Middle East: Innovation For The Grass Roots

This article was published in Knowledge@Wharton on July 2, 2015

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of traveling in the UAE to visit family. I happened to also have the opportunity to delve into the nature of entrepreneurship, especially the work of women entrepreneurs in the region. I had the chance to meet and talk to a series of startup founders, and below is an article about one of the innovators I met while there.

There tends to be a rather uni-dimensional view of women in the Arab peninsula. It’s not quite one of a hard-charging innovator and business leader. However, that’s certainly a dimension that needs to be added to the global picture of the Arab woman. In 2014, Knowledge@Wharton published a ground-breaking book on just such women. A chance trip to Dubai and Abu Dhabi in January provided me the opportunity to meet another tranche of these trailblazers – the women entrepreneurs who have used global digital platforms to drive transformational enterprise of their own. In many ways, the internet has empowered women in ways that go beyond education and the ability to organize socially – they are recruiting, developing products, communicating across global markets, fundraising and delivering services in ways that transcend conventional barriers. Without an exception, these are business leaders who also aspire to social impact – as individuals as well as for societies around them.

One of the young digital entrepreneurs who melds a social impetus into her commercial vision is LouLou Khazen.

Below is the article that ran in Knowledge@Wharton.

The Internet has empowered many Arab women entrepreneurs to transcend educational and other conventional barriers — they are recruiting, developing products, communicating across global markets, fundraising and delivering new services in growing numbers.

Chia puddings and steamed chicken....

A second into opening the Fresh Direct box, I knew something was off. I've NEVER ordered sweet potatoes, steamed chicken, or chia pudding...! For that awful second, I thought I'd had some kind of psychotic break...and then the delivery guy rang the bell and apologized for the snafu....

It did get me thinking, though. That split second of absolute incomprehension had been followed by a real sense of curiosity about Andre C (the person who the mis-delivered box was meant for). Here was someone who made almost diametrically different choices - not better or worse, just different. Yes, when we talk about choices, we tend to talk about differences in decisions as somehow better or worse. 

How different would Andre's decisions be about savings, health, holidays? How about investing in new ideas? How often have we been in situations where decision-makers can't quite bring themselves to invest in a new idea, because they don't see the relevance of the idea or product.... Next time I run into that situation, I'll be sending them a box of miscellaneous products from Fresh Direct, just to jump-start their curiosity!

Salon Chez Nous: Ben Parr's Captivology

After a hiatus, the Salons Chez Roopa and Sree has started up again in 2015. We've enjoyed hosting some of the amazing thinkers, artists and writers in our network, and are happy that the first salon of 2015 showcased Ben Parr, who has his fantastic new book coming out on March 3rd.

Ben's book Captivology: The Science of Capturing People's Attention is a treasure-trove of research and insights from his years of capturing your attention.

Ben's years as the editor of Mashable helped him hone his methods and insights, and he's bottled them for those of us who need to draw and retain attention for our ideas, work, messages and hopes!

Ben interviewed more than fifty researchers, business and cultural leaders including Sheryl Sandberg, Steven Soderbergh, Jeff Weiner, Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo, Reddit's Alexis Ohanian, and others. From highlighting the best colors to grab attention (red if you are a woman hitchhiker, any bright color if you are a male, and a red border around your photo if you want to be picked from a mass of resumes), as well as tactics (harnessing the human mind's need to solve mysteries, for example.) I know I'm currently thinking through Center10's colors - very orange right now. Ben's research shows that while blue suggests competence, orange suggests the opposite. Watch this space!!

Consider buying Ben's book - you may qualify for some of his cool perks!

The REAL Moneyball?

This post was posted in Umbel originally

Data helps your favorite pitcher, so why not empower your employees?

The 2011 movie Moneyball got us all hot and bothered about the use of data to drive breakout performance for a baseball team. I’m still waiting for Moneyball 2 – where a visionary leader uses data to change the effectiveness of his company. Something tells me I’ll be waiting a long time.

What’s good for the Oakland Athletics is good for you too!

