Types of Graph Analysis

 

Graph Analysis has become a groundbreaking way for organizations to look at their data and understand the relationships between them. For two years running, Gartner selected graphs as one of their top analytics and data trends because of the significant potential for value creation. 

Graphs capture relationships and connections between entities. The relationships and connections between the entities are used in data analysis. Knowing how the data is connected, and building a graph to understand the relationships are becoming increasingly important because they make it easier to explore those connections and made new insights.  For example, understanding how a person’s buying pattern is influenced by all the entities the person is connected with. 

Centrality analysis: Estimates how important a node is for the connectivity of the network. It helps to estimate the most influential people in a social network or most frequently accessed web pages by using the PageRank algorithm.

Community detection: Distance and density of relationships can be used to find groups of people interacting frequently with each other in a social network. Community analytics also deals with the detection and behaviour patterns of communities.

Connectivity analysis: Determine how strongly or weakly connected two nodes are.

Path analysis: Examines the relationships between nodes. Mostly used in shortest distance problems.

Importance of Fintech to India

On 8 November 2016, the Government of India announced the demonetization of all ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, it set off a wave of Fintech growth in India. Fintech is now mainstream and a critical segment for the future of India's economic growth.

Here are 10 reasons why Fintech is very important to India.

1. Economic Growth
The payment segment has been a major enabler of economic growth. Electronic payments systems added $300B to GDP in 70 countries between 2011-2015, which resulted in ~2.6Million Jobs/Yr
Each 1% increase in electronic payment produces ~$104 B in consumption of goods & services

2. Financial Inclusion
Fintech opens up opportunities for the previously unbanked population to access modern financial instruments. For people living in poverty or at the fringes of the economy, Fintech lowers costs of Financial transactions: Lower cost of credit and other banking services.

3. Speed & Quality of Innovation
Fintech drives improvements in traditional financial services – which will replace legacy systems. Eg: Peer-to-peer lending, Robo advisors, Hi-frequency trading

4. Business Sustainability & Scalability
Fintech has made businesses sustainable & Scalable. The entire e-commerce economy was built on e-payment systems and new business models such as Ridesharing: OLA, UBER, Metro Bikes, etc were developed on Fintech e-payment systems – which allows these businesses to scale and grow rapidly

5. Transparency & Audits
All digital transactions are inherently auditable hence bringing greater transparency into the system. Data sharing in real-time across banks & financial institution reduce fraud risks and reduces the cost of regulatory processes.

6. New Value Streams
New fintech technologies are creating new business opportunities. Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies have spawned whole new businesses.

7. Market Curation & Structural Transformation 
Fintech technologies are transforming other industries. For example, healthcare record management, Real estate, land registration with Blockchain, etc. This is bringing structural reforms to businesses that were on the fringes of the regulated economy into the mainstream economy.

8. Collaborative Culture
New Fintech businesses are built in collaboration with other businesses. For example, Blockchain is based on open collaboration between members who host the shared ledger.

9. The Scale of the Industry
Fintech has grown from being a niche to mainstream. Today Fintech companies are collectively worth more than $500Billion and directly employ millions of men.

10. Borderless Innovation
Technological innovations in Fintech can be quickly adapted across borders, creating new competition and new opportunities for existing players. This rapid innovation is bringing whole new financial hubs and opening new markets.

How Machine Learning Aids New Software Product Development

Developing new software products has always been a challenge. The traditional product management processes for developing new products takes lot more time/resources and cannot meet needs of all users. With new Machine Learning tools and technologies, one can augment traditional product management with data analysis and automated learning systems and tests.

Traditional New Product Development process can be broken into 5 main steps:

1. Understand
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test

In each of the five steps, one can use data analysis & ML techniques to accelerate the process and improve the outcomes. With Machine Learning, the new 5 step program becomes:

1. Understand – Analyze:Understand User RequirementsAnalyze user needs from user data. In case of Web Apps, one can collect huge amounts of user data from Social networks, digital surveys, email campaigns, etc.
   
2. Define – Synthesize: Defining user needs & user personas can be enhanced by synthesizing user's behavioral models based on data analysis.
   
3. Ideate – Prioritize: Developing product ideas and prioritizing them becomes lot faster and more accurate with data analysis on customer preferences.
   
4. Prototype – Tuning: Prototypes demonstrate basic functionality and these prototypes can be rapidly, automatically tuned to meet each customer needs. This aids in meeting needs of multiple customer segments.Machine Learning based Auto-tuning of software allows for rapid experimentation and data collected in this phase can help the next stage.
   
   
5. Test – Validate: Prototypes are tested for user feedback. ML systems can receive feedback and analyze results for product validation and model validation. In addition, ML systems can auto-tune, auto configure products to better fit customer needs and re-test the prototypes.

Closing Thoughts

For a long time, product managers had to rely on their understanding of user needs. Real user data was difficult to collect and product managers had to rely on surveys and market analysis and other secondary sources for data. But in the digital world, one can collect vast volumes of data, and use data analysis tools and Machine learning to accelerate new software product development process and also improve success rates.

Current State of Digital wallets in India

This article is a follow up to my previous blogs and revisit the impact of demonetization on small businesses and common man.

It has been 18 months since demonetization and surprisingly, at the street level, India still remains a predominantly cash economy. Only the major industries have moved towards a complete digital economy for a vast majority of their transactions. 

Indian digital wallet companies mainly consists of numerous startups such as Paytm, Mobikwik, and Oxigen Services, etc. These startups along with Airtel and Jio, the two major telecom service providers have played a major role in moving the Indian economy towards digitization and the industry has crossed Rs 12,000 crores of transactions per year in 2017!

While this is a significant number, year 2018 does not seem to be a smooth sailing and I suspect year 2018 will turn out to be a very tough year for digital wallets. 

What Changed?

