plastic bag no more

WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: San Francisco's Plastic Bag Reduction Ordinance Sf is showing great leadership in North America with this new municipal rule of no plastic bag that are not made out recycled content or vegetable product and with not petroleum products. Reading further Ireland with such law has reduced by 90% the darn plastic back thing.

Creationism & Intelligent Design & Evolution

Slashdot | 48% of Americans Reject Evolution This is a pretty scary statistic on its own - I wonder what the numbers would be on Canada's side.

Complacency

This morning I was at a presentation in the leadership serie. The keynote speaker was Terry Matthews and after that we had Larry O'Brien mayor of Ottawa, and Antoine Paquin Rho Managing Partner. I've seen Terry Matthew presents twice now. The first time I got out of there wanting to take over the world, he had so much energy and so go-go-go. Today was also a great talk, but more an alarm bell he wants us all to hear about the business state in Canada. His main point is we're way too complacent. He travels quite a bit around the world, and he competes on a global scale in each of his businesses. His first point is simple, Canada, the government, by not encouraging in some ways Canadian products is not helping its companies abroad. He went on to explain that people who think that the US or France or Germany are not buying local are from another planet. I started thinking about this one for a while, and just look at the police cars - how many GM police cars in Germany or France for that matter? or how many BMW police cars in the US? Basically our procurement rules should encourage canadian content. His second point is much more difficult to address and it's one of quick exit. Too often canadian businesses sell out to the first offer, and we end up with tons of branches in canada, with no head quarters. The side effect of this are not immediately observable, in the short term it's creating wealth on a small scale, but in the long term the region would have benefited more from the company sticking around - if it was viable. Why? HQs are important to a region, they own the budget. Companies tend to get involved more in the community where its leaders are. Think of it this way the R&D budget of a corporation is on a sunny day 15% of its revenues, this means it spends 85% elsewhere, would you rather be the region where the 85% is controlled or the one with the 15%. Now - How do you convince someone to stick it out, go for the long term wealth creation? That is not an easy question. The answer lies in the mind set of the people running the business - let's make a buck and be free to do whatever I want after, work on another startup or sip pina-coladas in cuba. I think it's this freedom to do whatever that drives the quick exit. More viable businesses (qty of) could mean more businesses sticking it for the longterm. Also if businesses were built to generate profits for the long run, I think it would encourage entrepreneurs/investors to be more patient, because they could pay themselves dividends along the way. I don't know where I'm going with this post - it's more playing back in my head what I had the opportunity to hear from one of the most successful entrepreneurs in Canada. - all in all it was a great presentation, a wake up call, and if you get the chance to see Terry Matthews speak, jump at the opportunity - you will get first hand at what it's like to love to compete and kick some butts globally.

Partnership

I always think partnerships are two way streets. At Macadamian we even put this in the partners selection process. In our case it means yes we will get you business, but by selection you as a partner it means you will also get us business. Too often in the product development outsourcing business, or other outsourcing businesses - global partners are taking the stance, Macadamian go find the work and we have the team to execute it. Yes I need this back end capabilities to manage the peaks of our own global back end, but I expect more out of our partners, I expect them to bring us business as well. This reduces the potential partners out there by 99%, and brings only the best ones, most committed ones to the top. We've been working on this strategy for quite a long time. I'm very happy to say we're starting to see the strategy bearing fruits. Partners are not an expense - they are also a revenue stream, this is great. It's good for the trade balance!

Do you need them all?

GrandCentral: The New Way to Use Your Phones They are getting endorsements from heavy hitters, like O'Reilly, more info at TechCrunch and you can get a good glimpse of what they do at Wired. It'S basically unifying all ones phone numbers into one and one v-mail with all sorts of features, like menu creation etc... I think Carriers will have to start offering something similar soon, GrandCentral should start licensing what they have. Even if I have one phone with a provider and another phone number with another carrier - the carrier I choose should offer me this type of services anyway.

Stranger than Fiction

I watched Stranger than fiction over the weekend, what a great movie. I knew it was about the main character hearing a voice, more precisely hearing the narrator. I had read about the original story in a magazine sometimes ago, then I saw the movie at Blockbuster, I was a little worried because Will Ferrel is the main character, and I'm not a big fan of him most of the times. He proved me wrong, he does a great job, and it's a very entertaining movie with an outside looking, outside looking out plot - the main character being aware is part of a grander thing, grander depending on who you talk to.