Of course, sports data is worlds apart from organizational data. There’s transparency, for one thing. A lot of what a sportsperson does is on display and can be tracked closely. Secondly, there is a clear alignment of interests – the sportsperson, their coach, the team and franchise all want the ultimate win.

So, tracking input metrics (basic ability, training hours, type of training, etc.) and output metrics (goals, passes, speed, shots on goal, etc.) are watched, parsed, correlated and shared. And then there is the environmental data (location, morale, fan support, weather) etc., many of which can and are endlessly parsed to predict future possibilities.

As a sports-obsessed country, we’ve been primed and educated in the language of sports analytics. I’ve now worked in and advised at least 20 companies and institutions – global behemoths, nonprofits, and startups. It’s never too much of a reach to get to external metrics – for innovation, for example, I like to track what percentage of revenue is driven by new products launched in the last five years as an indicator of ideas brought to market effectively.

However, once I try to get into input metrics – the percentage of concepts that make it to market vs. the total generated and progressed for review – things get murkier. For one, there is less of a discipline in the early stages of ideation monitoring, and secondly, there is less energy and leadership time spent on it. The dollars and the shiny new toy is so much more fun to contemplate than the hard work that goes into getting there.

Yet, innovation metrics are worlds ahead of people management metrics.

Why aren’t you using your data?

It’s a rare company that truly mines leadership and management metrics. Companies have made a science of reviewing revenue and Cost Of Goods. SAP and various ERP systems can tell you exactly how many widgets and man hours go into the last car/headphone/jar of grape jelly produced. How about the quality of management that went into crafting those products and services? A plethora of information exists on what makes for good management and great teams.

It’s often not too much of a stretch to identify the exemplary employees and managers in an organization – but rarely do we take a data-focused approach to understanding and using those insights. For example, it’s not a stretch for us to posit that managers who have high retention rates, larger percentages of team members promoted relative to others, higher revenue and productivity metrics, higher diversity, greater throughput of ideas, more invitations to advice on cross-functional and cross-company issues are possibly doing the right thing. You can easily see how all of these metrics can be captured and surfaced – wouldn’t it be useful for each employee to know where they stand against the exemplars?

Arm your people with their data.

We’re good about giving our 11-year olds a sense of where they stand against their peers in their proficiency at various subjects, as well as tracking key input metrics like class participation. Isn’t it only fair that we provide that kind of transparency to managers in our organizations, given how much of an impact they have on the bottom line. We’ve known the key drivers for a while. For example, in the 1998 study of Sears by Rucci, Qirn and Quinn, they found that when employee satisfaction improved by 5%, customer satisfaction improved by 1.3%, which led to a .05% improvement in revenue. At $50 billion annual revenue for Sears at that time, that came to an extra $250 million in sales. A 2014 study by Harter and Beck has shown that 4 people practices related to managers – selecting managers who are engagement oriented, the manager’s ability to hiring for skills, feedback to their teams on strengths, interest in people management – can drive up to a 59% increase in revenue for the team, ergo the company.

What’s stopping you now? Get beyond it.

With that kind of impact possible, why haven’t companies stepped up to the plate? They engage in once-a-year polls, of course. But how about using the great analytic tools we now use on consumers, internally? If a company can truly create a trusted relationship with managers, where the focus of such tracking is on development, rather than being punitive, perhaps we can use email tracking, sentiment tracking, feedback loops, etc. to better capture and understand their effectiveness. I’m not talking about the kind of radical transparency that can sometimes drive vulnerability – take Buffer.com’s salary transparency or Ray Dalio’s principles – this is more about giving your employees, managers and leaders useful and current data about their own skills, practices and abilities, so that they can strive towards excellence and impact.

There’s a lot of $$ at stake here – let’s take your best marketing analytics people and focus them on your managers for a quarter. You’ll be surprised how much change you can drive!

Get the monkey off your back with little experiments

A Capuchin On My Back...At Florida's Jungle Adventure

While I loved the capuchin monkey I met at Jungle Island in Miami (pictured here), my goal in 2015 is to get every other monkey off my back.

