I am excited to showcase India Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, India here on my blog yet again (see previous entry here). The Economist has published an article "On the pulse" here regarding development of an artificial heart at IIT-KGP that will be going into human trials in a matter of a year or so. The cost will be 1/30th of the average cost of one developed in the USA with much less failure rates. Please click through to the article for detials.
I like to share the trend I have been observing - South Asian educated mind's movement from memorization of best practices and replication to challenging the learned behaviors and "creating" the next breakthrough.
"A new, low-cost design for an artificial heart takes its inspiration from an unusual source—the cockroach."
My congratulations to IIT-KGP! Brilliant.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
US Utility Consumer Managing Their Electricity
The utility companies run one of the oldest infrastructures in the USA. A friend working in mesh networks for Smart Grids highlighted the fact that an industry where change may occur once in 20 years is being driven to incorporate and integrate technology whose pace of change is substantially faster. Challenges abound!
The Economist in their recent Technology Quarterly have an excellent article on the subject, "Building the smart grid" here. The article highlights my point above further:
"Even though the demands being placed on national electricity grids are changing rapidly, the grids themselves have changed very little since they were first developed more than a century ago. The first grids were built as one-way streets, consisting of power stations at one end supplying power when needed to customers at the other end. That approach worked well for many years, and helped drive the growth of industrial nations by making electricity ubiquitous, but it is now showing its age."
From speed of growth, lack of transparency on the transmission and distribution side of the grid to the consumer's habits of obliquity to their electricity usage, the opportunities abound. Having lived and traveled overseas extensively, the USA lags in one key aspect that the article touches on some what - the US consumer has never been given an incentive to save electricity. The utility companies must grow their revenue and bringing smartness to the electric grid will cut into their top-lines. The article discusses this aspect:
"One problem is that power companies are understandably reluctant to invest in technologies that will reduce consumption of the product they sell, even if there are other benefits. One way to realign the public interest with that of the utilities is through a process called “decoupling” which breaks the direct relationship between electricity sales and profits, a measure that has been successfully employed in California. Energy use per person has remained largely flat over the past 30 years in California, but it has increased by roughly 50% for the rest of America. But in some instances the business case is straightforward. Enel (utility in Italy)spent around €2.1 billion ($3 billion) installing its 30m smart meters in Italy, but now saves around €500m a year as a result, so its investment paid for itself within five years."
I am reminded of Bill Bryson's article "The Waste Generation" on the US consumers' habits in his book "I am a stranger here myself". The author writes that when he used to live in England, the utility offered an off-peak energy plan resulting in value back to the customers. He used to run his washing machine on a timers at night to receive the benefits using timers.
Is the pain or perhaps the desire to manage utilities strong enough for the consumer to adopt the new changes or are the stimulus funds would be used enforce a new regime for the unwilling customer?
"The American government is spending some $4 billion from its economic-stimulus package on smart-grid initiatives, but providing a smart meter for every American home would cost far more: California’s investor-owned utilities alone are spending about $4.5 billion on deploying smart meters over the next few years. That implies that a nationwide implementation could cost around $50 billion. But PNNL estimates that $450 billion would have to be poured into conventional grid infrastructure to meet America’s expected growth over the next decade anyway. Mr Carlson, who now works for GridPoint, argues that a bit of thought is called for if the aim is to move to a new energy-management model, “as opposed to building more of what we’ve already got.”"
One thing is for certain, once the grid gets tapped, the invention driven entrepreneurial opportunities for revenue generation through fulfillment of user needs will be endless!
The Economist in their recent Technology Quarterly have an excellent article on the subject, "Building the smart grid" here. The article highlights my point above further:
"Even though the demands being placed on national electricity grids are changing rapidly, the grids themselves have changed very little since they were first developed more than a century ago. The first grids were built as one-way streets, consisting of power stations at one end supplying power when needed to customers at the other end. That approach worked well for many years, and helped drive the growth of industrial nations by making electricity ubiquitous, but it is now showing its age."
