It’s easy to be inspired by him as a scientist sending rockets in the space, solar energy at home, electric cars on the road but the financial engineering behind this looks absolutely bad.

 
“Musk has stated that the goals of SolarCity, Tesla, and SpaceX revolve around his vision to change the world and humanity. His goals include reducing global warming through sustainable energy production and consumption, and reducing the “risk of human extinction” by “making life multiplanetary” by establishing a human colony on Mars”.

 
Was he a “mad scientist”?

 
Apparently, he freezes himself from the rest of the world on 21st November, 2017 (for the battle scenario).

 
In reality, as a scientist, he had several ideas which might have seemed plausible while he was alive. However, since he died, all of his plans also died with him.

 
Imagine we are in the year 40000, and a team of researchers somehow finds the DNA of Elon Musk. They try to replicate him in order to understand who he was and what he had achieved. They ask him questions about his past, like interview sessions. After a little while, some research team members begin to have doubts on whether he is actually telling the truth or just making up fancy stories about himself and his achievements.

 
Eventually, the research team splits in two opposite groups, one group who believed he was a real “innovator”, “entrepreneur” and “visionary” scientist in his previous birth, and the other team who believed he was actually a “fraud” and now he is overestimating his actual achievements.

 
In order to prove their theories both group decide to look in the past archives: articles about him, the real data from researches still available for them from the 2000th century.

 
Let’s meet for the battle in room A103 at 2 PM on 05-Dec-2017, where the two research teams are going to present us what they have found about him from the history.

 
The main question which will be explored, answered and battled about would be: was Elon Musk a “visionary” or a “fraud”?

Source: Wikipedia, Google.

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Google.

What are these resources?
These resources are nothing but a company’s assets. Some of them are highlighted below.
 

1) Human – Google has more than 20,000 employees spread across several functions such as engineering, operations, marketing, and sales. In addition to expertise in their field, all employees bring to the company their individual passions and interests, which play a key role in driving innovation.
2) Intellectual – The company possesses significant knowhow and intellectual property in many areas—most notably in crawling, storing, indexing, organizing, and searching data on a massive scale and with an extremely fast response time.
3) Physical – Google has a network of datacenters as well as a variety of custom, open source, and commercial hardware and software to harness this computing power and make it easily and seamlessly accessible to both customer facing products and internal tools.
4) Market – Hundreds of millions of people use Google’s products each day. These products generate revenue as well as goodwill that is useful to the company when it needs to try out, and get feedback on, its latest innovations.
5) Leveraged – Google fosters an ecosystem that allows other companies to prosper by providing additional value and content on top of its services. By lowering the impedance between itself and the outside community, Google facilitates a symbiotic relationship that enables and accelerates innovation for all.
6) Financial – The company has the ability to invest significant capital in many speculative projects and innovative ideas.

Google complements top-down innovation with its own entrepreneurial innovation model.
 
What is top-down innovation model at Google?

It is characterized by several traits mentioned below.

1) The creation of one or more entities focused on research or advanced development—for example, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, and Sun Microsystems Laboratories.
2) Recruitment of dedicated researchers, including many PhDs, to staff the research organization.
3) A small number of ambitious and often expensive long-term projects that are usually chosen, or at least vetted, by the organization’s top layers.
4) Formal and extensive research proposals, plans, and reviews.
5) A relatively closed and secretive environment, with limited sharing of resources and information with other parts of the company.

 
What is entrepreneurial innovation model at Google?
Google expects innovation from every employee. They say, “The business of Google is innovation”.
It is characterized by several traits mentioned below.

1) A flat, data-driven organizational structure.
• While the company has a traditional job ladder with familiar titles, it has always tried to keep the ratio of engineers and other individual contributors to managers as high as possible. It is not unusual for 30 to 40 people to report directly to a manager, or even to a director or VP. In addition, the key role of managers at Google is to guide and connect, not control.
2) A “20 percent time” policy.
• It allows engineers to invest roughly a day each week pursuing projects outside their official area of responsibility.
• The most important thing about 20 percent time is not how long employees are allowed to spend on side projects, but that Google encourages them to think and be entrepreneurial. There is no formal accounting of time spent—some people use more, others less.
3) Open and powerful development environments.
4) Services and tools to help launch, test, and get user feedback as early as possible.
5) Generous rewards and recognition for successful innovation.

