Green Business Solution – Different Perspectives

Changing user attitude is the toughest part of any sustainability solution. More or less we all understand our carbon footprints and how we can lower that impact. But this is a Game Theory problem – ‘Even if I do my part of sustainable living others will not and we all will face the same circumstances. Then why should I compromise?’ My solution tries to address this problem. Here are my proposals:

Charge as you use (variable pricing) and increase the rate enough to motivate people to stop wasting:

Consider the use of water – we pay fixed rate slabs for using water rather than using per gallon. Meaning you may use anywhere between 0-500 gallon and still pay the same price (say $20 per month), 500-1000 gallon and still pay a price slightly more than 0-500 gallon usage (say $30 per month). As you see the price of Natural resources such as water is still very low (who cares for $20 or $30 if you earn $5000 per month) and the fixed slab pricing does not allow enough rewards to motivate sustainable usage. I provided the example of water but this is true for almost all natural resources including oil (oil price is not enough high to motivate people to use public transport or carpool or at least consider reasonable use of car driving – people can afford to drive 60 miles every day to go to office and then another 20 miles to buy groceries – they don’t care to live near office or do grocery shopping once a week), paper(we all fire printouts without considering the need – the price of paper is so low that it does not matter), meat(meat prices are not high enough to motivate people to eat vegetarian food) etc.

My proposals –

Follow the best practices of Steady State Economics (SSE). Let’s first understand the basic philosophy of SSE

Basic Concept of Steady State Economy:
 
We measure the Progress of an Economy by GDP growth numbers or Performance of a Company by Earnings growth. Higher the growth, better the case for it.
 
But proponents of the Steady State Economy think that perpetual economic growth is not possible considering the fact that the natural resources are limited. We have limited space in this world (till the time, we can colonize other planets) and hence if we continue to increase the population and everyone starts to consume more and more each day (conventional concept of growth) we cannot sustain. We won't have enough food to eat, enough place to live and enough clear air to breath. On the other hand recession or economic contraction is not healthy or sustainable. Hence a new model was created: Steady State Economy (SSE). In SSE we don't look for growth but concentrate on improving the quality of existing life. A SSE provides a better means for current and future generations to achieve a high quality of life without undermining the life-support systems of the planet. SSE tries to price resources in an itemized manner (for example Cap-and-Trade) so that right kind of checks-and-balances is in place ensuring right amount of usage by everybody.
 
"A steady state economy features policies that aim for sustainable scale, fair distribution of wealth, efficient allocation of resources, and high quality of life.  Living in such an economy would be more satisfying for citizens today and provide more opportunities for future generations. One way to think about a non-growing economy is simply to look around at the current state of affairs. If the economy stopped growing today, we would have just what you see out there. We would have our current population and stock of natural and human-built capital into the foreseeable future. Investment would be redirected toward maintaining those stocks of capital. Energy usage would stabilize (or decrease if we started using energy resources more sparingly and more efficiently). The difference in income levels between the richest and poorest people in society would shrink. Society would focus on economic development (such as educational empowerment, poverty alleviation, and high-quality employment opportunities) rather than uneconomic growth." 1


Price natural resources on variable basis ($.1 per gallon for first 50 gallon, $.2 per gallon for next 50 gallon of water uses etc.) – this will ensure people control the use of resources for their own financial benefit.

Price natural resources at much higher rate - Account and include the Carbon footprint price to increase the price – Price of water, oil, paper, meat need to increase to motivate people to moderate the consumption.

Benchmark people’s behavior against acceptable use:

People perform better if they get constant feedback on how they are doing. Today we do not have intelligent metering systems suggesting the usage of natural resources.

My proposals –

Provide intelligent metering and alerting system so that people can measure their performance against the acceptable numbers: example- if acceptable use of water for a bath is say 10 gallons – once a person has consumed 5 gallon of water he/she will get an alert that “You have consumed 50% of the acceptable water use for one bath”. Once the usage increases to say 15 gallon it will stop the water flow and provide an alert that “You have consumed more than 150% of the acceptable use of water. Think Green. If you really need water to complete this case please restart your count as a separate case”. Stopping the water flow will make sure two things – 1. If the water flow was accidentally on it will be stopped thus reducing any wastage. 2. If the user is overusing resources it will make a serious case for him to change his behavior.

