Marketing

Was Mahatma Gandhi the Ultimate Marketer?

As India celebrates its independence day, we remember the leaders and the hundreds of thousands of martyrs who laid their lives for the country. As I look upon the history and Gandhiji’ s actions, I can’t but think of him as the ultimate marketer. The job of every marketer is to move people to action. That is exactly what he did, he moved people across the nation to action. So, I think there are some lessons that every marketer can learn from Gandhiji. Know whom you want to move: There were three sets of people – The British, The Indian […]

Marketing, Sales

How (Not) to Demo

Last week I attended a conference, where during the keynote, a cool new product was introduced and someone asked to show a demo of the product. The presenter lost the audience in two minutes flat, not due to the product not being cool, but due to the way the demo was run. I learnt the following from the demo about the art of running demos. I learnt that Talking and showing features and functions does not work anymore. Context is the key ingredient. Ensure that the demo is visible to everyone in the audience. In this case, the people sitting […]

Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Innovation

Elon Musk’s HyperLoop – Hope or Hype

At last Elan Musk unvieled his design for ultra speed travel system – HyperLoop. I think that the idea that he laid out in a 57 page document, is as good an idea as we might have currently. However, After having read through the generic description, I think that this is a good start to the pursuit of sub-sonic ground transportation. However, in its current state, this concept is impractical due to the fact that the entire concept seems to have been designed with the Los Angeles to San Fransisco route in mind, which, is mostly without much curves in the […]

Ideas

Why are We Unable to Solve Large Complex Challenges

Recently, Dan Burrus wrote a blog post about a new technology that has the potential to have a big impact on the future of energy. Though, this is good news, I am disturbed with the trend that this represents. All of us look to solve these big challenges with break through innovation. At times this works, but a lot of times, they don’t. Even when they work, these are very expensive solutions and need systemic changes for them to be successful. Though, I don’t argue with this approach, what is not acceptable for me is to only look for such […]

Business Model, Ideas, Innovation

Future of The NewsPaper Industry

Jeff Bezos has stirred up a lot of interest in the News Paper Industry by acquiring “The Washington Post” in his individual capacity. There are a lot of expectations now from him and Washington Post to define the future of this industry. If he succeeds to turn-around the loss making paper, that could pave the way for the other players in the industry to follow suit. If he fails to turn this around, people think that it could very well signal the end of an era. As part of an experiment, I thought what would make me love my newspaper […]