The power of Search, now across apps

A task as simple as choosing a movie to see can actually be complex — and the information you want can be in several different places, often in apps. You might get your trivia from IMDb, the box office stats from Wikipedia and ratings from Rotten Tomatoes. Starting today, Google can save you the digging for information in the dozens of apps you use every day, and get you right where you need to go in those apps with a single search. Google Search can make your life a little easier by fetching the answer you need for you — whether it’s on the web, or buried in an app.

Getting you there faster
Let’s say you’re getting ready for the holidays but can’t remember the name of that classic Christmas movie you want to show your children. Now, you can use Google search to find the movie and learn more about it in one of your favorite apps.

Helping you find just the right app
Sometimes, the best answer for a search can be an app. Say you want to explore downhill skiing — now, you can just ask Google for downhill skiing apps and get a collection of useful apps.

These new features are rolling out now on Android (through the Google Search app or directly in Chrome and Android browsers). App listings for from Google Play will appear in search when they’re relevant. You’ll be able to search within a select number of apps initially (learn more). We’re working with developers to add more over the coming months (if you’re a developer, learn more). 

This is just one step toward bringing apps and the web together, making it even easier to get the right information, regardless of where it’s located.

Posted by Scott Huffman, VP of Engineering

The value of openness in Android security

If you use an Android phone or tablet, there are a lot of benefits that come from Android’s open nature--customization and choice are the most obvious. But an often overlooked benefit of openness is security: by developing in the open, anyone can check Android’s code to verify that it’s trustworthy or discover areas where it can be improved. Furthermore, the security community can even write code to make Android stronger and protect it against unrealized attacks.

Google has always worked closely with the security industry to make the products you use safer and more secure, and we wanted to highlight a few recent examples of that cooperation on Android:

• Android, now part of the Google Patch Reward Program: That’s right, Google actually pays developers when they contribute security-related patches to popular open source projects, and Android is now a part of this program. As a user, this means that you have the broader security community looking out for you and preventing possible threats, before they are acted upon. 
• Security improvements in Android 4.4, from the community: In Android 4.4, we reinforced the Android sandbox (which prevents applications from extending outside of their own area and damaging other parts of a device) by putting SELinux into enforcing mode, providing one of the strongest security systems available. The core of SELinux, as well as many of the Android specific extensions have been contributed by third-parties through open source, an example of real security improvements from the community you can use today. 
• Pwn2Own Mobile, with Android: Android was a contributor to the bounty in this year’s PacSec Security conference, where teams of security researchers tried to exploit popular mobile devices. And while no exploit was found in Android on the Nexus devices provided, we were ready and waiting to create a patch in the event of an exploit! 

The Android team works very closely with the security research community at large to foster public discussions and implement improvements such as the ones above. This openness has helped make the Android phone or tablet you carry with you everyday much more secure.

Posted by Adrian Ludwig, Android Security Engineer

Introducing Google Play Newsstand - one place for all your news

Staying up on the news can be a daunting task. You have to go to a different website or app for each of your favorite magazines, newspapers and blogs. One place to read and discover all of this would be a lot simpler.

Today we’re launching Google Play Newsstand, a new app for your Android phone or tablet which brings together all of your favorite news sources in one experience. Newsstand puts the news you care about most front and center and presents stories that interest you based on your tastes. The more you read the better it will get. You can subscribe to magazines, newspapers, blogs and news sites and we’ll format and optimize them all for reading on your tablet or phone. With the swipe of a finger, you can browse full length articles, with beautiful images, audio and video right inside the app. You can access these articles even when you’re offline or bookmark them to read later.

Google Play Newsstand offers more than 1,900 free and paid, full length publications that you can subscribe to or follow. Some of these include:

• Newspaper Subscriptions: Full-length content from some of the world’s top newspapers including The Australian, The Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, The National Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. 
• Magazines: Hundreds of HD magazines like Better Homes & Gardens, The Economist, Esquire, Fast Company, Forbes, Game Informer, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Shape, TIME, Vanity Fair and WIRED, from publishers like American Media Inc., Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, TIME Inc., and more. 
• Blogs: Your favorite blogs like Apartment Therapy, Colossal, Cool Hunting, Flavorpill, Saveur Daily, TMZ and The Verge. 
• News sites: Leading news sites like ABC News, The Atlantic, CBS Sports, CNET, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, The Guardian, NPR, Reuters, The Telegraph, and more.

If you’re in the US, Canada, UK or Australia, the Google Play Magazines app will be upgraded to Google Play Newsstand over the next few days. In all other countries, you can download the Play Newsstand app for your Android phone or tablet from Google Play. If you’re a Google Currents user, you can upgrade to Play Newsstand by downloading the new app. You’ll find all of your favorite news sources will be transferred and ready to read the minute you open it.

Google Play is all about bringing you great content on your phone and tablet. No matter what your interests, there’s something for everyone in Newsstand.

Posted by Mussie Shore, Product Manager for Google Play Newsstand

Android for all and the new Nexus 5

Just in time for Halloween, we have two new treats for Android fans. First, we're excited to unwrap our latest platform release, KitKat, which delivers a smarter, more immersive Android experience to even more people. And second, we're introducing Nexus 5—a new Nexus phone developed with LG.

