Whizzing past the empty roads and barren landscape of western Rajasthan the attempt to think was way past my ability. All one could do was hear the radio singing above the whistling wind. Daddam khan, the taxi driver was the proud daddy of the innovative radio. He beamed and told us how he had invented it in only Rs.500. He could even take out the chip and insert it in his phone to upload songs. He had been bored with the cassettes and had figured out the ‘chip technology’. He fiddled with it needlessly and continuously changed the songs with his remote.

We stopped for a tea break in one of the road side dhabas to see the small innovations all around us. It just reiterates my thought about how Indians will never be able to replicate like the Chinese – each Indian is an innovator or designer due to his own survival needs.The dhaba owner had long stone sink that had a hole though which a pipe drained into a kanaster or aluminum container. Simple and clean solution.

One of the remotest villages we visited near the Rajasthan border where there were several widows who had made self help groups. The main administrator was one of the older widow women. While we sieved thru histories of old textiles the widowed lady conduced her work over the phone. How effectively the phone was being used to ensure that work was done timely and effectively.

I felt like a proud Indian where communication and technology had finally come of age

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tom Peters has been a huge influence , since the time i read The Pursuit of Wow and then ReImagine. I came across these points in a recent post of his and am looking forward to his new book, The Little Big Things.

Enthusiasm. (Be an irresistible force of nature!)
Energy. (Be fire! Light fires!)
Exuberance. (Vibrate—cause earthquakes!)
Execution. (Do it! Now! Get it done! Barriers are baloney! Excuses are for wimps! Accountability is gospel! Adhere to the Bill Parcells doctrine: “Blame no one! Expect nothing! Do something!”)
Empowerment. (Respect and appreciation rule! Always ask, “What do you think?” Then listen! Then let go and liberate! Then celebrate!)
Edginess. (Perpetually dancing at the frontier, and a little or a lot beyond.)
Enraged. (Determined to challenge & change the status quo!)
Engaged. (Addicted to MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. In touch. Always.)
Electronic. (Partners with the world 60/60/24/7 via electronic community building and entanglement of every sort. Crowdsourcing rules!)
Encompassing. (Relentlessly pursue diverse opinions—the more diversity the merrier! Diversity per se “works”!)
Emotion. (The alpha. The omega. The essence of leadership. The essence of sales. The essence of marketing. The essence. Period. Acknowledge it.)
Empathy. (Connect, connect, connect with others’ reality and aspirations! “Walk in the other person’s shoes”—until the soles have holes!)
Experience. (Life is theater! Make every activity-contact memorable! Standard: “Insanely Great”/Steve Jobs; “Radically Thrilling”/BMW.)
Eliminate. (Keep it simple!)
Errorprone. (Ready! Fire! Aim! Try a lot of stuff and make a lot of booboos and then try some more stuff and make some more booboos—all of it at the speed of light!)
Evenhanded. (Straight as an arrow! Fair to a fault! Honest as Abe!)
Expectations. (Michelangelo: “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” Amen!)
Eudaimonia. (Pursue the highest of human moral purpose—the core of Aristotle’s philosophy. Be of service. Always.)
Excellence. (The only standard! Never an exception! Start now! No excuses! If not Excellence, what? If not Excellence now, when?)

Will write a more detailed post soon.

Over the course of the last few weeks, there have been many posts that have talked about 2010. Here are some thoughts that I found interesting. If you are aware of more, please do share some links too.

5 Non-Obvious Marketing Trends To Watch – Rohit Bhargava

• The Importance Of When.
• Rebirth Of Usability
• Marketing With Customer Service
• The Rise Of Voluntary Ambassadors
• More Businesses Find Their Personality

How Enterprise Applications Will Change – Esteban Kolsky

• Business Functions – You have to embrace a new model, and you need new business functions for that.
• Communities – You will no longer build communities to control, you will participate in ad-hoc and impromptu communities.
• Experience – Or are you trying to do the “online experience” or the “brick-and-mortar experience”? The disconnect is what’s causing you to fail.
• Convergence – You will need to converge your Enterprise 2.0 (internal) and Social CRM (external) strategies (first), initiatives (second), and implementations (third).

