Free Does Not Work Most Of The Time

Ever since I had my first job, I have wondered about the concept of “Free” in corporate world. And many years later, I am pretty convinced free is usually a bad strategy for all parties. This is strictly a rant on my personal views – nothing official about it, and do not represent the views of my present and past employers .

Nothing is really free

That took me some time to realize – absolutely nothing is really free. Someone has to pick up the tab always. Since I have worked in the consulting business most of my life – let me use that as backdrop to explain . This is true for big and small consulting companies I have worked for.

Customers do pay a pretty penny for consulting – and rightfully think that since they are giving so much business for the consulting vendor, they should get some things for free. This is usually in the form of proof of concept work. And most of the time – Vendors do agree to throw in free POCs. Vendors do not do this out of kindness – since they typically do this only if there is upside down the line for them via more business. The POC starts – customer does not always go all-in for these projects , given they are not putting in direct money on the table. And eventually the project finishes with no one happy and no decisions made . The Vendor does not exactly lose here – they will make it up in next project, either at that customer or at another customer. Those vendors who do not have multiple projects and clients might actually lose serious money in these POCs, and hence they might not do it a second time either. Whichever way you look at it – no body is moving a good step forward in this picture.

Even when something is given away for free, it does not get used much

If you walk the show floor at any trade show, you will get a lot of free stuff – from coffee mugs to iPads. I have seen software companies give iPads to their prospects and clients preloaded with presentations etc, that usually end up in a teenager’s back pack in few days, usually without the presentation ever being looked at. And no prizes for guessing who is paying for those iPads

Then there is the case of vendor charging a maintenance fees for software, and using part or all of that fees for “free” new functionality added to already sold software. Customers might genuinely like to see all kinds of things to come out of this arrangement for free – new business processes, mobility, BI etc. The hard part is – it is next to impossible to draw a clean line on what should be free.

If you look at the adoption of the new functionality provided for free , very rarely do you see big adoption. But if you look in further – there might be other reasons for this , like cost of hardware, testing, change management etc. So on one hand, the vendor uses a lot of money for making stuff, and on other hand customer has no way of using it – due to lack of awareness, lack of resources or lack of interest. The take away here is again that Free did not work as expected.

It can of course be argued that in a multi-tenant SaaS model, customers might use free stuff more often. I seriously doubt it. Example : if you never had parallel ledgers till today, and now your cloud vendor gave it to you for free – will you implement it ? Many customers will not – either because they don’t care, or because it needs more change management , SI work etc (probably less than on premises world, but still usually enough to help inertia rule). And it is not as if cloud does not have lock in – if you have any doubts, look at the SEC filings of cloud companies on internet.

Should Vendors charge for a different UI or for mobile versions of existing applications ?

UIs will change over time – as technology changes (hardware and software advances, consumerization of IT and all that) . Should Vendors charge for that? Will making it free increase adoption and make customers happy? I don’t know the answer – but my (of course biased) answer is that it is fair to charge for this. Here is my rationale – when customers don’t like UIs, they will find work arounds. Vast number of screens delivered by vendors are replaced by loads from spreadsheets . I know a company where the financial analyst loads JV entries twice a day by putting it in an excel sheet and putting it in a sharepoint drive, System does the rest and the analyst is happy and productive. I have asked this guy personally many times if a different UI is a better solution, and he consistently likes to stick with his excel in sharepoint approach. I know a hundred other examples like this where people refuse to move to better UI for fear of change. Giving a free UI for these cases just would be a bad investment.

Mobile is a harder nut to crack. Vendors with a limited footprint – like just HR or just CRM as their offering, might throw it in for free and build it into their price case. I think that is the right thing to do for them since it makes business sense. However, for vendors who sell many different things – they might not have a good way to do this across their portfolio. For these cases – All I can say is “pick your battles” . They are probably better off selling packages mobile applications for best usecases. Or they might sell (or partner with) some development platform that helps customers build their own. Or maybe leave it to the partner ecosystem to bridge that gap. It might also make sense to throw in a few things for free on mobility front if it makes sense for competitive reasons.

