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....

open sourcing imagination #2

It's been a while since I penned down my last blog. This is typical me. Gain interest, lose interest, all at a rapid pace. But hey, it's a rapid world out there. Startups form and die, before you even know they were formed. Kickstarter gives us a live, streaming insight into the future, previously folks used to track patents to peep into the future. Nanotechnology is converting the paradigm of humanity from dealing with scarcity to dealing with abundance. My kids do 5 things at the same time using 3 devices and 4 channels. Robots are using evolution algorithms to learn to talk to each other. evolution Algorithm!  You must be kidding me, no one taught me that when I did my double master degrees....

so hey, with all this evolution around me, I am entitled to my own sand dunes of interests....

I was having a kadak chai with a business partner today and I saw his eyes gleaning whilst reflecting on the times we live in. I saw a reflection of my soul in that glean. I feel totally inspired everyday, just with the mere fact that i live in these times. There is entrepreneurship blossoming at every corner of the world, there are people from all walks of life giving wings to their dreams. And technology underpins most of those dreams.  My daughter follows this YouTube superwomen. She is a producer n director of a great show, which is a satire on Indian families dealing with contemporary times. Superwomen has over 1.7 million subscribers. She also does all three roles in her production. The father, the mother and the daughter. A celebrity, an actor, a director of this age.

An idea, a camera, an Internet connection and off you go....

Imagination is now open sourced. You can download thoughts from the stream of information flowing in front of you, convert these thoughts into ideas and start something big.

Here are some of my thoughts,  open sourced, creative commons licenced to build...

Startup cafe

Cities such as dubai could do with startup cafes where people from the innovation ecosystem come to intersect, discuss and build ideas, over a chai n a muffin. Folks with ideas, folks with money, folks with resources and folks with a good appetite. The menu card should not only tweet the trending chai flavours but also hot ideas being liked and under formation in the cafe.  A physical space for human beings to invent, share and eat.  A startup cafe.

Appstores blossoming at a garden near you

A godzillion apps are being built. But hey the big players such as Google and Apple seem to have a monopoly over app stores. Have the times arrived for verticalized app stores? Maybe one for retail, one for travel, one for banking et al. Sharpens the focus and removes latency and friction for someone looking for an app. Best to register those domain names,  just in case the idea picks up..www.ideas.appstore.com!

One second advantage

" I go where the puck is going to be"  the one second advantage of prediction. An art a science .. a game changer. Perhaps the next ecosystem for India and Indian companies to nurture. Ingredients : math, science, computing, art all mixed together and then delivered at scale. I would start with data science courses in the schools n universities to build capabilities ground up, just like we did with computer engineering all those years back...perhaps pilani can be the next bangalore. Companies should then form vertical cognitive and prediction hubs, as each vertical needs the models to be calibrated and fine tuned.  Generic data science and machine learning competence centres will not cut it. Go deep, go vertical, go forth...

Around

Humanity only looks down nowadays. Just walk around and watch. People are walking heads down, deep in love with their mobile devices. Chatting, posting, reading or just staring at their devices, praying for a notification to arrive. Something, an email,  a ping, something........

someone create a simple app for them please. An "around" app. It runs on all those devices, all those wearables, on everything that makes humanity gaze down. And all it does is to remind human beings to look around them,  smell those roses a few centimetres away, gaze at the tallest building in the world, admire the eyes of another fellow human passing by and around, look beyond at the horizon at the unique cloud formation. Link into the real world.
look back, look left, look right...look around.

That's it for now.

Theodore Roosevelt on what really counts

It is not the critic who counts;
not those who point out where our strong people stumbled
or when the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena.
Whose faces are marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strive valiantly
who err and come short again and again;
who know great enthusiasms;
who at best know the triumph of of high achievement;
and who at worst if they fall, at least fall while daring greatly.

So that their place will never be with those cold and timid souls,
who know neither victory nor defeat.

This is an inspirational piece by Theodore Roosevelt.
It is indeed only those who are in the arena who really count.
Loads of folks today have the tendency to ride the waves, skim the surface and never really dare take a position. It must be quite lonely to neither experience victory nor failure.

 A key leadership mantra - take a position, be counted, enjoy the outcome, learn from it.

At the Intersection

It is a perfect 32 degrees.  A light and cool breeze flirts with the sands of the desert.  The windows roll down, the sunroof rolls up. The spirit soars to the beats of some classic, soul wrenching music. The fog of a routine existence dissipates.  An orgasmic euphoria erupts within. It is great to be alive again.