The first thing you’ll notice about KitKat is we’ve made the experience much more engaging: the book you're reading, the game you're playing, or the movie you're watching—now all of these take center stage with the new immersive mode, which automatically hides everything except what you really want to see.

Bringing more Google smarts to Android 
Behind the polish on the screen is the power under the hood. Take the Phone app, which for most people hasn’t really changed since the days of flip phones. Now, we’re making calling easier than ever, by helping you search across your contacts, nearby places, or even Google Apps accounts (like your company’s directory), directly from within the app. And with the new Hangouts app, all of your SMS and MMS messages are together in the same place, alongside your other conversations and video calls, so you’ll never miss a message no matter how your friends send it. This is just a small taste of KitKat—learn more on our site.

Google has always focused on helping users get immediate access to the information they need, and we want to bring this same convenience and power to users on Android. With the new Nexus 5 launcher, Google smarts are deeply integrated into the phone you carry around with you, so getting to the information you need is simple, easy and fast. Swipe once from the home screen to get Google Now literally at your fingertips. Put Google to work for you by saying “OK, Google” to launch voice search, send a text, get directions or even play a song you want to hear. And in the coming weeks, we’re enhancing Now with important new card types that bring you information about contextual topics that interest you such as updates from a favorite website or blog.

Reaching the next 1 billion users 
Building a platform that makes mobile phones accessible for everyone has always been at the heart of Android. Until now, some lower-end Android phones couldn't benefit from more recent Android releases due to memory constraints. With KitKat, we've slimmed down Android’s memory footprint by doing things like removing unnecessary background services and reducing the memory consumption of features that you use all the time. We did this not only within Android but across Google services like Chrome and YouTube. RAM (or memory) is one of the most expensive parts of a phone, and now Android can run comfortably on the 512MB of RAM devices that are popular in much of the world, bringing the latest goodies in Android 4.4 within reach for the next billion smartphone users.

Introducing Nexus 5 
Along with our sweet naming tradition, we also introduce a new device with each platform release to showcase the latest Android innovations. For KitKat, we partnered with LG to develop Nexus 5 -- the slimmest and fastest Nexus phone ever made. Its design is simple and refined to showcase the 5” Full HD display. Nexus 5 also keeps you connected at blazing speeds with 4G/LTE and ultra fast wifi. The advanced new lens on Nexus 5 captures more light for brighter night and sharper action shots. And with optical image stabilization, you no longer have to worry about shaky hands and blurry pictures. A new HDR+ mode automatically snaps a rapid burst of photos and combines them to give you the best possible single shot. Learn more on our site.

Nexus 5 is available today, unlocked and without a contract, on Google Play in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and Korea (and coming soon to India), starting at $349. Just in the time for the holidays, Nexus 5 will be available soon at the following retailers: Sprint, T-Mobile, Amazon, Best Buy and RadioShack.

Android 4.4, KitKat, which comes on Nexus 5, will also soon be available on Nexus 4, 7, 10, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One Google Play edition devices in the coming weeks.

How’s that for a treat?

Posted by Sundar Pichai, SVP, Android, Chrome & Apps

Need to Scale? Subroto Bagchi's "The Elephant Catchers" will almost get you there

I have always been amazed by Subroto Bagchi's ability to combine writing and active public engagements with a successful corporate career. More importantly, he is a good writer, and his books (The High Performance Entrepreneur; Go Kiss the World) have inspired thousands of young Indians to take wings and pursue their dreams.

But, from my perspective , his most important book is The Professional. The rapid growth of the Indian economy has meant that lakhs of young Indians have entered the workforce in the last two decades. But neither the Indian education system nor the Indian social system prepares our young people for organizational life. Subroto's book fills this gap with the most practical set of inputs that I have seen. Institutions of higher learning in India couldn’t do better than conduct workshops around the core principles that Subroto proposes in his book.

 Now, The Elephant Catchers

Subroto's latest book returns to his earlier theme of entrepreneurship but with a twist - this time his focus is on scaling-up and growth. What does it take to make a company scalable? How do your people requirements change? What about organizational values? And external branding?

There are aspects of the book that I really liked. I found Subroto’s candor about the Kyocera fiasco which led to a huge write-off and, ultimately, the departure of Mindtree founder and Chairman Ashok Soota refreshing in an era where the truth is often obscured by corporate spin. Mindtree acquired the whole team developing a new mobile handset from Kyocera on the premise that the new handset was going to be path-breaking and this would give Mindtree a leg up in the R&D and product engineering space (one of the areas where Mindtree has tried to differentiate itself as a company). However, Subroto describes how they made a major error of judgement, perhaps carried away by the exciting prospects of a step jump in that business. Readers who are familiar with our 8 Steps framework would readily see Mindtree’s failure to do any low cost experiments to test the key hypotheses or assumptions related to this new product, as well as the absence of a robust de-risking process as significant gaps in Mindtree’s process.

Another section that I found very useful is on building a sales engine. The best salesmen rarely make the best heads of sales, the skill sets and personalities required for the jobs are very different. When you hire an experienced sales head from another company, s/he will not be used to working alone and will require other people, data and support to be successful, so the total cost to the company is much higher than the compensation paid to the head of sales. And, most importantly, the individual who has been a sales head in another company may not be the best person to create and build a new sales organization. While the challenges in building a sales organization are well known, Subroto does an excellent job of illustrating these challenges based on Mindtree’s experience. This would be invaluable to any small company that aspires to grow beyond the efforts of the founders to build a sustainable sales pipeline.

