3 Golden Rules of Innovation - My Experience

Hello Friends,


The market is changing frantically, making it more aligned to the changing needs of the customers.

But the true thing is there is a bigger picture which is created due to percolating mentality of the higher management which conceives the innovation. The term "innovation" is changing in recent days and its mainly due to the remorse mentality and pale focus towards the new trends.

Now the million dollar question rises that is innovation is heading towards the right direction or its just a term which is still in the process of understanding?

The answer lies in the attitude of the people. It applies to all the people in the pyramid right from the bottom to the top. Every member should be actively involved in the creation of the new innovative business process or service implementation.

Journey from Deception to Real Innovation:

I might sound weird but this is what I have faced in my 2.5+ years of experience in Telecom Innovation Lab of Tata Consultancy Service. When there is any kind of incubation of idea, there is always some kind of inconsistency arises between the business alignment and the success of the innovation. People often makes fun of you by saying that innovation is too big thing for the freshers like you.

It made me wonder that why people cultivate such kind of mentality. People usually thinks that innovation is the duty of scientists or PhD people. If you do not have that knowledge, you are not fit to innovate the idea or create new things. 

By this thoughts, you are blocking the process of innovation and creating a mindset among the fresh minds to follow linear thinking rather than trying for unconventional approach towards the problem. The aspect of lateral thinking comes to a complete standstill and your mind gets rusted with the routine work.

Everyone says that to stay fit, you need to do exercise. But the same thing applies to your brain. We never try to question things, and by any means, try to question the process, are made fun by our friends. They often says that you are not Newton or Einstein that you will discover things.

I just want to say them one thing. NO, I am not a scientist but I have every right to use my knowledge which I have gained over these years and question the existing process. Sometimes, a stupid thought can create new innovative business model. You just need to think out of the box.

Measuring Innovation:

The second problem which I have faced is to quantify innovation. Guys, wake up. You need to understand that there in never a timeline for innovation. You just cannot put a gun of some one's head and make sure that there is innovative idea in return. You just cannot get things back in a specific time frame. You need patience to get the desired results. This lead to one complicated theory. The characters include higher management who funds the innovation and the people  who has the duty to find new things and to innovate.

Fostering innovation is a difficult process and it becomes complicated when external factors like business model creation comes into picture. You just cannot find a business model on every innovation. Its the first step to improve the process. Once the process significantly improves, there will be visible amount of profit for the company.

Avoid Vicious Circle in Ideation:

This is also one of the bigger aspect of ideation procedure. People who are amateur or highly experts tend to involve so much into the process that they tend to repeat the mistakes again and again. They try to evolve the idea on the same lines without thinking anything new. 

The only way to avoid this, is to just get a break and try to read about other's innovative ideas and try to mould your thoughts on their aspects. You can ask question to yourself for the success of various ideas and their evolution. This will give you a way to think beyond your scope and you will improve significantly.

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I would like to say one more thing. 

No One Is Born Brilliant. Its The Knowledge Which Gives You Power To Think "Out Of The Box". Use It Wisely.

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Hardik Upadhyay

© Techbiz Research

Twitter - @HardikUpadhyay

Facebook - Hardik Upadhyay

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3 Mistakes of Google's Life - Part 2

Hello Friends,

Hope that you liked the previous part of the Google's Mistake. Now let me take you to the last product which was a disappointment for Google.

3. Google Buzz:

Google Buzz was launched in Feb 2010. It was not a great launch but still it created a lot of buzz around when it was launched (Obviously, it was a google's product. So it has to be) But still, I feel that there is some amount of error which Google committed while launching the product in the market. Few reasons which I feel are as follows:

• Wrong Product Launch At Wrong Time:

I had faith in Google as it is known to launch the product range at correct time. If they want to do some more research, then they will put the product in "Beta" and just let the users test it through Google Labs. But this was not in the case of Google Buzz. They were in hurry to launch the new product and they were under immense pressure from the higher management to launch an assault against Facebook and Twitter. 

