Can you innovate?

It's been a while since I have been claiming that I want to get into innovation. I don't have any concrete ideas but that just seems like what I want to do. Then again, I question myself as to why I don't do on a daily basis that which I would like to do forever. There is so much scope for innovation on a daily basis, it seems stupid to not gauge your suitability for it before deciding to take it up as a full-time option. A recent article by Scott Anthony in the Harvard Business Review Blog Network provided a refreshing definition of innovation, ""The Wall Street Journal article noted that Innosight founder Clayton Christensen favors three categories of innovation: efficiency (doing the same thing faster or cheaper), sustaining (making current solutions better), disruptive (transforming complicated solutions into simple, accessible, affordable ones)." Now, that leaves me with even lesser excuses to not do it on a daily basis.

Source: "Innovation is a Discipline, not a Cliche", Scott Anthony, HBR, May 30th, 2012

It's the third one

I think I have expressed this thought a million times on this blog and probably repeat it to myself at least ten-times a day, but I will stop only when it is absolutely, crystal-clear to me. It's not yet. While I can claim to stand by it in theory, I succumb to the opposite in practice every single time.

There is a theory in sociology (I read it almost half a decade ago, so I can't recall the name) that when we get ready to leave our house and take one last look in the mirror, there are three things that we think about:

1. What we think of ourselves

2. What we think of other people

3. And what we think other people will think of us

By the time we are adults and have experienced the world a little bit, I think we are clear about the first two points. We know, to a fair extent, who we are and who the people around us are. But it's the third one that gets us all at some point or the other and to different extents in different situations.

First of all, one needs to remember that it is only one of the three primary concerns and is probably the only concern that is not directly in our hands. Secondly, it's next to impossible to predict what others will think in a given situation. Thirdly, one can't live a life preoccupied with opinions that we think other people might hold and not opinions we know them to hold. Why not, go out in the world, do what we want to do, observe the reactions we get and then decide? Decide whether, the next time we face a similar situation, (a) will we do what feels right or (b) just what we are expected to do or that which will make us feel more included, even when it doesn't completely agree with our being.

Such a simple lesson - why is it taking forever to learn it?

Uprooted

Two summers ago, at Jill's cabin, I found a book titled 'Our neck of the woods'. It was a collection of short stories about Minnesotan woodlands and how the various authors related to it. Each story, written by a different author, was a memoir, sort of, of a certain time or time period spent in or around the woods. It was a rich collection of works linking human emotions to the places where such emotions will be drawn out rather nicely. There was a particular story that attracted my attention and was easy to relate to. It mentioned how the author, while strolling through the woods, came across a yellow Iris, which is of French origin and not native American. Seeing the Iris blend in nicely with the foliage around it and the health of the plant gave the author a hope about his own situation in a new place and helped him settle down. On that bright sunny afternoon on Mille Lacs lake, I looked around, fixed my eye at a green shady patch, painted a yellow Iris into the landscape, hidden yet conspicuous to the mental eye, and sank in a little further in my own body and soul, hoping to belong someday into the land that I was sitting on.

If just the nature of things were compared, I think I would fit much better as a bird than a plant. I can't stick at one place. Every morning, I go "out" in search of needs - food, water, air, happiness - and every night, when the day is done, I yearn to go back home. My favourite quote from the Guru Granth Sahib, goes something like: He who feeds the birds and the trees, will not let you go unfed. Yet, the human mind wanders, gets lost and wanders some more, in search of a kind of fulfillment which can only be found inside one's heart.

I think my family has had a strange relationship with places. We are Sindhis - we belong to a linguistic community originating from the province Sindh,currently in Pakistan. During the partition of the country in 1945, most of the Sindhis left Pakistan and migrated to India on account of being non-Muslims. Both my maternal and paternal grand-parents, who were then in their middle-late teens, moved across the border at this time. They had moved with just bare essentials, leaving most of their wealth and property behind. They stayed in refugee housing provided by the Indian government and re-built a life for themselves from barely anything. By the time I was born, I would say my family was quite well-to-do and I am really proud of them. The wealth was no matter of luck. I have heard many-an-inspiring-story of hardships, hard work, dedication and the spirit of charity and sharing. There are two major consequences of this migration to my psyche - one is that I don't feel very attached to places (and even people actually). I think life is going to be a journey from one place to another. To call one home would only dishearten you when you find yourself away from it for what ever reason. And, let's face it, there have been quite a few reasons so far. Second is that wherever you find yourself, your values will uphold you. You will be able to build a life from scratch, if the need arises. Life is not built on past wealth, as much as on the strength of character and the set of values one possesses. Wealth is transitory, values are not. The effect of both, I think, is to detach me from places, people and objects that can be 'lost or taken away' and focus instead on building inside myself a human soul that I can rely on and carry along where ever I go.

