Apr
20
2011
While I have always enjoyed writing, it’s been a while since I have written professionally. I suspect that having been trained in the scientific ways, there is some part of me that wants a “complete story” — data and all — before documenting it. My work over the last decade has been more entrepreneurial and business-focused, leaving me uncomfortable about the depth of what I could write about. My last article was on Social Networks while I was at Spoke.
Well, I figured it was time to change that. So, I’ve started writing again — as best I can. I am kicking this off by serving as the Columnist for a quarterly column in SAPInsider, a magazine focused on all things SAP. This column, entitled “SME Insights” will focus on the Small Business and Midsize Enterprise (SME or SMB) market. I’ll delve into different topics of interest to SMEs/SMBs from the market, partner and vendor view. I’ll bring in colleagues, partners, customers and industry experts as appropriate. And, as part of a little experiment, I will use this as the launch point to engage with the broader market at different watering holes my audience hangs out.
With that, here’s the inaugural column: “SAP’s Best-Kep Secret — Small businesses and midsize enterprises are rapidly adopting SAP’s Solutions.” I’m looking forward to it. I hope you enjoy it as well!
Please drop me email if you have (differing!) thoughts on the articles, topics you’d like for me to delve into, or if you would like to join me as a guest columnist!
PS: I’ve learned that you can’t pull these off without help. My thanks go to my colleagues at SAP (especially Birgit Stolle and Thomas Tan) and to our partners in crime at WisPubs.
Apr
19
2011
Chirag participated in the Santa Clara County Science Fair (aka the Synopsis Science & Technology Fair) a few weeks ago and was thrilled to be invited to the awards ceremony at the Great America Park and to have won a spot at the California State Science Fair (CSSF). Congrats, Chirag!
As I looked at the winners on the stage, I was struck by the preponderance of Indians. So, I did some simple checking. Here are the facts:
| Total | Of Asian origin | Of Indian origin | |
| Nominated by Synopsis to attend the CSSF (#) | 77 | 64 | 47 |
| Nominated by Synopsis to attend the CSSF (%) | 100% | 83% | 64% |
| Percentage of the Santa Clara population (%) | 100% | 32% | ~10% |
So, 32% of the population (Asian) won 83% of the spots while 10% (Indian) won 64%! I have my hypotheses… Yours?
Leaves me wondering who is going to pick up a Nobel prize 20-30 years from now… an Indian kid from Bangalore or an Indian-American kid from Silicon Valley. Wager, anyone?
Sources:
Disclosure:
Mar
31
2011
I learned something (of questionable utility) today… Something fascinating, nonetheless.
I chaperoned Pooja’s 3rd grade class on a field trip to the Stanford Cantor Art Center — which has the world famous Rodin Garden. Prior to spending time in the Art Center, the class took a detour and visited the Stanford Mausoleum — where I had partied in my graduate student years… This time I learned about sphinxes.
Turns out that the Stanfords originally had a Greek sphinx 
installed at the entrance to the masoleum. They, then, decided that (in the words of the 3rd graders) it was “inappropriate.” And replaced it with an Egyptian Sphinx
.
Curious, a fellow parent and I googled egyptian and greek sphinx and discovered some cool and, arguably, useless information:
- A sphinx (Ancient Greek: Σφίγξ /sphinx, Bœotian: Φίξ /Phix) is a mythical creature with a lion’s body and a human head.
- An Egyptian sphinx is typically shown as a man (an androsphinx). It was viewed as benevolent in contrast to the malevolent Greek version and was thought of as a guardian often flanking the entrances to temples.
- A Greek sphinx has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face and breast of a woman. She is treacherous and merciless: those who cannot answer her riddle suffer a fate typical in such mythological stories: they are gobbled up whole and raw, eaten by this ravenous monster.
I retire for the day, looking forward to a visit to the Nile Valley!
[Credit: Wikipedia for a quick summary.]
Mar
6
2011
I try to volunteer in my kids classes whenever I can. Without fully groking the implications, I volunteered last year to take Chirag’s 5th grade class through the “BizWorld” entrepreneurship program. Wow! I am so happy I did!
