Jun

29

For-profit corps can change the world

Filed Under changing the world, entrepreneurship, regular reads, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

A common trait among forward-thinking Generation Y “millennials” are that they don’t just want to make money (who doesn’t?), but to also do good by giving back some how, by changing the world for the better, by actually making difference. For this group of young adults, they may have struggled with the question of “to work for a non-profit or for-profit?”

The lines between the for-profit and non-profit jobs are blurring, which means that the actual experience gained, and the job compensation, whichever your choice, is roughly the same. Thus, this question can be effectively boiled down to, “which path feels better?”, or “which as a larger touchy-feely” factor?

In light of all the large corporation scandals (wow, Wikipedia has a list here), it’s no wonder that the winner to the touchy-feely question is undoubtly, the non-profits. However, I do think, nay, believe that if executed properly, for-profits can make a larger and more lasting impact on the world.

This is exactly what Bill Gates has done, all “Microsoft is evil”  puns aside. From Anil’s blog:

Bill Gates has pulled off one of the greatest hacks in technology and business history, by turning Microsoft’s success into a force for social responsibility. Imagine imposing a tax on every corporation in the developed world, collecting $100 per white-collar worker per year, and then directing one third of the proceeds to curing AIDS and malaria. That, effectively, is what Bill Gates has done.

Now that, is powerful. Microsoft might as well be a sovereign multi-national government. I think this is a feat tough to pull by a non-profit–simply because it might involve some questionable tactics in business.

I’ve blogged here about a book by C. K. Prahalad, titled “Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid“, which essentially concludes with proof that making profit is not mutually exclusive from helping the poor. Prahalad is a distinguished professor of strategy at the Univ. of Michigan.

Jun

8

Web 2.0 weekend roundup: Mashup (projected) money, Slide, plus mobile

Filed Under mobile, regular reads, web 2.0 | 1 Comment

Forrester reports that mashups are taking off. A trend/wave to take note of. This reminds me of what Greg McAdoo (VC with Sequoia) said, that the tiny companies have no power to change waves (technology trends), only the option of riding the wave. So here’s the wave, for those who want to ride it!

Mashups — custom applications that combine multiple, disparate data sources into something new and unique — are coming to the enterprise. Forrester projects that the enterprise mashup market will reach nearly $700 million by 2013; while this means that there is plenty of money to be made selling mashup platforms, it will affect nearly every software vendor. Mashup platforms are in the pole position and ready to grab the lion’s share of the market — and an entire ecosystem of mashup technology and data providers is emerging to complement those platforms. Those vendor strategists that move quickly, plan a mashup strategy, and build a partner ecosystem will come out on top.

The full report costs $775 ( ouch! psst .. can someone share? :) )

I got that link from Dion Hincliffe’s report on the mashup industry. An interesting read, do check it out — I do no justice in summarizing it here. It’ll get you a quick overview of the state of the mash-o-sphere (did I just invent yet-another-useless new Web 2.0 buzzword?) Plus, it features cool San Diego tech startup by two cool people I know; shoutouts to my friends Steve and Aaron from MindTouch!

On another note, Slide reports that they are doubling down their efforts on their current top widget properties to make them even better, .. implying that they are going to slow down on churning out new and potential “disruptive” widgets. I’m all about focusing on your core business for sure, but I hope they still carve out some time (as a percentage) throw stuff against the wall to see what sticks, since there’s no time better to encourage innovation than during hard times. Maybe this is all just an investor-relations fluff .. in which case, fine.

Max Levchin is no stranger to innovation, and I am sure he knows what he is doing. He is definitely someone I admire, and I’ve covered him previously on my blog here before.

Someone I spoke to this weekend was blindingly oblivious to the revenue opportunities in value-added services for mobile, so I thought including this pretty picture from this very worthy blog post from Alec Saunders here was in order.

Silly wabbit, of course you can make money writing apps for mobile :) — just google for {iPhone, Android, Blackberry} fund.

mobile value added services: long tail

Jun

1

(Cognitive) memory hack: recall just before you forget

Filed Under did you know, regular reads, self improvement | Leave a Comment

I’m backlogged on my reading and I have just gotten around to reading this interesting (but lengthy) piece from Wired about some cool psychology hacks. I’m going to distill the key points for easier (read: less time consuming) mass consumption here. This is a very interesting memory trick. Simply put, I’m sure everyone could use a better memory.