Three Enterprise 2.0 Themes You Should Be Watching – Hutch Carpenter

• Impact of SharePoint 2010
• Enterprise 2.0 Becomes “Like Air”
• Enterprise 2.0 Market Stratifies

10 News Media Content Trends to Watch - Vadim Lavrusik

• Living Stories
• Real-Time News Streams
• Blogozines
• Distributed Social News
• News Goes Mobile
• The Year of Geo-Location
• Story-Streaming
• Social TV Online
• Marketers as Producers
• Social News Gaming

Consumer Trends Influencers

A Resolution to Fix Morale – Kelli Schmith

• Simply pay attention to your people – Give your employees thoughtful attention.

The New Way to Work – Top 5 Trends to Watch – Contagious Ideas

• Organizations will embrace Design Thinking
• Women will play a more important role in re-defining traditional notions of work
• Small business owners will become the new stars of economic growth
• “Happiness” will become a way to measure economic prosperity
• Personal branding will become the buzzword of talented workers around the world

Four Ways Consumer Mobility Will Reshape Digital Advertising – Dave Courtney

• Audiences Will Replace Channels
• Mobile Evolves Beyond Devices
• Contextual Location Emerges
• Engagement as a Metric

Landor’s 2010 Trends Forecast: Market Trends and their impact on Brands

Media Predictions – Pat Kitano

• Community Engagement will become the Driver of Local Media
• Mobile + Local advertising = Penny Saver 2.0
• Mobile + Advertising + Pubsubhubbub = Alert systems
• Advertising as Content
• Everybody becomes a marketer, and some will become sales closers
• Virtual socializing and Webinar ubiquity
• The grass roots Web
• The stream is more important than website
• Curation is the new syndication
• A new era of open social media

5 Social Media Implications for Brands – Sienna Farris

• Social media marketing will finally transition from “nice to have” to “must have”
• Location-based social networking is here to stay  ( Also read The Future of Geo-Tagged Marketing )
• Experimental social media budgets are key
• The division between the virtual world and the physical world will continue to blur
• Crowd sourcing will turn social media into a direct sales channel

The Top Trends That Will Shape Social Entrepreneurship – Nathaniel Whittmore

• Online Action Moves Away From Just Donations
• Coworking and Startup Incubation
• Sector Blending
• Innovation Ecosystems
• Creativity in Seed Stage Funding

The Year Marketing Dies… – The role of the new marketer:

• Won’t be simply to focus on outbound messaging but to consult with sales, customer service, and human resources on how the brand must be communicated in every consumer interaction, every tweet, and every touchpoint,
• Won’t be merely to imagine creative messages but to fashion programs that are seamless with the actual product and service experience,
• Won’t be to plan bursts of communication on a yearlong calendar but to respond to and be part of the ever-changing dialog with consumers,
• Won’t be to count friends, page visits, eyeballs, readers, or viewers but to measure changes in consumer attitude and intent,
• Won’t be merely to talk at consumers but to listen and engage one to one,
• Won’t be to build campaigns but relationships,
• Won’t be to create impressions but experiences, and
• Won’t be buy media but to earn it.

The 10 TENsions That Will Define 2010 – Ross Dawson

• Optimism – Fear
• Institutional work – Independent work
• Hyperconnected – Disconnected
• Openness – Privacy
• Youth – Experience
• Death of Media – Birth of Media
• Immigration – Borders
• Climate Activists – Climate Doubters
• Innovation – Copying
• Me – Everyone

Digital Trends

• Social media fatigue
• Real-time search and social search
• The end of the Intranet … as we know it
• Content leaves home
• Augmented Reality (AR)
• Service on demand
• User-friendly collaboration tools
• The new interface
• iPhone-killers

Some Next Big Things – Faris Yakob

• Gestures – Gestural interfaces are the future of human computer interaction, at least until we find a way to connect something straight into your brain
• Banners – Thinking about banner networks as ways to distribute samples of interesting content to your audience might lead them to earning their own attention
• The socialization of mainstream media – new media do not displace old media. They simply change what it is for.
• Content – To get in on the spread requires content strategy, and the lack of media scarcity online means we need to “think like a dandelion” – produce as much content as possible and see what catches the breeze.
• Hyper-connectivity and transmedia

Click here to view the embedded video.