From speed of growth, lack of transparency on the transmission and distribution side of the grid to the consumer's habits of obliquity to their electricity usage, the opportunities abound. Having lived and traveled overseas extensively, the USA lags in one key aspect that the article touches on some what - the US consumer has never been given an incentive to save electricity. The utility companies must grow their revenue and bringing smartness to the electric grid will cut into their top-lines. The article discusses this aspect:
"One problem is that power companies are understandably reluctant to invest in technologies that will reduce consumption of the product they sell, even if there are other benefits. One way to realign the public interest with that of the utilities is through a process called “decoupling” which breaks the direct relationship between electricity sales and profits, a measure that has been successfully employed in California. Energy use per person has remained largely flat over the past 30 years in California, but it has increased by roughly 50% for the rest of America. But in some instances the business case is straightforward. Enel (utility in Italy)spent around €2.1 billion ($3 billion) installing its 30m smart meters in Italy, but now saves around €500m a year as a result, so its investment paid for itself within five years."
I am reminded of Bill Bryson's article "The Waste Generation" on the US consumers' habits in his book "I am a stranger here myself". The author writes that when he used to live in England, the utility offered an off-peak energy plan resulting in value back to the customers. He used to run his washing machine on a timers at night to receive the benefits using timers.
Is the pain or perhaps the desire to manage utilities strong enough for the consumer to adopt the new changes or are the stimulus funds would be used enforce a new regime for the unwilling customer?
"The American government is spending some $4 billion from its economic-stimulus package on smart-grid initiatives, but providing a smart meter for every American home would cost far more: California’s investor-owned utilities alone are spending about $4.5 billion on deploying smart meters over the next few years. That implies that a nationwide implementation could cost around $50 billion. But PNNL estimates that $450 billion would have to be poured into conventional grid infrastructure to meet America’s expected growth over the next decade anyway. Mr Carlson, who now works for GridPoint, argues that a bit of thought is called for if the aim is to move to a new energy-management model, “as opposed to building more of what we’ve already got.”"
One thing is for certain, once the grid gets tapped, the invention driven entrepreneurial opportunities for revenue generation through fulfillment of user needs will be endless!
Monday, June 8, 2009
Consumer Focus: Social Media Organizations
"Social media isn't a box to be ticked or a department to be manned or even a campaign to be launched. It's about thinking differently about marketing, customer service, the entire company. It's about realizing that consumers are running the biggest recommendation service in the world and that, as has been tiresomely often repeated, they define the brand (no, this is not new; yes, this is becoming more obvious and important by the day). All thinking about product, customers and communications, needs to take this into account -- it cannot sit in a silo."
Above is an excerpt from AdvertisingAge - "Dedicated Social Media Silos? That's the Last Thing We Need" here by Jonah Bloom.
I enjoyed the article. The tone was perhaps a bit professorial, yet, I have to agree with the statement above. Unfortunately, silos will develop, organizations have to develop silos, Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" documents the reasons in detail.
Good article overall about what is happening in the social media creation, management and monetization market place.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Health Care Consumers Winning in India
"America's spending on health care is soaring, yet its medical outcomes remain mediocre."
So states "Lessons from a frugal innovator" in the Economist here. The article begins with the description of a complex heart bypass surgery, while the patient is having a chat. This approach has been pioneered by Dr. Vivek Jawali at Wockhardt, an Indian hospital chain. According to the article this is just one of the many innovation in health care in India. The article goes on to share other innovation-in-practice examples like the one above.
The article highlights how the Western prowess in the medicine perhaps may be detrimental to itself:
"Dr. Jawali is feted today as a pioneer, but he remembers how Western colleagues ridiculed him for years for advocating his inventive “awake surgery”. He thinks that snub reflects an innate cultural advantage enjoyed by India.
Yet, as the article shows, the Western organizations themselves are tired of their own system.
