PDF Passionate about exploring new technologies and sharing new ideas, Mr. Ramesh Kumar is the CTO of Eduquity, a leading human resource assessment organization. With more than 30 years of experience, a string of professional achievements and awards to his credit and a growing list of lucid, insightful technology articles to his name, Ramesh Kumar is someone who has been part of India’s technological growth story . Here are some thoughts he shared with us.
1. What do you think is the one best practice that fosters innovation in your organization?
Value addition is the key. You offer ‘the best’ solution and in no time the same is offered by many, including the competitors. Then, what makes you different? Being one step ahead helps. Innovation is the key to this extra step. And when it comes to innovation and value addition, it need to be addressed properly and must be implementable. We specialize in Computer Based Examinations and were the first ones (as far as I know) who provided (and provide) back up for everything – be it be Power supply or Servers. Now it has become a de facto standard and all tenders call for these. At the end of the day, I feel proud when we deliver zero-error tests (where not a single student goes back without taking the test). Year after year, we provide additional features to our repeat clients, even though a 7 year old client, who is happy with the current process.
2. How is innovation crucial in a business process?
Innovation is very critical to any business. Every company must have their own unique selling proposition (USP). You can not sell a ‘me too’ product forever. And you must have good market intelligence. Try to sell what people want (or what they may want). Don’t try to sell what you have. Innovation keeps you ahead of competition. You may get ‘inspired’ by something others use/do. You can always improve upon them and create your niche. Innovation may not mean that you need copyright or patents of your own. When a customer was finding it difficult to scan thousands of photographs of applicants, we suggested a small visiting card scanner that saved the photos as they are scanned, saving many man hours for the client.
3. What drives technological innovation for businesses in India? Is collaboration with customers more important than data based decision making?
Technological innovation is key for your growth. I strongly believe that one shall invest some percentage of turnover on R&D. Try new technologies. Try some new ideas, even if they appear to be crazy. Stay with the times. Think ahead of them. Invest in market intelligence. Your Business Development people can get you the crucial data on market requirements. If you are launching a new product, do a proper market survey and do not go by the numbers in Excel spreadsheets: expected footfalls, eyeballs etc. Create a focus group and let them give an unbiased opinion. If you are strengthening the product line and you think the customers get a large benefit, take them into confidence and collaborate with them. The client may have more experience and the requirements than you. And you may have more knowledge of the industry where you may have the knowledge and experience of more than one customer. Then there may be some employees, who have great experience from their previous employment. And crucial to collaboration is taking feedback and your willingness to accept the feedback, particularly the one ‘you do not want to listen to’. I prefer to have a devil’s advocate, who can ask some tough questions. There may not be any answers for some questions. But, they may give some direction to your thinking. And sometimes, you may also need to involve your vendors/partners. It is a collective contribution that makes it click.
4. We would like to know more about your “Human Search Engine” concept.
This is purely personal. Everyone knows how to search Google and can get what they want. However, not many know how to search effectively when the search does not return what you want. For example, we used to use various search engines trying to locate obsolete electronic components. Then due to my experience I found there are a few websites they work wonders. ex. http://www.findchips.com which returns the search from 15 reputed suppliers in one search! Similarly, if you are searching to import some item, you may search with http://www.alibaba.com directly, which may not be known to the casual searcher. You may know how to search, but, do not have time. Or you tried various keywords and did not get what you want. Then leave it the ‘Human Search Engine”. Human search engine searches the required data manually and provides the best solution. This can be useful if one wants to know who your competitors are or if you want to see if there is any bad publicity about you or your competitor or locating some product/supplier/solutions. In fact Human Search Engine can be of great help if you want to unearth valuable information that is not available easily. Yes, it is not scalable right now. But I would be happy to cater to at least two-three searches a day and can sleep well if I have the satisfaction that I could help two people that day!
5. Do you see this as a potential shift in search engine approaches, from pure algorithms to algorithms + the “human factor”?
This is not new. There are some sites like mahalo.com. A simple search results thousands of results and the users can easily lose interest, if they do not get the accurate result in the first 15-20 clicks ( URLs). Here is where the experience of Human Search Engines with lot of experience in searching for data comes into the play. Yes, algorithms are important and it is the core for any search. Without search results from the Googles and Yahoos, I bet Human Search Engines cannot do much. One needs to fine tune the algorithms as we go along.
6. Does the human search concept have the potential to scale up to the volume of search requests on the internet?
Yes. It is human intensive, but is possible. However, it all depends on what kind of ‘experts’ are enrolled as ‘Human Search Engines’. The initial few may be of top quality. Then if one starts hiring people to do manual search and if their quality is not up to the mark the entire system collapses. Hence the quality is important.
7. What’s your favourite gadget that you always carry around with you?
My BlackBerry.
8. What’s your favourite inspirational one-liner?
Not one…I have many!
Some are:
Nothing is impossible.
If I can do others can do. If Others can do, I can do !
To Programmers : Think like the users
To Programmers : Think like a crook before he breaks your system.