Pattie Maes & Pranav Mistry - Technology In Sixth Sense

Amazing!

You might also want to read this interview with Pranav Mistry, the genius behind 6th Sense.

What's on your mind now?

Elizabeth Gilbert on the creative process

You have written the ultimate best-seller or produced the top of the charts song or created the best ad campaign. How about an encore? More importantly, what is behind the success of any creative process?

Find out from Elizabeth Gilbert. This speech is awesome. (Courtesy: Metacool)

Can a healthy dose of idealism (in a skeptical world) help redefine markets?

Sometime in the 90’s, my then boss told me that he had taken his octogenarian father to Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai for a serious surgery.

My spontaneous response was, “Aravind in Madurai? Isn’t that a hospital for the poor?” I meant by this ignorant remark - poor quality, lousy service and above all how could one go to a small town hospital for a major surgery. My boss simply told me that they were the best and his father had recovered in record time. That was my introduction to Aravind.

Couple of years ago, C.K.Prahlad, the guru of strategy in his famous book ‘Fortune at the bottom of the pyramid’ devoted a full chapter on Aravind Eye Hospital and termed it as a Centre of Excellence. That is like winning the Nobel.

Aravind started by a retired professor, Dr.G.Venkataswamy, who wanted to provide world-class eye care to eradicate needless blindness. This is made possible by a Trust and a team of dedicated staff. The poor are treated free of cost and nor do they over-charge the rich. The fact that they do not depend on Government dole and meet all their financial requirements themselves makes their story even more amazing. From a small hospital in 1976 they have expanded to other towns in the state of Tamil Nadu and along the way treated millions of people.

Aravind is like a breath of fresh air that has completely redefined hospitalization and bucked the unholy trend of ‘corporatization’ that has crept into this noble field. In fact ‘corporatization’ is increasingly taking medical care out of reach of the poor and even the salaried class. Aravind is a case of idealism and profits working in tandem for a greater good.

In this connection, I cannot help talking about Mozilla Firefox. Here’s a browser created by developers from around the world with a simple goal – the best browser made available to everyone for free. Firefox has become a rage amongst users. It might never be able to overtake Internet Explorer, but that is okay. Its growing popularity (and that of others) has made IE uneasy enough to launch newer versions of their browser to stay ahead.

There is one aspect of Mozilla Firefox that I know nothing about – its revenue model, if any. If someone can throw light on this, I will be extremely grateful. Revenue or not, Mozilla Firefox is a case of idealism that has challenged a monopoly and thereby changed the landscape of browsing.

Then there is this interesting organization called 'Better Place' founded by Shai Agassi. Their noble ideal is to ‘Create a world free of oil’ and thereby heal the battered environment. They are building an electric car company and an electricity distribution network to charge the cars anywhere, anytime. Mobile and mobile networks are the inspiration behind their business model. The fact that countries like Denmark, Israel, Australia and the Bay Area of California are partnering ‘Better Place’ reinforces their growing popularity. Thomas Friedman even warns that Detroit might have missed the bus (or car) and therefore might lose out completely in the long run.

I wish countries like India actively adopted the model that Better Place has created. It could mean reduced dependence on fossil fuels (and thereby saving precious foreign exchange) and much less pollution to choke our lungs. Nothing much can be done about the choking of roads though.

In all this, am I confusing idealism for vision?

Probably yes. I would prefer to treat it as matter of semantics at this point in time.

What I meant by idealism in the cases mentioned above (and many such) was that doing good to a vast majority of people was the starting point for the creation of the product or service. Everything else followed thereafter.

Therefore, can idealism help redefine markets?

Yes, because doing good for people can actually be good marketing provided:

1 The product or service should be world-class which lives and breathes the ideal

2 It should completely overturn existing models in their respective category

3 This is not a CSR initiative. In most cases CSR is just a halo effect that organizations try to create for themselves. An earlier post of mine talked about this.

Finally, it was not very long ago that idealism and foolish were mentioned in the same breath. Now I suspect increasingly idealism will play an important role in driving economic growth. The current economic situation has made people cynical of things ‘business or corporate’ in nature. However, someone breathing idealism and ideas might be just what the doctor ordered.

