Am quite excited that we’ve finally launched this project!  In short, it is a year long research and immersion program with 12-21 year olds in India.  We’re really looking for 5-6 sponsors  - to help kick it off the ground – personally I believe that one of the key benefits (apart from the actual understanding and immersions with kids and youth) is that Clients from different non-competing industries will go on this journey together and learn from each others rich and varied experiences too.

More details and the brochure available for download here – bit.ly/convokids

Crossposting from the Convo Blog

For the right job, in the right situation there’s nothing more powerful than getting the client to come to grips with a persona they don’t know or understand well. We know that personas can help organizations have the conversations they need to have. Over the last few years working with technology products in particular we’ve seen this first hand. The engineers who are designing products and services sometimes don’t know or  understand how people really live, what conditions they live in, what work they do, what stress and painpoints exist in their lives. We believe Personas help in creating effective value propositions for a representative user group by understanding them in depth.

What’s a Persona: a description of a representative user.  Personas tell us who the user is, what they wish to do with your products or service, why they buy and use – what their motivations and drivers are, how your product/service fits into the context of their lives.

Examples of Personas we have co-created with our participants and clients in the last year. Categories we studied ranged from tech products, mobile phones, wikipedia, naturals based personal care product ranges.  You will notice that some of the personas are “kaccha” (unfinished) and deliberately so.  And in some cases, we’ve brught in a designer to help us create an impactful visual representation of the persona.

And finally, after months of derailment, and a ton of good longitudinal projects, we’re live!  A little history here

Abundance  - i’d certainly add that as a key principle . I’ve been spending time at Slideshare checking out presentations on principles, processes, personas, ideation, creativity, scenarios and story in Design Thinking for new product development (NPD as researchers often call it, and covers the areas of User Experience, User Design, ). By no means a complete list, but  I thought I’d share some gems I found here – thank you all, for your generosity in sharing your presentations!

And Phillippe Starck rocks the stage with his deep and inspiring thoughts on Design at TED 2007!

Actually, my super lazy blogpost post TEDIndia. It was an absolutely fantastic experience and the best part was meeting such a great group of people. I feel incredibly fortunate, and humbled to have been a TEDIndia Fellow.

I’ll be blogging more thoughts and pictures in the next few days, but for now, here’s a compilation of my Tweets (for me, my notes and apologies for typos & grammatical errors) as I was live-tweeting some of the sessions.  Read them, bottom-up!

DAY 3:

well done #tedindia blog and social media team! “TEDTalks will be available starting mid-november” http://is.gd/4PIaR
oddly enuff, many of the BIG names were in the latter group – disappointing. #tedfellows pre-conference truly gr8. will blog later #tedindia
talks i loved – those that came thru w raw honesty. disappointed when projects pitched w’out extracting big pic & some ‘same old’ #tedindia
overall thoughts on #tedindia – transformational for some, inspiring to others. for me utterly humbling & I made many super new friends
feels strange being back after #tedindia and having to shift modes so rapidly. working on a research presentation & off to delhi for monday
oieee TED is almost over … a bunch of us are leaving on the 1 pm bus for bangalore. so pack-up time real soon #tedindia
india is a nationalism of an idea that has emerged long ago – consensus in diversity is how we move into 21st C #tedindia @shashitharoor
Tharoor – the story also rests on political will – secular india & how we’ve embraced religions of the world. a (ra-ra moment) #tedindia
the country that tells the better story wins! (i so agree – and our stories are also in our pop culture). #tedindia @shashitharoor
afghanistan – most popular TV serial – Kyonki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi – eg. of soft power. lots of popculture egs. @shashitharoor #tedindia
.@shashitharoor tells stories interestingly. empowerment of the poor is the real achievement of communications #tedindia
thanks for all the shout-outs for my tweeting from #tedindia
the cell phone 15 mn/month story – what did we have to do to get there.!! talks of growing up w’out one. #tedindia @shashitharoor
soft power emerges partly because of govt but partly despite it #tedindia @shashitharoor sez
talking of india’s potential in the 21st century – the Future Beckons – soft power #tedindia
lakshmi also sez @shashitharoor singlehandedly made twitter popular in india. ???. #tedindia
Lakshmi apologizes to tweeters following @shashitharoor for late start #tedindia
A. Balasubramanium – artist, sculptor, painter, printmaker on stage – work here – http://is.gd/4PmVM & http://is.gd/4PmZL #tedindia
lol sivamani doesn’t spare a suitcase – he’s making it sing! wonder if brand managers r watching – sponsorship opps galore :):) #tedindia
he’s using everyday items – pans, empty 10 litre water bottle etc. sheer genius – Sivamani #tedindia
sivamani is awesome! hope all u tweeters r watching the livestream. @shashitharoor will be on later. http://ted.indiatimes.com/ #tedindia
the irony is that so many years of denying being a girl has led us here!! eve ensler #tedindia
being a girl is so powerful that we’ve had to train everyone not to be a girl. Eve Ensler #TEDIndia
Eve Ensler – playwright and activist – best known for The Vagina Monologues is on!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eve_Ensler #tedindia
Matthew Spacie – talking of rugby being an institutionalized safety valve. And Play as a way to learn. Sport teaches u abt life! #TEDIndia
Matthew Spacie – a #TEDFellow – Magic Bus – http://www.magicbusindia.org/
Riverside school url http://www.schoolriverside.com/.
if the city gives to the children, in the future, children will give back to the city #tedindia
in Ahmedabad – how did the city respond to the school? every other month – biggest street closes down & infected by kids playing #tedindia
kid said – teacher told me “i can do it” – but parents said what abt grades?? kids actually did v v well in math eng and science! #tedindia
Kiran Sethi – aware (see the change), enable (being changed), empower (leading change) = “i can” – infect children with this bug #tedindia
Kiran Bir Sethi Riverside School. Contagious is a good word – laughter, passion, inspiration – infected by “i can” bug! #tedindia
Aravind Eye Care – Fastcompany article here – http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/43/drv.html #tedindia
disappointed w session – where’s the new way of learning in all this? eg. ask questions faster, stories, dialogue, real-time etc?. #tedindia
“eye care with the efficiency of macdonalds” – deliver eye care like a burger??? heh! Aravind Eye Clinic – #TEDIndia
CK Prahalad is talking of mobile revolution now!. Didn’t say too much we haven’t seen. Wish he had focussed on stories of change #tedindia
Interview w CK Prahalad on how bottom of the pyramid strategies are paying off. mobile phones as an eg. #tedindia . Link -http://is.gd/4PjBV
CK – 4. multilevel dialogue. 5. Knowledge creation. all thru access to connectivity, information, analytics, dialogue, assessment #tedindia
CK – how to democratize learning? a. eliminate info asymmetries, b. give access to analytics, c. make access affordable & avail, #tedindia
CK – for the first time in history, everyone has access (cell phones eg.) leads to democratized learning. #tedindia
CK – instead of having an institutions view of citizens have a citizens view of institutions – facilitated by tech and internet. #tedindia
CK – how do we change – break down hierarchical power structure becos pple hc access to information and can challenge each other #tedindia
CK – why do gr8 companies lose leadership – becoz cant excape the past or create the future. mistake momentum for leadership #tedindia
multiple discontinuities challenge mental models – learning is abt selectively forgetting the past & refuelling for the future. #tedindia
CK Prahalad – discontinuities egs. eg. suddenly deal w 5 bn pple on less than 2 USD a day OR 400 mn connected by mobile phones #tedindia
CK Prahalad – success has its own learning disabilities built into it . Discontinuities disrupt the process! #TEDIndia
social determinants to learning impt. learning must lead to change. information –>inference (educ + socialization –> Action #TEDIndia
CK Prahalad on!!! #tedindia I want to separate teaching fm learning. learning does not take place in isolation – we’re part of a social grp
Sashwati – “if we can’t reach them, we can’t teach them” – mobile & wireless tech will bridge the gap. with engaging content. #tedindia
looking forward to C.K. Prahalad’s talk. Galli Galli Sim Sim – Shashwati Banerjee of Sesame Street Workshop on now. #TEDIndia #TEDFellows
wow #TEDFellows get a Nokia E71 and a 1500 USD cash card among other things! pays for my new macbook :):) #tedindia

