Solar Energy

I have been reading and learning about renewable energy. This is a set of slides tht will help managers and business folks to quickly come up on speed on what is happening in solar - which is arguably one of the most active areas in the overall renewable space.

Have a look, download, reuse just email me and let me know what you feel.

http://www.slideshare.net/sanjoysanyal/introductionto-solar-presentation-812649

SaaS article in Silicon India

My SaaS Blogs, posted here and also cross posted at VentureWoods has generated quite a bit of interest and I was approached by Silicon India to publish an article on new ventures in the SaaS space in India

Here it is :

http://www.siliconindia.com/magazine/articledesc.php?articleid=LDFV639135713

Learning in Innovative Organizations

I have spent many years of my life in the area of Talent Management (or as it was known many years back as e-learning). The use of learning as a strategic weapon in organizations has always fascinated me. In particular, smaller innovative organizations that survive and succeed learn a lot more quickly and painlessly.

http://www.slideshare.net/sanjoysanyal/learning-in-innovative-organizations/

These slides based on a few chapters of "Making Innovation Work" by Tony Davila, Marc Epstein, Robert Shelton build a framework to understand Innovation. A key point it makes is that it links Knowledge Management (which has for many years dominated our thoughts on Learning) to the Innovation Framework. Knowledge Management is central to Incremental Innovation – operational items that organizations have to do everyday.

For radical innovation – on the other hand – learning by experimentation is key. There is really no substitute for trying and failing quickly. This reinforces the need for leaders and managers need to build an open collaborative culture to facilitate learning.

Listening to Customers is not enough. Ask the right questions to drive Innovation

Companies which have dedicated customer feedback collection and analysis programs still continue to get surprised by seismic shifts in the market place. How do companies which have an established customer base and are diligently working with them fail to develop products and services only to be surprised by start-ups? Worse, why do innovative ideas within companies get killed after a round of customer research?

At one level, the answer is ready. Customers cannot give feedback on a product that does not exist. To get to understand what customers really need you need to ask the right questions. What is it that they are trying to do? What is important to them? What are the constraints that they are facing? What is it that they have and do not really need?

Have a look at these slides to put some rigour in customer research program in your Innovation process.

http://www.slideshare.net/sanjoysanyal/listening-to-customers-in-the-correct-way-to-drive-innovation/

Let me know what you think.

Open Source

In my last post I had written about how innovators and entrepreneurs can work with lead customers to develop innovative products and services. Lead customers are like "early innovators" and are looking at substantial profit from using products.

Developers in open source software are more often than not lead customers. They are using these projects as inputs to their work and are actively fixing bugs and making modifications. They are adding back to the pool of common knowledge sometimes for altruistic reasons but more often than not because it makes economical sense to do so. The cost of bug fixing and maintenance is driven down by releasing code to the common pool. Companies relying on software to drive innovation should seriously learn about open source.

The other reason why open source is important because it redefines the software value proposition: the value of software lies in using it and not in owning it. This has also be the central tenet of the SaaS models which I have followed for a year.
I have read and summarized the book The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S Raymond here:

http://www.slideshare.net/sanjoysanyal/open-source-software/

The book is an important book to read in the Open Source literature – a little too high pitched to my taste and I have tried to take the emotion out and focus on the business learning.

Entrepreneurs are busy folks

I had lunch with an aspiring entrepreneur friend of mine last Thursday. He is a specialist in the consumer marketing area and has got a great idea which may click. I could see the light in his eyes and excitement in his waving hands as he explained the concept. He has a really cool idea and one that might really click. While we were walking out I asked him “what happens if you are able to raise funds right now?”. He looked at me and told me shyly “I will still carry on – I can start it anyway”. I knew that this was serious.

My friend was going to be a very busy man – starting off, getting the PowerPoints ready. And he has a job and a family like the rest of us. That’s one thing about entrepreneurs – they are really busy. So busy that they do not have time to read the great books and articles all round that is constantly adding to the body of knowledge in this field. The only way they learn is by trying it themselves – the mostly expensive method of education.

In this series of blog posts I am planning to publish summaries in the form of Slides of some of the most cutting edge management thought in our area, to help these crazy busy brave folks. This is my post with my love to this friend of mine on Valentine’s Day of course.

The first post is the slide show on User Defined Innovation. It is based on readings of Eric Von Hippel’s book “Democratizing innovation” and his video lecture in MIT’s OpenCourseWare site.

Let me know – what you feel. If there is anything that you guys want to learn and want me to work on, let me know.

Check out Slideshow at

http://www.slideshare.net/sanjoysanyal/user-defined-innovation/