Strategy, JVs, M&As, and other insights

Subroto makes several other important points in this book. The first is about “strategy.” In Subroto’s view, you don’t need a strategy unless you are seeking a significantly higher growth rate than the industry. While I agree with him that strategy is all about performing much better than the average performer, I would hesitate to connect strategy to growth alone. In my classes, I emphasize that the objective of strategy is achieving sustained, above average returns that exceed the cost of capital. While growth is one part of this, you need a strategy even if you want to achieve distinctive performance on other dimensions such as margins or return on investment.

Subroto emphasizes the important of the emotional connect of strategy. I couldn’t agree with him more - if you want people to get excited about the strategy they need to relate to it emotionally. That’s why a catchy story that communicates the strategy well is much more useful than aggressive numerical targets.

Subroto has interesting views on joint ventures. He is generally not in favour of them. I find it interesting that few Indian business leaders are very gung-ho about alliances. Does this come from a strong need for control? Or, an inherent distrust of others?  Or, because Indian companies often lack a distinctive advantage that they can bring to the table? I haven’ seen any good research on this….

Subroto is skeptical about M&A’s as well. Of course, we know the global stats on the success of M&A’s are not good, and Mindtree’s experience seems to have been consistent with these! But, I wish he had also referred to research shows that the ability to do acquisitions successfully is a capability that has to be learnt, and that there are companies like GE and Cisco globally, and our own Bharat Forge and the Tata group that have over time developed the capability to do acquisitions successfully.

The chapters on how to deal with the media, use consultants and make corporate social responsibility (CSR) a core part of the company’s strategy don’t cover much new ground but are eminently practical and would be useful to the entrepreneur trying to scale up his enterprise.

Two Weaknesses

While the book is eminently readable and has a tone that is Subroto's very own, I found his coverage of two issues unconvincing, or at least lacking in details. In a way the two are related. If you read Subroto's earlier book, The High Performance Entrepreneur, you would recall how Mindtree decided on its core values through a consultative process with its stakeholders. Mindtree was conceived as a warm and caring company; its logo was designed by youngsters from the spastic school.

In The Elephant Catchers, Subroto describes how expertise, being businesslike and adding value became critical attributes as Mindtree tried to scale. This led to a re-definition of Mindtree’s core values as well as a change in the external branding and positioning. But the book doesn't tell you how these changes were effected in the heart and soul of the company. If merely re-stating values changed organizations, change would be child's play. Similarly, for a brand to be successful, it has to be much more than external communication – customers have to experience the brand for themselves in every interaction with the company. But the book doesn’t complete the picture on these points.

From discussions with him, I know that Subroto has very sophisticated ideas on organizational change. He even played the curiously named role of “Gardener” for a few years in which his focus was on building the next generation of leadership at Mindtree. In The Elephant Catchers, he describes how individuals need to scale along with the company, and if they fail to do so they may not be a part of the longterm plans of the company. But, somehow, he hasn’t tied these different threads together, and hence the reader doesn’t get a holistic picture of the change process.

But, I would still recommend this book for its useful insights and triggers for fresh thinking, and above all for an opportunity to hear first-hand from one of the best business storytellers of our time.

India Needs More Science Museums: Reflections on a Recent Visit to Hong Kong Science Museum

On a day made grey by the retreating presence of Typhoon Utor, we recently headed to the Hong Kong Science Museum (HKSM). En route, we crossed the majestic sight of Victoria Harbour, and the crowded streets of Tsim Sha Tsui. With its glittering shops and bustling commerce, a science museum seemed somewhat incongruous in Hong Kong, and we were therefore curious to see what happened there.

As we entered the museum, we realized that it is a popular place. There was a loud buzz of young voices and kids milling everywhere. Any doubts we might have had about the relevance of museums in the internet era were dispelled as we saw the excitement there. It wasn’t much different from what I recall from visiting Bengaluru’s own Visveswaraya Museum as a young student many many years ago.

Practical and Contemporary

HKSM is an intriguing mix of high science and very practical stuff. Reflecting Chinese pragmatism, many of the exhibits are closely related to contemporary life. These give a powerful message of how science and technology are intertwined with our daily routine.

Pork is a mainstay of the Chinese diet. HKSM features a set of exhibits on pigs –their different parts, what they are called, how they get converted into different food products, how they contribute to nutrition, and to other uses as well! The exhibits also have some interesting statistics on the millions of pigs consumed in Hong Kong itself every year, and how a large percentage of these are imported from mainland China.

There is a section focused on energy use in the domestic context.  Exhibits give visitors a chance to see which appliances and applications consume the most electricity. The differences between different forms of lighting appear particularly stark. A similar theme is heating, and how different types of heating are energy efficient to varying degrees (e.g. induction heating vs. conventional heating). Mock-ups of different rooms in the house allow visitors to see how much energy is consumed in each.

Reflecting sustainability concerns, there is a section on trash and the re-cycling potential of different forms of trash. Some really interesting questions are on the typical composition of trash, which was the material to be re-cycled first (aluminium), which materials can be re-cycled indefinitely (glass), etc.

