Necessity, the mother of invention?

Is necessity truly the mother of invention? Or, do we invent needs?

Today, Sony announced a breakthrough in TV technology, with a working model of a flat-screen, thin full-color screen that bends like a piece of paper! It has been reported that Sony is yet to decide how it will commercialize this innovation. A wearable TV-fabric and wrist-wrap TV are amongst some early application ideas being bounced about. One thing can be certain, once Sony invents a need, the anticipated customer demand will accelerate the creation of complementing products and programming to piggy back on this technology.

For all the technical innovation in broadcasting technology supported by FCC mandates on High Definition transmission, the form factor of current display unit limits where and how one can enjoy the medium and the message. Plasma TVs are bulky and fragile, while LCDs have viewing angle limitations. We end up getting these newer generation TV's and hosting them in a 19th century fashion, rooted to a spot around which we congregate; rather than having the flexibility of letting the TV follow us to where we want to 'enjoy' it.

Ideal application? Thin-screen large TVs that weigh no more than 5 pounds, wall mountable on simple picture-frame mounts, with user-swappable designer frames with fully-integrated HD antennas, wireless connectivity with peripheral AV equipment and powered by rechargeable batteries that can be swapped out. Further, imagine if TV's became as portable as laptops and reach the level of personalization that we are used to with computing technology. We might take to switching TV sets out as fast as we switch the channels on the flipper!

That, indeed, would be a need invented.

Of course, when you head over to TiECON East 2007, you will get to hear about The War for the Digital Home with Rod Randall (Partner, Vesbridge Partners), Nandhu Nandhakumar (SVP, LG Electronics), Jeff Binder (Senior Director, Motorola), Gunjan Bhow (VP, Marketing & Product Mgt, Actiontec Electronics), Ofer Vilenski (CEO, Jung Software) and Brian Mahony (VP, Marketing, Espial) sharing their thoughts on Saturday June 16th.

The conference starts at 6 PM on Thursday, June 14 at the Hynes Convention Center with Reed Hunt, Intel Board Member / Former FCC Chairman / Author kicking off the event.

Can you afford to miss this and spend the next 365 days until the next TiECON fretting over it?

sai at obviousideas dot com

Vroooomm – are we Ready for the Electric Muscle Car ?

Take a look at this video. It is really cool – if you blink you might miss the motorbike disappearing in a puff of smoke in the distance going 155 mph on the straightaway at the Firebird Speedway in Arizona.


Well that would not be that earth shattering if it weren’t for the fact that this motorbike was running on electricity. Electricity off of 990 Li-ion cells from A123 Systems delivering over 350 HP !! According to KillaCycle’s website, they can recharge the 161 pounds of batteries in a few minutes between runs using less than 10 cents of electricity.

Well you won’t see the KillaCycle but you do have a chance to hear David Vieau, CEO of A123 Systems speak at TIECON on June 15th and tell you all about where the next generation of battery technology, that powers these vehicles, is going.

Fast electric vehicles are not just for extreme hobbyists. The Tesla, unveiled earlier this year, promises to bring a high end, high performance electric vehicle to market in the next year. With a price tag north of 90,000 dollars, they have sold over 350 cars even before the first production model hits the streets. And speaking of hitting the streets, this baby can go from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds flat.



And if that was not enough, how about a battle of the supercars ! Here is a prototype electric car, the X-1 from Wrightspeed that takes on a Ferrari and a Porsche and leaves them in the dust.



If speed is what turns you on, there is even a site for Drag racing Electrics - http://nedra.com/ You can see more of these electric rockets there.

If you want to find out what’s next with state of the art energy and electric technology, then TIECON EAST in Boston is the place to be. Hope we see you there.

Raj Melville

Innovate or Imitate...Fame or Fortune?

Contributed by Don Dodge, Microsoft's Emerging Business Team

Innovation drives our industry, attracts the best talent, attracts VC money, and wins fame for its leaders. Innovation leaders burst onto the scene, win early market leadership, but sometimes can't sustain the pace. Why do "fast followers" often jump in later and make fortunes? Is management responsible for the success or failure?

I have been on the leading edge, sometimes bleeding edge, of technology for most of my career. I have been fortunate to be part of start-up teams that have created "first-of-its-kind" innovations at companies like Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks. All of these companies were first in their field, yet few of them realized the financial rewards one would expect. Is it all timing and luck? I don't think so.

Before exploring the reasons for success or failure lets review a list of innovation leaders and fast followers.

