Why can’t we make our train journeys safer and smarter with technology?

Are we using really technology to improve our life? If yes, why still we notice railway TC carrying a printed list and go for verification and the people in RAC and wait list wait for TC to allocate the berth.

Do we have options to improve current situations and bring transparency in the system? Why can’t we use existing technologies and provide a connected touch screen in coach and handle many of the activities of the train travel.

Like….

Reservation booking: While booking ticket, passenger should be able to view the coach layout with berth status and choose the available and preferred berth.
Profile check: Profile check can be done while booking (like Adhaar based)
Verification of passenger while boarding train: Passenger himself can complete the verification at available connected touch device in coach.
Swapping of berths: We notice many times, people with families or with sr. citizens requesting for swapping. By using this touch screen they can swap the berths.
Dynamic booking: Dynamic booking facility, can be provided to passengers. Passengers who don’t have a reservation, they can buy general ticket and board train. If they find any vacant seat online, during travel they can book the berth. The Railway can collect amount by credit cards.
Always correct data with the Railway: We notice often, when an accident happens, the railway struggle to get the exact number of passengers on the train. Many people board trains with general tickets, waiting list and also without tickets. Currently there is no way to have their status about boarding. If we have a device, we can control this type of problems.
Bribing TC/TC Demanding bribe for allocating berth: With transparency, bribes can be controlled.
Preference for berth allocations during travel: Many times we notice, TC violates the rules and allocate berth to general ticket people by taking bride. This can be controlled with dynamic booking.

Challenge the status quo

Do you think innovating is difficult? Do you often get asked to be ‘Innovative’ at work? Well, I have often been in situations where I have felt intimidated by the sheer breadth of what to do and where to start. Can you guess what the image below is, it is the very first version of what is now called a Rubik’s cube.

Source: https://ruwix.com/the-rubiks-cube/first-rubiks-cube-prototype-invention/

A group of eight wannabe innovators were ushered into a conference room in the tony Koramangala locality. We were all geared up with biases, tools and prejudices of our own for innovation. Guess what? All that was about to be thrown out of the window! Over the next two days, we would be debating, facing our deepest fears (read biases), learning and unlearning about prototyping, collaborating, preparing challenge boards, thrashing out case studies, among other activities. Our current state was pretty much like this crude Rubik’s cube.

     This was about to change.

Day 1

So here we begin, we learnt about the categories of innovation and you do not necessarily need to ‘INVENT’ something to be called an innovator. There were four broad categories where we could innovate - Product, Process, Customer Experience and Business Model. We also had the point driven home when we were told – ‘Patents are only useful if it adds value to a larger populace’. Point taken!

            We were then guided into the actual approach of systematic innovation, the 8 steps which can be broadly classified into three categories – Pipeline problem, Velocity problem and about Batting Average.

            We next discussed about having a – ‘Challenge Book’ that would be the place where challenges can be made available for other stakeholders to see. It is also important to have a clarity on these challenges and allow for anyone to suggest for solutions to a problem. Often, we are stuck with a bias that an 'outsider' cannot offer a solution to my problem.

            We were then handed over a case study, popularly called the Grossmann and Patrick IBM Problem. A classic case study about how a frontline employee – Grossman, who was not responsible for Innovation, Creativity or Strategy almost single handedly got an ailing IBM (in the 90s) into the internet era. But wait, was he able to do it singlehandedly? Nope, what he needed was a person who believed and backed his idea. A Champion. In most cases, we need people convinced about your idea to take it forward and to socialize it amongst the larger audience. Some of the questions we answered about this case study got us a broader perspective into some of the roles needed for a successful innovation.

An Idea either finds a Champion or it dies

Also, about some of the attributes of an Innovator, broadly a person who is curious, does a lot of experiments, can communicate well and collaborate.

Day 2

The most fascinating thing about the session on this day is about how we face our biases, it was mind altering, to put it mildly. We were shown a few monostable optical illusions. We were shown a couple of images/ gifs, which each of us saw it from a biased view (and each of us strongly thought that his/ her version was the correct one). We literally could not believe our eyes. Imagine the amount of havoc it something mixes up your vision and how it is wired to your brain!

And the best part of making us realize about these biases - the video of the Backwards Bicycle.

And, guess what - Cognitive Biases are supposedly much stronger than optical biases. We also realized how difficult it was to think thorough our biases. And when it comes to innovation we need to park some of these biases from not altering our decision. Something that is very difficult, what is easier is to be ‘aware’ of the biases and to an extent not allow them from interfering with our thought process.