Case for office us of Paper, Electricity etc.- Create a alert and accounting mechanism for responsible use of office supplies – You will get an alert if you are printing above specific number of pages or your computer is Switched on at night.

Use Smart Devices/Processes to reduce waste

We waste a lot of natural resources which can be stopped by introducing smart devices. If we need hot water we have to keep our water flows open for some time before hot water starts flowing. That creates a lot of water wastage.

Similarly when we send emails to multiple people they each receive individual copies of the same email – what a waste of server space!!

My Proposals –

For minimizing water waste: Create an intelligent device which will start hot water flow when the water is ready hot (say at a set temperature).

For minimizing email server space wastage: Rather than sending separate copies of emails to each recipients keep a single copy and provide read access to that copy as email. If someone ‘deletes’ the email only the view access is deleted for him/her and not the actual email. If someone ‘Reply All’ the original email another conversation copy is generated only for the added comments and appropriate access is provided to the ‘reply All’ recipients. Again if someone deletes the Reply all email the access is deleted and not the whole email.

Less is more in Green IT - Tao minimalism can make organizations more effective, profitable and green:

With the coming of cap-and-Trade and other Green regulations IT will have more importance in reducing the waste, minimizing the costs and increasing the profits. Organizations can improve their Green strategy by integrating it with the Core Business strategy and changing the Organizational culture. The Organizations can become more competitive and create long-term shareholder value by following a minimalist approach and focusing on the core competencies.

Two different (conflicting) roles of IT:

1. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has potential to reduce the Business As Usual(BAU) Carbon footprint by 15%(Re-Engineering save of around USD 1015 Billion by 2020) by creating smart systems(smart energy greed, Intelligent Transportation system etc.)
2. At the same time global IT industry generates almost 2% of the Global Carbon Dioxide emissions (equivalent to greenhouse gas as the world's airlines as per Gartner study) and this share is increasing because of information overload (Typical Data center capacity double every 5 yrs etc.).

To optimize the role of IT industry we need to make sure we build smart systems which can make smart Decisions to reduce the Carbon footprint by improving the Processes, reducing redundancies, improving utilizations etc.

At the same time we need to make sure we minimize the share of Global Carbon footprint of the IT industry. This can be done either by improvement in Technology (such as Virtualization etc.)Or by minimizing the unnecessary data Processing (this is like either you control the population or minimize the per capita consumption to control the overall effect).

In this solution I will concentrate on the strategies to minimize this Information overload and thus making organizations more effective, profitable and green. The aim of this solution is to show that by integrating Green Strategy to the Core Business strategy and by making an Organization-wide culture change organizations can achieve this goal.

Culture change: An Inevitable component of Green IT strategy

Corporations have historically given more importance to doing more things. The employees have been encouraged to do more: Deliver more Projects, Manage more People, Create more knowledge artifacts, send emails to more people (Distribution list and Reply all), attend more meetings, stay more time in office etc. Unfortunately this mindless growth culture is not effective. We need to appreciate the fact that by doing less we can achieve more. We can save time, money and energy by selectively creating what we do best and increase our effectiveness.



We think the organizations can improve their Carbon footprint by following a minimalist philosophy. Too many activities go on in large organizations without any planning and focus on the long term vision. We do too many Projects which are not aligned with Long term Business strategy. We have many activities or processes which are redundant and can be avoided (thus reducing cost and carbon footprint). We spend too much time on doing and too less time on thinking “What is the best thing to do and how best we can do it”. We produce too much unnecessary things and thus focus less on which is really important. We need to stop this noise and concentrate on core things which are really important. Let me provide you an example:

Green enthusiasts always push for minimizing the use of paper. This is absolutely necessary and a must for Green IT strategy. But what we generally miss out is the cost and carbon footprint associated with Electronic documents. We create millions of documents related to Projects, processes, Knowledge artifacts, financial reports, emails etc. but never care about the quantity and quality of those documents. Many times they are just simple crap, do not add any value, redundant and can be eliminated. Just consider the Storage Server utilization and related power costs. Worse we make these documents searchable (Intranet or Internet). Just consider the recurring cost, time; power and energy we waste on these searches (consider the carbon footprint of all these servers). Good example: Company Knowledge repository – thousands of copy-paste documents without adding any value or any Google search producing too many unnecessary items.

