There have been many a times when you believe that you have a great idea. Then you begin analyzing on the pros and cons of the same. Then you begin thinking on how you would go about monetizing it. You do a SWOT analysis. Then you start working on the math. The break-even targets seem to be very big. You are not very sure on how it will work out one year from now. So you think more. You analyze further.
By the time you have arrived at a decision, someone somewhere has already started on it and has release a beta of the product. The world has already started discussing this. You have a familiar feeling - It was my idea and I thought about this. Maybe the other person has somehow read my mind and copied this.
The above is not a very uncommon occurrence. It happens to a lot of us. My experience and advice from a lot of successful people is to have a firm bias for action. We should not get into a paralysis by analysis mode. The future is anyway hazy and quite unpredictable.
So if you have the confidence and the hunch that you have a good and workable idea, you should spend most of your time, energy and money trying to get the Alpha or beta of it working. Get it out. Invite your friends, acquaintances to come in review it and give a feedback. Blog about it. Twitter it. Go to all discussion boards and try to generate interest in the product. If you have a good product, you will automatically get the eyeballs and the visibility. People will talk about it. Listen carefully. Take the feedback very seriously and improve the offering. No amount of Business Plan document will give you this insight.
One such initiative that I personally undertook is the Feedboc project. The idea came up at the TiE Entrepreneurial Summit (TES) 2008. We were discussing the effectiveness of a Performance Appraisal process and were in general agreement that a year-end appraisal is not the best way to assess a person's year long performance. So there was a need for managers to have a mechanism to provide feedback to their team members. This feedback also had to result in a person knowing more about himself, his traits, his strengths and weaknesses. This was a universal requirement and would be needed by most organizations.
From this pressing need, we quickly drew out an idea for a product and aptly named it as FeedBOC - standing for Feedback is the (B)reakfast (o)f (C)hampions. After some initial amount of analysis (we did it!!), we started working on the product. We are happy to inform you that the Beta of the product is already released.
Whether the product gains acceptance, will be widely used or whether we make money is something that - as the cliche goes - only time will tell. But it was a great personal victory for us to break free from our traditional mode of thinking / working and orient ourselves to have a "Bias for action"!
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Slowdown - What do "you" do?
I have been reading a lot of posts on the current slowdown and some advices / suggestions on how we cope with this.
A majority of Entrepreneurs / "wise guys" are of the opinion that this is as much an opportunity as a threat. An article in the Havard Business Review, lists six steps which can be followed in these times.
I personally view this as an opportunity and a challenge, which is not to de-emphasize the threat portion. But I believe that if you are offering a product / service that is of value to an end-user then you are going to have customers. People are definitely going to buy what is needed and what they perceive as value.
As organizations we need to recognize where this "value" lies. Trying to achieve this may also lead to disruptions of existing models / lines of business. Innovation is the key. Innovations can be at multiple levels - be it products, services, delivery, customer services, etc. Only those organizations that innovate consistently and rapidly will remain current and relevant.
To recognize the "value", it would be absolutely necessary to keep all your communication lines open. Talking to your customers is a very good step to discovering this.
Another HBR article goes on to say that the current environment that we are in is not a phase. This is a condition. And this is how it is going to be from now on. A product or a service will have a shelf life of a year-or so. It is quickly going to get cloned or get obsolete. So to remain current, you need to inculcate rapid innovation into the DNA of your organizations.
That is our best bet to ride thru 2009 and for a long time from thereon.
A majority of Entrepreneurs / "wise guys" are of the opinion that this is as much an opportunity as a threat. An article in the Havard Business Review, lists six steps which can be followed in these times.
I personally view this as an opportunity and a challenge, which is not to de-emphasize the threat portion. But I believe that if you are offering a product / service that is of value to an end-user then you are going to have customers. People are definitely going to buy what is needed and what they perceive as value.
As organizations we need to recognize where this "value" lies. Trying to achieve this may also lead to disruptions of existing models / lines of business. Innovation is the key. Innovations can be at multiple levels - be it products, services, delivery, customer services, etc. Only those organizations that innovate consistently and rapidly will remain current and relevant.
To recognize the "value", it would be absolutely necessary to keep all your communication lines open. Talking to your customers is a very good step to discovering this.
Another HBR article goes on to say that the current environment that we are in is not a phase. This is a condition. And this is how it is going to be from now on. A product or a service will have a shelf life of a year-or so. It is quickly going to get cloned or get obsolete. So to remain current, you need to inculcate rapid innovation into the DNA of your organizations.
That is our best bet to ride thru 2009 and for a long time from thereon.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Twitter, Yammer, Ffwd, Stumbleupon, "Stupid"
I recently got to know about Twitter. I went to the web page and read about it. My first reaction was that it was a "stupid" thing to do. Who would want to read one-liners about what people are doing? I also read that a lot of people had similar reactions at first and then changed their opinions later.
