Storage

Increasingly, many of us have started to use our personal webmail accounts, such as Yahoo or Google, to exchange large files, because our official emails do not allocate to us the kind of space that the today's has humongous application files require. A number of us, who have to exchange large data files, are also increasingly using free file sharing services such as Pando or Rapidshare.

All of which points to a simple truth – online storage on the web is much cheaper, and sometimes virtually free, compared to local storage. So, over a period of time, will we progressively see people storing their data on the web, rather than on their local PCs? Only time will tell, but there are definitely signs which are pointing to that direction. The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is planning to come up with paid service, which will allow users to store their data online, so that it can be accessed from multiple computers and mobile devices. This of course will not be something unique, for there are other online providers who also have this service. But whereas with these services, for example Yahoo Briefcase, file transfer is a multistep process that needs clicking through multiple screens, the Google service, internally known as My Stuff, promises to make the process much simpler, by allowing file upload and access directly from the desktop, and by having the online storage act like just another hard disk.

Microsoft also has a service called Windows Live SkyDrive, which is currently free, and here's a quick list of a few other online storage providers too:

• Omnidrive.com : 1 GB free. 10-50 GB for $40-199 per year.
  
• Box.net: 1 GB free. 5-15 GB for $7.95-19.95 per month.
  
• Xdrive.com/AOL: 5 GB free. 50 GB for $9.95 per month.
  

Question : Once the data deserts the desktops and takes refuge online, will the applications follow suit too ? So what shape will future PC s take, if there is a place for PCs in the future? Hmm, time to think deeply I think.

Yotel

What happens when you apply the space saving designs of the business class of airlines and of luxury yachts to hotel rooms? Answer : You get an Yotel.

Currently available at only two airports in Britain and Netherlands, a Yotel is a set of cabins which passengers can hire on daily or hourly basis, if they have a long waitover period between connecting flights. The standard cabin, about 75 square feet in size, houses a bed, overhead storage (yes, just like flights), a fold away table, a flat panel TV, free internet connection and a bathroom with shower.

Go to www.yotel.com to take a virtual tour of a cabin.

The Yotel is proof enough that innovation is not necessarily invention. Borrow the ideas from one industry, apply it to another, and voila, you have innovation.

The eight appeals

Well you are trying to sell something to someone. Yes you know that your product/ service is probably the best thing that has ever happened to the human civilisation after the discovery of fire and the invention of the wheel. In fact you are absolutely, absolutely certain of it, as certain as night follows day. But does your prospect care? Is it worth her time, her risk, her inconvenience, her natural inertia and her poor experience from past bad buying decisions? Well, maybe not.

In order to reach the mind of your prospect, you must appeal to any of the following things that your prospect wants to be :

1. Happier
   
2. Smarter
   
3. Healthier
   
4. Richer
   
5. Safer
   
6. More secure
   
7. More attractive
   
8. More successful
   

Any sales or marketing message that does not appeal to any of these eight desires, is not likely to succeed.

Salmon Leadership

Customer leaders need the guts of a salmon. Some might say delirium. Think about it. The salmon goes head first against the current. It pushes on to its destination, unscathed by resistant forces. The salmon leader turns the company from facing itself to facing the customer.

Quoted from Chief Customer Officer – Getting past Lip Service to Passionate Action by Jeanne Bliss.

Note for the uninitiated: The salmon fish swims from the ocean into the river, battling its way upstream against the current and rapids, travelling nearly a thousand miles, to lay eggs.

And here we go once more...

And once more, back to our old game of Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis. Here goes.

Thesis: In school computer labs, since there are not enough PCs to go by, children sharing a PC must take turns at the mouse. Antithesis: Though there are not enough PCs, and children must share them, it is not necessary for them to take turns at the mouse. Synthesis: Create software that allows multiple mice to be connected to a single PC, using multiple USB ports; let each cursor be of different colours and shapes so that they can be recognised.

Sounds fairly simple, doesn't it? It is simple. And it is actually the solution that Microsoft Research India is working out. The additional plus of this innovation is that apart from allowing for better sharing, the system encourages a lot of collaborative learning among children.

Here's one more.

Thesis: If one wants to check whether an official document is original, then he has to get the document verified by the issuing authority. Antithesis: It is not necessary to get the document verified by the issuing authority. Synthesis: On one corner of the document print a bar code that carries the same information as the document. If the information in the bar code corroborates the information in the document, then the document is genuine.

As the one before, this solution too is fairly simple. And elegant. Being developed by HP India, the additional advantage of this approach is that it is easy and cheap – unlike sophisticated technologies like holograms or RFID chips, it can be simply printed by an ordinary printer.

So before I sign off, once more, what is your Synthesis today?

Once more, about struggle

Not many of us heard about Izumi Tateno. But he happens to be one of the top Japanese pianists, with more than 3000 concerts and a hundred recordings behind him.

In 2002, while performing onstage in Finland, his right hand began to shake. He finished the piece with his left hand and collapsed.

He had suffered a stroke. A stroke that left the right side of his body paralysed. In his own words, "In an instant, I lost all the music that I had accumulated inside me for over 60 years".

But he did not give up. No. In fact he is back on stage giving dozens of concerts, though he has not gained control of his right hand. He plays music especially composed for the left hand, sitting on a bench that stretches the length of the piano.

"...I am not interested in taking it easy. I don't even know how to. I want to perform as I have done in the past 50 years..." , he says.

And then in a performance last year, he had an urge to play a simple melody with his right hand. He tried it, and it worked. His wife sat in the audience with tears in her eyes.

He wrote that whenever he plays with his right hand, he gets the feeling of new leaves coming out in spring. "They are still delicate, but maybe in time, they will grow strong."

All our new initiatives are like new spring leaves too. They are delicate and need a lot of care. But as Izumi Tateno says, maybe they will grow stronger with time.

Let us all nurture more new leaves in our work. For what else is spring, if not new leaves?

Biomimicry

The TIME magazine, in a recent special issue on "Heroes of the Environment", has honoured a number of people, who are, in the words of the magazine, "speakers for the planet". And one of these people, who find mention in the section "leaders & visionaries" is Janine Beynus, who pioneered a new field of study called biommimicry with her 1997 book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.

Biomimicry, as the name of the book suggests, is a science that learns designs and processes from nature and uses them to solve human problems. Biomimicry has resulted in development of paint that cleans itself like lotus leaves, synthetic sheets that collect water from fog and mist like desert beetles and ultrasonic canes for the blind inspired by bats.

The logic of biomimicry is not difficult to follow. Since evolution ruthlessly eliminates all design flaws, what is left behind after 3.8 billion years of nature's stringent quality control, must be worth emulating. In the words of the TIME magazine article, biomimicry is "treating nature as model and mentor, cherished not as a mine to be stripped of its resources but as a teacher"

Read about mollusc inspired fans and termite inspired air conditioning at the Biomimicry Institute's case studies
page, or watch Janine Beynus herself present a few biomimicry ideas in this video.