Microsoft shall be the opening blog for my first blog....

In a super condensed form, I'll try to sum up a 12-hour day 2 event INDIA IS INNOVATION conducted by Microsoft at Bangalore....

And before everything I wanna thank all the concerned ppl at MS who have contributed such immense efforts at identifying the technology enthusiaists among the academia, in Inida and around the world. and more importantly for tapping into and encouraging the potential India has, in production, development, engineering, maintenance and of course the market opportunities. On a personal front all the technology Evangelists, Academic leads and MVPs who have always mentored or guided us, have had a very empoering influence on us all, technically(knowledge view), on event management n leadership aspects, and of course the ever-important community aspect.

Back to updates, the " i3 " convention is an annual MS event aimed at the SMEs of Indian market ...which is a en enormous consumer-directed potential market .

In a way to the effect that ensuring that the entities at the bottom of the pyramid are enabled to compete more aggressively and generate and maintain 100% of talent and productivity potential that it can unleash.


Statistics :

Venue - Leela Palace, Bangalore

Invitees- Student partners ! {yaaey}
Scientists at MSR, Business professionals, enterprenuers, V-Cs, CXOs, Founders, and Venture-Capitalists of large, small and medium scale enterprises. And distinguished luminaries in fields of education, research and business.

Mash up of speakers, panelists, contributors and content :

Ravi Venkatesan-The Chairman and Corporate VP, MS(India)
Neelam Dhawan-MD, MS(India)
Dr Ashok Ganguly-Chairman, Firstsource Solutions & ABP, & Dir, Central Board, RBI
Srini Koppolu-Corp VP,MS(IDC)
Dan'l Lewin-VP,Strategic & Emerging Business Development,MS
Arun Maira-Chairman, Boston Consulting Group
Dr R.A. Mashelkar-Ex-Director Gen of Council of Scientific & Industrial Research(CSIR)
Craig Mundie-Chief Research & Strategy Officer, MS
Ravi Venkatesan-The Chairman and Corporate VP,MS(India)

Panelists
Sanjay Anandaram-Founding Partner, JumpStartUp Venture Fund
Kishore Biyani-Managing Dir., Pantaloon Retail & Group CEO, Future Group
Ashish Gupta-Managing Dir., Helion Venture Partners
Dr. Pillai-VC,I.G.N.O.U.

Srikant Rao-CEO, Affordable Business Solutions
Dr Sadagopan-Founder Dir.,I.I.I.T., Bangalore
Sakthivel-Chairman, Poppys Group
Sandeep Singhal-Managing Dir., Sequoia Capital India
A. Srikanth-Asst. VP, SKS Microfinance, India
Ramgopal Subramani-AztechSoft
Aruna Sundarajan-CEO, CSC Project
Sudhakar Varanasi-CEO, CoOptions Technology
Sudhakar Varanasi PhD-CEO- India ISV

Additional Speakers
P. Anandan-Managing Director, Microsoft Research
Jaspreet Bindra-Country Manager, MSN India
John Fernandes-Dir.,Strategic Emerging Business Development, MS
Tarun Gulati-GM, Developer & Platform Group, MS (India)
Paul MurphyDirector, Innovation, Microsoft India
Ram NarayananDirector, Unlimited Potential Group
Udai Singh PawarAssistant Researcher, Microsoft Research


In the first few hours, emphasis was laid, upon empowering the bottom of the pyramid....

"FOCUS is on “People” at bottom of pyramid ."

topics covered were
Sms server ---- leveraging the deepspread cell phone penetration in India (more than broadband that is) to innovate upon shortening the lifespan of supply end cycle, significantly.

National Programs in place

--> Startup Acceleration Program
Student Acceleration Program
Business Model Acceleration


We were informed that the hallowed halls of Harvard engages in research on the success of following Indian pioneers in Innovation :
Six Sigma - Dabbawalas of Mumbai ! 99.999999% correctness (— which means one error in six million transactions.)
http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/mar2003/msg00243.htmlhttp://www.prettislim.net/mydabbawala/News/Mumbai%20dabbawallas%20lecture%20at%20IIMs.htm

Fab India Success Story http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2007/04/15/stories/2007041502740100.htm
TechFarm
ITC http://inhome.rediff.com/money/2006/feb/11spec.htm



Demo:

