“When can my boss test drive the application?”

IT Magazine – November 2007

Business leaders everywhere have started caring less and less about how IT guys build an application. All they want to know, early, is what they can expect in their whole experience with the application.

You guessed right. If we were able to have them ‘interact’ with the application even before writing code, they would be more than happy to actually ‘freeze’ their expectations and live up to their word of accepting what we deliver.

What I realise, rather grudgingly, is that it would actually help even us immeasurably, to be able to deliver what we promise. For over a decade now, we’ve been hearing about how look and feel are so important to any software application. IT purists are seemingly out of their depth in this particular area; they relegate it to being the work of graphic designers or, at best interaction designers.

Thinking of look and feel as an end-of-the-pipeline ‘cosmetic’ enhancement is a blunder of gigantic implications. There is something intrinsic—which tells me that beauty is never skin deep—especially about the ‘feel’ part, which requires a paradigm shift.

“The Original” Sin

IT Magazine – October 2007

What is the recipe for that breakthrough product? Innovation or Invention? Hard-core originality or smart thinking on your feet? Read on to discover more about making ‘all the difference’.

We are not talking about Adam here we’re talking about our permanent need to be ‘original’—all the time! “Who wants to do what has been done before, except, of course, when it can qualify as ‘inspiration’ Annu Malik ishtyle!” I have found our obsession for originality to be the single reason for creative paralysis. Designers, geeks, artists… everybody is inflicted.

Cameron Moll says, “Pablo Picasso, the first living artist to be featured in the Louvre, influenced the artistic world in a uniquely original way. So why is he known for saying ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal’?”

“Picasso hardly meant that great artists steal popular designs whose original source is known to everyone,” says Wes George, writer for The Mac Observer.

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IT is dead! Long live IT!

Hindustan Times – Delhi edition. Friday, September 21, 2007

Is India’s IT revolution just about cheap labor and repetitive coding? Is there a need for innovation and business orientation?

I love oxymorons, – and they have nothing to do with airy idiots – retrofuturism, hitech fashion, mass customisation, happily married … the list goes on. I’ve just added Information Technology.

Before jumping to the conclusion that this article is a proclamation of accession or another attempt at sensationalisation, I provoke you to disagree vehemently. How can IT be dead? Surely not Indian IT! The revolution has just about begun. If this were a multiple-choice question, I would answer ‘All of the above’.

While on exams, remember when we used to poke fun at a teacher who had the reputation of awarding marks by the number of extra sheets you took? How we could make the clever guys look stupid! I’m thinking that this is exactly what we’ve gone and done to Indian IT today.

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What do I care what my Client thinks?

IT Magazine – September 2007

We IT guys have never had it better. The only problem is that our clients never seem to understand us. My question is, “Do we understand our clients? Do we care about what they think?” My short answer is, “No.”

I heard a recent speech by Anu Aga, former chairperson of the Thermax Group, where she borrowed a thought from Miles Kington,“Knowledge tells you that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom tells you not to put it in the fruit salad!”

Although she used it in a different context, I found it appropriate in the context of IT. Wise IT entrepreneurs (however much of an oxymoron that might seem) know that technology is a tomato. Their wisdom, however, tells them that it is not the business itself.

Now you’re thinking, “Who’s this guy who’s trying to get my attention – does he think we don’t know our stuff?” Let me hasten to introduce myself. My credentials are of little significance; my philosophy is what matters— sustainability, innovation, globalisation and culture are the cornerstones of successful entrepreneurship. Since I now have your attention, I am going to try my utmost to keep it.

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