But if you charge – what is fair and what is not? I have a simple POV on that – the price to charge is the maximum $$ that will not stand in the way of adoption. Price is driven by market – if you over charge, customers won’t buy and use it. So start with what you think is fair, adjust as you go – with a good tradeoff between adoption and your financial KPIs like revenue and margin.

What about consumer side of the house?

You would think that consumers are happy with all the free stuff they get – like facebook, free uploads in flickr and so on. Nothing is really free there either – you still pay in terms of sacrificing privacy, suffering through advertisements (or paying to avoid the advertisement). And of course you use the same facebook to complain of their free service

So in short (well, I guess this was not very short – sorry) – I doubt “free” really works anywhere. There is no free lunch – I have accepted that and made peace with it. What do you think ?

SAP Hana and “The Killer App” Problem

Ever since SAP announced Hana , I and many others have wondered about what would be the set of killer apps that would come out and wow us. While several apps have come out , and hundreds of others are in the works at SAP and its ecosystem, this question has not quite gone away. Next week is SAPPHIRENOW in Orlando, and I have already been asked a lot by a number of people about what killers apps will be demonstrated there.

Obviously, we have cool things on Hana to share with you next week - and I have no plans of spoiling it here. I am pretty sure some of them have real potential to be killer apps.

There is no consensus on what makes a killer app though - if existing SAP applications like Business Suite and BW run on Hana and a lot of customers deploy it, would they be considered killer apps? There will be some who agree and some who disagree and both sides have good reasons for their stances. If a high value use case comes out for a specific niche industry – something that 10 companies in the world can use and get outrageous benefits, but no one else has any use of it – will that be a killer app? I guess the opinion on that too is divided. What if the app is downloaded by 10 million people , but it does not significantly alter the top line for SAP? Will that be considered a killer app? I have a feeling that we won’t get consensus on that either.

So what then is a killer app? and is it a goal worth pursuing? and if there is no one killer app – what happens then?

As you would have guessed by now, I am at a loss on the killer app definition – so I will leave it to my readers to define (ideally in the comments section below). However, I do think that this is not as big a hurdle as I used to think 2 years ago.

All the examples I gave above of potential killer apps are 100% valid for different people – and whatever is the solution should cater to all parts of the ecosystem. However, it is probably different parts of Hana that help each scenario . Some apps need more of Hana’s raw power to process lots of data in quick time , others might need industry specific libraries, yet others might need Hana’s predictive capabilities and so on. And for existing customers – they need the ability to modernize their existing SAP systems with minimal trouble, as well as extend them and even build brand new apps from ground up.

So what is the solution – the solution in my mind is to treat Hana as a platform. Not a “run of the mill” platform – but a modern, standards based platform that caters to a wide variety of developers and customers. It should make it easy for developers to have a native, open and integrated development experience and should scale with their needs. And hopefully some of the apps built on this platform will get to a consensus “killer app” status.

SAP Hana Cloud Platform does this, and a lot more. Come to SAPPHIRENOW or follow along online – we will share a lot more on the platform direction there. Trust me you will like it – so don’t miss it

 

An Ex-Influencer’s take on influencing

I read this today morning http://getlittlebird.com/2013/04/how-to-influence-the-influencers-ask-for-their-advice/ and thought it was good advice . Influencers – they are an invaluable source of information to any vendor , and the good ones can help you do course corrections before you do something awful .

For a brief period , SAP considered me as an influencer . First as an SAP mentor and then also as a blogger . It also probably played some part in SAP hiring me . And now I deal with several influencers as an SAP employee, similar to what I did as an IBMer till last year.

I never quite figured out why there are multiple categories of influencers – analysts, bloggers, press , mentors et al. I am not a communications expert – so I trust there is some good reason that such distinctions exist . As someone who talks to most of the “50 shades of influencers” , I don’t personally see any difference in the quality of input I get . Maybe it is just organizational inertia to change an existing model .

In my opinion – choosing Influencers is exactly like choosing your mentors . It is never easy . It is a complex balancing act – you need to establish long term relationship with the best of them, but you also need to keep bringing in new ones to negate any bias . All influencers have some bias – which is why you should have more than one to begin with . However , if you stick to the same ones for an extended period – your chance of getting fresh new ideas will decrease quite a bit . And after some time passes, you would have influenced your influencers too much in reverse and will start painfully wondering why you seem to be stuck in echo chambers all the time .