AltaVista -> Google
Napster -> iTunes
VisiCalc -> Lotus 123 -> Excel
Word Perfect -> Word
Netscape -> Internet Explorer
Apple Newton -> Palm Pilot -> Blackberry
IBM PC -> Compaq -> Dell
Double Click -> Google Ad Sense
Ofoto -> Photobucket
Compuserve -> AOL -> @Home -> Comcast & Verizon

All of these companies were innovation leaders and market leaders. Yet, they were eclipsed by fast followers, in some cases multiple times, who imitated their innovation. My belief is that the technology was outstanding...the management was not.

Clayton Christensen wrote The Innovators Dilemma which I reviewed in an earlier post. The basic premise of the book is that management optimizes around protecting their existing business and fails to recognize and react to disruptive threats. However, the examples in Christensen's book play out over 10 or 20 years. The above examples played out in 5 or less years. Are the same factors at work here? Lets take a look.

AltaVista was the first search engine and the clear technology leader. The management at DEC didn't understand what they had and didn't invest the necessary resources to make it a business success. Later Compaq and CMGI squandered the search opportunity and tried to imitate Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and AOL in the consumer portal game. Big mistake. Fault management.

Napster was the first P2P file sharing application to bring together search, FTP, and Instant Messaging. Brilliant technical synergy. There are lots of reasons for failure here, mostly management decisions and unfortunate timing.

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet, invented by Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston. I know Dan fairly well but have never asked him why he thinks VisiCalc fell behind and Excel moved ahead. This topic deserves its own post. My memory is that VisiCalc was slow to adopt the DOS platform. Lotus 123 moved ahead on DOS and achieved market leadership, but failed to jump onto the Windows platform fast enough. Excel did make the move and the rest is history.

IBM created the PC revolution and was the early leader. Compaq was a fast follower focusing on "transportable" PCs and won huge market share. Dell came in later and trounced them all with a better business model.

Compuserve was the first dial-up service provider. Together with Prodigy they dominated the market. Later AOL entered the game with superior marketing and original content. AOL absolutely dominated in the 80's and early 90's. Then @Home created the cable Internet market and took the early lead. It wasn't long before Verizon, Comcast, and other cable providers owned the broadband market. AOL never really made the transition from dial-up to broadband.

In nearly every case the early innovators were eclipsed by fast followers. Why did the fast followers take over market share leadership?

Better business model (Google, Ad Sense, Dell)
Better market position (Word, Excel, Comcast, Verizon)
Better timing (iTunes, Flickr)
Better platform choices (Blackberry, Word, Excel)
Better management (all the fast followers)

It is overly simplistic to pin the success or failure of these innovators on one factor. There were a combination of factors at work. But in most cases the problem was not inferior technology, it was inferior management decisions.

So, were these early innovators led by technical visionaries who were not good managers? Will the imitators and "fast followers" suffer the same fate and be overtaken by new fast followers?

The list of "fast followers" above are more than just imitators. They have continued to innovate far beyond the original idea or feature set and have maintained market leadership. If you look closely at these companies they have a mix of technical visionaries and business management leaders. It takes a different set of skills to start a company than it does to sustain a company. This balance of skills, I think, is the key to sustained market leadership.

Cisco is an example of an early innovator that kept their market leadership position over time. Their technical founders brought in professional managers to take them to the next level.

There is a rare breed of technical visionaries who are also great business leaders. Bill Gates, Gordon Moore, Larry Ellison, and Scott McNealy are examples. They are truly extraordinary and rare. However, I suspect that each of them has a strong business management team behind them. Bill Gates has Steve Ballmer. Larry Ellison had Ray Lane. The early innovators who failed did not have the business leadership necessary to sustain them.

Lessons for entrepreneurs;

• Never stop innovating
• Build a well rounded management team early
• Value sales and marketing talent as much as technical talent
• React quickly to disruptive technologies or business models
• Don't be too proud to imitate when it makes sense

Everybody's Going Green

Within the past week a couple of articles popped up in quick succession that showed an interesting trend. On May 7th Wal-Mart announced that they would purchase solar power for 22 stores in California and Hawaii from 3 suppliers. Then within days Rupert Murdoch of News Corp called his entire staff together for a global video conference and declared that News Corp would become Carbon Neutral by 2010!

Now Rupert Murdoch has always been known to be a shrewd businessman and Wal-Mart has made cost cutting its mantra. Although altruism and publicity might have played some part in these announcements, you can be sure that cold hard economics was what was driving these decisions. Increasingly businesses are realizing that going green is good for the bottom line too.