This made it clear that they will be facing lot of issues when they launch the product initially. This was a biggest drawback for Buzz.

• Privacy.....:

Google totally forgot one term while launching Google Buzz. PRIVACY....

You wont believe, it just picked up people from your mailing list and automatically followed them or made them follow you. So your privacy is totally F***ed up. They did not even gave a thought about it. Only thing was there in their mind is to make it compete with Facebook just within weeks of launch of product.

Due to this hasty decision, Google faced lawsuit. This was also a kind of setback for Google.

Sorry... Facebook was not created in one day!!!!!

• Gmail?? Wrong Place Boss!!!!:

Buzz was still into making. Google was wondering that the product is ready (Just a thought even though it was not. This usually happens when you develop a software) so what shall we do now? Which is the best way to launch? 

They were thinking of a best platform for this highly innovative product. So the second best product of Google was selected and used to launch their product (GMAIL). 

So one fine day, when everyone woke up, they found a new application next to their inbox and showing people whom they mailed and were in their group... WTF!!!  You should have asked me at least. Anyway, the public reviews were taken into consideration and few changes were done. But I guess the damage was done. No turning back for them.

• Google Profile - Prime Requirement: 

Lot of people will disagree with me if I say that creation of google profile was not a bad option. But believe me friends, there were a significant amount of people who hated to create google profile.

In fact, its very true, why should I create a profile to use some product which is linked to my mail. It already has my details. 

Google is known to connect different application by single id but still it was not able to fetch details from orkut, google chat, you tube or any other sites. May be they would have some other thought in mind. But sorry, I was not able to digest their requirement. So I guess, it was one of the mistake of Google Buzz business model.

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I hope you all like the review. Sorry, if I have been some what harsh on Google, but do not forget that Google has given this world lot of things which will not be easy for any other companies to recreate. And every business needs risks. Some give returns and some does not. But we should move on!!!!!

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 Hardik Upadhyay

© Techbiz Research

Twitter - @HardikUpadhyay

Facebook - Hardik Upadhyay

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3 Mistakes of Google's Life - Part 1

Hi Friends,

Google is one of the most innovative company I have ever seen. They start new services and generate new products which are unique and best in the market. 

The best part of Google is - They are never afraid to venture in new areas and they always redefine the word "Innovation". Google implement new business model in the unique way which is totally aligned to the customer requirements.

Best part of Google:

• They think from end user perspective.
• Google thinks about 5 years in advance. ( I am saying this because google recently got patent for location based advertisement. The application for the patent was filed in 2005. This shows that they think every service from future perspective.)

But one thing I should admit that they have come across a lot of failed business models and they are trying hard to come over it. The only thing that stops Google in achieving this is their failed business models in few of their products.

Two Products which I would like to discuss today in this blog.

       1. Google Phone - Nexus One

Google hyped about the phone in spring 2007. It took around one and a half year for Google to create a phone. Google launched nexus one on Jan 04 2010. It was a great time to launch smart phone. Smartphone market was booming and at the same time, android was also on the peak. But there was some problem in the business model which google approached to market their phone.

• Online Selling Only : Google took this approach to sell their phone online without using any kind of store. This was the major setback from the customer's perspective. There was a lukewarm response in the booking process. The reason is customer are much comfortable with computers and ipods, but when it comes to mobile, they want to touch and feel it before purchasing it.
• Lack of Marketing : This was another shot in the arm of Google. Google missed to advertise their phone. This was accepted but along with that, they missed the various channels of marketing. There was no viral marketing of the product before the launch which was a major setback.
• Initial Reviews: Google kept mum on the initial bad reviews of the phone. Instead of taking actions on improvements, they were just waiting for the user to accept without their assurance. This created more rave reviews and they slumped more in gathering market share.
• Technical Support and Customer Service: Google missed this thing by a great margin. They followed the website and online support in case of phone. F.A.Q support will not help in case of phone selling, Google should have understood it. But they did not know that phone selling needs good customer care support and other technical services. I guess Google should rethink their service and support approach if they want to improve.