RBI (Reserve Bank of India) imposed one major guideline for Digital wallet services to fulfill their KYC (know your customer) information & February 28, 2018 was the deadline.

This directive unnerved India's unorganized sector and refused to cooperate and many users were willing to move away from Digital wallets back to cash based transactions. As of march 2018, only 10% of the total customers in the digital wallets industry had submitted their KYC information (which was to link their Aadhar card with the account - by providing biometric information).

This implies that nearly 90% of existing customers were willing to walk away from digital wallets!

A 90% loss in customer base can kill the industry.

But on the ground, things are really not that bad. Though 90% of customers walked away, the total volume of transactions fell by 21.3% and the total value of transactions fell by 16.7% only.

This implies that there is a strong silver lining to the dark clouds and digital wallets companies can continue to grow only if they innovate and develop newer services.

Opportunity Ahead

As per information released by the RBI, the effect of demonetization was at its peak in January 2017 and the overall number of transactions via digital wallet during this period was reportedly about 295.5 million. Despite such a significant rise in digital wallet transactions, the percentage of transactions used for purposes of buying goods and services remained at just about 29 percent, at around 86.8 million transactions and only a minor percentage of all transactions conducted with digital wallets, was used for the purpose of purchasing goods and services.

Digital wallets has now become the first step in formal banking for a whole new generation of customers. For Several young adults, a digital wallet is their first bank account!

It is the nature of this India customer base, which results in such a high skew of the results: 90% drop in customer base results in only 16.7% drop in transaction value. This implies that most customers had very little transactions.

Small & kirana business have returned to cash

Small & kirana business, especially those in small towns and rural areas adapted digital wallets in the initial days on demonetization and now have returned to cash - mainly because of high transaction costs. PayTm charges 3% transaction fees to transfer funds from PayTm account to a regular bank account. 

Majority of small & kirana businesses do less than Rs 2000 of sales per day, and paying 3% transaction fees was unacceptable for small businesses!

eCommerce accounts for a tiny fraction of retail sales

eCommerce accounts for just 2-4% of Indian retail, and only 8% of Indian retail sales happens through organized retailers (such as Big Bazaar, Reliance Retails etc). 

This means that nearly 90% of retail sales is still happening over cash and there is a good opportunity for Indian Digital wallets to win them over - only if the transaction fees are eliminated.

Impact of UPI

UPI or Unified Payments Interface developed by the NPCI. 

The disruptive effect of digital wallets was met with a rapid and effective response by the banks; they quickly launched their own mobile wallets. SBI came up with SBI Buddy, HDFC Bank launched PayZapp, and ICICI Bank offered ICICI Pockets digital wallet - all powered by UPI. 

UPI permitted real time money transfer from one bank to another via mobile phones.

This new payment interface was not available in Digital wallets and that has hindered Indian digital wallets.

Future for Indian Digital Wallets

Year 2018 will be marked as the year of "crossing the chasm" for most digital wallet providers. Companies that can innovate and offer lower cost services (when compared to traditional banks), will ultimately win the battle against use of cash for transactions.

Indian Digital wallet providers must provide an alternate banking model that is affordable, transparent & help customers from financial standpoint.

In Indian context, Indian Digital wallet providers may also have to enable independent agents to work/operate as a human interface with whom customers can talk/call/interact when they have problems. A pure 100% online bank cannot win small business owners - many of them are not fully literate or knowledgeable in digital banking terms/technology.

Use of local agent also helps in onboarding new customers, getting their KYC details and initiating new customers into the world of digital banking.

Indian Digital wallet providers have to innovate beyond payment banks and offer a whole suite of banking services - either directly or via partnering with existing banks, while keeping a sharp focus on winning Indian small businesses and kirana stores. For example offer Peer-to-peer lending services (like Monex), offer investments services: Mutual Funds, Debt funds and government investment schemes etc.

Indian Digital wallet providers have to create a completely branchless experiences. Digital wallet companies need to move beyond mobiles and embrace web banking services and offer value added services - such as international money transfers: Global money remittances, insurance, GST filing, tax planning, etc.

Lastly, Indian Digital wallet providers have to embrace cash! Customers should be able to convert their money in digital wallets into cash without transaction fees.  Though this sounds counter intuitive, there are customers who need cash for their daily living - for example: to buy a bus ticket in DTC or BMTC busses, To pay traffic fines, To pay for postal stamps, etc. There are thousands of areas where government agencies do not accept anything but cash.

Closing Thoughts 

From a business perspective, Indian mobile wallets sector is currently fighting to survive and overcome its hardest phase. The industry has to innovate and continue fighting

I believe that the effect of the KYC mandate on the digital wallet industry is limited. Over the long term, the mandate will prove to be advantageous and enable them to be more competitive with the current banking systems. New innovations will solve the problems of interoperability between different payment banks, debit/credit cards and banks.

Digital wallet industry will emerge from this crisis stronger and better. 


Read more at:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/62229424.cms?
https://inc42.com/buzz/mobile-wallets-drop-users-full-kyc-rbi/
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Basics of Text Analytics

Serverless Computing for Microservices

Microservices is a new architecture of developing software. Microservices is best defined as:

"Service Oriented Architecture composed of loosely coupled components that have clearly defined boundaries"

This can be interpreted a set of software functions that work together based on predefined rules for example take a restaurant website. A typical restaurant website does not have high traffic all through the day, and traffic increases during lunch & dinner time. So having this website on a dedicated VM is a waste of resources. Also the website can be broked down into few distinct functions. The main webpage would be the landing zone, and from there each section like Photos, Menu, Location, etc., could be another independent function. The user triggers these funtions by clicking on the hyperlinks - and users will be served with the requested data.

This implies no coupling or loosely coupled functions that make up the entire website and each funtion can be modified/updated independently. This implies, the business owner can independently - without the need to bringdown the entire website.

From cost prespective also, building a website with Function-as-a-Service - allows the business to pay for the actual usage and each segment of the site can scale independently.