Piotr Wozniak found a trick of how to remember stuff, and his software SuperMemo is a tool to help accomplish just that.

The problem statement and the general theory behind the solution:

SuperMemo is based on the insight that there is an ideal moment to practice what you’ve learned. Practice too soon and you waste your time. Practice too late and you’ve forgotten the material and have to relearn it. The right time to practice is just at the moment you’re about to forget. Unfortunately, this moment is different for every person and each bit of information. Imagine a pile of thousands of flash cards. Somewhere in this pile are the ones you should be practicing right now. Which are they?

The benefits:

Twenty years ago, Wozniak realized that computers could easily calculate the moment of forgetting if he could discover the right algorithm. SuperMemo is the result of his research. It predicts the future state of a person’s memory and schedules information reviews at the optimal time. The effect is striking. Users can seal huge quantities of vocabulary into their brains.

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May

25

100% odds

Filed Under execution, failure, fear, perseverance, quotes, regular reads | Leave a Comment

Being a computer scientist and math nerd, I like numbers. I like stats. I like probability, and I like to calculate risks. However, life is not so simple such that everything can be nicely fit into a mathematical equation that would compute and balance (although I wish!)

I think that’s the main reason techies don’t cope very well with uncertainty and when things are ambiguous. Anything that don’t fit the cookie cutter mould is shied away from. However, as an entrepreneur, one *must* thrive in a fast-paced and dynamic environment, watching out for land mines and charging ahead into the unknown. I saw this quote on YC/Hacker News today and loved it.

100% of people who succeeded tried. 100% of people who did not try failed.

May

11

iPhone apps for healthcare technology — plus some robots

Filed Under changing the world, healthcare technology, innovation, mobile, regular reads, technology | Leave a Comment

Cell phones, mobile phones, hand phones, whatever they are called, wherever they are in the world–can change the world! We already see it help drive economic development in microfinance, and now, we’re making strides with healthcare technology, another field I’m interested in because I love seeing technology change lives. The convergence of sophisticated UX-centric mobile devices, Internet/Web 2.0, Software as a Service, cloud computing — not to be missed!

From the article:

Despite all the advances in medical diagnostics, two-thirds of the world’s population has no access to imaging technologies. Worse, about half of the imaging equipment sent to developing countries goes unused because local technicians aren’t trained to operate it or lack spare parts, according to the World Health Organization. But thanks to the proliferation of cellular and other wireless networks, researchers are stepping up efforts to deliver crucial medical services from afar. “You go through India, anywhere, in the middle of the road, there’s someone with a cell phone. A friend calls me from the jungles of Costa Rica,” says Rubinsky. “I can see so many applications in which the cell phone becomes an integral part of a medical device. A cell phone can cut the cost of almost every [diagnostic] device.”

We have the $10Mil fbFund for Facebook apps, $100Mil iFund for iPhone apps, $10Mil for Google Android apps, and the to be announced $150Mil Blackberry apps fund — will we see a fund to drive healthcare technology apps?

With the iPhone spurring more handset makers to introduce similarly robust devices, the U.S. market for medical cell-phone software is expanding rapidly. Sales of phone applications for medical professionals are expected to rise from $111.8 million last year to $276 million in 2011, according to consultancy Ambient Insight.

On the “heavier” tech side, we’re definitely making huge strides in having robots that can now operate on people.

Consider this: Suppose there are only 10 surgeons in the world that specialize in this really complicated brain disease, affected by not that many people, but the number of victims dying from it is significant enough (say, 5,000 deaths a year worldwide). There’s only so many surgeons to go around, and with that many victims around the world, even if these surgeons worked themselves to death to save the world, they can’t possibly help everybody with just two hands and only 24 hours in a day. Seriously, it takes almost a day to just travel halfway across the world, and that’s just a one-way.