If we run the numbers these costs are serious. Just multiply the number of documents with number of users making number of searches every day.



How to improve?

• Assess the IT Infrastructure and processes for redundancy and quality of data. Put stringent quality control on the documents which can be searched across the Enterprise or Internet.
• Minimize junk data entering the system. Design an intelligent IT system which will have controls in place to persuade users to enter right/True data. This can be done by integrating IT systems across the organization and putting logic in place to validate the entered data based on available data in the system.
• Concentrate on reuse and minimizing redundancy. Rather than creating multiple similar Know-how documents create a single one and allow everyone to improvise it (wiki style).
• Encourage quality over quantity: Allow your employees to think and come up with something really good rather than ordering them to create twenty ordinary items. Improve effectiveness and productivity (by quality not by quantity perspective).
• Discourage email (especially group emailing), meetings and other time-waster wherever possible.
• Block Junk websites and emails as much as possible through Security policy implementation.
• Sensitize employees on the importance of green behavior and how small changes can ultimately lead to big savings. Create right reward and recognition scheme for motivating employees to come up with innovative ideas to save.
• Use automation for implementing green behavior. Create a popup form if some user fires a printout of more than 5 pages (ask about the need of the printout and audit the responses).

Integrate Green Strategy with the Core Business strategy:

Beside the culture change, we need top management focus to align Green IT strategy with core business strategy. Superficial execution of Green IT strategy will not be successful. Green IT Strategy needs to be integrated with the Core Business Strategy of creating Long term Shareholder value. From that perspective Green strategy can be simple: Focus only on your key strengths, do less, do it smart, avoid waste and achieve more.

Strengthen your core Business and selectively invest on Projects which creates long term shareholder value. Gartner research shows 80% of the IT Investment money is ‘dead-money’ - simple waste of resources.2  These investments do not add any value to your business but add to your Carbon footprint and cost numbers. Improve the quality of Investment Decision making system to minimize this waste.



How to improve?

• Focus on High Impact Investments and minimize the waste. Consider improving the Investment Decision making process by creating an intelligent system based on actual data (rather than vague estimates).
• The best business case for Green IT can be minimizing waste, reducing costs and thus increasing profit. In future with Cap-and-trade and more regulations in place Green IT will be the core differentiator in the marketplace.
• Analyze your Organization cost and carbon footprint (including Energy audits for operational costs) and find out which are the big impact areas you can attack to control it. Focusing on small number of Projects will make it more effective. Do something really meaningful rather than selling ‘The idea of Green’ and spending big money on PR (Green contest, Earth day or Green apparel).
• Effective use of Green IT strategy can help to reduce the Carbon footprint of other departments within the organization if the strategies of these departments work hand-in-hand. As a real-life example, international retail giant Tesco found that IT’s contribution to the company’s total carbon footprint is only 4% — but that IT has the enabling potential to reduce total carbon footprint by 20%.

How we can solve world obesity crisis, food crisis and green energy crisis in one go

Let’s analyze some history. Today our primary source of energy is fossil fuels such as coal, oil, natural gas etc. They were created millions of years ago from the decomposition of forests etc. They are so-called non-renewable sources of energy because it takes millions of years to recreate that (we consume them at a much faster rate). Their energy density is very high and that’s why they are much easier to use than renewable sources of energies such as solar, wind etc. But bottom-line is ultimate source of energy in earth is sunlight. And photosynthesis by plants (green) is the only process to capture that energy which can be used by living organisms (plants and animals etc.). We need to find out how (chemical or physical transformation process) the decomposition of forests improved the energy density of the fossil fuels – was this just the addition of millions of years of stored energy in a very less volume or something different. That is critical but even if we don’t understand that we can still find some temporary solution. We have seen biofules such as ethanol mixed with gasoline to supplement our energy needs. Only problem with that is ethanol comes from sugar – and sugar plantation needs a lot of water and agricultural space. Critics say, use of biofules increase the price of food (simply by demand supply curve – biofules provide better price for farmers than rice or other foods and hence they are encouraged to plant sugar than other food items) and thus cause world food crisis.