In my opinion, it is probably safer for both sides to introduce a retirement scheme for all influencer programs . A change of scenery can do wonders for ones perspective . And if it is a planned activity, it will feel more like a nice vacation than a divorce . Sure you will lose a bit of continuity and comfort feel – but it is a small punishment compared to the doomed echo chamber !

Big Data Solutions – Do Questions Matter ?

I have Ray Wang to thank for this post. Off late, I have a serious problem of writers block. I just cant find a topic interesting enough to write about, and consequently have become a ratherirregular blogger – at least compared to last year. Any way – back to the topic of this post.

Ray tweeted this few minutes ago

MyPOV: start with the right questions to ask before you create your #bigdata business models #inforum2012—
R Ray Wang (@rwang0) April 23, 2013

A lot of BI blueprinting sessions from my consulting career flashed through my mind when I saw that. A key principle for a good BI system design is in finding out upfront most of the questions a user would ask the system, and then designing a solution around that. Unfortunately this is a blessing and a curse – while we can really optimize getting fast and accurate responses to predefined questions , this also curtails our ability to change our mind and ask different questions. More experienced BI experts will second guess other questions that users “may” ask and leave some room in design to cater for that, but it is clearly not a scalable way to do things.

Somehow, users were also trained along the way to agree to some lack of flexibility in BI systems. While the complaints never went away fully, most users think by now that it is normal for BI team to ask for some time to change the datamodels and create new reports and so on. It is a sort of “marriage of convenience” if you will – with tradeoffs understood by both sides.

So when we let go of “ordinary” data and embrace “big” data – what should change? I think we should use the big data momentum to make BI systems more intelligent than the rudimentary things it is capable of doing today. And this intelligence should be done with some business savvy. In other words both “B” and “I” of BI need some serious tweaking.

In my opinion, what should change right away is the expectation of business users needing to state most of their potential questions upfront at design time of the system . Or more clearly – the expectation should be significantly lowered, and business users should be allowed to ask more ad-hoc questions than they have done so far. Of course we can never guarantee full flexibility – so some subjectivity is necessary on where we draw the line. Just that the line should be drawn musch farther from where it is drawn today.

Accuracy of result for ad-hoc questions is not enough – the results should come back in a predictable and short time frame too. Ideally, all questions should come back with answers ( or a heads up to user that this is going to take longer ) within a predefined timeframe (say like 3 to 5 seconds or less).

Then there is the question of how the users ask these questions. SQL or NoSQL – querying languages do not provide democratic access to data. People should be allowed to ask questions in English ( or whatever language they use for business ). Some training might be needed for the system and for the users to understand the restrictions – but no user should be constrained with the need to know how things work behind the scenes. A minority of people should have the skills to educate the computer – the rest of us should not be burdened with that. Instead, the computers should be smart enough to tell them answers to what questions users ask.

There are very seldom exact answers to questions in business ( or life) – even apparently simple questions like “what is my margin in North America ? ” is ambiguous to answer. Most clients I have had have many different meanings to “margin” and “North America” and “My” within their organization. In real life, if these questions are asked of a human analyst, she will ask follow up questions to you to clarify and then provide an answer with necessary caveats. Why can’t systems do that? Wouldn’t life of users be vastly improved if systems answered problems like humans did, in a way humans understand? of course with more speed than humans

Big data or otherwise, there is always an issue of trust in the data from user’s perspective. Most analysts spend nearly as much time explaining how they arrived at their results, as they take for compiling and analyzing the data. The system goes through all the computation any way – even today in the non big data world. Why can’t our BI systems explain to the user how it arrived at the result all the way from source to target or backwards? Wouldn’t that increase productivity a lot?

When users ask questions – they usually will also combine it with external data (google, spreadsheets etc) before they take a final decision. Would it be possible for a BI system to present some useful contextual data to the questions from internet and intranet and allow the user to choose/combine what he needs?

And one last thing – if the system is intelligent enough to find answers, why can’t it have the smarts to also figure out the best possible presentation for the results? Today – we mostly have to predefine how output looks like visually. Why put that load on users? Can’t systems be smart enough to look at the question and the answers and figure out the best way to represent it to the user? This is not a “big data” problem – this should have been the case all along, but somehow never quite happened in a mainstream kind of way.