"Columbia Asia, a privately held American firm with over a dozen hospitals across Asia, is also making a big push into India. Rick Evans, its boss, says his investors left America to escape over-regulation and the political power of the medical lobby."
India is offering another advantage to the breakthrough innovators, faster improvements at speeds unparalleled in any other part of the world.
"[Aravind, the world’s biggest eye-hospital chain] staff screen over 2.7m patients a year via clinics in remote areas, referring 285,000 of them for surgery at its hospitals. International experts vouch that the care is good, not least because Aravind’s doctors perform so many more operations than they would in the West that they become expert."
Perhaps, this is an approach to perfection through practice, as the old adage goes! The article closes with:
"[Tim Brown, head of Ideo] says, "In health care, as in life, there is need for both Ferraris and Tata Nanos."
So states "Lessons from a frugal innovator" in the Economist here. The article begins with the description of a complex heart bypass surgery, while the patient is having a chat. This approach has been pioneered by Dr. Vivek Jawali at Wockhardt, an Indian hospital chain. According to the article this is just one of the many innovation in health care in India. The article goes on to share other innovation-in-practice examples like the one above.
The article highlights how the Western prowess in the medicine perhaps may be detrimental to itself:
"Dr. Jawali is feted today as a pioneer, but he remembers how Western colleagues ridiculed him for years for advocating his inventive “awake surgery”. He thinks that snub reflects an innate cultural advantage enjoyed by India.
Unlike the hidebound health systems of the rich world, he says, “in our country’s patient-centric health system you must innovate.” This does not mean adopting every fancy new piece of equipment. Over the years he has rejected surgical robots and “keyhole surgery” kit because the costs did not justify the benefits. Instead, he has looked for tools and techniques that spare resources and improve outcomes."
Yet, as the article shows, the Western organizations themselves are tired of their own system.
"Columbia Asia, a privately held American firm with over a dozen hospitals across Asia, is also making a big push into India. Rick Evans, its boss, says his investors left America to escape over-regulation and the political power of the medical lobby."
India is offering another advantage to the breakthrough innovators, faster improvements at speeds unparalleled in any other part of the world.
"[Aravind, the world’s biggest eye-hospital chain] staff screen over 2.7m patients a year via clinics in remote areas, referring 285,000 of them for surgery at its hospitals. International experts vouch that the care is good, not least because Aravind’s doctors perform so many more operations than they would in the West that they become expert."
Perhaps, this is an approach to perfection through practice, as the old adage goes! The article closes with:
"[Tim Brown, head of Ideo] says, "In health care, as in life, there is need for both Ferraris and Tata Nanos."
Sunday, May 31, 2009
China And Electric Cars
"China is set to become the world's largest producer of environment-friendly cars within 10 years, largely due to the central government's backing and the domestic car makers' ambitions to push electric vehicles, according to business consulting firm Bain & Company."
See the complete article at the China Daily here. The Cherry S18 electric car is pictured on the right.
This level of Chinese government push this early in the country's automotive industry's growth bodes well for the future of the Chinese consumers and their environmental aspirations.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Communities Of Choice - The Avenue For 21st Century Breakthroughs
I have written consistently and proven the point that there is a myth called wisdom of the crowds. Perhaps it is a marketing term now engulfing the tera-intellect.
An excellent example in the Wired magazine article "There's Power In The Puzzle" here, highlights yet again how the power of communities formed by choice can drive breakthroughs past the imagination of the initiators of the idea for the community. The article discusses a SETI@home like program yet driven from a gamer's perspective, i.e. putting the people in the center of the process. The result is a game called Foldit -
"It simply serves up a multicolored knot of spirals and clumps—a 3-D render of a protein. Players use the cursor to grab, bend, pull, and wiggle the chain of amino acids anywhere along its length, folding the protein into its optimum shape. The only rules are based on physics—opposite charges attract, atomic bonds have limited angles of rotation, and the parts of the molecule that stick to water tend to point outward. The closer your model's properties adhere to those rules, the more points you get."