Being very intrigued about the following it has, I wanted to know more. My search landed me to sites like "Twitterholic", "TwitterBuzz", etc. I went in to Twitterholic, which was supposed to contain the list of Twitter'ers with the most followers. The first on the list was Kevin Rose. He has 75,302 followers. I went in to find out what was it that caused so many people to follow him. I am pasting his most recent posts below.
1. making the turkey! http://vimeo.com/2365809 about 9 hours ago from twitterrific
2. Reading: 4 Reasons to Eat (or drink) Pomegranates - http://tinyurl.com/6ea26l
3. Also, our thoughts and prayers are with those in Mumbai. abo
4. Happy Thanksgiving all! Today I'm especially thankful for family/friends, football, beer, and tcp/ip
Well you have it folks. These are his twitters and this is followed by 75000 readers!!
I learnt some more.
Further reading took to Ffwd , Flikr and StumbleUpon . I read here that all these can be linked with Twitter. So if you view a video of Ffwd, then it will make a Twitter notification on your behalf. If you post a photo, the same goes. So now you can set yourself a ghost who will keep on looking at all the things that you do and send a tweet for to know. You can even send a item to your RTM list from Twitter!!
The tweets of the guy with the most followers coupled with the very "I will follow you to death and watch you dying" capabilities have certainly not yet made me change my view completely.
But I did find some other more "useful" applications and variants of Twitter. Will comment on this in my next post.
Being very intrigued about the following it has, I wanted to know more. My search landed me to sites like "Twitterholic", "TwitterBuzz", etc. I went in to Twitterholic, which was supposed to contain the list of Twitter'ers with the most followers. The first on the list was Kevin Rose. He has 75,302 followers. I went in to find out what was it that caused so many people to follow him. I am pasting his most recent posts below.
1. making the turkey! http://vimeo.com/2365809 about 9 hours ago from twitterrific
2. Reading: 4 Reasons to Eat (or drink) Pomegranates - http://tinyurl.com/6ea26l
3. Also, our thoughts and prayers are with those in Mumbai. abo
4. Happy Thanksgiving all! Today I'm especially thankful for family/friends, football, beer, and tcp/ip
Well you have it folks. These are his twitters and this is followed by 75000 readers!!
I learnt some more.
Further reading took to Ffwd , Flikr and StumbleUpon . I read here that all these can be linked with Twitter. So if you view a video of Ffwd, then it will make a Twitter notification on your behalf. If you post a photo, the same goes. So now you can set yourself a ghost who will keep on looking at all the things that you do and send a tweet for to know. You can even send a item to your RTM list from Twitter!!
The tweets of the guy with the most followers coupled with the very "I will follow you to death and watch you dying" capabilities have certainly not yet made me change my view completely.
But I did find some other more "useful" applications and variants of Twitter. Will comment on this in my next post.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Social Capital
Today I had a chance of seeing some new-age Social Capital build and utilization at close quarters.
A friend of my took to blogging, networking and making his online presence felt more seriously. He registered himself at various fora and started giving his views/opinions/advice at a number of places.
At one place, he advised someone who had an issue with his current employer. So that person added him into his Friend's list. A few days later, the guy with the problem wanted an HR Software (looks like his current problem was solved with my friend's advice???? maybe). And lo-and-behold, my friend looks at this and informs his new-friend about his software.
It is another matter on whether his earlier advice (given with no expectation) would help him now. But it has definitely allowed him into the permission space of his friend. (my interpretation of Seth Godin and Permission Marketing, although Seth Godin does not use this term anywhere).
So my friend built some amount of Social Capital and was able to help himself with it.
This may look like old-hat. But hey folks, remember, I am new here and also seem to be learning quickly. ;-)
A friend of my took to blogging, networking and making his online presence felt more seriously. He registered himself at various fora and started giving his views/opinions/advice at a number of places.
At one place, he advised someone who had an issue with his current employer. So that person added him into his Friend's list. A few days later, the guy with the problem wanted an HR Software (looks like his current problem was solved with my friend's advice???? maybe). And lo-and-behold, my friend looks at this and informs his new-friend about his software.
It is another matter on whether his earlier advice (given with no expectation) would help him now. But it has definitely allowed him into the permission space of his friend. (my interpretation of Seth Godin and Permission Marketing, although Seth Godin does not use this term anywhere).
So my friend built some amount of Social Capital and was able to help himself with it.
This may look like old-hat. But hey folks, remember, I am new here and also seem to be learning quickly. ;-)
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Learn to write!
I read an interesting article today. The article said that volunteering to speak was one of the best ways to learn.
I also remembered Dr. Raja Ramanna an eminent scientist who we heard at a guest lecture in college. He had said that he had an assignment to teach a new subject and he started out on the assignment by writing a book on the subject.
I completely agree with this thought. To be able to write a blog or speak on a subject, you would need to know "enough", to be confident and be able to form an opinion and articulate the same to your audience.
My personal journey on this blog (I have started only recently as you can see) has been proceeding on these lines. I have realized that I need to read / listen and speak even more to be able to properly communicate with my audience and one of the best ways to do this would be read more blogs and write more on my own!!