This is by no means an exhaustive list – I left out plenty of things like collaboration, predictive responses, closed loop BI and so on. I didn’t do so because they are unimportant, but only because of the boredom factor. These types of things are already happening to some extent, and hopefully will catch on more as time progresses.

So there you have it – its my birthday wishlist. And thanks again Ray for that much needed spark to blog again

Is “Out Of The Box” a Myth ?

I had a brief exchange of tweets with Ram Manohar Tiwari ( @rmtiwari on twitter ) recently on out of the box thinking , and since then a lot of thoughts have been brewing in my mind about this .

Everyone I know in corporate circles is a fan of “out of the box” . I don’t think a day has passed in my working life these past few years without someone mentioning it explicitly . It almost gives me an impression that there is this huge big box , full of regular joes like me – and a handful of smart people who stand outside and try their best to get us on their side .

My view on this matter is that there is no such thing as “out of the box”. People maybe able to get out of “A” box , but they will be in “some box” all the time . And because people are different from each other – most people should be able to tell others to get out of the box . All they can do is get out of their current box, get into a box with more space , and when that box fills up – then jump to yet another box .

Some times you might even have to visit the box you were in earlier – the one that you took pains to get out . If you need an example : think of people moving out of mainframes and now going to a similar model in cloud computing

I also doubt we are just in one box at a time – my feeling is that we are at the intersection of several ones at any point in time . This makes me claustrophobic just thinking about it . This is also the reason getting out if a box is hard – it is like a relational DB. All the dependencies need to be taken care off before you whack a table

All things considered , I now think teams will have more success by making use of diversity in its members than making a homogeneous team try hard to get out of the boxes they are in .

I think I have sufficiently bored you by now . If you need to be “un-bored”, try some out of the box thinking ….NOT

IT In India Could Use Some Help – Are You In ?

I woke up this weekend to this depressing news http://toi.in/ot3e_a

I have worked at various SIs all my life before deciding to join SAP labs in January of this year . So this problem hit me hard – and in some way, I felt that I am responsible too somehow for this dismal situation that the younger generation is facing .

This is not just an HCL problem – every SI I know of has had this issue of having a big mismatch between supply and demand . The irony is that these SIs all have very capable S&OP type experts who have done fantastic work for their clients solving this exact problem . Yet they can’t seem to solve it for their own business .

The academic world in India does not work as closely with Industry as it should. I am a mechanical engineer by training – but there were hardly any good mechanical engineering jobs when I came out of college . The only decent jobs were in IT – that too in SIs . There was practically nothing that I learned in Engineering that I could directly apply to my IT job . And yet, vast number of mechanical engineering students come out of colleges every year and look for IT jobs . Why isn’t there a supply adjustment to suit demand ?

It is not as if the education is much better for core mechanical engineering needs itself. The labs in most colleges still use engines that were obsolete 40 years ago . When I went to college – auto transmission was popular outside India . I remember just passing references to it in my text book – and that was it . I am glad I did not have to do mechanical engineering for a living . I just wasn’t well prepared for it . As I talk with young students now – I think the syllabus has barely changed from when I did engineering 20 years ago.

And yet – thousands of new engineering grads are churned out every year . This cannot be good – the average quality is not good for their core discipline nor is it good for IT .

IT education is not much better . People still learn C and java and come out of school looking for software jobs . I met a recent computer science grad last week who did not know why servers use fusion I/O cards or even SSDs. They very rarely have seen good code in college , because there is very little interaction with corporates . So corporates take them, train them and few years later they are productive . If academicians took a look at what the industry wants – these unproductive years could be absolutely minimized . But most of them don’t – they just love status quo.

The VC culture in India is nascent at best . All the major VCs have presenxe here – but several people who could use their investment have no idea where they are or how to get their attention . And vast majority of people don’t understand even basics of how startups work . It pains me to see some of them fall prey to local loan sharks . This lack of awareness results in several brilliant students live a “next best life” as a programmer at an SI, and rise through its ranks to varying degrees of success . It depresses me to no end . I try to talk to as many people as I can and try to give them pointers and help them build a network – and I know several others do it too . But it is not done at a scale that matters , given the magnitude of the opportunity cost .

