“History confirms that knowledge sharing has fostered accumulative scientific progress avoiding reinventing-the-wheel phenomenon. If scientists had kept their inventions secret and instead had provided fees based services over those inventions, without revealing the logic behind it, then we would have still been in an era of wondering whether the Earth rotates round the Sun or the Sun rotates round the Earth!”

Open source supporters often argue somewhere along the above lines to promote it as a better software development methodology. And then counter arguments posed by proprietary software followers go into somewhat the direction below …

“Software development is a process which involves creative as well as not-so-creative tasks. Development process based on volunteer contribution from people because of their sheer interest and philanthropic motivations can not ensure execution of all types of tasks upto required extent. A more formal approach can ensure it and that requires building an organization. As code of a software product generates revenue for the organization to sustain, it’s an asset and free distribution of that may not be in the organization’s best interest. That will affect competitive advantage which is a long proven motivation to produce better products or services.”

Well, it is quite fair that these two methodologies have constantly been compared against each other but where it gets wrong is when the comparison tries to prove one better than another in all circumstances. Rather, instead of embracing one of them too tightly, a company can benefit more and can produce better value for its customers by adopting a genius of AND. Products, that differentiate a company from others, certainly be kept proprietary. Though it will take away freedom to know source code from its users, it will ensure company’s competitive advantage. On the other hand, the same company can encourage development of complementary applications around this product using open source methodology — by publishing a well-defined Application Programming Interface (API). By fostering collaborative development of such applications, it can help to create a range of different applications as well as enriching existing applications with a large number of features developed by various developer communities — this kind of scale is nearly impossible to achieve with a completely proprietary development.

As a matter of fact, both the methodologies have their own advantages. Proprietary products can better target mass markets as a company can invest into building a generic product and then marketing it to a large population; whereas, an open source product can target a specialized interest better as it usually relies on network effect to reach people and also people sharing a specific interest can collaborate more likely and more effectively. In case of proprietary products, customers have an official entity to get back to in case of required support. While, an open source project gives an advantage of distributed support system so if a group that initiated development of an open source project fails to sustain, third parties can study source code and offer independent support services.

Given such divergent facts, it makes more sense to evaluate these methodologies specifically against roadmap for a product, than to prove one better than another in a generic sense, doesn’t it?

Click on image to watch video

On the other hand, critics of this project often consider this as band-aid solution to a more serious injury. In their opinion, spending money on providing gadgets to people - who are yet struggling to meet their basic needs - is naïve and ridiculous.

As the maxim goes - “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. OLPC project is based on theory of constructionism that emphasizes on learning to learn. Learning process is more effective when the learner is actively involved; and so traditional education process, being more of one way traffic, has failed to create genuine learners. OLPC is offering a tool that will make education system more interesting by infusing collaborative learning process. It will bring abundant of information at finger tips of children who, by nature, are curious and eager to learn. Moreover, it will inculcate self-learning abilities in them than mere filling their tiny heads with useless theories.

It’s true that just building schools and appointing teachers is not going to ensure education, let alone making it interesting and effective. And so this different approach taken by OLPC looks promising. Now, like any other large scale project, OLPC too is gonna encounter unavoidable and at times unseen obstacles; some of the most important issues to be addressed are -

1. Easily accessible technical support: Although designed to be robust, its very likely that kids are going to do use it in weirdest possible ways. Lack of easily accessible local technical support can dampen curiosity and interest.
2. Native (non-English) language support: Kids (and teachers) in underprivileged communities will need something that they understand better or can learn quickly.
3. Backbone infrastructure: Underdeveloped regions are most likely to lack any backbone telephone or internet infrastructure. And without that, information flow and peer-to-peer communication can be hindered to great extent.
4. Gray/black market problems: For highly underdeveloped communities which are still struggling to survive without sufficient food and other basic facilities, it is certainly not a solution. If they are offered this laptop, more probably it’s going to be sold in gray market to fulfill their today’s needs. Hungry stomachs do not understand philosophy, however great it may be. They should be provided with what they need first and funds allocated for that purpose should not be diverted towards any other project.

