My Technology Videos

There was this series of videos done by Discovery Channel on personal innovations in India. I first encountered them while Prof Anil K Gupta gave a talk at our office on innovation.

I love the amphibious cycle example in the below video starting 3.05.

There are more videos from the same series

Enjoy…

CE References

I did not believe when Angelina said attending Dave’s Cognitive Edge Course is a thrilling process of intellectual expansion, after the first day I am starting to believe.

Anyway post day 1 gathered a bunch of references from Dave and went around to the largest book store chain in India to buy the lot that was close by.

Only to figure out that none of them were available, which means I have to buy them through the painstaking process of order, call, wait and call backs. 

The corner book store recommended is on the other side of the world as well.

Here is the list

1. Harnessing Complexity: Organizational Implications of a Scientific Frontier by Robert Axelrod and Michael D. Cohen
2. Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System by Alicia Juarrero
3. Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Gary Klein
4. The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain by Terrence W. Deacon
5. How Brains Make Up Their Minds by Walter J. Freeman
6. The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves by W. Brian Arthur
7. Knowledge Assets: Securing Competitive Advantage in the Information Economy by Max H. Boisot
8. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities  by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner
9. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again by Andy Clark

Stories and Community

In my organization we did ”joy of giving” week, and a community within our organization used these specific stories below to inspire giving to an NGO called Goonj. The community (Dhriti: the woman’s network within the company) did an awesome story campaign based on unsung  heroes  from ibnlive

Campaign images are below

Why is family a bad metaphor for organization?

I have always felt strongly against the use of the family metaphor on organizations for various reasons

1. Family is not run for profit
2. Family cares for the weakest most and organizations care least for the weakest
   1. In times of crisis in a family there is lot of sacrifice at the top
3. In family there are no multiple stake holders with conflicting demands like employee demanding more salary versus investor demanding cost controls, which forces organizations to resort to point 2
4. Family does not evaluate for performance (can you imagine rating your dad against a benchmark dad or he evaluating you)

You can find apt metaphors/Images of organization elsewhere including  machines, organisms, cultures, brain, psychic prisons, and domination instruments.

Thanks to Venkat from ribbonfarm for the pointer. btw have you read the latest post by Venkat?…

Pursuit – Return

Read this 1915 Paper by Ananda Coomarasamy, highly recommended

Quoting

“The life or lives of man may be regarded as constituting a curve – an arc of time – experience subtended by the duration of the individual Will to Life. The outward movement on this curve – Evolution, the Path of Pursuit – the Pravritti Marga – is characterized by self-assertion. The inward movement – Involution, the Path of Return – the Nivritti Marga – is characterized by increasing Self-realization. (9) The religion of men on the outward path is the Religion of Time; the religion of those who return is the Religion of Eternity. If we consider life as one whole, certainly Self-realization must be regarded as its essential purpose from the beginning; all our forgetting is but that we may remember the more vividly. But though it is true that in most men the two phases of experience interpenetrate, we shall best understand the soul of man – drawn as it is in the two opposite, or seeming opposite, directions of Affirmation and Denial, Will and Will-surrender – by separate consideration of the outward and the inward tendencies. Brahmans avoid the theological use of the terms “good” and “evil,” and prefer to speak of “knowledge” and “ignorance” (vidya and avidya), and of the three qualities of sattva, rajas, and tamas. As knowledge increases, so much the more will a man of his own motion, and not from any sense of duty, tend tо return, and his character and actions will be more purely sattvic. But we need not on that account condemn the self-assertion of the ignorant as sin; for could Self-realization be where self-assertion had never been? It is not sin, but youth, and to forbid the satisfaction of the thirst of youth is not a cure; rather, as we realize more clearly every day desires suppressed breed pestilence. The Brahmans therefore, notwithstanding the austere rule appointed for themselves, held that an ideal human society must provide for the enjoyment of all pleasures by those who wish for them; they would say, perhaps, that those who have risen above the mere gratification of the senses, and beyond a life of mere pleasure, however refined, are just those who have already tasted pleasure to the full.”

1 second billing: Telecom Trends

Back at trizindia http://trizindia.org/profiles/blogs/1-second-billing-telecom

Project Artifact as Boundary Object

A project can be visualized as a opportunity for interfusion of multiple different identities of people. These identities stem from role performed in the project, technology specialization/association of the project team member, affiliation with customer through proximity on location/role/relations, among many other identities.

A general agreement to collaborate across these different roles is realized as a need in most cases and there are contractual tie ups (could be a real agreement, or defined by role and individual responsibilities) between several pairs of parties, customer-service provider, manager-resource, practice-resource, onsite-offshore. Real progress on work usually involves actions by project team members across different identities.

When identities fuse across, there is a need for objects that are “Common Point of Reference that can have different meanings attached to it, while can act as a means for coordination, alignment and translation, while catering to different concerns simultaneously” 

That was a definition of Boundary Object, all emphasis indicate the key characteristics.

