Thoughts, ramblings, rantings of Renganathan Ramamoorthy
August 8, 2010 1 Comment
Anthem.
Harini made me download this book from Project Gutenberg and read it. And I must say – absolutely worth the 56 odd pages. Despite the hyperbole of the dystopian future, the author clearly communicates the need for identity.
Highly recommended.
May 9, 2010 Leave a Comment
We are all people people. Let me explain.
Most people who work in organizations and have a “job” work with other people in that organization. The 33%+ of your normal day and 50%+ of your conscious day is usually spent interacting with other fellow human beings who subscribe to the same club and get similar benefits.
Hence, the people you work with make or break the experience for you. It becomes very important that you have a chance to interact in detail with the people who you are going to dedicate 50%+ of your day.
My personal motivations are mutual respect, and acting as a reservoir of support. Everybody can do wonderful things when there’s belief and support. If the team decides to focus on the job as a collective whole (which is definitely possible) and delegates work based on the strengths and weaknesses of the group, it would be a cohesive whole that truly achieves economies of scope, scale, value, time and everything else towards realizing those goals.
So, get to know the people who you will work with. It will make your experience that much richer, fulfilling and a pleasure.
Good luck.
P.S. I have had the tremendous fortune of working with some amazing people in my experience at Siemens and through Thunderbird. And things are certainly looking up for my next experience beginning in about a month. 
April 20, 2010 Leave a Comment
I am a bit shocked at how much flak Gizmodo has received of late. Especially for the fact that they have paid to get the test model of the iPhone 4G from someone who claims to have “found” the phone in a bar.
I do not condone Gizmodo ratting out the poor Apple dev, who would have already been going through a turmoil, if not facing the Jobs wrath already. However, I am still appalled at how the tech gurus and journalists are lashing at them for paying to obtain the device or publishing the information for the Internet.
Especially when those same tech-gurus are on the lookout to break exactly such information to the public. Now, I agree that speculation about the iPhone and tips from the sources add to the magic of expecting new devices. However, I personally feel that this is a case of sour-grapes.
The usual tech journalists who get the dish on what’s happening inside Cupertino were over run by kids who acted on an opportunity. That Apple declared the phone stolen was *not* known until later. However, I ask the question that what if these people who lashed out against Gizmodo received the gadget. Would they have NOT published the information?
I am not too sure about that.
April 2, 2010 Leave a Comment
The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity for innovation. While big problems don’t always produce big breakthroughs, little problems never do.
- The Why, What and How of Management Innovation, HBR Feb ’06
March 25, 2010 Leave a Comment
The last 42+ weeks of business school has taught me many things. If there is one thing that I can articulate in my learning is that business success is about balance.
One one hand, you have your customers who are paying you some money for the benefits that you are providing through your business. On the other, you have your shareholders (even yourself) who are trying to ensure that your business generates enough money to justify investment.
A successful business is one that delivers the best set of benefits for its customer, while ensuring that it is able to retain most of the money that the customer provides for satiation.
In simple terms, business success is nothing but revenue / incremental costs.
Jonathan Knowles, who spoke during the New York brand management winterim in winter 2009/2010 was the one who drove home this nugget of awesomeness. I highly recommend reading his book, Vulcans, Earthlings and Marketing ROI: Getting Finance, Marketing and Advertising onto the Same Planet
March 9, 2010 Leave a Comment
As I edge closer to graduation on April 30, 2010, I realized that it’s time to take stock on what I have learned over my time in MBA and chronicle them as posts to share. So, I will begin a new series of posts today that recount my experience and learning at Thunderbird. They would be cross posted across Tumblr and here.
October 3, 2009 8 Comments
Harini Saladi mentioned something in passing today
Google needs to be commented commended on how well they have marketed Google Wave to the geeks. They have done a tremendous job in positioning themselves properly.
I completely agree with her. I think Google has done a phenomenal job in marketing Wave to the geeks, who by and large would be the early adopters of such a technology.
The wave is a paradigm shifting technology. The early adopters have mixed reviews of the same, which is to be expected. More than the product, what really fascinates me is how Google has managed to generate, manipulate and manage the hype around Wave. They have reused a gimmick they learned from GMail and used it in perfection with Wave – create exclusivity.
Exclusivity mixed with cool new technology from Google makes for a potent marketing mix raising hype and buzz to astronomical proportions. The reasons are evident. It’s been trending consistently high in twitterverse and the blogverse.
Kudos on an amazing campaign Google.
June 22, 2009 19 Comments
First off, I have nothing but respect for one of India’s most successful people in the world. In fact, I’ve made another blog post about the success of Mr Nayar. However, I strongly disagree with what Mr Nayar claims here.
