I’ve tweeted it and facebooked it … but this is still my space, my main lifestream and my first love … and although I haven’t been blogging much, I thought I’d  share my talk on the Future of Insights which I made at the India Social Summit 2012.

Here’s the deck on Slideshare – in fully downloadable format, along with the talk script:

And here’s is a video of my rather rushed presentation at the India Social Summit 2012.

Hacking Life – the India Way is a presentation I made at Microsoft SCS 2012 in NYC in January.  Here’s an introduction by Stuart:

In this presentation Dina makes a nice case viewing “hacking” as a generative construct for thinking, and an organizing principle for life … hacking life and living … rather than it being just about hacking infrastructure to do different things. In other words think about how hacking empowers the user and betters their life, rather than the technical approach or the work around. And this presentation is not about the much-touted concept of Jugaad!

And a video recording of the presentation that I did later, as the slides were just a support for my talk:

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

Just discovered Tricia Wang’s really super blog, Cultural Bytes, thanks to Experientia‘s blogpost on Ethnography’s contribution to values in technology design and use. She’s blogging her way through her research on the socio-cultural contexts of technology usage in low-income communities and migrant communities in Mexico and China. Lots to learn!!

A couple of months ago former Nokia ethnographer Tricia Wang gave a talk at the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, CA, and she just posted the slideshow and the abstract on her blog.

“My talk today is about how I came into my research at Nokia wanting to answer the question: how can ethnographers contribute to the product design process of a mobile device? Ethnographically grounded research for technology use is a method that aims to reveal users’ values, beliefs, and ideas. Nokia was one of the first mobile companies to concertedly hire ethnographers as part of its design process, In the mid to late nineties, Nokia changed the mobile industry forever by creating affordable, user friendly phones. More than a decade later, the hardware mobile phone market is nearing saturation. With Nokia transitioning from a company that produces hardware to software, how can ethnographically driven research provide strategic insights for this shift?”

Here’s her slideshow:

Daily updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina

• A Social Publishing Strategy by @gkjohn at @kanter covers education/publishing. love the skype reading sessions esp. -

“Our strategy has relied upon being part of a larger mission, providing meaningful and valuable content, curating information and content for the community, using a legal framework that allows for a participatory culture and lastly, in time, providing a space for the community to assist in the mission by creating content themselves. The last part, a community publishing platform, is something we are working on with the Connexions Project and a brief video about it is here. It’s still a journey we are on and we’ve had many success till date  - Skype reading sessions across countries, helping us get books to children across the country, audio books created for the blind, iPad apps being made of our content and so much more.  Here’s some details about some of social tactics:

Skype reading sessions: This project started after a few tweets were exchanged between a librarian from Central Manor, Pennsylvania. We started off by people from our organization having Skype reading sessions with a few children and then moved onto having sessions with entire classes. On 20th March, 2009, we managed to hold a Skype storytelling session between kids from Akshara Foundation’s community library and a class from Central Manor.The purpose is to go beyond being just a publisher. Through these activities we are encouraging reading, learning and connecting children from different communities and backgrounds. Channels used: Twitter, Skype, Blog

Inviting people to remix/repurpose our content: As a publisher, we have a lot of content available which we want people to access as easily as possible. In our attempt to do so, we have managed to license some of our books under Creative Commons licenses. Now, if we can’t publish a book in Assamese, but a teacher in Assam wants to do so, she doesn’t have to worry about copyright infringement. We have also put up some of the illustrations of our books so that people can remix or repurpose them. Channels used : Scribd, Blog, Flickr

Facilitators/connecting organisations and people: @Anorakmagazine found us on Twitter and asked if they could send us some back issues of their magazines to share with kids in India. Once the books arrived, they were sent to the community libraries run by Akshara Foundation. We also helped coordinate a drawing project that Anorak Magazine wanted to involve the children with. Now, some of the kids have their work published in an international children’s magazine.Channels used: Twitter