Udai Pawar

1) Split Screen (Multi Point- using Multi Point SDK {http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=A137998B-E8D6-4FFF-B805-2798D2C6E41D&displaylang=en} to collaborate two sessions at same time, while keeping optimization and resource allocation in place, allows permitted access to the other sessions applications as are allowed by permission for select applications or parts of a select application )


Target solution fields --> In Education , kiosks, cyber cafes & small businesses.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/dec06/12-14MultiPoint.mspx

you wud like to know wat ppl around da world say http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=266221


2) Multi-Console
3) Multi Keyboard

Bottomline: Sharing space {always desirable} VS. Sharing time

Dr. Pillai – VC, IGNOU says

IGNOU involves around students of who 65% – rural, of which 45% are women and around 10 students are >80 yrs old.

They have active initiatives around:

Ø CNRI(http://www.cnri.reston.va.us/home/cnri.html) Knowledge Centers http://www.cnri.reston.va.us/activities.html
Ø Certification of Prior Knowledge & Skills (for rural graduates, dominant in North East India).

Kudos !


Dr. Ashok Ganguly

SMEs have an innate advantage - size & agility to innovate
- less competitive domain , since target presence is national market, not international , hence able to take innovative risks .

But it also poses a problem in hesitancy for the businesses to implement innovative out-of-box proposal ideas, in terms of R.O.I risks.

In fact the hierarchy gap of a large organization that can kill the ideas in a validation vertical, is less of a challenge than in a small organization which identifies and associates any new innovation with a substantial risk of irrecoverability from a possible failure in beneficial .R.O.I..

He says "Intensity of Innovation is measured by à % of business http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/microsofts-health-vault-allows-you-to-store-and-share-your-electronic-medical-records-but-should-you
AztechSoft's Ramgopal Subramani's demo was a useful software Industrial Cluster Solution that decrytallizes SME Challenges viz.
Affordability (à solution cost, talent management, resources cost),
R.O.I. (à "long" time to provision the solution),
Vertical applications (à SMEs require small point solutions),
Distribution Channels.

Industrial Cluster Solution:
Ø Better vendor tracking , vendor planning & mgmt. of channels
Ø Used sms solutions
Ø S-a-a-S, used asp.net, ajax

{?guys wats the Reporting tool used ?........also leads me to another question burning in my head ...I smell a whiff of Business Intelligence (BI) here ...but the Indian software and services market is kinda in incubation regarding the BI ...den what will provide the INNOVATIVE solution (warmth) for an competitively priced BI service...so that the baby chicken can hatch here }

Ø The image-less ad {data mining...back to BI again...my "roti, kapda and makaan" }
Ø The “jury-less” content


The Panel which followed discussed as follows ---->

"Innovation à Keeping cost absolutely low." {of course!}

Our beloved Dr. Sadagopan (http://ss.emergic.org/) brought the spark back into all until-now-sleepy eyes ...he mentioned, "The most successful innovations happen in the most unexpected places."



He exemplated upon Bangalore...

East Bangalore: Tirupathi – RFID technology (implemented by Bartronics) to mange pilgrims queues especially in Tirupathi and other busy devotional centers on special occasions such a ‘ Brahmotsavas’ in Tirupathi, Puri, Jagannath Chariot Festival. and making sure they are water proof....for the holy dip yu know..smart chaps ! :-)

West Bangalore: Robosoft (at Udupi)...the Founder who wanted to contribute to his home town...and of course he did it ! ....and to all the VTU students who feel their college has valuable talent and wanna bridge the Industry-Academic gap...mark this Innovative Organisation on your college's program list.


And if we didnt know , the technology innovation that went into making Apple IPod wireless, emerged from a bunch of Innovators at namma J.P.Nagar ...geeee :-D

I loved his associative examples which go right back to our ricj Indian cultural context :
Siva is the Destroyer
Brahma is the Creator
Vishnu Maintains...and the penetration of temples in India around them decreases in order of Vishnu>Siva>Brahma .....likewise in the Industry-context {unlike wat we perceive maintenance as}...

“Like Sri Vishnu’s vogue, Maintenance jobs are key to largest jobs."



Srikant Rao emphasized

à "Training a million people at low cost is the innovation challenge."