It is the same car. It is definitely the same life. However the concoction served through the intersection of the perfect 32 degrees, perhaps the sudden blast of a favorite song or even the breeze waving through the hair, results in a completely different connection in our brain and suddenly euphoria sets in.

Life lives and thrives at the intersection.

Ants and other life forms have discovered a unique form of collective intelligence. Leaderless, extremely federated, super-efficient.  Ever wonder how ants form such a uniform pattern to/from their home and their source of food? Or how huge swarms of locust, millions of them, move in such harmony, without the long-haired conductor doing his/her bit in the center? It is quite amazing that such basic life forms in nature are able to achieve such colossal, coordinated feats.

A few folks from the homo sapiens cadre got quite intrigued by these advanced accomplishments of smaller, fellow inhabitants of mother earth. So they broke the shackles of linear learning and went and studied ants, bees, fireflies, locusts and even water droplets at a level of detail. Besides a number of PhDs, this research also resulted in some critical insights and the birth of a new term viz. ‘swarm intelligence’.

The agents (ants or locusts) apparently operate completely on their own, in their local context. However they are connected to each other and their environment through a set of very simple rules. There is no central co-ordination or leadership and also no grand goals which the community sets for itself. However federated, local actions based on a simple set of rules result in global achievements which many a team would aspire to achieve.

An ant for instance emits a substance called pheromone as it moves out of its home to look for food. The pheromone evaporates over a period of time – this is where the environment comes into play. The simple rule that ants follow is “go on the way where your little nose smells the most pheromone”. So as multiple ants move from their home looking out for food, soon some of them will go on the shortest route and on this route the smell of pheromone will be the strongest. Subsequent ants will use the simple rule and follow this route and this will further intensify the pheromone smell on the route. As a result, globally the majority of the ants will follow the shortest path to the food!

The discovery of this highly effective pattern in nature has been intersected with a number of our day to day optimization problems such as finding the shortest route from source to destination for a set of packets over a telecom network. This kind of intersection has already spurred a whole lot of innovation in multiple fields of life. An Airline ran an experiment in 2008 to see if airplane allocation to gates worked better if it were based on swarm intelligence i.e. each pilot is like an ant acting in his/her local context to get to the gate, while overall guided by a set of basic rules. Apparently, the net allocation of planes to gates on the day was much more efficient when based on swarm methods as opposed to the normal optimization algorithms.

(http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2008/0406-planes_trains_and_ant_hills.htm)

I wonder if we have seen the full potential of this intersection yet. Imagine how we could apply this highly decentralized, leaderless pattern to other walks of life. The implicitly federated Internet environment comes to mind. Imagine the internet as the “environment” and all things connected to it as agents. If these agents could all have some basic rules under which they can operate, can their local actions tie up into a connected whole, a whole much greater in intelligence and capability than its parts? I guess the challenge will be to write and then execute the thin layer of software on each agent which will ensure that the agent follows a set of pre-defined basic rules. However if we could somehow manage to get the software installed and executed each time an agent connects to the Internet, then there is a possibility of morphing the Internet into a collective intelligence unit (brain) which is able to solve our problems based on the rules currently  configured on its agents. Perhaps the next big evolution of the www after the internet of things!

The key point however is that the next wave of innovations and successes will emanate from the intersection. Linear learning in various fields has perhaps reached its zenith or will result only in incremental advancement in our thoughts. Those bright sparks of fresh thinking and innovation will only be found at the intersection.

At the intersection of different fields and disciplines.

At the intersection of different cultures.

At the intersection of different religions and belief systems.

At the intersection of Eastern myths and Western science.

At the intersection of ying and yang.

 So when your angel, your daughter walks up to you and says she has decided to take up ‘nanofractalmedicine’ taught in 6 semesters across India, Europe and America be prepared to say yes, foot the bill and proudly walk her to the intersection!

The anatomy of a CEO

It was another one of those blazing afternoons.

I guess we were all used to the resplendence of all three seasons – hot, hotter, and blazing hot. But nobody complained. Hot had become a way of life. I and two other of my rather leisurely friends made our way to a coffee shop. The bright idea for the afternoon was to gulp down our parched throats some hot coffee, amidst the mist of aromatic shishas. Men don’t analyze too much, I guess. They just do what they got to do. Hot coffee on a hot day seemed like a perfectly harmonious thing to do.

The conversation flowed in confluence with the smoke waving through the room. Floating here and there, going nowhere. The aroma of exotic Turkish coffee mixing fluently with the mist emanating from the Shishas. Pretty much like a scene out of that old Bollywood movie ‘dam maro dam’ sans of course the lovely women floating around. 