Audio books for the National Association of Blind : This project started off because of another blog post (on the Helen Keller Talking Library project) that got automatically updated to our Twitter account. @owos then messaged us to tell us about a similar intiative Radio Mirchi had started. Then another tweep (@barkhad) told us that she had registered with Radio Mirchi but they didn’t get back to her. So, we got in touch with Radio Mirchi to talk about a blog post and while we were talking, she asked if we would be interested in having our books recorded by Radio Mirchi for the National Association of the Blind. We also requested if @barkhad could record one of our books and they agreed. So, our Twitter friend went offline and recorded a book in their Delhi studio! Channels used: Blog, Twitter

Passing it on – the book edition: We read about about a bunch of kids in Kolkata who went around with a van full of books to reach kids who didn’t have access to books and even went on to teach the kids how to read. After reading about this initiative, one of our trustees volunteered to sponsor some Bengali books if we could find these kids. We mailed the news bureau which published the article, but were unable to get a response. So, we decided to see if the Twitter community could help us. Within half an hour of sending out a tweet, we had a volunteer who said he would get us the information and by the next day we had an address and contact number. Within a few days, Bengali books were sent by us to these kids.From this story, we decided to start an initiative which would allow our online community to participate…to help these kids as well as other kids. Channels used: Twitter, Blog, Facebook

What we’ve found is that honestly, transparency and accountability are the three most important elements of any social media strategy.   A longer case study that we had written up is available on the IndiaSocial site.

• iSay, you say, we all say, to Nokia – neat post by @rashmibansal who’s got herself an iPhone – Rashmi Bansal shares why she will never go back to a Nokia phone, and gives Nokia some good advice!!

CLIPs: “Nokia is still a market leader in the lower end handsets. But there too companies like Micromax are coming in aggressively with high end features at very competitive rates.” It’s time for Nokia to go back into the laboratory and come up with something that make you want to chuck what you have and buy a new one. Imagine a stunningly good-looking girl with an IQ of 180 – but in the form of a phone.”

“… Just a few crazy ideas. I am sure there are designers and engineers out there can come up with much better. Because product lifecycles are getting shorter and shorter. If you’re not dreaming ‘what next’, ‘what more’, your brand is one step closer to the grave. Nokia still enjoys tremendous goodwill, and marketshare. But it needs some stardust to sprinkle on consumers. To work its magic spell, to mesmerise us into saying “lena to Nokia hi hai, question is ‘which model’!”

Fantastic post from Manu Prasad that broadens the discussion on Durability and takes it forward in new directions.

Brand equity is something that falls naturally into the scope of this discussion. But what i was more interested in its impact on the content that brands create, including their communication. Look at say, print ads, whose physical durability is perhaps one day (equity created might probably last longer), or radio jingles and television commercials., with a slightly larger shelf life. On the internet, it can exist ‘forever’. But there are costs involved in all of these, and in terms of durability, they might not really deliver in this era of content abundance, fleeting attention spans, and the constant search for the next ‘wow’. Also, on a smaller scale, what happens when you design say, applications for a particular platform/device like a Facebook/ iPad, and it doesn’t prove to be durable? It is many ways. a gamble.

This raises more thoughts in my mind – is the ‘durability’ of your product dependent on the durability of another … esp. in the era of software and apps?  Classic example as it’s unfolding right now – developers of Twitter applications are really uneasy, and are questioning whether its time to drop the Twit, Tweet etc from your app name? . David Beckemeyer shares what’s happening and his concerns:

There has been a storm of sorts this past week surrounding Twitter, their developers, and the “ecosystem”.  It started with some comments from VC Fred Wilson followed by comments from Twitter CEO Ev Williams in a New York Times interview, and culminating in Twitter buying Atebits and thereby creating an official iPhone app: Tweetie. This has, of course, created quite a stir in the Twitter development community, with accusations that Twitter is “eating their young” and pushing third-party developers out of the market. These recent events have really brought home for developers the risk that when building on top of someone else’s platform, they could decide to compete with you head-on.