This should change – and every Indian who knows better should spend some time and effort in helping those who don’t . If enough people take an interest at grass roots level – I am sure this could change for the better . Actually, I am not sure any more – but I sure hope and pray that it will change !

Insecure Middle Level Managers – Help Them !

Yesterday, I was most excited to see an email from my friend and mentee Tomas Krojzl . IBM’s CEO and her senior staff chose Tomas as one of the “Best of IBM 2013″ Winners. That is a huge deal in IBM – to be one of the few picked out of 430,000+ employees. No one I knew before personally have made it to that list. I, and many others I know, have made it to the “clubs” for selling more than our targets – but that is nothing compared to what Tomas got recognized for.

Way to go, Tomas – you are an inspiration to the rest of us – within and outside IBM !

As much as I like Tomas , I think there are some unsung heroes in this story – his management that put him up and supported his nomination all the way up. This is exactly what leadership is all about. They let Tomas shine bright as just reward for everything he did and continues to do – with no concern that Tomas will get more visibility and credit than they ever will. Hats off to them – I wish I had more managers like that, and I wish I acted that way more times in my own role as a manager.

At every employer I have worked for – I have had good and bad ( and sometimes terrible) managers. I am only 2 months into SAP , and so far everything is great – so I can’t say from first hand experience how it is with managers in SAP. I can certainly say I could have done a lot better as a manager than I have in the past.

Middle managers are a stressed out lot largely. They fall into a few buckets in generally – and some oscillate between these groups.

1. They see a clear career path forward and a rough time line to get to next levels.

2. They are happy where they are, and do not have a lot of growth ambitions for whatever reasons. Most often, they feel secure where they are.

3. They have no clear idea on where to go next or how to get there – although some might think they know, yet can’t stand scrutiny when pushed for an answer.

Those who know they have a path forward – I think they are of two types. One type is very secure – and will lead their team , and everyone will progress together. They will coach effectively , recruit people smarter than them, get rid of people from the team if they think coaching is not helping and so on. And they will never stand in the path of someone else’s progress. Not only that – they will go out of their way to smash obstacles in your way, and teach you how to smash the next obstacle you encounter. And when they need help – they have no shame in asking for it.

One of my mentors at IBM once told me “I can totally foresee me working for you in few years” . This is a guy I had looked up to for several years, and you can imagine my shock. But I could make out that he was proud that it was a real possibility that his mentee would forge ahead, and that he was part of the reason why that could happen. I know another senior executive at SAP who has hired and groomed several top achievers, and she now works for one of her recruits. Yet another friend of mine – whom I met last week at Bangalore – gladly introduced me to his boss, whom he helped recruit. These are all people I greatly admire. And I would love to work for them any day, or have them in my team any day. It is a privilege just to know them.

Then there is the other type – who are insecure. From the outside, they look exactly like the first type – the key difference is that they mostly care only about themselves. They “manage up” significantly better than other employees. In common parlance – they are awesome politicians. They are masters of stealing credit from their team. The best of them manipulate their teams to make them think that they are watching out for the best interests of the team. Sadly, it takes a while to know who they are . I even doubt they realize this is how they operate – I have asked some of these characters, and they seemed to have rationalized their ways somehow.

Getting stuck with an insecure middle manager is painful – and I have been unfortunate to occasionally have insecure bosses. And I constantly worry if I am (or f I will become) one of them.

It is not as if top management is free of insecurity and politics – they clearly are not. The big difference is that by the time they are in top management, most of them have a fair knowledge of what is next for their careers. So my observation is that only a handful are insecure – and they usually stick out like a sore thumb. And once you know who they are, you can work around them somehow in most cases – or you can leave. There is not a lot of guessing needed for employees, management and peers.

Every company I know think they have a talent shortage . In my opinion, before they look outside – they should evaluate their middle management layers. My bet is that there is plenty of talent usually in companies, and the only reason the top management can’t spot them is because a portion of middle management is insecure, and will hide their top performers. I readily admit that not all middle managers do it out of malice – some just have protective instincts , and like to shield their team. They don’t always think through whether the team needs that extra air cover.