There is a section on how different home appliances work. This section includes simple workings as that of the toaster, and more complex ones such as the microwave oven, vacuum cleaner, and washing machine. Each exhibit shows the appliance, what it looks like inside, and the principles behind its working.

Another important section is one on occupational health and safety. This section covers the dos and don’ts in erecting a crane, managing a construction site, etc. I thought the theme is very relevant even if the scope of this section is somewhat limited. (This could be a very valuable section for people in India where we often display inadequate concern to occupational safety issues!).

Considering how different forms of communication have become integral to our daily lives, it was good to see a whole section devoted to telecommunications.  This includes details of how mobile communication systems work (including a nice practice demonstration of how a call is handed over from one cell tower to another), different forms of transmission  such as TDMA, FDMA, etc.

More Conventional Science Museum Exhibits

HKSM has more conventional sections as well. A well-designed section on optics features captivating images created through mirrors and lenses with explanations of how these images are created.

One of the most conspicuous exhibits is a huge and noisy apparatus near the entrance that is operated just a few times each day to show the different types of energy and how they can be converted from one form to another.

Electricity and magnetism is an enduring favourite for it allows some impactful demonstrations of turbines, generators, etc. Automotive and aircraft are well-represented too – highlights include a Mercedes Benz engine and Cathay Pacific Airline’s first aircraft (a Dakota), etc.

It was good to see that HKSM has exhibits professionally designed by companies who make museum equipment as well as practical devices designed by the students of local universities. For example, an apparatus that demonstrates the different features of waves has been made by Mechanical Engineering students of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. A good museum therefore provides important collaboration and learning opportunities for institutes of higher learning as well.

Overall Experience

I liked the way different types of exhibits and sections are mixed up, with more theoretical and informative ones interspersed with the interactive and practical. Of course, HKSM is not free of the challenge of keeping exhibits in working condition – some of the exhibits were not accessible because they needed repair. Somewhat inexplicably, a whole section on nuclear power was closed.

Biology and agriculture are clearly under-represented in the museum. An exception is the large section on soyabean, presented as a  “wonder of China” with impressive statistics on harvests and productivity, but this doesn’t make up for the absence of important fields such as genetics and molecular biology.

When we visited HKSM, there was a stunning exhibition of award-winning wildlife photography in the basement. I am still not sure how exactly this fits in with a science museum, but the photographs were so impressive that I guess no one is complaining. (One photo of two young tigers near a water body at Bandhavgarh National Park was very reminiscent of a scene we saw when we visited the part a couple of years ago).

Takeaways

A few decades ago (in the 1980s?), there was an effort to start science museums and planetariums across India. If I recall correctly, there was even a unit in the Department of Science and Technology to spearhead this effort. But it’s clear that the creation of museums has not kept pace with the growing population.

Though there is a lot that can be done on the internet, the excitement of seeing a working model before your eyes that you can touch and feel is important to spur innovation. Science museums can serve this purpose well. A strong network of science museums would go a long way to supplement the important work that organizations like the Agastya Foundation are doing to spread science education.

Supporting thematic science museums could be a powerful CSR initiative for our leading companies. Why can’t our IT companies contribute to the creation of museums related to the fields in which they work? 

Here, there and everywhere: Google Keep reminds you at the right time

Notes are a good way to keep track of all you have to do, but most of us need a little nudge now and then. Google Keep can remind you of important tasks and errands at just the right time and place. For example, Keep works with Google Now to remind you of your grocery list when you walk into your favorite grocery store, and nudges you on Thursday night to take out the trash.

To get started, select the “Remind me” button from the bottom of any note and choose the type of reminder you want to add. You can add time-based reminders for a specific date and time, or a more general time of day, like tomorrow morning. Adding a location reminder is incredibly easy too—as soon as you start typing Google Keep suggests places nearby.

 

Of course, sometimes plans change. If you get a reminder you’re not ready to deal with, simply snooze it to a time or place that’s better for you.

 

It’s now even easier to get to all of your notes using the new navigation drawer, which includes a way to view all of your upcoming reminders in one place. And for people who want more separation between their home and work lives, the drawer also lets you easily switch between your accounts. 

And finally, we've made it easier to add your existing photos to a Google Keep note on Android. When you tap the camera icon you can choose between taking a new photo or adding one you already have from Gallery.

The new update is gradually rolling out in Google Play, and available now on the web at http://drive.google.com/keep and in the Chrome App.

Posted by Erin Rosenthal, Product Manager

Bhagwati and Panagariya miss out on scope of innovation to address social challenges

A couple of weeks ago, I lauded the new book by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen for its clear identification of a challenge book for India. I just finished reading the recent book by their “competitors,” Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, titled India’s Tryst with Destiny: Debunking myths that undermine progress and addressing new challenges. To be chronologically correct, I should have read them in the reverse order, but I don’t think it made much of a difference from a content perspective!

Bhagwati & Panagariya Have Strong Views….