Manu then goes on to draw a parallel with Clay Shirky’s recent post:

So, when I read Clay Shirky’s amazing post ‘The collapse of complex business models‘, I sensed a tangential connection. To broadly summarise, the post uses Joseph Tainter’s ‘The Collapse of Complex Societies’, in the context of TV content producers’ inability to cut expenses below revenues, and explains how at some point, the level of complexity added to a system fails to add to the output, and becomes just a cost, because the different levels extract more value than the total output. Also, by this time, the system is too large and too interlocked for it to adapt quickly and change. Then ‘collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification.’

The post throws on what is most likely the ‘tripping point’ for contemporary media. With increased connectivity between individuals thanks to various platforms, more ideas are being formed and honed. As new products and services arise, consumption patterns change, new needs are discovered and a disruption (which is perhaps another way of  describing simplification) always seems around the corner. I see this as a message to brands, many of whom have evolved their organisations, products and services on the basis of older ways of communication.

Products are not being pushed out anymore in classical modes of marketing or communication. Al Ries and Jack Trout’s notion of Positioning – of how the product rests in the minds of consumers seems incomplete too in today’s context. (You can read their book here). Today products need to breathe and live a relationship with users. It’s not enough to tell them or make sure your brand imprints rest in their minds – its also about creating enduring sustainable relationships. Intrinsic in this thought is the notion of agility and flexibility – because “consumers” aren’t static, nor are their relationships!

Manu ends with the thought:

How much has durability of products been a factor in the design and structure of communication and organisational processes? Or was it a result?  As durability ceases to be a major factor, is the new imperative flexibility?

More than durability ‘dying’ … its perhaps about how its morphing! Manu’s post, Sameer Patel’s The Transition to Durable Relationships and all the comments at my previous blog posts on the topic, are all different dimensions and directions.

The series – Durability – is it losing power as a customer driver?
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Some of my blog readers have left really thoughtful comments at my last post on Durability. I’m attempting to synthesize them here, (and I hope I’m not killing the wonderful nuances they’ve shared), as each thought adds a unique and new facet to the many dimensions and interpretations of durability, in a rapidly-changing market like India.

Vinuth’s thought on durability expectations being inversely proportional to the price of a product, and directly proportional to the range of options, and rate of change what makes up durability – these factors define perceptions of durability – and the perception of what’s durable or not depends on whether the product ‘breaks down’ during that period between old and new. This is sweet, and provides a great framework for placing needs and expectations from durability in the context of price, rate of change, and range of options!

Vinuth: Interesting Topic !! I think it is a function of two things:

1. inversely proportional to Price of the Product.
2. Directly proportional to the Rate of change of the Product or range of available options/varieties.

1. Lower priced products tend to be changed more frequently than higher priced. Mobiles tend to be more frequently changed than cars. And dress materials and makeup materials even more than mobiles.

2. Products which rapidly change or have a very large option set to choose from also tend to be changed more frequently. There must be a justifiable difference between old and the new, for almost the same price point… either through better technology or a very different variety…

Based on these two factors each product has it’s own usage duration. Between this duration of discarding old to new, if the product goes broke, it really is frowned upon… no matter which product… so it is implicitly expected that the product lasts for at least this duration. What say?

Karthik’s contention of the growing need for real-time, bite-sized slices that result from info overload and being spoilt for choices often results in a reduced need for durability. However, this changes, when the effort (not price alone) to replace, or find the ‘new’ is much greater as in the case of car batteries. Also, invisible products like car batteries are expected to last, whereas the car itself may become outdated in terms of image need fulfillment. I agree with the first part, and like the ‘invisible’ angle particularly – it brings in a unique dimension to explain why for some products, durability is important as a customer value.

Karthik:What a fascinating topic! Going a level or two above durability, aren’t we also collectively losing our attention span? I mean, even our attention span is not ‘durable’ these days. Is it to do with the overdose of information? Possibly. Back in the 80s, I remember waiting all week for a 15 minute episode of Spiderman cartoon on Doordarshan, on Saturday noon. Now, I can see as many spidermans as I want.