Help these middle level managers – chart a course for them and help them navigate. And make sure you get to know more people up and down the org chain, so that you don’t always need a middle level manager to spot talent. And please amply reward the best of them – like the ones who saw Tomas through to his achievement . They are a big reason why good companies become awesome companies. And if you can’t coach them – move away their employees to another manager who is secure and can do them justice as a leader.

Congratulations again, Tomas – very proud of you. And I am looking forward to see a lot more stars being well recognized and not stifled.

Be Proud To Be An IT Expert – But Please Evolve !

Between Analysts, Bloggers and Software Vendors – I think a lot have been done to demoralize IT professionals already. A lot of fantastic IT people that I know have started to feel insecure and unwanted. This includes many of my friends and mentees. In the last few months – I have had innumerable conversations about this with my friends who work at customer companies, SI companies, HW companies etc. I think it is a huge mistake to downplay IT like it is done now – and just wanted to post a few thoughts here.

First – IT absolutely needs to evolve, just like every other part of the enterprise. And I think that is already happening. I don’t see any IT experts I know who live under a rock. If there are any – then yes, they should feel insecure and unwanted and all that.

But lets look at other parts of the enterprise to see how IT compares. Take HR for example – how many companies can boast of a lean super efficient HR system where talent management, career progression, complaint redressal, succession etc are all efficiently done? Many companies I know struggle with most of these functions, just like they struggled when I started my career. The big improvement has been in payroll processing – like outsourced payroll etc, which happened not only because of business model changes – but also due to great IT innovations. Or lets take sales – several large enterprises still do most of their sales like they did 20 years ago, with good sales people knocking on doors (literally and figuratively). Many of them have complicated and manual approval processeses that I did not understand in the 90s, and I still don’t get them. The parts that improved – like cloud based sales force automation, pricing optimization, etc all happened because of IT innovations. Look at engineering – machine design got a huge uplift in large part because CAD got sophisticated over years, and computers can now handle heavy duty collaborative design seamlessly.

If none of that sounds impressive – imagine the business impact if the IT systems that handle sales orders or payroll goes down ( please don’t say “that is why we should move to cloud” as your response – cloud goes down too ). Yet – the “business” side of the house doesn’t get anywhere near the criticism that IT gets. And IT gets very little credit for jobs well done.

For sure, there is some significant complacency in IT – many IT people feel entitled. Several have not kept pace with the latest and greatest. But on a relative scale – are developers and DBAs worse off in this matter compared to colleagues in HR and sales? My answer is an emphatic NO.

Software vendors and SIs do make a claim that they are all about business solutions. This is of course the right message – IT’s job is to solve business problems . However, this message is now interpreted as “We are all about business, and we don’t care about IT”. That is not how it works in real companies – even in departmental purchases (like it often happens in BI for example) , at some point – integration, security etc will come into play. Not involving IT upfront almost always results in grief and extra cost down the line. I have seen many CXOs repent that they did not involve IT upfront in their procurement decisions.

Some IT folks have morphed into procurement experts – and I am not sure of this is good or bad. Procurement skills are important – since a good part of the job involves dealing with Vendors. However, the way this has translated in many companies is that the sole focus is on price reduction. If IT and the actual procurement department both focus strictly on price – the vendor gets very little opportunity to explain the value of the solution. And this usually is behind the reason why IT vendors like to establish relationships with business side of their customers so that they can also present the value side of the equation, and not just cost. The mature IT organizations act as orchestrators – pulling in business, procurement and all other stake holders – and enabling and advising and coaching all the parties including the vendors. That is where IT adds value in “buy” decisions. I have learned a lot from such IT experts – and I am grateful for that learning.

Then there is the whole cloud argument – that cloud makes IT obsolete. Nothing could be farther from truth. Cloud definitely is the future – but it will be a very long time till everything moves to the cloud. And since the predominant pattern in cloud is for customers to buy best of breed solutions – someone needs to integrate all the disparate solutions between themselves, and also to the on-premises systems. Same holds true for security. And who will advise the business colleagues on HA/DR etc for cloud purchases? Even in the case where most of the landscape is shifted to cloud, IT jobs won’t go away. The cloud companies – hosting companies, data centers, application companies et al need the same skills that customer companies used to need.

