mind × the + gap

FINALLY, THE IT TZAR TAKES THE BACK SEAT. And as Mr. Bill Gates completes his last full working day by the EOD today – June 27, 2008 – at his Richmond, WA office in the US, an era of Biggest, Richest, and Fastest draws towards a change. Call him Innovator, Software Evangelist, Chief Software Architect, or by any other name, above all, Mr. Gates is a successful businessman, Zero-to-billions kind. And that is how I would want to reckon him, for Mr. Gates is not perhaps a mesmerising orator, neither a charismatic leader, nor a magnanimous personality. Even if he is all of these, they rather remain secondary, for the bottomline is, Mr. Gates knows business, does business and means business. Period.

Arguably the world’s most famous dropout – and thus perhaps the tallest example that education and money may not have a direct corelation – wrote the first BASIC compiler 17 years ago, and left the legacy as the world’s richest man with such words: “There is nobody getting rich writing software that I know of…”.

[Left: Bill Gates, CEO, about 27, in his Microsoft office in 1982. Source: time.com. Do you also feel that the DOS screen in front of him reads something very similar to “Bad Command or File name?”]

Mr. Gates indeed has been the biggest catalyst for last two decades for the IT industry and for the global economy at large – Windows OS still runs more than 90% of personal computers in the world, and Microsoft Office artefacts are the de-facto standard for offline information and data transaction. This has made Mr. Gates the richest man on earth; reaching there in the fastest possible manner – at the speed of thought, if you like…

On my part, it was a wonderful experience to listen to him from a mere few feet away in Sep 2002 while he was delivering a lecture and providing with his vision (such as, “XML is the future…”) at the time of the launch of Windows XP. It being my first encounter with a global leader at close proximity left me with a lasting impression.

Competition has not been kind to Mr. Gates, and visa-versa is probably equally true. Sort of a reminder of the old saying that Friends come and go, enemies accumulate…

The success of Microsoft Corporation undoubtedly has contributions from many more than Mr. Gates and his “Big Picture” memos alone, but in the world-wide (Globalization?) game of business where media and economy are increasingly tying up, and where winner takes it all, the credit nonetheless has almost always been attributed to Mr. Gates as the poster-boy face of Microsoft. At the same token, the discredit of bad designs, security flaws and sloppy software performance is also to the discredit of Mr. Gates.

[Right: Culturing Innovation; Sponsoring ImagineCup. Bill Gates in Korea for the event in 2007.]

It would be an interesting experience for Bill Gates to become a user from the owner of Microsoft products. His displeasure towards many thing Microsoft, especially the usability and user-friendliness, has been known. (Here is the full text of a rather interesting and lambasting email supposedly from Gates himself.)

BillG, as they call him, has never faced any job interviews, and in that respect he would perhaps always remain inexperienced! Unless of course any of the prospective next career moves (as in the following video) click for him 🙂

Mr. Gates opened his keynote of TechEd 2008 last month with the following video. This is where Mr. Gates tries various career changes now that he is to move out of Microsoft. It has been making rounds on YouTube since Jan this year, and it’s honest, well choreographed, very humorous and well entertaining. Not worth missing at all!

Bill Gates is going to be just fine whatever new avtar he may adorn next. But the industry observers seem to be divided over what would happen to Microsoft in absence of its poster-boy. I recall a media interview a few years ago where the reporter indirectly inquired about the “Google threat”.

Mr. Gates replied and I quote, “Every couple of years a new company comes up and people say that it would put us [Microsoft] out of business. And every time I say, ‘No, not this time’…”

If monopoly and monarchy have anything in common, we should shortly hear, “The King is dead… Long live the King!”

Let’s see who would stand up and say “No, not this time…” for Microsoft next.

[Go here at time.com for the Photo-essays on Bill Gates’ early days.]

“The special commodity or medium that we call money has a long and interesting history. And since we are so dependent on our use of it and so much controlled and motivated by the wish to have more of it or not to lose what we have we may become irrational in thinking about it and fail to be able to reason about it as if about a technology, such as radio, to be used more or less efficiently…” — John F. Nash, lecture at CII in Mumbai, Feb 2007

IF THE WORLD IS CONSIDERED A “CLOSED SYSTEM”, deeming it a Zero-sum game, Nash Equilibrium could certainly offer a different meaning to the notion of money, and thus, to the word ‘richness‘ or net-worth and the world economy.

