Innovation rules

There is a nagging feeling that there is no, or very little, innovation coming out of India.

There are numerous ways in which this feeling presents itself - sometimes as a itch that needs scratching, sometimes as a job that helps pay the bills, sometimes as a need to prove something to the world and oftentimes as a voicing of frustration.

It is not too difficult to articulate this feeling. Why does a Linux or Google or Facebook never originate in India. Why do we only spawn businesses like Infosys and TCS which help support innovations from other cultures rather than create any themselves. At the same time, you find that large proportions of people in companies, like Microsoft or Google, that innovate, are Indians.

Where’s the glitch?

One explanation that is usually served up, most recently by the CEO of TCS, is that it is a question of perception. This implies that one only needs to make it look like India is innovating - in one word, marketing. This probably makes sense from the point of view of a business, where everything is marketing. If you really wanted to understand the phenomenon though, such an explanation is too easy and in a strange way shines a little diffused light on the fundamental issue at hand. 

When faced with a problem there are two basic ways in which one can react - logically or emotionally. The various shades between these two extremes are what we usually find ourselves painted in, depending on factors like what we were taught and how were made to feel in relation to the world.

Logic, when translated into something tangible, becomes a set of rules. Follow the set of rules and there’s a good chance you’ll get where you want to go to. If you don’t follow the rules, any movement you make will be an error within the logical framework. Rules then, define the boundaries within which expected results can be obtained. 

Rules are meant to make life easier. When a rule is the cause of problems, the logic behind it can be modified and the rule mended to suit reality better. Doing so would, over time, evolve the rules and result in a society based more on logic than on emotion. Western economies have evolved to such an extent that they have rule books for everything - even torture.

We evolve rules in India too. Only, the driving force is emotion. When we don’t like a rule, we reason out an alternate logic, apply emotion to it and implement the rule change immediately - without making it part of the framework. This means that we have a multitude of logical frameworks, each following its own evolutionary path. Bribery and corruption are nothing more than logical frameworks. Bribery in India is not anarchic. There are a set of rules governing it, with emotion being the thread that ties the rules together. You could be driving a stolen car with no license, but when stopped by a Traffic cop in India, your options vary from Death to winning the friendship of the cop.

The changing of rules dynamically and instantaneously requires quick thinking and adaptation - in one word, innovation. However, in the vacuum that exists without a logical framework, the rules are short lived and exist only for the duration of the transaction. Also, since the innovation occurred beyond the boundaries of the original framework of logic, it cannot be recognized as an innovation that can be replicated. The CEO of TCS throwing the ‘perception idea’ in the air is a tangential example of such innovation. The fundamental problem is that there is no innovation coming out of India, but to him the immediate problem to solve is, ‘people asking him why there is no innovation’. By fixing the second, he dissociates himself from the first and evolves a new logical framework which solves the immediate problem.

You take this same person with an immense capacity for dynamic rule creation and place him in a culture where rules are curated and see what happens. All those random rules he’s been creating just to get by are now absorbed into a logical framework and he feels like he’s in rule heaven.

The chip stretch

It’s a common situation. 

You have the most brilliant idea anyone ever came up with - at least you think so. And you do need to think so, even if just to sustain interest in it for a few hours longer until you can pen down your thoughts, before they melt into the atmosphere.

So. The idea seems perfect. From every angle. Even your brainstorming partner - just anyone who happens to be with you at that time - plugs in her ideas and adds to your concept. It seems like a festival of brilliance. The stars will seem to have aligned themselves just so, to shine their combined light on the tiny spot of planet that you happen to be occupying at that moment.

In a frenzy, you create a plan.

In 2 days you find that someone has already thought about ‘your’ idea and proceed to modifying your plan.

In a week your plan is beginning to look elaborate and bulky

In a month, your plan is extremely detailed but your idea appears lame. You get back to watching TV.

In 2 months you find that someone else has implemented your idea. You check it out and get back to watching TV if only to replace remorse with fast moving images.

In 6 months, you look back at your idea as though it were the Sphinx - Familiar, but having nothing to do with you.

Of course, you might be a person who managed to start something and actually finish it and succeed in the bargain. You are needed too, I guess, because we can’t all sit around watching TV. We need someone to create programs for the rest of us to waste our lives watching. So, please keep it up.

In bookshops, they have shelves just to stack books written by people who are dying to tell you how to be guy who doesn’t dissipate himself and his ideas. 

Such books are always boring and following what they say is way harder than watching TV.

How then do we realize our ideas while indulging in activities that rival the comfort of watching TV?

The most obvious things are sometimes the hardest to spot, because their obviousness makes us oblivious to their existence. I realize that the word play in the previous sentence is most certainly a put off, but I’ll let it stay for a reason that I hope, will become obvious as you read on.