Now let’s analyze the problem of obesity. Evolutionary biologists suggest that our body was built to do a lot physical activities. With the development of Technological innovation the need for such physical activity has reduced dramatically. But we have continued to consume the same amount of food/energy intake causing mass obesity. Doctors suggest doing some physical activity in the gym such as running in the treadmill etc. to compensate for the extra calorie intake. Now let’s see how all these problems can be merged into a single solution.

My proposed solution
Instead of consuming electricity driven treadmill why can’t we create man driven small electric generators (instead of motors we will create generators so that the energy conversion is just the opposite from mechanical to electrical). Also we will create different ways to capture manual energy (mechanical energy) and transform them into electrical energy. Possible ways - pressure while walking in roads can create electricity etc. Advantages – we can continue to consume enough yummy food we like to eat (no diet and as we can eliminate biofules our food prices will be within control – no food crisis), we will still have to do physical exercises to keep ourselves in shape but at least it will have motivational aspects (we can generate our own energy and reduce our electricity bill rather than increased electricity bill for gym machines). We need technological innovation (such as smart grids etc.) but I believe still this is a viable solution for obesity, energy and food crisis. I am not suggesting this can replace fossil fuel use 100% but with other renewable energies such as solar, wind etc. we should be able to meet a major portion of our energy needs.



References:

1. What would a steady state economy look like?   http://steadystate.org/discover/faqs/

2. Gartner Research that 80% of the IT Investments is dead money http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=497088

A new beautiful world

Problem Statement:

Aristotle said,"Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of introduction".We all want to look good,to be more successful in career,sex life and personal life.But unfortunately most of the people in the world do not know have the aesthetic sense to work on their personal beauty. For a few quick makeovers they can look much more beautiful. But they are not aware of this. They also do not have enough resources(time,money,availibility of trained people etc.)to take help of professionals.

Opportunity Statement:

1. We should work on making the people of the world more beautiful. It is frustrating for eyes to see so many ugly looking people around us.We can not make all of them Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie with these changes. But surely they can look much better with few small changes.

2. This will revolutionize the Healhcare/beautycare/cosmetic industry by democratizing opportunities and making resources available to all of them. Considering the size of this industry market potential is huge.

Product/Solution Details with Implementation Ideas:

1.Two part:Hardware and Software Implementation. Whenever a customer wants to consume this service he will be first scanned using some Camera and scanning machines for their present body structure,Face Details,shape,Hairstyle etc. In short first activity is to scan the body with preplanned views to get a detailed data of his/her present body status. We may also add few standard questionare to understand his/her food habit,lifestyle data,ethenic background etc.

2. Next we need to analyze the data, check with an existing database and recommend solution to the customer.Let me detail down the concept of this history database. This will be a huge database with the physical data of people having a higher beauty quotent than a trigger point. The database can be started with the data from celebrity beauty data(famous actors/models/dancers etc. from different ethenic class)and then more data can be added to that database.Whenever a consumer uses this service his/her after makeover data will be stored in the database. Any new consumer can refer to those data and rank them in a scale of 1 to 10. Any person having an average score(say after 20 rating is done) of say 8.5(higher beauty quotent than a trigger point) should be set as a standard beauty and will be referenced for suggesting makeover solution to the new customers. To create the history database we can also take help of creative people like artists,makeup artists,fashion designers etc. They can suggest their dream beauties for different ethenic classess.

3.Once the scan and data reference from the history database is done the customer will be shown the result in the increasing order of difficulty of attaining those states(considering time,money,ease of changes etc.).For example it is easier to change your hairstyle or remove your mustach than to reduce your bodyweight by 30lbs. The customer will also have tools to simulate their own looks by customizing the suggested looks obtained from the software(we should not have typecasted profiles in the world,beauty lies in the variety). Once the customer finalizes his/her dream look he/she will be given action item recomendations to achive that look(example, dietary changes,cosmetic procedures,lifestyle changes,increasing exercises etc.).

