'It's not the How or the What but the Who'

I came across a Harvard Business Review webinar 'It's Not the How or the What but the Who: Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Best'. It was hosted by Claudio Fernandez Araoz, whose written the book 'It's not the How or the What but the Who'. (This title is from a Jeff Bezos quote made in an interview.) He is also a Partner at Egon Zehnder, which is into executive recruitment consultancy and leadership strategy services among other things.

In the book, he states that people's choices about friends, partners, spouses, mentors and employees are more important than they realise. You need the best people around you to thrive and yet very few people know how to do this well. I couldn't agree more with him because I've spent so many years of my life pruning away people who are a drain and liabilities and trying to add people who will bring out the best in me and help me succeed. I actually do have a similar motto, which is up on my Google profile.

So, once I knew it wasn't just a snobbish tactic on my part but an approved strategy at work, I wanted to see what tips Claudio had for companies to put together good teams. He did start off by comparing two top CEOs in the world today. Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Roger Agnelli of Vale (a Brazilian mining company). Both men have attributed their huge success in such disparate industries to their great teams.

Claudio also highlighted why this strategy is needed now more than ever. The reasons are:
- Globalisation: Many businesses are looking to find increased revenues - almost 70% - from emerging markets.
- Demographics: The developed countries are seeing a 30% decline in leaders in the 35-44 age group bracket.
- Pipelines: Companies have depleted pipelines of qualified successors. This problem like the above one will double in time. At the moment, half the VP level leaders in most companies that Claudio looked at, are close to retirement and half of those don't have successors lined up. A survey of 400 companies showed that successor training and planning is broken.

The webinar participants were told to take a poll and they all stated that the third factor, depleted leadership was what bothered them the most. Claudio suggested four ways to counter this issue:

- Focus on Potential: Good way to start but most assessors are clueless about how to judge potential. No one has an "empirically validated model" to predict a person's potential. Claudio suggests employers keep an eye out for these indicators: Motivation ("a fierce commitment to unselfish goals"), curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination.

- Master Retention: Key ways to retain people is to give them autonomy with regard to (task, time, team and technique), mastery, and purpose. These were recommended by Daniel Pink in his book 'Drive' and Claudio thoroughly agrees with them.

- Master Development: This was least looked into by many companies. Claudio's research shows that education makes up for 30% of development but on-the-job experience makes up for 70% of it. What also helped with development of potential was, in this order of priority - being given stretch assignments, job rotation and having personal mentors.

- Build Effective Teams: This is and will become an urgent need in the future: Surrounding yourself with the best people. This doesn't happen by chance. You need to know how to pick the best too. Talent spotting can't be left to the whims and fancies of people recommending their favourite and/or servile pets.

He has suggested and seen what team structures work best for a company turnaround, a new venture and a post-merger alliance.

1. A turnaround team has to be resilient and efficient.
2. A new venture's team has to be high on energy, openness and resilience.
3. A post-merger integration (PMI) team has to be balanced and aligned.

He also shares a case study of one of his 'finds' - Pedro Algorta. A person whom he recruited to be a brewery manager in Argentina and who then went on to become the CEO. This despite him not having the required competency but Claudio mined his past, and knew this man had the potential to do this job well. You need to see this portion of the webinar to know what this CEO endured to become the person he did.

I read the CEO's experiences on his own site a few months ago, and Claudio gives you a short version of it. From surviving a plane crash in the Andes to eating human flesh to survive..he did it all. He, and some of the other survivors have also been immortalised in a movie called 'Alive'.

I would like to work for such a person, but everyone doesn't have so much trauma in their past that makes him/her a wonderful type to work for, or with. I'll settle for people with some competency, a sense of fairness, and the ability to take criticism as much as give it to others. Oh...hmm..a dash of potential would also help!

What I loved best, was the way Claudio emphasized in the Q&A session at the end of the webinar, that women are the future of every workplace, all over the world. So start bucking up guys or leave, especially when you don't add much value to your jobs anyway.

Check out the webinar here: It's not the How or the What but the Who Graphics are from the webinar.

Ghostly Voice

The sound of his voice still thrills her and it brings back memories of a trip to Shimla. It was so soon after their marriage that it almost seemed like an extended honeymoon, so, they had been teased about it. "The lovebirds can't get enough of each other" was the common thread that ran through all the ragging but that hadn't changed their plans much. After all, they were going with friends who had just come down from abroad.

Bags were packed and they had flown away to a week of fun and reminiscing over hot cocoa, in front of a warm fire while the snow outside chilled everyone. The cold got through the windows no matter how tightly they were shut and that just drove her to the comfort and warmth of his arms.

They were all going to take the cable car ride over the gorgeous valley the next day. But she remembered getting up with a bad fever so he told her to stay tucked up in bed and he said he would be right there to get her anything she wanted - hot soup, medicines and lots of tender loving care - the best antidote of them all.

