Idea, Products, Innovation

Is it lack of law & enforcement?

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:12:00 +0000

Can the HUGE difference between developed & developing countries - be attributed to lack of law & enforcement? (apart from the other aspects of economy, population etc) - let’s take couple of examples find the differences & analyze if these could be solved with better law enforcement:

Town Planning -

Developed countries have a great town planning - that would ensure there is no compromise on width of the road, number of house in a street, standard dimension of plot / house

Isn't this a case of proper law & ENFORCEMENT (is more important than law) - as even in developed countries we establish some form of law / rules & regulations around town planning - but they are brutally abused because of lack of enforcement (more in detail later)

Traffic Control / Management -

Same as above - developed countries have much more organized movement of traffic, adherence to rules - if broken would mean serious consequences

Developing countries - have some laws, but the enforcement is poor or even the authorities break them (don’t set by example)

Enforcement - why are the developing countries weak in implementing the law to the word?
I could think of following reasons - some of them are because of financial constraints, but some are easy to avoid

Respect by law safe guards towards the law / rules & regulation is low - either they are not educated well enough about the law or they are aware & ignore it
Authorities have too many other things to handle - tend to compromise on the law enforcement
Lack of second level of review or check on enforcement authorities - should there be a second level of check on the enforcement authorities to make sure they are not being lenient on the law enforcement
Lack of funds to enforce - you need sufficient funds to enforce the law & they are short in many cases, could this be solved if government considers the cost of enforcement as part of an initiative, so sufficient funds are allocated?

Wish, we have younger generation specialize in government / constitution law & enforcements to help make it stronger & reduce the mediocrity in law & enforcements.

-Bhaskara

Challenges in B2B product launch...

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:19:00 +0000

You think launching a new product or innovation in B2B space is easier? ready with a detailed industry gap analysis, found an opportunity & come up with a solution to fix the gap? It also sounds easier compare to B2C products, because there are less number of people to pitch your product, take to market, go live!

YET - B2B products are as harder to launch & be successful, I have tried to list a few... based on a recent research that we have done in B2B space:

Current Process - are you changing the existing process, that business are using currently? for them to adopt your product - if yes, think again... might have an uphill task in convincing the potential customers
Savings - is your pitch mainly on cost savings to the business? be sure that you have done a complete research & understand is the cost line item you are replacing is on the top 10 of the cost line items for the business
Payment Cycle - assume you will be a paid product for the businesses, you should be aware of the payment cycle of the businesses in the industry - helps to know what is the money needed for WIP & be ready for such a cash flow
Literacy of People - are the target users in business literate with the tools or technologies you are using or proposing? if no - then you might waste & break your head with people not willing to learn or use the tool
Industry - last, but an important one... is the industry you are targeting shown a sign of adoption or willingness to look at new products, open for change, backed with legal (formal or informal) compliance to ethical practices

I still think B2B market has better chances of succeeding on innovation, profitability & target revenue realization... rather than living in virtual money or valuations of B2C market (at least for the tech companies)

-Bhaskara

Target Users for Social Media Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 10:52:00 +0000

Internet Users are the target for social media marketing; snapshot of 2009 online user metrics in India is as given in section below. Social Media Marketing is about finding the genre specific vertical or website that can provide the target users to position the product / service.

India Online User Metrics

47 million people online, regular users reaching 38.5 million
4 million users access internet on mobile phone
4 out or 5 online users are 19 - 35yrs
91% of regular online users - search or buy online
20% have bought online in past 1 year

are they mass or class users for your product?
Social Media users are your quality / class users that you want to reach & communication the message, it’s not yet a mass media in India – because of the much smaller user base on internet compare to TV, Radio etc., It can help you reach students in Bangalore, who are passionate about movies – a focused smaller set of people that have a higher chances of receiving the message & considering to purchase or recommend to other users.

how is the conversion ratio of aware consumers to purchase?

Traditional Media has a smaller conversion ratio in consumer consideration to purchase funnel, because the nature of advertising is mass, we need more impressions to reach the target awareness stage of the product & achieve the required recall rate. Social Media can provide a higher conversion ratio, if the right social media channel is chosen for communicating your product / service message. Also, it’s a shorter cycle of money spends – as the performance metrics of the campaign can be viewed on a daily / hourly basis & corrective actions can be taken quicker than traditional media.