So, is the loss of durability a factor of increased choice? Another example! When I started my music blog, Milliblog, people pounced on me for belittling Indian music soundtracks by doing a 100 word review. They said I was doing a disservice to all those musicians who toil to bring out a soundtrack. My blog is 5+ years old and going strong and now people say it helps them glance the soundtrack’s flavor fast and simple!

That said, do you recall the tag line, ‘Lasts long. Really long’? I don’t recall the brand, but I think it is Amaron car batteries. So, if people want car batteries to be durable, does that say anything about select products/ product categories that we still want the ‘durability’ factor? It is not decided by cost, for sure, but could it possibly be decided by the effort it takes to replace?

A car sure takes time and effort to replace, but the pay-off is showoff value and status symbol. But a battery? Who cares what battery I’m using in my car or mp3 player? I just want it to last as much as possible! I’m sure this is a random ramble, but some food for thought, I suppose.

Syamant locates durability in different contexts that customers respond to brands in: a. the brand-customer relationship – where customers buy more products from a particular brand – a dimension then, of brand equity? b. the brand-customer experience – I’d add here, the alpha – beta phases and upgrades as further examples. c. how much stretch does the brand or product provide the customer – does it allow you to ‘extend’ its durability while you actually use it?

Syamant: The first thought was that durability was earlier referred to in the context of quality. Now that quality is given or at-least expected, there are perhaps other contexts..

1. In the context of relationship with the brand – More products from the brand portfolio being sold to the same customer.

2. It has now been built into tenure of use – Use xyz product for some number of days is an example. Another related example is Extended Service Packs. These provide extended relationships as well as assurance, but in a sense are related to the durability of experience.

3. Another example is in the context of consumption of fuel. Products are sold on the basis of how much more one can extract out of the fuel. So is this durability as you consume?

Anita Lobo adds an important dimension – resale value into the equation. I’m currently studying the car-buying process for a client, and how often I’ve heard the refrain – “resale value is very important when i decide on a car brand”

Anita Lobo: Durability has got into bed with a fancier friend – resale value. While we may replace cars and other high-value purchases faster, we usually buy something that delivers ‘give-away’ value, when we decide to sell/ exchange/ recycle/ give away.

Sameer Patel, like Syamant brings in the dimension of durable (enduring) relationships companies forge with customers as a new order.

Sameer: My sense is that you cant fight the trend since its customer driven. As I commented on twitter, this highlights the need for organizations to focus on durable ‘relationships’ with customers that can outlast their seemingly shorter experiences with a single product they purchase.

And Stuart links to my post with this comment, where he talks of how this shift in thinking (moving the durability discussion into one on efficacy) is affecting behaviour in the mobile phones market in India.

Stuart: This is a great post about how our perspective of durability is changing or more locally in the US long ago changed. In India this shift really has an impact on the mobile phone market where many will now trade-of the tradition of “drop-it many times”, dirt dust proof, and long battery life. I suggested a few comments to Dina too and she picked them up. I argued for efficacy as an internal distinction. So what do you think? Is durability losing its power as a consumer driver?

The series – Durability – is it losing power as a customer driver?
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

A while ago, a Client who is working on a project where she wanted evidence that durability is losing its power as a consumer driver in some product categories in India. Durability was always  It’s a tricky question really, as there are multiple India’s and each of them displays different drivers when purchasing and adopting products. However, for the most part, my feeling is that while it may still hold importance for some categories, it’s seen as a given – a hygiene-factor almost, that users expect from their products. Research I’ve done in the last few years indicates that neither a brand differentiator nor a purchase driver, as it was even just 7-8 years ago. I thought I’d share some of my notes here – with some great inputs from Manu:

• A good example is the phasing out of the Bajaj scooter which has been one of the strongest icons for durability through the routes of unity, familial and community bonds, across different regions in India. Interestingly, “its durability was also one of the best available and there was a notion that any problem would be solved by tilting the vehicle sideways. A popular joke – “The Indian rocket did not fire. What to do? Just tilt it for a second.” – only helped to reinforce the hold of this vehicle on the Indian mind.” They moved away from this positioning to one that said – Distinctly Ahead – and now have finally announced the end of the road for scooters.
• Product review sites look at mouthshut.com – youth hangs out there and reviews products/purchases. Here’s an example for advice on a dream bike – no mention of durability!