She said she was fine and insisted he carry on and have fun with the others and not fuss around her all day. But he said the others had already heard about her being unwell and knew he would want to stay with her. So, they had gone ahead to do some sightseeing. But she clearly remembered saying, "Go join them then and have fun."

He kissed her goodbye and went away to have a good time. She went to sleep and woke up at the end of the day to find he had not come back yet. She soon found out to her horror, that he was never really going to come back to her ever again.

The hotel manager told her, that he had decided to take the cable car ride by himself and had planned to come back to tease her imagination just enough, so she could go with him, when she got better. To cut a long story short...the cable car snapped and cruelly cut short the life of a young man...a young husband who didn't even know he had just become a young father.

He had plunged to the bottom of the valley, taking her heart and her sanity along with it. Grieving friends brought her back to her shell-shocked family. But she didn't feel anything. She kept asking for him as if he had just stepped out to buy groceries and hadn't returned yet.

He had left her some things, as if she needed any reminders of him. He had left her a recording of his voice. He had recorded a message for her just as he had got on the cable car and sent it to her mobile phone and that's the only voice she responds to...20 years later. The message haunts everyone else as being so prescient, as if he had known or felt something eerie was going to happen.

His message to her was: "The view here is so beautiful but if I were to choose the most beautiful thing that I want to see before I die, then it's you..will always be you."

He also gave her me - his daughter. She gave birth to me almost eight months later from the day he died but she didn't see him in me. Yet people always say I have my dad's looks.

Yet she doesn't recognise me. I realised long ago, I had lost her to that ghostly voice.

I wrote this short fiction story on a whim. Any resemblance to any living character is purely coincidental! I do assert this as being an original work, so if anyone is going to lift it for any purpose, atleast have the decency to request permission.

Written for the Spark Magazine

Which status symbol wheels do you own?

Nothing screams money more than a luxury car. Now joining an exclusive club of hi-end car-owners - that comprises celebrities like Akshay Kumar, Bipasha Basu. Bobby Deol, Leander Paes and so many more – are first generation entrepreneurs, hedge fund managers, doctors, architects, lawyers, engineers and dotcom geeks with cash to spare.

There are a many luxury car brands vying for Indian wallets and the glamorous ones like Mercedes, Porsche, Audi, BMW are being spotted on India’s roads quite frequently. For the SUV aficionados, there is the Honda CRV, Porsche Cayenne, Land Rover, Audi Q7 and the Mercedes M Class.

Navnit Motors which is the Indian franchisee for BMW and Land Rover has seen a surge in sales of these cars in the recent past. Though, BMW has been in India for the past 12-15 years, sources at Navnit Motors say that they are selling almost 40 cars in a month now.

                  Image source: Autocar 

So even though the BMW 3 series and 5 series are the popular ones to go out of their showroom, they are not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. For these cars, the EMI works up to Rs 60,000 pm and if anyone is going for the upper-end of the spectrum BMW (for eg. a 7 series), then the EMI can go up to a whopping Rs 2.5 lakhs per month.

BMW Model - Price of the car
3 Series - Rs 27 lakhs
5 Series - Rs 37 lakhs
6 Series - Convertible Rs 87.90 lakhs
Coupe - Rs 79.70 lakhs
7 Series - Rs 74 lakhs

But whatever the price, the cars are selling like hot cakes because nothing beats the German engineering that comes packaged in sexy, stylized metal. So, though Audi is in India to heat up the competition, sources at Navnit Motors say there are not too worried because they have a headstart to begin with and atleast in Mumbai, where Audi doesn’t have a showroom - therefore after-sales service and spares are difficult to procure - they think of the Mercedes as being their closest competitor.

Though, sources tell me that an Audi showroom is set to open in Mumbai in July this year and that will bring in premier models like the A3, A4, A6 and the Q7 onto Mumbai roads.

Similarly, Precision Cars India Private Limited, the firm which has imported Porsche into India is not losing sleep over Ferrari’s recent entry into India – or so it claims. Chief Executive Officer, (CEO) Ashish Chordia actually welcomes the competition and says, “We believe that competition is very healthy and we together are growing the industry in our market. With the superiority of our products and the great success Porsche experiences worldwide, we have no doubts that the Indian market will meet our growth expectation.”

He adds that, it’s customers who differentiate between brands because of their emotions associated with a particular brand. In other words, there is space for everyone to play on people’s perceptions and emotions.

Besides he believes that there are a million potential luxury car buyers in the country and though the sales figure is currently at 5,000 cars, there is immense growth waiting to be tapped by everyone. What’s more, his dealerships are willing to finance the purchase. With these sleek cars starting from a price range of Rs 47 lakhs and going all the way to Rs 86 lakhs for the SUV, the Cayenne – some people will surely jump at this opportunity to show-off their money.

