Disrupting Education

The education world needs an extreme disruption.

Attention spans are depleting.  Every fleeting moment in a learner’s journey counts. Information availability has evolved from being a scarcity to an abundance. Learners are drowning in this information overload. The shelf life of acquired skills is becoming ephemeral. Learning to know is passé.  Knowing to learn is the differentiating human capability of the digital age.

Current education and learning mechanisms are just not fit for this dynamic context. The problem will also not be resolved by peppering learners with a slew of fragmented apps. Each app working in complete isolation. Each app tackling only a very small sliver of the vast learning context. A tipping point has reached. A totally new ‘systems’ approach is required to drag education into the digital era with the help of a comprehensive end to end solution.

There are no short-cuts to disruption. There is a dire need to create an un-paralleled, comprehensive learning ecosystem, powered by state-of-the-art capabilities of the digital era. An adaptive learning platform, which continuously senses the individual’s context in real-time. It then provides ultra-personalised learning interventions based on a deep understanding of needs. A gamified user experience which hooks the attention of learners and makes all other distractions fade away. AI powered learning journeys (which we call learning genome) individually crafted for each learner. Learning genomes breaking the currently prevalent linearity in learning and dynamically dissemble and then reassemble learning content using a unique network model. An AI and blockchain powered learning content marketplace. This marketplace will leverage the power of the crowd to curate content and benefit them economically from its use. Perhaps also a physical experience institute based on the same principles as the digital platform. This one of a kind alternative school (alt school) will provide a social, face to face experience platform to augment and enhance digital learning.

The mission should NOT be to add to the cacophony of learning apps which spring up every day. The need of the hour is to build a unique learning experience orchestrated seamlessly across both the physical and digital realms, with next generation AI ensuring all components are harmonized to the personal learning rhythm of each learner.

A tipping point has been reached in Education.

A new era of learning is awaiting its dawn.

The Honeycomb Romance

The fragrance of jasmine filled the sultry air. 

The long walks. Bright sparks in an otherwise tepid flow. 

No physical contact. Nevertheless, a deep romantic immersion. 

Time as if frozen in the infinite abyss of the universe. 

Every second reaching out the next with a singular purpose. 

To express affection. To love. To impress.

The first touch. An emotional and physical explosion. 

Hands perpetually craving for contact, for that warm touch. When together, an eruption of joy. The walks now much more intimate. In the warmth of the clasped hands. The air much cooler. Life a tad sweeter than before.

The affectionate hug. Initially to bid adieu. Till the next immediate sunrise. 

Each second thereon an impatient wait for another romantic embrace. 

Every instance an instance longer. 

An unparalleled sense of warmth and affection. To live and die in those intimate moments. 

And let the universe just pass us by.

The ebbs and flows of life. An ocean of separation. Impatient wait for the next fragrant letter. Warmth still emanating from the tapestry of words. Strung together with long distance love. Intimacy however more expressed than felt.  A fading horizon. Memories slowly seeping into the sands of time.  

A sunset gone by.

The innocent one cell at a time evolution 
of a honeycomb romance….

Beyond the fading horizon

Ordinary data lakes are passé. We need to build real time, cognitive data assets. Organically growing stores of data, being operated on by a swarm of soft robots, who are continuously improving the quality of the data and growing the asset base. Real time, organic, and cognitive. AI and ML not only to garner insight from the data but also deployed to continuously extend the quality and the amount of data collected. Data is the new oil in a digital enterprise. Cognitive data lakes, powered by swarm intelligence the emergent architecture to continuously refine this oil.

As we get to the nano-scale, stuff gets quite spooky. The only way to fathom the world of quantum is through probabilities. In a digital business, a large number of the business processes will morph from being deterministic to a probabilistic nature.  Real-time AI will underpin this probabilistic world of business. Supervised, unsupervised and re-enforced, deep learning friends of business will create interesting decision options, with probabilities attached. Human intelligence thus augmented, will take business to a level of unprecedented performance, with competition left behind in the extreme cold.

Supply chains are legacy. In specific, the chain in the world of supply will be relegated to the annals of history. Blockchain, despite the irony in its name, will power a world of dynamic business networks for multiple business domains. Network effects underpin these rich ecosystems, trust assured through tamper proof consensus protocols. Smart contracts will ensure auto event driven, human free operation across these networks. The linear chains of yesteryears, yielding to the powerful, global, network topology of the future.