Run Big Data Apps on Containers with Mesosphere

Apache Mesos was created in 2009 at UC Berkeley. Designed to run large scale webapps like Twitter, Uber, etc. It can scale upto 10,000s of nodes and supports Docker Containers.

Mesos is a distributed OS kernel:

• Two level resource scheduling
• Launch tasks across the cluster
• Communication between tasks (like IPC)
• APIs for building “native” applications (aka frameworks): program against the datacenter
• APIs in C++, Python, JVM-languages, Go and counting
• Pluggable CPU, memory, IO isolation
• Multi-tenant workloads
• Failure detection & Easy failover and HA

Mesos is a multi-framework platform solution: weighted fair sharing, roles, etc. Runs Docker containers alongside other popular frameworks e.g. Spark, Rails, Hadoop, Allows users to run regular services and batch apps in the same cluster. Mesos has advanced scheduling: resources, constraints, global view of resources, which is designed for HA and self-healing.

Mesos is now a proven at scale, battle-tested in production running the biggest of the web apps. 

Advantages of Serverless Computing

Advantages of Corda - Distributed Ledger Technology

Product Management 101 - Customer validation is the key

Recently, I was having lunch with a co-founder of a startup in Bangalore. They have a vision which sounds good on the surface: Provide data loss protection on Cloud. Though this sounds as such a old & proven idea, they have a very good secret sauce which gives them a unique value proposition: Security, Cost benefits & much better RPO/RTO than competition.

Like most entrepreneur, he started out by validating his product idea with customers. Starting with customer survey, asking customers about their pain points and asking them:  "If this product solves your problem, will you buy it?"

Customer validation is a good point to start, but one must also be aware that such a survey can lead to several pitfalls.

1. Customer needs could change with time, and are no longer interested when the product is launched.
2. Customer just expressed his 'wants' and not his 'needs', and may not pay for the actual product.
3. Customer has no stake in the product. Just answering few questions was easy - there was no commitment or risks.

All this risks imply that customer validation may result in false positives.

False positive is a known risk factor in new product development and startups often take such risks. In case of my friend's startup, he took that risk and decided to invest in developing a prototype.

Several months have gone by and his company is busy building the prototype and his biggest fear is that customers may not embrace his product and is constantly changing what should be his MVP - Minimum Viable Product.

What is a Minimum Viable Product?

A minimum viable product (MVP) is the most pared down version of a product that can still be released. An MVP has three key characteristics:

It has enough value that people are willing to use it or buy it initially.
It demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adapters.
It provides a feedback loop to guide future development.

The idea of MVP is to ensure that one can develop a basic product which early adapters will buy, use & give valuable feedback that can help guide the next iteration of product development.

In other words, MVP is the first version of a customer validated product.

The MVP does not generate profits, it is just a starting point for subsequent product development - which in turn results in rapid growth and profits.

Customers who buy the MVP are the innovators & early adapters, and no company can be profitable serving just the early adapters. But a successful MVP opens the pathway towards the next iterations of the product which will be embraced by majority of customers: 'Early Majority', 'Late Majority' and 'Laggards'.

MVP is also expensive for startups

For a lean startup, developing a MVP can be expensive. MVP is based on: Build -> Measure -> Learn process - which is a waterfall model.

There are two ways to reduce risks associated with developing an MVP. One way to reduce risks is to avoid false positives.

While conducting market research during customer validation process, one must ensure that customer is invested in this product development.

At the first sight, it is not easy to get customer to invest in a new product development. Customers can invest their Time, Reputation &/or Money.

By getting customers to spend time on the potential solution to their problem is the first step.

Second step would be get them invest their reputation. Can customer refer someone else who also has the same problem/need? Is the customer willing to put his name down on the product as the Beta user? Getting customer invest their reputation would most often eliminate the risks of false positives.

One good way to get customers invest their reputation is to create a user group or community - where customers with similar needs can interact with each other and new product development team - while helping new product development.

In case of B2B products, customers can also invest money in new product development. Getting customers to invest money is not so tough. I have seen this happen in several occasions. I call this co-development with customers (see my blog on this topic)

Kick Starter programs have now taken hold and today startups are successfully using kick starter programs to get customers invest money in their new product development.

Accelerating the Development Cycle & Lowering Development Costs

A lean startup should avoid developing unwanted features.

Once customers are invested in this new product, the startup will usually start developing the product and march towards creating the MVP.  However, it is common to develop a product and then notice that most customers do not use 50% of the features that are built!

Lean startup calls for lowering wastage by not building unused features. The best way to do this is to run short tests and experiments on simulation models. First build a simulation model and ask customers to use it and get their valuable feedback. Here we are still doing the Build -> Measure -> Learn process, but we are doing it on feature sets and not the entire product. This allows for a very agile product development process and minimizes waste.

Run this simulation model with multiple customers and create small experiments with the simulation model to get the best possible usage behavior from customers. These experimental models are also termed as Minimum Viable Experiment (MVE), which forms the blue print for the actual MVP!

Running such small experiments has several advantages:

• It ensures that potential customers are still invested in your new product.
• Helps develop features that are more valuable/rewarding than others.
• Build a differentiated product - which competes on how customers use the product, rather than having the most set of features.
• Helps learn how users engage with your product.
• Help create more bang for the buck!

Closing Thoughts

In this blog, I have described the basic & must-do steps in lean product development, which are the fundamental aspects of product management.

Customer validation is the key to new product success. However, running a basic validation with potential customers runs a big risks of false positives and investing too much money in developing the MVP.

Running a smart customer validation minimizes the risks while creating a lean startup or lean product development. A successful customer validation of a solution helps to get paying customers who are innovators or early adapters. This is first and most important step in any new product development - be it a lean startup or a well established company.