Porsche Model - Price of the car
Boxter S - Rs 47 lakhs
Carrera - Rs 63 lakhs
Carrera S - Rs 71 lakhs
Cayman S - Rs 52 lakhs
Cayenne V6 - Rs 47 lakhs
Cayenne S - Rs 61 lakhs
Cayenne Turbo - Rs 86 lakhs

The other status-symbol SUV to own is the Land Rover. Beginning with a price tag of Rs 1.25 crore, this marquee brand that belongs to the Ford family is just what the nouveau riche are riding around in, these days.

Sources at Navnit Motors say that there are three models to choose from in this brand – the Range Rover, Range Rover Sport and the Discovery. With the EMI for a base model coming to around Rs 1.50 lakhs, these wheels symbolize wealth, like nothing else.

Here again, confidence reigns when it comes to selling more of these SUVs. Though a sales figure was not forthcoming, (projected or otherwise), sources said that they considered the Porsche Cayenne and the Audi Q7 as the brands which could cannibalize their sales.

Land Rover Model - Price of the Car (Rs Cr)
Range Rover - Rs 6.67 lakhs
Range Rover Sport - Rs 4.30 lakhs
Discovery - Rs 3.29 lakhs

This will happen ofcourse, only when more Indians start to think big and spend lavishly, and when they realize that there is such a buffet spread out there. At the moment, all the brands have their exclusive, small number of clientele, therefore the money is being thrown out generally at the few by the few.

So, it’s probably safe to say that to make a choice between brands is not easy. To figure out how the rich make up their mind to pay for such expensive wheels, may be every marketing consultant’s dream come true. But for the moment, everyone is going by gut feel and good old brand-building.

Chordia explains, “We are working to establish the Porsche brand in the Indian market with the same standards as they would be anywhere in the world. Therefore we are preparing ourselves for a great future ahead. Currently, we have approximately 500 vehicles of Porsche available in the Indian market.”

So, are Indian customers discerning and demanding as well? Do Indians ask for radical makeovers or for vanity plates, a bar, DVD-TV gizmo combination? Apparently, they do. Sources at Navnit Motors say that though the 3 series and 5 series is imported as completely knocked down (CKDs) kits and assembled here, any such add-ons have to be told well in advance and for the higher end series, which comes straight from abroad, the same situation prevails. So, cherry-picking you accessories well in advance is the way to go because they absolutely don’t tinker with the car once it’s in India.

                       Image source: Autocar

With Porsche, Chordia explains, “The concept behind Porsche Design Driver’s Selection looks beyond the vehicle. Not only do we take the wishes of Porsche drivers into consideration. We also go one step further to include anyone with a passion for Porsche. The result is a range of superb products that combine high-quality materials, exclusive design and truly individual character.”

“For eg. Take the Porsche Cayenne collection, – a truly versatile range of meticulously finished, functional and stylish products, which are developed to meet the challenges of everyday life. With a combination of classic, elegant design and modern materials, the 911 Swarovski
collection reflects those special moments in life – just like the 911 (model) itself.”

“We have a huge list of possible options that can be offered to the customers. However, if a customer comes up with any specific request, we are happy to fulfill it.”

All the luxury car brands are out to get customers with just such great assurances. So, what’s there to lose? Have the money…then go spend!

(Never wrote this for any mediocre car site).

How the ultra-rich spend their stash

Do you have any idea what sort of spender are you? The conscientious kind or the impulsive kind or just the plain foolish kind? Or are you just too broke to do the spending you wish you could do! Either way, I came across a report by Kotak Wealth Management that was done last year, which shows how ultra high networth individuals (HNI) spend their cash. Ironically, while investing was a priority, saving money was not. These graphics tell their own stories..

What I liked best about this report was how it points out that 97% of ultra HNIs spend "not much" but "less than Rs 25 lakhs" in a year on art. But the remaining 3% probably make up for it, by spending between Rs 25-50 lakhs anyway. For many people, with that much money, they would rather buy a home! Also, they bought art because they are passionate about it but wearables were on show for social status. Sort of like flaunting expensive cars. Some things don't change.

MAID: Stylish Aid To Jazz Up Cooking

If you have waited for someone to come up with a ‘connected microwave oven’, that would flash or show you recipes, just when you wanted inspiration to cook up something scrumptious, rather than having to read it from a book or off a website, then MAID (Make All Incredible Dishes), a smart, multi-functional oven, has been designed for people just like you.