• Think of China phones – they are not seen as durable, but growing as a segment – look at the Karbonn advertising at the IPL – evidence enough?
• 
• In a study on brand choice for apparels, durability isn’t really mentioned anywhere. Similarly, you see the change in advertising for mass-brand shoes moving away moving away from durability plank into more young contemporary brand expressions.

• A slightly outdated and tangential but interesting take on how technological advancements are changing people’s wants and desires from products and services in this article called The Good Enough Revolution in Wired. ”So what happened? Well, in short, technology happened. The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they’re actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as “high-quality.”

• What about the age of pirated CDs and DVDs – they’re not durable – but quick releases, timely, fun etc.

• Thinking thru current Ads on tv – only the infrastructure and paints guys seem to talk about Durability in their communication today.

• Would also connect with the real time nature of things now – people aren’t looking for durability because trends change, and they don’t want to be saddled with something they can’t throw away because they’ve paid too much for it. It’s the age of twitter and facebook updates – once they’re off the front page, they’re forgotten

• An XLRI student study on brand choice – durability – naaah! And a presentation from the Dean at XLRI too.

• Another study – see Point 3.2 Durability on page 3 [pdf]- “Thirty four percent of the people consider durability to be a little important, six percent said it wasn’t important at all and twenty four percent consider durability to be an important factor. This indicates that when the shopper makes a decision to buy such a product, he/she does consider the product’s durability but does not attribute it with much power.”

Goutam Jain replied to my question on LinkedIn with these observations:

“Youth today upgrade faster than before, hence durability is not important. Some are glad when something breaks as they get a chance to upgrade. Technology/fashion changes prompt users to upgrade rendering ‘durability’ meaningless. Even items such as furniture which people usually expected to be durable or last many years now expect or change every few years. We are becoming a fast consumption society, recyclable items are abound, when something is going to be either used and recycled quickly or upgraded, durability isn’t a proposition I would buy into. Products today are looked upon as ‘toys’ – we use & and throw them like impatient children (even cars which the older generation used to purchase after saving a lot are used and sold in a few years for a better car.). Branded items outscoring over unbranded, six sigma/ISO processes, do we even question the durability of branded products today when we buy them? Isn’t this a given!”

Goutam also asks – are you just referring to ‘durability’ (strong and lasts a long time) or durability as a dimension of brand equity?  It’s a good question too – perhaps as a feature to speak of its losing its relevance, but it will endure in many categories as an intrinsic brand value. However, it won’t be the differentiator any more in most cases, with a few exceptions like paints, construction materials etc

Stuart adds to the discussion by moving from durability to efficiency ….

“My top of mine thought was  – we are moving from a world of durability to efficacy. We see this in examples from working hard to working smart. When I think durability I think of Maytag – the washing machines that go forever here. Yet today that “durable” isn’t expected to last 20 years and new features, energy efficiency etc are changing the definition. Contrast Efficacy! Years ago I worked on deodorants. At the time stick deodorants were mostly about “fragrance” and AP’s were just getting launched. It became a category that was about efficacy – 24 hour protection. No stain etc. People cared more about the protection than the fragrance. (There are some cultural differences globally of course!)

Does it work for mobile? “durability” is no longer broad enough. Increasingly it is about efficacy… yes it better not break on the job, the battery better last, and the shift to smarter phones is keeping me working in real-time, or entertained, manages my calendar, wakes me up. Eg the phone’s features are broadening my perceptions of the uses it’s put to.

IMHO efficacy is better as a term in combining the ideas of hardware and software. Efficacy is not a word you can promote to users, however it may be an important internal distinction where I imagine “durability” traces to and is defined as something tangible.