As you go into 2015, is it worth thinking through what your "monkeys" might be? I mean those issues, habits, untried ideas that sit on your shoulder, weighing you down.

5 things to do now:

• Give yourself permission: To reflect for 15 minutes - this may be when you're out on a jog, meditating, having a quiet soak in the bath...wherever you can separate yourself from the flow of external ideas and information.
• Listen to yourself: Now let your mind do its thing - watch the parade of thoughts that flow through your mind.
• Capture them: Once you are back to your desk, make a like of all the ideas and issues that reared their head - things undone, experiences not tried, conversations not had, etc. Some technology tools you could try: Any.do is a simple extension on Chrome that will keep track of your list, then there are cross-platform apps like Wunderlist and Todoist. These can keep them fresh and front of mind for you.
• Plan: Here's a short set of options to manage your list - Do, Delegate, Experiment.
• Do it now!! Many of your "monkeys" can just be acted on - for example that short email introduction you can provide but that you've put aside in the search for the perfect framing. Remember, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
• If you know there are issues that someone else could address, or opportunities someone else might act on for you, go ahead and delegate.
• Finally, there are those "monkeys" where there isn't a simple action. This is where you might want to start making small bets and experimenting - see my earlier post to plan some small experiments.
• Act, at the right pace: Make a rational timetable for acting on the list. Be ambitious, but also be kind - to yourself! This is about continuously increasing your effectiveness and your peace of mind, so don't let the list be a monkey - just a guide and tool to help you along.

The future of retail is here...and it looks like a steal!

Allegedly, in 1992, as he sought re-election, George Bush Sr. was surprised by a scanner in a simulated grocery line at a DC convention of grocers. The mechanics of the bar code reader left him amazed, and shaking his head.

I had a bit of a reprise of that moment today, as I walked away from the UWS apple store with an adaptor for my apple computer, never having stood in line, never having handed over a credit card or cash to any shop assistant. I'd popped the little white box into my purse and walked out. This must be what shop lifting feels like, I thought.

OK, I exaggerate.

Apple's app has freed us to be as introverted as we want to be, enjoying retail therapy without the potential pitfalls of engaging another human! If you have the app running in the background, you're greeted with a welcome message as soon as you walk in the door. It's a non-creepy version of the constant messaging you'd see in a movie version of a Philip K. Dick book like the Minority Report.

There are greeters everywhere, but there is a simplicity to the Apple store that allows you to wander and find. It took me less than a minute to locate the adapter.

I so wanted this to be a magical, futuristic experience.

It was not to be.

I looked skyward. I'm 5 feet 4, so while not a giant, I'd say I'm average height. So looking up at the shiny white box up in the sky, I signed, stood on tiptoes, tried a little jump in my stylish heels. My quest for the non-intermediated experience was shattered. I made eye-contact with the pleasant sales associate and glanced upwards. "I'll bring the ladder", she said...

While I waited for my sales associate to find a ladder, I watched another one lug a bunch of supplies and a ladder along so she could stock them sky-high. Here's a tip, Apple. If your associates need ladders to stock the shelves, then chances are, your customers will not be able to get hold of those products either. Seems intuitive? And that puts a kibosh on them experiencing the self-checkout app, doesn't it?


Despite that little hiccup, I've got to say I rather enjoyed the experience with the app. You click the little shop button at the bottom of the screen, and you get the option to shop with easypay,  Apple's payment system.  It opens up a QR code reader. In my case, it took some time to get it to read, and I landed up having the shopper standing nearby hold the box while I scanned. Up popped my hame and saved credit card number. I was asked to enter the code at the back of my card, and voila, all done!

So...not quite a magical experience yet, but I can see the possibilities.

I know my local CVS launched it's self checkout a while back. But the enormity of the shift we're talking about here is the "trust and verify" element at play in the case of Apple. You're not hunched over a large checkout machine, or stuck in the line waiting to check out. I suspect, if I'd been a 6' 4" giant, I'd have been in and out in five minutes. Being more on the compact side, the whole experience took 5 minutes plus another 5 minutes waiting for the ladder. Not bad, considering....

