Business vs Technology - what comes first?

I recently had a discussion about the business and technology with a friend, over which is more important (in an organization). My friend was of the opinion that technology was more important in a technology company than business management

Two interesting points came out of it:

-- 1 --
There is some confusion between management as an unqualified term (which may imply people or project management) and business management (i.e., what an MBA would do), and between development (what developers do and development managers manage) and technology (the invention/innovation that is being "developed"). The focus should be between business management and technology, not management and development.

-- 2 --
Both business management and technology are important in their roles.
Take the analogy of a bus. The bus is the business potential, the driver is the business manager and the engine is the technology. Now, without the driver telling it what to do and where to go, the engine is of no practical use. Alternately, without the engine, the driver can't do anything.

Now lets look at it a bit deeper.

Without the engine, the driver could still potentially get 20 people to carry the bus to where he wants it to go (i.e. using the same business model but much less efficiently), or get 10 people to carry a minivan instead (scale the business model down). However, without the driver, the engine is still useless (unless ANOTHER driver with ANOTHER bus - i.e. another business potential - can use it, which still means a driver is needed). This showcases the role of business as a technology consumer - without the consumer, there is no product.

Alternately, without the design of an engine (or its practical implementation - the actual engine), the driver would either not be able to envision the concept of a bus (i.e. untapped market need) or would not have a job (i.e. no "realizable" business potential). This showcases the role of technology as a business enabler - without the means, you can't achieve the goal.

A bit deeper?

I would argue that innovation is the mother of invention, and necessity is the mother of innovation. Transitively, necessity (market, i.e. business potential) is the mother of invention (i.e. technology). And you need a business manager, not a technologist, to realize a business potential and create the concept of a product. Of course, they could be one and the same person, but we are talking roles here.

Back to the bus - the bus driver should have ideally realized the concept of mass-moving people from one location to another. The engine would then just be the technology chosen to fulfill that need.

This is not rocket science. However, the ideal is far from the reality. So the roles of business management and technology are perhaps more parallel than sequential, especially in cutting-edge fast-paced technological fields like the internet.

How to Make Wealth - very interesting article

Kintan Brambhatt (http://www.kintya.com/) brought this well-written Paul Graham article to my attention. It talks about how start-ups are most apt to create "wealth". A brief summary:

• Wealth is what people want - car, a peaceful countryside vacation, house, anything. Money is just what they use as a medium of exchange to move wealth around. There is a relatively fixed amount of Money in the world, but limitless wealth to be created. Hence money is not wealth.
  
• To get rich (wealth-wise), you need to be in a situation with two things: measurement (your performance should be measurable) and leverage (your abilities and actions have a big impact). Any job where you feel safe probably is missing one or the other (or both).
• A small company enables Measurability, and cutting-edge technology enables Leverage. Hence start-ups self-select motivated top performers who want to work hard, as their efforts have distinctly visible impact.
  

A couple comments on the article:

• Wealth vs Money: I'm not completely on board with the statement that wealth is on average created, because there is no way to clearly measure it. For example, how do you measure the increase in wealth due to cell phones versus the decrease in wealth due to increasing cases of life-threatening deceases like cancer (which may be attributable to wireless communication)? How about industrialization and its environmental repercussions? Paul addresses it, but not to my satisfaction - immeasurability is not the same as 'different kind of wealth'. I agree though that Money is just one way to measure Wealth. In fact, Money is the measure of the perception of wealth, and it should be respected in just that capacity. So, if something is worth less money, there's a good chance that its implied wealth creation capability is less - but it is by no means the only factor to consider, as several people could have that 'wealth', which reduces its premium but not necessarily its value. A particular cell phone is just as useful regardless of whether it costs $400 or $100, and regardless of whether there are only 100 such models or 10 million. "Premium", IMHO, is not Wealth but simply a manufactured concept to increase the perception of Wealth. As such, its 'value' is fickle and non-dependable unless delicately managed - which makes this 'value' depend on the individuals managing it rather than on the product itself. Case in point: the iPod?
  
