Come here; for Muse calls, 

a siren allures and Sun sinks in the vastness of the night. 

Come here; for Bard calls,

a rhyme breaks and notation falls in dried ink.

Come here; for World celebrates,

a mourning moment in my life! 

Plato speaks on poets in Apology,

“…..the worst critics of their own writings –anybody taken at random from the crowd is better interpreter of them than they are of themselves….”

Apology and Ion are the only two Platonic creations, I find of any worth. Rest I consider rumbling of a “philosopher-with-moderate-level-of-understanding-and-exceptional-amount-of-flare-for-adoxography”. No wonder Elizabethean writers loved them, and that includes the Bard of Avon.

You say what of Socrates then? I will suggest reading Xenophon’s work to better understand Socrates. By Plato’s own admission, Soldiers make more accurate rendering of history, and writers are better raconteur. Now let us consider what Socrates, according to Plato, has to say about poets,

“…..For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not as works of art, but because they are inspired and possessed…and the soul of lyric poet does the same, as they themselves tell us; for they tell us that they gather their strains from honied fountains out of the gardens and dells of the Muses; thither, like the bees, they wing their way. And this is true. For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles….” (from ION)

We should ponder the veracity of this argument. Socrates, according to Plato,  believed that Poets don’t write out of their own accord, and are rather instruments or as he says; interpreters of Divinity. And the rhapsodes who sing of these poets, are their interpreters. Plato gives a very good analogy to help in understanding this concept. Consider a magnet with many rings of iron attached to it. He says that the Muse is the magnet. And the first ring is poet. The power of magnetism is termed as inspiration. The second ring is the rhapsode, who recites the poet. He is inspired by the poet, and the consecutive rings can be a musician, who is inspired by the reciting of the rhapsode, singers, inspired by the musician’s play, actor, inspired by the performance and audience, inspired by the drama.

To be cont…

PS: A quote from Aristotle about the nature of poets,

“….to perceive is to suffer…”

An Evening Spent by Pulteney Bridge

On that evening, a virtue in wine did I find,
intoxication grows ten fold with beauty beside,
and like the velvet touch of Bacchus' nectar,
subtly does, beauty wrap its arms around your sight...

This one is coming along well. Already on the twentieth passage! 

Why Oracle would survive?

For the following reasons,

1> Larry Ellison.

If you don’t know about him, then just to give you an analogy, which I am not very fond of, he is Steve Jobs of the enterprise sector. Flamboyance, audacity and a bit of puerility, he has everything.

2> Too big to fail

I know; in past,  organisations which were too big to fail, had not only failed but failed in quite a spectacular way. A more recent example would be Kodak!

But one of the major reason for failure of big organisations has been dichotomy in the available resources. Kodak was making money out of digital sensor market but was not investing heavily in it. It was still pursuing the dying art of film development and digital printing. Oracle is concentrated on its target area. Target enterprise market! Provide your best service and innovations to them and leave the consumer field, with low margins, for the likes of HP, Dell, Acer, Asus, Apple and etc.

3> They are not fools!!!

Google them.

Hello there, I am posting here some notes regarding today’s assignment by Prof. Andrew Graves

1. Joseph Schumpeter

Mr. Schumpeter was an Austrian. He was also, for a time being, Minister of Finance for Austrian government which is quite astonishing. I mean despite being in politics, he managed to contribute something useful to the field of social economics. In Mr. Tidd & Mr. Bessant’s book he is referred as grandfather of innovation. I am still not able to fully appreciate that title. Anyway moving on, Mr. Schumpeter suggested two concepts, which are really part of the  whole idea of innovation.

First concept is Monopoly Profits

When there is a stagnation in the industry, of product and process innovation, an entrepreneur comes along with a radical idea which totally transforms the market place. And he/she starts reaping all the profits of the innovation. This leads to a state of monopoly of the innovator in the market place and is known as Monopoly Profits. Eventually rest of the field catches up, and counters with their own imitations, striking dents in the profit margins of the original innovator. This process continues till a state of equilibrium is reached. After that the original innovator or a new entrepreneur comes up with another idea with the potential to change the game and the cycle repeats itself.

An example would be IBM Pcs in 80s. Microsoft came up with new ideas for the operating systems with graphical user interface and all of sudden all the market share went to them. They had an unchallenged monopoly till Mr. Jobs took over Apple’s CEO’s job in late 90s and begin the transformation of MAC OS, and Linux Group started coming up with noob friendly versions of linux destro. In later half of the first decade of the 21st Century, Google came up with their own version of web based operating system. Microsoft, after two decades of monopoly, has begin to lose some of its market share in the field of PC operating systems.

Second concept is Creative Destruction.

That phrase is an oxymoron and Mr. Schumpeter should be charge with linguistic murder for coming up with it. Anyway moving from my rather tasteless attempts at humor, creative destruction simply says that to create a new niche, something from the old setup must be destroyed.

It basically suggests that every new innovation carves its place in the market by destroying an already existing, and continuously implemented, idea.

An example would be the meteoric rise of motorcycle companies in India. For instance let us look at a company called Bajaj Auto. They were the biggest manufacturers of scooter in India and their scooters provided them with control over a great part of the market. But in early 2000s, they introduced a new affordable motorcycle model, Pulsar, which immediately begin to eat up Bajaj Scooters’ market share. People were flogging to buy a better, more powerful and aesthetically more pleasing two wheeler, at the same price, than scooters. Bajaj eventually closed their scooter production in early 2010.