Effective workplace for Digital Startups

Earlier this week, I met with a CEO of a startup in Bangalore who wanted to setup a smart office for this startup. I had a very interesting discussion on this subject and here in this blog, is the gist of our discussion.

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Startups need a work environment that fosters collaboration, productivity, and innovation, it is able to attract and retain the best employees.

Office spaces are now turning into intelligent spaces - where office space can engage with employees to maximize effectiveness, connect seamlessly and securely anywhere, anytime.

How to build such a work place? 

Today, we have ultra-fast Wi-Fi, mobile "anywhere" communications, and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity that connects physical building work places to employees. For example having a mobile app - which gives information about available meeting rooms, directions to meeting rooms and an easy one-click interface to book a meeting room - helps save 5-10 minutes off an employee's time in setting up a meeting. This alone translates into 42-85 man hours of productivity per employee per year! Freeing up time for innovation and collaboration.

In the world of intelligent work spaces technology becomes a key enabler. Every employee has fast and complete access to the applications and data they need and can use any mobile device to schedule space, operate electronic white boards or projectors, or set up video conference calls. Employees can be productive, seamlessly and securely, anywhere, anytime, whether in a quiet work space, a conference room, a boardroom, or even an outdoor space such as a rooftop café.

In a startup office, basic Wi-Fi and video conferencing are now so very common that they are taken for granted. The closed-door offices and cubicles have given way to open-space designs, casual meeting areas. Cafeterias & pantries are now seamlessly integrated with work spaces - to encourage open idea sharing and other collaborative exchanges among workers.

Understanding the requirements

Startup offices often share offices spaces with other startups (typically non-competing - Of course!)

A startup workplace must also be truly innovative. In most of the legacy workplaces, there is too much friction and inefficiency that hampers office productivity. Talented & creative employees are still shackled to desks on which sit hardwired computers that act as their main and sometimes only access point to the applications, software, and data they need to do their work.

Startups do not have a hierarchical organization structure. Instead they tend to have a team-based organizational structure. Teams are formed and disbanded depending on the project at hand. Cross-functional teams are dynamically created when necessary. This means employees need the right tools to work in a fluid environment where they and their colleagues can collaborate whenever and wherever the need arises.

Good news is that, today we have mobile-first, cloud-first and IoT technologies that enable such intelligent spaces. Facility managers will have to dorn an IT hat and ensure that:

1. Secure, untethered, and consistent connectivity anywhere.Security is of paramount importance in a multi-tenant workplace. Employees are no longer tethered to a wired deskspace, they need to have complete mobility within the workspace - and yet have safe and consistent high bandwidth connectivity.
2. Consistent workplace productivity solutions across all devicesWorkplace productivity tools such as Slack, Skype, Google Meetups etc are essential. These tools can work on various devices: iPad, iPhone, Android Phones, Windows Laptops, Apple Macbook etc.
3. Collaboration solutions built on cloud
    Note that for a consistent workplace collaboration tools are all connected to cloud. Its not just the productivity tools, even booking conference rooms or meeting rooms are handled via cloud. In a multi-tenant workplace where conference rooms are shared, the solutions must be able to generate pay-per-use billing systems for all shared resources.
4. Location based services
   Based on number of people per floor or per zone or area, smart facilities are turned on or off based on actual need. This means all lighting, cooling/heating and Wi-Fi connectivity are all based on number of people in that area. This implies use of intelligent sensors and smart analytics on the edge to minimize energy usage.   

Build Analytics into workplace  

Industrial IoT devices opens up a whole new way of seeing how an existing facility is being used. Heat/motion sensors can track which areas of the office are highly used and which areas are least used. This data over a period of time can be of immense value - to optimize the way  office spaces are designed. This data can be used to optimize the cooling & lighting requirements and HVAC systems planning.

The use of smart building technologies - sensors on the floor, motion sensors, thermal scanners, CCTV, Biometric scanners etc., generate vast amounts of data which can be used in lot of ways to a better workplace.

Closing Thoughts 

When technology and facility design is done right, we can create workspace that allows organizations, small or large, to orchestrate workflows for maximum efficiency and productivity. This will unleash the kind of innovation, creativity, and productivity needed to compete in the new digital economy.

Such a building would be a truly digital workplace where technology becomes a strong hidden foundation for a true user centered work place.

Invest in IT enabled facilities to make employees happier, attract and retain the most talented workers, it must provide employees with a modern, digital environment where they can work efficiently and seamlessly.

Taking Analytics to the edge

In my previous article, I had written about HPE's EdgeLine servers for IoT analytics.

In 2017, we are seeing a steady wave of growth in data analytics that's happening on the edge and HPE is in the forefront of this wave - leveraging its strengths in hardware, software, services, and partnership to build powerful analytic capabilities.

With HPE EdgeLine, customers are able to move  analytics from the data center to the to the edge, providing rapid insights from remote sensors to solve critical challenges in multiple industries like energy, manufacturing, telecom,  and financial services.

Why IoT project fail?

Recently, Cisco reported that  ~75% of IoT projects fail. This is because IoT data has been managed in centralized, cloud-based systems. In traditional settings, data is moved from a connected 'thing' to a central system over a combination of cell-phone, Wi-Fi and enterprise IT network, to be managed, secured, and analyzed.

But with IoT devices generating huge volumes of data, and data being generated at multiple sites - even in remote areas with intermittent connectivity. This meant that analysis could not be done in a meaningful way as the data collection was taking time, and when the analysis was completed, results were computed, it was irrelevant.

Centralized cloud systems for IoT data analysis just does not scale nor can it perform at speeds needed.

HPE Solution - EdgeLine servers for Analytics on the Edge

With HPE EdgeLine servers, we now have a  solution that optimizes data for immediate analysis and decision making at the edge of the network and beyond.

For the first time ever, customers have the first holistic experience of the connected condition of things (machines, networks, apps, devices, people, etc.) through the combined power of HPE EdgeLine servers and Aruba wireless networks.