MAID has been made by SectorQube, which is an Internet of Things (IoT) startup set up in October 2011 by six friends, that now employs 14 people. Nibu Alias is the CEO of the company. To raise funding, they ran a Kickstarter campaign for introducing MAID across the globe. SectorQube Inc, a US entity, was setup for the same reason. The campaign raised $123,920 in 35 days and they got 200 pre-orders. The goal had been to raise $50,000, which was done in an amazing six days!

So here are some of MAID’s wow features as shared by SectorQube:

1. It has touch interface rather than the usual buttons

2. A recipe database, connected via Wi-Fi that provides an unlimited number of recipes to the MAID interface

3. MAID can be controlled via touch, gesture and voice, and it is the only oven to have these features

4. MAID has a personalisation engine that can learn a user’s cooking habits and calorie needs, and can suggest recipes based on them

What really inspired the team to come up with such a ‘with it’ appliance, was their own lives. SectorQube, Co-Founder & CBDO, Sabarish Prakash told Networked India, “We were bachelors living in an apartment and we did not know how to cook. We depended on restaurants for food and in Kerala, where anyone can declare a hartal (strike) at any moment, it was not sustainable. We wanted something that could cook on its own – that was the idea. From there, we moulded an idea into something practical. That was how MAID was born.”

He added, “We had a soft launch in 2012. We were surprised by the coverage that it got. We got more than 1,000 pre-orders, but we were in no place to complete them. We did not have enough capital for manufacturing. So we had to drop all those pre-orders.”

We went ahead with licensing the technology to home appliance companies, but no one was ready to bring such a big change to the market. We wanted to market the product more in the western markets and also establish its market validity. That is when we decided to go for the Kickstarter campaign.”

Their moment of glory has come because MAID has got international acceptance now, as the same global home appliances companies who did not want to license the technology from them initially, are now contacting them.

Prakash says, “Even though we struggled initially, and at times thought that the product was maybe not good enough, we continued improving and going forward. And it got us on the path of success.”

The company has also implemented better and easier human-to-machine communication. What’s more, SectorQube has major industry leaders like Godrej and IFB on their client list, with more of them lining up.

Written for Ericsson.

Nano Origami Drone: The Economical Spy Paper Plane

If you remember the gorgeous, chocolate cake-like Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai being stormed, first, by terrorists and then by commandos flushing out those cowardly creeps; then someone else was also affected by that sight.

B. Madhan Kumar watched the news on that day and felt for the commandos going in blindly because “no one knew what was happening inside. So, after that, I wanted to make a simple spying device which makes defence operations easier and at the same time, it must be economically efficient to adopt”, he told Networked India.

He seems to have figured out how to do that. An M.E degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Madras Institute of Technology has also certainly been put to good use, because he has mixed some really nifty high-level science and kindergarten level craft, to come up with a paper plane, that’s more than a toy that we played with as kids.

His paper unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is actually a drone that can be used to defend a country! He said, “My innovation is Nano Origami Drones that can be used for surveillance by the defence department. It is a simple paper plane with in-built nano avionics system. It also includes a camera with wireless transmission.”

“This is the only origami (paper built) flying surveillance system that can be used for indoor and outdoor surveillance.It is a soldiers’ gadget and can be used only once, as it only made out of paper. It reduces the stress of getting back a drone in the middle of a war.”

He has managed to make this drone for an unbelievably cheap Rs 1,000 and has applied for a patent. He explained, “I have chosen ordinary paper as material and on analysis, it has proven that a simple 80 Grams per Square Metre (GSM) paper resembles having the properties of aluminium.”

From my childhood, I am good at making paper planes. I know the

efficiency of paper planes in the open air. I also got some prizes at national level contests for the ‘Best Paper Plane designed for the Highest Range and Endurance (flight time)’. It took almost two years to get the right weight which can be accomodated by a paper. Finally, I made it fly inside and outside along with a camera.”

In a research paper that Madhan has written on his UAV, he has stated that it requires a certain altitude to perform well. “The control surfaces are fully active at an altitude of 20 to 70 feet. This altitude gives enough time for the paper plane to stabilize itself.” So it is required that the UAV is “dropped at least from 20 feet.” For example: If a user wants to survey a building from indoors or outdoors, this plane has to be dropped from the top floor. Then “it is very efficient and controllable.”

He has done this project on his own because people have laughed off his endeavour and told him “don’t do any dream as your project.” But he has persevered because he says, “I know the power of my motors and the efficiency of paper. Whenever someone says. “It is not at all possible to fly this thing”, I take those words as fuel, and do more, to make it fly. And ofcourse I got moral support from my department head, Dr V.K. Shanmuganathan and a DRDO scientist, Rajesh. They were able to visualise my thoughts and always inspired me to keep going with my project.”

He has amply justified these people’s faith in him. He was awarded the ‘Dr Walter Kohn Award for Innovation’ in 2014 by Satyabama University and is the first person to receive it for an aerial project. This has spurred him on to doing even more with his paper plane UAV. He has now even developed a vertical takeoff and landing system too.