So, my friends in IT – don’t feel that you are any less important than your colleagues in other parts of the organization. You are every bit as important – and an equal partner in making sure your company meets its goals. Stop thinking of “business and IT” as two things. “business” is not your customer – they are your partner. You both have only one customer – you know, the people who sign checks etc

But please don’t sit back and be happy with status quo – complacency is the only thing that can make you obsolete. Learn more about usability, design , organiational behavior and most importantly – learn how the business of your company really works . Adapt and evolve – ALL THE TIME !

Co-innovation – It Takes Two To Tango

People who have known me for a while know that I am a big fan of co-innovating with an ecosystem. I have worked in a number of co-innovation projects in my career with varying degrees of success. And now I am in India for 3 weeks, working with a number of ecosystem partners to explore co-innovation ideas.

Why should anyone co-innovate in the first place?

To begin with – innovation is a misused and overhyped word. I am of the firm opinion that a vendor should not claim innovation on any product or service – only a customer should. I am in two minds these days on whether analysts and bloggers are good judges of innovation. But till I get some clarity of thought, I am going to stick with customers as the sole judge.

But Vendors have to constantly try to innovate – otherwise they will not stay relevant to their customers. Relevance comes in two parts – protecting the investments customers made already, and coming up with new things that solve the ever changing needs of customers in a global economy. It is a hard balance to strike, to say the least.

One reason for this balance being hard to strike is because vendor solutions are not always outcome based. Almost every customer has budget to make more money – be it revenue increases or cost reductions. But not all vendors and customers can articulate IT solutions in the context of a business solution. It is an in-exact science to begin with – since some assumptions have to be made . And in a dynamic business world – you can never guess all the factors that affect an outcome. So vendors are naturally hesitant to tie their sales to an outcome that they don’t have control over. Not just vendors – I have also seen several customers who are hesitant to tie their purchases to a risk/reward model. I guess it will be a while before outcome based contracts become mainstream if at all.

Yet another reason is that no one vendor can provide all the solutions to a customer , although many vendors apparently want to do so. Customers also typically like a “one throat to choke” model – which these days seem to be called a more politically correct “one hand to shake”. A happy medium is where co-innovation comes in. It can have many flavors – with multiple vendors joining in , and some times (sadly not often enough)  with customers directly playing a part.

This is a scalable model – since for a given budget constraint, every vendor can get more bang out of their buck, and the customers get a comprehensive solution. But it takes a lot to make it successful. More than the legal, IP, cost etc type of issues – it is the personality of the people that actually work on these projects that make a difference. Co-innovation projects need people who work for different employers to trust each other a lot. This is easier said than done .

There is another conflict of interest in such solutions. Vendors will need a solution that they can lift and shift to other customers . That will typically mean – some features specific to the given customer they are working with might not fit a “framework” ,model. Customers on the other hand will want an out of the box solution that they don’t need to customize any more. I am sympathetic to both sides – and whether this gets resolved or not depends on the trust the people on all sides have with each other, and very seldom does it depend on the contracts that are in place. In fact if contracts have to be referred to every step of the way – I won’t hold my breath on co-innovation projects succeeding ever.

Then there are co-innovation (allegedly?) projects which have little to no customer participation. This is the beginning of the “solution looking for a problem” type scenes we have all seen. In my opinion, such projects should not be done – just scratch them off. They may succeed on occasion – but they are not scalable.

And then there are the “influencers” – analysts, bloggers, friends and family etc. They provide extremely valuable information on co-innovation projects. The hard part is to negate their bias. Every influencer has a bias – some might want you to maximize short term revenue (hi mom) , others might claim they are “buy side”, except they make vast majority of their income from vendors, yet others might only know one geography or market where you sell and so on. So unless you balance it out – there is a good chance that you might end up with a skewed solution. But all things said – I would rather have influencer input than not have it.

I have a lot of battle scars from co-innovation projects – and some of them have not ended well. But I have learned something valuable from each, and I will still be quick to say “I am in” if there is a co-innovation project I can work on . The only ones I say no to are the ones with low or no customer participation.

