Death

Yesterday a friend and batchmate +Sunil Ivan Gomes had a massive heart and died. I am deeply shocked that a guy around 39-40 should suffer this untimely a death! Sunil RIP. Today's blog is dedicated to you

Innovation

A lot of people in the software industry who are doing the same thing for years together talk about innovation. "In-novate" is derived from "Novel" which means new. This requires original thought, not copying and repetition. To build skills requires a discipline and rigour, but once you have built the skills, if you keep on doing the same thing with those skills, that is NOT innovation. That is Specialization and "specialization is for insects"

So what exactly is innovation when it comes to the software industry? Let me give you an example from my life.

Years ago i ventured out trying to build India's first Analytics product (Nash Data Miner). We failed but the experience enriched me in many ways. This was not innovation as we were following in the giant footsteps of +SAS, however, I came in touch with several people who wanted to do new things and were all fired up! Needless to say several of them were Fresh graduates and yet un-destroyed by the Indian IT industry's un-innovative regimen! Though the idea was not new to the world, it was new to India and certainly new to me. However, I toyed with several innovations when it came to solving my practical problems. This was the first time i was dealing with 16 odd software engineers at once, all writing code at varying speeds and with varying quality.

I decided to use the Co-operative model for software development! this was an innovation (new to world) I was inspired by Mr. Kurien the milk man of India. he set up +Amul Milk which was based on the co-operative model, and i decided to use something similar for software!

Which meant :

1. Developers would not need to be physically present at one place most of the time
2. They would be evaluated by their work alone. (and paid in proportion)
3. They would bring in their code which would get evaluated by automated tools (similar to Amuls milk quality and quantity evaluation tools)
4. The modular code would then be built with the rest of the engine
5. There would be metrics for code quality as well as quantity (LOC)
6. There would be deductions for bugs, mistakes and such.

This was and still is a fine example of innovation according to me.

Why do most people lack it? And why innovators are often rebels.

People lack innovative thinking because they are programmed by society. They are "beaten into shape" till the programming becomes hard-wired. Wake up, Go to work, lunch, tea, work and so on. Only a die hard rebel is truly able to question this programming, challenge it and rise above and destroy anyone who tries to program him/her. This requires supreme belief in ones own abilities and the ability to swim against the flow. As I like to say "if you go with the flow, you end up down the drain"

How do you spot an innovator in robot-town-hell ?

• Someone who is building new skills all the time (so if you get a guy with the headline "16 years of Java experience" he's not it)
• Someone with a die-hard attitude ( this is required to fight the programming) (team players can leave the room now)
• Someone who has ideas and is willing to work hard to make them happen. (bye bye work life balancers)
• Someone who does not care to be judged by society, leave alone companies and managers.
• Thinker as well as Doer.

That's all for now folks!

Regards

+Milind Thombre

(comments welcome)