Penny for Your Thoughts – Don Tapscott

Click here to view the embedded video.

Four Big Ideas Influencing Marketing – John Moore

• Word of Mouth isn’t always Spoken, Sometimes its Visual
• Clear is the New Clever
• Social Media is about Solving more than Selling
• Word of Mouth Marketing Begins First by Listening

Consolidating Strategies – Wim Rampen

• For 2010 I wish all the Customer Centric strategies to consolidate, on a company level

12 Digital Marketing Predictions - Lee Odden

• Hybrid Plans that Combine Subscription Fees with Advertising
• More Transparency on Websites Could Undermine Online Ad Efforts
• Social Plus Search Will Equal Better Results, More Ad Opportunities
• Mobile Commerce’s Time Has Arrived
• Retailers Grapple with Measuring Social Commerce
• Mobile Is Moving Into the Mainstream
• Earned Media Takes Center Stage
• Social Ad Networks Will Expand
• Twitter
• Online News Content
• Digital Video Convergence
• Look to the 55+ Age Demographic for Internet Usage Increases

Technology Forecast & Predictions – Jack Uldrich

Future of Advertising

BtoB Marketers Predictions – Paul Dunay

• Facebook Advertising will take off – Should try it out for recruiting or even brand advertising
• Mobile Marketing – Experiment with Location Based Services especially at live events
• Social will leave Marketing – It starts to transform the rest of your BtoB organization from Product Development and R&D, to Billing and Finance, to HR and Recruiting, to Customer Service and the Contact Center
• Corporate Websites will become less important – More consumption of content off of the corporate website in places like Facebook, YouTube, and relevant Communities and Forums
• Lead Generation tools must combine with Social Media tools
• Listening tools will also get much stronger
• How to handle Advocates will become more important
• MicroVideo shops will start popping up
• Businesses will demand Intelligence not Social Media

Ten Trends

Also explore the Insights and Ingenuity List

Consumer Trend Report from TREND HUNTER

Click here to view the embedded video.

Further Updates : Jan 6, 2010

Top Digital Trends : The drive for content at scale ranks among the developments set to make waves by Brian Morrissey

• Content at Scale
• The End of the Digital Agency
• Social Gaming
• Demand-Side Platforms
• Engagement Pricing
• Augmented Reality Grows Up
• Social Media Morphs into Digital

Top Ten Digital Trends – Simon Mainwaring

• Where You Are Is Who You Are
• THE Customer As Advertiser
• Real-Time Search
• Selling The “Why”, Not The “What”
• Overcoming Overload
• Content Is King
• Augmented Reality
• Measuring Engagement
• Crowdsourcing For Everyone
• Your Brand in Their Hands

Predictions: Conscious Capitalism, Vertical Learning – Raff Viton

• The integration of Conscious Capitalism will spur long-term growth
• Vertical learning will be of increasingly high value

Five Predictions on Collaborative Computing – Rob Howard

• 2010 will be another year of growth for the industry
• Engagement analytics will replace Web analytics
• Platform, not application
• Collaboration will replace social
• Enterprise search technology will grow

Customer Experience Resolutions – Bruce Temkin

• We shall put in place a robust voice of the customer program
• We shall stop playing with social media and put it to good use
• We shall treat customer service as a loyalty-driver, not a cost center
• We shall go beyond just fixing problems and inspire brand promoters
• We shall establish clarity in our brand, internally and externally
• We shall identify a senior executive to lead the transformation effort
• We shall help new customers get value from us faster and easier
• We shall improve the usability of all self-service interactions
• We shall communicate more clearly with customers across all channels
• We shall make our culture more customer-centric