Within Knowledge Management there are real good examples of boundary objects, below are some

1. wiki page on wikipedia
2. Knowledge Map of a project/community
3. a story/anecdote

 If you are on a project it is likely that your deliverable, usually an artifact is also being used as a boundary object. But no one thought about it that way yet…and you compromised, some symptoms below

1. Have you ever noticed the indifference with which core process groups fill out or create templates, while the end users of the templates find it hard to use it for any real purpose
2. Even when you send a status report that goes through the hierarchy will the “head” be able to make sense of the original concern that you wanted to be acted on or was it all lost in translation
3. Dev team seems to be at ease with the seemingly random project wiki, while the business team finds it real hard to get anything out or the other way around, is the wiki really that pliable
4. The tester does not seem to be all concerned with the reds in the project plan, while the PM is unable to catch the significance of a red flag in a key test case

Mark Weiser spent the best part of his life working on Ubiquitous computing. He has another noted work as well in which he indicates all social and knowledge work is all about reducing the problem to reach an agreement , where he explains reality distortion with the classic archetype the Dilbert. And there are measures that you can use, to reduce Reality Distortion and for those academically oriented there are complex equation to represent them, but I like the cartoons better.

 The real issue I think is, can we design boundary objects and reduce the reality distortion differences over a period of time?

Fixed Price versus Time and Material billing

You know in Bangalore you can buy a Pre Paid auto ride from station to anywhere in the city.

You just buy a token for 1 INR to ride and pay the amount at the end of journey.

This is Fixed Price, you do not care which route the driver takes and do not try to influence him in anyway. If you are lucky you get a driver who knows the route and you reach your destination safe.

In some rides something interesting happens during the journey, you will get to know a totally different alternate route to the destination that you have never tried before or aware, it also happens to be the shortest. The shorter the route the better it is for the driver in terms of ROI.

Even if the driver is no genius or mostly does not know how to collaborate with you or the city, you won’t make a loss, till he gets to your destination, as all effort and expenses are the drivers’. But you will still lose time.

But the journey back from anywhere in the city to station is never pre-paid and it is a journey in which the meter is running, and you as a rider is managing which way the auto is going and trying to optimize your journey for less time (lesser traffic signals) and fare (shortest route).

Remember you don’t have control on the meter, you are less likely to get a heart attack by just believing it is a honest meter, but you have to pay what it shows at the end of the journey. The return journey to the station is TnM model (Time and Material).

You can think of yourself as a success when you can beat the pre-paid amount on the return journey. But remember there is always a better route home with another genius auto driver.

 
Image Credit Autorickshaw 2 by Knile

Safe Fail and Fail Safe Roll outs

Safe Fail and Fail Safe concept of the 2 types of experiments or trial runs is not new. I had to make a case to a strong process oriented crowd on adopting a new process and tool for allowing harvested knowledge at an organization level.

 Major portion of the debate that ensued clearly gave a chance to contrast between the 2 types of experiments. I am only taking the roll out part of the whole change (a better word in safe fail types would be adoption).

 For Fail Safe roll outs

1. A business case that proves or claims that a change would happen on a stated benefit which is along either commercial or satisfaction value
2. Once the business case is all clear there would be a pilot on a smaller (claimed representative) chunk of selected projects and disproportionate effort goes into making the business case a reality
3. Now proving the benefit means you have a fixed boundary on the initial state and a new end state that has happened due to the change/experiment. Of course this will include non accounting for reasons that possibly worked in favor (that statement reflects the fact that I just finished reading “Fooled by Randomness”)
4. Provided the sample set results are satisfactory the change is rolled out to larger set of people whose contexts are generally not clearly understood, and the effort that was put into the pilot is surely not replicated at this new large scale
5. Post this usually benefit measuring exercise is conducted and published as is or there may be a change in parameters of what is measured as scale has changed

 On the other hand Safe Fails

1. Do not have a “business case” as the outcome is usually not clear when begun
2. The pilots are usually not chosen or selected but are rather like drug trials are volunteers
3. Boundary states are not necessarily fixed and coupled with outcome not being clear
4. Larger scales is possibly an indication of the success of the change/experiment itself, but really speaking the success comes from the number of such experiments that Safe Fail type allows that will work in context.
5. This point is not applicable as usually there is ignorance of how the change will adapt and work.

Using Expertise Survey

I have recently participated in a survey on how expertise is leveraged and managed in organisations. This is part of an open research project where the results of the research are made available to the KM community as they are finalised. The project blog is at http://usingexpertise.blogspot.com, and there is also a wiki showing the outcomes of project workshops at http://usingexpertise.wikispaces.com

If you have time to complete the survey as well, please do add your perspective. The survey is at http://tinyurl.com/expertisesurvey, and when you have completed it, you will see the results of the survey collected so far.