Rewarding successful innovation
While for many Googlers the main incentive for innovation is seeing their idea become reality and reach millions of users, employees who take innovation from idea to successful product receive both monetary and honorary recognition. The Google Founders’ Award, launched in 2004 to reward outstanding entrepreneurial achievement, amounts up to millions of dollars.
 
Trying something new and not succeeding is an inescapable and important part of the innovation process. Google knows that if it never fails, then it is probably not being as innovative as it needs to be. When a project fails to meet expectations, the company acknowledges it, learns whatever lessons it can, and moves on to something different.
 
Source: Entrepreneurial Innovation at Google

Additionally, Britain was also one of the most politically established nation, as well as the world’s leading colonial power, which indirectly meant that its colonies could serve as a source for raw materials, as well as a marketplace for the manufactured goods.

As demand for British goods increased, merchants needed more cost-effective methods of production and transportation, which led to the rise of mechanization, the factory system and evolution of more durable transport system.

 
In early years of the 19th century and even before that, horses were essential for war, agriculture, and transport. Horses continues to be preferred because of the necessity to ride long distances over uncertain roads. People opted to walk for smaller distances and hired horses to travel long distance journeys. Also, the raw materials and finished goods were hauled and distributed via horse-drawn wagons, and by boats along canals and rivers.

 
However, with industrialization, emanated the invention of steam locomotives and it’s applications in public transport system. With the success of steam engines, horse-drawn wagons were soon replaced by the steam-powered ships and trains in Britain by the year 1830. Additionally, around the year 1820, a Scottish engineer developed a new process for road construction. His technique, resulted in roads that were smoother, more durable and less muddy.
 

The massive shift amongst the people and the society, the paradigm shift from older technologies to adopting newer technologies, there came the awareness of replacing horse-driven carts with horseless engine-driven cars.
 
When there could be roads and steam engines by the year 1830, will it be injustice to think there could be engine-driven cars by the year 1883 on the roads of Britain!

 
Now let’s imagine, you are a rich billionaire in Britain in the year 1883 who wants to invest the money in a transport company. And if I give you two options – you could invest in a company that manufacture cars to sell for public use or a company that sell horses for public use.

 
Few points to keep in mind in the above scenario is that these horses live longer, get sick less often, have same autonomy as cars (same speed) and could be used for multiple purposes. On the other hand, cars could be improved and upgraded over time, and has less maintenance costs.
 

Which company would you prefer to invest the money?
 

Join the battle in room A103 on 07-Nov-2017 at 2 PM to put forth your opinions and comments
 

Image Source: Google.

1) Wrong assumption – Often people at higher post in an organisation assume that they can make their employees be more productive if they provide higher financial incentives for achieving targets. They fail to understand that not everyone works for getting a high pay.
2) Follow the process – Organisations tend to make a process for completing every task within the organisation. There is no room for the individual ideas and ways to do the same task in a different way. This puts a halt on the independent thought process of the employees.
3) Lack of trust – Leaders in the organisations don’t trust their employees. An employee is never let to complete a task following his/her ideas and thoughts. Employees are being micro managed for their work which unknowingly generates a sense of frustration in them.
4) Focus on short term goals – Maximum corporate companies are focusing on short term goals to maintain a high position of the company within the stakeholders and the market. The targets are set so high that employees fail to think about the long term goals of the work.
5) Comfort over growth – Most of the employees follow the process what has been a tradition in the company. They fear from taking risk to do the same task with a new approach. “The riskiest thing you can do is play it safe”, says Godin.