Now all that is required is, for these paper plane drones to take off, with the right people in the right places.

Taparch: ‘Sensing’ Shoes Will Help The Blind Move Around Easily

Krishna Sai Inkoolu is the Founder & Director at Taparch Footwear Pvt Ltd. So, what is so great about this footwear-maker anyway? Well, his shoes help blind people and those having less than 15 degrees of visual field, identify and isolate obstacles within a range of 400 cms. It is currently in the pre-incubation stage, and is already in the market and is priced feasibly. Taparch has been tested at the National Association of the Blind and Krishna wants to scale the trial to a national level.

Krishna was a student at the Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management (GITAM), when he was motivated to help visually impaired people live more dignified lives. While they navigate around the world with their white/red canes, they are visible to us, as being seriously at a disadvantage, which they indeed are. These shoes quietly guide them without announcing their blindness to the world.

To design these shoes, Krishna observed how they moved around. As he told Techpedia, “We keenly observed the conventional walking methods of the visually impaired. While 80% of them used Hoover canes, the rest were dependent on echolocation. Therefore, we realized that there was no significant and economical technology available to cater to the needs of the visually impaired. With that thought in mind, we invented Taparch, that works on the principle of “Sense of Touch”, and lets the user identify the distance and dimension of the obstacle ahead.”

While he states that the technology behind the shoe has been easy to crack – converting mechanical energy into power – it is also much less expensive and more user-friendly. Well, all that electrical energy generated can also be used to recharge the user’s phone, while he/she is walking!

The shoes work with a sensor that “is placed at the weld point of the shoe, which identifies the obstacle and gives a tap on the arch of the shoe. With the help of micro-electronics, the entire circuit is placed in the shoe socket, which has a connection with the weld point where the sensor is placed”, reported Moneycontrol. The shoe works on a rechargeable battery and doesn’t need a smartphone.

Krishna realised it was important to know when the sensor was not working since there is no system that is fail-proof. So he has embedded a “mistake-proofing” device in the shoe to pick up on any errors. If the sensor fails, it raises an alarm to alert the wearer.

Shoes don’t come anymore hip than these! Now, if only Krishna can offer colour options…

Written for Ericsson's blog: Networked India

‘Universal’ ATM Card: Likely To Be A Game-Changer

Avinash Kumar Dwivedi is inspired by innovations. So much so, that he is driven to spend hours experimenting and hoping to create something new that would benefit everyone. Let’s just say that he may succeed in achieving such a lofty goal. He and his team have been working on an automated teller machine (ATM) card, on which a person can add more than one bank account.

This will considerably ease the problem of people carrying around too many cards and then forgetting ATM pins. He told Networked India, “We embed more than one bank account in one ATM card, so that the user can transact as he wishes with a single swipe. For security, we use the PIN password with a cipher key that is generated when the card is authenticated.”

He explained the advantages of such a card:

1. Faster than the previous system
2. More secure
3. IT department can directly monitor the accounts, so it will be profitable for the  government
4. People do not have to pay taxes for all ATM cards every year
5. Reduces the stress of carrying a number of ATM cards
6. Saves time if a card is lost, as it is a universal card; it can be  blocked easily
   

While all of us are aware of what an ATM card is and what it does, most people do not keep track of clauses like the limitation in the number of transactions when using the ATM of some other bank, or that after crossing the limit used, they will have to pay transaction fees. These fees, collectively, work out to quite a lot of money annually. Avinash explained the math,

If you assume 20 crore people are using ATM cards in India, and they have an average of three ATM cards with different banks, it means having to pay additional maintenance charges for a year of about Rs 100 for one card. So, the average for three cards is Rs 300. Now, multiply the 20 crore people by Rs 300 each and it’s a huge amount we are paying each year, from our pocket. So, one ATM card means one-time maintenance cost and that is what this universal ATM card can do.”

He admits that this new concept didn’t get buy-in from his team-mates – Saurabh Gandhe, Ujwal Shirode,Twinkle Pajiyar, and Pooja Bora – right away. But he convinced them and their hard work has borne fruit. They have even applied for a patent for this technology.

He is happy with the praise and recognition he is getting, and adds, “I think I will feel satisfied when there is technology available in a simple and smart way for all.”

Written for Ericsson's blog: Networked India

Global Innovation Index is a wake-up call for India

With all the economies of the world realising the potential of entrepreneurship, creating an enabling environment should be on top of their priority list. But is it? To help policymakers to assess progress and track innovation trends, the Global Innovation Index (GII) was set up in 2007, as a “tool-for-action” for decision-makers. Their annual report/rankings are worth looking at, to know where we (India) stand in relation to other countries, and the numbers are not looking great.