OLPC is certainly not an all-comprehensive solution to all problems of all underprivileged communities; rather it’s about building an enhanced education system that can solve some of them. It’s a step towards bridging digital divide. It is going to empower few of the bright minds inside some of the underdeveloped communities - that will further trigger a tickle down education effect and eventually improve lives of a larger population around them.

Pretty impressive, huh? So, how can I make any contributions?

• Make a Donation
• Be a Volunteer

The first argument is somewhat like -
“A good business model is an essential ingredient of business success.”

And the second argument is somewhat like -
“Business model is a widely spoken but rarely understood concept.”

There are loads of research papers and published resources that talk about the concept of business model as well as the confusion over the topic; and often cause more confusion as different authors take different views.

A scenario reflecting this confusion is well illustrated in a paper from Osterwalder et al — The Theory of Business Models. In a survey conducted to know how different people understand the term business model, from 62 participants they received 54 different definitions! Moreover, the paper mentions two very important facts about divergent understanding of the term –

1. Technology-oriented and business-oriented people tend to define the term differently.
2. Most of the definitions can be categorized into two broad groups as value/customer oriented (outward looking approach) and activity/role oriented (inward looking approach).

Another misconception about business model is that it is considered as an attribute associated with a company e.g. Dell business model. Business model makes more sense when it is associated with a product than company as a whole. A company can have different business models for its different products.

So then what’s business model, precisely? Well, all important things not necessarily have to be complicated! In the simplest form, business model is nothing but seeking answers to only two but extremely important questions –

• Who all are involved in making a product successful?
• Do they have enough motivation to do so?

These are the questions that decide fate of a product more than anything else, ain’t it? As Joan Magretta perfectly points it out in the HBR article — Why Business Models Matter?, one needs to have insight into human motivations in order to have a fairly convincing answer to these questions. A business is basically a collaborative activity and its success depends on how effective the collaboration works out. A product essentially shares the same culture. Its success depends on effective actions and interactions among different actors involved in that collaboration like - producers, distributors, consumers, competitors etc. If there is no appropriate motivation present to any of these actors involved, we can’t expect effective contribution from that actor and eventually it’s gonna affect the product life-cycle. Now, it may sound a little weird, at first glance, but competitor is also an actor on whose actions success of the product depends. A negative motivation needs to be posed to this particular actor.

In short, what a good business model ensures, precisely, is that everyone involved has something in it and this fact in turn compels them to work together towards making that product successful, that’s it!

It is said that web 2.0 is about “wisdom of crowd” but is it really perceived in that sense by the crowd after all? All these new web technologies have made it a lot easier to launch a website stuffed with abundant of cool features — and that too without dropping a penny out of pocket! But is it all really helping to create informative web resources than mere duplications? Today we find tons of websites (yes, including blogs) revolving around same topics and even filled up with same content (generated using someone else’s rss feed). And what’s the motivation behind creating such websites? Well, conspicuously, it’s just about milking the gorgeous Google Adsense cow than anything else.

As with every need, there are inventions indeed! To get rid of this advertisement irritation, there is a stream of tools being developed; and AdBlock-Plus is one of them. It’s an open source advertisement blocking tool, developed by Wladimir Palant, that can be installed as a plug-in to Mozilla FireFox web browser. And guess what? … once configured, it removes all the advertisements from a page before rendering it in the browser! Quite obviously, it has received considerable appreciation from web content consumer’s side; and quite more obviously there is an outcry from web content publishers and advertisers community against it.