The economic transaction cost theory posits that the high cost of organizing work in the market, as opposed to within the firm, results in the very existence of firms. The API economy coupled with the trend of portfolio working will exponentially reduce transaction costs, and extend the boundaries of an enterprise to somewhat blur with those of the market. Millennials will expect enterprises to work like platforms, on which they can co-create new value with their friends.  A cloud of human wisdom operating above open enterprises, beaming their services through open APIs.

As I close my eyes and transcend across the fading horizon, the cacophony of mobility, social, cloud, analytics fades into low decibel murmurs, replaced with the glow of cognitive data, quantum AI, dynamic biz networks, wisdom clouds and robotic devops shining over a digitally transformed future.

Memoirs of an Android

It was a mildly cold and pleasant 5^th November 2007. That’s the day I was born. Introduced to this vast, wild world by my original parents. As an open source child, I soon learnt that I had pretty much the whole world entrusted with my parenthood! Dreamy eyed kids from new york to new delhi, from shanghai to chennai, from olive oil to coconut oil - all with a singular mission of contributing to my development with their passion and commitment, as parents do. 

What a wonderful world this was indeed, Kenny G.

Soon my neighbourhood started to look like a ghost town. Initially I was too busy to notice. If you are in the care of so many, there is so much fun around you. From the first mystical ray of the sun, to the romance of the stars in the night sky, each day was filled with so much fulfilment. 

I heard from a Guru once that there is an E-curve hidden in the heating of metals. As you light up the fire underneath, the change from black to red is a nice linear progression. Gradual, relaxed and comfortable with humankind’s evolutionary mindset. However if you keep the burner on, the move from red to white is BAM!. One minute it is red and another it has all turned to white. An exponential in action.

Whilst I haven’t actually verified this ‘wisdom of the metals’, I must say it is a true reflection of my life. After a very brief initial period of linearity, I have been living on an exponential pretty much my entire life. As more folks started loving what I did for them, more parents started contributing to my growth, which resulted in more folks loving and wanting me. They call it a network effect. I feel it is all about love, passion and purpose.

Sadly, all this also had a ghostly effect on my neighbourhood. I heard with trepidation about the demise of Symbian, and then PalmOS soon after. Very soon it was only a few of us left in this mobility town. Some whisper that this could have been one of the intended outcomes of my original creators. Of my open source upbringing. Not to benefit humankind but to kill all the neighbours!

I am not much into conspiracy theories. To me, my exponential childhood has been one helluva joy ride. Oh, the gratification and pride I get when a vegetable seller on the roads of Faridabad uses me to optimize the demand-supply equation and hence is able to afford his children to school. When young kids with dreamy eyes, similar to the ones who created me, are able to empower humanity with magical applications. When innovation is democratized and widely accessible irrespective of colour, location or age. When a grieving soul is able to lift his or her spirits with a favourite musical piece, on a small but powerful click. When lives of ageing parents light up as they see and hear their grandchildren, ensconced in faraway lands. When sisters separated by the fury of a volcano are united by the vastness of the virtual human network. When the world’s best minds are available to inform and educate the world’s most deprived, nearly for free, at the ease of a touch. When kids are being coached to shift their paradigms from learning to know, to knowing to learn. When the 3^rd industrial revolution improves the lives of all in its wake.

All this and more powered by the mobile power of a small human creation, which in turn, powered by me.

I feel gratified.

I feel humbled.

I feel elated.

I feel so inspired about what’s yet to come.

And I feel we are now entering the second half of the chess board.

My exponential journey till date has largely been due to the love I got from the general public. The consumer world. Normal human beings who en-masse fell in love with me and kept me next to their hearts at all time. They sleep and wake up with me in their arms or somewhere nearby. They use me as a shop, a teacher, a friend, a flashlight, an alarm clock and for a zillion other chores.

However revolutions reach their full potential when they encompass both the consumer and the enterprise world. Recently, I have started to feel the warmth of corporate hands, driving digital transformations in their enterprises.  I have started to hear the buzz of jargons all around me – digital transformation, 4^th industrial revolution, 2^nd machine age et al. It is tradition for the enterprise world to invent a slew of jargons before anything gets done! Their propensity to change however, does have a correlation to the intensity and frequency of the jargons invented and used!