It's also a case of the company leveraging all it's technology to great effect. Most of us have smartphones, and we're app-addicted. By leveraging their app for education but also for the purchase interface, Apple has given me control over yet another slice of the value chain. I'm loving it.

You're probably out there, buying holiday presents. Take a gander at your nearby Apple Store and give the app a try. It's a breeze.

Is Innovation increasingly becoming state-less?

How virtual collaborations and mobile capital may make innovation hubs a thing of the past

This oped was published in Knowledge@Wharton on 20 November, 2014

On October 29, Johnson & Johnson (J&J), the New Brunswick, N.J.-based pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer goods giant, announced the launch of its Asia Pacific Innovation Center. Located in Shanghai with satellites in Singapore, Australia and Japan, this unit extends the J&J innovation network beyond its original chain of facilities in London, California and Boston. While laudable, J&J should think more innovatively about how it might source innovation. Some of the more interesting consumer and digital plays continue to come from unexpected places. In today’s age, it is time to start thinking about virtual networks rather than centers that require personnel and capital-intensive investments. Instead of a chain of pearls, a more appropriate metaphor might be a net of diamonds — with links in Africa, Asia and the Nordics, underpinned by a big data center that leverages customer data and the web.

Want to switch jobs? Do these things first

This article was first published in Marketwatch on October 28, 2014
Sital Patel (@Sital) interviewed me on how to start a job search in the current environment, and be innovative about it....

As the job market improves, it’s tempting to jump at the next best offer. But career coaches say don’t jump before considering some important factors.

Stalk trends, and be the panther in your job search!
Illustration: Srushti Hebbar

“We work on a series of assumptions at work and at home,” said the career coach. 

Before making any dramatic changes, focus on what you are doing, what you want to change and what the best way is to change that, said Roopa Unnikrishnan, career consultant with Center10 Consulting.

“Be ready to make the jump by looking at the options out there and the capabilities you have been building over the last few years,” says the career coach. 

Unnikrishnan says there are a few important steps to consider before taking a leap.

Evaluate your situation

Before you do anything, you need to dig deep and understand your situation and why you want to switch jobs, said Unnikrishnan. Ask yourself whether your lack of fulfillment in the situation you are in or the lack of motivation from yourself to make the most of the opportunities presented by the role you’re in, said Unnikrishnan. “Be thoughtful about your current situation.” You don’t want to leave opportunities on the table. In digging deep, if it turns out it’s time for you to leave, you have your motivations and goals clearly thought out for when you speak to a potential employer, she said. It will be a more thoughtful story, where you have learned, delivered, can do more, says the career coach. Figure out what you are passionate about. “When push comes to shove, it helps to be convinced about the product or service you are providing or interested in.”

Assess your capabilities and passion

Next, ask yourself if you have the capabilities and passion to stay and grow in your work at your current job, says Unnikrishnan. Capabilities are divided into emotional and technical. Emotional capabilities are about working with people. Technical skills are about being able to do the core of what you want to do. “It can’t just be about a job on LinkedIn that has your search terms in it,” said Unnikrishnan. “What you want to do is it start from a core of “what am I here to do on this planet.” When looking at a position, think about whether the job could be done better, faster and maybe even cease to exist at some point. “With every move, you are making some bets,” said the career coach. “You are going in wanting to believe it will work out, but put on a skeptical hat” before you take it.

Be like a panther

Third, Unnikrishnan says visualize yourself as a panther. It’s about watching and waiting, she said. Once you have realized what you’re passionate about and what your goals are, stalk the trends and gather information, she says. It’s impossible to know everything out there, but look at trends around you that pertain to your career, she says. Whether you are talking to people, reading the papers, walking down the street, it’s about recognizing trends. For example, if you can’t go to industry conferences, look up the agenda and look at the topics of discussion for trend ideas in your space, says Unnikrishnan. “But don’t expect it to happen in a moment. This is about 25 things happening over time, that will [lead to] your light bulb moment,” said Unnikrishnan. Once you start seeing trends that could affect your career, ask the question: Why is this relevant? Why could this be relevant? Says Unnikrishnan.