For example, the financing activities of the housing sector was the starting point for the beginning of market collapse. The same housing sector with a dose of idealism can see its revival and that of the economy. This could be in the form of low cost, eco friendly mass housing projects (I don’t know the economics of it though) I can also think of Education as another area that the world could benefit with a radical approach.

Idealism plus action in business can probably save the world.

Now, am I being too idealistic or what?

(Image courtesy: Ivet Angelova)

Lay's Chips - Happiness is simple

So is the communication and the chips. Blogworld is abuzz with the ads created for the humble potato chips from Lay's by this very interesting and talented agency, Juniper Park. See the ad below and learn all about the campaign from Jason Oke.



While you are at it, also read this (again by Jason Oke) very amazing initiative on the part of Lay's to rope in more women to snacking with 'A Womans World'. Apparently, the trailer below has more than a million views on YouTube. Enjoy!

Gandhi and Marketing

Is there a better description of what a great service, great marketing ought to be?

You will find this in most government offices in India. I mean the message, not the practice.

(Image courtesy: Navel Marketing)

Mobile - The 7th of Mass Media

Read more such astounding facts from Tomi Ahonen – a best selling author, consultant on digital convergence and mobile telecoms. He has termed mobile as the 7^th of Mass Media – the other six being print, recordings, cinema, radio, TV and the internet.

Any talk of mobile phones cannot be without mentioning the iconic iPhone. There is a team of hackers spread across the world – called iPhone Dev Team - whose single-minded mission is to rip the iPhone apart to identify potential problems (or even innovations) and make it work for everyone. And they do this for free. This is destruction for creation. Learn all about this awesome team in this interview. And for more Apple related stuff, you can always go to ‘the unofficial Apple weblog’.

Out here in India we have a body that is also into destruction, minus the creation. We call it the Government.

Top Ten I Wish I Had Written This

‘I like them and my gut says so’ is the only criteria for the selection of the posts mentioned below which I came across during my random browsing. They are not in any order of priority. Hope you like them as much as I did. I also invite suggestions and directions to more such posts – including yours - as I intend to make it a regular feature.

• Great Ideas: Platforms for value creation Vs platforms for creative executions
  

Great brands are built on the value they create for the consumer. This is achieved by ‘doing’ rather than ‘talking’. A fact brilliantly stated by Adrian Ho.

• Revelations and insight
  

‘Insight’ is a revelation according to the author (Aditerate). Not only does it tell you what an insight is but also tells you where you are most likely to find it.

• Creativity and the rise of optimism

Paul Bennett feels that creativity is about collaboration - this is more than ever true now than ever before because of the troubled economic times. He urges businesses (and people) to share, to give - ‘doing good begets doing good’. He should know. He is a Chief Creative Officer at IDEO.

• Ignore everybody

‘Ignore everybody’ is the first point in ‘How to be creative’ by Hugh Macleod (Gaping Void) and it rolls thereafter with one useful tip after another. This is a very old post and the best part is that it is getting published as a book sometime this year.

• Rock logic vs Water logic

‘Try everything and see where it goes’ is the inspiring line in this outstanding post by Dave Trott. With enough examples from people who have dared, Dave Trott tells us that we have to explore to succeed.

• The role of messy in social media
  

Sean Howard (CrapHammer) writes about the need to be ‘messy’ in order to enable conversations. I think this is not only true of the social media space but also advertising.

• Bet on the future

By telling the story of how Rockefeller Center was created during the great depression and became successful in spite of the odds against it, Faris gives us all a message of hope in these unsure times.

• More on Twitter is my Submarine

Here’s a simple piece by J.P.Rangaswami, whom I discovered courtesy Chris Brogan, on why he likes Twitter. He uses the analogy of a submarine to make his point.

• Love (and annoying)

Seth Godin, explains the difference between doing things people love and between doing things people like (less annoying) and why one cannot try to do both. And great brands do things people love.

• So long, and thanks for all the fish

This is a farewell post as Editor by Gina Trapani who founded and created lifehacker.com into the force it has become. It is an inspirational piece especially for struggling bloggers like me.

PS: When I ran the idea of this post past a good friend of mine, he said that the title should be “Top Ten I wish I had written this, but alas can’t!”

(Image courtesy: Johan Jonsson)