Hotmail fame Bhatia speaks

This week's knowledge @ Wharton has brought out an interview with Sabeer Bhatia, the famous serial entreprenuer who started htomail (bought by microsoft) and many more. See the video to know about his latest ventures...

Bingo! : Microsoft bing -back with a bang?

Finally, Bing is out after days of waiting when the site wasn't even saying anything interesting unlike google which often puts up a puzzle or something as people start hitting new product pages. Anyways, bing definitely seems to be much better than the live search microsoft had earlier. I tried a few searches including my name and the results are much more relevant compared to what live used to throw. Will it blow away google? Certainly not. Atleast not immediately. As we know Google has been improving its search features silently and continously for a while. Its new wave is definitely going to create some waves. Checkout the video...


I happened to read an article that gavce the background of how Qi Chu was hired from Yahoo to get this done. Anyone making bing your new default search engine?

mint.com - a 'mint' fresh concept

Yesterday, I stumbled upon this site called mint.com and before that the only mint I knew was the Mumbai based newspaper, owned by WSJ. Anyway, this is the most amazing personal finance tool that I have seen so far. First thing: its free so, anyone can try it without making an investment. And signing up is fast and easy. I was amazed to note that it doesn't ask your name during signup. After the sign-up, you are asked for your bank account details and then mint.com automatically links to the banks to download your everyday transactions. The best part is that it automatically classifies them into food, shopping, entertainment etc, so really know where all your money is going. You an link your credit card account and your savings, if any :) Check it out for yourself!

BTW another surprising fact is that the company was founded and is currently run by 27 year old CEO Aaron Patzer.

How to sign up for Mint.com from Mint.com on Vimeo.

Good global morning

This has been a wonderful morning. It began before my alarm went off and after a quick shower I headed for a session of group yoga at an acquiantance's place. It was interesting to findout that he was from Bangladesh. I never bothered to ask him earlier because I assumed he was Indian based on his looks. After a relaxing session I went to brunch at a Pakistani resturaunt with an American folk. An Asian looking woman borrowed by paper to look for an article. She then told me that it featured her daughters wedding. Again a Pakistani with Indian groom. Ok I now to call my chinese friend for his whereabouts, bye!

Grameen success

Hello readers,


If you haven't heard about Grameen bank of Bangladesh and/or Nobel prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus, now is the time to know. I came to know the story behind creation of this great organization that has helped about 8 million people in Bangladesh and millions of others world wide get credit and banking experience only a couple of years ago. I must admit that I have not been tracking the subject since then. But, Knowledge @ Wharton has come out this great interview of Dr. Yunus this week. I am also glad to hear that Wharton has invited him for the commencement of the new batch at the University. It makes sense to invite people who have done great work on the ground instead of goign behind people in positions. Kudos to Wharton!

During the interview I came to know that Grameen and/or the conecpt is now in almost every country in the world. And that includes US too. Grameen's amazing programs include health insurance to people and Grameev Veolina and Grameen Intel. Finally, do you know that repayment rate at the Grameen bank is as high as 99% ? much higher than rates at an commercial bank in the world. Grameen has partnertships in India too. This includes players like SKS microfinance.
More here: http://www.grameenfoundation.org/where_we_work/south_asia/india/

How to build an iphone business

Following an interesting analysis on apple store revenues, I stumbled upon this video that talks about building a business on iphone apps. Check it out!

Personally, I think it is a win-win situation for everyone and kudos to entrepreneurs coming up with apps! Read the complete article with video here.

Building an iPhone Business

View more OpenOffice presentations from Elia Freedman.

Innovation in today’s economy

Recently, Innovation labs revealed results of a study on how companies are innovating in today's economy and how much. The results are quite amazing as you can see here:

Recently, I was reading another article on innovation from MIT Sloan. Although 3 years old, the point mentioned in it are as relevant now. According to the article there are 12 different ways or directions a company can innovate. The article calls this the 'innovation radar'. The 12 dimensions of innovation with quick examples;

1. Offerings – product development – Eg. Disposable toothbrush
   
2. Platform – Nissan's single platform for half a dozen car models
   
3. Solutions – Derre & co. solutions to farmers
   
4. Customer – virgin mobile – catering young adults market
   
5. Customer experience – IDEO
   
6. Value capture – Edmunds.com
   
7. Processes – INFY, Wipro
   
8. Organization – Thomson financial – restructured team by customer segments
   
9. Supply chain – zara
   
10. Presence – Titan
    
11. Networking – CEMEX ready concrete
    
12. Brand – Easy
    

Each of these deserve more research (read googling) and I will leave it to you :)