Right selection of online channels to promote your product / service can yield good return on investment, social media marketing is an emerging trend / topic in advertising industry - that has gained a significant share of advertising in US Market... but in early stage of use (only limiting to technology related products / services) in India.

-Bhaskara

What is Social Media Marketing?

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:47:00 +0000

This is the first in series of post about "Social Media Marketing" - we will cover the basic definition of social media marketing, how the media differs from the traditional media... that we are aware of & used extensively for marketing currently. In subsequent posts, we will understand the suitability of social media marketing for India market.

Wikipedia: “Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures.”

Marketing has been inside-out (one way) approach – to broadcast the product message to the consumer with & expect the user to listen, consider purchase of the product. Social Media Marketing is use of media that is capable of two way communication, engage consumer in a dialogue, hear their review comments, spread your product message among their network – along with increase in product sales, you would also get feedback from consumers.

Traditional Media

Television, Radio, Print are the traditional media, currently used for marketing the products / services, characteristically it adopts the “law of few” (scarce resource) that leads the products / services to fight for limited media available to broadcast their message, pricing. Demand to Price elasticity is driven by the quality of the program on the media.

Social Media

Internet & Mobile Phones are the two main constituents of Social Media and it differs in availability of scale, does not have the problem of few, less elastic demand curve compared to traditional media. Specific / narrow target user social media channel can be found or created to market the product, a new channel creation has lower entry barrier.

Bing is favorite rest of world... other than US?

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:51:00 +0000

Is Bing catching up as "decision" sorry, the "search" engine of choice by people all over the world? Looks like yes as per this non-scientific poll by Time.

Interesting only US State that is in blue, for Bing is Iowa, all other states have a "leading" Google choice as favorite search engine.

Rest of the world's 81% liking for Bing, makes Bing the winner in this non-scientific post.

I Personally love Bing search - it gives me the results I need & in a structure format that makes me easier to navigate to the destination... not having to spend time wasting to look for my destination on the map (may we say the search results page on web is a map?)

The coolest thing that I like on Bing is the "new image" for every day... that keeps me informed about a remotest island that I never heard or some interesting facts of a place that I have lived in or visited.

I'm not a microsoft fan, but a supporter of innovation, new products, early adopter... I truly believe Google is suffocating as search engine & will be getting into catchup mode, if they don't change soon.

Wait... I thought people in US were early adopter's, but why are they stuck with Google, while rest of the world has embrace Bing?

-Bhaskara

AD theme in recession...

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 22:28:00 +0000

US and probably most countries in the world is going through a tremendous change during these recession times, what used to be unique product based positioning & marketing... is moving towards advertising on "price" - price based competition is the one of the first consideration for advertisements, below are some examples of TV Ads...

Subway - $5.00 footlong sandwitches
Hyundai - Offering $1.49 /gallon gas for the entire year
KFC - $5.00 for chicken, side & drink
GM is becoming "green" from the traditional blue.. to give a new message
Chillis - $20.00 3 course menu for two people
Walmart - continues to give the message of everyday low prices

and every street has at least one store in NY, has one of the following boards...

going out of business
everything is 80% off
buy 1 get 1 free

How does the world of advertising change in these recession times?
First thing that happens in time of recession for advertising is cut in budgets & change of positioning & message for the product to something more valuable, less price, better over the competition etc,

How do you innovate in advertising your product?
It should be back to basics...

a. re-think the competition for the product, as because of new macro-economic conditions the marketplace might have changed, could be competing with a #6 company in the market

b. understand the new value of your product in the recession, new economic conditions might mean different to your consumers...

c. change your advertising strategy, start with a clean slate in the communicating the message to the consumers

the list can keep going to innovate, position and marketing of the product.

-Bhaskara

Adverisements claim that cannot be verified

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:18:00 +0000

Indian Advertisement industry seem to be taking quick & dirty approach towards gaining traction & improving sales... Horlicks used to keep "high standards" for their advertisements, but off late seem to have given up & taking an easy route by using some health reasons or facts (that cannot be verified) for advertising the product.