Anyways, you perhaps are starting to ponder where or when does the CEO enter in this scene. So before I lose the skeleton of that CEO in the mist of those aromatic shishas….J

Let me cut to the chase.

The free flowing conversation received a rather sharp incision when someone asked the poignant question - “I wonder which discipline has the bigger chance of making it to CEO – Sales or Finance?” This filled me with sadness as IT did not even find a mention in the question! Anyways I ignored my hurt emotions and jumped into the conversation by offering a firm view anchored fully on empirical evidence and facts – “I believe it’s the Finance field which dominates the corner office”. Of course all three of us had firm and fully informed opinions but no one really knew what the true facts were.  So I offered to do some research…..

I picked up the top 50 brands of the World.  First of all that list itself is quite interesting. You have in it the expected McDonalds, Coca Cola et al. However increasingly the Chinese brands are breaking in as well – ever heard of ICBC (Asia), the 11^th most known brand in the World! 

Then of course there are geek firms which feature prominently on the list – Apple, Google, IBM, HP, Oracle, SAP, BB – not bad for IT. It has made it to the crème de le crème. No doubt by weaving a .net over the stock market’s eyes, whilst its brokers sipped Java!

Anyways, next I started looking at the top honchos who head up these fine companies and observed the following:

Game, Set, Match MBA: These coveted three letters M.B.A; they still dominate the Top. That too only from premier institutes such as Harvard, Wharton. So if Nicholas Carr publishes another HBR article, this time titled “MBA does not matter”, ignore him as much as you did his first one

Back to School: CEO resume are peppered with academic glories. Quite a few of them have more than one degree and that too from Ivy League institutions. Yes, there are indeed a few, high profile ones who jumped college to pursue their passion and made it to the corner office. However that is exactly what they are – a few!

The equal opportunity movement! : The corner office is quite like the Sahara desert if you were looking for women. When I came to Louis Vuitton in the list, I thought maybe, just maybe. But alas, thou too Brutus? Of course Pepsi was the pleasant variant, for reasons more than one

A kaleidoscope of experience: These guys have a rich tapestry of experience. They have ‘been there and done it’ at a number of places, in different roles and across different disciplines. The path to the top has many curves and top honchos seem to embrace each curve with a passion

Putting in the Years: Contrary to popular belief, the majority of top honchos careers are not characterized by the shifting sands of frequent job changes. In and out of companies, weaving their magic wands? Not really. Most have toiled their way in and around the bylanes of the same organization, putting in the hours, then days, then years, gaining deep experience, earning deeper credibility, building a strong foundation of trust and then claiming their right to the corner office. Old is indeed gold - at least when it comes to the top jobs @ top brands

Someone witty I met recently would say - “two turkeys don’t make an eagle, Neetan”. Perhaps a more diligent collation of empirical evidence across Fortune 500 companies may yield a different set of conclusions.

However for concluding a shisha powered, coffee triggered, light conversation amongst three deep friends, the above observations provide an adequate picture of the internals of our beloved CEO’s anatomy.

A tribute

it must have been somewhat similar

decades ago

when an inner voice would have screamed

a chord would have stuck

and millions paraded

to the melody of freedom

being part of a generation born free

i have often pondered

what drove those wonderful people

born with love in their hearts

and humility in their souls

to part with the tranquility of their homes

the loving hugs of their daughters

the protective shield of their parents

the harmony of their routines

and jump into the burning flames of protest and conflict

what drove those wonderful people

to offer those heads so fondly stroked

by the supple hands of their little ones

to the bludgeons of blood soaked batons

what drove those wonderful people

to kiss their mother’s feet

in the stillleness of the night

then disappear into oblivion

to partake in the fight

what drove those wonderful people

to dawn pristine white robes

so lovingly creased and caressed

by their doting spouses

and jump into bottomless pits

of death or endless pain

it has always felt surreal

that era gone by

those wonderful people, no more

it has always felt surreal

those uprisings for a cause

that deeper sense of purpose

that irrepressible societal core

today the streets are brimming again

with endless hearts in full bloom

a rare glimpse of an era gone by

a surreal upsurge of sentiment

where the eyes see no reason

the mind sees no loss or gain

the soul rejoices in celebrations

while the body suffers in pain

at the helm an aged, selfless being

in pristine white

full of energy and passion

awakening the collective consciousness

of a declining nation


a senseless crusade

or perhaps a true tribute

to THE Mahatma