Both businesses have taken a hard look at the environment and have come to the same conclusion. A sound ecological foundation is increasingly necessary for sustaining growth and profitability in the future. In his remarks to his employees Mr. Murdoch said “Reducing our use of energy reduces costs”. One of the examples he highlighted was that just switching the bulbs on their exit signs would reduce carbon emissions by 200 tons equivalent to 200 flights from New York to LA. That’s a lot of energy and a lot of dollars ! And News Corp estimates its global carbon footprint is around 650,000 tons ! From converting to LED lighting in their news centers to replacing lights in their plants, News Corp is looking to reduce energy consumption across the board.

Beyond their immediate impact, Mr. Murdoch realizes the multiplicative impact of his global media empire. He made this very clear in his speech In his words “We can set an example, and we can reach our audiences. Our audience's carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours...That's the carbon footprint we want to conquer.” A courageous vision !

Wal-Mart is no slouch environmentally either. Its latest foray is just a part of its overall emphasis on sustainability. A major portion of its company website is devoted to sustainability and the environment and the message is coming down from the top.


With 4000 plus stores averaging over 180,000 sq. ft. squeezing energy efficiencies and using renewable energy is as much an economic necessity as an environmental one. When finally implemented, the total solar power of the 22 initial sites will be as much as 20 million kwhr per year. And this is the first step towards their goal of being supplied by 100 percent renewable energy. More importantly, Wal-mart has pulled this off by leveraging its buying power and offloading some of the costs to its suppliers. As reported in Red Herring, the price of electricity generated by the solar systems will be less than what the company currently pays for electricity from the grid because the suppliers will be fronting the capital costs of the solar systems. Always low prices, always!

What are some of the other new business initiatives and models that need to be put in place? Are there emerging technologies that will change the landscape? And will it be soon enough ? Fortunately we have a panel that will help you figure this out at TIECON. On Saturday June 16th, Jeff Andrews from Atlas Ventures will bring together a panel of experts from diverse fields – Solar, Cellulosic Biomass, Electron beams – and probe into the future of Energy. Hope to see you there.

Raj Melville

Technology and the Quality of Life

I was flipping through the channels today and a shot of two old ladies in wheelchairs swinging away at a monitor caught my eye. So I froze the clicker, shifted brain into listen mode and watched as the ladies were shown the intricacies of the Nintendo Wii. Apparently 24 year-old Nintendo fanatic, Ethan Bechtel, realized the Wii would be a great tool to help seniors relive playing sports, like bowling and golf, while providing some physical stimulation and exercise. He setup a website, collected some money and now works with the seniors, like Elsie Tourville (85 yrs. old) and Alice Dubois (96) at the Green Mountain Nursing Home in Colchester VT. It is a pleasure to see the intensity and determination in these retirees as they duke it out over golf. This is possibly one of the more inexpensive ways to get people physically engaged. The unexpected popularity of the Wii beyond the hard core gaming crowd has caught every one by surprise. But more importantly it is surprising how it is stimulating interaction, dialog and even some physical exertion among a mainstream audience. Adieu, couch potatoes!



On the other side of the globe, Amir Hasson Alexander and his enterprising band of ‘Motomen” are busy bringing the internet to the remotest parts of Asia. Using buses equipped with WiFi, Amir’s company, United Villages (http://www.unitedvillages.com/) , provides web content to computers with no internet connection. A small box, with an antenna, onboard the buses or motorcycles, communicates with the rural computers. Every time a WiFi bus/motorcycle rolls by the village, the web content on the village kiosk computers is updated and email delivered. In remote locations with no wired connections, villagers can communicate – albeit asynchronously – with their cousins in faraway lands, order parts, lodge complaints, or review the status of their claims. With every kiosk Hasson’s company makes the world a little smaller and better place.



We are lucky to have Amir Hasson Alexander as one of the speakers at TIECON, a conference that highlights how breakthrough technology can be used to enable innovative connections and collaboration. We also have Dean Kamen, inventor par excellence, on a panel discussing what’s next in technology.

Dean’s inventions have always been people focused. From his insulin pump, to his IBOT for the physically challenged to the Segway, he has always looked at empowering people with technology.

A few weeks ago, I was at a TIME sponsored conference at Bentley where Dean spoke of two of his other projects. For a while he has been struggling with the fact that over a billion people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water, and an estimated 1.6 billion don’t have electricity. He put his thinking cap on and now has a couple of devices, each about the size of a washing machine that can provide power and clean water in rural villages. His water purifier makes 1000 liters of clean water a day and his generator runs off virtually any fuel (including cow patties) to generate a kilowatt of power. He is teaming up with Iqbal Quadir - the same Iqbal Quadir who was on our Social Entrepreneurship Panel last year at TIECON and who fathered Grameen Phone - and is testing these devices in Bangladesh.

Whether it is Clean Energy. The next mobile offering or Innovations in personalized medicine, TIECON has always been an event to attend to find out how technology is being put to use to enhance your personal life.