Taking into account 81 indicators such as political environment, regulatory environment, business environment, human capital and research, infrastructure, ecological sustainability, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technological output etc; the report has been co-published by INSEAD, WIPO, and Cornell University in association with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), du and Huawei.

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) site states, “It provides a rich series of metrics that benchmark the innovation capabilities and performance of 143 countries. As firms and governments show growing interest in identifying and energizing creative individuals and teams to harness future growth, this year’s GII explores the critical role of the human factor in innovation.”

“Countries that have made visible efforts to maintain or enhance the quality of their human resources through education and life-long learning include the Republic of Korea, Finland and the UK (among high income countries) and China, Argentina and Hungary (among middle-income countries).”

At the GII launch, Australia’s Minister for Industry, Ian Macfarlane stated: “Reports like the GII provide direction on how we can boost our innovative outcomes giving us a deeper understanding of the many factors that drive innovation.”

WIPO Director General, Francis Gurry added, It is a “comprehensive map of the capacity of countries to innovate and thus compete on the world stage.”

WIPO has a succinct synopsis of the GII rankings. “For the fourth consecutive year, Switzerland topped the GII’s rankings, followed by the United Kingdom and Sweden. For the first time, Luxembourg entered the top 10, ranking ninth. Among the top 20 rankings there is a very high degree of stability” noted Bruno Lanvin, Executive Director of INSEAD and co-author of the report.

“The top 25 countries consistently score high across most of the Index’s 81 indicators, have well-linked innovation ecosystems and demonstrate strong capabilities in areas such as innovation infrastructure (including information and communications technologies), business sophistication (including innovation linkages, knowledge workers, and knowledge absorption); and innovation outputs (such as creative goods and services and online creativity).”

While a persistent divide exists between and within income groups over the speed of innovation, some middle-income countries like China and Malaysia are likely to break through to the Top 25 list in the near future.  In the same vein - of the 33 sub-Saharan countries in the rankings, 17 have shown major improvement.

Cornell University’s Soumitra Dutta, who has co-authored this report stated that the results “indicate important trends for the future. They show which economies are learning faster and where probably a lot of future growth in the economy and other interesting innovative ideas will emerge in the future.”

BRICS countries are not all performing on par. Or rather, India is doing dismally. It skipped 10 places to be in the 76th position. The other four did better. Brazil moved up by 3 places to reach 61st rank, the Russian Federation by 13 places to reach 49th, China by 6 places to reach 29th and South Africa by 5 places to reach 53rd position. More reason for Indian policymakers, innovators, and businesses to take the GII ranking seriously. Other countries are leading the march when it comes to making their country a magnet for innovative talent. In fact, Morocco is one of few countries that has succeeded in bringing back their talented brain-power.

WIPO’s site states, “Recent studies show that around 75 percent of migrant inventors from low- and middle-income countries reside in the US, with China and India standing out as the two largest middle-income countries of origin, followed by Russia, Turkey, Iran, Romania and Mexico.”

So what is India doing to bring back its innovative people, and make it attractive for the ones who have stuck it out here and are making a go of things? Answers would be truly welcome because the numbers are not exactly rosy.

Here are a few takeaways for some of the criteria I’ve mentioned earlier:

• On political stability and absence of violence/terrorism: India ranks at 126. Below countries like Niger, Botswana, Tajikistan, Myanmar, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Burkina Faso, Bosnia and a lot of others, who surprisingly are way ahead of us. The five toppers were: Finland, Norway, Switzerland, New Zealand and Sweden.
  
• On regulatory environment: We rank 83. Again behind Niger, Kazakhstan, Burkina Faso, Botswana, Uganda, Rwanda! These are not even ‘usual suspect’ kind of countries like Singapore, New Zealand, Denmark, Netherlands and Hong Kong, who have topped this benchmark.
  
• On business environment: India ranks 128. We lag behind Ukraine, Tajikistan, Ecuador, Algeria, Malawi, Mali, Burundi, Serbia, Uganda, China and Pakistan among many others. The top five are: Singapore, Canada, Ireland, Hong Kong and Norway.
  
• Human capital and research: India is at 96. Ghana, Albania, Vietnam, Brunei, Mongolia, Lesotho, Algeria, Uruguay, Serbia, Montenegro and a bunch of other interesting countries are higher up on the list than us. The five toppers are: Finland, Singapore, Korea, UAE and Israel.
  
• Infrastructure: India is at 87, behind Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Dominican Republic, Botswana, Tunisia, Slovenia, Peru etc. The top five were: Hong Kong, Singapore, Norway, Sweden and Korea.
  
