Need for speed. Need for ambition. Need for hunger to disrupt.

Having worked closely with multinationals and Indian corporates, I couldn't help but notice the difference. I admire Indian corporates for business prowess but at the same time feel concerned about lack of hunger for radical innovation.

Innovation in Indian corporates are mostly incremental improvement efforts with an objective to enhance quarterly results. Their pursuit of business excellence and performance is commendable. However, a sole focus on this pursuit alone can lead to 'frog in slow boiling water' syndrome. Whereby Indian corporates do a good job in adapting to heating competition and business pressures, but do not show ambition to jump out and disrupt.

To illustrate, a large Indian conglomerate announced that they want to go Digital. But after meeting them, it turned out that their definition of Digital was narrow, it was limited to leveraging ecommerce in their business units. They lacked the ambition to use Digital Technologies  to disrupt their business and market.

Another case in point is automotive sector. Indian automotive companies are  rightly focused on improving products & securing sales in a competitive market. Recently we heard a news that an automotive company partnered with leading taxi aggregator service. What we do not hear, unlike in rest of the world, is Hybrid/Electric vehicles, Self driving cars/trucks, Connected system, Drones, Next Gen Mobility etc. These disruptions are bound to shift the most value adding link in entire value-chain away from traditional automotive companies, chipping away their differentiation and margins.

Indian corporates are good in responding to competitive pressures with clever tweaks on existing markets and products. Unfortunately, they are not investing on breaking the mold and taking disruptive bets. Many do not even have a defined Product Strategy to cater to both business and technology trends/shifts.

Going forward, disruptive forces will bring fundamental shifts in several industries. Value chains will change, some industries may morph and others would cease to exist. Hence, Indian corporates need to be ambitious, spearhead disruptions and make future bets.

Know the Visionaries, Pragmatists & Conservatives

If creating innovative products is hard, selling them is even harder. A B2B innovative product caters to either an implicit/un-met need OR a not-thought-of gain. In either case, selling it is an uphill task. Its quite similar to high-tech market development model as explained by Geoffery A. Moore. The model divides the customers majorly into Early Adopters (Visionaries), Early Majority (Pragmatists) and Late Majority (Conservatives).

When the customers are companies in B2B, segregating them in these boxes is not that straightforward. Companies have both good and lacking areas. For example, an Airline may be ahead in customer service but might be a laggard on operations side. A more pronounced segregation is seen inside a company. People in the company are from across the spectrum of Visionaries, Pragmatists and Conservative. And each contributes in their own way to effective running of an organisation:

Visionaries: These are enthusiasts, seek the radical improvement, can see the big picture and strategic opportunity. People like them are usually found wearing the hat of Innovation, R&D and Business Development. Usually, they hold budget to invest in new ideas but do not control big ticket purchase decisions.

Pragmatist: They form a big chunk in the organization. They look for quantified benefits, low risk, proven solutions and are comfortable with incremental improvements. These are Departmental heads in Operations, Marketing, Finance etc. They decide on big ticket purchases and their expectations can be different from that of visionaries.

Conservatives: They too are sizable. They always have the word of caution, prefer in-house development, worry about compatibility with existing systems and prefer convenience over performance. These usually come from support departments like IT, Procurement, Administration and others, but are also found in line departments. They can influence and delay big ticket purchases.

Similar to market development model of Geoffery A. Moore, there is a chasm between Visionaries and Pragmatists. A buy-in from visionary can get you a pilot phase, a foot in the door. But for the big-ticket purchase and company-wide deployment, buy-in from Pragmatists becomes the key.

To cross the chasm, its important to reach out to the Pragmatists early on to understand their expectations. And pick up a specific area to solve on an industrial scale. This may narrow down the scope, but then Rome was not built in a day. A pragmatist buy-in becomes a strong reference in that market segment.

There is no one size fits all when it comes to bringing innovation to market. Knowing your Visionaries, Pragmatists and Conservatives does help and feeds into a sound product and market strategy.

'Fail Fast', a catchphrase that can fail you

Mantras and catch-phrases dominate the management lexicon these days. Consultants, thought leaders and experts use it to condense ideas and popularize them. Business leaders pick it up and go gung-ho with it in their organizations. Before one knows it, catch-phrases start getting applied in literal sense, overshadowing common sense at times... until the next catchphrase arrives.

One of such catchphrase is 'Fail Fast' used in combination with 'Fail Cheap', 'Succeed Faster' etc. However, its 'Fail Fast' that grabs attention the most. Its important to understand the circumstances 'Fail Fast' should not be applied.