3. This service can be sold using a franchise model or web service model. In franchise model you sell the product/solution to francises who will have their own beauty centers all over the world. Also it may be easier to make this a web based service where the customer reach will be more than franchise model. An Web camera can be used to do the scanning and the rest of the computation process can be done from the centralized servers.Revenue generation should be subscription based and to attarct largest amount of customers this fee should be set as low as possible(if I can not save on the price and time why should I use this service,I can take help of beauty professionals).Another USP of this offerred service is to create simulated looks which can not be done in a standard parlour.

Ensuring Data Quality: Negative Feedback Control System

Good quality data is essential for Intelligent Decision making. We can build top-class Data Analytics system but if the raw data is distorted the Decision made based on those data will also be wrong (Garbage in-Garbage out).
We have over invested in the Development of Decision making systems but underinvested in the effort/process/systems to ensure quality data entry. Unfortunately we have huge amount of junk data in the system and hence although we are using smart analytics methods we are making biased/wrong decisions.

The junk data is entered into the system for the following reason:

1. Users are careless of entering true data. For example in a web-survey, people can answer the questions without even reading the questions (just to save time).
2. Users can purposefully enter wrong data to make their case and meet their short term needs. For example companies can overstate profits to ensure better year-end bonus for the executives.
3. Users are aware that most of the times they will not be caught for entering wrong data. They can manipulate data in different systems as and when needed. There is no integration, verification or reconciliation of the data in most of the systems.

The proposed idea is a generic framework which can be used to ensure that good quality data is fed into the system.

Basic Principle

Design an intelligent IT system which will have controls in place to persuade users to enter right/True data. This can be done by integrating IT systems across the Enterprise and putting logic in place to validate the entered data based on available data in the system.

Case for Better Technology Investment Process
For example, consider the Investment Decision making process. Many of the times these are not objective and depend on the face-value of the champion of the project. To make the case of a Project the champion can show very high Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) numbers and get Finance/Top management approval. The Decision making body do not have enough tools to analyze the case based on historical data. Also the champion never fears to be questioned for artificially inflating CBA/ROI numbers.

If we can create a system where the Project cost (including the maintenance cost/operational cost) and the business benefits (revenue growth, cost save etc.) can be tracked and then matched against the actual CBA/ROI we can improve this gap. The Finance department/Investment decision making body will have better information to make the Investment decision. The Project owner/champion will also make sure the CBA/ROI numbers are realistic as this will be tracked against his/her performance (if Proposed CBA does not match against the Actual CBA). This way we can make sure right/realistic data is fed into the system and the decision making process is improved. Just as a data point, Gartner research shows 80% of the IT Investment money is ‘dead-money’  - simple waste of resources. If we can improve the situation even by 50% that will be a huge benefit.

How we can do that?

We need to integrate different IT systems which work in silos and then make a decision making system which reconciles data from different systems to create Business insights. In the previous example we need to integrate Time Tracking/Project management systems (source of cost numbers) with Marketing and Finance system (Profit/revenue numbers).


What is the USP of this solution?


The Intelligent System which can ensure that Users can not manipulate data for their own need and thus enter correct data. This can be achieved by integrating different systems of record in the Enterprise (single view of Project Management system, Revenue Accounting system, HR Management system etc.) and creating intelligent Business logic for verification of entered data (query system, reports).

This follows the famous Negative Feedback Control Theory. In this process the users strive to enter correct data for their own need. Let’s take the same example of IT Decision making system.

In case the users enter an abnormally high CBA values for a Project to push the case of the Project (reason may be some emotional attachment with the Project/people or some other personal motif) and in future the Project could not deliver the promised benefits the Decision maker will be asked for explanation: to justify the case for providing high CBA numbers.

At the same time if someone puts very low CBA (just to be safe and conservative) the Project will not be rolled as there will be Projects with higher CBA numbers which will be considered as more attractive investments.