DAY 2

Hehe. The bollywood party continues in the bus back. #tedindia rocks. http://twitpic.com/oi3wi
song at #TEDindia Grand Party at Lalit Palace Mysore. Bollywood Nite. Jai Ho! http://twitpic.com/ohvo2
Abhay Deol – thinking woman’s eye candy (paraphrased by Shandana). He’s cute. And seems a lil nervous #tedindia
E3it. Engage entertain educate immerse transform. It’s his mantra. Cost him 250 USD. He’s a dude!!! Rocking #tedindia
RT @tedindia: TED’s June Cohen invites you to join the TED Open Translation Project http://bit.ly/2yFqSF #TEDIndia
E3it. Engage entertain educate immerse transform. It’s his mantra. Cost him 250 USD. He’s a dude!!! Rocking @tedindia
Digital Hampi. Travel to hampi. Ramachandra Budihai takes us there on his augmented reality headset! #tedindia
familiar sight at #tedindia queing up for the vest seats in the house http://twitpic.com/ogrr6
Loved Kavita Ramdas. On feminism – there’s no need to lose yr femininity or yr traditions. SHE (woman) rocks & can be on top. #tedindia
Experienced a real TEDmoment in the last session. Magical. Collective. Worth being here even if just for that. Thanks #tedfellows #tedindia
What can civil society do? Accept and embrace victims of human trafficking in our daily lives. And tell 2 friends. #tedindia
Touched by Sunitha Krishnan of Prajwala. rebuild faith in victims of human trafficking. 1 person changes life of 3200 people. #tedindia
Rapid transformation impt for rapid diffusion. Esp w mess we r in. Often best solutions cone in v lil time. Agility. Banerjee #tedindia
RT @infosys: Banny Banerjee: reframing insights -> concepts – > prototypes – > new paradigms in design that r solutions to probs. #TEDIndia
The simulcast lounge is cool. V v comfy. Here’s a pic. #tedindia #tedfellows http://twitpic.com/og7l7
For me best part of the last session was Bribe Buster idea. Wish the others had moved to the ideas space more than showcase work. #tedindia
Anil Gupta – scalability must not become the enemy of sustainability. Shows egs of innovations fm grassroots to global #tedindia #tedfellows
Anil Gupta knocks maslow’s hierarchy of needs out of the stadium! Don’t have to go thru levels fr self actualisation.
Anil Gupta -honeybee network. To learn fm & support grassroots innovation. Minds on the margin are not marginal minds.
@shaffimather totally loved the bribe busters thought. Let us know how civil society can help. #tedindia #tedfellows
RT @pkgulati: Shafi at @tedindia – we are insane people and an insane person does not know what’s an impossible task !! #tedindia
New idea. How to fight the demand for a bribe!! Call in the Bribe Busters Dial …… Nice :) Shaffi Mather. #tedindia #tedfellows
Shaffi Mather. Ambulance service. Dial 1298. Similar to 911. Furst on scene on 26/11. Was at Jugaad workshop Y’day. #tedindia #tedfellows
Dr Asher Hassan. Main Bhi Pakistani Hoon. (I too am Pakistan). Sharing stories of normal people thru photos. #tedindia #tedfellows
RT @bcampbelljr: Idea from TEDIndia – write your obituary. If you don’t like the way it reads, change your life – now. #tedindia
Quite inspirational!! Q- one key idea to spread ? Shukla Bose A- educate the teachers!!! #tedindia #tedfellows
Content of education is education. Not necessarily things like toilets. Take one child at a time and unleash her potential. #tedindia
98% of fathers r alcoholic. An ex-maid was of 28 kids selected for Duke’s scholarship. These kids r using facebook!
Showed videos of kids of roadside flower seller talking of hardy boys and ducatis. Kids teach their parents. ICSE curriculum. #tedindia
Dream is to prepare kids to live peacefully in this conflict-ridden global world. English medium. #tedindia #tedfellows
What?? Her research found one out of four teachers in slum schools donot go to school all yr!! Educating poor > a numbers game #tedindia
Shukla bose- 3 schools for poor kids. 26 yrs in corporate world. Quit. 2003 started Parikrama fm kitchen table.
Q fm @tedchris.how do u get yr insights working in villages on ground?? A- test it first & refine. Iterative process.
Need to combine psychology marketing art and the scientific method. On the verge of a new social science – Sendhil
