So, sometimes my brain tweets out what I call ideas and you may call gibberish. After all there is nothing like absolute reality. Reality depends upon who is looking, upon the observer. This inderminent nature of reality itself, now proven by the science of quantum physics. So, I guess it would be quite alright for you and me to have these somewhat opposing perspectives on what I am about to share with you.
And then if my brainwaves were not warped enough, a noble soul handed me a book called ‘The Medici Effect”. I consumed it with a vengeance. It broke some of the associative barriers in my brain and got those brainwaves riding over this interesting concept of ‘innovation at the intersection’.
The net result was a further explosion of these gibberish ideas! (GIs)
With the pipeline in my brain bursting at the seams, I had another brainwave about how to manage these brainwaves! What if I open sourced them all? Shove them down the Internet pipe and choke that pipe up, instead of my brain.
Extrapolate this thought to all ideas and you will have a place for ideas to roam about, with the kind of euphoria which typically comes with along with a sense of complete freedom. To break away from the shackles of patents, IPR and lawsuits. A creative commons license for ideas. Available to be adopted by any entrepreneur with a passion for converting ideas into innovations, which change the world or at-least a part of it.
So this blog is an attempt at this thought. Sparking an internet of ideas. Open sourcing imagination.
OSGI #1: EduVille
Every parent closely knows this particular problem statement. It is getting increasingly difficult to get kids interested in studying. There are just too many digital distractions around. On the other hand, in countries such as India, the amount of studies children have to undertake has grown exponentially. It’s a competitive country in a competitive world and the education system is geared towards exposing children to that spirit of extreme competitiveness from an early age! So how to deal with these opposing forces – decreasing mindshare on studies and an increasing load of studies to stay competitive.
This idea is about resolving the above problem in the intersection of three disparate fields - education, gaming and social networking. Start with rote subjects such as history and geography and create interesting, engaging online games which are based around these subjects – use characters from history and places from geography in the games. When the games go viral on Facebook or other social sites, children will be spending a fair amount of time on them and in their sub-conscious learning the subjects which underpin the game. Parents too will encourage children to buy and play these games! Schools will adopt them as well and install them on their library computers.
So anyone out there with the venture cap to launch EduVille on Facebook?
OSGI #2: From SMS to SGS
Quite often you have this surge of affection for someone you love and your heart wants to express this affection by sending him/her a gift. Or you see something a loved one enjoys, let’s say a type of ice-cream and you wish if you could send your loved one this here and now.
This idea is about taking sms to a new level and not just delivering messages but delivering gifts near abouts the speed of sms or a ‘short gift service’. It is also inspired from the world of microfinance, microloans. No doubt the challenge is much bigger than microfinance as this will involve micro logistics. However I feel we are getting to that inflection point in the connectivity of the globe that someone with scale could actually deliver your wish within a few hours anywhere in the world. It will need a confluence between retailers, logistic companies and a hub platform on the internet/mobile app which accepts sgs and ties up the various players in the value chain to deliver the gift to the recipient. An initial test for this concept could be setting this up within Dubai and India, where a lot of expats have this feeling of guilt about having their old parents alone in India and time and again feel the urge to share with them something they are enjoying at the moment.
So Fedex are you game for SGS?
OSGI #3: Prada Smog Scarf
In a number of developing countries I see two-wheeler riders and especially their companions wrap a cloth around their face to save them from the traffic smog. It must be quite a challenge to get that thing wrapped around you especially when you are getting ready to go to work.
This idea is about first thinking about the design of a scarf with perforations which can be easily smoothened onto your face as you ‘gear’ up to face those polluted roads. And then of course once that design is done we can always look at making it a fashion statement. After all if mobile phones can be designer, why can’t smog scarfs be!
OSGI #4: Swarm BI Bots
The internet is becoming the world’s biggest brain and memory bank. Joe Bloke’s like you and me use the Internet to lookup almost anything we need. “where can I find an Indian restaurant in Innsbruck” “what is the meaning of the word epiphany” “how much money do I need to carry to Thailand. What is the conversion rate from AED to Thai Baht”. Just feed your queries into the Google search monster and within a few seconds it spurts out an appropriate answer.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a search engine or a robot on the Internet dedicated to answering my business questions, when I dawn the avatar of my role in my Job. Today not many executives type away at Google to answer some of their searching questions “what has been the pricing trends of my competitors” “is this market in growth or has it reached maturity” “what is the business model of my competitor” “given a set of 10 things which have happened can I predict the competitive actions of my closest foe”
Granted that corporate information is not readily available on the internet and most sensitive information is closely guarded within enterprise firewalls. However I believe that despite these obvious constraints there is still enough corporate information available on the net – due to the pressure of disclosures by stock markets regulators, the fact that a number of the employees are on social networks typing away stuff plus all the freely available industry information.
This idea is about launching a specialized Google for enterprises. This search engine has bots inspired from the swarm technology (which incidentally is inspired from ants) which rummage through the information on the Net and convert them into meaningful intelligence for any enterprise manager. It’s like each executive has his/her very own intelligent pet bot in office. You sensitize it to what you are looking for, make it learn by feeding it some sample data and then unleash it on the Net to revert back with targeted intelligence for your enterprise needs.
If IBM’s Watson can beat humans in a game of Jeopardy with full natural language recognition, I am sure an executive bot pet for the Net can become a significant hit.
OSGI #5: Software Artineering
Something is amiss with the current age software engineering. Something doesn’t feel right about it. Too many projects get botched up and the industry figures on successful large scale IT projects are just appalling. In any other industry this level of a failure rate would have spurred numerous inventions looking to redefine this space.
I feel the issue is with the name itself – software engineering. Is software development or package acquisition and implementation really an engineering task! I am not so sure about it anymore. We might have applied the absolute wrong principles to this discipline and hence confined ourselves to a state of continuous failure.
This idea is about re-imagining the development and implementation of software. Looking at the intersection of art, engineering and software to redefine the way we build software and then deploy software. Art would play a critical role in this re-invention as there is definitely a creative side to imagining and writing software code. The idea is to create an entirely new method and process in the intersection of these fields – let’s call this software artineering.
What exactly will this new world look like, I have no clue. This idea is about having a fresh look, based on a completely new perspective, from a completely different angle and see what pops out. It might be a damp squib or something which re-invents one of the most influential fields of modern times.
That’s all I have in my kitty right now folks and guess what, the brain already feels relieved. The pipeline is now much more relaxed after the unload. There was one other idea which I gave to a couple friends who are serial entrepreneurs, and run an imaginary company called ‘rocket singh’. If the company and the idea remain imaginary, then I will open source that idea in the sequel to this blog.
If someday any of these ideas transition to an innovation and someone out there makes an enterprise out of them, please remember that charity begins at home and you can start with my home which accepts donations in cash and kind J
With cheers to every Startup out there changing the world, this is Neetan the serial dreamer signing off …..
