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The World Cup that did not have a Winner!

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As if on cue to my r ecent blog post on ICC rules that are crying for change , we witnessed one more farcical ICC rule at play in the most decorated match played in 2019, yes the world cup final, and it significantly upped the luck factor for one of the teams involved in the well contested battle. I do not have a problem with the rule where the match gets decided by the most number of boundaries scored by a team even if after the super over the score remains a tie, which was the case for this match.  We need something to break the tie and this is one way where ICC chose to reward the team which played more bold and entertaining cricket. Rightly so, England, amidst muted celebrations lifted the much coveted trophy that they so badly wanted. If they so badly wanted it, then why were the celebrations so muted? Well I guess possibly because England felt guilty being awarded 4 extra runs for an overthrow during the last over.  Not that they could not have won otherwise, but that si
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3 simple changes ICC can bring about to not let down the game of Cricket

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Luck, it seems, can play a big role in life. You start for the airport 2 hours before the departure of your flight and still miss the flight. Bad luck! Is it really? It really depends upon from which place you tried to pull of this stunt? In a city like Bangalore, it is asking for trouble. If you had checked with locals or even merely checked the Google maps, you would have known that you should have doubled the time you gave yourself. There are lot many such situations where we attribute it to “luck” when all it was needed to make it “science” was simple application of mind. If you follow the game of cricket , go ahead and read on. If you don’t follow the game, let me improve your luck by telling you upfront that this one is not for you. Thanks to the format and the rules, as such explaining the game to a novice is difficult, trying to explain the loopholes and issues in those rules and format can be a nightmare and could derail me. Sports, in general, has its share of luck
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Taxes this year, is your incentive next year

2016 A.D will go down as a landmark year in the history of India. Demonetization came in as surgical strikes on Black Money (In the process it also temporarily affected lives or normal people who are law abiding as well - but the inconvenience was more than welcome as it was a part of the war on black money.) Let us assume that over a period of time the above initiative increases the tax paying population of the country significantly from the current single digit percentage of population who do pay taxes. It is very important for a nation to make the people lovingly pay taxes instead of grudgingly or forcibly doing so- along the lines of some of the welfare nations of Scandinavian countries. How can we turn around this behavioral trait? The below article explores a simple way to start https://www.change.org/p/finance-ministry-incentivise-income-tax-payers-make-them-feel-proud-to-pay-their-taxes When will this be a reality?
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Managing Innovation

Innovation has always excited me. It meant doing something better and different from what was expected. I have invariably moved on to roles and opportunities which required innovation. In each of those roles, when it was felt that we had innovated enough at that point, I have been lucky to move on to a different role.   Over the course of my career in both IT Products and IT Services organizations, I have had opportunities to both manage innovation and be managed to innovate in structured and unstructured ways. Based on my experiences with innovation- first hand, observed and hearsay, I have tried to pen down my gospel for managing innovation. My gospel for managing innovation: 1.        Quality over Quantity One of my most important learning in managing innovation is that when it comes to innovation, quality and not quantity is the way to go. What I mean by that is, while it might seem very rational and logical to institutionalize innovation across large organizations,
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What you give is what you get (WYGiWYG)- Make your World a bit better, a lot faster- Part 3

Just to refresh your memory, in Part # 1 of my blog on this subject I referred to WYGiWYG (What you give is What you get) as a Crowd Source Ideation and Application Development platform where you and me can come together and put together an application, market it, get it going and hand it over to the Government when the benefit of the application is there for anyone to see. In this blog, as planned earlier, I am going to elaborate on the Framework for Integrated Helpdesk for good Governance (Through Public Opinion and Feedback), an example for an Application/ Infrastructure that can get built through this WYGiWYG platform “A Problem needs to be reported first in order to be solved”, That is the basic premise behind this “Integrated Helpdesk”. This is a proposal to enable the various public interfacing functions/departments of State Govts.  and/or the Central Govt. to listen to the actual problems of the people and to their views/Requests for improvements through an Integrat
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What you give is what you get (WYGiWYG)- Make your World a bit better, a lot faster- Part 2

In my last blog, I wrote about having a Common Platform where anyone can contribute towards creating Apps that can be used to solve some of the nagging issues in a community. In this blog, let me try to illustrate a need for such Apps We all know what kind of a nuisance Crime can be in our lives. There is a phenomenal amount of resources and time being spent to control crime in the society. Can an app really reduce Crime rate in a Society? Wait, I don’t envisage using this platform to create an App that will eventually become an “Iron Man” and fight crime and bring in world peace. Instead, for example, what I envisage is a simple app that helps the common man to report a Crime (Especially in India, where one hesitates walking into a police station for various reasons). Timely reporting of a Crime goes a long way in Preventing Further damage and in nabbing the culprit. That hardly happens and hence the increasing crime rate. Currently, the victim or the witness is hardly a p
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What you give is what you get (WYGiWYG)- Make your World a bit better, a lot faster- Part1

Part 1- A platform to create Apps that will change the World- Must be Kidding!!!...Read on.. What you give is what you get (WYGiWYG)- Make your World a bit better, a lot faster What this is(Envisaged to be) A Site/Platform that will Crowd Source, Ideas, Lines of Codes, Infrastructure, Skills, Money and time to Build IT Solutions / Applications that can solve some of the nagging issues in the world/your country. Applications / Solutions that will be so developed will be provided to the State/Central Govt. Free of cost. The Site will have following Sections ·          Ideas- A place to list, Discuss, Debate and Fine Tune Ideas for New Applications/ Solutions ·          Requirements Page-  A place to capture Requirements for one Particular Application idea. ·          Design- A Place with version Control where Against Selected Ideas, please can come up with HLD/FRS ·          Detailed Design- A Place with Version Control where against available HLDs people can com
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