Intentions don’t always translate into actions. Last mile problem shd be talked of as last mile opportunity. #tedindia #tedfellows
Sharing puzzles w us. We hv intuitive ways of dealing w the world. For Last mile problems our mental models may not always work. #tedindia
Sendhil mullainathan on stage. How people make choices and decisions. #tedindia #tedfellows http://twitpic.com/ofray
At the TED x Fellows breakfast. Spreading ideas. #tedindia #tedfellows http://twitpic.com/ofndt
(ed) RT @rmack & @AndreMartin: “A trip into d secret, online ‘cloud’”: where & how yr files r stored online -plain English http://ow.ly/zuwf
Does anyone in the simulcast lounge at #tedindia have an iPhone charger?? It’s a real trek to my room!!He got 3 sets of standing ovations. @tedchris says he’s one of the most outstanding innovators he has ever seen. #TEDindia #tedfellows
Integrating computing with everday objects. How powerful is that!!! Pranav mistry is sheer genius. Wow. #TEDindia #tedfellows
Wow!!!! Took paper. Removed mic from camera. Clipped cam to paper. now plays games using paper as the computer. With info too. #TEDindia
Explored 3D pen and stickynotes. Then reversed this thinking Why not paint real life with digital info??? And WOW!!!! #TEDindia #tedfellows
Pranav Mistry – SixthSense we use objects and gestures as part of everyday life.wHy not mimic in tech?? #tedfellows #tedindia
Modified camera to record his acuity. Dylan is the system being used. Now testing Dylan for autism. Awesome!!! #tedindia #tedfellows
Motion or dynamic info processing the bedrock in recovery. Using Darius his baby as a baby cam!!! #tedindia #tedfellows
Really enjoying being here. Get a bit of “india shining” feel tho. 1st session was v entertaining. 2nd session a bit of same old. #tedindia
Pavan sinha fm MIT tells us that recovery is possible and has treated 200 kids despite extended congenital blindness. #tedindia #tedfellows
Project prakash. Neuroscience. Outreach +treatment + study. Showing kids from blind school on video. #tedindia #tedfellows
For all those who asked. Was in the main auditorium so no tweeting. Only allowed in simulcast lounge and last row. #tedindia #tedfellows
And another pic of the mainstage. #tedindia #tedfellows No video allowed at all. http://twitpic.com/obxvm
The TED stage. Event begins in 10. Nice sarees as a backdrop. Mobiles off soon. http://twitpic.com/obx04
Crazy rush for the best seats for the opening session of the main event. #tedindia #tedfelliws. http://twitpic.com/obvqe
Jugaad flourishes where government fails to provide solutions. Bottom up social arrangement. Scale makes it viable. #tedindia # tedfellow
What??? RT @vishalgondal RT @ppeach: Credit card companies know whether couples will divorce 6 months before they do. #TEDIndia
Calls chit funds stripped down capitalism! Regd industry 3-4k billion dollars. Unregistered 10 to 100 tines that amt. #tedindia #tedfellows
Modit on Chit funds in context of jugaad. Much like the kitty party concept. Lending/saving/ insurance device. #tedindia. #tedfellows
Reuben sez new term for ambulance = death taxi ! #tedindia #tedfellows
Charges approx. 2.5 times normal taxi rates Bigger barrier is cultural, located in association with dead body. Jugaad #tedindia #tedfellows
Context for his business idea. 90% usage of ambulance in india was for dead bodies. #tedindia #tedfellows jugaad panel
Shaffi fm 1298 dial for ambulance. Jugaad. Differential pricing paid &free. depends on type of hospital. Pvt or public #tedindia #tedfellows
For working poor. Rentals play a key role in pricing. Selling impressive homes fr USD 6k to 10 k. Jugaad #tedindia
Housing market in inda. 25 million units of unfulfilled demand. USD 150 billion opportunity in sales. Jugaad
Dhaval fm ashray housing. His company treats land as working capital rather than rely on appreciation. Jugaad.
David Kyle on jugaad panel sez jugaad is inherent in education sector in india. He’s a financer.
Jugaad is a work around the system sez Reuben. Affordability is at the heart of jugaad
Workshhop on jugaad with reuben abraham and others just starting.

