Thank you for always opening up possibilities. For giving us wings and teaching us to fly. For letting us find our paths. For keeping us real and grounded. For moulding our minds and our hearts. For looking out for us, even as we grow older.
We love you always,
Your three girls, and our families.
(Will add in more pictures from tonight’s celebrations later)
Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina
How Companies Tap the Potential of Innovative Users – Four Examples from Germany – "Open innovation has found its way into companies’ innovation processes and is a widely used approach to spur collaborative innovation with consumers. A multitude of methods and tools have come into being, creating confusion about how to make the most out of users’ knowledge and creativity. This article provides innovation managers with insights into four popular open innovation practices at four German blue chips and contrasts the various approaches."
Gupta, 59, and his aides have uncovered more than 25,000 inventions, from the bicycle-mounted crop sprayer to the electric paintbrush that never needs to be dipped in a paint can.
Many of the cheap, simple ideas he spreads for free from one poor village to another with the inventor's blessing. Some he is working to bring to market, ensuring the innovator gets the credit and the profit that will spur others to create as well. Many ideas are simply documented in his database waiting for some investor to spot their potential. He routinely dispenses tiny grants, either from a government fund or his own web of organizations, to help poor innovators finish their projects."
Came across this blog post – Klout, Big Data and Opting Out by Fred McClimans via @gautamghosh and liked this quote, among other things: “There’s nothing in the dark that isn’t there when the lights are on.” Rod Serling. I tweeted it, and @rajeshlalwani responds:
Rajesh’s quote immediately made me think of Shakespeare and his monologue from As You Like It. How true it is centuries later, for Social Media, and in the context of the raging discussions around privacy and big data! All seven acts and seven ages, as described by Shakespeare collide at such a fast pace on multiple stages. We’re visible to invisible audiences. We’re being edited by invisible algorithms.
And we are exposed.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
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:
Ethnographers vs. Moderators: Know What You Are Buying | anthrostrategist – Ethnographers vs. Moderators: Know What You Are Buying
The other day I was speaking with someone about ethnography and was informed by the person in question that she too was a “moderator.” She, of course, practiced ethnography, such as it is, and informed me she had been “moderating ethnographies” for years. Yes, it made my skin crawl. Not because someone was crossing disciplinary boundaries, but because the choice of words told that ethnography was indeed the last thing she practiced, but had no doubt sold her self-defined ethnographic prowess into many a company. And unfortunately, this is precisely what continues to water down and cheapen the methodology and its use in business settings.
Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina
Social Means Freedom, for Better or for Worse – Nilofer Merchant – HBR @nilofer (via @armano) – From a series of posts on how the Social Era will reward fast, fluid, flexible organizations. QUOTE: "This post is part of a series on the Social Era and answers the question: If you were going to design an organization from scratch today, what would you design for? And the answer is: nimbleness." …….. "What will it look like to lead an organization when only 5% of talent affecting output is directly on payroll, and others come and go? Organizations will not need to be big to have a big impact. But they will need an extremely clear purpose, and shared, decentralized power throughout. ………………. Work is freed. This changes not only how we work at the broadest levels — and how we organize every single part of our organizations — but what we make, how we produce and distribute it, and how we market and sell it. Is that scary? For many, yes. But, for better or worse, social is giving us this freedom. The question now is what we do with it." UNQUOTE
Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina
India’s elite is blinded by a cultish belief in progress | Siddhartha Deb | Comment is free | The Guardian – QUOTE: The Hazare movement has since petered out, but its central idea, of the unique meritoriousness of the middle and upper classes of India, remains. It is an illusion, and it reminds me of the illusion among the middle and upper classes of another society, and that is the US. I live and teach in New York, where I've seen among my students (mostly white, just as elites in India tend to be mostly upper caste) and in the Occupy Wall Street movement an elite that has suddenly been forced to examine its notions of unique meritoriousness and endless prosperity. The lack of jobs in the US, something that earlier affected only those in manufacturing and the service industry, and therefore had an impact mostly on inner city African Americans, poor immigrants and rural whites, has now worked its way into the lives of the middle and upper classes, towards even people with expensive college degrees." UNQUOTE
Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina
Farmers using Facebook to discuss prices and plan strategy – The Economic Times – QUOTE: "Facebook farmers played a crucial role in stopping the auction and solving the problem," says Raghunath Ramachandra Patil, president, Shetkari Sangathana, a political party with farmer members. The small protest at Sangli may not be a patch on the social media-led 'Arab Spring', but it does point to the growing importance of social networking websites in the Indian countryside. From sharing critical information in real time to eliminating middlemen to opening up marketing opportunities for companies looking to tap rural consumers, social media is becoming a powerful tool of communication across India's 600,000 villages. Technology experts say the community has always been central to rural India and therefore its acceptance of social media tools is not surprising. "Community concept has always been prevalent in villages," says Asheesh Raina, analyst at technology research firm Gartner India." UNQUOTE
Brilliant argument by @jeffjarvis: The temporary, pop-up corporation « BuzzMachine – QUOTE: "I have been arguing that vertical industries will be replaced by horizontal ecosystems made up of three layers: (1) platforms that enable (2) entrepreneurial ventures to be created at low cost and risk and (3) networks (e.g., ad networks) that, when needed, bring these ventures together to reach the critical mass that firms used to provide. Of course, enterprises today can start with no need to build factories (use someone else’s) or distribution (plenty of that, for now) or technology (use the cloud) or marketing (let your customers do it for you) or design (let your customers help) or retail outlets (they’re dying anyway) or capital (see above). We know that this new architecture of the economy means enterprises can be launched with less investment, risk, and effort." UNQUOTE
Tweet 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 […]
Tweet Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina How "frictionless sharing" is undermining the individual experience – essay by @evgenymorozov. The Death of the Cyberflâneur – The New York Times – QUOTE: "Something similar has happened to the Internet. Transcending its original […]
Tweet Updates on what I’m reading. Links with my notes. I also just tweet links and things that interest me @dina Stuck? Now stay connected: Use Facebook on your Mobile Without Internet or a Data Plan | thanks @labnol – It reminds me of the old days when I travelled overseas and had no data […]
"Conversation. What is it? A Mystery! It's the art of never seeming bored, of touching everything with interest, of pleasing with trifles, of being fascinating with nothing at all. How do we define this lively darting about with words, of hitting them back and forth, this sort of brief smile of ideas which should be conversation?"
Guy de Maupassant