Raj Melville

Women & TiECON

Breaking through more than a thousand-year old tradition, the first female gondolier, Alexandra Hai took the oars in Venice this week – go Alexandra! Off to something else - well not entirely….

It is redundant to ask whether women leaders in all spheres face a different set of challenges. Women form just nine percent of the Boards of Directors at Fortune 500 high-tech companies and a 2006 study published by the University of California, Davis described the "paucity" of women CIOs.

Even though many women business leaders today enjoy their jobs and are able to make a difference, the bigger picture isn’t really rosy. Many still remain unsure about men and women sharing an equal level playing field, being in control of their careers and having their views truly heard and appreciated.

Despite all the underlying skepticism it is still encouraging to see current examples of exceptional women leaders in the world of business, academics and politics. TiECON East is proud to present such strong women including the Managing Director and VP of Strategy at IBM VC, Claudia Fan Munce, former U.S. ambassador and President of Hunt Alternatives Fund, Swanee Hunt and the newly appointed President of Bentley College, Gloria Larson.

Attend TiECON East and hear from them directly about strategy, execution and success - all from their unique leadership perspectives.

Also at TiECON, network and collaborate with other women leaders, entrepreneurs and professionals from across the nation and the globe. Register today at http://www.tieconeast.org/

Going back to Alexandra Hai – when asked if she was bothered by the thought that the other gondoliers might appeal the court ruling allowing her to steer her gondola, she merely quipped: “They can go to the pope!”

Indrani Ray-Ghosal
inmedia Public Relations Inc.

Competing on Analytics

Pithy prescient information. Pure fidelity in a sea of noise. The A-ha moments that open up new vistas and opportunities. Thats Analytics. A combination of art and science. A potent secret sauce that can help firms find actionable insights into maximizing business value.

Head over to TiECON East 2007 and listed to Thomas Davenport from Babson, Dr. Rama Ramakrishnan from Oracle and Prof. Ananth Raman from Harvard Business School discuss how analytics goes beyond pattern finding and trending.

Thomas Davenport's latest book, Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, goes wide and deep into how firms can become analytical competitors, using the power of high-powered analytics to carve out competitive advantages in crowded playing fields.

I am attending the TDWI World Conference this week and am pleased to report that the conversations in this space are moving beyond tech-speak and looking at how Business Intelligence can help drive better business decisions. I find some of the world's leading corporations in attendance to explore how to invest in analytical capabilities that provide deeper insights across their value chain.

Many speakers cite sources that either directly or indirectly reference work done by Thomas Davenport, vendors like Oracle Corp. or practical research and case studies from top B-Schools.

HOWEVER, YOU CAN HEAR DIRECTLY FROM THE SOURCE!

If you care for a conversation that goes beyond metaphorical articulation of goals, semantic sense of strategies, pedantic process principles and other forms of canned construction that promise to meet real world needs, head over to TiECON 2007.

What do *you think* is the future of enterprise-wide analytics & intelligence? Will predictive analytics complement or challenge 'gut-based' decision-making?

Whether you are a startup, small business enterprise, services firm, Fortune 1000 corporation or consultant ... you are bound to find value in exploring and understanding how ANALYTICS MAKES A DIFFERENCE!

I know, I want to look beyond old standbys and hear from thought leaders, provocateurs and practitioners that can help articulate a horizon-vision on where you can go with analytics ... I will be heading over to TiECON East where Davenport, Ramakrishnan and Ananth Raman promise to set the vision on Competing.

Let's hear from the source!

sai @ obviousideas dot com

Start-up India

Check out Boston Globe's exclusive feature on entrepreneurship from the Asian subcontinent.

Want to know more and meet these featured entrepreneurs in person?

Register TODAY at www.tieconeast.org

Head over to TiECON East 2007 and meet Ganesh Venkatraman, Gururaj "Desh" Deshpande, Al Kapoor, Sean Dalton and others!

sai @ obviousideas dot com

'Time' to innovate, literally!

Let us think about this for a minute, shall we.

How do you plan an organizational structure that encourages a culture of innovation, more so, one that can scale with the organization's growth? Set aside a day of the week to 'innovate', hoping that all the creative minds fire up on that day, every week? Let people organically generate ideas and build a mechanism to channelize them? Or, hire people that appear to be innovators and hope that they will strike gold when the sun shines through the open window on a balmy Summer day when the temperature hits 70 Fahrenheit?!

What have *you* have done to encourage innovation in companies 'n teams that you have funded and led? Tell us *your* story!

Google encourages its employees to spend 20% of their time on ideas and projects that are not necessarily tied to their jobs or job descriptions.