[Today, June 13, John F. Nash, Jr. turns 80. A humble tribute to the 1994 Nobel Laureate legend. Go here for Nash’s personal home page at Princeton.]

Arguably, the Nash equilibrium is the single game theoretic solution concept that is most frequently applied in economics. (See also: Investopedia) In terms of strategy and planning, the equilibrium could be simplified as:

“For any finite, non-cooperative game of two players or more, no player can improve his/her pay-off by unilaterally changing the strategy…”

[Above: Actor Russell Crowe in his Oscar winning portrayal of John Nash in the 2001 Hollywood film “A Beautiful Mind“. Photo courtesy: Prof. Lynne Butler.]

invention, innovation, inspiration, imagination…

If any of the i’s tantalise you, entertain yourself with this cute little 1.5 minute teaser video, which in fact is a runnup to the ImagineCup 2008 due this month.

“Great innovators don’t imagine things in the future;
They imagine them in the present,
and change the future…”

Go here for a list of Software Project designs that made it to the semi-finals of the innovation competition this year.

[The video above is one among many created by the students of Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication. Go here for the video on YouTube, and here for other possibilities from Microsoft.]

Edit: The ’08 finals will be held in Paris between July 3 and 8, 2008.

Yahoo: Clinton suspends campaign, endorses Obama.

And now, it is ‘young’ Barack Obama pitted against ‘experienced’ Mr. McCain.

Let’s suppose that Senator Obama continues the momentum, wins over the Clinton vote-split, manages to prove that young is the new ‘old’, defeats the myth by showing that change could also be other than what is loose in your trouser pocket, and finally makes it to the ‘White’house, should he rename it?

Talking about names, I am almost certain that it is purely coincidental that Baraq Obama sounds so similar with the two other major disasters for the Bush Administration: Iraq Osama

TODAY, JUNE 5, IS THE WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY.

It is an open secret that China is the biggest abuser of environment in the world. Most of the manufacturing in China uses coal-burning furnaces, and that one single industry equals more than the most the whole of Europe in terms of CO2 emission.

At the same time, China is the single largest country to have invested the most – USD 8 bn – into planting trees. Criticised yet again though it is doing some serious spend, the reason is rather different from a change-of-heart or accountability or even a soft-corner for environment. Beijing, its capital is being subjected to sand storms so frequently that the Chinese have already coined a term for it – Yellow Dragon. Sand from this area have already started crossing the Pacific and reaching Americas.

This is the Gobi desert from Mongolia making inroad into China at an alarming pace – claiming 3,600 km² of Chinese grassland per year and converting it into a desert, and creating “sandy” environment all over the place. The denting Chinese economy by nearly USD 50 bn every year. To check this dangerous progress China has finally decided to hug the trees, and we have the (great) Green Wall of China – the largest afforestation project in the world today.

The Green Wall is a project to plant a 4,480 km (2,800 miles) shelterbelt of trees across the North-Western rim of China skirting the Gobi Desert. To avert the ghost of de-forestation, this afforestation project is phased for next 70 years starting 2001.

Better late than never…

[Go here for a related coverage by BBC.]

A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO I was sitting over the fence of 80% and 20% of the opinion makers reacting to the possibility of success of the IPL business model. 80% were the sceptics and believed that as it happened with ICL (Indian Cricket League – Chaired by Kapil Dev and sponsored by Zee Entertainment), IPL would find very few takers – perhaps only the useless of the useless lot would devote time to this remix masala version of the gentlemen’s game. To my mind, both these Indian T20 “cricetainment” versions were not at par: ICL was but a “zee thing”, where as the Premier League had the mind, money and muscle backing of BCCI – an important element that could make it swing and bounce.

[Above: Team Jaipur after winning the maiden IPL. 1 June 2008. Source: http://ipl.indiatimes.com%5D

It appears that this compressed format of the game may not have gone down too well with all quarters of the cricket, especially the British media and “empirical” standards. Lord Archer, for example, has been quoted saying during his hugely successful India tour last month that Twenty20 is entertainment and not a cricket. Lord Archer may offer a dead defensive bat, and silly mid-on and Shane go up in appeal to Billy nonetheless, the whole of the stadium also erupts in asking the same question. That essentially is the appeal of the game. Spectacle.