...........and with regards to training , I chanced upon a friendly innovator Shyam Kedare (Dir., Softnet Interactive Pvt. Ltd) who shared his gyaan on reducing training costs...their Organization has implemented a delivery software for training in voice recorded content , scaling most Indian languages...and it sounds promising ! You heard it ....and a voice-support call center which engages partially or completely visually challenged individuals as a career option, which of course is GENERATING JOBS (!!), CUTS DOWN EMPLOYEE ATTRITION FACED BY CALL CENTERS (!!) and a VOICE BASED MULTI-LINGUAL TRAINING !! How much better can it get ?

We are looking at India now in a different light ...INNOVATION "under current constraints"...constraints are healthy , because when constraints appear, we see challenge in fulfilling neccesity ....and back to basics "Necessity is the mother of Invention."

Mr. Shaktivel mentioned the following efforts to the panel....

ATDC Training Center (in Tirupur)
Optex (for garment sector training)

And again the emphasis looped back to the “jury-less” content , the user generated content. Monopoly must crumble in the long run under a democratic community-based content.


P. Anandan (MD, MSR “Scientia”) {I personally found him an amazing person, with amazing insights, during our conversation at lunch)

Demos:
>>Surface Computing (bottomline : real world items coded as a bar code), [ of course, too cool an innovation to spoil the experience with just a writeup about it check the demos if yu can, online http://www.microsoft.com/surface/]
>>Virtual Viewpoint Video (Digital Image Processing & Vision Technology),
>>Machine Learning and HIV - training machines to identify varying patterns in gene pool, so that HIV can be combatted....Thanks Bill for the promise you made at the Ready Tour(dEC 09, 2005) in Bangalore....God bless You
>>Photosynth.

Professor shared a quick conversation at lunch on how Research for research's sake isnt healthy...research ought to be targetted at real time scenarios and for usability among people...and of course it must have a profitable commercial life cycle...he tells me to the following effect, the trend now is about people's needs being a factor among servicing initiaitves...and research can come out with a lot of innovation, if they keep commercial promis in mind , and if they focus on the realtime constraints of an eco-system.....When quizzed about the BI impact, he also put it for me saying,

BI + Social communication = one of MSR's focus

Kishore Biyani (Future Group):

They emulate an interesting emulation model, adapted from movie making.....


Lights (idea) -> Camera (drill down on idea and analyze) -> Action (prototypes) -> Retakes (quality) -> rollout -> Blockbuster

àHe informed us that an Open Source University is in progress....boy ! isnt dat news :-)

Ajit Balakrishnan (Founder and CEO - rediff.com):

“Technology in a large way is socially constructed.”

Ex: A traditional mindset recognizes a camera with something that is box like...no wonde rthe structure is stil the same...even though we can innovate on the shape and make it into a futuristic sheet of paper like device....

Morever the people in general ought to be freed from the obscurity of "jargons"...try telling a man in ancient times about building him a " car "...or try telling him you wanna build him a " horse-less carriage "...what can be a stronger association to motivate him to adopt a technology product called motor vehicle.

He emphasized on the need for a tool to automate learning, so that
shortage of trainers and teachers can be combatted, the existing teachers can untilize the time to structure out course designs & interact more qualitatively with students. This helps organizations like IIMs to scale out to cater to more students, which was the current issue of contention among the demand for IIM to scale out.


Democracy + Diversity + Demography = India
Hence
Inclusion of the entities at the bottom of the pyramid is the key note of I3.


"Innovator is one who sees what others see, but think what others do not think." nice definition I think.


Craig Mundie spoke to this effect :

"Invent" your way out of the problems, which keep growing. Current problems cannot be solved by scaling current models, Instead invent fearlessly.

“Looking not only for outsourced problems to solve, but also for people who re-engineer the computer to solve real world problems.”

He also referred to a newspaper article on which an Indian politician had campaigned that "Cricket and Bollywood are killing India."
{hey what about politics....LOL...and did we forget the feverishness of the South Indian (besides Bollywood) movie industry...the overhyped idolisation of you-know-whos...and the portayal of rowdy behavior as a solution, in the movies...which translates directly into public emulating it, to emulate the super stars...and of course to look cool (?)... hodi magaaa (?) . Well all I can say is, "It not always possible to be "cool" and do the right thing...so guys step out of the fantasy world. India is under the scnning eyes of the world, for innovation.}

He actually addressed my observation (too, coincidentally) to a wider audience...I remember the other day lecturing my friend about the Bangalore culture...and I remember telling him the direction Kannada film industry is directing young minds towards...bottomline : we need more meaningful films.....and of course the politics too...the good thing is its still not sucha widespread disease. of course,kudos to the bunch of IITans, who are contesting elections, for a intellectual country to nicubate. we all want that ! but only a few people do it.....hmmmmmmm

Mundie also spoke of the undesirable-to-progress state of mind generally among Americans and Indians, "When you aks a child in China what he aspires to become when he grows up, he replies Bill Gates without battign an eyelid. In the US , the answer would be Tiger Woods or Britney Spears. In countries like the US and India, people are obssessed with sports and entertainers. That needs to change. Only then can we grow. And IT is a critical tool to ensure that there is growth."