…The official wanted to know why HCL, a $2.5 billion (revenue) company with more than 3,000 people across 21 offices in 15 states, wasn’t hiring more people in his state. Vineet’s short answer: because most American college grads are “unemployable.” (In fairness to HCL, the company recently announced plans to open a delivery center in another state, North Carolina, and invest $3.2 million and hire more than 500 employees there over the next five years under a Job Development Investment Grant.)
Many American grads looking to enter the tech field are preoccupied with getting rich, Vineet said. They’re far less inclined than students from developing countries like India, China, Brazil, South Africa, and Ireland to spend their time learning the “boring” details of tech process, methodology, and tools–ITIL, Six Sigma, and the like.
And Indians and Chinese and Brazilians are NOT? The entire reason why a good majority of Indian grads are even approaching software houses is because they offer the best pay for their knowledge and services. And that too for fairly low end work that is usually present in them.
And even worse is the fact that he classifies that “ITIL, Six Sigma, etc,” as boring. In this case, about 90% of the Indians in these software houses have NO frickin’ clue on how to write good code. Trust me, I’ve been there and done that. For ITIL and Six Sigma, they are not aware of basic quality processes and follow them on a rote model if instructed in written points pasted across bulletin boards.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that American grads are better than Indian grads. We have some of the most technically gifted people on the planet, however, much like how we cannot generalize how Indian IT workers are software coolies, we cannot say that American grads are unemployable? If American grads did not have the skills, how come most of the world is running on Windows or the Mac, or Google became such a powerhouse or facebook and twitter and tumblr are taking over the world?
As a result, Vineet said, most Americans are just too expensive to train–despite the Indian IT industry’s reputation for having the most exhaustive boot camps in the world. To some extent, he said, students from other highly developed countries fall into the same rut.
In an interview following his presentation, Vineet said HCL and other employers need to have a greater influence on the tech curricula of U.S. colleges and universities, to make them more real-world and rigorous. For the most part, he said, those institutions haven’t been receptive to such industry partnerships.
Holy crap a moley. Why would they want to tarnish American institution reputation? The Indian institutes save for those IITs and those BITs etc have the awesome reputation of churning out mindless coding zombies who don’t ask a question, but can churn out code at mindnumbingly fast rates (of course with poor quality: bugs are the way maintenance guys make money) and can pore through oodles of freakshow documentation. And why don’t they first try and work with Indian institutions to make THEM real world capable first. How many Indian grads truly understand what’s happening in the world today? Are they aware of coding quality standards, processes, project management, algo analysis and design, compiler theory, languages, PERL, Python Ruby? How many of them really work on true projects and come up with awesome stuff during their college days?
I will concede a point to Mr Nayar though, yes, the Americans are over all more expensive and for an Indian IT powerhouse that relies on low-cost model to win contracts, it doesn’t make sense to hire an American grad and pay them through the nose.
Again, I am not claiming that every American grad is better than the Indian grad, but first look inside and change the things before pointing fingers. This all seems like a very impromptu reaction to why they are not hiring American grads in HCL?
More broadly, Vineet echoed the concerns expressed by other CEOs, including SAS Institute’s Jim Goodnight and Cisco’s John Chambers, about the failure of the U.S. education system to prepare the country’s next-generation tech workforce (a subject Goodnight and others will dive into at the InformationWeek 500 Conference, Sept. 13 to 15).
Seems like an also-ran case. What Jim Goodnight and John Chambers were referring to was a problem that is facing not only America, but India as well and relates to the overall poor situation in technical education. Good God man, you should’ve at least made the point clear.
Beyond the need to bolster competencies in math, the hard sciences, and basic problem solving, U.S. schools at all levels must place a greater emphasis on global history, foreign languages, and other subjects that prepare students for jobs and life outside this country. How many grads of U.S. colleges are ready or even willing to work abroad? Vineet asked rhetorically. “We need to define the American dream to be more global in nature,” he said.
Again, please look at the Indian state of education before shouting at some other country’s education system. What the heck do we do better that we can claim such things. If anyone has been following the global news and Obama’s speeches, they can state what Mr Nayar has said. So he hasn’t really said anything so precocious that everyone needs to react.
To tie it all together, let me reiterate that I am not claiming the American education system or the American graduates are superior to home grown “techie geniuses.” All I am saying is that Mr Nayar should have at least referred to the Indian education system and considered before lambasting the American education system. Furthermore, he should also make genuine efforts from HCL and all other tech companies side to truly make the Indian education system world class.