DAY 1:

5 Mins into Microsoft surface demo here’s what we see. @amitvarma spilt coke on it. Hehe. #tedindia http://twitpic.com/o8ezk
Watching a demo of Microsoft Surface. 10000 usd. #tedindia #tedfellows http://twitpic.com/o8enq
over and out for now – party time !!!
announcements on now – party at brindavan gardens tonight – gr8 becoz infosys campus does not allow booze!!!!!!!
he’s a great speaker!! whatever brilliant ideas you hear – the opposite also may be true – essence
he should study indian addresses too!!!
final lecture of the day beginning – confounding systems of japanese streets = derek sivers
new opps for collab, multimedia integration, imaginative ways to tell their story – grade 4 using it too!!!
Rob Newberry – students using prezi. http://prezi.com/. So what does web2.0 in classroom mean for the future?
kids r thinking vieually – engaged and tech minded – when u ask for proof of learning – non-linear ways!
Rob Newberry – emerging tech are changing classrooms & students. give it to them, rather than teach, u see learning!
she’s holding a brain in her hand! talking of info processing. starts left goes right forward & backwards
strange twist – cowdung trade led to increasing cattle & degrading forests & elephants (which were in my coffee!!)
growth of trade in cowdung – YES cow dung – it is being sold as get far higher price than chemical fertilizers
Prof. Madhusudan Nature Conversation – nice first slide – “waiter, there’s an elephant in my coffee!”
Bacterial Consortium formed to solve these probs. Cultured at diff salinity levels. Nitrifying BioReactors
Prof Mohan Kandaswamy – traditional systems of aquaculture lots of waste & harmful ammonia – pollution – hi mortality.
eve blossom’s company is lulan artisans http://www.lulan.com/blog/ -
artisans vulnerable to trafficking – at risk. formed social venture to prevent human trafficking & generate eco opps.
talks of human trafficking as a marketplace – and she felt the call to do something after a horrifying experience
Prof Eve Blossom – moved to vietnam as an architect of buildings and left vietnam as an architect for change
Raqs – photo, installations, video – invite viewer to analyse a crime. subodh gupta – celebrates everyday artifacts
interesting set doing art and installations – loved the skeleton of a rickshaw by jitin kallat
Ravin Agarwal 10 indian artists- bharti kher, – bindis, balasubramanium, chitra ganesh – amar chitra katha,
.@thecomicproject tons of references to Jugaad this morning at the Fellows sessions!
the infosys campus is fantastic in a weird sense – architectural kitsch! not sure i love it tho – ot inviting me to explore more!
Ramachandran – Gandhi neurons – there is no independent self that is outside of others – bridging the science-humanities gap!
similarly – with touch – these neurons are based in empathy. but you don’t feel the touch. empathy but not experience
MIRROR neurons – transmitted eg. tool use, fire, shelter, language – this is the basis of culture and civilization.
neurons fire when person performs a specific action. a subset will also fire when u look at someone else performing that action
VS Ramachandran – representation of self and others on the human brain #tedindia @tedfellows . puts electrodes in nerve cells & eavesdrops
Suneeta Reddy – Apollo Hospitals talked of telemedicine – a bit like a pitch – didn’t learn v much
Richard Alderson of Unltd India – DNA of social entrepreneurship made up of Economic, social, political, Spiritual.
First interesting TEDUniv talk – PalletRacks Structures by Freeman Murray
this morning was cool; got to hear what 25 Fellows are doing! will be posting pics I took later.
TED University consists of 4 minute talks – 3 sessions with 6-7 people each. Before the main event tomorrow
Bruno Guissani introduces the first session at TED Unilversity #tedfellows #tedindia Kiran Khalap talking. Are Ideas Good or Bad?
In the bus to #tedindia with #tedfellows. Much bonding happening. @amitvarma is in form! http://twitpic.com/o3l2e

The Progress Project is the initiative set up by Nokia and Lonely Planet that is focused on capturing the human impact of mobile innovation; tackling social, environmental or economic challenges; bringing to life real stories of people through video. The site’s not fully live yet – I was told it will be up and running fully by Sept 3 – still, I thought I’d share this now, as videos of the documentaries that were made by the Lonely Planet and Nokia teams on our immersions into the Nokia Life Tools and Nokia Tej projects are already up there! And the Nokia Data Gathering and the Mobile Learning Institute projects that my colleague at Mosoci, Stuart visited are also on the site. Should be interesting stories to watch! I do hope there will be follow-ups too as the projects take a life of their own.

Although the site has both Flash and HTML options, you’d either have to view the videos on there, or download them – both of which don’t make it easy to blog. So I decided to post them on youtube so I could embed them in here.

Nokia Life Tools – Full length documentary – 4:42 . In this video, you will see different users than the ones I’ve blogged about. I wasn’t able to meet them all on the trip – so it’s nice to see similar stories but being told by different people!

Nokia Tej – 90 second edit:

Another small hitch at the Progress website – while there are Share options for many social networks, blogging platforms and other social media sites; only the URL is shared, and not the actual videos!

[Disclosure: I was invited by Nokia to share in these experiences, and was paid travel expenses only, and not a fee.]