Is failure an opportunity?

Failure is often treated with negative adjectives such as sadness or disgust. We are often scared that a failure will create a negative impression about us to our team or leads. We think that if we fail, it will get us a negative grade in our performance.

To understand whether it is actually a true, let us walk down the memory lane to our childhood. Do we remember how we started walking? If not ourselves, we would have definitely seen babies in our family or our siblings their attempt to start walking. The first time they attempted they have failed. The have fallen down. The immediate next reaction was to get up and try again.

The same philosophy applies almost everywhere. One of the important techniques to answer a question is by eliminating the wrong answers. You tick off the answer that you are sure is not right. Why don’t we apply the same, in our experiment or while ideating. When our idea fails, we just discovered a way that the idea should not have been pursued. It might be  that we just need to change the steps to develop the ideas or even we might be experimenting with the wrong audiance.

To justify this thought, let us look at some of the products stories and how they succeeded.

Bubble Wrap:  The initial intention of creating a bubble wrap was create a trendy new textured wallpaper. This was a total failure, until when IBM used it to package their newly launched computers while transporting them. It became a success overnight and today it is a defacto choice for packaging any delicate items.

WD-40: After 39 times of unsuccessful attempts the company perfected the formula and thus the name WD-40 “Water Displacement perfected on the 40^th try”

So failures is not then end of the end of the road. It is just a step closer to success. The only hardship is to stay focused and persist the idea till you succeed. There is always a right time and a right way to present an idea.

In words of Henry ford, "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently".

Credits

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2015/01/16/8-successful-products-that-only-exist-because-of-failure/

http://www.businessinsider.com/wd-40-failed-39-times-before-becoming-successful-2015-7

2nd Inning

2nd Inning

 

There is a general belief that everyone deserves a second chance. If you believe in it, then you are on my side to explore this further in the space of innovation. If you don’t believe in it, then also reading it further may force you to re-think your position. Many companies, organizations, and teams run innovation campaign at small and big level. They come in various forms like drives, hack fest, hackathon etc. Ideas are collected and at the end winners are awarded. As soon as the campaign is over, things comes to full stop. The ideas that did not made it to winners circle are completely forgotten. Even the submitters of those ideas feels it may not be worth taking forward. In short, the one time drive killed thousands of potential idea in the process of giving light to few at the top. These forgotten ideas deserves a second chance.

Ideas that did not made to top may be a case of insufficient details, miss-aligned reviewers, time pressure, or articulation. Sometimes the idea may be too early in the game and market is not yet ready to understand or accept. These ideas may have hidden potential in other areas that the reviewers or sponsors are not ready to focus or invest. They may be supplementary or complementary to other ideas or products. All these suggests they should not be ignored. They should be re-looked with fresh perspective and fresh mind from time to time regularly. No idea should have an expiry date unless it is already implemented in the same exact form. No idea should be ignored at review stage.

Often questions arise on the feasibility to maintain such idea pools. That should be easy to resolve in today’s world. Storage has become cheaper. Tagging and search technologies have improved. Crowd sourcing, community funding, and VCs are always eager to invest. Further, the value of such databases is much exceptional if someone decides to utilize it at max. In short, it is worth investing in such ideal pools as against ignore them as lost. By giving them a second chance, you are keeping the submitter hope alive. The submitter mature over a period of time and they themselves will see their ideas morph into new ideas over a period of time. The submitter themselves will maintain their ideas with latest development in the world around them. Wikipedia is one such example where submitter maintain the content in absence of any returns. Having such idea pools may result in small and supplementary ideas to existing products. Having such idea pools may connect submitter to potential champions or sponsors in future when the time is right to invest. Having such idea pools will keep the hopes alive for many and becomes a source of inspiration to continue on new ideas.

 
In conclusion, the idea of giving second chance to all ideas has merit and potential much beyond our current imagination. It may open doors into infinity to prosper innovation for ages to come. In games like cricket it is the 2^nd inning which is important to conclude the game. Hence, second chance is important in the space of innovation.

Artificial intelligence in Airport?

Anyone and everyone who has travelled by Air knows the importance of time.   Airlines advice passengers to reach airport at least 3 hours before flight departure and for international flights and about 2 hours for domestic.  While passengers enjoy being in the retail area of airport but unfortunately most of this time is spent standing in queues for checking and security clearance. 