Hence the user will try to do their due diligence to provide honest numbers. This way he/she will ensure that he/she minimizes the risk of not making his/her initiative or being responsible in future for providing false data(-ve feedback).

The intelligent decision making system should be an ideal repository for analyzing past data and thus improvising the estimation numbers for the future projects. This will also help in creating an enterprise wide Technology spending management system where unallocated/unused funds/resources will be tracked and then utilized in a timely fashion (early automatic adjustment of resources for maximum utilization).
Enterprise Wide operational data consolidation and intelligent analysis for improvement of Operational efficiencies: Following similar fashion we can create Intelligent Data Analysis systems for checking enterprise-wide Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Operational efficiency data (system availability, system-uptime, confidentiality, Data Integrity, Server/CPU and storage cost etc.). e.g. if we see a lot of problem tickets from a system, it indicates we need to reengineer the application and thus some improvement opportunity exists(Need Development/ReEngineering Projects).
This idea can be implemented in various systems as described below:

Case Studies:

1. Better Quality Compliance: Historically speaking, the existing compliance laws (SoX etc.) have miserably failed to stop corruption. At the same time these laws have huge cost implications for the corporations. We create huge number of compliance related documents and this needs huge amount of cost and effort. Many of the times those documents are dead data – Data not updated properly and not verifiable. Worse: As we increase the quantity we decrease the quality of the people who creates these documents and have limited audit opportunity(lack of manpower) to check if the data entered are correct. This is not a smart system and huge amount of productivity gain is possible by freeing resources doing compliance related documentation. The FED, SEC and other compliance bodies can think of standardizing the whole audit process making it smarter. What I suggest is to create a generic data system framework where the data will be fed by the companies in the specific format (web based forms/questionnaires). There will be guidelines to generate theses data from the raw granular level data and the companies need to align their internal Information system to support these numbers. The compliance and the regulatory bodies will have access to the data and intelligent tools to automatically verify the truthfulness of the data. The data points need to be designed in a fashion so that data manipulation is not possible (this need to be improvised on a continuous basis). The regulatory bodies can benefit by efficient (verifiable), low cost (automated) audit system and thus improving better compliance. The companies can benefit by reducing stuff in the compliance and documentation related work (reduce cost) and engaging them in revenue generating activities (sales, innovation etc.). Overall the economy will be benefited by increasing the efficiency of audit and compliance process through 100% automation of validation and verification, better resource utilization and lower compliance related costs.
2. Better Cost Transparency of Customer Servicing and Intelligent Customer segmentation Even with smart CRM systems in place most of the companies still have very inefficient Customer Servicing and Segmentation processes. We spend huge amount of money in wrongly targeted Promotional activities. For example a big US bank provides customers to customize their Debit card with personalized photographs. Whenever such an activity is initiated the Business rule creates a Promotional mailer for a Travel related service. This Service is Free for a month and you get a Risk free Prize for enrolling into it (iPod/ Portable DVD Player etc.). If you cancel within a month you keep the Prize and you are not charged. This looks to be a pretty standard promotion and should help the Bank to generate charges for the Travelers program. But the part is even if someone has cancelled the program and again requested for a Customized card similar promotional offer is sent to him, although he has cancelled before and received the Prize. A better approach could be to integrate the Prize fulfillment system with the Marketing department and not to send the Promotional offer again (high chance that he will repeat the same activity). We need to have a system where we can see the Total cost of ownership of a customer (Servicing cost etc.) and the Potential revenue that he can generate over time. We need this kind of CBA transparency at the most granular level (customer level) to make right segmentation decisions.
3. Better People management: We don’t have objective systems in place for Performance appraisal of the people, Business units etc.  Many of the cases the appraisal process is subjective and not based on true data. We have very inefficient compensation system where we don’t objectively measure the return on investment of a specific employee. Most of the times employees can manipulate the data and take undue advantage.