IBM has 'Think Fridays', when employees are encouraged to focus on innovative work, by freeing up their time to play with new technology.

Of course, the stories of innovation at 3M are legendary. The Post-It story, of course, being the most famous of them all, although the role of 'luck' is not cited as much. Check out Ralph Katz's book to know more. Want to know where to find it? Come to TiECON East 2007 and ask for .... Obviously. I will tell you, obviously, where to find the real story behind Post-It. What you read might shock you!!

Back to IBM, Google and ... Microsoft. Want to see Ram Shriram, Member of Google's Board in action? Want to hear Claudia Fan Munce, VP Strategy, IBM VC? Or, Don Dodge, Director of Business Development at Microsoft's Emerging Business Team?

You cant do that sitting at your desk or Googling for 'innovative ideas' during your innovation-hours at work :O!

Show up at TiECON East 2007, the LARGEST GLOBAL INNOVATION CONFERENCE and walk away with nuggets of ideas and insights that you can use to make a difference!

sai @ obviousideas dot com

Bloodless coups on the info superhighway!

Whew! Digg.com needs to dig itself out of quite a hole now. Caught between its 'loyal' Web2.0 customers who built the user-posted publishing behemoth and the long arm of IP-law; the future of Digg.com might in fact define the future of 'rules & rights of way' on the info-superhighway.

Digg.com's critical mass of devoted 'diggers' decided to revolt against the Website for deciding to comply with digital rights management interests and pulling down users' posts with code that would enable access to copyrighted HD-DVD material. The world of 'Web 2.0' customers ended up deciding that they had the right to have access to stories, regardless of which side of the law they lay!

This unprecedented display of power is at once both a testemant to the power of democracy and the unintended effects of unfettered 'people's wishes'. It highlights a very real legal (and almost ethical) question whether populist people's choices can overrule the letter of the law.

This issue is not about the spirit of the law or esoteric debates on the many shades of jurisprudence that might be open to interpretation. Users were, simply put, handing out free keys to the bank's vault ... and daring and defying the law to restrain their power.

Whew! Web2.0 ...

• Is the customer always right? Should Digg.com have bowed under pressure and reversed its initial decision to take down messages with the 'crack code'?
• Do such mass-populace community-based Web presences have any sort of sustainable advantage in the face of a fickle mass (one that finds solace in a collective anonymity that affords it the ability to flout the law)?
• Is this a mere communication of 'a sequence of numbers and letters', protected under the First Amendment? (since there was no actual delivery of hacking software or decryption tool)
• Or, is this collective voice of the community actually a clarion call to rethink how current laws are written?

Are these users time-travellers helping define the future by defying the present?

What do you think? Is Web2.0 too hot to handle?

sai @ obviousideas dot com

Innovation ... the real deal is here

You bet! Head over to the Hynes Convention Center, Boston between June 14 - 16 2007 and get a chance to rub shoulders with Hon. Governor Patrick, Ram Shriram from Google, Dean Kamen who brought us 'it', Tarun Khanna from the B-School, Thomas Davenport from Babson College and many great speakers!

I could tell you how TiECON is an experience that is not to be missed! But unless you head over to http://www.tieconeast.org/home.html, register and show up ... you wont know what its all about.

So, why sit back and 'think about it' or 'try to decide if TiECON is for you'. Innovation and change is happening 24x7 across the world.

Catch a big chunk of it at the LARGEST GLOBAL INNOVATION CONFERENCE! Period.

In the meanwhile, keep coming back to this blog to keep the conversation going...

And, by the way, I shall sign of as, obviously ... because, obviously, we will be meeting soon @ TiECON East 2007!

Until then, sai @ obviousideas dot com

Get ready for TiECON East 2007

Welcome to the blog of TiECON East, an annual event organized by TiE Boston. The conference, held once a year in spring, is attended by venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and anyone who gets excited by technology.

TiECON East 2006 was held in Boston in June. Dates for the 2007 conference have not been set yet. But why wait till then? I would like to invite you to learn more about TiE and join the organization. While TiECON East is held only once a year, there are several events organized each month in the Boston area.

If you have any questions and need help, please contact the TiE Boston office.

Information on the 2007 conference will be posted here as we make progress. In the meantime, if you wish to learn more about the conference in 2006, you are welcome to peruse this blog by using the navigation on the right.

This blog is run entirely by volunteer contributors and is expected to become more active once TiECON East 2007 planning commences.

- By Jay Dwivedi

Flattening world - What are you doing?