A Look Forward – David Polinchock

• Authenticity continues to be a critical
• As SM grows, people will demand much more from brands
• Brands must learn that they start the conversation, people amplify it
• If you don’t give me information, I’ll go to someone who will
• We need to expand the Experience Continuum
• To expand the Experience Continuum, we need to start creating Oneline experiences
• We’ll start to understand the importance of Location Based Branding
• AR & QR codes will become mainstream
• Physical retail needs to adapt or face the consequences

5 Marketing Principles Brands Should Embrace – Frank Striefler

• Create better realities
• Don’t be design blind
• Be “brand led”
• Think 365 — not 360
• Be interesting

The Words You are Going to Hear a Lot

• Spurned Media
• Mobilenecking
• Jack Ripper
• Wiki Wart
• Oedipost Complex
• Deciprocity
• Faux Post
• Appfusion
• Brand Tease
• Shelf Storm
• Apptosterone
• Buck Sucked
• Trust Lapse
• Runway Rebel
• Blog Dodger
• Tweet-Shifting
• Curbcasting
• Twitstop
• Digital Detox

The Future of Social Media

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Mobile Internet Report – Summary

10 Things – Bring Work to Life – Krishnan Chatterjee

• Impact Not Transaction
• A piece of You. Not You as a piece
• Run the race against yourself
• Knowledge and Skills are irrelevant without Insight
• Earn a Seat at the Table
• Think Outside In
• Leadership is the art of self-redundancy
• You HAVE to push the envelope
• Detail, Detail and Detail
• There is no trust without being yourself

Further to my earlier post, Health on her fingertips, where I explored the need of Sumita, a poor young woman to find out more information on basic health care, I have built up my thoughts on the need for universal, transparent health information accessible by phone.

• A Central repository of health information + local health information is added in to make it more relevant
• People can access the information through a Call desk and through SMS
• A national health number is created that is manned by people who speak the local language. SMS menu is readily available that gives basic information (in language of choice to subscribers)

Public health services in India are woefully short of reaching the urban poor let alone the vast rural population. While institutional health frameworks for urban poor and rural poor exist, they could greatly be strengthened though this simple mechanism.

A. There are 5 dimensions of access to health services (Obrist et al. 2007: 0002)

1. AVAILABILITY: The existing health services and goods meet client’s needs - What types of services exist? Which organizations offer these services? Is there enough skilled personnel? Do the offered products and services correspond with the needs of the poor? Do the supplies suffice to cover the demand?
2. ACCESSIBILITY: The location of supply is in line with the location of the clients - What is the geographical distance between services and homes of the intended users? By what means of transport can they be reached? How much time does it take?
3. AFFORDABILITY: The prices of services fit the client’s income and ability to pay - What are the direct costs of the services and the products delivered through the services? What are the indirect costs in terms of transportation, lost time and income, bribes, and other “unofficial charges”
4. ADEQUACY: The organization of health care meets the clients’ expectations - How are the services organised? Does the organizational setup meet the patients’ expectations? Do the opening hours match with the schedules of the clients, e.g. daily schedule of workers? Are the facilities clean and well kept?
5. ACCEPTABILITY: The characteristics of providers match with those of the clients - Does the information, explanation and treatment provided take local illness concepts and social values into account? Do the patients feel welcome and cared for? Do the patients trust in the competence and personality of the health care providers?

In India none of the above parameters are remotely met when it comes to the poor. Health services have poor availability, are seldom accessible due to absence of doctors, medication, infrastructure. Most poor people are illiterate and unaware of what to demand from the government health centers, therefore even inadequate and unacceptable services are accepted with gratitude.

B. Mobile phones could serve as a simple, cost effective empowerment tool. Information on the phone could help people empower themselves and solve basic issues that occur due to paucity of information and availability. At a basic level Mobile phones could give relevant information on the following:

1. Methods of identifying, preventing & controling health problems
2. Appropriate treatment of common diseases & injuries
3. Maternity & child health (including family planning)
4. Prevention and control of locally endemic diseases
5. Immunization
6. Availability and sourcing information of essential drugs
7. Health education

C. This in itself is a large body of information. This would need to be converted into a simple information architecture which is accessible on voice call as well as SMS.