There are lot of other reasons also, but if Google would have focused on these things, they would not have faced the shame.

I can only wish one thing. Google should learn from its past mistakes and should not repeat the thing when they launch Google Tablet or Google Chrome OS.

        2. Google Wave:

One more classic product from Google. It was one of the most hyped product from Google and it was creating lot of waves in the year 2009. It was the most awaited product from Google in 2009. People kept their fingers crossed for the launch of the product. But when the product launched, it was the disappointment.

People started wondering what is the product all about. It was no way related to their use and it was not able to meet their expectations.

Reasons for the failure of Google Wave:

• More Futuristic Thinking: When you are targeting a product to the whole world, you should think of billion people who lacks advanced computer knowledge like the people from Google Labs. :) Google thought of things which are far from normal Internet user's understanding. 
• Privacy Policy Analysis: The worst part of Google Wave was privacy policy. The wave created is always public and anyone can join anybody in the personal wave. Google should have learnt from the issues which were burning around facebook and twitter.
• Lack of Applications: Wave had very very limited amount of applications which restricted the user to try and analyze the wave as a product.
• Creating a requirement for the customer: Any product, it you want to market, there should be a way to market. To achieve this, there should be a need from the customer for that kind of product. Google did not analyzed the market and assumed things and launched the product. This was the setback for them.

Google is known to learn from its past mistakes but I guess they repeated the same thing in another product which was in pipeline.

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Thats all for this part friends, few of the other products which added feather to Google will be included in the next part.

Till then, Keep reading my blog.

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Hardik Upadhyay

© Techbiz Research

Twitter - @HardikUpadhyay

Facebook - Hardik Upadhyay

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Back And Rejuvenated

Hi Friends,

I have been out of regular blogging from a long time. But now onwards, I will be blogging regularly.

Lot of things changed in last few days. New products were launched, new business ventures were established, new telecom trends and new controversies were emerged.

I found one thing which did not change is the greed of mine to know new business trends and innovations throughout various technological dimensions.

I will be putting the trends and acute analysis on the on new and emerging business models. I will keep you posted with new happenings and buzz in the technological industry across the globe.

I would be promoting my blog and expect the readers to comment on the same if you like my article. Please do follow me and all your suggestions to improve the blog are welcome.

You can add me on facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/hardik.upadhyay

Also you can follow me on twitter - http://twitter.com/hardikupadhyay

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Hardik Upadhyay
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Cisco's New Venture Opportunities

Cisco has been taking some serious decisions now a days. They are into lot of new fields and are aggressive on taking decisions to venture in the untapped 2G/3G/4G markets of telecommunication.

Recently Cisco are in the buying spree. They bought Tandberg and Starent. After all this fiasco, last week they started to enter mobile communication market by launching ASR 5000 a product with combined expertise of Starent and Cisco.

Now they are into all these, we have to think about their future market.

The answer is very clear, cisco is far ahead of avaya and Qualcomm. These companies are trying hard to compete with Cisco but they are not getting success. They are beating the bush and getting nothing in return. Cisco already holds the good position in the communication market with its wide range of products.

Today, I am going to discuss about the possibility of Cisco's venture in making the education system more proficient, transparent and efficient.

Cisco's Education System:

Key Players:

Cisco's Telepresence

Avaya's VoiP service

Prometric / Pearson CBT

Now on hearing this, we can conclude to few things and can start imagine how the situation of education industry will be once these companies start their combined enterprise application for the education field.

Current scenario:

People register online Computer Based Test (CBT) and gives exam. Now there is lot of market for making exams online and computer based. The opportunities are vast and its easier for the students to get through the exam.

But what if there is more added flavor to this exam. What if Cisco and Avaya pitches into this solution.