India and the mee-too countries

India’s outsourcing success has 50 countries trying a me-too: "Despite the competition, India retains its position as the global off-shore leader, Karnik said adding that given China’s ambitions propped on advantages like better infrastructure and unbridled government support, the situation could change." Karnik is Nasscom's president, the organization in India about IT. Nasscom has a lot of clout and every one respects what they have achieved. They have foind a way to get the fearest competitors working together for India, to bring business to india. They have worked together to brand India as the destination of choice for IT outsourcing - and they've been very successful. They expect a lot of the executives who commit their time to the cause and it works. They have a lot of data on what is going on, and trends. They shape their industry to be competitive, and they shape the perception of the world has toward India with great success. Karnik has all the reasons in the world to be happy with their success - but they are still very much aware of their weaknesses - and the quote I have above is just that - a strong message to their own Indian government to get their act together to build the roads, and electricity power generation because India risks loosing out big. Here in canada instead of one advocacy group, we have many, and the two standing out are Itac and Cata . They both try to make their points to the government, in their own ways, and many times will take different slant on issues, but all in all it boils down to the same thing, and worse they divide the membership base, and ultimately do not carry the weight the industry in Canada needs. Nasscom is a success story we ought inspire ourselves from, to get out of the me-too countries the analysts are putting us in, because we stand out in very particular ways - someone has to tell the world.

Twitter!

I don't get it! Sometimes it just happens this way, something is going on, and this time it's me who doesn't get it. The infamous Twitter is getting more than its 15sec of fame. There are mashups using their API, but I don't see where it is going. Have a look here (the twitter vision) from programmable web (great source I find in the domain of mashups and open API) and here from Dave Winer himself.

The batting average!

I remember Mike Cowpland saying once "no one has a 1000 batting average in R&D", and it's true. So because of that fact what has happened - companies developing products have cut cost in Manufacturing, ship the manufacturing to China, and then start breathing again. That has worked for a few years, but then more pressure comes along, so they start shipping the product software development Globally, start breathing again, and that has also worked for a few years as well. So the reality has been for product companies:

1. Reduce Manufacturing Costs
2. Reduce Software Development Costs

What's next - we know prices aren't going to go up, they are bound to the law of gravity. The next thing is going to be for the years to come:

• Reduce the failure rate

The third installment of the evolution of product creation, making sure you get the RIGHT product out of the gate! Shareholders are getting tired of paying for R&D efforts falling flat in the market place. They want Companies to bet on the RIGHT product. For 10 product initiatives in most organizations, the vast majority is not going to go anywhere - and 1 is going to be a winner. In consumer speak, the product I buy has roughly the cost of 9 not so great products embedded in it. A big part of the answer is in Design - it will greatly improve the odds for a successful product. Design helps create product that will be quickly adopted with users getting passionate about them. Design executes both with the user context and the Corporation objectives in mind. , Design speaks to the objectives of the corporation, the functionality that can be put forward, and last but not least the task users would be performing with such products. Creating a successful product is cost, time to market, quality, but it also creating the RIGHT product. Creation/Ideation is not done in a vacuum, speculating what the user needs, we need to involve the users. This is our motto at Macadamian. Apple certainly got that, Microsoft also, they have one of the biggest UX lab in number of experts under one roof.

More outlook nirvana!

As I posted before the date field in outlook allows for free form text. Well not only does the field allows me to enter dates, and recognizes it, now the big discovery: Today I was trying to figure what date was the last Friday of the month - so I entered "Last friday of March" and then automagically the control punched in the date. Cool! I use this date field so much, and up until now I was always entering the date in numbers, now I can say next Friday, and boom I get the date for it. I should have read the manual to figure this before.

Challenges of operating alone in India

Reversing the BOT (Build operate and Transfer) model. For the longest time Indian companies offered companies to kick start their operations in india, and after three years the same company could buy the team over and run wit the ball. I don't know if this is a trend, but lately the same Companies who used the BOT model or started on their own are realizing than unless they reach a minimum of three digits the challenges of running a business in India are enormous. The numbers of companies starting their own captive centers is stable, ie not growing anywhere near growth rate in the outsourcing business. Now we're seeing companies with actual centers in India divesting of them to have a specialist manage them. The market in India is so hot that running a business there is nothing like any north american companies is prepared for.