The migration, I think, was only the first of it's kind and not the last, at least for my family. As for an example, my first trip abroad was a few months before I was born and the second, a few months after! :) This is the eleventh country that I have visited and the fourth, I can say, I have lived in. But, somehow, as the U2 song goes, "I still haven't found what I am looking for". It's not just countries, even within India, both me and my family have migrated from one place to another. What I have observed is that given sufficient time, each room that I inhibit becomes a reflection of me. In one simple word that reflection can be described as: color. Yes, color. The theme of all my rooms, all my visions of life, all my ideal self-images is color - the bright reds, and greens, and blues, and yellows...the colors that would light up any dull spot in the universe...the colors that I fell in love with when I was a little girl growing up a big house in Jaipur, Rajasthan!

It is surprising, and at the same time not so much, that wherever I have found myself, I have wanted to run away towards a vision that I have in mind of a certain other place. But, once I am there, I often find myself yearning for the times and places of the past and this yearning reflects in the way I decorate my rooms. It shows that 'at the end of the day', where I would like to be, is a mere reflection of where I have been. Home, they say, is where the heart is. But, the heart is always in the upper left side of your own body. The idea, then, is not so much to belong in a place, as much it is to belong in your own self. Therein one must find happiness and fulfillment.

How to fight for a cause?

There are some social issues I care about. I have been thinking about what I could do to help with the cause. Some of the causes I am thinking about need more than just helping, they need fighting for. I am, for some reason, thinking of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa as examples of people who have fought fights and won. But then to put things into perspective, they did not fight for just causes, they fought for people. It appears, then, to me, that it is easier to fight for people than to fight for causes. Because, when it's for people, people come forth to your aid, perhaps a little more reluctantly than you would want them to, but they still do. To state it as an example, Gandhi did not fight for "freedom", even thought he may have put it that way in some of his speeches, he fought for the "freedom of the people of India". The object of the cause is not only important, but it's participation in the cause may be immensely important too. While, of course, I have to admit that there are different kinds of causes and some causes may have "subjects" rather than objects, but a cause in itself is perhaps a difficult thing to fight for. 

Something interesting for today...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-subway-networks-evolve

http://business.time.com/2012/05/15/why-we-need-more-female-traders-on-wall-street/?xid=rss-topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

A long bike-ride later....

I can't believe it really has been a year since I took the bus to school. It did not really start as a resolution or something. It's just that the the construction of a light rail track started on Washington Avenue, so bus route 2 stopped being a door-to-door service, but rather a door-to-three-blocks-away service. So, what's the big deal with walking three blocks, right? Yeah, right! Try telling that the fat-me an year ago!

The three-block walk bothered me so much that time that I decided to just bike instead - door-to-door. Summer went great - no major complains. It was only mildly cold during Fall, but the walking distance was the same, so I continued biking. It started snowing, so that's when everyone thought I would stop. But the walking distance was still the same (even though I was about 20 pounds lesser at this point). And in addition, I had to walk those three blocks in snow boots. Humbug! So, I continued biking. 

Soon there was ice on the road. It started taking 20 minutes to bike to-and-fro instead of the usual 15. Then, one day, there was a snow storm. It took 35 mins to bike back from school. That was the day I got late to my guitar class. While I was biking back from my class with my guitar on me, another biker stopped at the red light with me and remarked, "A rather lonely day to bike, isn't it?" It sure was. It also was a rather rough day to follow traffic rules and stop at every red light.