Last month I spent a week vacationing at the remote island of Utila in the Caribbean. With a population of just 2,000 people, the island has only a handful of automobiles - we rented a golf cart to get around - and the ferry ride to the port of La Ceiba is infrequent and expensive. But I am not writing this post to talk about Utila's white sandy beaches or what a great place it is for snorkeling and diving. In fact, what struck me the most about the island was the large number of foreign entrepreneurs - they run over half of the businesses, in many cases without even speaking the local language.

So when I read a United Nations report that has found that nearly 200 million people now live outside their country of origin, I realized that Utila provides an excellent case study of how flat the world is becoming and how entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the opportunities. According to the report, the number of people who have left their birthplace is up 25% since 1990. According to the Migration Policy Institute, the foreign-born population of the United States grew by 57 percent between 1990 and 2000, representing 12 percent of the population. And as many of you already know, many business models today allow you to "work" in a foreign country without ever leaving your country.

Implications of mobility

If we take the example of Utila, we can clearly see the advantages of mobility of people - and more specifically, entrepreneurs and capital. The foreign entrepreneurs have brought international-standard entertainment, dining and lodging options for tourists to Utila. They have also influenced public policy by pushing for investment in infrastructure for telecom and energy. In other words, the island is thriving because of investment from overseas.

How are you responding to a flat world?

If you need some thoughts on how to get started, I recommend that you attend two sessions at TiECON 2006. The first one is "Global Sourcing in a Flat World" and the second is "Emerging Trends: Cross Border Investing." If you want the venture capitalist perspective, you may also want to attend the session entitled "Can VC's Innovate in a Flat World?"

Related reading: How to approach investing in India?

How to innovate in a flat world?

How to exploit the Indian capital market?

Investment opportunities in India

Consumer market in India

Innovative business models for India

- By Jay Dwivedi

How to get the most out of TiECON?

If you have not yet registered for the conference, remember that the discounts end at the end of this month. If you do not register by May 31st, you will have to pay full price.

Jay Dwivedi gave some tips on networking at TiECON in March, but Michael Weinstein of Nitron Advisors has some additional tips below on how to get the most out of attending TiECON.

1. "Dumb-down" your elevator pitch. Since conference attendees often represent many different industries, make sure that you are able to convey concisely and in laymen's terms, what you do, what your company does and why the listener should be interested so that they could easily repeat it to someone else effectively. Remember, it's not what you know, or even who you know - but whom THEY know!
2. Contact event speakers. Review the conference web site, read the bios, subscribe to the blogs and review the web sites of the keynote speaker(s), panel discussion moderators and other event speakers. For example, if you're interested in blogs, plan to check out the track called, "Emerging Trends in Social Software and Online Networks" and make plans to connect with Torsten Jacobi, CEO of Creative Weblogging.
3. Create a target list. Then, get to know them! Get the conference agenda, list of attendees, exhibitors and event committee list prior to attending and plan your schedule ahead of time. Plan to attend the panel discussions that will help you achieve your goals at the conference. For example, if you are interested in the areas that investors consider most attractive in the overall software market, be sure to go to the "State of the Software Industry 2006" track on Friday morning.
4. Offer a little self-promoting Q&A. One of the greatest and most efficient ways to let an entire group of people know who you are, is to ask insightful questions aloud at the individual sessions. If you are interested in outsourcing, for example, attend the track on "Global Sourcing in a Flat World" and ask, "As the founder of ABC Company, a developer of network security products for the financial services industry, what are the key areas of my business that I should outsource to reduce costs without impacting our excellent customer service?"
5. Become the all-knowing conference czar. Where are the big meetings? ...the private parties? ...the after-hours events? Review the agenda, contact the event coordinators prior to attending, and learn the details of the "behind-the-scenes" so that everyone will look to contact you as their information source.
6. Coordinate your own meeting. Do you know other people or companies that will be attending TieCON East 2006? Plan ahead of time to meet at lunch or dinner to facilitate introductions and offer to help each other. Looking for people who share similar interests that may want to meet with you at the conference. Check out the TiECON East Blog for some great discussions, comments and contributors.
7. Volunteer. Contact the event coordinator(s) ahead of time and offer to help out at the conference in anyway that you can. Whether making calls to confirm attendance, helping guide people as they are attending or simply letting someone know that you're available if you need them, offering to help is the greatest way to meet people, learn and build relationships - remember, you have to give to get!
8. Prepare your questions. Once you have set up meetings with the event speakers, exhibitors and other attendees, research their background and prepare at least 5 questions that you want to ask each person while meeting with them to make the interaction as productive as possible. Interested in learning more about social software and online networks? If you're interested in hedge funds and investment research, visit Nitron Advisors and make sure to connect with David Teten, CEO of Nitron Advisors, to learn more about these fast growing industries.
9. Join industry-related organizations. By joining local organizations, sites and associations that are aligned with the conference focus, you can gain access to other members, as well as invite them to attend with you while building a relationship. Most organizations can be joined online and can lead to great new avenues and discussions when attending a conference.
10. Become a virtual private detective. If you want to get to know someone and want to figure out how you can help them, start gathering intelligence online. Google them, review their web sites, go to online social networking sites and don't hesitate to let them know that you've been doing your research on them to explore ways that you could help each other. Curious what others might find out about you? Google yourself and see what you find! For more insights on how to use blogs, social network sites, virtual communities, and other online networks, read The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, by David Teten and Scott Allen. You can download the entire book for free at The Virtual Handshake.