Check out here for the full article
June 15, 2009 Leave a Comment
[Image credit: http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/pub/eres/EDSPC715_MCINTYRE/sbWinner.jpg]
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT.
Let me repeat that again – POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT.
When someone does something, appreciate their contribution. In most startups, the product is a vision of a particular person / group of people and the others are trying hard to materialize that vision. Make sure as the founder, you are grateful that they are sharing your vision and helping you realize it. Anytime you do otherwise, it’s a major point against you and will bite you forever in the future.
And while you are at it, the best thing you can invest in before running a company is to understand how to manage work relationships.
June 13, 2009 1 Comment
[Thanks for the image: Wikipedia]
I saw the movie directed by Richard Attenborough yesterday. There are so many moments in that movie that is required by people world over to realize today in this time and age. What Mahatma, or as we Indians lovingly call him, Bapu, made us realize was that no person should be judged based on religion, caste, vocation, but be accepted as a fellow human being. There are so many wonderful quotes that it had made me order a copy of “My Experiments with Truth.”
Mahatma’s message is so powerful – Truth and love shall prevail over any other force created by mankind. I can go on, however, I need to stop raving about the movie and instead focus on how we should apply his teachings to the world at this time and age.
Today, the world certainly has more money and materialistic comforts than it had before. I have a computer that I can make do pretty much anything, a home that is a bungalow compared to the homes during the terrible times of poverty faced in India and around the world. Yet, it has come at a price. It saddens me today, as I write this that we paid for materialistic comforts by trading humanity. I, for one, certainly believe that it was an unfair trade.
[Look at them ready to start a race... Awesome picture btw]
Let us take Bangalore for example – the (erstwhile?) garden city of India. I remember coming here a decade ago and being marvelled at the beauty of the city. It had gorgeous parks in every nook and corner of the city. It was famous for its two parks – the Lalbagh (meaning Red Garden) and Cubbon Park (which was right across the humongous, gorgeous architecture of the Vidhan Soudha). I remember travelling through Richmond Road and Malleshwaram and thinking this is what I call the perfect mix of nature and modern constructions. There was no dust, as the gardens used to almost soak in the dust. The weather was gorgeous, never an extreme and winters were delightful, sitting inside home and sipping on hot tea and chilli bondas.
Fast forward to 2009: it’s the epitome of a city bursting at its seams, and worse mis managed to the core. Worse, people have lost their friendliness once and for all. Everybody is in a hurry to one up another. Competition is good, but is it good at the cost of losing friends, being lonely?
It is time that people realize that the change they are waiting for is not something that will be delivered to them in a platter with all the niceties involved. It is something that WE need to demand from the government. As V in V for Vendetta says, “People should not be afraid of their government. The government should be afraid of its people.” We have a right to demand from the government that serves us (they are public servants aren’t they?) to better our roads, to plan our system. We outsourced the work to them because we have better things to do – making money for the country that we ought to be proud of to live in.
India has come a long way and we are growing at a fast pace. However, what we need to realize is that we should be learning from the mistakes that the so called “developed economies” went through when they went through the very same process. Remember the mafia wars, the gang wars, the hatred that went through the various cities across USA, through the wars in Europe – we cannot let India go through that as unlike them, our country is tremendously diverse.
There’s a very interesting line mentioned in the movie – A British official says, “India is not one country. There’s a Hindu India, a Muslim India, an India of provincial rulers.” Well, we showed them that united we stand, divided we fall, and still we seem to have forgotten what our forefathers themselves decided to do demand and provide independence to our nation.
Let us unite again to build the dream India that the world will be proud of. Let us honor our heritage, our traditions, our culture and stop being selfish pricks that we have become today. Let us not judge anyone by their religion, caste, or vocation. Let us treat everyone with respect, no matter what their economic state is. Most importantly, let us stop capitalizing on each others weaknesses to earn a quick buck, but build on our strengths. Let us build the glory India that we all dream of, but never have the time to build. LET US MAKE THE TIME. And my fellow citizens, my good friends, my brothers and sisters, NOW is the time.
June 13, 2009 Leave a Comment
… is something that I try and keep in mind, be it turning off power when not required, or taking my bag to buy groceries. I am a vegetarian and I don’t typically over eat or waste food. With all this, one thing that I couldn’t get myself to do was to spend on recyclable batteries in India.
I have a duracell charger and recyclable batteries that I use for my mouse and keyboard combo when I am on the move. Unfortunately owing to the various voltages across the world and frequency of the Alternating Current (AC), they can’t be used anywhere else other than US. I had a rechargeable rig before heading to US. However, it’s in Chennai and I don’t have access to it.