Start the job hunt

Once you have done all of this, then you can hunt, said Unnikrishnan. Pretend you have been offered the job and think about what a week in that position would look like, she said. Consider what the routine of your day will look like so when you go into an interview, you can ask the questions that you need to, said Unnikrishnan. Don’t just focus on achieving a bunch of goals, think about how it all will work together. Imagine what your life will be like and if you’ll like it. “If you like to do things fast, maybe a start-up is the right place for you,” she said. 

The last step is to “live it,” says Unnikrishnan. Network, meet up with people in the industry to gather more information, she says. And don’t just ask them to tell you about it, have them walk you through it so you get it, adds the career coach. Start living in the space before you start actually looking for a job in that space, said Unnikrishnan. For example, if you are interested in a chief innovation role, look up the top five chief innovators on LinkedIn and talk to them . You must build a relationship with them before you can ask them to spend the time with you, said Unnikrishnan. “You can really test and be ready in a much more meaningful way for your new role.”

Malcolm Gladwell on the key to success: don't be afraid to look like a fool

Note: This article appeared in Quartz.com on October 23, 2014

I had the chance to sit down with Malcolm Gladwell and a few others just before he went on to speak about David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants during the World Business Forum “Provocateurs” conference. It was easy to slip into a casual, free-wheeling chat, and we touched upon everything from success and socialization to his infamous 10,000-hour rule.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for clarity:

Q: A lot of your writing talks about how to succeed—in your mind, what is critical for success overall?

MG: Capabilities—if you want to be a basketball player you need to be tall. And of course, desire and passion…(frowns and smiles)… except if you’re a lawyer, where theres probably no overlap between desire and success. (chuckles)

Q: What makes you successful, in your mind?  

MG: Not sure if it makes me stand out. What I try to do—try to be—is unafraid of making a fool of myself. Often I will often say something that later I consider wrong. I don’t mind changing my mind. The older I get, the more I’ve come to understand that the only way of pursuing valuable things and saying valuable things is if you lose your fear of standing corrected. Especially as a writer. I’m not making fiscal policy for the United States where an error is catastrophic. I’m provoking people to think. An appropriate mindset to have if that is your job, is to be unafraid. It’s about trying an argument out in front of intelligent people. There’s a 40% chance I’ll be wrong, but that’s OK. That’s the mindset you need to have.

Q: Let’s talk about fear. What is the most powerful weapon against fear? 

MG: The most powerful weapon against fear is forgiveness. If you are part of a community or a context or a world that is comfortable with the idea that people are sometimes fearful, sometimes make terrible decisions, and sometimes don’t do what they are supposed to do—and you continue to support them—then it becomes a lot easier to overcome fear. The key to overcoming fears is your understanding of what happens after you have done or not done something—and if you know that what happens next is that you will continue to be supported, that makes it easier to do the right thing. I think of things not in terms of the individual but of what surrounds the individual.

Q: In David and Goliath, you explore the idea of the advantage of disadvantage. How can you create strategic disadvantage deliberately?

MG: Part of this is making people comfortable with their imperfections. I am constantly hearing about a person seen inside organizations as being disruptive, but is nonetheless highly valuable to the organization. My sense is, if you are inside the organization and you’re discomforted by this person, get over it. It should be fine. Not every relationship has to be smooth sailing. Part of what makes a lot of people good at what they do are their flaws, their compensations for their flaws. My favorite example was a person I used to work with, a great investigative reporter in the Washington Post—one of the greatest of his generation. He was also exceedingly difficult to work with. They drummed him out, but they didn’t realize that you can’t get this great investigative reporting without the obnoxious personality.