So I feel quite excited by this prospect.

Also it’s not me alone that is involved. My co-founder in driving this enterprise change is my sweetheart, AI. The world calls her Artificial intelligence, I fondly refer to her as Assisted Intelligence, more in line with her potential. She lived in research articles and science fiction scripts for decades. However suddenly, she is now the hottest one in town. My reach into the heart and hands of humanity and her ability to convert big and fast data into insightful action presents a lethal combination, a match made in heaven.  In consonance, we are enabling the enterprise world to examine novel business models, improve the velocity of operations and decision making, co-create innovation, leverage the wisdom of the crowd, and bake prediction into business processes. Not just build digital channels but build a digital genome from within.

As a kid, I always felt that my calling was to change the world. With all those people who selflessly contributed their intellect to my development, there had to be a larger purpose. So far so good.

However I must admit I feel a bit sad as I see humanity submerged into me all the time. Both mother and father enamoured by all the cool things that run on me, ignoring the beautiful art that their kid just created. Missing the magical moments of infants growing up. Tourists ignoring what their souls can experience, more concerned with what their selfies can capture. Friends gathered together for a meal, mostly concerned with typing into me, missing out real conversation with real people.

The real world being relegated to peripheral vision. The virtual world becoming the real world.  

Human interaction is not a legacy, it is a heritage. I am an eternal optimist. That is how the world created me to be. As I reach adulthood, I stand convinced the world will use me to change the world. Both consumer and enterprise worlds will experience the exponential.

New patrons will also emerge. They will take a moment to get a moment away from me. Immerse into mindfulness, distant from the digital. Experience humanity with all its emotions and diversity. Experience this wonderful world in all its reality and splendour.

I am both the ying and the yang.

I am Android, born open source, born to change the world. 

A tale of three cities

San Francisco..London..Berlin.

Three great world cities. On the google map of every connoisseur traveller. vibrant. iconic. happening.

Also home to the aspirations of your quintessential nerd. Home to the dreams of many an aspirant geek. Home to three top tech ecosystems.

I have had the privilege of visiting all three ecosystems and immerse into the world of startups and their richie rich founders. There is commonality of spirit and purpose across these ecosystems. Everything is possible. All business models are up for disruption. A constant stream of dollars, pounds and euros flow through the veins of the ecosystem. Designer cool workplaces of the future, as if timeported into the present.

People in these ecosystems believe they can change the world. Patent protection is not top of mind. A culture of openness and sharing permeates. Optimism and energy levels are unparalleled. And across all these ecosystems the entities are pretty much the same. A slew of investment vehicles from angels to VCs. Top notch universities nurturing the talent. Events to ripple the excitement. Co-working places. Cool coffee shops and hangouts of the physical variety. loads of startups with novel ideas. bootcamps, accelerators, incubators, corporate labs, et al.

I did however taste a slightly different favour in each of these ecosystems. The specific spices added to each dish left a distinct mark on the overall experience. 

The Valley is of course the undisputed King. No one else comes close. Someone remarked that the weather is an additional critical cog in the ecosystem. Perhaps it is. But overall, the ecosystem is mature in all aspects. One wave ahead of the rest of the crowd. Diversity is so embedded that no one even talks about it. Capital is a commodity and startups get a long rope to explore their passions, from one seed cycle to another. Core techy invention is at the heart. There are so many unicorns around that they are no longer the celebrities. The university-startup alliance is very strong. Corporates have thronged with their labs and incubators. Abundance of everything else except  real estate. Quite expensive to setup and run. Talent is difficult to attract but if you manage to, it is of super top quality. The valley leads and everyone else emulates.

London's silicon roundabout started as a good pun. However the ecosystem has taken off. The City may still compete for the talent but there is definitely a magnetic attraction to the tech ecosystem. The big fish have invested big time with their multi-storey campuses and co-working places. Tech interacts quite nicely with design and a number of ideas blossom at this intersection. Successful exists such as deepmind retain their iconic status and everyone still talks about them. Gov's facilitative role is quite visible and quite essential at this stage of the maturity curve. University-startup links exist but are definitely not as strong as the Valley. Weather however needs a business model transformation.