I went to Staples today and was checking out the various options available for me today, and realized that the recyclable batteries are sold at about 8x the price of normal batteries and the charging rig costs about 15 times an average pair of AA batteries. And this comes at a lower Wh rating. That implies that I need to recharge more often than using the throwaway batteries.
Economics prevailed and I ended up buying an 8pack of disposable batteries. I shall do the needful and dispose of them properly =|. However, the government should really look into this. With consumer spending on the rise and people flocking to buy TVs, flat panels, Home theater systems, etc the battery usage of an average family would be way superior to mine and hence economics would play an even bigger role there. We really need to find a way to bring technology that tries and makes living a little greener, cheaper. =|
On another note, check out this awesome wallpaper from Flickr.
June 11, 2009 Leave a Comment
There is something to be learned from what Alibaba.com, a counterpart of eBay in China, achieved. Accidental Product Manager was the one who brought my attention to this news.
While they tried to go the traditional way of reducing the prices to keep existing customers and entice new customers into signing up, their addition of financing into their process is something that is going to help the typical sellers and buyers in an online marketplace.
However, I am not necessarily commenting on the model they chose, but what it achieved for their customers that stands out. In such an environment, anything a business does to cure their customers’ headaches is the only model that will succeed. That is how businesses should be run, not just for making money. Needs/wants should be cured.
June 8, 2009 Leave a Comment
Open Platforms and Innovation: “
I love Steven Johnson’s cover story in this week’s Time Magazine. I told that to the Gotham Gal last night and she said ‘yeah you tweeted that not once, but three times yesterday.’
You’d expect a cover story about one of our portfolio companies (Twitter) which mentions our Hacking Education event would excite me. But honestly, that’s not why the piece is still rumbling around my brain this morning.
It’s the finish of Steven’s piece where he talks about ‘end user innovation’ that is so brilliant. He makes this ‘larger point about modern innovation’:
But what actually happened to American innovation during that
period? We came up with America Online, Netscape, Amazon, Google,
Blogger, Wikipedia, Craigslist, TiVo, Netflix, eBay, the iPod and
iPhone, Xbox, Facebook and Twitter itself. Sure, we didn’t build the
Prius or the Wii, but if you measure global innovation in terms of
actual lifestyle-changing hit products and not just grad students, the
U.S. has been lapping the field for the past 20 years.
That’s the thing that gets me so excited to get up and get going every day. Technology has reached a point where anyone can get involved with innovation. Patents and degrees matter a lot less. Imagining something and then coding it up is what its all about these days.
We are engaged in what Eric von Hippel calls ‘end user innovation’ and it is a fundamental shift in the way society innovates. The Twitter founders are a perfect example. They built a simple tool to share short messages and it has become something entirely different. As Steven says:
It’s like inventing a toaster oven and then looking around a year later
and seeing that your customers have of their own accord figured out a
way to turn it into a microwave.
I’d like to do exactly that to my toaster. Since every time I write about something I want, one of you builds it, I’m expecting my microtoaster to show up sometime soon.
[Via A VC.]
Brilliant point from Time regarding Twitter and thanks to Guy for pointing it out. This is exactly why I am really excited about being in the technology space. We’ve reached a point of time in our life when we cannot claim not to come up with good ideas and follow it.
Take for example, Startup City 09, in Bangalore, India where I spent my Saturday. It was amazing to see the number of innovations coming up from Bangalore. Sure, we are no Silicon Valley, however, given the various limitations that the Indian entrepreneur has to face, I am proud to say that there’s a lot to invest in India. I would, if I had the money. In fact, I have realized that I really need to start a venture fund for the Indian technology startups.
Startup City saw not just technology innovations, but also very interesting companies, business models and various monetization models. Kudos to Startup City and here’s to the Indian entrepreneur.
June 7, 2009 Leave a Comment
Chris Hardwick’s Confidence Theory: “u’ve got a safety net. That net makes you less desperate for that one thing to happen, more chill and composed. Makes sense. But how does one create these options? Hardwick says you’ve got to get good at something you lo”
[Via Smarterware.]
I agree, the reason why I am doing my MBA and doing well at it is because I have the safety net that I can be very useful to technology companies with my technical competence of programming any day.
Don’t get me wrong, the MBA has opened my eyes and brain into looking for and seeing things from a much broader perspective, but I know that anyday I can get down to really cracking good code when it comes to it =)!
Here’s to an awesome MBA education and great life =)
May 28, 2009 Leave a Comment
There seems to be a genuine push towards such initiatives as Samasource in the world. As corporate social responsibility pushes are being made by big huge corporates, there is indeed a genuine need for such organizations and plans.
Good luck to samasource.