It’s high time for us to reason about our default metrics for success, cultivate leaders who inspire and trust people, root our businesses in big and challenging goals and push people to take more risks and chose uncertainty over comfort in their careers.

Image Source: Google.

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Original Article

Three decades back, the American cyberpunk science fiction movie Robocop featured a crime-ridden Detroit theme.

Fast forward to the year 2017, we realise that the fiction is slowly transforming into a reality now. Recently, the robot police officers are being deployed across China and in Dubai. These early phase Robocop’s are serving the purpose of security guards or mobile information touch screens with the task of passing general information onto the citizens.

Fast forward to the year 2050, we observe that Robocop is going to be a reality in Detroit, the city from where the idea of this superhero originated. The mega-corporation (OCP) in Detroit has revived it as a superhuman law enforcer, and now has the complete control of the Detroit Police Department. In return, OCP aims to turn the Detroit city into a high-end utopia called Delta City.

These Robocop’s will have three primary commands:

1. Serve the public trust.
2. Protect the innocent.
3. Uphold the law.

And how do you think they will be able to achieve this?

It would certainly require the common public to share their identity and certain set of details with the department (OCP). This collected set of data would be fed into the brain of the Robocop in order to serve and protect the common public in parallel to keeping up the law and order in the city.

Imagine if you were one of the common public in the Detroit city and you are asked to share your personal identity and other related details.

How would you feel about doing so?

Does your security in the city bother you more than your privacy?

Or

Does your privacy holds strong roots that are non-negotiable?

So, is it Security or Privacy? Wondering which one matters to you more?

We are here to enlighten you with our thoughts, opinions, suggestions, and arguments on Security vs. Privacy and to assist you decide better on this crucial choice.

Come join us in the room A103 on 24-Oct-2017 at 2 PM

Image Source: Google.

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I had a very interesting discussion session a while ago and would like to share it with all of you…

Before I start… I would like you all to give a couple of minutes thought on the below plot.

What if humans have two planets to live! Guess what would the second planet be?

Give it a little thought guys!

Yes, you guessed it right……MARS

Hypothetically speaking what if the countries of the world have colonized different regions on MARS. Largest since the colonization of the American continent. The countries have imposed their jurisdiction and governance in their new claimed lands. Common public have started to migrate from the Earth to Mars to find new opportunities and start a new living

How wonderful it would be to have well established networks and routes to travel from the Earth to Mars!

How exciting it would be to travel in the UNIVERSE! Amazing if there is a Taxi service…!

How thrilling it would be to add such an experience in our lives!

Doesn’t it sound great to you?

I am sure it does, as much as it does to me

Well, of course all of this might seem like a dream now in the year 2017. However, I am talking about the year 2100

It may be or may not be so farfetched though but it shouldn’t stop us from pondering.

Being a visionary I am, I would like to believe that all of this is possible by the year 2100

What puzzles me is that, which mode of transport I would prefer to travel between the two planets?

I know public taxis are frequent and available but then there are also private Uber taxis which are flexible and luxurious.

I want your suggestion guys! Please help me pick one of them!

What according to you would provide us the most feasible journey in the universe in terms of cost, safety, time, and so on.

Let’s discuss on this happening, exciting, thrilling topic in our next battle on 17-Oct-2017 at 2 PM in room number A103.
Image Source: Google.

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Horizon 2020 is open to participation from all over the world. And for the post of Advisor to the President, the nominees are the two legendary entrepreneurs – Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. We have to elect ONE of them!

Have a look at the table below, to know a little more about both the applicants before we choose to vote for one of them!

Let us see what they bring to the desk that makes them the most suitable candidate for this post. My friends, what are your thoughts?

Who do you think should be elected as the advisor?

Who do you think deserves the most and would do the justice for this post?

So here we go … Join us for the Battle on 3-Oct-2017 at 2PM in A103 to stay tuned 

Jot down your thoughts for this battle keeping in mind the below boundaries of the battle and focussing on the personal figures … not on their respective companies!

Image Source: Google.

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