Analysis on the edge is just picking up momentum and it's just the beginning of good things to come.

Today, cloud is omnipresent, but for large scale IoT deployment, a new model of computing is needed emerge where constant cloud connectivity is not essential. Most data will be processed at or near its point of origin to provide real-time response and will be handled on-site in that  moment. Running analytics on edge will save costs, refine machine learning on massive data sets -  that can be acted on at the edge.

In June 2017 at HPE Discover, customers were delighted to get an in-depth view of this solution.

HPE's continued investments in data management and analytics will deliver a steady stream of innovation. Customers can safely invest in HPE technologies and win.

HPE along with Intel is future proofing investments in data and analytics for hyper distributed environments. HPE has taken a new approach to analytics to provide the flexibility of processing and analyzing data everywhere - from right at the edge where data is generated for immediate action and for future analysis in the cloud at a central data center.

Customers are using IoT data to gain insight through analytics, both at the center and the edge of the network to accelerate digital transformation. With HPE Edgeline, one can take an entirely new approach to analytics that provides the flexibility of processing and analyzing data everywhere—at the edge and in the cloud, so it can be leveraged in time and context as the business needs to use it.

This technology was developed in direct response to requests from customers that were struggling with complexity in their distributed IoT environments. Customers, analysts and partners have embraced intelligent IoT edge and are using it in conjunction with powerful cloud-based analytics.

Analytics on the edge is a game changing approach to analytics that solves major problems for for businesses looking to transform their operations in the age of IoT. The HPE Vertica Analytics Platform now runs at the IoT edge on the Edgeline EL4000. This combination gives enterprises generating massive amounts of data at remote sites a practical solution for analyzing and generating insights.

Customers like CERN, FlowServe,  etc are using Edge analytics to expand its monitoring of equipment conditions such as engine temperature, engine speed and run hours to improve maintenance costs. Telecom services companies are pushing the edge with analytics to deliver 4G LTE connectivity throughout the country, regardless of the location of the business.

Closing Thoughts 

Benefits of centralized deep compute make sense—for traditional data. But the volume and velocity of IoT data has challenged this status quo. IoT data is Big Data. And the more you move Big Data, the more risk, cost, and effort you'll have to assume in order to provide end-to-end care for that data.

Edge computing is rebalancing this equation, making it possible for organizations to get the best of all worlds: deep compute, rapid insights, lower risk, greater economy, and more trust and security.

Corda - A Next Generation Blockchain Technology

Corda is a distributed ledger platform designed to record, manage and automate legal agreements between business partners. Designed by (and for) the world's largest financial institutions, it offers a unique response to the privacy and scalability challenges facing decentralised applications

Corda's development is led by R3, a Fintech company that heads a consortium of over 70 of the world's largest financial institutions in the establishment of an open, enterprise-grade, shared platform to record financial events and execute smart contract logic.

Corda is now supported by a growing open-source community of professional developers, architects and hobbyists.

What makes Corda different?

1. Engineered for business
Corda is the only distributed ledger platform designed by the world's largest financial institutions to manage legal agreements on an automatable and enforceable basis

2. Restricted data sharing
Corda only shares data with those with a need to view or validate it; there is no global broadcasting of data across the network

3. Easy integration
Corda is designed to make integration and interoperability easy: query the ledger with SQL, join to external databases, perform bulk imports, and code contracts in a range of modern, standard languages

4. Pluggable consensus
Corda is the only distributed ledger platform to support multiple consensus providers employing different algorithms on the same network, enabling compliance with local regulations

Closing Thoughts 

Corda provides the opportunity to transform the economics of financial firms by implementing a new shared platform for the recording of financial events and processing of business logic: one where a single global logical ledger is authoritative for all agreements between firms recorded on it. This architecture will define a new shared platform for the industry, upon which incumbents, new entrants and third parties can compete to deliver innovative new products and services. 

Developing an Innovation Zone

Every business today wants to be innovative. Yet most companies fail to innovate. Having worked as R&D engineer in Silicon Valley - where I started my career and filed for my first patent, and a innovation coach, here is one the key point for building an innovative teams.

Innovative teams need market knowledge to be successful. Having just technical skills is not enough. Here are four key inputs innovative teams need.













1. Customer Insight 

Great innovative companies such as Intel, Hewlett Packard, EMC etc have developed multiple channels to get information about and from customers, and have built extensive knowledge sharing systems to distribute this information widely within the company. This enables teams to understand customer needs and that helps develop new products that delights customers.

Having deeper customer interactions also provides opportunities for customers to participate directly in the innovation process.

2. Global Network

Companies that leverage information from the large business ecosystem are always at an advantage. Organizations that build a global network have greater advantage. When we look at top 10 innovative companies - they have a global foot print with teams operating in all continents and many countries, they integrate these global sites with information sharing channels helping teams all over to innovate.

The global network extends to global partners in the business ecosystem. For example Intel works with Hewlett Packard, Dell, IBM, Lenevo, Microsoft and several hundreds of partners to collect information & knowledge from the ecosystem.

3. Future Foresight

Innovation does not happen without a need from the market. Understanding what customers will need in future. But getting to know what customers will need in future is not easy. Developing a future insight in extremely difficult. This is where global companies have an advantage.  Identifying tomorrow's market needs, opportunities and risks requires working with senior management to assess the strategic and tactical implications of trends, and sharing information throughout the organization. Company leadership then shares this vision of the future with the entire organization. Global teams then work on this insights to develop products for the future.

4. Innovation Organization

There is tremendous innovation potential residing in all employees. Companies that go to great lengths to hire intelligent employees and then they have to empower innovators. Innovative companies provide dedicated R&D budgets, invest in labs, and focuses on innovation.

Company leadership backs up an idea with money, resources and time to develop innovative products.

Closing thoughts

All successful companies have reached the top because of their innovation. There has been no shortcuts in innovation.