The solution: remote surgery. In terms of supply and demand, the supply is scarce (the Ph.Ds in this very narrow field) and the demand far exceeds the supply, and the number of victims is probably going to grow at a rate faster than the rate Ph.Ds in this field can be minted. Technology here serves to increase supply, that is, not by letting universities churn out more doctors (although that would work too), but rather by increasing the “utilization rate” of the existing doctors by allowing them to perform their work anywhere at anytime, by saving on travel time and expense. Even if we had an infinite amount of money to spend on the fastest jets, nobody can buy more than 24 hours in a day. 10 hours on a jet spent traveling is 10 hours that could be spent operating on a patient.

“If you are looking at the future, it’s hard to envision a hospital not offering robotics,” said Robert Glenning, chief financial officer at the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey

Technology, changing lives and making the world a better place–I love it!

May

6

Cognitive Surplus

Filed Under regular reads, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, time management, winds of change | Leave a Comment

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, .. I’d say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened–rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before–free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan’s Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.

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Apr

8

Lessons from the Warrior of the Light

Filed Under changing the world, entrepreneurship, execution, failure, fear, goal setting, passion, perseverance, quotes, regular reads, self improvement, startup, strategy, things to ponder about, things to remind myself, values | Leave a Comment

I’m definitely a fan of Paulo Coelho, the renowned Brazillian author. He has a unique way of teaching the lessons in life that he has learned through storytelling.

A few lessons from the Warrior of the Light.

Using one’s own madness

A warrior of the light studies very carefully the position he wishes to conquer.

However difficult his objective may be, there is always a way to overcome the obstacles. He verifies the alternative routes, sharpens his sword, and seeks to fill his heart with the perseverance necessary to face the challenge.

But, as he advances, the warrior realizes there are difficulties he had not foreseen at the outset.

If he waits for the ideal moment, he will never move from his position; he sees that a little madness is needed for the next step.

The warrior uses a little madness. Because - in war and in love - one cannot foresee everything.

Life is such that if you wait to gather 100% of every single detail before you can make a decision, others would have surpassed you. If you waited for the fog to clear, then what you see is what everyone else will also see. Given the perfect picture, anyone sane would make the same correct, best choice. This is exactly how *not* to beat the market.

CEOs often make decisions with incomplete data–and that takes a little madness. It’s about making decisions with the best information possible available at that time. Standing still through inaction is waiting to fail–and I’ll fail from action than inaction.

So when do you put yourself out there and wear your heart on your sleeve?
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Mar

29

Technology and Changing the World: Trends roundup - March 29, 2008

Filed Under business, changing the world, entrepreneurship, microfinance, mobile, passion, poverty, regular reads, startup, technology, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

This post consists of my “value-added” thoughts on David Kirkpatrick’s article on Fortune here.

Since I love all things technology and passionately believe that it wields the power to change the world, these numbers are just plain interesting to me. I’ve overlayed on the data some general technology trends on Web 2.0 startups, venture capital, microfinance and poverty, all cleverly slapped into one big fat blog post. Why? Because they’re all inter-connected, and I haven’t written anything all this week (been so darn busy lately!) Off we go.

Indonesia:
- 1 in 100 owns a PC
- 1 in 1,000 has broadband Internet
- 63 million cell phone subscribers, representing 27% of the population (of 234 million)
- Annual cell phone subscription growth rate: 36%

India:
- 166 million cell phone users
- Last year’s cell phone subscription growth rate was 84.5%

Switzerland:
- The Swiss have 85.1 PCs per 100 persons, beating the United States at 80.3 PCs per 100 persons

Global PC penetration is 12.9 for every 100 people. Room for growth? You bet. Many of PC owners are obviously in well developed countries, and not poor countries with lots of people. OLPC’s efforts to reach the billions at the BoP will move the needle here, if they succeed. Not forgetting the “middle” market, more of those who are neither rich nor poor will also buy computers and get on the internet. (Better start loading up on some PC stocks!) But wait, am I sure that the middle-class is not going to get poorer and not buy computers? Well the stats from Hans Rosling’s TED talk show that the overall trend here is that the world is slowly digging itself out of poverty, and I take comfort in that. Actually, read on below as I describe another trend that supports that.