Future:

Imagine you are going for an interview. You can apply and confirm your job from any location. You can give online test for interview and can also attend the interview by the help of cisco's telepresence.

Globalization?

Yes, it will make sure that world is moving towards globalization. Here we are seeing the wider aspect of the market. The companies and their HR policies are putting their lot of effort in improving a sustainable future model for hiring new employees. So if this system works well, they will be more than happy to get the product.

IT companies like TCS and Infosys will be grateful to implement this solution when they are planning to hire around 50,000 people in one year.

This is a Win-Win situation for all the stakeholders in the current scenario.

Hopefully this will turn out to be fruitful and will get implemented very soon.

Hype and Aura before Apple Event Jan 2010

Wow,

You wont believe how I feel writing just few hours before the launch of Apple Event 2010. The theme of this event is "Come See our creation".

But this creation is not just a simple creation. Apple "Might" be launching their much awaited and much hyped tablet at this event.

Apple are the masters of disguise and they have the most secret way of promoting their product. They have a very good history of launching products right from Mac, iPod, iTouch and to iPhone.

Now when Steve Jobs is back in the gang of Apple, this event wont be a simple event. It will revolutionize the market and it will create ripples in the market creating new trends.

Apple is already on the upper side by having almost 99.4% of market share in App market.

After the launch of Apple iTablet, this sector of apps will be highly competitive.

Currently the market is very cautious about the move of Apple in the Silicon Valley. Amazon has already started to take defensive steps against the launch of apple.

Also there are lot of sources which confirmed the launch of apple much awaited iTablet.

Few things which should be seen for in this event are:

• New iPhone version which will have much more added functionality
• LAUNCH of iTablet by apple. Let Steve Jobs rock the stage.
• App store revamp by Apple
• iTunes moved to cloud or its future roadmap.

But all this things might create a kind of illusion for the future trends. We have already seen the outcome of Nexus One by Google. But the same thing cannot be expected from Apple. They are the masters.

Lets hope what Apple has in its kitty for us. All this things will be disclosed to us in next few hours.

I will be updating all the things in my blog. Also you can follow me on twitter @hardikupadhyay for real time updates.

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Hardik Upadhyay

Real Time Web?? Now its Real Time - Ads

Hi All,

There is a lot of buzz around for lot of products and services which are creating a cloud of hype in the technology field. Search engines are trying hard to get the real time information on your webpage as soon as possible.

Google and Bing made the deal with real time information source Twitter and on the basis of it, Twitter posted a good amount of profit in 2009. Now this search engines are not satisfied. They want to make revenue also. But ads are the old things.

Now they are trying to get money for the "Real Time advertisements"

This is done by several algorithms and sources. They are taking the trending topics from the internet and showing it to the clients.

Basis of this, they will display advertisements.

Eg: Trending topics - Michael Jackson, Brittany Murphy, Santa Claus, Christmas, etc.

Now the advertisements will be generated based on the trending topics like get the Santa gift for Christmas. Go for shopping at amazon.com

One Riot has already started to implement this thing. You can check it out from the image below.

Also Google is trying to implement this idea in much better format. They are trying to implement better model of this advertisement by using local trends and location based service.

My ideas regarding implementation - If Google implements real time advertisements. 

• Twitter real time results
• Google Trends
• Social Circle Results
• Location Based Results
• News Agency based results
• Personalized web history results
  

Now if the user logs in google account, all the above things will be analyzed by google and will be used to create proper results which are oriented to user to get more clicks.

For more information regarding this topic, you are free to mail me.

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Hardik Upadhyay

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Indian Mobile Subscriber Base - August 2009

Hi,

Again I am here with the statistics of Indian Telecom Market ending July 2009.

India adds 14.38 m wireless users in July.

India's telecom industry is growing at a rapid pace. You can check the subscriber base details of previous months from my blog.

India added 14.4 million new mobile subscribers in July, bringing the total number of mobile subscribers in the country to 442 million, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said on Thursday.