Innovation is essential for success, but not all innovative products will be successful. For example, Nokia invested in two different smart phone technologies - Symbian and MeeGo, and yet failed. While history will say Nokia as a leader who failed, history will always remember Nokia as an innovative company.

Why Fintech should embrace DevOps

Making your IT operation DevOps friendly can improve Bank's ability to respond to rapid changes in FinTech deployments.

For many years now, the biggest challenges banks face have been "soft" and cultural as much as technical. CIOs and IT directors need to align with business values, nurture security awareness, and cultivate a forward-facing workforce with considerably more urgency than they apply when they look at, say, a migration to IPv6, certifying SOC2 compliance, or calculating the ROI of a shift from spinning disks to flash memory.

The latest wrinkle for IT is how to befriend DevOps talent, or more precisely, how to leverage DevOps capabilities and resources. This introduction describes DevOps, distinguishes DevOps and IT cultures, and concludes with a handful of specific ideas IT should consider in response to DevOps fashions.

What is DevOps?

Make no mistake: A significant fraction of DevOps practice is fashion, in the sense that belief in the benefits of those practices is far more widespread than objective documentation of the same benefits. That doesn't mean that all of DevOps is bunk. It just means that DevOps deserves the same critical scrutiny from IT as functions like data management, legal, or marketing. All of them ultimately have a responsibility to communicate how they promote the organization's mission.

The "DevOps" neologism aspires to capture collaboration between software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) skills and experiences. One sign of DevOps' mind-share is that it has inspired even more contrived targets, such as DevSecOps and Lean DevOps.

DevOps is often explained as a contrast to outdated silos of responsibility. In the latter model, programmers code up functionality, then toss their source code "over the wall" to a distinct engineering or operations crew responsible for delivering that functionality at a production level and scale. Ignorance of operations realities often results in developers choosing architectures or coding styles that scale poorly and fail clumsily, and are hard to monitor.

Similarly, operations staff who work without deep programming insight have only blunt tools to attack such real-world requirements as a sudden need to multiply capacity by a factor of 10 or harden an application against hostile actors.

DevOps practitioners should have sufficiently broad and deep perspective to step around such pitfalls. The current hot market for DevOps hires reflects the expectation that DevOps practitioners should be solidly grounded in both development and operations.

Another strong theme in DevOps culture is that practitioners automate and generally treat as software as much of operations as possible. A traditional operations staff might install and test operating system patches during downtime hours, while dedicated DevOps workers are more likely to have hosts under automatic control so they can launch new resources and migrate workloads during business hours. Similarly, a new version of an OS should be just another configuration element to update.

When things work well, DevOps takes credit for reliable, highly scalable results delivered to customers, with rapid turnaround of feature requests.

Hybrid vigor

Those certainly sound like desirable qualities. Can traditional IT hire a few DevOps practitioners and acquire the goodness for itself?

Yes and no, as with any important question. Yes, there's plenty DevOps can bring to traditional IT. There are also numerous hurdles to overcome to avoid wasting IT resources and annoying DevOps adepts.

Part of DevOps reality in 2017 is intimacy with cloud service providers, from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google's G Suite, and so on. Most DevOps professionals take for granted the rich ecosystems of management and orchestration that have grown around these services. A traditional IT on-premises environment—where a new host or storage unit might take weeks to approve and physically requisition rather than seconds to select and deploy—can upset DevOps hires profoundly.

How can central, traditional IT best welcome DevOps talent? These following four ideas—right target, tech clarity, broad perspective, and API opportunity—will take you a long way toward making the right DevOps impression.

Right target

First, keep the goal clearly in mind: While the title of this piece targets "friendly" relations, that's a metaphor. The real goal is to promote the organization's business mission; "friendliness" or "comfort" are means to that end. A traditional IT department probably should never aspire to the "leading edge" technology turnover that some DevOps relish. At the same time, a traditional IT department can speak frankly about the specific help it needs from DevOps and the opportunities to apply DevOps principles outside the usual DevOps domains. The right candidates prize that sort of honesty and challenge.

Technical clarity

Clarity about the organization's infrastructure plans is also important. Is the department adopting private cloud on-premises? DevOps can help define its configuration. Has the company decided on a hybrid cloud architected to allow loads to migrate from on-site to off-site and back? Hybrid remains a specialized, narrowly understood technology likely to excite many DevOps professionals. Is the company committed to legacy architectures in its own data center?

A smart company can remain with legacy at that level and simultaneously work to virtualize and streamline management of those legacy resources. Good DevOps professionals can recognize that, although on-premises legacy architecture won't help them keep up with the latest AWS releases, integration and modernization projects offer abundant opportunity to apply DevOps principles and tools. Part of recruitment should be to sort out the DevOps candidates you encounter: Does a particular individual hunger to be at the bleeding edge of technology? Is the candidate's reward more in using existing tools to fulfill the organization's needs? While both prospects can equally claim "DevOps" status, the latter is likely to be a better fit for integration in centralized IT.

It's more than just a GitHub account

The DevOps focus is on automation and lifecycle management. While this applies immediately to provisioning, that focus can help traditional IT in other areas, including capacity planning, availability, and business continuity. Certainly the past decade has seen a great improvement in tooling around performance, but much of that tooling is still poorly understood by traditional IT. DevOps will assume Logstash, Kibana, Redis, Elasticsearch, Nagios, Puppet and/or Chef, a messaging bus, and other such tools are available. Even the most traditional IT departments probably need to open up to these basic building blocks. IT probably also needs to support Git or a comparably modern source code management system, along with an integrated issue tracker and source review manager. The department doesn't have to hand everything over to GitHub—but it better offer something almost as good or DevOps careerists will think they're just wasting their time.