Opponents of AdBlock-Plus are projecting it as an evil that can create a serious threat to existing web 2.0 business model which is largely based on advertisement revenue. Internet advertisement revenues are projected to be around USD 66 billion by year 2010! Now web content consumers usually don’t want to (and have to) pay money for online content and services these days. And so their attention has being utilized to generate revenue. Saying no to advertisements is equivalent to demanding either no services or paid services. Having said that, it is still unfair to take consumers for granted and then targeting with aggressive and irrelevant marketing irritation; and if it fails some business model then so be it. Instead, I’d say, it’s a right time to rethink about that very business model itself. If you’re providing a valuable service for free; you’re, no doubt, entitled to make some money through advertisement. Agreed. But it doesn’t mean bombarding viewers with it to the level of irritation; it’s gonna degrade the value of your content too, ain’t it? Showing relevant and useful ads in an non-obtrusive manner can, in fact, be conceived as value addition to the content by it’s consumers. For example, if you are writing about movies and advertisements are about upcoming movie trailers then consumers would love to see it, wouldn’t they?

Now, there are two options for content publishers and advertisers to defend the ad blocking tools — one is a quick but short term fix whereas another one is a slower but long term solution. First one is to find technically superior methods to detect ad blocking tools and then refuse content or to imbibe ads so tightly with the content that those will pass ad filters. This option will trigger a tug of war between filter developers and filter breakers! Second option asks advertisers to rethink about creativity while creating ads (rather than using cheap gimmicks like “you have won $50000″) so to make them genuinely appealing. And more importantly, it asks publishers to be discerning about quality and quantity of advertisement placed over web site.

In short, development of ad blocking tools is definitely a step towards betterment of the web as an information sharing platform; and making advertisements as valuable and appealing as the content itself will ensure a win-win game for everyone playing with it.

Few months went by and Tony realized that, however and whatever advertisement being done, there’re no chances to sale even a single toy in BigMenCity. He did some market research and figured out places near his city like AllKidsTown, KidsOnlyTown and LetsPlayTown. After discovering sales opportunities, he opened his toys stores there and started making at least some sales to survive. Few more months passed by and to his dismay, Tony found out that although people in those small towns were interested in toys, they couldn’t really afford the expensive ones those Tony had designed with great efforts and expectations. Tony was disappointed to see the sales chart showing off only ordinary toys so far. Tony started wondering how to convince people to buy his expensive but great toys. He indeed tried some marketing tricks desperately but alas! … it only confirmed that people there are too poor to buy into any tricks too.

Then one fine day, while consistently pondering over various ways to increase sales, he was suggested by his sister (who was a computer graduate) so see if he could get some help from the internet. After having a few brainstorming sessions with his sister and other eCommerce based business owners, he launched his own website — www.mindboggling-toys.com — that supported online sales. Well, as he anticipated, there weren’t many orders in the first year but, as decided, he continued to make the website more attractive, feature rich and popular. Eventually the web presence started overpouring his stores with orders from all around the globe. Today Tony offers franchises and has more than 1000 dealers across 27 countries in the world!

And Carl did nothing of all this because he truly believed that his cars are best and they’re going to bring him success tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. Well, it would not take any guesses to end the story with the conclusion of who wins and who looses.

Many people fail before even starting a business because of great-idea-mania — they keep on looking for great ideas forever! What they forget is the fact that ideas evolve! There are many examples around where companies started with a not-so-great idea but over a period, they improved and even transformed their ideas completely and built a highly successful product out of it. For example, Motorola started with a battery repair service initially, then moved into car radios, then to television, then semiconductors and ICs; and eventually into cellular communications. Today they connect millions of people together with their legendary communication devices! Mark Zuckerberg, a Stanford graduate, was accused of stealing the concept of online social networking from founders of a website named www.ConnectU.com … that would mean he developed a product based on an idea behind ConnectU. Now I am not sure how many of you are aware of ConnectU today; but the product developed by Mark Zuckerberg has turned out tremendously successful now a days — it’s called www.Facebook.com! Both Facebook and ConnectU are based on a same idea of online networking; what differentiates them is precisely the way they were executed!

There is a nice O’Reilly article by Derek Sivers which further simplifies this fact, “The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20″, is the conclusion!