• Measurement and leverage: This is very key: "If you're in a job that feels safe, you are not going to get rich, because if there is no danger there is almost certainly no leverage"
• Uninterruptability: The best technical brains *hate* being interrupted, because they are creating 500hp value that interruptions tend to put a handbrake on. This is easy to forget in management, where you are the one interrupting these folks for reports and metrics. You need to keep in mind that when you do that, "inside their heads a giant house of cards is tottering."
  

We are what we are exposed to

Heads-up: This promises to be a confusing post :)

We are what we read, hear and experience - basically what we are exposed to. We (can) fundamentally change over the course of these experiences. I'm not breaking any new ground by stating this here.

What I wonder is whether we have control over the change that these 'mental impingements' bring in us. We may know what our reaction would be to a news story about children dying of hunger in a small country, but do we know how it will change our way of life? We may have an opinion about the role of individuality in life, but do we know what a particular 3-hour conversation with someone will do to that opinion?

The simple answer: No. The more interesting answer: Mayyyyybe.

What if we had control over this change? What factors influence this process?

Factors in our personal space:

1. Mood - happy, melancholic, ?
   
2. State of mind - peaceful, stressed, ?
3. State of life - stable, in transition, ? (maybe this rolls up into #2)

There's no "right" value to these factors btw. The effect would be different when you are happy vs. brooding and melancholic, but it would still be an effect.

Factors not in our direct control:

1. Style of impingement - book, discussion, experience, ?
   
2. Quality of impingement - Well-written and emotionally rich poetry? Passionate discussion partner? Well-written and connected book? Intense and pure (or uniquely mixed) emotion?

However, is there something in our indirect control, which I for one have not realized yet (similar to the Zeroth law of robotics in a sense)?

Can we control what type of literature we read, people we speak to and experiences we have with the conscious intent of gaining a specific insight into ourselves? I'm not talking about engaging a specific person for a specific reason, or reading a particular book. I'm also not talking about the serendipitous discovery of blogs or chance discourses on topics, that happen seemingly at random. I'm talking about "can I control what I imbibe (not just read) or what I listen to (not just who I talk to), based on what I want to gain from the experience?" Perhaps this is a cyclical dependency: if I could do this, I would already know where I want to go, which is the whole point of the experience.

The simple answer: Yes. I choose to read a particular type of literature and interact with a particular type of people.

The more interesting answer: Sometimes, you may need to not read, not meet, not experience something. Is it important to choose what you do not want to have impinge upon you, as it may change you in ways you don't want? Some criteria for this 'impingement exclusion':

1. You need a deep insight into who you are and what you want to do or be going forward
2. You are relatively easily swayed by others' opinions and thoughts, and have admitted this to yourself.
   
3. You need to be looking for contentment and a path to stable state.
4. "there is something called too much information", where "too much" is highly subjective, based on insights developed in #1.

If these conditions hold, then you are in a position to be swayed from your path to contentment by the passions and dreams of other - your parents, friend, peers, etc. In which case, is it better to consciously follow the "ignorance is bliss" maxim? Is it even possible if you know yourself well?

Btw, this is not an autobiographical analysis ;). I was reading an article on melancholy, and got to thinking about which sort of people would be comfortable with having fits of melancholy if they engender fits of innovation. We've all seen people struggle for peace of mind while continue to do things that put more pressure on them to perform, leading to a vicious cycle. I wonder if ignorance is indeed bliss in the long term for these folks, or whether everyone should strive for melancholy (as defined in that article). I guess I'm wondering if there's an invisible and indiscernible "meritocracy of the melancholy". I don't want to believe there is, and it is perhaps impractical to even discover it (never say never though ;)) - but I wonder.

I said it would be confusing.