Embrace APIs

Join the API gold rush. APIs represent another (at least?) double-edged sword, of course. Plenty of past IT attempts to provide programmability have resulted in ill-conceived uses that made more work for IT, however much the intent was to encourage departments to construct their own robust applications. APIs play a different role in 2017, one DevOps will insist be supported well. Cooperate with DevOps and they will show how APIs can be published and consumed more inexpensively than in the past.

Blended strengths = enormous opportunity

A traditional IT department in a non-technology company does no one any favors by pretending it is DevOps paradise. If it's clear about its goals and plans, though, and ready to move on from break-fix and physical craftwork approaches, it can present its IT plans as great opportunities for the automation and management DevOps does best.

There's no need to view cloud providers and convergence technologies as enemies to traditional IT. Rather, they are simply new challenges that deserve thoughtful response in support of traditional IT's longtime strengths in business continuity management, security routines, identity management, cost accounting, and so on. The opportunity to blend the strengths of DevOps and traditional IT is enormous, at least for those IT decision-makers clear about their plans and resources to support them.

Can Apple Revive iPad and make it great again?

I have had an iPad 2 for nearly 5 years now and it still works great. I have not felt a need to upgrade it either. The fact that the old iPad works so well is great, but it also indicates a BIG short coming in product planning by Apple. (Samsung has not done great either with its Samsung Tab)

Eons ago, Apple released a groundbreaking product called iPad which sold hundreds of millions of units and customers loved it. After few years of increasing sales, gravity seems to have taken over iPad sales and now the sales of iPad is dropping every quarter.

The product is so good that it does not breakdown and customers like me are happy using it even after 5 years.

The fact that my iPad has outlasted my laptop made me think over it.

When I bought my first iPad, I thought the next version of iPad will surely replace my laptop. Few months later, I got another one for my daughter and my wife got a Samsung Tab.

Both iPads and Samsung Tab still do a great job & I see no reason to replace it with newer models. I read books, browse web, read gmail etc., But the usage is limited. For other creative work, I still need a laptop. For example, I am typing this article on a laptop!

In my opinion, iPad missed several great opportunities to be a perfect replacement for a laptop and a Television. I think, Apple is struck with an unresolved dilemma. Is iPad a computing device? Or is iPad an entertainment device? Should iPad evolve to replace laptops? Or should iPad evolve to replace Televisions?

To me, this is similar to the dilemma faced by Yahoo!  Is Yahoo a media company or is Yahoo a technology company! Yahoo was unable to resolve this dilemma and died. Hopefully Apple can do better.

Long ago, I saw iPad as a computing device which would replace my laptop as a primary computing device. But my daughter uses it as a game console and entertainment device. In both cases, iPad still has not been able to progress much.

Path Ahead for Apple

Putting my product management hat, the best I can recommend is to split iPad into two distinct product lines.

1. Expand the compute capability & make it a preferred compute platform.

2. Expand screen size and make iPad a perfect personal TV Platform.

iPad as a Compute platform

With ever increasing CPU power and memory sizes, iPad can be expanded with a better keyboard, and mouse to replace the laptop. Increasing CPU power.

Apple always supported Bluetooth keyboards and it works, but the real issue was with the pointing device. The Apple pencil and Styli is awkward and has never taken off as a pointing device, this needs to be fixed in the future release. Maybe a bluetooth mouse perhaps?

In addition, Apple needs to beef up its app offerings to support better content creation tools - either via a VDI platform or native content creation apps. Today, modern ARM based mobile CPUs have enough compute power to support content creation.

These two can be easily addressed by Apple.

The real big problem is the screen size.

Increasing the screen size to a 11" or a 12" will make iPad bigger and cumbersome to handle. iPad has long supported external displays - via AirPlay protocol, but it was always cumbersome and one had to carry a big bag full of accessories for a small iPad. Instead, the solution is to allow iPad to operate multiple screens - like Windows & OS-X.  Ideally having apps adapt to any screen wirelessly without a docking station will make it ideal device as a workplace productivity tool. Users can use both the iPad screen and an external screen to do their job.

iPad as an Entertainment platform

In the entertainment version of iPad, iPad can leverage wireless connectivity to a larger screen and also support multiple screens - like a VR headset - will help iPad become more relevant to the future of entertainment world.

When it comes to gaming, I would like to see iPad support different wireless gaming controllers - via Bluetooth or wireless USB. This would allow users to use a bigger 48"-96" TV screens for gaming via iPad.

Support for multiple screens will also aid in entertainment usage. One person can watch a video being casted on TV while other watches another video on iPad screen.

Closing Thoughts 

Once iPad makes these changes, app developers will enhance their apps to support such flexible options with large-screens, VR headsets etc., and it usher in a new era in home entertainment, while keeping the base iPad's portability and all day battery usage.

iPad is a great device and can reach greater heights. Apple just needs to evolve this into two distinct platforms to make fit better into more people's divergent needs.

Disruptive influence of FinTech on Indian Banks

Indian banking & financial services industry has endured a tumultuous months following November 8th 2016 announcement of demonetization.

Banning of high value currency notes and the subsequent cash shortage and financial crisis is still taking their toll on banks. Indian banks were already under tremendous pressure due to bad loans and are now facing increased demands from retail customers. Many banks are still struck with slow & archaic online payments, with users needing to type in user names, passwords, 16 digits from the credit card and more. It is no wonder that the public trust and confidence in Indian banks is arguably at an all time low.

It is no surprise that consumers and businesses alike have moved enmasse to newer financial services which are enabled by FinTech!

FinTech is a catch-all term for the nascent revolution in the financial services space. Mobile payment systems that use technology and Internet platforms to offer a wide range of financial services. FinTech now offers a genuine alternative to traditional banking and payment systems offered by financial services firms such as Visa & Master card!

Indian customers & businesses are tired of the oligopoly of the state owned banks and duopoly of Visa/Mastercard in payments services sector.

Mobile payment systems offer an exciting, democratizing development which offers tools and services needed to meet the demands of vast majority of Indian small businesses and consumers. This denotes a major paradigm shift in banking and it will disrupt existing financial systems.