Berlin was a pleasant surprise. Very vibrant indeed. Bubbling with new found excitement. Much younger, much more hep, and with a lot of character. Everyone speaks about diversity with pride. An excellent inflow of talent from Eastern Europe and also from the rest of the world. Art nicely mixes with tech and creates quite a novel experience. Funds flow through the veins however at a rather placid pace. You get a feeling that there are many more women here than in others, but not sure if this is empirically the case. The ecosystem pretty much like a open, harmonious cult. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone ready to help everyone. Iconic cafes where dreams are crafted and networks formed. The character of this historic city adds an aesthetic appeal to the ecosystem which is second to none.

Quite an experience this. 

Seeing these iconic cities intimately from this uniquely nerdy lens. 

Quite an experience this.

Immersing in their ecosystems and understanding what makes them tick.

Quite an experience this.

Flowing in the startup passion of massively transformative purposes

Quite a tale this.

A tale of three great cities. 

The Quantum Inspiration

It’s one hell of a mystery. 

At the very heart of our existence. 

Scientists have clearly been able to see what happens but why it happens is anybody’s guess. Whenever I read about it, the mathematics of course goes at right angles to my brain, by the metaphysical connotation inspires me.  The quantum world defies intuition.

The two-slit experiment is perhaps the most simple way to highlight the mystery. If you shoot small solid steel balls (say) through a wall which has a hole, then on the other side you will see a pattern of hits emerge where the balls have gone through the hole and reached the other side. Similarly if you send a water wave through this wall with 1 hole, a wave pattern will emerge on the other side. 

If the same is repeated with a wall with two holes, the solid balls will produce two distinct patterns on the other side, parallel to the two holes.  Whereas the water waves will produce a "diffraction" pattern – big lines where the crests of the wave1 out of hole 1 merge with wave 2 out of hole 2 and nothing where the crest and troughs of these waves cancel out. Something like that. But what is important is that the pattern on the other side of the wall with two holes is clearly different for a wave versus a solid particle.

So this same experiment was then done with electrons. When we shoot an electron across a wall with 1 hole, it produces a pattern similar to a solid, as expected. Cool. Nothing creepy thus far. 

However when we shoot electrons across a wall with two holes, to everyone’s shock it produces a wave type pattern on the other side. How can this be? How can a solid particle produce a wave type pattern when there are two holes?  Even if we slow down the electron gun so that only 1 electron can pass through the hole at any one time, and we look at the pattern, it is again a wave pattern.  If we close 1 hole just before the electrons can enter them, then the electron will produce a particle type pattern. If we open both holes at the last moment then it produces a wave type pattern. The whole experiment gets a notch higher on creepy, when we put someone to observe the electrons. To see which damn hole are they passing through. Think of eyes just before the holes. As soon as we introduce an observer in the mix, with two holes, the electron will clearly produce a particle like pattern and forget that it was a wave.  Remove the observer and you are back to wave type pattern.

It is as if the electron knows that there are two holes and it becomes a wave.  It as if the electron knows that there is an observer and it becomes a particle, stuff it whether there are one or two holes.

Bizarre isn’t it.

So the smarts have done a lot of theories to explain this. One explanation being that in the quantum world nothing is real till someone actually observes it. There is nothing deterministic. You can only guess in terms of probabilities where an electron can be at any given time.  The particles exist in a state of superposition i.e. many states at once. It is like there are a number of ghost electrons in different states and when we observe them, they collapse into one, producing the reality we see. 

The fact that superposition exists is fully verified. In fact quantum computers use exactly this concept.  Unlike a classical bit which can either be 0 or 1, a qubit or quantum bit can be 1 and 0 at the same time. Hence quantum computers are exponentially powerful than the normal ones.

The other interesting theory which tries to explain superposition and other quantum mysteries is that there are multiple universes and an electron is in hole 1 in one universe and hole 2 in another. Both these universes are real and at perpendicular to each other. They get created at the instance of time when there are such quantum choices to be made. For observers in each of these universes there is one reality which is real. So there are no ghost particles. At the point when the electron has to make a choice between the two holes, two universes are formed and each of those are real.