Yet, the important part of this activity was:
"Working on test proteins for which Baker already knew the structures, folders quickly started to make friends via the in-game chat channel. They shared insights and half-finished puzzles; teams emerged, and collective efforts proved far more successful than any solo folder. A member of the leading team named Jason Kuznicki ... set up a wiki that Popović adopted as Foldit's official manual. "We even built a mini-Facebook for them," he says."
I believe the 21st century is going to be about "communities of choice" driving breakthrough innovation. The internet will continue to flatten the intellectual landscape and making collaboration ubiquitous, where a student who has completed the MIT computer science course work through MIT's open-courseware in Vietnam's low socio-economic class (see excellent article here) can engage in direct scientific analysis with individuals independent of geography.
Note that the winner of the game of Foldit who developed a complex protein is a 13 year old.
An excellent example in the Wired magazine article "There's Power In The Puzzle" here, highlights yet again how the power of communities formed by choice can drive breakthroughs past the imagination of the initiators of the idea for the community. The article discusses a SETI@home like program yet driven from a gamer's perspective, i.e. putting the people in the center of the process. The result is a game called Foldit -
"It simply serves up a multicolored knot of spirals and clumps—a 3-D render of a protein. Players use the cursor to grab, bend, pull, and wiggle the chain of amino acids anywhere along its length, folding the protein into its optimum shape. The only rules are based on physics—opposite charges attract, atomic bonds have limited angles of rotation, and the parts of the molecule that stick to water tend to point outward. The closer your model's properties adhere to those rules, the more points you get."
Yet, the important part of this activity was:
"Working on test proteins for which Baker already knew the structures, folders quickly started to make friends via the in-game chat channel. They shared insights and half-finished puzzles; teams emerged, and collective efforts proved far more successful than any solo folder. A member of the leading team named Jason Kuznicki ... set up a wiki that Popović adopted as Foldit's official manual. "We even built a mini-Facebook for them," he says."
I believe the 21st century is going to be about "communities of choice" driving breakthrough innovation. The internet will continue to flatten the intellectual landscape and making collaboration ubiquitous, where a student who has completed the MIT computer science course work through MIT's open-courseware in Vietnam's low socio-economic class (see excellent article here) can engage in direct scientific analysis with individuals independent of geography.
Note that the winner of the game of Foldit who developed a complex protein is a 13 year old.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Product Innovation from India
While at P&G, I developed a R&D center outside of the USA. It is exciting to read this article "Outsourcing: Product Innovation from India" here, highlighting how India has slowly but steadily moved up the product innovation value chain at RealInnovation.com. Even though the article is based on a white paper originally published by Zinnov in 2005, it is insightful. The article states:
Update: A macro-economic number showing India had 5.4% growth in Q1 2009 vs. projected growth of 5.2%.
"As of 2005, more than 150 international companies, large and small, were doing R&D in India. Multinational companies started hiring strong leaders to run their development centers in India. Some of these companies imported expats (professionals returning from the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western countries) to run their operations in India. The leadership teams of these companies understood that they could do a lot more from India than simply being a back office to the product teams in their home countries. Thus began a quiet revolution. The India-based leadership teams of these companies convinced their executive management to allow them to take ownership of certain products whereby the Indian teams could conceptualize and build new features and modules."
Here an excellent diagram from the article showing the product companies operating in India as of 2005.
Update: A macro-economic number showing India had 5.4% growth in Q1 2009 vs. projected growth of 5.2%.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Smart Mobs!
Interesting article on communities of choice (not wisdom of crowds) leading the way to collaboratively support each other towards a goal in the article "Smart Mobs, Smarter Puzzles", here authored by Clive Thompson. The article states:
"It's in becoming a neuron in a much bigger intelligence: Finding a piece of evidence, contributing it to the wiki that players inevitably create, and brainstorming with others to figure out what everything means. ARGs could not have existed before the Internet."