Regular Horlicks:
Horlicks runs this ad as showing in a school the kids were made in two groups & only one group was given Horlicks, while others regular milk... showing after 6 months, kids taking Horlicks were stronger, sharper & taller. This AD was accidentally telecasted in UK by Nepalese Channel & GSK got into legal tangle with UK government and had to ban the AD:

Youtube Video of Banned Horlicks Ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PzL0bIdFYg
News in UK Media - row over Horlicks Ad: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1080646/Row-ad-Horlicks-makes-children-tall.html

Why can't the advertising council in India watch out for such ADs that don't make sense & ban them, instead of letting them use false promises to sell their product?

Womens Horlicks
Jan 2009:
Horlicks launched their Womens Horlicks with a nice advertisement, showing how women are busy at work & home taking care of others, forget to take care of themselves... I really loved this launch & I thought it was giving the right message - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWvolkt-FH4

June 2009 :
Horlicks has now launched a new AD for women horlicks that show, one in three women are suseptible to weak bone related joint pains or fracture & recommend them to drink Horlicks. How are the going to prove this point? Is it this easy to make claims about health that does not even require a research backing & detailed explaination... before ADs are approve?

ps: Sorry, could not find a video of this AD on web.

What is the bad in these ADs?
These brand are lacking a long term strategy, perspective & creating advertisements that is creating some form of scare or inferiority complex, if you don't use the product... it only helps people to bond with it, until the deficiency is covered & then people will move on.

Brands should rather consider giving the positive message about the product in the AD, encourage people to relate with the product to their real life.

-Bhaskara

Idea: Webmail, read receipt?

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 03:08:00 +0000

Has there been a time, you sent out a blast email to 100's of your friends or colleagues (mostly to their personal id's - webmail) & wondering, who all read the email?

It seems to be a simple solution that Y!, GMail, Hotmails of the world can implement, by using the same concept as GoogleAnalytics does to keep count of people who have visited a website. Let me describe this in detail below... (hope GMail developers read this & implement :))

1. Every Y! or GMail user should have an ability to enter their GoogleAnalytics (or similar tracking software) code, that should report their email read metrics

2. Email Compose - should have an option, "Do you want to know, if the receipient read the email?" - this option can be chosen by users, who need it

3. Y! or GMail - read email web page (that displays the email), should use the GoogleAnalytics solution, with the senders code

4. GoogleAnalyics - Javascript code will take care of sending the reader analytics, that can be later analysed by the sender on his Google Analytics account.

Good idea... do comment, if you think was a stimulating thought!

-Bhaskara

Data Provider Partners...

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:01:00 +0000

If you are building a new software product, say "changing" the way a certain industry works from being manual to be automated, one of the biggest challenges is to show the value in the product to prospective buyers. It's a chicken & egg problem - "no proven data, hence no customers - no customers, hence no data"

I have been thinking about this & found one possible approach to solve this... read along & give me your comments.

Design / Architect the product using as much possible inputs from the industry experts, do user interviews, work in the domain for a while (if you don't have exposure) etc
Build a prototype to show, while speaking to the industry veterans, it helps in sharing the idea / concept much easily - than just speaking about it
Customers may not signup, because of lack of confidence right? Try to engage them as "data provider" partner, collect all their current manual data & upload into your system
Anonymise (remove the company name, demographics etc) the data - as much possible and use this as base to run through various business flows, make sure the software is working as expected
Also - use the data collected (anonymous) as suggestions or boundary conditions data to new or trial customers (whom you have been finally able to convince to come onboard) - they would be happy to see, that system is providing some guidance!

It's not the complete solution, but a possible approach that can be useful for enterprise products.

Thanks
Bhaskara

Open Office, is a good alternative!

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:28:00 +0000

After using Microsoft Office products for the past 10yrs, I recently started using "Open Office" products in my personal laptop... it's been impressive, able to do pretty much most of the document creation, editing in open office as I have on MS Office.

It provides compatability with MS Office documents & seem an easy transition path, options & toolbars available is different, less in OO - but it's only a matter of time you would get used to it.

It breaks your rhythm from doing the same thing over in MS Office, go ahead & give a try to OO...