To simplify this further, information could also be broken up into information by need.

I. Questions on personal and family Health and wellness

• Personal & Family Hygiene
• Prevention – Malaria, TB
• What will keep my children healthy?
• Protection

II. Questions on Cost of care

• for emergencies
• for doctor visits
• for medicine
• for surgery
• for tests and medical needs and insurance cover for each

III. Questions on Treatment

• Diseases
• Types of treatments
• Caring for chronic illnesses
• Doctor details
• Hospital information
• Types of tests
• Complaint numbers
• Blood banks
• Organ donors

D. The above method of information access would help the government by reducing the burden of health care in some ways by increasing transparency and empowering the bottom of the pyramid people who are frequently short changed because they know no better.

The information dissemination would of course need to be in multiple Indian Languages to ensure penetration and access..

Going back to the 5 dimensions, mobile services would solve some of the issues outlined above:

1. AVAILABILITY: The poor can know what is available, how they can help themselves
2. ACCESSIBILITY: Instant information increases the ability to access health services as patients can now know who to contact and where.
3. AFFORDABILITY: Overcharging and corrupt practices can be curtailed to some extent.
4. and 5. ADEQUACY and ACCEPTABILITY: Better information, means more knowledge of what to expect and therefore a bottom up pressure on service providers to give better care.

E. The issue of funding also needs to be looked at critically. Funds will be required fundamentally for the following:

1. Seed capital to establish the information databases and technology infrastructure as well as hookups to the various telco’s
2. Ongoing costs to update information, services, staff costs and technology

While a simple model would be to make this government funded, I believe that for this service to be sustainable a public private partnership would be a better idea. The revenue generation from incoming calls, SMS interactions alone could be substantial. Other revenue streams could also be explored. For example a rating system for doctors, hospitals, nurses could be set up. Doctor and hospital references could be given on the basis of their track record and customer / patient feedback.

Private hospitals in India use mobile phones to interact with existing customers to communicate information about appointments, health screenings, health camps, vaccinations etc. However, this is largely an urban phenomenon. Access to health information in rural India is virtually non existent, while some companies are trying to penetrate this market, most activities are in a nascent stage. More on this in Health on her finger tips.

No one communicates with local communities on health issues. Both Government and Private Health services use mass media such as newspapers and television to communicate with the general public on health issues – Example – dos and donts of Swine Flu, Swine Flu testing centres, symptoms etc. Mobile phones are not really regarded as a way of mass communication. At times the National Disaster Management society has used mobile phones to communicate with local communities, but this too has been very limited.

The absence of a large information repository that hooks up to multiple telecom operators seems to be limiting the popularization of Mobile Health Services.

The other challenge is that no one has really looked at consumer needs. Instead the discussion on Mobile Health has largely been around Technology Capability. Health Records on the Mobile Phone are great to have, however the larger challenge that most of us face is around the Wellness Lifecycle. Till the time Health Services become as ubiquitous as Music services on the mobile platform, penetration will largely be limited.

The consumer facing challenges are another matter all together. For any service / product to succeed. It should have the following characteristics:

• It should be needed by the target audience / consumers
• It should be part of present consumer behavior

If the above are true, most consumers are willing to pay a price and consume the service.

1. Health Information on Mobiles – Consumers have a nascent need for Health Information. While it may exist, it is not critical to my existence unless I fall sick. Even then, the existing behavior is to ask a friend, family member. Hence, a business model around Health Information on Mobiles needs to be driven by a change in consumer behavior.
Music / Ringtones on mobile phones were not a success till the time mobile companies communicated – ‘the cool factor’ through large television campaigns. While the same marketing logic does not apply to Health Information, a targeted marketing campaign around Emergency Services might not be a bad idea.

