let me explain. a typical company starts out with an innovative idea for a product – it procures [...]]]> somewhere on the route to from good to great, it happens. companies start with an innovation, create a marketable product out of it, and produce it at scale. then they transform from innovators to ‘sourcers’ of innovations.

let me explain. a typical company starts out with an innovative idea for a product – it procures the raw materials/parts that it needs, combines them in the unique way to create a product that is valued higher than the cost of the sum of the materials/parts. as you can see, the value addition happens in the way the materials are combined. e.g. you can procure a piece of sheet metal and mould it to make a very ordinary water bucket, or the next best mousetrap. very different ways of creating value.

along the way, hoping the product is hugely successful, it becomes good and very familiar with handling the parts it procures. it develops the expertise in the materials and the whole org is tuned towards making that particular product that it invents.

but the catch is, sooner or later, the innovation is going to become a commodity, and the the money you can earn from the value you have created is going to diminish over time. so what is a company to do? well, it has to come up with a new innovation again – one that adds a large amount of value, but that will use almost the same materials/parts and people that the organization is tuned towards. e.g. companies diversifying from selling airline tickets to adding hotel reservations, etc.

this happens a few times, but then, there comes a point when this cycle yields lower and lower value innovations – e.g.the traditional internal combustion cars are a great example. a car can improve only so much from chassis, carburetor, tyros and engine.

at this point, the company starts to outsource innovation, and to an extant, even the supply chain. the company starts buy into new ‘adjacent’ supply chains and new innovations that they foster. e.g. car companies go into financing. computer makers go into home electronics.

assuming you an do this diversification successfully long enough, you come to realize, that you aren’t good at any particular product, but you are getting good at picking winners. i.e. looking at the budding innovations and supply chains that are ready to hit prime time, and pushing them over the hump. you become a pure marketing company – one that’s good at ‘research’ (knowing what the market is demanding), and ‘development’ (taking an innovation and developing it to reach it’s market at scale).

coca cola does it well with water bottling firms, energy drinks, and sports drinks. cisco does it well with networking innovations. drug companies have mastered this part. proctor and gamble does it all the time. oracle has started to do it in the last few years. that brings us to my side of the world – have the web companies matured enough to go this route? that for another post.

The hot wind blowing from left to write was distinctly dry san joaquin valley air, creating swirling pockets of hot and cold air on the other sideof [...]]]> Mission peak at 7 am Saturday July 2nd 2010. 1hr 20 going up, 50 min coming down. Very windy, nose was getting dry. Got hot by 8 am.

The hot wind blowing from left to write was distinctly dry san joaquin valley air, creating swirling pockets of hot and cold air on the other sideof the peak. You could feel the hot air pockets even on the trail.

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Back [...]]]> Where Omkara and Gangaajal paved the way, Raajneeti takes it forward. These are the films that take you in the wonderful landscape of India beyond the 100km radius of big cities. Yeah, the kind of world the urban yuppies go into for ‘excursions’ over weekends and take pictures as if they are foreign tourists.

Back to the film.

Firstly, it’s an ensemble cast film. Prakash Jha (director) has done a great job of putting the perfect actor in the perfect place (even the hip looking Arjun Rampal seems to oddly right in place with the character). A subdued and underplayed Nana Patekar was fantastic, to begin with. Ajay Devgan, big shot he is, playing a non-central character only added to the underscoring what his character was about – which was of a reluctant second fiddle. Manoj Vajpai did well to get back from his excursion into lead-role dreams, and Katrina Kaif is a worthy wallflower, until you see Kubrick-esq transformation – the audience is perfectly setup for that bait-and-switch.

Secondly, with about 8-10 strong characters, it’s near-impossible to develop characters at the same time as building a story (look up the film Salaam-E-Ishq). For instance, Arjun Rampal abuses a female party worker in one his early scenes, who, later in the film, becomes a pawn in the opposition hands. Flows flawlessly into the story, without an awkward jump in narration. This would’ve been written as a simple drunken-assault scene in any other film – but here, the abuse is linked to party nomination process run by Arjun Rampal, shedding a ton of light into the ethics of his character. Simply put, story moves forward from shot-one, and characters build along the way.

Though somewhat of a longish film at about 3 hours (with some very good-sounding songs cut nicely short), this movies is brisk due to some very compact scenes. Fantastic pace and editing to keep you in the story and in your seats. I found myself stepping back into the film a few times to catch the nuances of the story. Definitely not a lean-back film., and not definitely for those that can’t appreciate the earthy hindi language (use of the word ‘yone soshan‘ for promiscuity).

It’s nice to see sophisticated well-films for the rest of the country, by the masters of the craft. Watch the film – but not in a multi-plex. That would be somewhat of a incongruous – like eating pani puri in Oberoy. Watch it in a “Cinema Ghar“, as the trailer puts it.

sub note: the grocery stores used to charge a rental for the videos. then, it turned to giving the rental for free if you bought $20 worth of groceries. now they are giving away the damn DVDs – no need to even bother returning them.