My Second Wind

Happy Karthee or Happy Karthigai Deepam . This is a festival that falls a few days after the Diwali festivities are done and dusted and a few days before the well-awaited year end holidays. This is typically celebrated by the Hindus in South India. Karthigai is more religious than the more social yet religious Diwali. I don’t remember buying new dresses for Karthigai, unless you bought one too many for Diwali and saved one for Karthigai, as an afterthought! Also, though some folks celebrate this festival by bursting crackers, I don’t remember buying crackers specifically for Karthigai, unless you got tired at some point in Diwali and yes saved it for Karthigai, again as an afterthought! Enough said about the light & sound, Let’s just say Diwali is the more popular cousin. Sweets can’t be too far away when we talk about festivals and because I need to eventually get to the title of my blog.  For Diwali the sweets that we make, eat, and distribute come in many forms and shape...

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, bu...

Sports, in general, has its share of luck. For cricket however, the impact of the so called “luck” is profound. We all think it is a level playing field for both the teams, but we reasonably know well that it is not! The Toss, the conditions of the pitch, the weather, the rain, when the rain comes, algorithms to determine what’s the target for a curtailed game, the mood of the umpires and these factors(luck) that influence the game just goes on and on. Here are 4 changes (3 simple, 1 a bit more complex) suggested that can reduce the "Luck" factor in the game. This blog outlines  four strategic recommendations  aimed at reducing the influence of  luck and unfairness  in professional cricket. I first take a hard look at the  Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) method , proposing a more flexible system of  multiple targets  to better reflect match situations during rain delays. Another suggestion involves using technology to  halve the runs  awarded for...

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?

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 inno...

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 Inte...

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...