-Bhaskara

Next is what? for DVR, TiVo or PVR (as called in India)

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Mon, 11 May 2009 05:35:00 +0000

I love the Personal Video Recorder (PVR) from TataSky+, television viewing experience has changed & hardly watch any movie or programs with commercials... PVR them & watch it later, still waiting for an unlimited storage or external harddisk facility. But... apart from more storage, what could be next in this space?

PVR a favorite program, share it with other friends or families - digitally connect different PVR's & ability to browse the recorded programs & play back?

Watch a favorite program together with friends? - Invite other members, whom you think would like to watch the program, invite them to see with you - watch together, even if you are miles away?

Create your own video & share to your grandmother or relative far away? - extend the same recorded sharing experience to sharing user created videos, to far away relatives, friends... broadcast those cherished memories of your family with your loved ones!

As Samsung say's it... "Next is what?"

-Bhaskara

Idea : Recycling Plastic Bag

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 04:22:00 +0000

Thinking green in the week of "World Earth Day"

We all use plastic bags - from grocery, apparel, utility store etc... but very few of us recycle them in India. Only way a plastic bag is probably recycled now is through some separation of plastic bags that are thrown into the waste & % of this recycle is very low.

Here is an idea to improve this situation in India, at least to start with metro regions...

Make recycle quality plastic bags, that can be branded to the retails needs (Spencer, Foodworld etc)
Print a text on the bag, if the user "returns" these cover back into a designated collection points - he would get around INR 25p or 50p (depending on value of recycling)
Put up collection points, that would have "recycle bins" at the retail outlets or tie-up with city corporation & setup at Post Offices or government buildings
We will need smart machines that can accept "clean" - recycle quality covers, count them & dispense money back for the user

this seems a noble way of giving something back to the environment... looking forward for people in this domain of plastic bags, recycle experts to validate this & take it forward.

-Bhaskara

Now, this is called "after sales support"...

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:39:00 +0000

I ride an electric bike "Yo Speed" from Electrotherm (http://yobykes.in/) for the past 11 months, I have been happy with the purchase decision & love the bike... doing my bit to save the environment. First week of April, I got a call from the dealer saying... "sir, we have a free service & could you leave your vehicle for service" - I thought it was a routine free service they give within the first year, but was surprised with the free service that was done to my bike... they had replaced some of the vehicle parts with new one...

front fork
front wheel rim
brake pads
stand for the bike

these parts are at least worth INR 2000.00 or above, for a bike that I purchased for INR 36K, this is a pretty good "after sales" to upgrade the old bikes with new parts... really impressed with this company. We have several other companies in India that don't even come to 10% of this level of "after sales" service... which is a sad story, companies need to understand a "happy customer" means they have a higher NPR score! and higher chances of free advertising by the users of the product.

-Bhaskara

Innovation, G20, Entrepreneurship...

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:28:00 +0000

I'm back after a long silence, to share few web resources that I think would be a good read:

1. Interesting model for "Engaging Individuals in Idea Management" (new product development) - "The ORCHID Model" - Observer, Ringmaster, Creator, Helper, Inquisitor, Doer - http://www.imaginatik.com/site/pdfs/Imaginatik%20WP-0503-1%20The%20ORCHID%20Model.pdf - this white paper explains the individual styles of the people & how to build the teams for creating successful products.

2. Interesting blog resource from the CEO of Imaginatik, some of his posts are thought provoking - http://markturrell.wordpress.com/ - read the posts on "Enterprise Crowdsourcing", "Stepping Up" - he basically writes in the space of innovation

3. About current state of the Economy, ET Columnist MK Venu's - has written some great articles over the past few weeks, links to some of them are below:

a) G20 & Epidemic of over production - http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/MK-Venu-G-20-and-Overproduction/articleshow/4368049.cms
b) Innovative Ideas required to spur economy - http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/MK-Venu-Innovation-must-to-spur-eco/articleshow/4273779.cms

4. Crash Course on Economy & current state by Chris Martenson - http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/chapter-1-three-beliefs

Hope you find these resources useful... do reply back with your thoughts to me.

Thanks
Bhaskara

Being Innovative...

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:07:00 +0000

While thinking on topic for this post, innovation was the first thing that came to me... here goes my thought process for possible steps to be an innovative company in building products or services!