This is the last post in the series on Mobile Innovations based on a learning journey that I was a part of. Here’s the full series:

1. Mobile Innovations – Introduction
2. Nokia Life Tools – Agriculture Service – “The Internet for the next million” – mobile innovations in rural India
3. Nokia Life Tools – Education Service – “Raju go get bakery” – mobile innovations in rural India
4. The old, the not-so-old, and many facets of the new
5. “My laptop, my MBA” -  Commercial Mobile Innovation for SME’s

Nokia Tej is a mobile order and supply chain management solution for companies working in a communication intensive and networked business environment. Check out more details and this video which demonstrates how it actually works on the ground.

We visited with an Agent and a Manufacturer using the service, to understand what changes these mobile innovations are bringing into their lives. One of the persons we met – the Agent, Nikhil K. Gadhia who is using the service calls it his laptop and his “MBA” – Mobile Business Administrator – all rolled in one!

How it works:

Chand Malu, Head of Product Management, New Business Program at Nokia (in the pic below) tells us that Nokia Tej is an attempt to improve efficiency – speed of booking/placing orders, mobility, accuracy of information provided in the orders, ability to track, less paperwork required and a smaller margin of error.

Tej runs only in English, as most written communication was done in ledgers and booking sheets that were printed in English. It’s still in beta – the first prototype was piloted in 2007. Pricing  is yet to be decided, and will be announced with the commercial launch later this year.  Chand also told us another user in the beta program called Tej his “CRM – customer relationship on the mobile”.

The Agent plays a large role in the entire Textile Industry sourcing –> manufacturing –> retailing chain. I’ve tried to capture this in the diagram below, which represents my perhaps simplistic understanding of the flow, based on our chats with manufacturers and agents and dealers during our immersions:

Benefits to Agents:

There are tremendous benefits for the Agent. Nikhil Gadhia, the Agent we met shared some of these with us :

• normally Agents need to make 3 copies of order forms, one for himself, one for his supplier, and one for the dealer.
• the orders are complex because you’re dealing with many grades, shades, varieties of cloth and fabric.
• mobility and automation allows him to take on greater volumes of work.
• it’s a tremendous image boost to be seen to be using hi-tech
• he would normally take an order/place an order on the telephone while on-the-move and then get back to office late evening and send a confirmation fax or email via a cybercafe or send the confirmation by courier. This was exhausting for him and his work was duplicated manifold. With Tej, he said, he could do all this instantly, and from anywhere.

Here are some of his expressions of benefits he is getting:

“I have mental peace now. Now there is no need to work when you get home.  My wife earlier called my cell phone my first wife, now she has reclaimed that position!”

“Now I can do much greater volumes of business as the paperwork takes less than a minute. Also, if an Agent forgets to place an order, the customer alerts us, as he is informed what order is placed on his behalf. Recently, a dealer ordered for a particular piece and I forgot about that and ordered the wrong piece – I got an instant alert from the dealer as he saw what order I had placed via SMS”.

Nikhil still retained one physical copy however, as he says, “it’s our Indian mentality not to completely trust technology”!

“People appreciate us when they see us using hi-tech. I’m called the hi-tech Agent, and my status goes up. The customer too feels he is getting better service and is updated with the latest information on his order. There is a change in mindset – younger suppliers and businessmen are getting more professional and want to be competitive. This helps them”

What was missing in the service he felt was completion of the chain. He really wanted Tej to deliver on payments too so the cycle would be complete. Possibly an opportunity for micro payments for Nokia?

Benefits to Suppliers/Manufacturers:

The benefits don’t end with the Agent. The Supplier or Manufacturer uses the service on the internet to track movement of orders, production and stock flows and payment cycles. Each manufacturer/supplier can customize the software they use to suit their needs – eg. order forms, and the service is hosted on the Nokia servers. Benefits according to Mr. Marda, the manufacturer we met:

• they can anticipate their inventory, manage their stock flows and balance sheets much more efficiently and get warnings of orders early
• often there would be a time lag of 8-10 days before the Agent placed the order he had procured because he was busy on the field. with this system orders were instant.
• with this system, he would not need one person dedicated to communicating on the telephone with Agents (as he currently had), as the process would be automated.
• often there were discrepancies as these transactions were manual or made over the telephone – now there is little margin for error on the part of the Agents.
• this took up a lot of time, and with Tej he felt communication could now focus on business building and marketing rather than on logistics and admin functions.
• finally, repetitions came in really quickly, as there were templates for Agent’s orders that they could develop!

Marda said that his sales have increased roughly 20 percent to 25 percent because of  the faster ordering process that Tej encourages. Marda’s views on loopholes and problems in Tej:

• Tej needs to tie up with the transporters, as they still required manual printed copies of inventory and invoicing, as they did not accept the details from the Tej system.
• while it would work on simple fabrics (60% of his business), buyers, dealers, retailers needed to touch and feel complex fabrics which were difficult to ‘templatize’.
• there’s a learning curve for the Agent who had to work on the mobile interface and feed all data into it
• GPRS connections that Agents used were often expensive and unreliable
• doesn’t work on CDMA phones, which are used a lot by Agents

Benefits to Dealers/Retailers:

At the other end of the chain is the Dealer or Retailer – they are alerted via SMS on confirmation of order, and on despatch of the consignment.  They can also check up on accuracy of order placed through these updates.