The demand for mobile phones has been growing despite an economic downturn because Indians view mobile phones as a necessity, said analyst firm IDC India. The increase in July can also be attributed to new rollouts by some service providers and a focus by large operators on rural markets.

The country added 12 million new subscribers in June. The number of fixed line subscribers in the country continued to decline from 37.54 million in June to 37.41 million in July.

The country's largest mobile operator, Bharti Airtel, added 2.8 million subscribers in July for a total of 105 million subscribers. Reliance Communications, the second largest player, added 2.4 million subscribers, bringing its total up to 82 million.

Tata Teleservices, which is rolling out its GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) services under the Tata DoCoMo brand, saw the number of subscribers for its GSM and CDMA services grow by 2.3 million to 39.4 million in July.

Tata Teleservices added 624,905 subscribers in June. NTT DoCoMo holds a 26 percent stake in the company.
State-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam added 1.6 million mobile subscribers in July, taking its total to 56 million.

Indian mobile operators and handset makers are targeting India's rural markets. Nokia announced this week plans to launch micro-finance schemes across rural areas in 12 Indian states. The plan means people can buy a handset and pay it off in weekly installments for as little as 100 Indian rupees (US$2).


Analyst firms such as Gartner, however, describe India's rural market as low margin and too geographically spread out to be comparable to the country's urban market.

While the total wireless—GSM, CDMA and WLL (F)—subscriber base stood at 441.66 million in July, the wireline connections declined by 0.13 million to 37.41 million during the month.

The broadband subscriber base reached the 6.80 million million mark. India's mobile user base rose 25 times in the last five years and research firm Gartner expects it to touch 737 million by 2012.

Will keep you guys updated with latest news about Indian Telecom Industry.


Copyright © Hardik Upadhyay

You can follow me on TWITTER

JSK

Telecom Market Overview - Part 2

Hi Folks,

After a long time I am updating my blog. I would like to continue with my previous article in the changing mobile market scenario.

In recent days, I found one very interesting thing. The concept of "Pay-Per-Use".

Pay Per Use Strategy:

The ‘Pay-per-use’ model represents a paradigm shift in the overall telecom experience. It allows the consumer to pay only for the seconds utilized, heralding another revolution in the mobile telecommunications industry, not only in India but all over the world. This business model will help user to pay money only for the amount which the customer has actually used.

Previously, they were following the concept of 'Pay-for-all' but there was no profit related to it. The customer was using this because there was no competition. But now the scenario has changed. New companies are coming to market with very innovative strategy.

Rise of TATA-DOCOMO:

Tata-Docomo is a joint GSM service provided by TATA teleservices of India and NTT Docomo of Japan. They started a GSM service in India. But what is so special about this? The answer is the innovative model "Pay-Per-Use".

The pricing model is very innovative. They charged only 1paise/sec. Wow!! Isnt it interesting? Ofcourse it is. The proof is clearly visible from the next line.

Tata Docomo, the GSM-based mobile services of Tata Teleservices, on Aug 7 2009 said it has crossed the 5 lakh-subscriber mark in Tamil Nadu within a month of launching its services in the region.

"We are focussing strongly on network superiority, coverage and service offerings... Tata Docomo will soon unveil a portfolio of value-added services that will reinvent mobile telephony in India, with products and services like free voicemail, timed SMS service, free missed call alerts and call-me tunes" - Tata Docomo Strategy

Problem with this NEW model:

The following are the problems which I thought which will give jitters to TSP.

• Cheap mobile cost and cheap pricing strategy. Will it reduce overall ARPU?
• Is the pricing model beneficial for the TSP?
• Complicated billing engine?
• Real time pulse calculation and phone usage?
• What is in it for the TSP?
• What is the Return On Investment (ROI)?

The answer to these questions are bit complicated and not much clear. As per the recent press release, the company said that they are in loss currently. And the balance sheet is supposed to be in red for this financial year. The company might come out of this losses by the end of 2010.