• When perseverance is key, keep this catchphrase at bay. For example, while struggling with product-market fit, its tempting to drop ideas/projects if customer feedback is not very encouraging. Or when crossing the chasm, where a slow adoption rate may tempt to shelve the product. Or when working on innovation, which is not a linear journey but a winding road filled with conflicts and struggles.

• When working relationships are to be built. Imagine a company hires an individual/agency to partner on a new initiative. Things do not go well first six months. What does the company do? Fail the partner! And face the same issues all over again. When both the company and the partner are on a journey to something new, its important to communicate, empathize and invest in making the relationship work.

But their are circumstances where 'Fail Fast' catchphrase is relevant. 

• When experiments are required for problem solving. Or when iterations are required in Agile development. In these circumstances Fail Fast is to Learn Fast.

• When its required to galvanize a risk averse management to take on new initiatives without the fear of making mistakes. Fail Fast is to Bounce Back Fast for the management when mistakes are made.

AI for Business Simplified

What is AI? How can it affect my business and industry? What can I do with AI? 

AI is hot and happening these days. Investment activity is high. The research in AI is finding its way into real-life applications. Corporates are waking up to it and are grappling with above questions. Having leveraged AI for business applications, my attempt here is to address above questions in plain language sans buzzwords.

AI simply put is computers doing things normally done by human mind. Hence, by this definition, an AI ..: 

Recognizes and understands like a human

AI technologies are attempting to provide computers the ability like human mind to recognize and understand unstructured inputs like handwritten inputs, natural language, audio, pictures, video and more. The application of these in real world are diverse:

• Understand queries in natural language. Current popular applications are personal assistants like Siri, Cortana, Google Now. However, in future it will extend to work related queries 'Which fastener should I use for ....?' 
• Extract valuable data/information from handwritten documents, audio and video  for analysis. Eg: Handwritten records in regulated industries, Audio and video recordings of experts and executives, Customer feedback.
• Automate management of unstructured data: Imagine an app that goes through all your pictures and videos, identifies the best moments and catalogues them in a timeline and makes a collage out of it. Or a software that organizes lifecycle data of a product/part (say car engine) from paper records and databases.

Social media and consumer tech companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Amazon are leading in such applications since they deal with natural language, pictures, audio & videos.

Interacts/Responds like a human

Enabling machine to converse like humans allows to automate human interaction and improve user experience.

• Customer service, service desk, 'Help and FAQ' can be automated by using chatbots which can understand and respond to queries in natural language. 
• Chatbots can be used for branding. A customer can actually talk to a brand. Eg: Barbie chatbot for interaction with kids.
• Chatbots can be your concierge and advisor: Eg: Book itinerary (flights, taxi, hotel) through chat. Organize and order your shopping. Advice on preparations for special occasions.

Thinks like a human

AI technologies are adding self-learning power to computational power of machines so that they can rival humans in performing specialized tasks. The applications are diverse:

• Gaming: AI have been pitted against humans in Chess and Go. In future Gaming will include AI to make games more adaptive and engaging.
• Driving: Driverless (Tesla, Google,..) and driving assistance (Porsche) vehicles are evolving rapidly.
• Training/Assessment: Recently AI performed better when pitted against a fighter pilot in dog fight simulation. In future, one could imagine AI training humans at specific tasks and also assessing them.    
• Professional services: AI is automating the knowledge and analysis work in legal and financial world. UBS and Goldman Sachs are using AI for both employees and customers.
• Automation in IT industry: Many aspects of software development and testing can be automated with AI. 
• Healthcare: AI will participate/assist in diagnosis, treatment, nursing and follow-up. It will improve overall healthcare quality and reduce costs.
• Shopping: AI will learn buying preferences over time and suggest relevant and interesting products. Will benefit both shoppers and retailers alike.
• Entertainment: Insights into likes and dislikes of individuals and masses will help entertainment industry to put together better storylines and shows.
• Security: AI technologies can learn about anti social elements, terrorists, criminals from past actions and investigations; and predict their behavior and next move.
• Business decision making: Activities like processing data, mathematical analysis, applying frameworks, forecasting can be managed by AI. AI assistants to CXOs are a distinct possibility. And maybe an AI CEO in future. 

Creates like a human

It has been argued that AI can emulate human creativity and art. AI can learn and produce beautiful music, painting, poetry etc.. Recently, Google's Magenta created a 90-second piano melody. The early attempts by AI are tad simple and imperfect but cannot be ignored by art world.

Feels like a human (Self aware)

This is still far-off and in realm of science fiction. If it happens, mankind would have effectively spawned a new intelligent species. The implications of which would be far reaching and best left to imagination for now.