As has been written extensively in the press, Bhagwati and Panagariya are emphatic that India’s number one priority should be making all possible efforts to sustain economic growth. They argue that India’s poor has benefited from sustained economic growth, and provide evidence that this holds true even for people from socially and economically disadvantaged groups. Though India has, thanks to the growth in the last two decades,  more money to spend on the provision of social (health, education) services, they point out that we lack sufficient resources to provide the kind of welfare services that the UPA (more specifically, the NAC) wishes to. Even if we are to do much more for the poor, Bhagwati and Panagariya are completely against the government playing the role of provider. Instead, they prefer that the poor be assisted through cash transfers (for food security), insurance mechanisms (for health), and vouchers (for school education) on the grounds that these will be better aligned with market mechanisms, involve less corruption, and achieve better results.

A few things struck me while reading this book. One is the aggressive tone of the authors, combined with a knowledgeable air that suggests that these issues are so obvious that anyone who thinks otherwise must be living in a world of delusion. They are almost disrespectful to Dreze and Sen when they refer to arguments that the latter have made in the past which conflict with their own. This aggressive tone is related to the second feature of this book: a strong conservative ideological slant – small government, minimum regulation, and worship of the market. A combination of one and two results in their unapologetic air about the growing incidence of billionaires in India. Here, they unfortunately fail to differentiate between those who made their billions from knowledge-based companies, and those who did so thanks to privileged access to scarce resources.

I was surprised to find their endorsement of some unsustainable distortions in the education system. One of their findings is that private, unrecognized schools provide better education than government schools, even though the teachers in the former are paid several times less than the latter, because of better supervision and oversight. But, from all reports, teachers in such private schools are under-paid and over-exploited, and the schools themselves have poor infrastructure including no playing or recreational space. This may be an economically “efficient” solution, but surely it can’t be the basis for building a modern productive workforce.

It must be obvious by now that I liked the Dreze-Sen book better! For one, it has a scholarly and more even-handed tone. Dreze & Sen don’t dismiss growth (as Bhagwati and Panagariya might lead you to believe), they just suggest that it’s a real shame that a country with our resources can’t do better for its citizens. Dreze and Sen provide a broader perspective of development (not surprising considering that’s Sen’s forte) while Bhagwati and Panagariya take a mechanistic view and look at people with the lens of the “economic man.” Perhaps Dreze and Sen are a tad more idealistic and romantic than Bhagwati and Panagariya, but surely a country with our history and potential needs to retain a dose of idealism. I liked Panagariya’s earlier book (India: The Emerging Giant, 2008) but this one has an impatient, “angry man” air about it that detracts from its core arguments.  

… But Neither Get the Importance of Technology & Innovation

As I wrote in my earlier post, a particularly attractive dimension of the Dreze-Sen book is their openness to different models, and a willingness to learn from “bright spots.” On the other hand, Bhagwati and Panagariya are dismissive of such bright spots that don’t fit in with their ideology. This suggests to me that Bhagwati and Panagariya are much less open to innovation and trying out new things. In fact, they take a very explicit classical economics view of capitalism and labour as the main inputs to the production function, taking us back to a time before Solow when technological change was no more than a residual explanation of growth. I am glad that our government takes a more modern view of change, and is explicitly trying to encourage innovation to solve social problems (Both the National Innovation Council and the India Inclusive Innovation Fund have this focus).

But, to be fair, neither Dreze & Sen nor Bhagwati & Panagariya appear to have understood the tremendous potential of technology to reform health and education. Their discussion about both assumes standard, people-intensive solutions for which issues of accountability and control are obviously important. But, as is increasingly clear (see my posts on Massively Open Online Courses [MOOCs ] and new models for inclusive healthcare), new models are emerging which may make their ideological differences less relevant.

Creative use of MOOCs could allow us to achieve higher quality teaching with a far lower number of teachers. The role of the teacher would also change from being the source of knowledge to being a facilitator of learning. Organizational issues related to who is the employer therefore become less important. Similarly, initiatives like Sughavazhvu Health care show that with the use of improved technology, and a stronger preventive healthcare orientation, it is possible for alternately trained personnel to take care of primary health care. Here again it doesn’t need to be a choice between poorly managed government-run public health centres (as Bhagwati and Panagariya would characterize them) and exploitative private doctors (as Dreze and Sen would call them).

Government’s role and priorities would be different under such alternate paradigms. In education, the role of government would shift to making available low-cost, high speed broadband internet connections to students along with a low-cost access device, and in providing financial support for the creation of high quality content in regional languages. In healthcare, the government’s role would be in re-establishing a focus on public health, setting standards for certification of medical health professionals who are not doctors and providing a communication backbone that would allow the low cost use of technology in primary health care.

Conclusion

In their eagerness to prove the superiority of their respective positions, leading economists are in danger of missing out on the power of innovation, the ability to bring fresh thinking to the solution of tough problems. Perhaps we need greater openness to new ideas, and a healthy pragmatism instead?

Wisdom from Raghu Rajan

"For economists who actively engage the public, it is hard to influence hearts and minds by qualifying one’s analysis and hedging one’s prescriptions. Better to assert one’s knowledge unequivocally, especially if past academic honors certify one’s claims of expertise. This is not an entirely bad approach if it results in sharper public debate.

"The dark side of such certitude, however, is the way it influences how these economists engage contrary opinions. How do you convince your passionate followers if other, equally credentialed, economists take the opposite view? All too often, the path to easy influence is to impugn the other side’s motives and methods, rather than recognizing and challenging an opposing argument’s points. Instead of fostering public dialogue and educating the public, the public is often left in the dark. And it discourages younger, less credentialed economists from entering the public discourse."

Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-declining-quality-of-public-economic-debate-by-raghuram-rajan#Xlo2wzGUe2FcbYDZ.99

A Debate over Obamacare

Casey Mulligan versus David Cutler

Applying "8 Steps to Innovation" Framework to Start-ups

How do start-ups innovate? How is the process they follow different from that of large companies? And, how relevant is the process we outlined in 8 Steps to them?

These are the questions Vijay Kumar Ivaturi, ex-CTO of Wipro, and master planner of CII’s 9th India Innovation Summit, posed to us when we proposed to hold a workshop on innovation for start-ups the day before the summit. And, in the spirit of experimentation that we believe is critical to successful innovation, we looked for answers to these questions in the workshop.

We decided to work intensively with around 10 companies rather than spread thin over many. But as part of our design, we asked them to register as teams, rather than as individuals.

 What we learnt from the workshop

We had a good spread of companies: medical devices, simulator for surgical procedures, tamper-proof labels, compliance systems for new healthcare regulations, online art sale, 3D games on the mobile, etc. The group had several older entrepreneurs. Though our sample is too small to draw any conclusions about the Bangalore ecosystem as a whole, I was enthused by both the range of ideas as well as the experience profile - these bode well for the future of the city where I live!

Our participants got the seeds of their ideas from diverse sources: a couple from needs unaddressed by their former employers, some from personal experience, and some from friends or family. But, except for one, all had stuck with their idea even though it had been refined and gone through multiple iterations.

All of them had tried to validate their ideas before starting their businesses by talking to experts, potential users and academics. They claimed to have used multiple modes including demos and prototypes to validate their ideas after starting.

The First Exercise

Yet, we soon learnt that there was plenty of scope for them to push validation harder. Right at the outset, we asked them to identify what they thought was the biggest challenge they faced at this juncture of their enterprise. We then took them through an exercise where they identified the assumptions related to need, technology, production and commercialization that underlie their businesses. They explored these assumptions and rated them on criticality, and extent to which they had been validated. Not surprisingly, they found that some of their most critical assumptions were not yet adequately validated. This made some of them re-think what was their topmost challenge!

Our experience from the workshop suggests that the identification of the assumptions underlying the business and continuous validation of these assumptions is the most promising area for the application of systematic innovation methods to start-ups. This reminds me of what Peter Drucker referred to this as the theory of the business and echoes the approach recommended by Eric Ries in the Lean Start-up.

The Second Exercise

We found support for the importance of finding champions as well, though here the most important champions are outside the start-up, typically lead users or regulators. The second exercise we did with the group was designed to help them reach out and influence such champions: it focused on how to design a powerful pitch. Here, we used the powerful SUCCES model developed by the Heath brothers, in their book Made to Stick. To make a pitch effective, they advocate keeping it simple, giving the twist of the unexpected to catch attention, giving concrete evidence or examples, enhancing credibility through endorsements or the "self-test", infusing the pitch with emotion, and making it sound like a story.

Interestingly, we found that many of the participants did follow some form of a formal review process, perhaps reflecting the maturity and prior corporate experience of our participants . We got the sense that these participants were not as unstructured and fluid as is our common notion of a start-up.

Conclusions: 8 Steps Framework and Start-ups

Given the size of a typical start-up, there is little need for a formal idea management system, and formal efforts to engender participation. Instead, the most important and relevant dimensions of our 8 Steps framework are those related to experimentation, going from proof of concept to incubation, and business model exploration. Start-ups would do well to include such approaches in their innovation process.

I felt that the start-ups we met (and others in general) would benefit by sharpening their ideas using the notion of the challenge book that we wrote about in chapter 2 of "8 Steps". Vigyanlabs, a company I wrote about earlier, illustrates the power of this approach that focuses on identifying pain, wave and waste to guide ideation. Vigyanlabs' patented solution addresses the high power wastage (pain, waste) by data centres (clearly a wave given the momentum with which IT is moving up the cloud).

By their very nature, start-ups work in a sandbox mode - all the entrepreneurs in our workshop were intensively engaged in making their enterprises successful. But, clearly, building the right partnerships was a valuable way of taking their ideas forward (10 out of 11 companies emphasized the importance of such partnerships). As we wrote in 8 Steps, such openness to collaboration can be a significant contributor to achieving impact from innovation.

Many of the start-ups see partnerships and validation as key steps in managing risk. We were pleasantly surprised to find 8 out of 11 companies keenly aware of the need to de-risk their businesses. Steps 7 and 8 thus seem quite relevant too.

Vinay and I hope to work more closely with start-ups in times to come!

Get ready for college with textbooks on Google Play

Heading to college? Be prepared for the typical rites of passage: decorating your dorm room, choosing your classes and buying textbooks. And when it comes to buying textbooks from the campus store, some things never change like long lines, limited supplies and heavy backpacks. Or do they?

Rolling out this week, you can now rent or purchase digital textbooks from the Books section on Google Play. We have a long list of publishing partners, and we’re launching with a comprehensive selection of higher education titles from science and mathematics to history and English, and everything in between.