Let me provide some more details around the opportunity. In a typical IT organization we have different Employee Activity Tracking system (this is a typical case in India, in US we generally don’t track and micromanage employee activities and are more result oriented for performance appraisal etc.)  – We track Entry and Exit time of an employee (for attendance record), Computer Login and Logout times for making sure they are shutting down their systems before going home (green IT perspective + Tracking activities for security reason/audit etc.), Timesheet for measuring the effort data(which is the baseline for future estimation) and a Performance appraisal system for doing Employee appraisal( which ultimately decides salary, promotion etc.). Unfortunately all these systems are not integrated and do not have intelligence to verify if the employees are entering junk data. This creates a bad employee culture –either they work more or  just to show they are working more they stay late in the office (probably doing their personal work, surfing Internet etc.) and at the same time showing they are working only eight hours in the timesheet thus increasing their productivity numbers. This has multiple effects - underestimated effort data (in case a critical project demands an effort of 100 unit and even though they took 100 unit to complete the work they report 70 unit in the timesheet – thus base lining 70 unit for a Project which actually requires 100 unit – causing missed revenue opportunity, high employee stress, bad work-life balance, increased risk to the overall Project timeline), misrepresented employee productivity(although taking 100 hrs to complete the work they are reporting 80 hrs and thus improving their chance to get better performance rating), high Operational cost(even they have no work employees are staying late in office, causing more electricity cost for AC, Computers)etc. But if we can integrate the systems and place negative feedback control systems in place we can reduce this problem. Now if they are reporting 8 hrs of work in timesheet but their Computer login and logout data shows 16 hrs or office in and out data shows similar trend they will be asked questions. This will ensure they report honest data in the system and the management can get true picture of employee effort and productivity.

A smart HR system, integrated with different other systems, can ensure right data is put into the system and the decisions made are objective. This can be extended even to Outsourcing decisions and vendor management systems. We can create intelligent systems tracking their performance (against the contract) and make decisions for next contract (whether to renew or negotiate the contract etc.). Benchmarking against the industry standard for estimating the effort needed for Developing a System/solution will ensure vendors are not overcharging.

4. Create better Surveys: My gut feel is most of the Survey responses are junk data. People generally hate surveys and in general they are negligent in filling the data. Also they sometimes fill biased data. Executives make a mistake in taking those survey results as truth and acting on those decisions. We need to create intelligent surveys where contradictory responses will be questioned and a better quality data will be generated.

Biomimicry - new hope

Need Smart Chemists - I want to get rid of Flatulence in Public restrooms

Sourced from wikipedia:




The gas released during a flatus event frequently has an unpleasant odor. For many years, this was thought to be due to skatole and indole, which are byproducts of the digestion ofmeat. However, gas chromatography testing in 1984 revealed that sulfur-containing compounds, such as methanethiol, hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) and dimethyl sulfide, were also^[2] responsible for the smell.^[3]


Can someone create some chemical which can absorb these unpleasant gases(I know there has been some patent around charcoal) or do reactions to create pleasant smells?

Smartphone Meeting App for Jetsetters

Remembering meeting pass codes and entering them one by one is so pain! Why can't smartphones be integrated  with email systems so that as soon as I tap the invite it connects me to the meeting(entering the pass code happens in the background automatically) as well as opens up the sharing window in the browser or in a app.

Specially useful for Microsoft Livemeeting, WebEx or GotoMeeting. Any smartphones iPhone, Android, RIM should offer this.

Want to avoid market manipulation

Track and Analyze Stock gurus/insiders advice and their action...unfortunately I could not find any good website tracking this..probably this will stop the Big Financial Services industry...hence huge pressure might be the reason!

One of the best(obvious) suggestion on US Healthcare(as well as Education system) Reform

Here is a wonderful link for US Healthcare reform. This solution sound obvious but nobody worked on this because US is full of different powerful lobbyist groups.

I have one followup suggestion. The supply of doctors can't be met by only US educated doctors. We need healthcare profesionals as well as Medical Education Services from outside. This will allow reduction of overall costs.

On the same Demand-Supply logic we should plan our University curriculum.We have many courses in our schools which do not provide jobs(simply because they are too academic and do not have practical value). At the same time we have few skills in very high demand and enjoys premium pricing. Why can't universities re-plan their course capacity as per society needs? Think about it :)