You’d like to go on a trek. The planning is great fun - choosing the route, packing essentials, just dreaming about it the night before. You pick a route that you think you can manage to complete and to push the limits a little you factor in a diversion or two along the way. Once you start, if your plan is simple enough, chances are, you will have reached your destination without too much trouble and returned from your trek in one functioning piece. 

Now, if you introduce a few random variables into the trek - like a landslide or bad weather - which you cannot plan for too accurately, two things are diminished. Firstly, your chances of executing your plan fully and secondly your chances of survival. The extent of both, though, are linked to the same factor. And this factor, stamina, is the one we become oblivious to on account of its being obvious.

I think this is true of any human venture - from something like running where stamina is more easily appreciated to something like creating a business - where stamina isn’t an obvious planning parameter.

Stamina is generally associated with going on for long, doing whatever one wants to do. Looking at it in this way makes it quite boring and difficult to achieve. On the contrary, I think stamina needs to be looked at as a moderator of all the qualities that are required to embark upon a journey and reach a destination.

And stamina is a physical parameter. Which is much easier to quantify and comprehend than say something like talent or experience.

How does all this help me ‘effortlessly’ realize my ideas? 

Quite simply, by being driven only as far as stamina allows. Actually by doing a little less - like stretching for that bag of chips rather than getting up to fetch it.

The chip stretch, when implemented to non-food situations, will allow one to do more without wasting too much energy and hence conserve much valuable stamina.

Fresh produce

Imagine a family. One where all members live in amity, share what is available and believe that spending quality time with the family does not require anything other than the family.

Now imagine a family where the members constantly quarrel with each other on some matter or the other, do not share resources and believe that the new monster sized television with rock concert scale speakers will help the family spend quality time together.

The second, being the greater consumer, is too easy for businesses to exploit. They aren't the problem. You produce, they consume. The goal then, of all business, is to convert the first kind into the second.

This is essentially a problem of creating disorder from order. It's not as easy as it might appear.

A number of things need to happen before stability, contentment and harmony in a unit such as a family can be replaced with uncertainty, discontent and disharmony.

It will take time before the destruction is complete. Sometimes, a small seed of contentment that is left behind might spring back and spawn another contented unit – which will again need to be targeted. And all the while, raw materials are becoming scarce. These are the kinds of risks that businesses endure just to ensure that the world can continue consuming.

The first line of offense is misrepresentation. It is easy to cheat people who thrive on trust. The simple folks fall for this and start consuming petrochemical filled detergents quite quickly.

The second line of offense involves selling dreams. Wearing a pair of shoes made from petrochemical waste will never help you run a mile under 4 minutes, if you couldn't already. But wearing one will make you feel like you could, if you only tried and just did it.

The third line of offense is the instilling of fear. You are encouraged to plan for the future of your loved ones, by spending less time with them so that you can work harder to invest the extra money in complex stock linked insurance plans, the future of which the company promoting them cannot determine. The company though, expands, using your contribution.

The fourth line of offense is the spreading of hopelessness. Research, a word that signified thoroughness, honesty and humility (for no-one knows everything) has now been hijacked to promote sensational 'conclusions' like 'fighting couples will continue to fight until they die'.

The final line of offense is anarchy. Once humanity is out there, delirious with dreams, scared of the future and buying things without hope, there is a real risk of the smarter among them realizing that they are being had. One way to beat such a minority into eternal submission is to sponsor anarchy. By doing so, businesses obtain access to the revolutionary spark within each human – the one that springs hope for humanity – and convert it into a propaganda machine.

When anarchy has run its course, I believe, simplicity and contentment will seem refreshing.

Information potential difference

So, wikileaks has leaked tons of potentially embarrassing documents and Nira Radia's lobbying efforts are out in the open.

Like all events, they will have effects, but what do they change fundamentally for the world?

Businesses lobby to get preferential treatment – on policies – policies framed by bureaucrats and executed by politicians – politicians elected by citizens – citizens who work for and use the products made by the businesses.

So, business is the prime mover in our society, and what is the economy but a bunch of businesses?

Business is also, quite simply, the art of optimization. This optimization can happen at both ends – procuring resources for less and selling products for more than they are worth. The better you are at both of these, the bigger your business.

The selling end is relatively easier to understand – in one word, advertising. The procuring end is a little more involved. Recent unmasking has revealed the machinations behind the procuring that have hitherto gone unnoticed and been taken in the common citizen's stride, the fallen crumbs accepted as shiny products worth paying for with one's sweat and blood. This is not nasty per se - exploitation will always appear cruel to those who are not on the right (or wrong, depending on your views) side of the exploitation workbench.

The first deduction, then, is that there is no nexus between businesses, politicians and bureaucrats. There is business and then there is everything else that facilitates the large scale exploitation of resources that the economy requires.

The interesting thing, for me, is not the mechanics of the backroom dealing itself but the mask of propriety behind which people are required to hide. Why the backroom?

I think the answer lies in the nature of exploitation itself.