I also remembered Dr. Raja Ramanna an eminent scientist who we heard at a guest lecture in college. He had said that he had an assignment to teach a new subject and he started out on the assignment by writing a book on the subject.
I completely agree with this thought. To be able to write a blog or speak on a subject, you would need to know "enough", to be confident and be able to form an opinion and articulate the same to your audience.
My personal journey on this blog (I have started only recently as you can see) has been proceeding on these lines. I have realized that I need to read / listen and speak even more to be able to properly communicate with my audience and one of the best ways to do this would be read more blogs and write more on my own!!
Friday, November 14, 2008
SaaS - Your time has come!!
I read an interesting article on cnet news today. The headline read "IDC lowers IT spending forecast for 2009". As the headline was all doom and gloom, and this was the current flavour of the season, I had to read it and so I did.
The article mentioned that worldwide IT spending would grow by 2.6% as compared to IDC's earlier projection of 5.9%. The forecast also says that "With the exception of storage, hardware will be the hardest hit by the spending cutbacks, while software and services will be relatively safer". The spending is expected to be back to 6% by "2012". So now you know when you can take that vacation again!!
Which brings me to another different but unrelated article. In a survey done by Thinkstrategies / Cutter Consortium, results have indicated there is a distinct surge in the market for SaaS products and a rise in Customer Satisfaction indices.
This again brings the focus back to SaaS. With its low setup costs, short implementation time-frame and ability to walk-out easily if not satisfied, the model is steadily gaining acceptance. Now more and more vendors, products and organizations are crossing the bridge. After being on the fringes for quite some time as ASP and SaaS now, it does look the time and environment has become quite conducive for SaaS to be adopted in a big way!!
Note: As as a strong believer in the SaaS model, our organization has released our flagship Leave and Payroll on a SaaS platform. More details are available here.
The article mentioned that worldwide IT spending would grow by 2.6% as compared to IDC's earlier projection of 5.9%. The forecast also says that "With the exception of storage, hardware will be the hardest hit by the spending cutbacks, while software and services will be relatively safer". The spending is expected to be back to 6% by "2012". So now you know when you can take that vacation again!!
Which brings me to another different but unrelated article. In a survey done by Thinkstrategies / Cutter Consortium, results have indicated there is a distinct surge in the market for SaaS products and a rise in Customer Satisfaction indices.
This again brings the focus back to SaaS. With its low setup costs, short implementation time-frame and ability to walk-out easily if not satisfied, the model is steadily gaining acceptance. Now more and more vendors, products and organizations are crossing the bridge. After being on the fringes for quite some time as ASP and SaaS now, it does look the time and environment has become quite conducive for SaaS to be adopted in a big way!!
Note: As as a strong believer in the SaaS model, our organization has released our flagship Leave and Payroll on a SaaS platform. More details are available here.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Recession - India?
The "R" word is being touted everywhere. It is now acknowledged that the US is officially in recession. It was also commonly believed that inspite of all indicators, India would still grow at around 7-7.5%. But current data seems to indicate to the contrary. Sales, Tax Collections, etc., have not only shown no growth, but have actually fallen. So the 7% growth projection looks fairly optimistic.
As every company would now try to conserve as much cash as possible, they would try and make fewer purchases. Same with consumers. This adds further to the problem.
How do we cope? Some common "ways" touted by "experts"
- Reduce Expenditure
- Reduce Sale price and see if customers would buy more
- Offer to share the risk of the customer while making a sale - You benefit "if" he benefits
- Conserve Cash
- Talk to employees
On the funny side
- Apply to and keep more credit cards - you never know when you will lose your job
- Apply for more loans so that you have more cash
- Do not deposit the money in the bank: you do not know if it will still be functioning tomorrow - do not keep at home: crime increases because of recession. The safest way: spend it.
- Be friends with the Sales guys - if they are living then you know what will follow
- Act busy and brown-nose your boss even more - hope you have not been very frank with him in the past - Ofcourse, this is assuming your boss is going to survive this.
- Network more
- and lastly, dust your blog and start blogging.
As every company would now try to conserve as much cash as possible, they would try and make fewer purchases. Same with consumers. This adds further to the problem.
How do we cope? Some common "ways" touted by "experts"
- Reduce Expenditure
- Reduce Sale price and see if customers would buy more
- Offer to share the risk of the customer while making a sale - You benefit "if" he benefits
- Conserve Cash
- Talk to employees
On the funny side
- Apply to and keep more credit cards - you never know when you will lose your job
- Apply for more loans so that you have more cash
- Do not deposit the money in the bank: you do not know if it will still be functioning tomorrow - do not keep at home: crime increases because of recession. The safest way: spend it.
- Be friends with the Sales guys - if they are living then you know what will follow
- Act busy and brown-nose your boss even more - hope you have not been very frank with him in the past - Ofcourse, this is assuming your boss is going to survive this.
- Network more
- and lastly, dust your blog and start blogging.
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