My thoughts:

The Suppliers are getting more professional and using technology in their processes already, so adoption among them may not be such a large issue. Large ERP systems may be unwarranted or out of their reach. Dealers and retailers at the other end, are getting simple SMS alerts. It’s the Agents that are crucial for the success of this program – however compliance can be driven by the manufacturers and suppliers. I feel a lot will hinge upon how simple it is for the Agents to use the mobile input system, and how it will be charged to them!

While we looked at the textile industry on this learning journey, the same principles can apply to many many businesses, and not necessarily only in the emerging markets. Here’s a neat checklist from Anurag at FutureChat on how she’d like to see mobile innovations work for craftsmen and artisans!!

One of the things I like about how Nokia is going about running this program is they are really involving actual customers/users in the innovation process. Nikhil and the Marda’s of Arvind Mills almost felt like they were a part of the Nokia team. It’s also a smart move running the pilot in such a complex industry – lots of lessons for future iterations of Tej!!

[Disclosure: I was invited by Nokia to share in these experiences, and was paid travel expenses only, and not a fee.]

It’s how Natesh, Head of  Nokia Life Tools India describes the program – I like the realism when he uses ‘million’ and not ‘millions’ or ‘billion’! Alan Reiter, who was with us during our rural immersions has a great article on Life Tools – here’s an excerpt:

Farmers view Dhanaji Dongre’s crops in Khandali, India, and ask why they are looking so much better. Dongre says it’s because he is using agricultural information transmitted to his cellular phone, and he shares that information with others. This is how mobile data empowers people in rural India.

Dongre farms some eight acres with such crops as corn, tomatoes, eggplant, and wheat. He lives in a modest home with simple furnishings, and he typically uses animals for farming rather than tractors or other motorized equipment.

Dhanaji Dongre is a farmer from the Mohar Taluka in Sholapur District, Maharashtra; one of the crops he grows is ber or bor. By no means poor, despite his simple living and manual field operations, Dhanaji tells us how he was helpless at the hands of middlemen, transporters and wholesale markets prior to using the Agriculture Life Tools.

How it Works:

While there are many programs, including those run by the government, that hold a lot of useful information on market price, dissemination of this information is usually poor. Here’s where the Life Tools program delivers – it allows access to this information, and disseminates it in the simplest manner – through SMS. Internet kiosks are doing some of this, however they are plagued by infrastructural problems (erratic electricity, high outages etc.).

What’s interesting is that Nokia as an Agri Desk at the backend which works with State Agricultural boards and NGO’s; and collects/mines/analyzes/validates/disseminates this information – most of this backend work is done via the Internet. However, for the end-user, the farmer, it is his mobile phone that is the touch-point, the delivery mechanism, and he is totally unaware that the Internet is actually being used. It’s often been said that India will leapfrog the PC stage, and it is the mobile that will be the device that delivers the internet to people – this is a real example!

For Rs. 60 (US$ 1.3) a month, he gets three types of information daily:

• market prices within a 100 km radius for three crops registered by the farmer – price alerts are sent late evening every day, and are factored upon minimum-maximum price traded that day, and supply levels.
• daily weather updates at 7 am – based on location of the subscriber (the more rudimentary method of using pincodes rather than GPS for now) and advisories based on the three crops registered by the farmer (eg. if you’re growing this crop, take this precaution)
• advisories – alerts, precautions, tips on best practices, pesticides and fertilizer information; and neighbourhood news within the 100 km radius and dependent upon the crop. (eg. there’s a growing incidence of red colour stains on sugarcane crop – take XXX precaution). These are sent early evening.

Benefits and Motivators:

We interviewed Dhanaji for a while, between shooting breaks, to try and understand how all this has impacted his life, changed it and made it better.

[Picture credit]

Dhanaji told us that he had wanted to purchase the Nokia 3110 seven months ago, but when he went to the dealer, he was shown the Nokia 2330 with the Agriculture Tools service. He was primarily attracted by the fact that he would get daily market prices for the crops he grew. As a farmer, he was otherwise almost held to ransom by the middle-men and transporters who would take his produce to the marketplace. These middle-men worked on a commission basis with the wholesalers and retailers at the markets, and did not really look after the farmer’s best interests, holding him hostage to their greed. So more often than not, he never did get the best price for his crop. Moreover, approximately 25% of his revenue was “eaten up” by these intermediaries he felt.

With the power that comes with access to information, Dhanaji now insists upon a fixed price with the middle-men, and also asks them to take the produce to the market of his choice. Also, he feels better equipped to buy and more in control of the pesticides and fertilizers he needs.

How does he make is assessment whether the Agriculture Tools service on his mobile phone is working?

• his revenue has increased – he says “if earlier I earned Rupees 100, now I earn Rs. 150″
• he feels he’s better equipped for timely interventions and precautions that ensure his crop is doing well
• he feels more knowledgeable when he goes to the shop to buy pesticides and fertilizers. Often product info on the packs are in English or Hindi and he doesn’t understand either very well. So he would rely on the shopkeeper’s recommendations on type, brand, method, timing – which he feels could be biased by the margins they get on each product. Now he knows better and has been asking for specifics

He says people ask him why his crop looks “visibly better” – which for him is proof! Another consequence is that he is now perceived by other villagers to be the thought-leader – and this gives him immense satisfaction and a sense of power, status and achievement. I asked him why others in the village weren’t buying the service, especially since it had all these benefits, and he said they don’t need to – all they need to do is ask him for his advice on how they can grow a healthier crop, and get better market value!

Equipped with knowledge around farming, access to better prices and the ability to make choices, I do hope these sorts of initiatives will help alleviate some of the strife our farmers face, often leading to suicides, especially among poorer farmer.