To wait for a great idea is a bad idea indeed. Business success is not just about an idea behind it but rather it’s about getting started … it’s about trying lot of things and keeping what works … and more importantly, it’s about evolving as you learn, isn’t it?

Not-yet-committed: A fresher’s just completed his studies and so most likely to be a “single”. He doesn’t have many commitments to keep those usually come into life with a better half and thus he can make best of the long-hours startup culture.

Not-yet-settled: A fresher is usually not considered as settled in life as his professional life’s just began. He’s assumed yet away from any financial responsibilities those usually start resting on your shoulders as you move further in life. And so he is assumed to be free to take the risky but rewarding startup jobs — any day can be his (and his company’s) last working day together (but if succeeds then he can be millionaire overnight)!

Well, this assumptions are rather deceptive. Freshers usually do have above mentioned liberties in life but at the same time, they don’t have any professional track-record to fall-back when the startup, they’re working for, fails to survive. Work experience with a failed startup can put a dubious spot on their resume, and that too at the very beginning itself. It can affect their moral and put up a tougher career path ahead. Also working for a startup is never easy compared to a stable company job. The performance expectations are higher as resources are tighter. Operations and infrastructure of a startup company is yet to be stable and so can make work life further demanding and unmanageable without a previous professional experience. It’s like asking a newbie athlete to jump over a highest hurdle at the beginning of a race — when he’s not even warmed up well.

Nonetheless, if a fresher is darn sure about his further career plan as to launch his own startup then it might make some sense to take up all the challenges and join a startup. Still, most of the times, ambition to build own business turns out as “not my cup of tea” as years pass by. So we gotta be a bit careful there. Best path is to join a stable company in the beginning, accrue some experience over the resume as well as some treasure in bank accounts - also reiterate and reconfirm that very ambition of starting a company during these years and if the flame is still ignited — take your shot by joining a startup!.

First be sure that it’s your cup of tea and then only have that hot sip!

In a broad sense, we can divide OSNs into two categories — specific OSNs and generic OSNs. Specific OSNs, as the name suggest, focus on a specific interest or activity. For example, consider Debate.com — it’s a platform that focuses on facilitating debates among people; and that’s it! Another kinds of OSNs i.e. generic OSNs don’t focus on anything specific as such. Those are, by far, more popular social networking platforms today e.g. MySpace.com, Facebook.com, Orkut.com etc. And these are the ones who carry a concerning downside with them that we’re precisely going to talk about here.

By design, generic OSNs don’t focus on a specific interest or activity; that’s actually one of the reasons behind their larger user base too — it’s for everyone! Now this lack of focus has a side effect — it develops a tendency of aimless browsing in users. Various features provided by these OSNs actually encourage this type of browsing. For example, each user has a profile page where he can share anything and everything — his likes/dislikes, daily diaries, personal relationships, beliefs, photos, videos and well, everything and anything! And why would one share all this stuff? It’s because that makes the profile page more cool and complete! Studies on OSNs have shown that people keep sharing even highly personal stuff on their profile pages to attract more visitors; and, in turn, they too end up spending hours browsing through other’s profile pages, updates, photos, and videos — even whom they don’t know and not going to meet in their lives. As a matter of fact, this kind of web browsing, over a period, often tuns into an addiction and further has been considered as a psychiatric disorder!

The story doesn’t end here itself! To make the matter worse, there is an alarming relationship observed between hours spent in OSNs and degree of social isolation experienced by people. Following chart from a Stanford study article clearly depicts the fact -

These OSNs are taking people away from their real world as they get more and more absorbed into these virtual worlds. This kind of social isolation can moreover lead to a depression that comes with social loneliness. And as per Durkheim’s theory of egoistic suicide, less integration with society and community around us often leads to suicide!

In short, like every other great tool, OSNs are beneficial to a discerner only. Now, may be because no one in neighborhood extends a first hand of friendship, or may be because it’s easier to “poke someone” or to “add as a friend” in online worlds; people easily tempt to engross in these virtual worlds — and further to build world’s largest friend list there to get a temporary feel of importance. But as real human beings, by nature, we do need company of real people to survive. A software can’t stimulate that peace of mind or a feel of refreshment which comes with spending quality time with your real friends in real world, can it really? And so, it’s better to understand and appreciate that line of separation between real and virtual; and further to maintain both of them at their own places.