First, a simple explanation of the program. And then my observations.
- Designed by Tim Draper’s BizWorld Foundation, the BizWorld curriculum is designed for kids in the 4th-6th grades, and requires 8 hours of contact time spread over 4 classes.
- Each team creates and capitalizes a company
- The company designs, manufactures, markets and sells a product (generally, bracelets) to kids in a lower grade
- The company creates an income statement of sorts, to show how much value has been created
- The team/company with the greatest value ‘wins”
My observations:
- The basics
- Some 80+% of the class knew what a startup was — not surprising given this is Silicon Valley!
- They generally got the concepts pretty quickly and asked insightful questions (mostly around gaming the game…)
- Advanced
- They impressed me when some of them understood pretty sophisticated tradeoffs — “Should I raise capital or should I pick up debt from the bank?”
- They blew me away when they figured out dynamic pricing and intuitively figured out basic concepts like perishability! As the stores were closing, some reduced their prices to move goods. Others even sold the unused thread to increase their sales
In summary, if you get a chance to facilitate the class, jump at it — you will be pleased you did! If your kid’s class doesn’t know about BizWorld, bring it to the teacher’s attention and teach it. Your child will forever remember what you did!!
For me, the ultimate pleasure will be when one of the kid’s in Chirag’s class founds a company — successful or not. The one commitment I made to the class was that I would make a seed investment in any serious idea they brought my way!
Nov
22
2010
I have been reading, with great interest, the path that the Gates and Warren Buffett are taking and encouraging their billionaire bretheren to take — apparently trying to pull together some $600B in additional giving. Clearly, they have the aggregation issue figured out — pooling money gives you disproportionate power to get things done. The Gates have also been experimenting with “venture philanthropy,” with the goal of transitioning from merely writing checks to trying to drive outcomes. Its not so clear that they have this one figured out….
As I have sporadically read the articles on the topic and seen folks in the non-profit world worry about a flood of money causing “inequities” among the recipients, my mind keeps going back to a rather simple and efficient model that I benefited from some 2 and a half decades ago.
The J N Tata Endowment was set up in 1892 by Jamsetji N. Tata, the Founder of the Tata group, to enable Indians to be educated in the best institutions in the world. About 120 “J N Tata Scholars” are identified each year and awarded scholarships that enable them to attend the best schools in the world.
What is different about the JN Tata Scholarship is that it is a “loan scholarship” – the recipient is awarded a “scholarship” that he/she has to pay back! (The Endowment has the Scholar obtain and service a life insurance plan as the collateral till he/she pays the scholarship amount back <in a few years after graduation>.) By taking this path, the Scholarship is meeting its goals of helping Indians get educated at the best schools and maintaining its endowment in perpetuity.
While it is clear that the risk of loan forfeiture is low with such a carefully picked population, the business model is appealing. Pick a specific area you want to impact, ensure you can have that impact, invest the minimal amount required to meet the end goal, control your risks,and turn your assets over as quickly as you can. For these reasons, I can argue that this philanthropic model is conceptually similar to the micro-finance/Yunus/Grameen Bank idea.
What is not clear to me is how scalable this model is. Can one give a “loan grant” to a hospital in sub-Saharan Africa? What would the collateral be? And what is driving the hospital team to want to be successful??
I guess the only good news is that this is a hypothetical problem — one I don’t need to deal with since there’s one heck of a gap between Mr Gates’ wealth and mine!! Let me know if you have had to deal with this challenge and what you have done. Or, if you had the money, what you would consider doing!
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10
2010
I was driving Chirag and his buddy Rory back from soccer camp this evening when we passed an AT&T store that is being re-constructed.
Curious, I asked the kids if they knew what AT&T stood for. They quickly figured out the American and Telephone parts… but were stumped by the second T — till Chirag suddenly blurted out “Texting!”
Not surprising, given that he hasn’t ever seen a telegram and has seen a lot of texting… Time for AT&T to change its name??