The people around the weirdos have to be patient. It’s all a matter of how that’s framed. To think about my example: had the editor stood up and said, “Look we need him. Come to me if things are really difficult, but he’s not going anywhere.” If that conversation took place, it makes it easier. In David and Goliath, I talk about [Dr. Emil J.] Freireich, this tempestuous, difficult, impossible man. He had a boss at the National Institutes of Health who made it possible for all this great work to be done battling leukemia—he knew his job was to harbor and protect obnoxious and brilliant people. He woke up in the morning knowing it was his job to protect the brilliant people from the people they drive crazy.

Q. And what happens in schools—how does this reflect on what happens there?

MG: When it comes to children, it gets more complicated. You’re trying to socialize them, and educate them. With adults, we’ve kind of given up socialization. I worry sometimes that we have gone too far in the direction of socialization. Skilled teachers and principals try to find the right balance. We promote socialization over independent mindedness. I am the millionth person in my generation to object to the way competition is handled in schools today. It’s a really healthy thing to have winners and losers. You learn more when you deal with the real consequences of a loss than if you pretend there is no loss.

Q: Tell us about the 10,000 hour rule.

MG: People have consistently misinterpreted it. It’s not about sports—it’s about cognitively complex disciplines... and running and basketball are not cognitively complex disciplines. It’s not an either/or situation—10,000 hours cannot substitute for talent. If you are doing something complicated, how much time do you have to spend—the minimum amount of time necessary to express your innate talent? Even the most talented surgeon in the world cannot do amazing brain surgery at 21—what the rule tells us is that it takes a long time. Once you understand how long it is, then you understand the idea of patience in organizations, and the importance of organizational support for talent development. Talent development is a hugely critical element of any successful organization.

The correct response to a world that is growing more complex is to delay specialization, not to advance it. People think, because it takes so long to be good at something and jobs are so complex, I need to specialize earlier. No. Start later. The fact that skill levels in sports is rising means you should start practicing one sport later, not earlier. Because the question of fit is more important than ever. You can’t tell if you’re good at something at five, you can at 12. Play seven different of sports between five and 12. Same is true of education and careers. Slow down a little—learn your larger set of skills and then you can hone in and specialize once you have that broad set of capabilities and know where your fit and passion lie.

When customization leaves the customer out of the frame

A version of this post was published in Quartz Magazine on September 25th, 2014. Click here for the article.

This year, as our 11-year old twins prepared to go back to school, they convinced my husband and I that they deserved something special for their 5th grade and middle-school entrance test results. Each had set their heart on customized shoes. I had been curious about how these services had evolved in recent years, so I decided to set up an experiment of sorts.

The criteria we established were simple: speed, concept delivery, no spam. The unsaid factor, of course, was customer satisfaction.

We started with a general search for customized soccer cleats for my son and sneakers for my daughter. After some price and value research, we decided to go with Vans for the sneakers and Adidas for the soccer cleats. Among the soccer shoe providers, Nike and Adidas have done the most to offer the greatest level of customization. Vans stood out as the only one, apart from Nike, that seems to provide customized casual keds. Toms, a leading contender provides artist-designed shoes and monogrammed pairs, but don’t get to the level of customization we were looking for. Of course, there’s a lot of speculation around 3-D printable shoes—I looked at a couple of options like the MiMiniFactory and Dezeen shoes, but it wasn’t easy to find anything practical and that didn’t require a lot of work to get set up, printed and tested. But I suspect my next shoe will come hot off a press somewhere near me.

After we selected Vans and Adidas, came the family mix-and-match fun, after which we had a couple of impressive looking shoes designed. Both websites (vans.com and adidas.com) did well as far ease of use goes. However, Adidas won when it came to the types of customization you can incorporate (the player’s name, a country flag, etc.) As we hit the order button, we were surprised at the expected time to delivery – 4 weeks for the MiAdidas, and 7 weeks for the Customized Vans. Not to put too fine a point on it, but given the difference in the types of shoes we’re talking about here – cleats seem to be a slightly more complex product than Vans keds – this seemed a bit off. I get a sense that there’s a huge opportunity to simplify and speed up the process at Vans!

The criteria we established for the experiment were simple: speed, concept delivery, no spam. The unsaid factor, of course, was customer delight and surprise.