Now, for some cell phone stats:

United States:
- 77.4 subscribers per 100 people
- Everywhere in Europe (except Turkey) exceeds penetration in US. Italy is at a whopping 135.1 cellphone subscribers per 100 persons.
- Hong Kong beats the US in penetration too, at 135.3

The global average is 41.6 per 100 people.

Cellphone usage growth in fast growing markets last year*:
- Peru: 57%
- Vietnam: 114%
- Pakistan: 170%
- Ukraine: 185%

*numbers might be fuzzy, but they show a general trend

What’s also important to note about this upward trend in adoption is that mobile phones were the crucial piece that first enabled the poor in Bangladesh to get out of poverty (see section on Village Phone). Women built business models around it and turned it into a source of income. These days, mobile phones are also playing another role in microfinance: enabling the transfer of money and information over, well, mobile phones! In poor countries, a brick-and-mortar bank branches with ATMs are hard to come by (ditto for computers and broadband), so mobile phones are serving this unmet need, facilitating microfinance and thus helping reduce poverty.

Other interesting stats:
- 1.3 billion of global population connected to the Internet, compound annual growth of 20.3% for past 8 years.
- Internet ad spending of $40 billion is only 6.6% of global total of $605 billion and is growing at 33%. (Ha, I should double down on this little company while I can!)

Data from 2008 Global Internet Snapshot compiled by Imran Khan, senior analyst at JP Morgan. (hmm, can anyone get me access to that full report?)

That’s why medium and big tech companies can weather the unfavorable US economy trend by going abroad. Fruit trees in your backyard not yielding? Then go after the greener pastures outside of your backyard too. It’s called diversifying. That’s the other thing I love about software is that it’s not a physical object–a computer scientist can create value with merely a laptop (and some coffee!) The cost of making that first software copy is the most expensive, then every other subsequent copy ad infinitum is basically free. This is just the nature of information economics, and has obviously served Microsoft very well. Actually, tiny tech startups can do this too — by leveraging the distribution power of this thing they call the internets.
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Dec

23

Persistence and keeping your eye on the prize

Filed Under career, goal setting, perseverance, regular reads, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Looks like Marc Andreessen has been sharing a lot on the books he has been reading. Which is great, because he’s filtering out the less interesting stuff and only sharing the good stuff! :)

This story on persistence inspires me. I’ve quoted Vinod Khosla a lot on this already, but I’ll write it to remind myself: Part of entrepreneurship is persistence. When you run into an obstacle, you either plough through it or you give up (and do something else).
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Dec

19

Two Fishermen

Filed Under fear, quotes, regular reads, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Two men went fishing. One was an experienced fisherman, the other wasn’t. Every time the experienced fisherman caught a big fish, he put it in his ice chest to keep it fresh. Whenever the inexperienced fisherman caught a big fish, he threw it back. The experienced fisherman watched this go on all day and finally got tired of seeing the man waste good fish. “Why do you keep throwing back all the big fish you catch?” he asked. The inexperienced fisherman replied, “I only have a small frying pan.”

Sometimes, like that fisherman, we throw back the big plans, big dreams, big jobs, big opportunities that God gives us. Our faith is too small. We laugh at that fisherman who didn’t figure out that all he needed was a bigger frying pan, yet how ready are we to increase the size of our faith?

Great story, that I randomly stumbled on. This actually reminds me of something the famed VC Vinod Khosla once said in an interview, that sometimes entrepreneurs fail because they fail to think big enough. The problem is their self-imposed limitations, and they just don’t realize it.

Dec

16

The invisible skill

Filed Under career, regular reads, self improvement, things to remind myself, time management | Leave a Comment

Interesting thing I read today: Much like how a sculptor’s work is the result of what is taken away, self-control can also be described in the same manner.

Self-control manifests largely in the absence of more obvious emotional fireworks. Signs include being unfazed under stress or handling a hostile person without lashing out in return. Another mundane example is time management: Keeping ourselves on a daily schedule demands self-control, if only to resist seemingly urgent but actually trivial demands, or the lure of time-wasting pleasures or distractions.