Innovation is everybody's business

I have been in dozens of strategy meetings with CEO's and other senior executives and have seen their blank faces when the discussion moved to innovation. Many would even find excuses to sneak out of the conference rooms using stupid excuses like "I have to check my email," or "Need to make a few phone calls," and some even more creative ones.

When I have confronted these people about their discomfort with innovation, I have heard even more interesting excuses like, "Oh, I have a great R&D group," or "Our CTO is on top of this," or "I need to focus more on sales and growth."

Ladies and gentleman, you have it upside down. If you are a decision maker in your organization - particulary, if you are a CEO - it is YOUR responsibility to drive innovation within your organization. Leaving the techies alone in-charge of innovation is not the best strategy - I have seen hundreds of cases of R&D group developing offerings that the customers did not want. Result: money/time wasted, business opportunities lost.

While keeping on top of sales and income should clearly be the #1 priority for any business leader, if you are not in charge of innovation, very soon you will be fighting with the Chinese on price. And that's no business - that's a dog fight that you won't win.

And in case you did not notice, the theme of TiECON this year is "Innovating in a flat world."

Relted reading

Innovation in biotech sector

- By Jay Dwivedi
Photo courtesy: PP Digital

Sanjay Kadaveru shares TiECON vision

Sanjay Kadaveru, one of the architects of TiECON this year, recently attended the sister conference in Silicon Vallley and had a chance to speak to John Furrier of PodTech. Please click the link below to listen to the podcast.

Link for Sanjay Kadaveru podcast

Most conferences suck, but you should still attend them

I am sure you have attended conferences that you thought were a total waste of time. And those of you who have already registered are probably wondering if attending TiECON is worthwhile. Those of you who are yet to register, I am assuming, are also struggling about the value of attending. Let me just talk about the problems with conferences in today's information-rich economy, why you should still attend some of them, and how to make the best use of a conference.

Why do conferences suck?

1. Rarely a speaker has anything "new" to say. In most cases, they simply regurgitate what they have written in a book or a research paper or market research report or taught in the classroom - or even worse, someone in their office actually wrote their speech. Many speakers get there not because they are smart but because they have an impressive title.
2. A half-hour Google search will typically tell you more about a topic than listening to some "expert" pontificate.
3. Executives of public companies rarely share useful insights since their speeches have been extensively censored by their PR/IR departments.

So why do I still keep going to conferences?

To share knowledge. Let me clarify. If you think that you will gain pearls of wisdom in a presentation at a conference, think again. You might be better off spending some time on the web. But not everything that you want to know in life is on the web despite the advances we have made during last ten years.

Early on in my career, I worked at a management consulting firm that developed market strategy for corporations by actually talking to their customers. The premise was that despite availability of so much information just about 2% of the world's knowledge is actually documented and less that 0.1% actually searcheable. So where is the rest of the knowledge? In people's heads. While blogs enable more people to share what is in their heads, it is still a drop in the ocean.

In other words, unless you talk to people, you cannot tap into that knowledge. And that is what conferences allow you to do. I have actually found that I get more out of a conference in the hallways and dining halls than during presentations.

How to make the best of your time at conferences?

1. Do not miss a chance to speak to someone.
2. Do not hang out just with people you know.
3. Try to go to a panel discussion than a presentation - if you can choose. Since a panel discussion is free-flowing, you are more likely to hear things that you would not hear in a prepared speech.
4. Don't be afraid to ask questions or approach people. If you get "rejected," you still learned something - that person is not worth doing business with.

Related: Tips on networking

- By Jay Dwivedi
Photo courtesy: Morguefile.com

How to approach investing in India?