Leadership, Management and Gandhi

Right from my first day at Business School, I have been conditioned to believe that I should not ever aim to be a manager – I should aim to be a leader, an entrepreneur, anything but a manager. What my professors preached to me was reinforced by my bosses at work, and the books I read. And I have faithfully tried to pass along this message to the people who came after me. I have a feeling that most of you – if not all – have a similar story to tell. As I think about it – it is actually hard to draw a clear line between across leadership and management. So take what follows with a pound of salt – not just the proverbial grain.

Any way, in December I resigned from IBM, and took a break before joining SAP. In that break, I watched several movies – one of which was “Gandhi” . When that movie originally came out, I was in primary school I think. And I have watched it at least 50 times. But I have not seen it since I started working. And this time it shook my belief systems quite a bit. Although it was not a planned activity, I also had read a lot about India’s independence movement before I watched the movie. By the time my vacation neared its end, I was firmaly convinced that it is way better to be a leader AND manager, as opposed to just being a leader alone.

When it comes to leadership, Gandhi played in a league that many of us could not even dream about. He influenced and unified a diverse set of millions of people with no formal authority to win India’s independence. And he succeeded and influenced many other leaders – like MLK, Mandela et al. Formidable to say the least. If anything, Gandhi did not take a liking to “management” as we know it, and it did yield exceptional results. India did get rid of British rule, and on friendly terms with Britain.

However, the lack of respect for management did come at a significant price. He definitely had his favorites – like Nehru. Gandhi went out of his way to make sure that Nehru was seen as the foremost leader even when others had better support from the electorate. Subash Chandra Bose walked away from the post of President of Congress – which he won fair and square – because Gandhi wanted Pattabhi Seetaramaiah to be president. Later, Sardard Patel stood down and let Nehru have the Congress President’s job, and the Prime Ministership because Gandhi wanted it that way. This was the whole root cause of Nehru dynasty ruling over India even today.

There was a short term price too – that was significant. Gandhi did not prepare the country for partition and independence. This resulted in widespread loss of life and property. It is not that Gandhi did not know for a while that Jinnah was serious about siding with British for an independent Pakistan. But he let it linger till the last minute. But his inspirational style leadership did not manage to prevent partition. Eventually – it was Gandhi’s leadership ( including his threat to the country that he will fast to death ) and Patel’s managerial abilities that stopped the violence post independence.

Nehru was probably a mix of a manager and a leader – but probably could not find a successful balance between the two. Patel found a better balance than Nehru in my opinion. Patel used his managerial abilities to integrate the various states into one India – except for Jammu and Kashmir, and he could not do that because of Nehru’s inability to decide what is good for the country.

Of course there is a lot more that can be said on leadership vs management in the context of Indian independence movement. I have a few take aways from the movie and the history lessons, to apply to my life in corporate world.

1. Leadership is required to set direction : Gandhi did not start the independence movement. Congress Party was already founded before he even came back to India. But till he came back, there was barely any direction or mass movement to gain independence. Nehru, Patel and others were all already active in the movement and were better managers than leaders. But their impact was felt mostly after Gandhi set the direction.

2. Management is a bigger weapon in crisis prevention : Amply proven by how Sardar Patel integrating the states quickly, and Nehru promoting the 5 year plans. Not everything went smoothly, but things got done – and clearly would not have happened with Gandhi’s type of leadership alone.

3. Disaster recovery needs leadership and management both : as proven clearly by Gandhi’s leadership and Nehru/Patel acting as solid administrators post partition when the country needed both. One or the other clearly would have been less effective.

4. For continuous improvement – leadership is needed to move to next level, and management is needed to keep things running till the new stuff takes hold and becomes the “new normal”.

So in short, if I aim for leadership alone and loathe management – I probably will just be the guy holding a hammer looking for nails everywhere I look. And things will take forever to accomplish. If I aim for management alone – best case, I will at best get to keep things running – maybe with some incremental improvements, but not an awful lot more. So clearly I need to aim for a good balance between leadership and management. But it is a hard balance to strike – so may be the solution is not to strike a balance in me, but rather try to strike a balance across a whole team. I need to think about that .

Well there is one more thing I am taking away – the need to take more vacations and watch more movies and read more movies