From the book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

That sounds to me like people who constantly repeat self-destructive (but addictive) behavior, such as gambling, drinking, .. <insert vice here>. Although it doesn’t even need to be that severe. These days, addiction to TV and mindlessly surfing the wonderful internet aimlessly, squandering precious time is also an indicator of lack of self-control.

It was a painful decision at that time, but I did give up TV. I haven’t replaced the remote’s battery and have been TV-free for more than half a year now. Do I miss it? Only if I start again I will. Have I missed out on the world? Not at all. I’ve also come to accept *not* completely finish reading all my RSS feeds. Even with my carefully culled list of RSS feeds, there’s just way too much information out there, more than I can consume, more than I have the time to separate wheat from chaff. Surfing the web for the pleasure of surfing, I have kept to a bare minimal.

The demon I am fighting today is waking up early. I’m more of a night owl, not really a morning person. But I have taken measures, including external accountability (with friendly bets with friends on how early I will wake up the next day, which if I fail to do, I buy them lunch). Sleep is a waste of time, I am trying to keep that to a minimum. I hate myself for indulging in it.
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Dec

13

You must want a big success and then beat it into submission

Filed Under business, career, changing the world, goal setting, passion, people i like, perseverance, quotes, regular reads, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

I love quotes! And here’s a good one I picked up today from Marc Andreessen’s blog post today:

Marcus Loew, founding father of the motion picture industry and founder of Loews Theatres and MGM:

Ambition!

You must want a big success and then beat it into submission; you must be as ravenous to reach it as the wolf who licks his teeth behind a fleeing rabbit; you must be as mad to win as the man who, with one hand growing cold on the revolver in his pocket, with the other hand pushes his last gold piece on the ‘Double-O’ at Monte Carlo.

As quoted in Neal Gabler’s outstanding An Empire of Their Own.

On another note, today I learned that OLPC’s Linux-based operating system was available for download, and so I wanted to check it out for myself. It’s pretty neat. Now I know what my blog looks like when rendered on an OLPC:

times-jliew-olpc
Also interestingly enough, when I uploaded the above screenshot on Flickr, the admin of a group (on Flickr) for the OLPC: One Laptop Per Child group asked if I could use this picture, to which I said yes. Do check out their gallery for more pictures of this laptop.

Dec

1

Self-discipline and getting a grip on growing to-do list

Filed Under execution, goal setting, perseverance, regular reads, self improvement, things to remind myself, time management | Leave a Comment

As I was taking a break from studying at a coffee shop today, I was *productively* wasting time by burning through the pile of magazines that I subscribed to when I found this gem from Entrepreneur magazine written by Romanus Wolter. He listed 4 points that hit me hard on all four counts.

1. Establish an affirmative mind-set by giving yourself a reason to become more disciplined. Just as everyone has different muscular strength, we all possess different levels of self-discipline. State three positive outcomes associated with becoming more disciplined, and give your subconscious direction by integrating your business goals into your daily routine. Having an overall view of your objectives and progress keeps you motivated to take action even when there are distractions.

I fight distractions a lot, and self-discipline is a challenge as well. This past week I did pretty well, digging myself out of bed early to go jog (to get blood pumping into my brain) and then going to work early to get a head start. I recently asked for feedback on myself from a certain few people and one of the criticisms I got was that I was too “corporate”. I think Romanus brought up a good point here; that integrating some business goals into your daily routine helps keep you more focused on your personal end goal. If the end goal is something large, this will obviously require some effort and consist of more than just a few steps. Some “corporate” grown-up-ness helps in reminding me of what I am working towards and not losing sight of my goal even if it’s distant.