It’s also a smart marketing move on Nokia’s part and can be a really profitable venture – 70% of India is still rural, a large proportion of that is in agriculture. Mobile phone penetration urban and rural in India is at 34% and the rural segment is growing quite fast. This means many many many millions who are yet to be connected. Natesh’s estimate of connecting the next million using the cell phone as the device seems reasonable.

It’s also smart in terms of pricing and payment model – for the most basic information, the farmer pays Rs. 30 (less than 1 US$ a month) while for the full suite of services, he pays Rs. 60 a month (US$ 1.3). The interesting bit is that since almost 90% of all subscribers in India use pre-paid services, Nokia is able to deduct Rs. 20 (if it’s the premium service) every 10 days, rather than deducting or adding on Rs. 60 at the beginning or end of the month. As a result, the farmer doesn’t feel the pinch as much. This taps into the  concept of bite-size pieces or small and therefore affordable pack sizes, propagated by C.K. Prahalad in the  Market at the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Given that the service was launched only in July 09, although pilots were on much earlier,  time will tell what attrition rates will be like. I doubt it though, as the potential benefits don’t seem to be driven by economics alone – using a service like this also delivers emotional benefits of not being at the mercy of middle-men, and of a higher stature derived from using a hi-tech approach to agriculture!

Additional Links:

• More of Alan and my pictures from the village visits
• Watch this TEDTalk with Iqbal Quadir of GrameenPhone who says mobiles can help fight poverty.
• My earlier post on Mobile Innovations for rural India – Educational Tools

[Disclosure: I was invited by Nokia to share in these experiences, and was paid travel expenses only, and not a fee.]

For a few days over the next two weeks, I’m going to be a “scribe” where I will visit with people who’s lives are being transformed through mobile innovations. This will be in rural Maharashtra and Kolhapur, and the two projects we are covering in India are Nokia Life Tools and Nokia Tej.  This is part of  Progress, a Nokia initiative with Lonely Planet that is focused on capturing the human impact of mobile innovation; bringing to life real stories of people.

As a scribe, I will be reporting on ordinary people progressing through mobile innovation from a fly-on-the-wall perspective, taking parallel content – text photos, podcast and video.

Why I accepted this project is because it’s a great opportunity to be exposed to mobile innovations on-the-ground. One of my pet research themes for the last few years has been to study how technology is making or can make a real difference in the way we live, work and play. Also how it might bring real changes in people’s lives. It also ties well into my experiences and skills of being a researcher, and I’m hoping to view these projects through an ethnographer’s lens.

I, like Stuart who is covering other programs in San Francisco and Manaus Brazil, was asked by Andy Abramson [@andyabramson] and Danielle Ross of Comunicano to participate in an evolution of the Nokia blogger relations program.  Stuart has a good post on what this means for blogger relations and how might a company engage with bloggers in such programs.

Full disclosure – I’m not getting paid to do this, but my travel and accommodation costs will be borne by Nokia.

UPDATE:

Here’s the full series:

1. Mobile Innovations – Introduction
2. Nokia Life Tools – Agriculture Service – “The Internet for the next million” – mobile innovations in rural India
3. Nokia Life Tools – Education Service – “Raju go get bakery” – mobile innovations in rural India
4. The old, the not-so-old, and many facets of the new
5. “My laptop, my MBA” -  Commercial Mobile Innovation for SME’s

This is a pretty fantastic visualization connecting your conversations on Twitter. From Google’s recently launched Chrome Experiments, which showcases JavaScript intensive games, apps, and visualizations.  I did some runs on some keywords and its pretty amazing. Here’s a screenshot of visualizations of the connections and cross-connections between tweeters I (@dina) have had conversations with in the last month – on the Social Collider site, you can mouse-over or click the dots to actually view the conversations:

Search: username: ‘dina’ [click images for full impact]

And another one with search keyword: ‘social media’ for a week:

From their About Page:

The Social Collider reveals cross-connections between conversations on Twitter.

With the Internet’s promise of instant and absolute connectedness, two things appear to be curiously underrepresented: both temporal and lateral perspective of our data-trails. Yet, the amount of data we are constantly producing provides a whole world of contexts, many of which can reveal astonishing relationships if only looked at through time.

This experiment explores these possibilities by starting with messages on the microblogging-platform Twitter. One can search for usernames or topics, which are tracked through time and visualized much like the way a particle collider draws pictures of subatomic matter. Posts that didn’t resonate with anyone just connect to the next item in the stream. The ones that did, however, spin off and horizontally link to users or topics who relate to them, either directly or in terms of their content.

The Social Collider acts as a metaphorical instrument which can be used to make visible how memes get created and how they propagate. Ideally, it might catch the Zeitgeist at work.

Get project status updates on Twitter: @socialcollider. Credits: Karsten Schmidt – concept, design & programming (@toxi). Sascha Pohflepp – concept, design (@plugimi)

Bonus Link: Here’s a great description by Kevin Makice of how it works and what all the coloured lines and dots denote.

I’ve spent the morning playing with Taglets – which is very cool and has the potential to be quite revolutionary as it’s offering up an open platform and API for developers. It seems like reverse Twitter in some ways – I create or follow tags that are really keywords of interest to me, and I get comments/discussion streams flowing into my email or as twitter messages to me. I like that it embraces the concept of information flows. I like that comments and followers are anonymous – although there may be a time when I would want to know who adds what. I like that it does not ask me for any password. I like the interface – it’s simple easy to navigate/understand and use. It has a very Web 3.0 feel to it – I like that Mark and David are asking folks to explore it and figure out ways of using it themselves!