2. Personal Health Records – Storing Health Records on the Mobile Phone is an interesting concept. However, it is not exactly a felt need and definitely requires behavior change. It remains to be seen how the business model in this case grows. Do the mobile phone companies have enough belief to back this? or will the market be taken away by someone like Google? I am not sure how this will pan out eventually, but i am sure of the fact that the organization which makes it simpler and easier and integrates with on ground services seamlessly will eventually gain. Another important aspect in health records which transcends usability is trust. Consumers need to answer the deeper question – Who do I trust with my information? – a mobile company or an internet company or a hospital. While the technology may exist, success will be driven by a combination of usability and trustworthiness of the service.

3. Health Insurance Facilitation – this is a need that is being felt by many in Urban India. Buying health insurance, is like buying into a black hole. No one knows what it has, when it will appear and what the impact will be. A service that uses Mobile phones could be very useful to consumers. The service could be a combination of health issues, personal information and policy regulations. If you are in a hospital the mobile phone rather than the PC is your primary communication device. Insurance information would easily lend itself to such a service. The only challenge is the service design. Can Insurance information really be made easy to understand, universally accessible and prompt?

Who do you go to if…

• You have a neck pain or a back problem
• You puled a muscle while playing tennis
• You are recovering from knee surgery or a fracture
• You have just had surgery and find moving around difficult
• or you are a certain age and face reduced mobility

The Answer

Most Indians would visit a Ortho, Neuro or Cardiac specialist in addition to their GP.

Visiting a Physio or Sports Injury doctor is seldom done.

The Gap

Physio clinics are in a low value trap as most Physio clinics are not branded. Services are generic and not differentiated. Patients are also seldom educated on procedures, why they need to do certain things and how they can hurt themselves if they dont take care.

Physiotherapy clinics are also not provided enough referrals by specialists as specialists run the risk of losing patients. For example in many hospitals, Physio and Ortho OPD exists side by side but very few recommendations are actually sent to the Physio. According to some estimates as many as 50% of ortho patients at some point or the other need Physio help. However, referrals are seldom more than 10 to 15% (see slides 13,14,15).

Other specialists such as Cardio, Pulmonary, Geriatric, Neuro and Pediatric only refer patients in severe distress. The perception of Physio as a wellness centre in a hospital does not exist.

The Opportunity

A large opportunity exists in creating branded Physiotherapy and Sports Injury clinics in India.

Does the service design community need to work with the open source community to provide an alternative to Facebook Connect ?

The background is the increasingly dominant role being played by a few companies in deciding on the issue of privacy of individual data. Frankly it does require an open movement to ensure there are enough perspectives on the board and also to provide tangible simple alternatives.

The two articles that inspired this thought are as follows :

• Facebook and Google: Contrasts in Privacy
• Facebook Moves to Standardize and Own Customer IDs

The specific comment that got me thinking was ..”The open community has not met the challenge to provide a better alternative to Facebook Connect,” says Chris Messina, an OpenID board member.

Could the customer centric thinking of service design working in tandem with like minded platforms provide the answers and alternatives that safeguard interests of individual users

Would like your thoughts…

What do we do when someone falls ill? I asked a few friends and it was no surprise when each one of them answered ‘ask a friend / family member’ about who to go to. The interesting bit that I want to draw your attention to is that no one said that they would call a particular number. Unlike what we see in most American Soaps – India does not really have a concept of 911. We rely on friends and family to help us in our hour of need.

While information exists in silos in our vast health infrastructure most people dont know

• the emergency services numbers,
• details of hospitals and doctors
• numbers of blood banks

In some locations people dont even know whether the medicine they have purchased is genuine or spurious? If they are doubtful they dont know who to contact.

The list is endless. A simple application that makes health information universally accessible on the mobile phone could go a long way in solving many of our information related needs around healthcare.

A road that does not see regular maintenance or cleaning , will accumulate mud and dust on the edges which increase over time and thus reduce the space and maneuverability .

Is this an analogy for work, careers and our options perhaps ?

Plus there is an emphasis on specialisation which seeks to take us into the center, but the edges have to be looked at too..

Would like your thoughts..