In fact, just this past week I tried something new that worked well. I called a good friend Monday night, told him my entire to-do list (my desired objectives that I wanted to hit) for the next day, and told him that if I fail to achieve even one, I would buy him lunch. The list ranged from “not pressing the snooze button at 6 am more than once” (first thing when I wake up) to “studying for my test” (last thing before I go to bed). And I hit it all! Had it not been for this, I think I would have hit the snooze button more than once.
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Nov

1

String theory in 2 mins

Filed Under regular reads | Leave a Comment

I’m a big fan of using technology as an enabler, and today we see the use of web video to lower of entry for education. In this clip below, the introduction of a complex topic (and perhaps scary for non-physics type) of String Theory is explained in a simple 2 min clip. Made just for kids! (and adults too)

Aug

20

Data suggests: More swings at the bat == higher success rate

Filed Under did you know, innovation, regular reads, self improvement, strategy, things to ponder about | Leave a Comment

Wow, I just read this great post by Marc Andreessen — finding empiric data (true to Marissa Mayer’s what-does-the-data-suggest style) to answer the flame-brewing question that has been circling: “Are older or younger people better at entrepreneurship?” I do no justice by just skimming here, so please read the entire post for the full effect.

For the impatient: In summary, the valuable lesson learned here from Dr. Simonton’s research is that:

  1. Generally, productivity — output — rises rapidly from the start of a career to a peak and then declines gradually until retirement.
  2. This peak in productivity varies by field, from the late 20s to the early 50s, for reasons that are field-specific.
  3. Precocity, longevity, and output rate are linked. “Those who are precocious also tend to display longevity, and both precocity and longevity are positively associated with high output rates per age unit.” High producers produce highly, systematically, over time.
  4. The odds of a hit versus a miss do not increase over time. The periods of one’s career with the most hits will also have the most misses. So maximizing quantity — taking more swings at the bat — is much higher payoff than trying to improve one’s batting average.
  5. Intelligence, at least as measured by metrics such as IQ, is largely irrelevant.

Jul

11

Psychology Today on Procrastination

Filed Under career, execution, regular reads, self improvement | Leave a Comment

Psychology Today has this great top 10 on procrastination — a favorite topic of mine, because I hate procrastination, and I know I suffer from a little of it.

These are my favorite points:

3. Procrastination is not a problem of time management or of planning. Procrastinators are not different in their ability to estimate time, although they are more optimistic than others. “Telling someone who procrastinates to buy a weekly planner is like telling someone with chronic depression to just cheer up,” insists Dr. Ferrari.

Procrastination is actually a serious problem, we as society just don’t view it like it’s that bad. To me, procrastination deserves the attention drugs, alcohol, and all the likes deserve. Ok so I went overboard a little, but you get the point. We only have a finite amount of time, all the money in the world can’t buy you more time — wasting time is an irreversible process.

4. Procrastinators are made not born. Procrastination is learned in the family milieu, but not directly. It is one response to an authoritarian parenting style. Having a harsh, controlling father keeps children from developing the ability to regulate themselves, from internalizing their own intentions and then learning to act on them. Procrastination can even be a form of rebellion, one of the few forms available under such circumstances. What’s more, under those household conditions, procrastinators turn more to friends than to parents for support, and their friends may reinforce procrastination because they tend to be tolerant of their excuses.

I’m not a parent, but I think that’s why too much parenting is bad.

7. Procrastinators actively look for distractions, particularly ones that don’t take a lot of commitment on their part. Checking e-mail is almost perfect for this purpose. They distract themselves as a way of regulating their emotions such as fear of failure.

This one, I particular hate — because I suffer from a minor form of it. Yes, I admit. Which is why recently I just cut myself off completely from e-mail. Literally. I won’t have my e-mail client running in background while I’m doing something, with that corner alert popup when a new message arrives. It’s just too damn distracting. I open my e-mail client once every few hours or so. If it’s so urgent, then someone can just call me. That’s what phones are for. In fact, I block off a few hours to focus on work and refrain from e-mail, and reserve checking email as a reward for my working a few hours. It’s a great method.

I think most corporate workers waste time on checking e-mail. Checking email and replying fast gives you that sense that you’re accomplishing something, it’s a form of instant-gratification like for impulse shoppers. If you reply enough emails fast enough all day, it feels like you’ve done work all day. I know I’ve felt like that, but it’s a lie. All day looking busy, but actual net work done = zero. It reminds me of people who like to “look” busy and work hard to be “busy” .. but are honestly just not productive — whether they realize it or not. I rather be productive and be calm and in control of things. Sure that may look like I am not busy, but I actually did real work.