For souls aspiring to prove themselves, there are some more candies in the store! Startup staff is always small in size so you’ve got better chance to stand out of a crowd. Each employee plays an important role in building and shaping company’s future; this fact itself can bring excitement and a sense of accomplishing something big. At the end of a day, if the startup succeeds, everyone involved is entitled to a great fortune through their stocks and shares. Thus, too alluring to just ignore, ain’t it? Well, given all the seducing facts and stories, there are some caveats to this affair too — and that make it a not-everyone’s-business kind of deal.

Startups are just born kids and so essentially have a somewhat chaotic dynamics associated with them. Job description on the offer letter is not what you’re always expected to live up to there. Days can be stressful and frustrating at times. As a startup has yet to prove its potential; it’s vulnerable to a lot of external pressure — mainly that’s coming from its investors — and a part of that pressure ultimately boils down to its small set of employees! Also startup founders often dream big and make even bigger commitments (come on! they’re learning too!). A cumulative consequence is that work hours can stretch well beyond 09AM-to-06PM boundaries. Well, for someone, who’s ready to put even his 25th hour at work, these caveats doesn’t create too much of terror. But wait, there’s something more. A startup can not afford to keep extra resources at any given point of time. Thus chances of stumbling on not-so-fine-day-today are higher — you never know when it’s your last day at work! Now, it’s not that big companies are completely oblivious from lay-offs; just that probability grows bigger at a startup due to its tighter balance sheets. Further, as a matter of fact, you also never know when it’s last of a startup itself!

Now, it’s quite tempting to rush to the conclusion of “high risk, high gain” here. However, the equation is not really that way from an employee’s point of view. It’s not actually about risking your money for some financial gain (a well-versed investment wisdom); it’s rather about a career choice. And keeping career at stake for some short-term financial gain is never wisdom. As far as investments for financial gains go, it’s better to let money work for money. Decision to work for a startup makes more sense when evaluated against individual’s long term career plans. You’re standing at a fork on your career path; which way to take depends on where you ultimately wanna go, ain’t it?

I’d say, for people oriented to climb the corporate ladder, startups don’t make much sense at any point in their careers. Instead of spending time on learning new company affairs - which are hardly to be encountered while working with a stable corporation - they should focus on what it takes to be successful there i.e. better to work with an established giant. If you’re planning to settle on Mars then what possible difference your short living experience on Earth is gonna make? Shouldn’t you just go to Mars? Working for startup is an excellent choice only for people having dreams of launching their own startups someday - and yes, specifically for those only! It gives them a best opportunity to learn, experience and handle situations that they’re mostly gonna face soon. It’s a place where they can get accustomed to stress and intricacies involved in venturing a business. It’s a place where they can see their dream in motion, and what more could they really ask for?

For others, it’ll prove an unnecessarily hot cup of, perhaps say, buttermilk! :)

An entrepreneur is a person who’s essentially driven by a desire to change the way business is done - and so he’s always in search of not just any but only the opportunities those are innovative in his perception. Agree. But the story doesn’t end there! And that’s where the other desires come into play. These desires usually have a role in deciding - which of the possible innovative opportunities gets identified and further how the identified opportunity gets seized. In other words, there will always be opportunities those are not perceived as innovative by an entrepreneur but can possibly fulfill other desires (if exploited). Those are unlikely to be pursued by him. Whereas, again, there will be more than one innovative opportunities lying around at any point of time; and which one gets identified and how that one gets seized depends largely on his other desires.

For example -

• a freedom and independence driven entrepreneur will prefer to self-finance his venture instead of seeking angel investors or venture capital funding.
• a money and/or fame driven entrepreneur will focus on building a large, global (and a for-profit) company.
• a philanthropist entrepreneur will build a for-purpose (and mostly non-profit) organization.