The point to be driven home....
Politics based on à Electorates based onà cricket & Bollywood à Dangerous to nation's progress

And he emphasized a sad fact....Technology IS celebrated, but not the Engineers......and of course the apt response to it by Dr. Mashelkar was that India did celebrate an amazing personality ...our lovable Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalaam, as our Ex-President.

Craig says, Risks & Mistakes are okay. But as Bill said, “Don’t repeat the same mistake twice.”


Dr. R.A. Mashelkar


“If you focus your energies, you can burn anything in this world.”





Panel:
CNBC “Innovation Conversation”

CNBC Discussion Interviewer
Sandeep Singhal (MD, Seqouia)
Dr. Sudhakar
Craig Mundie
Ravi Venkateshan


Craig is focusing on expertise in Parallel computing. You heard it !


Points :

Dr. Sudhakar’s Organization works with the bottom of the pyramid at the grass root level.

It is difficult to mix products and projects together. That has been the challenge always for an Organization.

Craig on INVENTION: 3 Types à

1) Sustaining invention
2) Inducing disrupt ness. Ex: current innovations in medicine.
3) Responsiveness to inventive ideas, subject to opportunity costs.


“psychic and financial analysis” : psychic – by recognition, financial – give stock options, bonus.

Make sure the risks that the company takes on your part, also succeeds and yields returns. And don’t make the same mistake twice.

There should be a social responsibility, or rather a visibility from the peers, so that people/Company who receive knowledge/clients also repay back to the country. Ex: Village panchayats etc.

Community-based system is more effective at reducing default-rates in an Organization.


My question:


What is the greatest challenge?
The hierarchy gap in a big organization’s verticals that may kill the ideas in a validation process? OR The risk factor of a small Organization which is accepting an inventive idea?
How to solve it?

Ans: Ravi: Second option. It’s a planted question.

Craig: Get people who take risks. Don’t treat people employees like military workers. VS. Venture based Companies…hence the Venture based Companies are better-of with taking risks.
à MS Innovation Center coming up in Pune, India.



Ending Note
à Market is the mother of Invention.


We left after our dinner and some more interaction....and of course our Imagine Cup Finalists from Gujrat shared good insights....and if the tech Evangelists are listening...their team didnt have a mentor....and that was a 3stepsforward- 2stepsbehind problem...also there were a couple of minute but irrecognizable differences between the focus on INDIAN FINALS and the WORLD WIDE FINALS.....(sorry cant go into details now).


On a different note, do check out babajob.com


NOW , in terms of innovation, if people out there are listening, reading and getting ideas, get back to me....I have some leads on the right places to showcase it...infact even illiteracy wouldnt be a constraint, because there are platforms available where funding and recognition of the projects after showcasing, is not a problem at all....The people we have interacted with, are the decisionmakers, and they are looking more strongly now at INCLUSIVE GROWTH...means INVOLVING THE BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID.

There is an exciting annual initiative happening at ITM Universe Campus (Gwalior) with Mr. Daulat Singh Chauhan
...if you have an innovative idea or know anyone who does, get back to me, and lets help you and them strengthen the Indian backbone.


Thanks a zillion to Paul(Dir. of Innovation, MS) who helped orchestrate such an important discussion, its picking up momentum, and thanks to Alok.....but of course goes without saying, AJAY, REZA and KEVIN are the three Magi at MICROSOFT .



we represented the Company as Student Partners, and as memebers of User Communities (this is Bangalore....http://groups.msn.com/bdotnetstudent) around Microsoft technologies...and if you wanna know wats the what-of-what about it, (the thing which helped me survive thru the monotonity and rote-learning of college...) then write back to me personally...would be more than glad to fill you in and get you involved. We are only on the tip of the iceberg until then.

http://student-partners.com/