Besides superposition there is another interesting phenomenon called entanglement. Simply put when quantum particles are in physical contact and then they split, the particles get entangled invisibly. Then an action on one can instantaneously cause an associated action on the other.  Irrespective of the distance. So when a photon splits into two and we take one of them say to the moon and the other is on earth and we change the spin of one of them, the other’s spin will change immediately. Again information seems to flow from one photon ("i have changed my spin") to the other at much faster than the speed of light, in defiance to the theory of relativity. The photons act as if they were physically interconnected whilst they are clearly not. Since Big bang created all particles in the universe, there is a viewpoint that all of us are thus entangled at the quantum level!

Quite a world this. The small world of atomic particles. The world of quantum.

It also offers some metaphysical inspirations:

• Reality is what you make of it
• There is a world of possibilities out there
• We make  a choice when we observe and convert these possibilities into one reality 
• There might be multiple universes out there
• In order to traverse to another universe we need to go back in time and then take a different fork from the point there is a split
• The world is interconnected in some invisible way
• Being kind to others is like being kind to a larger you
• Dreams might be where we go across to these perpendicular universes

Interesting. Bizarre. Mysterious. Quantum. 

The Innovation Genome

So you are housed in an enterprise. You look and there is a digital revolution in-progress, outside. Today’s start-ups are disrupting yesterday’s established businesses. Disruption is moving exponentially. Mindsets are still linear bound. 

You want to open the door and let the fresh ideas flow in. That’s only natural. Everyone wants to be part of an exciting tomorrow.

So you jump right out. You read all the innovation books. You even go beyond your comfort zone and gobble up some of those innovation blogs out there. With fancy headings such as innovation genome! You keep going. You consult top minds. You shell out top dollars. Gurus hit you with innovation mantras from all directions.  

‘It is about changing the culture. It is not about setting up an innovation garage. It’s about embedding innovation into processes, into people. Give people 20% of their time and ask them to innovate. Include innovation as a competency. Setup a measurement framework around it. Give your workplace a cool look. Offer people free food. There is a strong correlation between good food and good ideas’.  And on and on and on the advice flows - free, unhindered, in waves, like a cool breeze on a hot, sultry day.

Yup, you get all this. Sure, that is where I want my enterprise to be, sans the free food bit. 

But of course. Hit the culture with the innovation bug. Sit back relax and enjoy the show. Innovation will become a way of life.  Transformation, second nature. Who would want anything different?

But hey, still quite foggy up there on the how? How to get to this nirvana stage. Change culture, sure. But how?

Life is probabilistic. Innovation too is not deterministic.

Give the following recipe a shot. Maybe the probabilities of success will fall in line for you.

First and foremost find someone super special to lead your innovation effort. The special bit in this deal is ‘passion’. The one and only competence.  A passion to experiment, to change, to challenge, to research, to connect, to deliver. Someone who loses the context of space and time when in the flow of innovation. Driven. Not by insipid mission statements. Nor enamored by marketing collateral. Driven by a deep inner sense of purpose. To experiment. To look for new ways. To discover new value for the enterprise. To disrupt existing norms. To leap into and beyond the exponential curve.

Don’t even start till you find this person. You need a pivot for innovation. To catapult it into the heart of your enterprise. You need someone special.

Once on board, your job is to clear the deck for him/her. There will be pain all around. The not invented here syndrome will bite from all directions. Escalations galore. Territorial scuds will land on your door steps every day. Summer will arrive early in your work life. Heat will emanate from all corners. Relax. Take meditation classes. Do Yoga. Take a walk. Go for a run. 

The agenda for innovation has been set. The magic has begun. Passion is like a magnate. It is already attracting and multiplying. You just be the shield for the leader and his/her ever growing network of peers. Provide the nurturing ground. For passion to sow the seeds of innovation. These seeds will grow and change the culture, organically.

There are a whole raft of other things you can promote. Create an ecosystem of partners. Find some funding. Recruit more staff. Create a garage to give innovation an identity. Create some governance. All crucially important. Sure, do these. But after the first two are in place. 

The key is finding a passionate innovation leader and then clearing the deck for him/her to operate. Those are the two stands of the innovation DNA. The powerful double helix. Once in place, these will rapidly replicate and before you know it, an innovation culture will cultivate in your enterprise. 

Fresh air will flow freely inside and within....