One of the best examples of this phenomena is the coupons and discount codes space on the internet that is not corporation or for profit organization driven.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
China - Recession Proof?
Very good video and transcript at The McKinsey Quarterly, "Is China Recession Proof?" here.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
China - Consumer Sector Updates
Through my good friend Mr. Tony Tsai:
Ministry of Health to launch two-year crackdown on illegal food additives
May 11, Su Zhi, deputy director of the Food Safety and Sanitation Surveillance Bureau under the Ministry of Health, says the ministry will launch a two-year crackdown on illegal food additives. He puts forward a five-point proposal on the crackdown of illegal additives, such as improving related standards on food additives and further strengthening the government's measures for food safety supervision and crackdown.
It is hard to keep China's fuel prices in line with international crude oil prices
The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has published the administrative measures for crude oil prices, taking effect May 8 on a trial basis. According to the measures, China will adjust domestic fuel prices when global crude oil prices report a daily fluctuation band of more than 4% for 22 working days in a row. The launch of the measures is aimed at keeping China's fuel prices in line with international crude oil prices, in order to ensure Chinese fuel prices do not drop lower than international crude oil prices. If that happens, the Chinese government will have to increase fiscal subsidies to oil companies and the domestic oil industry and market will become disorderly. Zhou Xiaogang, an energy expert, thinks it is hard to keep China's fuel prices in line with international crude oil prices. China's oil market is not competitive. Private oil firms are still weak, and unable to compete with domestic state-owned oil giants.
PWC: there is a great deal of room to increase human capital effectiveness in China
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) recently published the research report about human capital influence among China's listed enterprises for 2008. The report pointed out it is a good idea for Chinese enterprises to increase core competitiveness of human capital which can help them tackle economic crisis and realize long-term sustainable development. Compared with enterprises in the US and Europe, there is a great deal of room for China-listed enterprises to increase human capital effectiveness.
Expert: consumer prices expected to show rise in second half of year
May 11, the National Bureau of Statistics says that China's Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell 1.5% in April from a year earlier, marking the third straight decline. China's Producer Price Index (PPI) fell 6.6% in April year-on-year, marking the fifth straight decline. But some experts believe that consumer prices should show an upward trend in the second half of the year. The government stimulus package and explosive loan growth will drive industrial product prices and consumer prices up.
Beijing to reduce 300 hectares of land supply for commercial buildings and to loosen control on foreign investment in local real estate market
May 11, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Land and Resources publishes the 2009 annual land supply plan. By the end of last year, approximately 40m sq m of commercial buildings had not been sold, which is expected to meet market demand for two to three years. Compared with last year, land supplied for the construction of commercial buildings in Beijing this year will be down by 300 hectares. The Beijing Land Reserve Center will loosen control on foreign investment in Beijing's real estate market.
Coca-Cola claims it will focus on existing brands and give up take over of Huiyuan Juice. According to media reports, Coca-Cola is set to abandon any attempt to take over the Huiyuan Juice Group. Buying a small stake with no decision power is not what Coca-Cola wants at all. May 12, Coca-Cola says in a statement, "We were disappointed, but we also respect the Ministry of Commerce's decision not to approve our proposed purchase of the Huiyuan Juice business. We are now focusing all of our energies and expertise on growing our existing brands and continuing to innovate with new brands, including in the juice segment. Beyond that, it is our policy not to comment on speculation."
Monday, May 11, 2009
Thoughts on Consumer Insights
Below is a quick and nice look at what consumer insights mean from a presentation on SlideShare. What provided me value from it? The author, Giulio Bonini, states that there are four properties of a consumer insights: (1) Deep, (2) Original, (3) Base of your communication, and (4) Specific for your target. Enjoy!
Sunday, May 10, 2009
World's Most Innovative?
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