2.  Sailing Ship effect

This is tricky one, and I would suggest you do your own reading along with what I am suggesting here.

First let us get done with the definition of the phrase,

sailing ship effect refers to the time when invention of the steam ships gave an unprecedented spur to the sailing ship technology, giving rise to ferocious competition between the two technologies. Eventually Steam Ships won the race because of their inherent superiority. But the interesting thing to note is that the new innovation, that is steam ship, inspired and challenged the established practice, that would be sailing ship, to not only improve its present structure but also innovate. 

Google suggests that, in 50 years after the invention of steam ships, sailing ship industry saw more technological advancement and innovation than, in last 300 years!!! Quite astonishing when you think about it. Incumbent technology’s demise is more or less certain, but its guardians try their best to keep it alive, and innovate at a very high rate.

I’d give you an example of it. It is actually happening right now! Conventional mechanical hard disks are being replaced by much superior and safe solid state drives. Although SSDs penetration in consumer market place isn’t that deep, but if enterprise sector is any indication of what is to come, then it is just a matter of time. HDDs maker are well aware of the fact that SSDs are the future and have been frantically trying to keep up with it. Result is for all of us to see, higher capacity and cheaper HDDS, more cache availability etc.  Few of you might argue that its Moore’s law at work, but remember no principle works on its own. Any procedural change is usually a result of complex mix of stimuli.

3. Riding two horses

This is another tricky topic. What exactly does riding two horses imply? Well it can have a positive as well as negative connotation,  but mostly negative.

Riding two horses can imply working on two different innovation strategies at the same time, resulting in diversion of resources and energies, which has potential to turn out into a disaster for the business.

But at the same time it can also mean simultaneously working on two aspects of innovation, manufacturing and marketing. In that case, it can lead to success. Understanding and evolving in accordance with the need of the market is part of the marketing process and when it occurs simultaneously along with the innovation in manufacturing, it is a certain path to the success of the venture.

In the above context, a good example would be recent introductions by two giants of aviation, Airbus and Boeing. Airbus introduced the concept of A380 to its launch partners in 2000 and begin the production along with 50 firm orders*. This implies that Airbus, while innovating the product aspect, was also marketing and modifying its product in accordance with the need of its customer. Similar thing happened with Boeing 787 Dreamliner. All Nippon Airways had already placed an order for 50 aircrafts in 2004 before it even went into production*!!!  Boeing was successfully riding two horses here, product innovation and marketing.

4. Technology Push versus Demand Pull

Another phrase from Mr. Schumpeter’s vernacular*. I am beginning to see why he is called grandfather of innovation. 

Now I couldn’t find much mention of technology push and demand pull in Managing Innovation‘s first chapter, but from what I have read on Internet and what common sense implies,

Technology push can be defined as a push (pun intended) from the R&D to production floor and eventually to the marketing, without understanding the market mood. A good example would be Newton by Apple in late 1990s. A misadventure by the company in the arena of tablets without properly understanding the need of the market.

Demand pull would be a situation where market dictates introduction of a new product or process. Market desires so, therefore so must be done!  An example of demand pull would be the delivery system for media content. Due to explosion in the consumption of digital data, through Internet, on mobile devices, has led every business to provide  customers with a mobile based content delivery system! All the apps available for various mobile operating systems, whether it is about NFC payments or mobile check in on airlines, are manifestation of  the demand from the market. 

I am feeling really lazy now, so I am off to bed. I would have to think about the applicability of this concept in environmental debate later.  Probably something to do with the lack of demand for environmentally safer technologies in the developing countries, and technology push in the field of environment; by the big companies in the western economies.

* —– Thank you to wikipedia for this bit of info.

Life is funny.

A little poem to a night that could have been…rain and falling leaves…moonshine…few dew dressed smiles and a frost touched kiss….

A little tickle and a smile stretching across her face,

and her wily whispers of wondrous wont of wanton,

reminding of those nights spend under the naked skin…

and touch of those sensuous sensations on my self…

kissing away the agony of agonizing schism,

leading to the dreams of dozen days spend in bliss,

and moonshine flowing through her arcs,

churning moments to mitigate the misery of living….with;

-    A sight so mighty that Calliope bows,

a face so lovely that Erota smiles,

a voice so vibrant that  Euterpe chimes,

a smile so encompassing that Urania sighs,

Muse to Muses of the Legend……

My apologies for not updating the site regularly.

I just moved to Bath, Somerset, UK. Still in the transition phase.

I would begin to update website on a regular basis once I get hold of my surroundings.

I have been missing in action for last few weeks.

Visa Blues.

But now I am back, and back with lots of photographs. Here goes the first one…

I realize I have not been posting here regularly…well its not the case of procrastination or lethargy. It is just that I have been really busy with some other projects. I have been trying my hands at web designing and coding has started to look fun again. Currently working at projectbeast.co.uk. I am going to develop it into a fully functional social network, though how “social” it would be; still remains to be seen.

I have lot of stuff waiting to be published. First would be the short story, Mr. Berry Fountain and Garlic Paradox. Then there are tons of photographs waiting to be post processed and posted. Also few articles on current political storm about the propriety of  Parliamentary Democracy.  Then my review of Kindle DX. And ofcourse, a sonnet