An extension might be… we expect durability and now we also expect it to be recyclable. The durable recyclable product is more efficacious. I suspect that  “software” and “updates” are an even more important part of the “durability” and how long things are now expected to last.  Efficacy as an internal discussion underpinning may broaden the evaluation criteria and increase understanding of the trade-offs.”

I was chatting with a friend today who’s not a Twitter user, and trying to explain why I like it, and why so many people do too. I found myself turning to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and his Theory of Human Motivations to try and explain this. I discovered this blog post titled The Hierarchy of Tweets at the Innovation Diaries, with this clever diagram based on Maslow’s model. The author makes an interesting connection between what motivates people and how these needs are expressed in 140 characters:

Click to Enlarge

I also discovered this neat little blog post by students of new media at the University of Amsterdam, where the question discussed is whether Twitter is in fact a tool that nourishes our social needs or is it in fact, increasing our needs to keep track of our friends every minute of the day? Here’s a clip:

Humans are social beings with social needs. We need each other to grow as well. Rom Harré describes in his book ‘Social Being’ that we exist as persons for ourselves and other people. We exist solely by the virtue of networks of relations in which we stand to other human beings of our kind. We are partially created by other people and our actions and interactions are jointed actions [3]. Twitter in this case would be a platform on which network of relations are enhanced. Networks are created and the followers you have and you follow are people you have shared interest with; they are ‘humans beings of our kind.’ Aristotle on the other hand speaks of how achieving the good life. We all have social needs and to have a good, successful and happy life we need to socialize with others. And because humans are by nature social beings it is good to live in a society in which the social life is mostly based on a community. Social life in a community is a necessity for a human’s complete flourishing as a human being. Another aspect that Aristotle addresses is friendship. This mutual admiration between two human beings is a necessity. This moral admiration for one and another is essential in friendships and taking advantage of these friendships can make a person fully human. [4]. The Maslow’s hierarchy of needs also addresses this fact. After physical and safety needs we all have our social needs. According to Maslow these social needs involve emotionally based relationships such as friendship and intimacy.

And how can one forget this piece – Understanding the Psychology of Twitter – at Moses Ma’s The Tao of Innovation Blog, written in March 2009.

All this research took me back to 2007, when I had talked about Social Media Strategies – Let’s Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I had then said:

Click to Enlarge - Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Web 2.0 companies have shown the way – their products are in perpetual beta, their architecture and marketing is decentralized, they encourage communities of users to self-organize around them. Recently, in an email to Rob, I wrote …. I think one of the most difficult things for people to do is give up control and relinquish ‘power’ to the many unless they see tangible ‘cost-per-click’ sort of gains. It’s the single largest barrier to accepting and adopting a process that is different to one we have been so conditioned to. Sadly, what few realise the act of giving up that power itself can be so empowering for them – why is WordPress gaining popularity – why is Flickr so popular – why are del.icio.us and Skype and so many others gaining traction today? They weren’t built in a day and pushed onto us as a final product or service – they are being built by and around the community that breathes them. The folks behind them had the guts and vision to say – let’s see how our customers ‘play’ – how they self-organize into networks (developers for instance) – embrace the criticisms with the accolades – and build around what they build. Chaos ….. and creativity. So powerful.

and

I’m not one of those academics who is framework-crazy or model-crazy, still it is good to pause sometimes, and reflect on their relevance and application, especially those that deepen our understanding of basic human motivations , which directly affect how we work, play and even ‘consume’. Triggered by the link I discovered today, I’m amazed at how relevant some of these models are, in our understanding and appreciation of the work we are doing in the social media strategy space. So much of our own social media usage that goes to form what Ton refers to as our distributed self, is driven by these needs – del.icio.us, furl, facebook, blogging, flickr, youtube, twitter, plazes, skype, last.fm – the list is never-ending! As I think about each, I see each one fulfilling a different need, and yet coming together to form a lifestream that is driven by the ‘gestalt’, often sub-conscious, of my own needs.

Moreover, the ability for brands and organisations to be in beta, and to listen and engage in Social Media – those that can take that leap, will be fulfilling some of the higher-order needs in the classic pyramid model, and in Jennifer’s circle, forming and providing ecosytems to their customers that enable the fulfillment of these needs. Ultimately, good marketing and PR is always one that delivers on meeting customer needs.

