Dream On !

Knowledge @ Wharton has launched India Knowlege @ Wharton in assoication with ISB. It can be accessed at http://www.ikw.in.

The new site includes articles that focus on India’s increasing importance to the global economy. The first issue features interviews with Indian finance minister P. Chidambaram and Ronojoy Dutta, former CEO of Air Sahara, in addition to a look at Tata Steel’s Corus takeover and stories on Indian real estate and the country’s burgeoning BPO film industry.

Another small step towards the recognition of emerging India !!

This is a 50 min. talk/presentation by Jawed Karim - one of the three YouTube co-founders - about how and why (social networking) sites like YouTube became so popular in the last couple of years. Although it focuses on the bigger known services this is very interesting to watch. Specially towards the end (last 10 min. or so) there is a lot to learn about why YouTube works/what made it work - recommended for anyone who has to do with social networking sites or wants to better understand them…

Well the title over promises. I am not going to dole out lot of gyan for building the right app for the mobile. Just narrating some experience that I had in Delhi. One of the mobile enthusiasts there asked me if I can give some feedback on their idea that he and his friend have been mulling over. I was delighted as he thought me worthy enough for the job. We met at PVR Saket. I bet not a great place to meet and discuss mobile VAS. There is so much girls around ‘Value getting created‘ and we are missing all the fun ‘Value not captured‘ :). The idea was interesting and guys have done some homework as in how to build the app. I was impressed at that. But then when I asked some of they important questions as in

a. What is the business model ?

b. How the value is getting created in the value chain ?

c. Are they capable to capture that value for themselves ?

d. What is the USP ?

And numerous others on the same lines. There were no clear answers for any of them. They were mixing the USP with other things and there were whole lot of other issues. Guys took it coolly. Meeting ended.

Today while browsing I found some more interesting tips by Sprint’s Vice President for Partner Development and Product Innovation Paul Reddick. Here they are -

1. Know thyself — consider your scope carefully and be specific of what you do that is better than everything out there.
2. Know if you are a mass market or a niche application — mass market is hard to get right, because it has to be popular to such a wide audience. But also if you’re a niche application don’t expect to be placed on the deck.
3. Educate objectively before selling passionately — carriers see a lot of ideas, don’t oversell it.
4. Admit what you’ve accomplished versus trying to sell what is really a work in progress.
5. Be specific about what you want from the carrier. And know what the carrier has deployed in the market — at CTIA he says he had a guy pitching him an application that they had launched three years ago.
6. Provide differentiation.
7. Adapt to new models — he gives the example of Sprint bundling applications with the handset, which he says is a risky move and a big shift for Sprint.
8. Leverage new capabilties — like WiMAX.
9. Avoid asking him why your application can’t be on the Sprint’s deck — he says he hears a sense of entitlement. Go off deck.
10. His team focuses on finding innovation that can fix technology and service bottlenecks. Keep that in mind.

But all salutes to the guys for their passion. I sincerely hope they might be either refining their plans or thinking on new lines.

All luck.