The exploitation of resources requires capital. Not everybody possesses or has access to capital. The generation, distribution and use of capital is controlled by a few people. Everyone wishes to be among those few. The fact that there is an entry barrier shows that there is an information 'potential difference' between the two sides. Those on the profitable side, the ones who possess valuable information, guard it - to protect their interests and prevent the dilution of the value of their assets.

Now, while these potential differences are critical for doing business, they are also dangerous. Sparks, as we know, can fly if the difference crosses a threshold. Hence it is in the interest of the haves to present an illusion of a smaller potential difference to the have-nots. This strategy was easier to execute when information did not travel too fast and leaks could be plugged before they breached the dividing line. Not so anymore.

The near instant spread of information across the globe reduces the potential difference by making the same information available to everyone at the same moment.

But how does one do business under these circumstances, if the very tools that sustain business are disabled, exposed and made to look vile? How can the economy function?

Recent trends seem to suggest that we are in the midst of an evolutionary process which will fundamentally change the way resources are exploited and as a result, the way business is done.

Rather than a huge potential difference that separates the haves and the have-nots, there will be numerous potential differences between individual citizens that they can choose to utilize for profit.

A move away from a few exploiting the many to a scenario where many exploit many. A more equitable future.

Patent == Crock

Is it possible to see any idea in isolation?
Why do you need credit for something you presumably invented?

Hang on, its not about credit, its about business

If you were the kind of person who felt insecure enough to 'patent' an idea you had, you are probably not the inventor
for the simple reason that you cannot do anything of value while also being scared of how other people are going to steal your ideas. The two are somehow not compatible. I would love to be wrong.

Einstein has patents. Was Einstein made of substances not available in the universe

There is no such thing as an invention. only borrowed and polished ideas with layers added.

Did you say 'references'?

Dear Mr.misinformed patentseeker, how about making that huge list of references, going back all the way to 3500 BC, to the inventor of the wheel (not the australian jackass), and while you are at it, could you please make sure portions of the money you plan to rake in go to his descendants?

Or better still, stay still and listen to yourself breathe.

burst and sell

Google you think has cracked it. No dishonesty no underhanded behavior. Just helping people make money with beatific smiles slapped on their faces
wrong
sponsored ads are the bane of human existence
they are on every darn site out there
what do they do?
they count on a small percentage of people mindlessly clicking links

lets take an example:
you want to find out how plants harness sunlight

Route 1: sit in front of a plant and ponder the mystery
Route 2: google for it
End up at a site that shows the latest research on photosynthesis
About how quantum mechanics is what its all about
You are lost
Your mind is tired from the talk about molecular communication
Your eyes drift
Towards a sponsored links box
That says "photo equipment hire"
You click on it
Someone makes a few cents
You eventually end up at a porno site

Does it matter which route you took

The dotcom bubble burst for the simple reason that it did not make business sense

When an idea starts to make business sense, the idea is facked.
Business kills ideas and sells the entrails
At a premium

A real sieve

Thoughts colonize humans,
humans are bursting at the seams
they want to tell someone... something ... any damn thing....

As people say things to each other, more thoughts are created.. which then...

How about, you say, something useful ; like news, or medical operations performed across continents

I say, does it really matter?
so you knew 10 seconds after that famous plane ran into a tall building
how on earth did that help anything?

People are facked. all there is to it.

If there were a sieve that filtered crap on the internet...
No. Not a crappy sieve like rss or a search engine that actually makes things worse by duplicating crap
a real sieve that chews all the nonsense, spits out the waste, digests the sensible stuff and gives useful crap
hang on... i forgot ...

... you are that sieve.

In a grand vision, every single thought that ever colonized a human being, if it forced the poor bugger to create something made of earth, wind, fire and the other element, would end up on the internet

Grand is bad. you cant run an economy on grand.
You have to bicker about dollars.

So we can forget grand. at least until we humans can figure a radically different way of looking at ourselves.

Tomato soup

Tomes. and more. have and are being written about shaping and consuming earth wind fire water
diagrams would you believe?

Your flush tank. was a tree at some point. and with time it will again turn into one
in between, we sit, brains brimming with thought on how to rip a fellow human off of something he has

X: what have you got that i don't
Y: um... well... there is...
X: give it to me
Y: but i need it
X: no. what you really need is a flush tank that i made
Y: erm... you know.. probably not
Z: here. take my tomatoes and give me the flush tank

A few days later X wants a flush tank too
A few months later the entire town yearns for flush tanks
A few years later there is a commodity market for flush tanks and tomatoes
A few decades later people are killing each other over the river - that will irrigate the tomatoes or cure the flush tank
In 5 decades all people concerned are facked, the stock market lives on
In 7 decades people jump off the 100th storey when the stock market crashes by a few points and land on a truck filled with tomatoes.

Business [biz-nis]: The purchase and sale of greed, jealousy and other juicy desires in an attempt to make a profit