Twenty20 is not going anywhere, and while the possessives (or the hypocrites like Ponting who, after getting a hefty pay-cheque for just a couple of appearance at IPL, goes back to leading the test squad and condemns the T20 format), cling to the ‘real’ word for Cricket, the economics are hugely against them. Fundamentally, I tend to agree that the game is played for the honour and patriotism, and that motive is now being played now purely for money. And the players are like hired “mercenaries” in certain cases. But sport, as much as it may be for the spirit, is also about entertainment, and while the contemporary youth is on a fast track for almost everything in his life, let T20 be a door for him to enter and sustain interest in Test Cricket. Let the format have best of both the worlds of English Premier League Football and American Baseball. While visiting the US I found it very difficult to convince my American boss that there could be a game that goes on for five days. Worst still, people go and watch it! Now I have something for him to relate to with his favourite Baseball team – LA Dodgers. (And then, there surely were some American cheerleaders around.) Let’s say that a Test match is like a grand five-course unlimited dinner, compared to which an ODI is like a limited lunch, and so T20 is but a quick snack or a breakfast. Having said that, the likelihood of T20 eating into the limited format of the game (ODI) is pretty strong – a brunch, if you like. (Did you hear also or is it only me that they are thinking of renaming BCCI? The new name got to be BCCCI – Beware of Cricket Crazy Countrymen of India.)
[Right: Washington Redskins cheering for IPL in Bangalore. Apparently, Bangalore Royal Challengers had “Bangalored” that job to the US.]

I suppose it was Geoffrey Boycott who, while commenting during India’s tour to England, first put forth the point that ODI is a Batsman’s game, for all the rules are against the bowlers regarding what they could do, and more importantly, what they can’t. The situation just got worse, and we have Twenty20 where the bowler is to be slogged. Or that’s what the initial impression was. It turns out, such is not the case, for all the important games did a turn-around mid-course because of some very clever bowling – be it Mumbai Indian’s ouster from the IPL because of a sad last over finish, or be it “Balaji – the weak-link” for Chennai Super Kings whose rather stupid last over did them in and they lost the trophy. (It was a rather modest Dhoni, with his first-time-on-TV huddle of his team on the ground before getting into the dressing room after the defeat in the finals, that he said it was a team effort, win or loose, and there was no one single event or player to be singled out or blamed for. A leadership quality that better not be lost on the likes of the “legendary” Tendulkar who, rather curtly, passed the buck of loosing out of IPL to the Sri Lankan Dilhara Fernando who bowled that last over.)

Warne’s squad was considered an underdog on the ground that they didn’t have any star player (and where of the cheapest bidding of the eight during the auction). Somehow, I disagreed with that statement. Rather I considered Jaipur team a real good value-for-money for the bid-winners. Warne is no less than a legend in his own right, and when you have the captain of the South African team also as your opener, you surely have a side to reckon with. If at all someone would want to consider them as starting underdogs, the reason has to be that the total squad didn’t had the best of the commercial value at the bidding time. And then again it was the error of judgement on the bidder’s part then anything else (one more indication to this effect is that Anil Ambani is rumoured to have backed out of Royal’s bidding at the very last moment for Ahmedabad, and the team was won by Jaipur). The real important part, however, was the captaincy by a leg spinner: IMHO successful spinners are born tacticians; shrewd and deceptive in their strategy and their main weapon. This may not be the case with the fast-bowlers who depend on their physical strength for pace more than anything else. Warne’s so-called “role-based approach” to the game might have given him the first IPL success, but it would be extremely difficult for him to repeat it in the comings seasons, and I am almost certain that he is also aware of it.

Some Trivia and Not-so-trivia about the IPL – maiden season:

• Before the tournament began, even 90% of India was unaware of a Cement brand called Super Kings. Wikipedia had no mention of India Cements Ltd. In 45 days, Super Kings goes on to become a globally known name and brand, and like N. Srinivasan, CEO, puts it, every penny invested in the franchise by them is worth it – No other branding strategy could have delivered within the given time-frame.
• Delhi Daredevils had the best ROI with their Feroz Shah Kotla ground turning in nearly Rs. 90 to 100 million in gate collections. They are the first franchise to break-even and go profitable.
• For Shah Rukh Khan, it was a double loss: first, Kolkata lost out, and then the TPR of IPL ate heavily into his newly launched game-show “Panchvi Pass”. He is surely praying for the revival of both.
• Vijay Mallya remained at the receiving end as Royal Challenge as a brand also goes down with his IPL team, and Blender’s Pride (Seagram) takes over the #1 spot in sales – almost after a decade.
• (more just after a commercial break…)