Globally, the average time spent at an airport — from arrival until an aircraft’s doors are closed — was 133 minutes in 2014. Out of this time only around 30 minutes is spent by the passenger having relaxing time in retail area. The time consuming process in airports include- Check-in/bag drop, Security, Orientation, and Boarding. This is a loose- loose situation for everyone. Passenger’s experience is bad as he has to wait in the queue. The airlines cost is more because they have to put extra staff to handle customers, the Airport security time staff also need to spend more time.

The best possible outcome for an Airport is when passenger spend more time in retail area, which would result in more sales in these area which in-turn in more revenue for airport.  Airports around the world have transformed into a high tech, heavily secured shopping malls to capitalize this opportunity.  Which the concept of duty free purchase, it give added incentive to passengers to purchase.

Many processes have been introduced that have reduced the queue time for passengers. Airlines provide option to passengers to web check-in and use home printed bag tags. When they reach airports they just need to drop their bag and proceed towards security.  In US the TSA, who is responsible for airline and airport security has introduced a pre-screening program called TSA Precheck. Through this frequent flyers can enroll to the TSA precheck program, on enrolling they would be issued a Known Traveler Number (KTN) after successful background check. When they reach airport they have a special queue for security clearance which is many times faster than regular queue. All these initiatives have helped reduce the time spent by passenger in queues, but with limited success. The problem is the TSA Precheck is not available to everyone e.g. non US resident, and not everyone wanted to go through the process of getting the KTN number.

Now coming to the main problem, how can airports process be streamlined to ensure all passengers spend more time in retail area then in queues? This is where technology and in particular AI and biometrics can play a major role. Many recent developments in AI technology has introduced algorithms that can detect human emotions, this enables the system to see if a person is stressed or scared. This technology is maturing fast and many leading players including Microsoft has adopted it. This would enable profiling of people with bad intentions. This could be clubbed with facial recognition and government database check to ensure the profiling is done properly. This would mean that only suspicious passengers go through extra checks and frisking and all others can basically clear security check in seconds.  This can go a long way in making passengers less hassled in airports. This saves time and cost for airlines also as they don’t have to send passenger information to government agencies for domestic flights as required by many governments. When passenger spends more time in retail area rather than in queues, it’s a win-win for everyone.

Although this technology is in early stages and would need manual interventions in the initial phase, with machine learning system would get smarted day by day and at some point would be able to handled security checks on its own in a fully automated way. The future is promising.

My Objective of the year – Reduce the waste of the ideas!

Waste always bothers me.  I am sure it does to many of you as well.   What are the common wastages you can think of?  Close your eyes and think of wastes that really bother you and what you can do about it?

 

 

The above will be common thoughts that more than 80% of us will come up with!    I am sure some of you thought of Money when thinking of waste as well.  Did you come up with some other “thought” when thinking about waste?  Do let me know in the comments below what are the other wastes that bother you and more importantly what are you doing to address the waste or prevent it? 

My area of concern about Waste might surprise many of you.  Have you ever thought of wasted idea?  What is wasted idea anyway?  Wasted idea is an idea which did not really see light of the day just because it was not articulated properly, it did not get a supporter or sponsor for it, maybe it was just way before its time or some other reason.   For many of you who have been in computer industry for long time, you have seen that AI was talked about even 20 years back, lots of research work and concrete algorithms were developed many many years ago and if that was the case – why we did not doing smart things that we do with AI few years back?  IMHO there was a crucial piece of the puzzle that was blocker was the compute power and storage.  Don’t you believe me? Read the following article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intelligence

 

Now with the easy availability of compute and storage power , AI is seeing new usecases and today its used in many many extra ordinary ways but imagine if that had not happen?  AI would have been such a big wasted effort!  A good idea which has potential did not make it just because it was before its time.  Simple isn’t it?  So what can we do about it ?  Or should we do anything about it at all?  I am for sure on a journey to eliminate as much waste as possible from the various innovation activities that we do within the organization.  Do you do innovation activities in your organization?  What do you do with the things that you generate/create after activity is done?    My common observation from being part of such activities in my organization as well as interviewing several people who are associated with innovation is , we have not quiet cracked the problem of how to identify the idea which is a total “junk” idea v/s the idea that might need some more thought before we can make decision on it.   It’s the latter category of idea that I call the wasted idea as more often than not, after the innovation activity is done, these ideas are shelved and no one looks at them again.  Should we be doing things differently?  How do we give second chance to these ideas?  Look at potential of merging of one or more ideas and creating a new idea altogether?    If this idea is real for you and you are interested in solving the problem with me! Please do reach out to me and we will find out ways and means to help each other out!

