3. Dont be satisfied with ++ get into maximum value through co-innovation!

I think Sunil this is not a bad start! Thanks Karthik, Prashant and Balaji!
This is amazing tool to brainstorm!

Is India Toyota's Nemesis?

The news item about Toyota's launch of Corolla at Economic Times at the link here starts as, I qoute,

"It may be the largest carmaker in the world, but the famed Toyota is finding the going tough in India. The Japanese major has revised its sales target and delayed its 10% marketshare plans by five years to 2015. The company aims to sell 4-lakh vehicles by 2015 from this fiscal’s sales target of 63,000. "

Is this an indication of failure of the Toyota Innovation Engine to adapt to peculiarity of India, the complexity of multiplicity of co-existence that India has designed through robust evolutionary processes springing from deep principles of Indian culture of acceptance, assimilation and assertion through exploration. The truth is beyond the mind and beyond the body - as Indian philosophy says!

India calls for a Toyota rethink! Many fans of Toyota (I being one of them) would like to see how things evolve for Toyota in India.

Meanwhile, Ford motors have woken to the new world - may be two decades late I think - as there is a new found insight - "Small Cars Can Be Profitable"
The link above is very interesting.

What Tata motors proved to the world with its Nano Small Car, is being realized by the Biggies now! The world may be perplexed with the revolt against Nano in West-Bengal.
But we need to realize - This is India - We invite all to assert through exploration!
Its is continuous celebration of mind and body - knowing fully well - truth is beyond mind and body :)

CrafitToon

CLICK ON THE IMAGE FOR A CLEAR VIEW!

The Co-crafting Approach

o Globalizing World – Complexity Explosion
o Globally Distributed Enterprises are the norm
o Co-Creation is the way ahead!
o We work diligently to understand customer value through our framework –before embarking on a solution
o The key elements of our approach are – customer value, social computing, decision engineering and Business-IT Alignment

How to Innovate

In the preface to the second edition of now classic, The Sciences of the Artificial, Herbert A. Simon, the noble winning MIT professor says, “…artificiality is interesting principally when it concerns complex systems that live in complex environments. The topics of artificiality and complexity are inextricably interwoven…”. When we talk about Innovation we are taking about the artificial – it is man made. We can learn from natural systems – the science of nature – explaining what is as is. The sciences of the artificial are concerned with making what we want to create – it is making, designing, inventing; it is the endeavor of human mind to achieve an objective. It is about creating by thinking – it is about crafting a system that achieves an objective or a goal.

One may argue that since man and the human mind itself is a natural system, anything that it creates automatically is considered natural – hence it is really artificial to talk about sciences of the artificial. Well, we will not get into semantics or the philosophy of the so called differences. Suffice it to say we limit ourselves to the subject of Innovation, which is concerned with a goal-oriented craft of man-made “artifacts”. We will not be concerned with explaining natural phenomenon, although we can learn from natural phenomenon to develop and describe methods to innovate. We will instead focus on crafting methods, techniques, methodologies, processes, systems, solutions to make, design, invent, produce or craft artifacts, processes, concepts, or systems that are considered output of human ingenuity.

The natural systems evolve; many of the unnatural ones are designed. We have heard of the top-down and bottom-up approaches to design, construction and creation. We also have seen changes in environment as a powerful influence on how a system evolves, changes itself or gets killed, just like many species in natural system that we know off. We also have been told about the limits of human knowledge and inherent randomness of our world – forcefully articulated in two of the recent books by NNT (“Black Swan” and “Fooled by Randomness”).

Given that all we know or may know will be useless when faced with randomness, the methods of science – explaining things as they are- are not necessarily the methods of the artificial. Further we don’t really know how to build complex systems as we believe “nature knows best” – the evolutionary, adaptive, complex, living organisms – the conceptual framework that exists. “How to Innovate” in such plethora of thoughts – does it make any sense to talk about this question at all.

It does and it doesn’t at the same time. Well, this is the typical diabolical statement that has close to zero information to most. However, information theory says uncertainty means the event has more information.

Do we have a single answer to the question, " How to Innovate"?