But the main benefit was due to the joint venture. TATA teleservices has lot of infrastructure which is not a problem for them. Same goes with NTT Docomo. They have designed the most complicated billing engine. So it wont be a problem for them too.

It will reduce the ARPU in the initial stage as people will talk less and they are likely to get more benefit. But as the time pass, people will be increase in the call usage.

Ntt-Docomo uses iMode technology and possess state of art technology especially in the billing side. They will make most of the use for it and get more profit.

So try to give thought about this technology and business model. If you have any comments do contact me.

Copyright © Hardik Upadhyay

You can follow me on TWITTER

JSK

Tech Companies "GROWING IN TOUGH TIMES"

Technical companies have already laid the foundation in this part of time. They have proved themselves as the horse of the long race. I am not saying because I am a technocrat but it is been said by their quarter results.

Lot of people expected it to be a simple outcome of sales. But the true story was totally different. It was the mashup of lot of things. It was expected by the market analyst that they will perform well but this much?? One would wonder that in this era of recession, if they are able to outperform many of the companies, then what will be the future?

I would like to discuss about few companies which I think that they need a round of applause.

1. Apple

"Apple"

Wow!! what a term. Have you ever tried to do an image search by the term apple in google? If not, try it. You will find out that how much this company has taken over the software industry. They have changed the meaning of the term apple. They are the leaders in innovation and technology. They know what they are doing and what they should do in the coming years to survive this tough time. I am saying all this good things about apple not because they have come up with most innovative product like iPhone and iPod but its the total company which comes out to be a winner. Take any product of apple starting form Mac desktop, Mac OS, iPhone, iPod and last but not the least, software like iTunes and Safari. Every product can be termed as the masterpiece. It has excelled the expectation of all the people. So they are surely winners in this tough time.

Their quarter results also says the same thing. Apple, the closest thing the tech industry has to a luxury brand, said earnings for the three months that ended June 27 jumped 15 percent to $1.23 billion, or $1.35 per share. Apple's profit was $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per share, in the same period last year. Apple sold more than 5.2 million iPhones in the quarter, more than seven times what it sold in the 2008 quarter, thanks in part to a newly released version of the device. I guess this all things tells the total story.

2. Google

Google has taken the world by storm. They have been in the news almost daily. Everyone will be reading about google coming up with some mashup of web technologies like "WAVE" or suddenly they will announce that they will be releasing the operating system for netbook named "Google Chrome OS". Also suddenly at one fine day, they will move many of their applications out of beta or they will announce about new android SDK and phones.

Google has designed a beautifully crafted business strategy to take over their competitors. I guess you know who....

But still, they are riding high on this scenario and getting the most out of it. Their google labs is working 24x7 as they are coming up with lot of products. If you see the small things in google search, you will be amazed to think how it would have been done. Google is indeed one company which will be there for a long time.

Google Inc. made more money than ever in the second quarter, even though its revenue growth slowed like never before. Its second-quarter profit rose 19 percent to $1.48 billion, or $4.66 per share - the highest net income for any three-month period since Google went public in five years ago. Google ended June with 19,786 employees, 378 fewer than at the end of March.

3. Tech pillars of India - TCS, Infosys & Wipro

The software industry has flourished in India exponentially. India was supposed to be an agricultural country but now the whole scenario has changed. More and more focus is given on the software industry which has shown tremendous growth in recent times. They are showing the profit of around 11 % to 20%.

All these companies have shown that they have tremendous potential for getting success and they are trying hard to come out of this tough times. They have made it clear that recession will not affect Indian software industry very easily. They know how this business runs and they are taking it very seriously.

I guess in the near future their strategy will change but it will all be good for India.

So this was all about the technological companies which will be making the future bright for us.

For more information, you can follow me on twitter : http://twitter.com/hardikupadhyay Or can read my blog: http://hardikupadhyay.blogspot.com/

Also you can mail me at : hardik2447@gmail.com

JSK