Aug
7
2010
I just got off of a telephone call with Surekha, who is traveling in India… As I did that, I realized how closely the kids and I have kept in touch with her. I am struck by how sharply (international) telecom bills have dropped. And, how dramatically the technology that has made this possible has also changed.
Today, for a fixed fee of $24.99 a month, Vonage lets me use the internet and Voice-over-IP to dial most any phone in India for a zero marginal cost. Yes, zero!! Not surprisingly, Surekha knows how the first piano class went today, what I did (or, more importantly, did not do!) with and for the kids, etc.
Contrast this with a good two score and five years ago, when I first arrived at Stanford. As I recall, AT&T was the only carrier of choice. And, it charged ~$3.23 for the first minute, and something like $2.25 for every minute thereafter — based on a 10 second (or, was it 6 second) tick. A 5 min call, back then, ran me $12.23. Which was a whopping 2% of my total monthly fellowship; and something like 4% of my post-rent amount. All, for a 5 min call. Naturally, I would write down my notes ahead of the call, have a wrist watch with a seconds hand in front of me, and would make a very carefully timed call home. My poor mother barely got to hear my voice, or know how my classes were going, or what was really going on in my life. No relaxed, random, conversation then.
Going further back in time, consider the period when my uncle first arrived in Michigan in the early 60′s. (I have no idea what the costs were like then; I’ll check with my aunt and update this post when I do.) I vividly recall, as a young child in the late 60′s, trooping off to a neighbor’s house (we didnt get a phone in the house till about 1974). The time of the call would have been determined via postal letters well in advance. My dad would lug his Grundig spool tape recorder and the precious microphone that he would attach to the neighbor’s phone/handset. When the call came through, you’d hear the women (the operators, now that I think about it, were mostly women. Do female voices carry further and/or better on telephone lines?) in the exchanges physically patching the call through. As they called out the cities they were in, one could conjure up a map of the world and imagine the line snaking over to Bangalore…. The call itself would generally be of a terrible quality. So, we’d head home and then play the tape back… often at a slightly slower speed to better tell what my uncle and aunt were saying. Once deciphered, a response would go via postal mail! Forget about knowing what was going on; one barely communicated back then!
I am sure that my nieces and nephews (“kids”) who have arrived in the US in the last half dozen years will be laughing when they read this article. They are so used to the idea of using their Indian Airtel or Vodafone cell, while still on-board the aircraft on the tarmac, to let their parents know that they have landed that they’ve no idea what it feels like to have to start from scratch. How spoiled they are… And how far we have come! Technology has certainly helped shrink the world. As I indicated in the earlier post entitled (“Prasad’s 24 hour migration rule”).
Jul
22
2010
My colleague, Thomas Tan, has a pricing dilemma that is worthy of Steven Levitt’s (of Freakonomics fame) attention….
As you might know, the cost of using the Bay Area’s bridges has gone up as of July 1, 2010. As you might also know, cars with 3 or more passengers (“car poolers”) until recently drove across for free. Now, they get to pay between $2.50 and $3.00 to FasTrak.
While it is still clear, from a game theoretic perspective, that carpooling is the way to go, poor Thomas, who regularly picks up a few car poolers while crossing the 4.5 mile long Bay Bridge, was left wondering what is a fair distribution of the $2.50 fee??
Thomas’ math:
Cost if everyone went their merry way: $6 + $2 (toll + cost of ~4 miles) for the driver, $4 (for a BART ticket) for each of the carpoolers = total cost of $16.
An equitable distribution suggests that the $4.5 ($2 for using the car and $2.5 for tolls) be split as $2.25 (driver) and $1.125 for each of the 2 carpoolers.
My take, close but more simple minded:
Keep the math simple, use whole amounts to simplify the transaction, and let the driver use his FastTrac device to pay $0.50 and let each of the carpoolers pay $1 each. I assume that the cost of driving across the bridge is a sunk cost, as it will not go away in either case.
(Better) Ideas for Thomas, anyone?