All your textbooks, anywhere you go 
With digital textbooks, there’s no need to worry about which ones you have with you and which ones you left in your dorm room. Because your library is stored in the cloud, you have instant access to the titles you need—when you need them—on your Android tablet, phone, iOS device and on the web. Now an overstuffed backpack is a thing of the past with all your textbooks weighing as much as the device you’re reading them on.

Take great notes, stay organized 
With the Google Play Books app, you have convenient tools at hand to make studying simpler and faster. You can instantly search within a textbook for a particular word or phrase, bookmark chapters and pages, highlight and annotate key passages and get quick access to dictionaries, translation tools, Wikipedia and Google search.

Rent and save 
Need your textbooks for just a semester or two? You can rent any textbook on Google Play for six months and save up to 80% as compared to buying print textbooks.

Shop for textbooks today on Google Play, and learn more at our Google in Education site.

Posted by Scott Dougall, Director, Product Management

The Latest from Merle Hazard

A New Job for Raghu Rajan

He's becoming a central banker.

Best week ever!

Good Monday to you all! Wow, it’s been a total whirlwind of a week! I’m not sure I’ve ever packed more into seven days in my life.

Bear with me as I share a little bit of it with you today – it’s been an wonderful, overwhelming, lovely week and it really couldn’t have gone much better!

First up – Haven 2013! For those of you who don’t know, Haven is a conference dedicated to DIY and decor bloggers specifically. It’s the first of it’s kind because we (the team) knew there was a need for it – and a few years ago we decided it was time to make it happen!

This was our second year and it was even better than the first!:

This is about half the group – all together we had about 450 attendees (that includes sponsors) so it was much bigger than last year. I’m not sure we’ll go too much bigger because we love the feel of this size – we still want everyone to feel like they have a chance to meet most everyone.

It was just a great week, really. We were just so happy with how it all turned out and are all so thrilled and humbled by it all! There was a lot of learning – I have a HUGE to do list written down – but most of all it’s just so amazing to hang out with people who totally get what you do.

We goofed around plenty:

It’s hard not to with these ladies. I laughed, a LOT. ;)

But most of all, like always, I walked away having learned so much from just chatting with other bloggers throughout the week. I was so happy to see old friends:

And meet plenty of new ones, even though I’ve “known” them for years:

As always, I didn’t get nearly enough pictures. I know took one with many of you and I’d love a copy! (Or we have a 2013 Flickr account going, so you can load them there!)

It was an honor to have been a part of it again this year and to work with some amazing women:

Our event planner, Kristin, isn’t in that pic but she is a rock star – there is NO way we could do this without her.

Next year’s conference is already booked for July in Atlanta! We’ll share details soon. :)

So I got home from the conference, slept for a few hours and then moved on to the next adventure…the NKOTB concert:

I know I’m a little teensy bit biased, but DANG, they put on a great show! I was exhausted just from attending.

This time they were joined by Boys to Men (they were fantastic!) and 98 Degrees and the place was packed!:

It is absolutely electric. And LOUD. Grown women can SCREAM.

My hubby’s cousin hooked us up with some incredible seats – six rows off the floor:

We had one of the best views there! Excuse my Farah hair by the way. I’m bringing the 70’s back. Apparently.

Yet again, I came home, got a few hours of sleep and then this morning we were up bright and early for a very special appointment.

Today we learned we’ll soon have a grandson. :) Yes, I’m going to be a grandma – my stepdaughter (23) is due in December and we found out this morning it’s a boy. It was very emotional and sweet and they had a room full of family and friends there to find out the big news. Our son is THRILLED. :)

We are just so happy she and the baby are healthy and doing well.  I haven’t mentioned it yet just because I kind of feel like this is their story to tell, not mine. I will of course share more as we get closer to the due date and will most likely share a few pics over time, but I want to respect their privacy and desires too.

I can’t wait to meet this sweet boy!!

So, yes, I think I will set some kind of record as the youngest grandma ever. Especially being 27 and all. Or something.

Well…there’s my week in a nutshell. See, a little crazy huh? But every bit of it makes me so incredibly thankful – I am so grateful for this life I live. I am a lucky woman. A lucky woman who is off to take a nap for six hours or so. ;)

Close Reading Resource Update

I am trying to prepare myself for instruction with close reading this year. There are so many great resources out there, and I want to make sure I am well-equipped to use the strongest elements of close reading in my classroom this year. At the same time, I don't want to have too much extra "stuff" to distract myself.

In a previous post titled "Freebie! Close Reading Materials"I shared the original version of my close reading product. It included printable charts for text coding strategies, a question cube template, and task cards for reading literature as well as informational text. Since then, I have continued to expand the product as I have accessed additional resources that I would like to use in my own classroom. I have recently updated the product to reflect a few revisions. The new product now contains the following items:

•  a colorful, visually-appealing poster that defines Close Reading based upon an acronym for "CLOSE"
• a black-and-white poster that defines Close Reading based upon an acronym for "CLOSE"
• a colorful, visually-appealing poster that outlines the process for multiple readings of a text, as well as the Common Core standards that align to each level of questioning
• a black-and-white poster that outlines the process for multiple readings of a text, as well as the Common Core standards that align to each level of questioning.