AI technologies & applications are expanding fast and will disrupt businesses, job profiles, our daily work and get more intertwined in our personal life.

Servant Leader : paradoxical but effective leadership style

We are well familiar with autocratic, participative and laissez-faire styles of leadership. They are considered to cover the entire spectrum from controlling to facilitating. Yet, there is another paradoxical approach beyond this spectrum, i.e. a Servant Leader.

Why do we need a Servant Leader? Are the familiar leadership styles not enough. To answer this, let's first understand the relevance of these familiar leadership styles:

• Autocratic leadership: Leader directs and controls the team. Role of every team member is clear and compliance is important to achieve the objective. Eg: Production, Construction, Military
• Participative: The team also participates in the decision making. This works with knowledge workers who are self-motivated and eager to share their ideas. Eg: IT industry
• Laissez-faire: The leader only offers guidance and support. The team members has complete freedom to decide and complete their work. This suits when working with highly skilled and experienced people who are independent. Eg: R&D, Innovation, Creativity works

Other leadership styles like transactional, bureaucratic etc.. also lie in the same spectrum.

There are two basic premise for above leadership styles.

• There is a team in place 
• The leader has some formal authority over the team.

What if the above two premise are taken away? Imagine a situation when one needs to achieve an objective with people over whom he/she has no formal authority, who are in different departments, some of them are experts and some other department head themselves. Each having a day job and independent responsibilities. How does one lead then?

This is where Servant Leader comes in. A Servant Leader is outside the spectrum of above familiar leadership styles because he is the doer first. He/she does not control. Instead he/she inspires support and commitment based on the merit of what he proposes and his work.

Based on my personal experience, servant Leader is very effective in  following conditions:

• The objective is novel and ambitious
• Uncertainty in how to achieve the objective
• Requires specialised knowledge and expertise.
• The team to achieve the objective constitutes other departments, experts and external partners
• Team members have a day job and general lack of time to support outside their regular work

In above conditions, 'leading by doing' works best. The leader gets access to specialised skillset and benefits from expert knowledge of team members. The team members would be more open to contribute without feeling burdened by extra work. The leader will still be in charge, anchoring the whole initiative and steering it. The team members will also act as ambassadors of the project and contribute to overall buy-in within and outside the organisation.

Servant Leader may sound paradoxical but it is very real and works. The usual management education portrays a leader who is sitting on top of his team, is autocratic or benevolent depending upon the situation and the team does the work. Turn this portrayal on its head and you get a Servant Leader who might be sitting at bottom or side of the team and leads by doing.

Being Future ready (contd..): Making active and effective bets rather than passive ones

The previous post on ‘Being Future Ready’ discussed the approach to creating future bets and portfolio. In this post, we pick up from where we left off, i.e. making active bets rather than passive ones.

A technology bet is passive if its being researched and developed in a silo with no link to business and market. A bet on new business model or market segment is passive if its only being explored in powerpoint presentations and reports. Such passive bets are common to organisations with siloed and conventional way of working.

In contrast, an active bet has product/commercial applications and benefits in medium and short term (refer figure below). An active technology bet would see a launch of prototype/demo in short-term and the first product application over mid-term. An active bet on a new market or business model would have a pilot phase in short-term, followed by a commercial offering over mid-term.

For bets in unrelated areas (an unconnected market/industry or technologies), finding a partner is an apt approach. To evaluate and find a right partner in short-term and then work closely with the partner towards field/market test over mid-term. The partnership approach allows to access new capabilities, share risks and gain experience/expertise.

For a company with not so deep pockets, the partnership approach can be extended to core and adjacent areas. This would reduce investment requirements and allow to have a diverse portfolio of bets.

Active bets are easier said than done. It requires an organisation which is tuned to cross-functional, design thinking and agile way of working; collaboration with customers and external parties; and a positive disposition towards risk and failure. Even with best of intentions, it's the organisational readiness which becomes the constraint and an active bet may relegate into passive one.

Being Future ready: creating a Portfolio of Bets

How does one prepare for the future business environment? What new markets will emerge? What kind of products and services will customers pay for? What technologies will disrupt the industry? What will disappear? What will become a commodity? And what will be the new high-margin and value adding areas in future?

Above questions are the key to long term business and product strategy of a company. So how does a company be future ready? There could be four approaches to it.

1. Predict the future accurately and invest for it?
2. Invest in various potential futures scenarios?
3. Evolve as the future unfolds?
4. Shape the future itself?

However, each of the above may not be sufficient in itself.