Research...
Spending good amount of time with people or institutes that do research could be one channel to give food for the brain to get out of the mundane, regular things & look outside the daily life. Is this easy to get hold of people in research to partner with them? No - but sufficient study or preparation and then approaching them to help with their research is a good way to go. Pick the area of interest - it could be anywhere from psychology to high technology, identify the top researchers or organization, make your top 3 or 5 people from that list to approach... then write or meet them with your offer to help or extension.

Patents...
There are several patents that have scope for minor modifications or enhancements & register them as a new patent or build products around them, again the starting point is same - know your area of interest, start digging all the registered patents in this domain (now Google has patent search service - http://www.google.com/patents) - study, understand, talk to the vendors or manufacturers of the products around the patent (there could be some that are not commercialized also) .... then build an add-on or modification to this patent. Enhanced version of proposed patent, could be registered again as patent to ensure that you are not authorized for this enhancement & would not face any legal issues. Now you have a good patent backed product to build, that can hopefully give you competitive advantage for a while or an entry into the market.

Imitative...
Imitative products or services is the top route taken by new ventures to enter into the market, some idea - that has succeeded in west, may not work in east - but people do not even look at their market or research before jumping in. In my opinion the success percentage for new ventures is less than 25% in imitative products or services & this seems like a reasonable percentage to give a try... backed with good amount of market research study & analysis. Again in this path - first consider the option of tie-up with original company or group that you are imitating from, if you think there can be a win-win for both the parties.

Think BIG & don't settle for just another idea or product... if you build a company, it should make a difference to the employees, community & people involved!

-Bhaskara

Idea : Creating commercial free radio channel...

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:26:00 +0000

Are you music lover & hate commercials on the radio channel? then... read on, have an idea to build a product to solve this!

Solution:
Add-on channel on radio, that would buffer songs / music from all other channels & deliver a commercial free music, with ability to use "next", if you do not like a particular song!

What we will need?

Multi-Channel Tuner component
In-memory buffer to store last 10mins of music from each channel
Music analyzer that can differentiate between commercial & music / song
Pick next random song / music, after the current song completes

Process / Implementation
Using the multi-channel tuner component, tune into all available radio frequency music channels in the region & buffer the streaming music from each of the channel for a duration of at least 10minutes. Build a music analyzer component that can differentiate between commercials & actual song / music, this would be a core logic on the backend.

User tunes into this new commercial free channel, then we pick one of the random channels content, pass it through analyzer & skip to the beginning of the song... if a commercial break comes after this song, then we repeat the process & pick any other random channel for the song... you might have guessed by now, it would be live FM transmission played by this channel, but delayed by 5 or 10mins, which is ok... we don't really listen to LIVE music on Radio!

Next Steps?
Several next steps... to make this idea into reality... below are some of the top few, if you are interested in this - drop in your comments or send me an email!

Review, if this is better to be done as complete software on backend & broadcast another commercial free channel on FM? or create a custom physical add-on that can be attached to any radio?
Research about any other similar real FM mash-ups like this already?
Legal angle / issues with this? would FM channels object for content being buffered & re-broadcasted? they really don't own the content... should be fine?

-Bhaskara

Book Review : Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish...

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:52:00 +0000

Inspiring book - "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish", it's a book that covers the story of 25 IIMA grads who took the entrepreneurial path for building some of the big companies in India, stories are pretty inspiring & wakes up the entrepreneurial spirit in you... if it's sleeping :)

Check the book website @ http://www.stayhungrybook.com/

-Bhaskara

Crunchies 2008 Winners...

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:57:00 +0000

Crunchies 2008 has some interesting winners for this year... like Microsoft making into the list, competition in mobile apps has been strong...