For those of you who need a visual image to support those wordy descriptions, this is for you:

I am trying to be more considerate of the use of ink (or lack, thereof) in the products I create. I love to create colorful designs. However, in considering my own experiences with TPT products, I have found myself to be extremely grateful for those products that contain a black-and-white option. While those colorful designs are cute, all of that printing can take a toll on your ink levels and, consequently, your pocketbook! So I tried to take this personal preference into consideration when revising this product. I'm not sure if everyone feels the same way that I do, but it's worth the extra time to provide the option for those who are conscientious of their printer ink levels!

If you are interested in these products, you can access them at the Tally Tales TPT store here. 

Do you have any other suggestions for creating TPT products? What details are you particularly grateful for when you make a purchase? Any feedback is welcome! Thanks!

Dreze and Sen Script a Challenge Book for India

I must confess that I might not have read An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions if it were not for the recent polarized debate on the front pages of India’s English print media. But, I am glad I did read it, for it focuses squarely on many of the challenges India faces today.

In 8 Steps to Innovation, Vinay Dabholkar and I emphasized the importance of focusing a firm’s innovation efforts on challenges that matter. To ensure this, we suggested that every firm compile and update what we called a “challenge book,” a set of problems that the firm needs to solve. The main virtue that I see in this new book by Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen is that it applies similar thinking at the national level to build a contemporary challenge book for India.

Pain, Wave, and Waste

In our book, we suggested that pain, wave, and waste are three good starting points to capture these challenges.

Dreze and Sen use the available data on reading and writing skills, access to toilets and availability of health services to identify the pains of the hundreds of millions of Indian citizens who have an unacceptably low quality of life. The main question they ask is of what use is our impressive economic growth if we can’t ensure a minimum standard of living and dignity for all our citizens.

Amartya Sen has based a lot of his work on the importance of freedoms that allow people to develop and use capabilities. Human potential is wasted when our citizens lack the opportunity to develop the capabilities that would allow them to realize their potential.

A wave underlies much of their thinking, but they urge us to ride against this wave rather than go along with it. This is the predominant tendency for public discourse to be obsessed with the concerns of the middle class and the intelligentsia, and to equate the “aam aadmi” with the slightly less advantaged among a privileged class rather than the real “aam aadmi” who spends less than 40 Rupees a day. 

Bright Spots

Though Dreze and Sen focus on problems, they spend considerable space to point out that in our large and heterogeneous country we often have solutions as well. At least three states of India – Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Himachal Pradesh – have been “bright spots” on a wide range of social indicators. As we pointed out in “8 Steps,” bright spots help identify ideas that are likely to work, and hence give us pointers as to how we can grease the path for innovation to happen. Bright spots also hold out hope that change is indeed possible.

But, for bright spots to be useful as role models for change, it is important that they are not outliers with totally different or fortuitous circumstances that can’t be replicated. Kerala was often seen as one such outlier thanks to several idiosyncratic features: the relative progressiveness of the Cochin and Travancore states that ruled the region before independence; the matrilineal traditions of certain parts of the state; and an economy driven by external remittances that has brought in money even though the state has not attracted much investment in industry and commerce.

In contrast, clearly, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh have the potential to inspire fresh thinking in the rest of the country. Tamil Nadu is a large state (I should have known this, but realized only after reading this book, that the state has a population of 70 million – that’s equivalent to the population of the Republic of Korea!) that started off very poor but today is #2 after Kerala on a whole range of social indicators. Himachal may be a small state but its location in north India shows that social progress does not have to be the monopoly of the south. Dreze and Sen also draw attention to a new emerging bright spot – Chhatisgarh - that has recently reformed its Public Distribution System with improved access for all its citizens. Give the diverse backgrounds and histories of these states, it’s difficult to anyone to say that no solutions exist around us.

The Source of Controversy

If you have read this post thus far, you are probably beginning to wonder why this book has raised so much controversy. Is it because of the discomfort felt by the Indian middle class when it is pointed out how self-centered we all are? Or is because of the inability of the Indian media to take criticism (Dreze and Sen accuse the media of neglecting the real “aam aadmi” in their quest for TRPs and advertising revenues)? While I am sure there is a bit of both, the lightning rod has been the nature of solutions preferred by Dreze and Sen.

Dreze and Sen point out that in most parts of the world the State plays an important role in providing basic services to the people. They are skeptical about the efficacy of market-based solutions to provide basic needs. They are most vehement about this in the context of health care where they argue that private insurance based solutions tend to result in very expensive care and inadequate coverage. They are similarly skeptical about cash vouchers for education, and direct cash transfers in lieu of the Public Distribution System. They provide some evidence to show that these market-based solutions work well for supplementary services once the basics are in place, but not for providing a base level of support.

While Dreze and Sen identify the need for greater accountability and better governance fairly early in the book, they are somewhat idealistic about how this will come about. This is a weakness of the book, for clearly reliable provision of basic services by the State will happen only when the State is more effective. Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Himachal and Chhatisgarh may provide inspiration, but achieving better governance across other states seems a far cry today.

In the end…

I found the book an engaging read. A major plus point of the book is the very informative tables and statistics. I found some of the statistics mind-boggling – e.g.  the hold of the upper castes over almost all important institutions in the city of Allahabad, and the abysmal literacy levels among dalits in India in the 1901 census (0% in most provinces).

But more than anything else, this book puts a spotlight on the biggest problems India faces today. Thus it is an excellent guide for any sensitive citizen of our country who wishes to contribute to the nation.