The temperatures started dropping. There was no winter in Minnesota this year I believe. But there was this one cold day. The temperature was -24 oC, but they say it felt like -37 oC. For me, it was just another day to bike. That is easily the day I have felt most alive in my life. It was difficult to breathe with my nose, so I was taking big gulps of cold air in through my mouth. I thought the tires will become stiff in the cold and start slipping, but somehow the tires were just fine, it was the breaks. They just failed! Perhaps because of the stiff tires, but it was too cold to think science about then. Then the chain rolled off the gears. This probably was just a coincidence and had nothing to do with the cold. So, I had to stop on the road and fix it, which added a few more minutes to the commute and to being outside. I called my mom that day with excitement, but she seemed unamused. My brother, who was with her that time, took the phone from her and explained to me, "Only thing she is worried about is that you are 25 and your biological clock is ticking away, she doesn't care that your breaks failed in -24 oC!"

I don't really remember any interesting times after that one day. I guess from then onwards, it was assumed that I bike to work no matter what. This will my second semester sans a U-Pass.

Radical changes are nothing but incremental changes added on to each other until it becomes impossible to guess what the starting point looked like just by looking at the end result.

I do believe that the world is a battle-field. I do believe that there will be quite a few fights to fight in the coming years. But, no matter what you are struggling to achieve, I believe that the real fight is inside you. It's not with the system, other people, inclement conditions, tough terrains, long roads or slippery sand, it's with the you that you do not wish to be...anymore.

How can I help?

I have come to realize during the course of extensive thinking over the last two months that to survive in this world, to excel at your job and to make a difference to anybody's life, you need to ask just one simple question: "How can I help?" For example:

1. At home, ask your spouse, room-mate, pet, friends, neighbors, parents, relatives: How can I help?

2. At office, ask your colleagues, boss, custodian, staff, seniors, juniors: How can I help?

3. In your corner of the world, society you live in, people you see around you, ask them: How can I help?

There is no dearth of problems which need to be solved and they are all waiting for just one person who is willing to dedicate himself/herself to any one of them.

Once you have heard the problem, there is various scenarios possible:

1. If you are both unwilling and incapable of solving the problem in the framework of your skills and values, decline and step aside - do not hinder the path.

2. If are willing but incapable of helping, say 'yes', learn what ever skills need to be learnt to solve the problem and give it your all.

3. If you both willing and capable of helping, I don't even know what has been holding you back from helping out so far! You should have been helping out already!

My thoughts are most truly reflective of my desire to contribute to the society in some way, but I am sure the simple question of "How can I help?" and the attempt to solve the problem is all that is required of anybody in any place, at any time.

I am also thinking that if I were to run for the President, I would like to use this as my campaign slogan. :D

The question of why

There were two important beliefs that got me so far:

1. "Be the change you want to see in the world" - Gandhi. In my words, be an example of what you want to see more of in the world. In my personal context, demonstrating that women can do the same things as men, which will mostly be intellectual labor for my field, was of personal significance. Capability to pursue and even excel at higher education is a simple demonstration I could put up for women of future generations in India. I know how inspired I was with Kalpana Chawla and Arundhati Roy. I know it makes a difference to see someone else doing something you have always wanted to do and feel empowered.

2. There is only one way to repay any country whose tax-payers have paid for your education - revenue generation. You need to bring them money. India needs a manufacturing sector - given the population and the economy. It is the only way to increase the employment and the standard of living of the people.

Ode to happiness

Oh happiness, where art thou?

Are you inside or ou'?

Where does one go to find you?

Oh! Tell me, tell me how?

Does one put on a pretty dress?

Are there a few buttons to press?

Are you on surfaces or in crevice?

Come answer, answer now!

Do you follow love or it follows you?

Do you visit all or just a few?

Are you something old or something new?

Oh, speak up, speak up now!

Fitting into a box

Consider these two thoughts:

1. Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky, little boxes all the same. [1]

2. Climb into a box. [2]

Same metaphor, same thought, different opinion about the thought. (Follow the links for complete text.)

The first one is from the song "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds. It's a satire on the conformist attitude of the society, written in the mid-sixties. She aptly points out how everyone is trying to fit into an image accepted in the society and is chasing after a few coveted jobs and a certain type of lifestyle.

The second one is from a recent post in the Harvard Business Review blogs - a piece by Christopher Bowe. A well-written article on how you need to harmoniously combine your various skills to fit into today's market. One key thing he points out is that organization may be in need of a certain persona for a certain role, you need to fine-tune our skills so as to fit the profile needed. The answer to the question "What do you bring to the table?", then, is dynamic and, ideally, it is: "Exactly that which is missing from the table!"