• Ecological sustainability: India is at 106. Behind Malawi, Swaziland, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Gambia, Namibia etc. The top five were: Hong Kong, Spain, Switzerland, Italy and Czech Republic!
• Market sophistication: India ranks 50. With Lithuania, Bosnia, Moldova, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, Estonia, Albania etc above us on this list. The top five countries were: USA, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Canada.
  
  - Business sophistication: India is at 93. We are way behind Niger, Bhutan, Ghana, Nepal, Vietnam, Bulgaria among others. The top five were: Singapore, Luxembourg, Israel, Ireland and Barbados!
  
  - Knowledge and technological output: India is ranked at 50. Behind Serbia, Slovakia, Croatia, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania, Belarus, Estonia. In this regard, Hong Kong is also placed at a low 45 (below all of the above-mentioned countries). The top five were: Switzerland, China, Sweden, USA and the UK.

China/Hong Kong and Singapore have kept the flag flying high for the Asian continent. Some of India’s smaller neighbours have done better than us. We only top in the Central and Southern Asia regions, where we have beaten Kazakhstan and Bhutan. Otherwise, the only other country we seemed to have done better than is - Sri Lanka! With this country having endured civil war for so long, and only just finding their economic and political feet, even they might do better in future GII rankings. Do Indian decision-makers need anything more to prod them to wake up, than these insulting facts?

Why Asthamatics Will Love Ecomappers – A Pollution Mapping Kit?

The word ‘pollution’ is on everyone’s lips and minds. But Dhiraj Gehlot admits that ­”we really wanted to do something about it, instead of complaining. We thought if we tell people about the pollution levels in their locality, they will start taking steps to reduce it, to save themselves”. He is Chief Project Innovator at RiiDL and a student at the KJ Somaiya College of Engineering, and he has come up with Ecomappers – a product that is related to pollution mapping and effective solutions for the same.

Dhiraj explained to Networked India, “We have designed a pollution mapping kit. We display data of parameters like CO, NO2, dust, noise, temperature and humidity, real-­time on our website, which has a Google maps interface. The kit is so well designed that it can be mounted above the street light, traffic light, in a housing society and/or in a home for personal use.”

The kit collects the data from the sensors and uploads the values on Google, rated on a scale of 1 to 10 on the basis of data and standards defined by the Pollution Control Board. We can compare two different areas on the basis of data collected – say pollution levels of Mumbai and New York.”

Along with mapping, Dhiraj’s team is also providing solutions like meshed window nets to purify air, fresh air mask, vertical vegetation and other such solutions to reduce pollution levels. He says they are gathering details of plants, which are more helpful in clearing dust and pollution from the air. With this information, they will come up with an algorithm that will suggest the right number of trees that need to be planted to keep the pollution level to a minimum.

He has faced challenges when designing this product. One major problem was financing. He said, “We bootstrapped the initial capital by pitching this idea at various competitions and with the prize money, we developed our first prototype. Calibration of sensors was another major issue we faced. But we somehow got meters (like noise, temperature and humidity meters from the environment department of colleges) and used them, to calibrate our sensors.”

The end result is that, the kit he has developed makes people aware about pollution and empowers them with solutions to avoid the pollution. For instance, an asthmatic person can plan his/her travel time and route to any destination, depending on the level of air pollution. He said, “Our mobile app provides details of pollution parameters like carbon monoxide, dust, etc. in a pictorial format, which is easy to understand. There are solutions which people can buy on our app and website.” See how the kit works here.

Even government organisations, like the state government Pollution Control Boards require data from his kits, for analysing the pollution level at ground level. He is obviously meeting a timely need because as Dhiraj says, “Currently there are no kits in India, which can be mounted on street lights. Also, real-time pollution data of (CO, Radiation, NOX, SOX, dust, noise, temperature, and humidity) can be logged using a single kit.”

Real estate developers and city planners can use the kit to understand the amount of pollution and compare their townships, by giving them ratings. This will encourage real estate developers to build green buildings.

He has successfully implemented a second prototype and will be soon launching a new website and mobile app for users. All-in-all, he is pleased with the recognition and awards he has received for his work, which proves that he is on the right track and is “doing good for the improvement of our society.”

Throw Trash Into This Bin & Get Free Wi-Fi!

At the NH7 Music Festival last year, the music flowed and the crowds rocked to it. When they took a break from all that grooving and went to get refreshments, little did they know, a freebie would be available to them – free Wi-Fi – and at a dustbin, at that! This was so people were encouraged to use that dustbin and not litter the venue.

This bright spark of an idea belongs to Raj Desai and Pratik Agarwal – the Thinkscream duo. Thinkscream’s “aim is to ensure that people in India and around the world, have access to, and take advantage of all the available new age technology.” To ensure this happens, they built innovative products, like the TS Connect for Multiplexes and TS Connect for High Crowd Density events.