8. There’s more than one flavor of procrastination. People procrastinate for different reasons. Dr. Ferrari identifies three basic types of procrastinators:

* arousal types, or thrill-seekers, who wait to the last minute for the euphoric rush.

* avoiders, who may be avoiding fear of failure or even fear of success, but in either case are very concerned with what others think of them; they would rather have others think they lack effort than ability.

* decisional procrastinators, who cannot make a decision. Not making a decision absolves procrastinators of responsibility for the outcome of events.

I used to suffer from the second category of avoiding fear of failure/success. I was a bit of a perfectionist, but I am no longer one. Perfection is sometimes overrated. More often than not, my striving for perfection instead leads to my inaction — which is against my value of being a person of action. I rather fail from action, than fail from inaction. As for worrying about what others think of you, I think going overboard there is also unhealthy. At the end of the day, I will be the judge of whether or not I have done myself justice.

Jul

6

How long can you ride the wave of a single good idea?

Filed Under business, innovation, people i like, regular reads, things to ponder about, things to remind myself | Leave a Comment

Ever since Shai Agassi left SAP AG (where he was in the running to be co-CEO), he has started a blog describing the many interesting things he is doing, to change the world. His posts are well thought out, requires research, due-diligence, careful observation, and just plain good-old business acumen. Shai is a technical guy (has a BS in computer science from Technion, a reputable educational institution in Israel), so he understands inherent intricacies of technical systems, yet he also has the ability to see the “big picture”, and knows what it takes to run a sustainable big tech company. Those two skills of his that I admire and hope to achieve.

Today, I just read a blog post of his, in his discussion of growth through innovation. He says,

[On Singapore’s leadership success, that comes from treating the island state as a large company] To a certain (much larger) degree, China applied the same model to create modern China over the last few years. Where most countries need one good idea every 5-10 years and can ride the wave of that idea for a generation, China needs to create one of those big ideas pretty much every 5-10 months at their scale. So what is the next big idea – because if you are a small country, like Israel or Singapore, you just can’t wait for the wave to hit the shore, you have to start paddling before the wave comes.

I’m musing over the similarities of running a big country vs. small country with running a big corporation vs. a small startup. If a startup can be built around a single good idea (and then ride that wave for say 5 years), it’s not too far fetched to say that a corporation 10X the size of the startup would have trouble competing in the marketplace if it was also churning out only 1 good idea every 5 years. I guess that’s why huge corporations churn out patents at the rate of a few per day? I remember Carly Fiorina using the number of patents filed by HP as one of the metrics to measure HP’s rate of innovation.

At any rate, reading this post by Shai just reminds me the importance of not falling into complacency. One good idea will only last so long, and in order to sustain a business, you better start thinking of your next good idea before the wave of the current good idea dies out. If you’re a big company, you will probably need a pipeline of good ideas. The process of building this pipeline should be formalized, with each idea vetted and tested out for soundness. In a startup, you can afford to be more ad-hoc and probably just yell over to the guy on the other side of your wall to bounce ideas, but in a big company, your “next-door” co-worker may be in Israel, Beijing, Dublin, or Paris (mine are) — I tried yelling really hard but apparently not hard enough. You can try but I wouldn’t recommend it.

So a question I would pose to my readers is, regardless of what type of business you are in, what is that next idea that you will come up with that will be the basis of that next wave, that your company can ride on for the next 5-10 years?

Shai is a good problem solver. He works by looking at the larger problem, and then breaking them up into smaller pieces, and solving those first. Then summing up those solutions to solve the bigger problem. That sounds a lot like the divide-and-conquer algorithm CS geeks learn.

Shai’s original blog post on this is here.

Jun

17

Cutting finger off for biometric pass prolem solved

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I’m sure everyone has heard of a fingerprint biometric device, where your fingerprint is scanned and you are then granted access to something. In the movies, you see the villains getting around that by chopping off the finger they need from the person, to gain access. I just read this blog post on newscientist.com and it talks about how this Japanese company has solved this problem.

The company’s biometric system uses an infrared camera to record the unique pattern of capillaries just beneath the skin, which can only be seen when blood is pumping through them. When this blood flow is cut off - when the finger is cleaved from the body, for example - the pattern disappears and the finger can no longer be used for identification.