Something marketers, consultants, techies and geeks, and PR folks who are working in the area of Blogger Relations, Social Media and Web 2.0 should well keep in mind when they design their projects, processes, products or services and strategies!

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.]

Take this – it’s a great start to collecting some good data:

We need your participation:

1. You can take the survey here- open until 24 December 2008 but don’t wait until the last day.

All valid participants get a FREE copy of Summary & Key Points from the “Overview of Blog & Social Media Environment in India”, a report prepared by Blogworks – this will be emailed to you. For it to be a valid entry, you must answer all questions.

Once you have completed your entry, do share your feedback on the questionnaire by writing to survey@blogworks.in.There would be mistakes to learn from & things to do better the next time -we’d appreciate you sharing your thoughts.

Media Partners for the initiative: Impact, Pitch and Exchange4Media.com

Bonus Link: Here’s a list of Indian businesses using Twitter, being compiled by Gaurav.

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

Rob Paterson alerts me to Jeremiah Owyang’s social media experiment in a comment at my post a few days ago on Twitter for Ethnography:

From Rob’s post at the Fast Forward blog:

This is how Jeremiah framed it:

I’ve created MicroMedia events before, this time, I want to frame it as an overlay to the multi million dollar advertising event, the Superbowl.

[TwitterBowl is a real-time social experiment where the audience rates million dollar advertisements in real time using Twitter]

Are you a superbowl ad critic? Of course you are, everyone is. Even if you don’t watch the superbowl, those pervasive ads will end up in YouTube, Digg, and your cousins blog and your best friends Facebook profile. Tired of others choosing which one was the funniest/stupidist/biggest waste of time? Well this year, you can rate your own superbowl ads using Twitter, and see what everyone else in Twitter thinks too.

How did it go?

Check out the results here. Please also look at the comments – they tell us even more.

Josh Bernoff, another Forrester analyst has compiled and analyzed the responses to ads during the SuperBowl Jeremiah helped evoke.

Very very cool!    A good example and validation of my thoughts on Twitter for Ethnography on Feb 1, a couple of days before the SuperBowl

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Great piece on Social Learning titled Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler. The supercool text illustrations are by Susan E. Haviland.

Some snippets I really enjoyed:

What do we mean by “social learning”? Perhaps the simplest way to explain this concept is to note that social learning is based on the premise that our understanding of content is socially constructed through conversations about that content and through grounded interactions, especially with others, around problems or actions. The focus is not so much on what we are learning but on how we are learning.

There is a second, perhaps even more significant, aspect of social learning. Mastering a field of knowledge involves not only “learning about” the subject matter but also “learning to be” a full participant in the field.

In a traditional Cartesian educational system, students may spend years learning about a subject; only after amassing sufficient (explicit) knowledge are they expected to start acquiring the (tacit) knowledge or practice of how to be an active practitioner/professional in a field.⁹ But viewing learning as the process of joining a community of practice reverses this pattern and allows new students to engage in “learning to be” even as they are mastering the content of a field. This encourages the practice of what John Dewey called “productive inquiry”—that is, the process of seeking the knowledge when it is needed in order to carry out a particular situated task.

Although this article has been written in the context of education, there are some great learnings for researchers, ethnographers and for business too. One of the greatest challenges and often a dilemma is how to leverage social tools into research and marketing that would create a shift from a much hyped must-do model based on explicit learning (yeah – lets go build a social network or lets start a Facebook community for our brand) to a more intuitive method grounded in tacit knowledge and real experience.

One reason why we believe researchers experimenting with these tools should immerse themselves in using them first, one reason why we believe all brand managers should build their own social media toolkits through actual experience! One of the problems with this is the time commitments required for these personal explorations, which could then morph into professional insights. I cannot emphasise more the importance of being touched at a personal level for developing a learning-to-be mindset. That’s what good Learning Journeys can accomplish.