Jul
19
2010
If you are like us, targeting small and medium businesses (SMBs) around the globe, you are likely spending serious cycles studying your marketing activities, spend and the corresponding results. And, in doing so, likely to be asking questions and testing your beliefs… Like the one I hear often – “Demand generation is more art than science.”
I’ll start off by acknowledging a few core tenets:
- You’ve got be clear about the few, key and compelling, messages that are most relevant to your target audience
- You’ve got to have engaging materials that quickly and directly address the prospect’s buying needs and questions
- There is plenty of room for creativity in delivering the above
That said, I’ll posit that it’s as much, if not more, about execution efficiency than about the creative. Without both, your efforts are likely to fail. Application/use of carefully designed experiments and measurement, quick and frequent analysis, ruthless application of Darwinian principles, rapid prototyping and iteration of ideas – since rank in the organization doesn’t always translate into better campaign ideas. (Remember that article on the endless meetings at Amazon (to determine where to locate the different content elements on their web page) that vanished when they started statistically testing placement?)
What does mean for the marketing professional of tomorrow (and for educators creating the corresponding curricula?) The first is the recognition that there are ways to continuously improve by borrowing from other fields (case in point – ICICI Bank’s use of the core principles of the Toyota Production System). The second is that a working knowledge of statistics is a requirement. The third is that an understanding of measurement techniques (e.g., web tools) is a critical job skill.
I’d love to hear from you if you have real life examples that either prove or disprove my position!
Jul
19
2010
Facebook, every so often, tunes its business model. And in doing so, tweaks the default privacy settings. Triggering rebellion in the ranks. Resulting in Facebook redrawing the boundaries to be more conservative.
While I haven’t, admittedly, delved into the details of Facebook’s endeavours (ok, I do have limited “spare” time and spending time with my family trumps being active on Facebook), I have scanned recent articles on the topic. And, almost always, find my mind wandering back to the lessons we learned at Spoke Software. (Not surprisingly, Chris Kelly joined us as one of *the* first Chief Privacy Officers in the world; and then went on to become Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer.)
We founded and funded Spoke Software in 2002 on a contract from McKinsey, the strategy consulting firm. And learned very quickly that the partners at McKinsey compete intensely in their roles as rain makers. We learned that we had to build tools that gave these partners “control” over their social graphs – to let them explicitly control who had had visibility into whom they knew and, then, whom they granted access to.
This was a particularly tricky topic because we mined the Spoke user’s email box and address books to auto-magically/implicitly build the social graph (in direct contrast to LinkedIn that came after us and helped users explicitly build their social graph – a topic for a strategic and scientific conversation over a good cup of Indian tea!)
We spent an entire release cycle – and precious and expensive investment dollars and time – building privacy controls into the product. Since privacy was core to the platform, we had to re-engineer from the bottom up.
What we learned was fascinating –
- users want to know that they can control their privacy settings – they need to feel that they are in control
BUT
- very few users actually *explore* the privacy settings
- and, even fewer (and, I do mean *few*) users actually *use* the privacy settings!!
Which leaves product managers and designers with some intriguing questions –
- “How much control do you provide your users on their privacy? Where does the ‘utility curve’ (to borrow from our economics brethren) intersect the ‘privacy curve’?”
- “What can guide my decisions? How closely do my target users behave to the best existence proof out there? Are college and school kids similar to or very different than the McKinsey partners we were working with?”
- “Since privacy is an evolving topic, how do you, from a marketing and PR perspective, handle the inevitable rebellion?”
I must admit that I feel for the folks at Facebook – they are trying to build a business model by monetizing the behavioral information of your users. They are constantly innovating. They have no idea what the acceptable social mores are likely to be. And they don’t have an inexpensive way to rapidly test concepts with prototypes.
The best approach, perhaps, is to be completely transparent about what one is doing and why? Message the utility, so the quid pro quo is crystal clear. (After all, don’t we *willingly* give the local grocery story, not to mention Amazon, direct insight into what we are buying in exchange for a few dollars???) And deal with the outliers who will always reject the status quo.