Interesting technology, although it doesn’t stop the villain from forcing the victim to willingly scan his/her finger, by say, holding the victim’s loved one as hostage.

May

27

Can’t program because you are blind?

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I just read this story about Peter Lundblad, a programmer recently hired by Google. The reason why I’m featuring him on my blog is because Peter is blind. I’m blessed to have a pair of good eyes, and I couldn’t possibly imagine even typing an email, if I was blind.

From the article:

“I was trained as a finger typist. I know from the feel of the keys if I’ve made a mistake typing. When looking at code, I prefer Braille.” Lundblad uses a device that presents each line of code on the screen in Braille for him to read by touch.

“I was 13 years old in 1989 when I got my first computer. Then a few years later, the Internet came along. It was a revolution. I could search for whatever I wanted, instead of going to the library to see what books they had in Braille.

What a touching story, and as a technologist, the lesson to be learned here is that while most of us are fortunate and take many things in life for granted, we should always remember the Peter Lundblad’s of the world — and make our technology accessible for them too. How different would Peter’s life be, had the Internet not been accessible in Braille?

I am reminded of a quote I read in Entrepreneur yesterday,

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who succeed are the people who look for the circumstances they want. And if they can’t find them, they make them.

– George Bernard Shaw

I admire his resilience in overcoming such a challenge, and hope I never forget that I cannot give up.

Mar

25

Traditional media having hard time coping

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Every time I am stopped at the traffic lights driving to work along Mira Mesa Blvd, I feel sorry for the old guy standing under the sun trying to sell some newspapers. At a dollar a pop (sorry, I don’t know the exact price of the newspaper since that isn’t how I get my news), if you include his hourly wage, and whatever commission for each newspaper he is able to sell, is he really making any money at all? Oh wait, duh, if he isn’t, then he wouldn’t be there. Put another way, is the newspaper company really making any profit off these traffic light salesmen? If they are not at least breaking even on selling newspapers at traffic light corners, how much of a loss are they taking?

To quote a trend from a New York Times article last year,

At its peak in 2000, The Mercury News had a Sunday circulation of 326,839 subscribers, according to the newspaper. Last September, the company counted 278,470 Sunday subscribers, a drop of about 15 percent. Revenue from the company’s help-wanted ads fell to $18 million a year from more than $118 million, according to the paper. The newsroom was whittled to 280 people from 404, a 30 percent decline.

The numbers do not lie, traditional print media will need a strategy to survive. While I wouldn’t outright be so quick to say that newspapers are dead because I do think that they still do play an important role and thus have their place in society, I do think that hey just need to figure out how to embrace (rather than balk and try to fight) this inevitable tectonic shift (a.k.a. the interwebs) while generating revenue, or they will follow the path of IDG’s InfoWorld — giving up their print magazine and go 100% online only.

Read more about this trend here, here, here, and here.

Update 3/26/07: From an NYT article today:

Mark Fratrik, an economist at BIA Financial Network, said the February results were “not a blip on the screen.”

“It’s fundamental, what’s going on with newspapers,” he said. “The younger groups, the most desired demographics, are just not reading them. They aren’t listening to traditional radio either, but I tell radio broadcasters that they’re lucky not to be in newspapers.”

And he would be right. Personally, I like my news relevant, on-demand, portable (easy to carry around, like in my PDA phone), and does not leave my fingers with dirty black ink marks. The newspaper size is also kind of big and cumbersome, all that folding around. Gah, I sound high-maintenance :)

And on an unrelated random note, other news for this week:

  • The balancing act between pursuing your lifelong dreams and financial security. I agree with the author in that money does not equal happiness; however, I don’t think pursuing your lifelong dreams and financial security has to be mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, this is still an interesting writeup which makes you ponder about your risk tolerance, and if you are taking as much (or little) risk as you should be.
  • GMail delete shortcut discovered! Hit shift+3 (for the ‘#’ pound symbol). I wonder why this shortcut is so well hidden.
  • HIGHLY ADDICTIVE FLASH GAME!! Proceed with caution, this is a major time waster!