Actions, and only actions, determine who you are

I read something once that was at once meaningful to me: “Actions, and only actions, determine who you are”. It’s true: There’s no such thing as faith in potential; potential is revealed only by some action at some point, and the magnitude of the action at that time or number of times the action was observed determines potential. However, it’s not possible to invest in just potential. You must ACT every day, because you are only as good as your last day. Past glories are easily forgotten, and past mistakes easily remembered.

This is especially meaningful to people who believe they have potential, but don’t utilize it. This means that they don’t have actions to back up their claims, which in turn means that they don’t have any way of proving (to themselves first, then to others) that they can do what they BELIEVE they can. So if you think you KNOW you can do something, but you don’t, it means that you don’t really know for SURE if you can or not. Not to say that you CANNOT do it, just that you can't say that you CAN. with full certainty. It's the difference between designing a program and actually implementing it -- the devil is in the detail, and you have to face that devil.

I apologize for the abundant cliché usage, but they all seem to apply appropriately :)

Google Apps: Where is it going?

I recently read this article about why it made sense for Microsoft to give up on Yahoo and pursue other options, and something in the article piqued my interest

Google may be lapping Microsoft in search share and online ad dollars, but the real threat is Google Apps—its free Web-based desktop applications

I was discussing this a few days ago with someone: What is Google's game with Google Apps?

There are several possibilities, but two stand out:

1. A new venue for targeted, personalized and relevant content (ads, news articles, advice, etc), in line with their core business model. This puts google-vended content in front of the corporate users at the one place where they spend most of their working-time: in their workspace, laboring away at word processors, spreadsheets, presentations, meetings and, of course, emails. These users are key commerce generators: they have needs, are aware of them, and have the means to satisfy them, if the right opportunity comes along - say in the form of a well-timed well-placed ad or link to an article subtly endorsing a product or product category. All perfectly legitimate, and very reasonable.
   
2. An Office-killer for small-to-mid businesses, in line with widening the scope of Google as a company. This will help businesses cut costs (from $500/yr/user to $50), and provide all the advantages - and disadvantages - of a fully online application. Few other pros: online collaboration (in various forms), Google's reputation for innovation, light-weight (no legacy-support requirements). This expands Google's market to the very lucrative office productivity apps space, and it will be easy for them to get a foothold at the lower end of the scale.

The question still is: What is Google's plan? It could well be both, but what is the primary thrust? A few days ago, I would have said (1), but I'm going to wait a bit more before putting my money where my mouth is.

Exploring the differences between East and West - Marketing

A brief take on what the Eastern Just-In-Time methodology and the Western Mass-Production methodology have to do with the fundamental pillars of marketing in these regions:

The Japanese use something called the Just-In-Time (JIT) methodology, where an item is created at the time the order is placed. This keeps inventory overheads low and each item is the product of the latest production technique available for that item.

In the US, the Mass-Production (MP) methodology is in vogue, where a large quantity of items are created in a batch, and inventory movement is paramount to keep costs low.

The MP process requires a strong marketing and sales force that can market and sell these pre-produced large inventories. A significant portion of capital is pumped into getting the product out to as many people as possible, instead of just improving the product’s value. The marketing and sales strategies are geared towards creating the perception of exclusivity and desire-to-own. Case in point: GM and its line of large gas-guzzling defect-ridden cars.

The JIT process requires extremely high per-product production efficiency. Capital is poured into creating a high-quality product rather that a high-quantity one, and on reducing inefficiencies at a fine-grained level. Due to the tight integration between perceived demand and production, inventory levels are kept low. Since capital is more focused on product quality rather than sales, the sales arm is under pressure to sell the product to potential lifelong customers who will consistently satisfy their needs from the same brand, rather than to an fickle population pushed here and there based on what they perceive their wants to be. Marketing strategies are geared towards creating the perception of value, consistent with the production ethics and the consumer mind-frame. Case in point: Toyota and its line of compact high-efficiency high-quality cars.

Looking further into implications - stay tuned ;)