Thales of Miletus was a Greek mathematician and a pre-Socratic philosopher, generally regarded as the first philosopher on the Greek tradition. And here’s an interesting story about him: he predicted the weather and a good olive harvest for a particular year. He went a step further and reserved all the olive presses in advance at... Continue Reading →
Is the new normal ‘non-normal’?
When all of this is over, we will look back and think about why we ended up at a point where these stark, difficult choices had to be made - and what can we do to avoid these extreme situations in future? Needless to say, decision making under these conditions is hard - but then... Continue Reading →
Is the new normal ‘non-normal’?
It is time to rethink some of our fundamental assumptions underlying our decision making models. The normal distribution is a good place to start ..
The Speed premium
If there could be a VUCA* period in highly compressed time, we are in it right now. The world around us is changing in ways that we are yet to fully grasp. Among the many things that will change (some forever), I think we will end up re-defining what growth and innovation mean. The traditional... Continue Reading →
Navigating ‘wicked environments’
I am currently reading ‘Thinking in Bets’ by Annie Duke on of my favorite topics: Decision making under uncertainty (the book itself is so-so – will review that separately). A key point she makes: it is not the outcomes but the quality of your decisions that matter. Therein lies an important pearl of wisdom: we... Continue Reading →
Bill Gates: Swinging for the fences
I am a huge fan of Bill Gates - especially his post Microsoft avatar focused on philanthropy. Melinda and he have posted their Annual Letter. Longish read - but entirely worth it. https://www.gatesnotes.com/2020-Annual-Letter?WT.mc_id=20200210000000_AL2020_BG-EM_&WT.tsrc=BGEM Gates Foundation: Annual Letter 2020 And for me, 3 key takeaways that should hold good in business (and life in general): Go... Continue Reading →
Designing a Learning System
In 1651, Thomas Hobbes wrote, “reason … is nothing but reckoning (that is, Adding and Subtracting) of the Consequences of generall names agreed upon.” It is widely accepted that with this, he laid the foundation for the Computational theory of the mind. And as often happens in science, one thing led to the other and... Continue Reading →
What is learning?
I just finished reading a fascinating short story by Jorge Luis Borges called 'Funes the Memorious'. The story is about this person who has a 'perfect' memory and can recall every minute detail about everything around him. "... he had reconstructed a whole day; he never hesitated, but each reconstruction had required a whole day"... Continue Reading →
What do you do when data is the problem?
I want to take a quick diversion and put down my thoughts about a specific problem that I continue to see in multiple enterprises. We are working with a mid-size bank on the classic problem of improving digital cross-sell sales. Except that, here’s the rub – there is almost no historical data – for the... Continue Reading →