 

 

Image source:

1.       http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-obscure-reason-why-supermarkets-are-allowed-to-send-food-waste-to-landfill-a6861196.html

2.       https://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-11650187-stock-footage-thematic-hd-stock-footage-on-save-water-theme-water-leaking-from-pipe-wastage-stock-movie-clip-on.html

 

 

Can Unisys ride the Artificial Intelligence wave?

Artificial Intelligence is not a new term to the industry, having been coined in 1955 by John McCarthy. However, the usage of AI has been dormant over the years, primarily because of limitations imposed by hardware and data. After six decades of chequered history, AI is making a comeback because of the advancements in hardware and the way how we store and manipulate huge amounts of data structured and unstructured data. Unisys has products like Elevate, Digistics and LineSight that span a wide array of industries like Finance, Transportation & Cargo and Safe Cities. Let us take the financial sector for example, a sector which AI is taking by storm. Can Unisys ride the Artificial Intelligence wave?

Almost every financial company is started using AI to reduce costs, enhance the customer experience and optimize their processes. For example, JPMorgan Chase’s Contract Intelligence (COiN) platform uses image recognition software to analyze legal documents and extract important data points and clauses in seconds, compared to the 360,000 hours it takes to manually review 12,000 annual commercial credit agreements. According to a 2015 study by research firm Javelin Strategy, false declines, legitimate transactions that are wrongly rejected, account for $118 bln in losses for retailers. A third of false decline cases result in lost customers, and in US alone they incur damage that is worth 13 times the value of actual fraud. The widespread adoption of AI across industries is predicted to drive global revenues of $12.5 billion in 2017 and $47 billion in 2020 with a CAGR of 55.1% from 2016 to 2020. Given the direction that the market is headed towards, there is clearly a lot of potential in these domains.

Some might say that it is too late for a new player to enter the AI industry. However, AI is not all technology. It is both a technology and an art. Today, getting the data is not the challenge. Everyone has a different perception of data and how to get insights from it and for this very reason, I believe that it is never too late for a new player to enter the industry. If someone has a better algorithm, they can compete with the best in the market because their solution will be provide an improvement in profits and reduction in costs which is actually the main goal. Then comes the idea of security. Unisys has security in its DNA. Our customers trust us with their data on our servers. We can leverage this trust and provide better products and services to serve our customers.

Artificial Intelligence is still evolving and has a long way to go. Unisys still has a great chance to get into this market and disrupt it.

Sources: 

1. https://www.toptal.com/finance/market-research-analysts/artificial-intelligence-in-finance

2. http://www.cmo.com/features/articles/2017/8/24/15-mindblowing-stats-about-artificial-intelligence-dmexco.html#gs.kQfReEY

Everyone is an innovator !

Innovation as a word can create confusions in many people's minds and have a feeling that it is for intellectuals. That is a myth that needs to be busted. Everyone is an innovator. In fact innovation keeps happening without one knowing that they are an innovator.

 The fundamental thing one needs to understand is that Innovation happens when you look at solving a challenge faced. Example of a challenge can be in our day to day work that we go about. How can I improve my quality of deliverable? First thing to do is what am I doing as part of my work and what help do I seek to get the quality verified. Do I get called by my peers for review of quality? Is this something that can be referenced as a good practice that can be adopted by everyone in the team which will lead to consistent quality across all the team members? Can we bring predictability based on repeated approach?

 If the answer is Yes, then you have achieved Innovation in your area of work. We can always start with addressing challenges however small they are in nature and get towards a better tomorrow.

Innovation will kindle the energy dormant in every individual and having your curiosity quotient high and help keep your work place and surroundings enjoyable.

As I close my blog I would like to throw up one use case of automating Unit testing. We have recommendations of tools like NUnit, JUnit for unit testing which will help the developers ensure better coverage of their user stories and at the same time bring up the efficiency of their work. We can definitely look at improvement of at least 5 - 10% improvement in productivity.

 

I did refer to the blog on the importance of innovation

http://www.paggu.com/getting-into-roots/what-is-innovation-why-innovation-is-important/