• As to first point, predicting the future has never been easy. A future is an outcome of complex interactions of several factors, some of which are known today and some are not. For every person who predicts the future correctly (and becomes famous), there are hundreds who get it wrong.
• As to second point, creating several future scenarios is helpful. It improves the probability but still doesn’t guarantee success.
• For the third approach, it’s easy to apply but then the company remains a laggard, a follower, a second-best. It’s not a bad business strategy though. Not every company can be a leader.
• Fourth is a game-changing proposition, but need to be realistic if the company has the required resource and clout to shape the futue.

What could be a realistic and practical approach then? The recommended approach is to create a portfolio of future bets by leveraging the above four approaches. Each bet can be dropped or scaled up in response to business environment. And a dropped bet can be revisited if required.

Following are the three grounds for creating the future bets:

• Future scenario studies based on megatrends,  customer shifts and other factors.
• Emerging or current hot topics so as to evolve with them.
• Own strengths (technological or business). So that company can shape a future where the strength will give a competitive advantage.

Number and size of such bets would also depend on how deep the pockets are of a company.

But what does a company with not so deep pockets can do about it? How to make Active bets rather than just Passive bets? Well… that would be the topic for my next post.

To Pivot, or not to Pivot...that is the question!

'Pivot' implies strategic course correction. Its perhaps the most challenging decision for both startups and corporate innovation projects. Both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs go through this dilemma some or other time. The dilemma is exacerbated when the situation do not seem that bad but is also not getting any better.

To make a good pivot decision, lets understand its business impact areas. From my experience, there are three distinct areas of Pivot:

• Customer: A pivot decision may involve changing the customer segment itself. Eg: Selling it to an intermediary rather than to end consumer, Moving from B2C to B2B,.. 
• Value offering: A pivot decision would be to rethink the offering to customer. Offerings generally evolve based on customer feedback. But sometimes one may have to change the offering completely. Eg: Selling platform rather than the content on it. 
• Technology: The technology behind the offering may have to be changed sometimes. This is perhaps the most common pivot decision and logical to arrive at compared to the above two.

Pivots are necessary to identify the right approach to grow the business, whether its a startup or corporate business development. 

However, its the cost of Pivot that discourage people from doing it. How can we reduce the cost of Pivot? How can we take a peek in the future post Pivot?

• One way to reduce the cost is to develop MVPs (Minimum Viable Product). Building an MVP over an existing product does not cost much. Sometimes MVP can be a mockup with less automation and more manual backend support. MVPs can be used to get feedback from new customers, get feedback on a new offering and/or a new technology. 
• Also to reduce cost, Pivot needs to applied judiciously. It cannot be a blind exploration exercise or a leap of faith. To identify potential Pivot opportunities, a value mapping exercise on paper is useful, followed by taking the feedback from the customer. Its important to clarify with the customer his willingness to pay for proposed product/service.

Another hurdle for Pivot is more of human nature. To love one's ideas so much so to not consider Pivot as an option. I will not call it as human weakness because such passion is required for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to succeed. Its the role of mentors then to help them see the reason and guide them.


To Pivot, or not to Pivot?.. Is not a reactive approach, but a proactive question that needs to be asked from time to time, especially when in predicament by flat-lining sales/profit and a mediocre situation.

B2B Marketing: transitioning from Messaging to Dialogue

A customers needs supplier as much as a supplier needs customer. Yet, the process of discovering each other is fraught with pitfalls. Having experienced B2B buying cycle from both sides (supplier and customer), its insightful to see how the information asymmetry impacts the success of B2B marketing. The customer has the information of its needs(both explicit and implicit). Gaining this insight and closing the information asymmetry is key to the success of a B2B supplier/company. 

A B2B company instead relies on one-way messaging to customers and closes the information asymmetry other way around. In Push marketing stage, a company is busy advertising its offering and same messaging is carried over in Pull marketing when dealing with queries from customers. Emphasis is on expanding the media mix to include blogs, social media, conferences and others. But the nature and content doesn't change, often to maintain 'consistency' in marketing messages.

The way to gain information symmetry is to enter into a Dialogue with customer. To pick the brains of the customers, to seek their views, to brainstorm with them and to be genuinely interested in understanding their needs. Opportunities for dialogue can be created within push and pull marketing stages. For example, instead of highlighting product features at a conference, storytell a future vision and how is your company contributing to it. When customer reaches out with queries, try to meet him (not as salesman but) as a fellow professional to offer guidance. Rather than just posting messages, use social media to start a dialogue.

I would conclude by citing an outcome from McKinsey study on B2B companies. The top quality that is appreciated most by customers (700 global executives) is 'Cares about honest, open dialogue with its customers and society'. And surprisingly, the above quality was missing in brand messaging of surveyed B2B companies.