On another note, its quite possible that a pure wantrapreneur (want to be an entrepreneur), who does not have any strong motivation to be a business pioneer as such, but accidentally goes for an innovative business — to solely fulfill his other desires. In this scenario, given that there exist other easier and direct options, he has actually opted for a non-optimal choice. As failures are inevitable in any business venture, this wantrapreneur will face a few failures too. Failures do have a tremendous propensity to make oneself introspective and retrospective. At that point this wantrapreneur will be forced to evaluate other options and most likely will opt for another more optimal and non-entrepreneurial option.

Except face-to-face, any other form of communication is vulnerable to anonymity and so is communication over the internet. Then shouldn’t we just live with it - like we live with anonymous letters or phone calls? Well, we won’t be able to say so innocently after looking at some numbers and facts - among the total of about 6.5 billion people over this planet, more than 1.3 billion are connected by the internet between them! And this number is growing faster; it’s already 2.5 times more than it was in year 2000! Perhaps, the more concerning fact is that, anyone can publish any kind of information (text/media) over it and everyone else of those 1.3 billion (minus 1) is possibly exposed to it — like an easily writable and globally readable, huge white board!

Now, it’s a fact that anonymity encourages freedom of expression, especially while expressing thoughts over controversial and not-so-freely-discussed (or may be embarrassing) topics. For example, to express opinions against a repressive authority - say a government - people would certainly seek anonymity. Free discussions related to some subjects - like sex problems - are not appreciated in many restrained communities and so people may desire anonymity to get over those social/cultural restrictions. People may seek anonymity when talking about non-controversial topics as well — usually to hide their ignorance about a subject or simply to seek unbiased input from others. And the internet, being an universal communication platform, is expected to encourage free sharing of thoughts and feelings.

Alright, so far so good. But there is a not-so-bright side to this equation too. Spamming - the most irritating side-effect of anonymity. About 96% of internet traffic is estimated as unsolicited today; and this percentage is growing at a high speed! The straight consequence is that people don’t trust the internet anymore. It also makes finding relevant and useful information hell lot of difficult. Well, although being a pain in neck, spamming could be ignored to certain extent but what about a completely dark side - which can have highly devastating consequences than mere irritation? Anonymity is equally exploitable by bad guys out there to perform illegal and antisocial activities — and that is without any fear of getting traced. Finding source is really hard over the internet due to anonymity and the evil has many doors to leave no evidences here. Fraud emails seeking your bank account credentials, publishing of hatred and inappropriate content (that can instigate social bursts in sensitive communities), and communications with the sole intent of seeking accomplices and further to commit crimes, can not be simply ignored, can we?

In fact, on comparison, dangers of anonymity clearly over-weigh benefits. Moreover, anonymity is not really required or helpful to address the issues those we mentioned in its favor before. For example, anonymity today allows an user to register for a web service (e.g. an email account) without any genuine identifying credentials. So nobody in the world can be sure about real owner of an email account. In case, any criminal activity is detected on that account, there is no way to trace back to the owner. Perhaps, a better alternative here is pseudo-anonymity. A web service provider (the one providing email service in this example) should be asked to make sure that it has all the genuine identification information before granting a service account to anyone. Now, they can, of course, allow the user to choose a fake-name for communication purpose only. This way, the web user can be traced in extreme circumstances, otherwise he is free to enjoy his anonymity.

Now pseudo-anonymity may not be useful when talking against an influential authority like a government, as they can force the web service provider to reveal identity of the pseudo-anonymous user. But the question is, how effective is a revolution when it’s backed up by anonymous revolutionaries? History confirms that people have to sacrifice their well-being in order to make a drastic social/political change; they are required to stand up and speak up loud to make that change. Who is (and how much) going to value an anonymous message in such circumstances, anyways?

With great capability comes great responsibility. The internet has become so powerful a medium of communication and perhaps, now it’s a time to think about it’s responsibilities.