What I’d like to see added, fully appreciating this is early days :

• comment streams available on the site
• more characters permissible in the creation of tags
• option to get only one email per day with all comments on tags I have subscribed to (I use Gmail as my email client so it’s not really a worry as it gets strung into one stream – those who use Outlook and other Clients may find it too much)
• capability to snip URLs in the comments

Taglet links:

Introducing Taglets

Taglets-are-it – an early review

Detailed Overview

About/API/FAQ’s here

I was on the first Phweet call!  Voice call over Twitter and with many folks at one time. Conversation contained within a URL. Really worth staying up late to actually experience it. It was fantastic – 7 of us from 3 different continents all chatting as if we were in the same room.  A PhweetParty!

If you’ve ever asked yourself these questions … Phweet will help!

• Have you ever wished you could just Talk to your Twitter friend?
• Have you ever wanted to spontaneously set up a Conference Call with your Twitter friends?
• Have you ever felt irritated that you have to turn on a separate client to accept a Call?

Check out the Phweet blog for more details.

“A Phweet is a shortURL that makes conversations and conference calls possible between Twitter friends and across other social networks. Let your friends know you are talking. Invite them to join in. No numbers, no new profiles. Simple, just start Phweet talking!”

I really do like the philosophy embodied in the PhweetVision:

Our vision is to create a more open telephony and communications environment where the users take control and are not dictated to by numbers, directory services, or tariff barriers, while retaining increased control over their privacy and presence information.

This is revolutionary really.  Today Twitter .. tomorrow all social networks? Congratulations Stuart (my partner at Mosoci) and David!

Stuart’s becoming quite the expert on mobility in urban India!! He was here end-April for a little over a week and we did a lot of learning around the mobile phone space in Mumbai. Next time, small towns too!! Its really cool to see how he can really get to some deep immersions despite so obviously being a foreigner – chatting up kids in a slum, hopping into an Andheri local, getting trade to reveal all, sharing his curiosity openly, completely comfortable sitting on the floor in a tiny home where he has to bend over at full stretch, and drinking sweet chai – despite his tall overview on things. I mean that literally as he is 6’5″. It’s really funny for me to see people’s reactions to him – here, where average male height is 5’5″ – they look up in such awe – and then realise he is human when he smiles, when they touch his arm tentatively and he responds by touching their arm back briefly.

Check out his prolific posts on his learnings, which I have collated here because it’s a great collection of observations, images, artifacts, insights and foresight:

• India World’s Fastest Growing Mobile Market- recent statistics on the mobile phone market in India and the need for all-in-one phones
• “China Phone”” Beats Nokia N95 in Boombox Test- BOOM. We are really psyched by the volume on these phones and feel sheepish when we try and compete with our N-Series Nokias!
• The Emerging Indian Middle Class- beginning to question what is the middle class really, after visiting with folks at Dharavi – our largest slum
• It All Comes Out in the Wash- one of Mumbai’s showcases for tourists – hmmm. Intriguing nonetheless in how they organize themselves and the truckloads of laundry
• From the Mouths of Kids – Mobile Insight- meeting some really smart kids from Dharavi who educate us about China Phones despite not owning one themselves!
• Manish Market and the New Mobile Ghetto Blasters – discovering and observing Manish Market – an alternative wholesale, retail, repair and service culture all of its own
• Prince A950 — My China Phone – Think Different where he reviews his spanking new China Phone
• Emerging Market – Research to Action- are you learning from countries like India? Stuart makes the case for companies to not just rely on focus groups and interviews, but to get out there on the field. They insights come out of understanding the “friction” between different needs and environmental factors.
• Repairs, Tweaks and Choice – Mobile Phones- aaah check out our friendly neighbourhood computer and mobile guys – we trust them more than the “companies” to solve our problems!
• Modding the 3G iPhone – Cracking the Case – there’s a whole hardware market for the iPhone coming from Asia

Mahatma Gandhi once said: “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”

My recent experience with the Learning Journey we organised for Clients actually reinforced to me that given the right balance of content with experiential immersions and a focus on ‘how’ learning would take place, learning-to-be can begin even with just a week’s exposure.

One of the instances that brings such a smile on my face is the sight of youngsters lighting up one cigarette after another, while chatting with 13 older persons who were all non-smokers from North America all in an enclosed area in a coffee and hookah bar! And not one of my clients complained or even minded, although I was so conscious that this could potentially be quite uncomfortable for them!!! You can keep talking about how the youth is confident, irreverent, etc, you can build models based on consumer insights and on all sorts of qualitative and quantitative data, but when you actually observe their manner of ‘being’ and they actually draw you into their world into which you walk in openly and begin sharing yourself, how much easier and more effective it is to understand and learn!

So many other experiences ….

we’re all observers together

lunch cooked by a family in a village on a traditional stove over firewood.

new best friends from the village

with dabbawallas understanding how grassroots self-organising systems work

renovation underway

a variety of food!

with bloggers

[pictures from Flickr group and Elena's flickr page]

This comment from a senior member of the group actually reinforces how a Learning Journey can really create a ‘we participate therefore we are” learning framework:

Each of our Team members has been changed for life as a result of our experiences – and we are most grateful. The experiences of our recent Learning Journey has been woven into the very fabric of my soul. More than ever I understand more personally that we are all citizens of the globe bonded together by the common threads of our humanness. Many thanks, again, Dina, to both you and Shubhangi for shaping experiences that touched our lives so profoundly.