This makes me wonder: Is "Just be yourself" really the best advice you can give someone in the present times? Or "Change, adapt, shrink, grow, transform until you fit" the better approach to survival?

There is something soothing and comfortable about the words, "Just be yourself". They make you believe that there is a perfect four-edged hole where a square-peg like you is fitting in. You don't need to change yourself in anyway, you just need to be patient until you find your hole. However, in a world which is constantly changing, and constantly growing, your chances of finding the perfect hole could only be diminishing. While I am still on a look-out for the correct answer to the question, I am holding on to this thought for solace: "Be aware of your true self, but for the time being, be the peg that would fit the hole. If you are lucky, the box that holds you the best will come along."

Elasticity, it seems, is the new strength.

One day, one place, one person at a time

Jaipur, Rajasthan: Sitting at the dining table in our house, Dadaji told her, "So what if he is coming over to check you out as a prospective match, you are going to judge him as well." She was staying with us to meet a prospective groom and was very nervous about it. He seemed to be out of her league. I was just a young girl.

H8 Cafe, IIT Bombay: Joy exclaimed, "Oh, now I see why these cuppa-noodles are breaking into small pieces. It's because the instructions only ask to pour boiling water, but he is putting them in the microwave on top of that." This cafe had opened up and was perfect for evening snacks. I was very fat then and greatly into food.

Perth, Western Australia: Dalai Lama joked, "I am doing my share of protecting the resources by bathing only once in a few weeks." The age of self-discovery began.

The corner of room 40, UMN: Mike said, "Sometimes you have to man-handle other grad-students. Sometimes you even have to man-handle your advisor." It was like a whole new country for me.

Princeton Campus, NJ: Anuradha said, "There are many forms of feminism....I am over all this now....I will end up doing something else anyway." I was pre-occupied with some of my own struggles.

Central park, NYC: Amit said, "But seriously, you should figure out a way to live in NYC. Writing, journalism, designing, whatever you can think of. There are many nice apartments near Central Park. Just live in this area itself and you can come here everyday. Oh, they have Blockheads here! It serves this interesting drink called Coronita, it's Corona beer plus Margarita. You should try it. It is amazing." We were seeing each other after 3 years and the weather was amazing.

I replied, "Yes, I know exactly what you are talking about."

It's strange how all the places you have been to, all the people you have met, all the books you have read and all the songs you have heard all fuse together into you and make just one complete person. Tiny threads of information, feelings, connections that emanate from your being hold the world together. Life is best lived one day, one place, one person at a time.

Run away

Just run.
Don't look back.
Don't think about what they will say.
Don't think about where you will go.
Pack nothing.
Take yourself
and that tiny shard of faith left in you.
Just run.
Never look back.

How to decide

There was a short story I read as a kid. It went something like this: A wood-cutter goes to the lake in the middle of the day for a quick drink. As he bends down, his ax falls into the lake. He is staring into the lake with despair wondering whether he will get his ax back. Then, suddenly, an angel appears with a golden ax in her hands and asks him, "Is this your ax?". He weeps and say, "No". Then the angel disappears and re-appears with a silver ax and again asks, "Is this your ax?". He again says, "No". Finally, the angel comes back with an iron ax and shows it to the wood-cutter. This time, he is elated and screams, "Yes, that is my ax!". The angel is so pleased with his honestly that she lets him keep the silver and the golden ax as well as a reward.

The world these days isn't as simple as the days of yore. The trouble I find is not whether we will have the courage or the honestly to reject the golden and the silver axes when presented with those, but rather how would we know whether this is our ax. There are so many to choose from and so many to try. We may think that the one we were shown is ours, but it may not be. I am sure the stories of misplaced ambitions and skills are one too many these days. I am going through some of those dilemmas myself and this is what I have come to realize: 

What will serve you most in a time of decision-making: Pick your own ax and get going. The silver and the golden one will follow. It can't be easy to know which one is yours but stay true to yourself and pick the one that seems right. Don't get fooled by the glitter. You can't cut wood with gold!

Detach yourself. Get rid of the expectations - from yourself, from other people, from life, things, everything. You can not control the outcomes of your actions. Face it. Don't give in to despair. Stay brave and stand tall. Failure doesn't make a smaller or bigger man, it just reminds you that you are a man!!! It happens to everyone. Face it.