The NH7 Music Festival was exactly the sort of “High Crowd Density event” that both of them love, to showcase their innovative use of technology. They seem to have hit the right spot with this idea because they were sponsored by MTS. Their other satisfied clients are: Cinemax, Red Bull, and Tata Teleservices among others.

Apart from Wi-Fi, they are into radio frequency identification technology (RFID) as well, since they want to “ensure that this near frequency communication technology helps upgrade various business verticals and solves a number of pain points.”

Raj told Networked India, “We have always been intrigued by human behaviour, and how we can effectively use basic incentives, to modify it a bit. When we wanted to set up Wi-Fi at Weekender (the NH7 event) with brandmovers and MTS, we wanted to provide something more than just vanilla Wi-Fi. That’s when we thought that incentivising people to keep their areas clean would be a good idea.”

He admits that getting corporations on board is a big challenge. He says,

People in India are yet to realise how effective little modifications in process, systems, and their designs can be, to bring about large scale change.”

However, he has watched people respond positively to their ideas. He added, “Right from OrderOffWi-Fi for Cinemas to Wi-Fi at music festivals or the Wi-Fi trash bin; it feels amazing when people come and congratulate you for the idea, and more importantly use the product. In fact, we were amused when we saw people queuing up to use the Wi-Fi trash bin.”

He and Pratik are open to ideas and suggestions from others too. In fact, if people show up at their offices with beverages, food, music, and/or movies, they are more than welcome!

Written for Ericsson.

CINI’s GPower App Empowers Vulnerable Adolescent Girls

If you have often seen children being exploited and your heart goes out to them; then ever wondered if NGOs like CRY, World Vision, and Childline are enough to handle all these neglected and unwanted waifs? Both girls and boys are taken out of school and made to work and earn money. Their childhoods are snatched away prematurely and they are forced to become adults before their time.

Child In Need Institute (CINI) understood this because they have seen it happen time and again, especially with girl children, who are forced to get married and have children early, even when they are not physically, emotionally, and mentally ready to start families.

To help and monitor vulnerable children – and they mostly seem to belong to the female gender – CINI has developed an app called GPower (Girl Power). GPower was launched as a joint venture between Accenture and CINI last year, after a survey was done on the condition of educational programmes among girls in South 24 Parganas and Murshidabad districts. It has helped save over 200 girls spread across 20 villages, from either being trafficked or being a child marriage victim, reported NDTV.

CINI’s Assistant Director, Dr Indrani Bhattacharya told Networked India, “The girls in GPower are caught in the vicious cycle of vulnerabilities, like school dropout, early marriage, early pregnancy, child labour and trafficking. It starts from birth and they are trapped in a society with socio-cultural and harmful practices, gender-norms and contrasting stages of development, that leaves them powerless to make essential life-choices.”

Saving these girls’ lives through a digital innovation (like the app) with real-time alarm and alerts, and through strengthening the community-based safety net in the family and village itself, could save a society. This is what inspired CINI’s birth.”

Via GPower, community facilitators (CFs) record and monitor the vulnerability of adolescent girls. It also identifies the girls at higher risk ahead of time, to enable timely intervention and tracks the delivery of appropriate services to avoid potentially untoward incidents.

This enables errors to be minimised and streamlines the collection of valuable information, such as details about a girl’s education, protection, health and nutrition. Information from the mobile device is then uploaded to the cloud, and a server-based software uses this to compute a vulnerability index for each girl, in real-time. This, in turn, allows for real-time data analysis.

These insights create a continuous information flow that not only allows tracking of individual cases of vulnerability, but also reveals trends and allows forecast of results. The app-as-a-solution also has links across the government agencies that “provide support for adolescent girls; giving the facilitator a ready view into the services across the four pillars that should be leveraged for each individual to reduce her vulnerability index”, Bhattacharya explained.

She added. “Aggregated data delivers status reports to the facilitator on the uptake of services. These status reports can also be used to uncover issues with specific services and service providers, and support more effective service delivery.”

“At the implementation level, GPower is helping monitor the effectiveness
 of CFs by measuring their performance and setting benchmarks. Based on this evaluation, necessary training can be provided to CFs to improve their skills, and motivate them to do their jobs better.”

While CINI has had to convince (and often browbeat) parents to let their girls continue to study; most parents have given in and let it happen. They have also not married their girls off too young. And this gives them immense satisfaction, as one of their ‘vulnerable victims’ is now well on her way to becoming an empowered teacher!

This child had been rescued by CINI and re-admitted to school. Bhattacharya recalls, “The panchayat head helped her to get admission without any cost. She is studying in class VII and now she is saying that “Ami abar swapno dekha shuru korechi ar ami bhobissate ekjon teacher hote chai.” (“I have started to see my dream again and I want to be a teacher in future.”)

Written for Ericsson's blog.