India has become "flavor of the month" for investors. Once I saw India on the cover of Business Week as the Next Great Market, I said "Uh-oh, now the money is really going to flood in". This is exactly what has happened over the past year and the market has rewarded those investors by seemingly scaling a new high every month or so. But, as those of you with experience investing in emerging markets know, the party ends at some point and usually ends badly. Here are a few thoughts on how to approach investing in India at these levels:

1. Take a long term view. An amazing statistic is that the majority of trades in India are day-trades. Taking a one day or even one year view can be dangerous when markets have moved up sharply as they have in India the past couple of years. You are best off taking a 3-5 year view on investments you make in India, whether in individual stocks or in fund managers (like us and others).
2. Avoid stop losses and price targets. Investing blindly with price targets or stop losses is, in my humble opinion, a foolish way to invest. Instead, you should focus on the fundamentals of the companies in which you have invested and focus in particular on the long-term strategy and on the management depth of the companies. This will help you build the conviction to continue to buys shares when the stock is down 50% and when the stock is up 100%. Remember that in a growth market like India, the best companies will return many times your investment if you have the patience to hold on through the volatility.
3. Invest within your circle of competence. Don't invest in a company simply because you hear a rumor about it, or because your cousin in Delhi has invested in it, or because you think the company has "buzz". Instead, invest in areas you understand and do your own due diligence on the company. If you aren't able to do this, particularly while living here in the U.S., then invest in a manager who can a large presence in India and can do this kind of detailed due diligence.
4. Invest in companies with the most scalable management teams. This is obviously a truism, but success for most companies boils down to management execution. This, in turn, is a function of their scalability, span of control, and philosophy around decision-making. Focus more on the management than on the product/service offering when evaluating the company. As we used to say in the venture capital industry, "a great CEO will take a mediocre business and turn it into a great business, while a mediocre CEO will turn a great business into an awful business".
5. Focus on management integrity and on how well management will treat minority shareholders. In India, you are most often going to be investing with companies that are effectively controlled and perhaps managed by individual families. Because of this, you need to develop a view about how this management will treat minority shareholders. Use past corporate actions as a guide.

Related articles

How to exploit the Indian capital market?

Investment opportunities in India

India is emerging as a consumer market

Opportunities for exporting to India

- By Gautam Prakash

- Photo courtesy: Jane M Sawyer

We should all be social entrepreneurs?

That's right. If we cannot do it full time, there is absolutely no reason why we can't do our part by joining the movement and contributing in whatever we can. And I appeal to the TiE community to do their part because you understand the value of bringing solid business approaches to solving problems of the world.

According to the latest UNICEF report, India is among the worst countries in the world when it comes to feeding children under five. 47% of the Indian children are undernourished (compared to 2% here at home, though I still don't understand why this number should not be zero in the richest country in the world with two out of us clearly "over-nourished"). As many as 7.8 million Indian babies are born underweight every year.

While India offers tremendous opportunities for new business, we cannot forget the importance of helping the poorest, particularly children. I am very proud of the fact that TiE community has responded to this challenge and all the way from charity work to impacting public policy, it has done its part. It is clear that social-entrepreneurship is taken as seriously as other areas of entrepreneurship. But there is still more to be done.

We have to agree that we collecitvely have more powerful voices and policymakers in India pay attention when we speak. In fact a few of them will be attending TiECON this year. I invite you to attend the session on Social Enterpreneurship and learn how you can be part of the process. We will have Vanessa Kirsch of New Profit and Iqbal Qadr, Founder of GrameenPhone to talk about how they are employing the principles of entrepreneurship for social change.

- By Jay Dwivedi

Photo courtesy: Faisal Sohail

How to protect your intellectual property?

If you are merely worried about protecting your brand, patents, and other intellectual property, the following story should come as a shock. According to the International Herald Tribune, a company in China literally set up a parallel NEC brand in the country with links to about 50 factories in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. This was not one of those basic operations in which a company reverse-engineers your product and starts selling fake products through underground channels. This group of people actually developed a complete line of consumer electronics under the NEC brand and then coordinated manufacturing and distribution while the NEC offices in China and Japan had no clue.

NEC, as you might know, is a global conglomerate (~$50 billion in sales; 140,000 employees) and had all the conventional systems in place to protect its intellectual assets but they never expected something like this to happen. They learnt about the scam only when they received complaints about products that they did not even know were sold under their brand name.

So what can you do?

Doing business successfully and profitably in a flattening world is not just completing the paperwork with the local government to protect your intellectual property. In addition to that you may need a full-fledged investigation and enforcement infrastructure to protect it since authorities in most countries outside the OECD do not have the systems that we expect them to have.

To develop a better understanding of these challenges and how you can navigate them, I invite you to listen to Ashley Wills, Senior International Business Advisor at WilmerHale (focusing on India and South Asia). His understanding of the business and legal environment has not been gathered from books and travel - he has actually lived in India for three years.