1. Best Application or Service - Google Reader - http://www.google.com/reader/view/
2. Best Technology Innovation/Achievement - Windows Live Mesh - https://www.mesh.com/Welcome/default.aspx
3. Best Design - Cooliris - http://www.cooliris.com/
4. Best Bootstrapped Startup - GitHub - http://github.com/
5. Best Enterprise Startup - Amazon Web Services - http://aws.amazon.com/
6. Best International Startup - eBuddy - http://www.ebuddy.com/
7. Best Clean Tech Startup - Project Frog - http://www.projectfrog.com/
8. Best Gadget - iPhone 3G - http://www.apple.com/iphone/
9. Best Mobile Startup - Evernote - http://www.evernote.com/
10. Best Mobile Application - imeem mobile - http://www.imeem.com/
11. Best New Startup of 2008 - Friendfeed - http://friendfeed.com/
12. Best Overall Startup - Facebook - http://www.facebook.com

Read more on Crunchies site @ http://crunchies2008.techcrunch.com/

Few questions to think / ponder about:
1. What are the learning's to take from these startup's that have won the award? is it their business model? team? funding? - behind their success...
2. How many years will social networks dominate? Facebook is the winner for second consecutive year & FriendFeed being the new startup
3. Is Google Android giving any serious competition to iPhone? will they be able to get the required adoption by mobile manufacturers?
4. Can Windows 7 introduce any new products for startup category next year?
5. Looks like India based startup's did not even make into final nominees, are we being innovative enough?

-Bhaskara

Bangalore Entrepreneurs Meetup

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:50:00 +0000

Interested in meetup on Entrepreneurial discussions in Bangalore? Look no further than "Bangalore Entrepreneurs Meetup" - we meet every month for an hour of group discussions on various topics on Entrepreneurial topics.

Go ahead & sign-up yourself @ http://entrepreneur.meetup.com/925/

-Bhaskara

Comparing physical & online shopping experience...

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 04:40:00 +0000

Can we learn something by comparing the behavior of people in a physical brick & mortar store with their online behavior, what are the things we can compare ?

Shopping Cart - number of items a person puts in a basket, removing them off before buying, items they remove at the billing counter
Duration - amount of time a user spends his / her time in the store & online?
Footprint vs Site usage - number of user entering the store vs visiting the site online

Trends between online & offline can be compared, we can use this comparison in various means - one of main usage could be to make usability improvements on the site to ensure online conversion is higher.

-Bhaskara

Research Paper : Performance Persistance in Entrepreneurship

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:17:00 +0000

Found this interesting research paper from Harvard, read in detail... when you have time!
URL: http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-028.pdf

-Bhaskara

Future of iPhone Apps

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:07:00 +0000

Currently the iPhone apps are standalone, which means a FaceBook or Google app or a video recorder (on Jailbreak phone) work in silos - they cannot latch onto some other application or features of the phone as an add-on.

Imagine...

How nice to have an iPhone app that would see the last number you dialed & suggests you to save into your contacts, if that does not exists already.
Adding MMS capability to SMS, sadly Apple has still not launched it

Time to think ahead!

-Bhaskara

Idea : reducing traffic offenders in Bangalore

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:32:00 +0000

People breaking red lights or going in opposite directions in one-ways is higher in Bangalore these days & our city also seem to take top spot as "worse" traffic managed in Asia now... can we build some products to help our traffic department manage it better / efficiently?

One of the idea that came to me was... build a small camera gun that is wireless enabled & can take picture on pointed vehicles, upload the date / time & photo of the offender to the central server, one such device given to all traffic constables... could help catch the people red-hand while breaking the rules.

Idea... requires a combination of physical device & software, I'm ready to conceptualize further, if anybody else interested to team up!

Share your thoughts on this...

-Bhaskara

How to step on the Accelerator of New Product Development?

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:56:00 +0000

I found this very interesting research article that provides tips on how new product development can be done with time to market in mind... following aspects has been researched in this article:

Experience of the developers
Physical proximity of the team members
Dedication of the team members
Role of Senior Management

Read the full research article @ Wharton site

-Bhaskara

Is new product innovation recession proof?

noreply@blogger.com (bhas4) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:26:00 +0000

Probably most written topic, after hearing so much of negative / bad news on paper in recent few weeks... its my turn to put this on the blog.

No, it is not - recession is going to hit the innovation to certain extent, the probability of raising big money for extensive research & development will be tough in this market...new companies would have to manage with frugal funding on engineering & research, hard to think innovative - on limited budget, will be forced to cut corners or make quick decisions.

Who will success in such recession market?
People / companies who build in-house or partnerships for research based on long term innovation strategy, obviously people would have to work at less / no pay for months to build the product & hope to succeed when market bounces back, then comes the pay day!

Good luck in sailing through tough times.

-Bhaskara