Disruption

Last few months post the demonetization, Fintech based payment systems in India - PayTM, MobiKwik, Freecharge, mPesa etc., have moved aggressively to get new customers and businesses, thus loosening the vice-like grip of banks & card payments. PayTM has made a huge splash in the 2016 and has changed the way consumers view payments.

Small Merchants in India have openly embraced FinTech payment services - mainly because of ubiquity of smart phones. More and more Indians are using smart phones, which enables banking and payment transactions to be completed electronically.

This transition to mobile payments also coincided with rapid adaptation of 4G data services.  In last 4 months alone, more than 125 Million users have taken 4G data services. This enabled rapid movement to digital payments. Rural businesses & merchants are accepting mobile payment through services like PayTM, MobiKwik,  UPI, etc.

Given the increasing usage of smart devices and mobile payment methods, there will be rapid growth of FinTech industry. I think in the near future we will see everything being paid for with our mobiles– for example paying Rs 10 for cup of coffee!

The movement towards mobile payment systems with newer payment companies using FinTech is just the beginning. Eventually customers will stop using credit/debit cards or cash, opting for mobile payments instead. This denotes the first move away from traditional banking transaction.
Given the increasing usage of smart devices and other contactless payment methods to complete transactions, business to consumer growth seems a natural direction for the FinTech industry.
In the next phase, people will start investing from their mobile platforms. Mobile payments systems will evolve to offer interest bearing investment opportunities - in form of fixed term deposits, Recurring Deposits or Mutual Funds etc., which can be accessed directly from user mobile devices.

As technology and consumer tastes continue to evolve, the market for financial services must keep pace, and learn to evolve. Newer FinTech companies will lead this new revolution.

Traditional banks, insurance & financial companies will struggle to change and adapt to this new paradigm. Banks in India will particularly find it hard to change because their customer experience management, based on legacy systems and legacy thinking, is lagging behind.

FinTech companies on the other hand have no technical debt, and they design the solution based on end user experience, therefore FinTech companies will have the upper hand when it comes to building better services.
  
Closing Thoughts

In the short term, FinTech in India will evolve & grow around the consumer banking space - with focus on consumer banking, making it easier for consumers to pay, and making it easier for small businesses to transfer money to other business entities. FinTech companies will unbundle banking & financial services and pick the 'cherries out of the cake', focusing on high-margin, highly scalable product and service areas, while leaving the commoditized or low margin services to banks.

Banks have the choice of either becoming 'platform utilities' or turning themselves into FinTech companies and building up their own FinTech ecosystems via various FinTech partnership and innovation models, and corporate venturing strategies.

The paradigm has shifted. The influence of FinTech is sure to be felt for years to come. Thanks to a perfect storm of changing banking rules, market forces and business cultures, FinTech has proved to be a disruptive force in Indian banking circles, a trend which looks set to continue well into 2020.

Fintech Disrupts Wealth management

Today a typical mutual fund or a ULIP fund in India charges 2.75% for managing your money.

Plenty of investors would be surprised at what a large proportion of their returns go to expenses. 2.75% sounds like a modest figure. However, that's 2.75% of the total amount, which includes the principal which is yours to begin with. The service you get, which you are paying for, is getting returns on your money. When seen with this perspective, the expenses charged can be very high.

With Robo advisors on the horizon, how long can fund managers charge such high fees?

The concept of "robo-advice" The use of automation and digital techniques to build and manage portfolios of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and other instruments for investors has gained significant attention within the wealth management industry.

Current robo-advice capabilities remain fairly basic. In general, they use simple surveys to profile clients and to assess their needs. An asset allocation is proposed, adjusted and implemented.
Portfolios are monitored, re-balanced and reported on. Robo-advice streamlines the account opening process, and its ability to transfer assets is increasing. All in all, it represents a useful basket of services at an attractive price

Robo advisor can reduce the fees charged for managing your money to less than 0.5%, and it presents investors with an interesting value proposition.

Although robo-advice to date has gained only a minuscule share of assets under management, I expect Robo-advice to grow rapidly in next few years. I anticipate that competition, innovation and new technology will dramatically increase robo-advice capabilities in the near future. Future
versions will consider the client's complexities by adapting questions based on earlier responses to fully understand investor needs.

In developing a financial plan, they can assimilate multiple goals, including college savings, planned home purchases, retirement, protection needs, estate planning and the need for health care and/or long term care coverage. In proposing investment solutions, they will be able to
incorporate outside assets, handle individual securities, ladder bond portfolios, consider low tax basis holdings, and allocate around illiquid positions. They will help clients understand their portfolios by providing information and learning in the context of the financial results and market information being presented.

There are also elements of the roboadvice experience that clients prefer over traditional models. Investors like the privacy offered by a digital solution and the ability to learn, and to chart their own path. These benefits will be expanded on in future releases.

Over the next decade and beyond, emerging technologies, such as cognitive computing, will power major advances in robo-advice capabilities. We anticipate a rapid evolution towards an automated advisor assistant that can even provide complex advice, and that will also allow clients to interact with the digital assistant in a multi-step process rather than a one-time effort. This will help to serve clients even more effectively.

Over time, investors who have low-cost and reasonably effective alternatives to traditional wealth management programs will not be willing to pay premium prices unless they see real differentiation and value.

Financial advisors will remain central to wealth management, but robo-advice will add new capabilities that wealth management firms will need to adopt and integrate.

Fintech Disrupts Wealth management 

Although a high level of disruption triggered by FinTech is already beginning to reshape the nature of lending and payment practices, a second wave of disruption is making inroads in the
asset & wealth management sectors.

A survey done by Price Waterhouse Cooper's found that this financial houses are already feeling the heat. Nearly 50% of insurers and asset and wealth managers consider their respective industries will be the most disrupted.

The investment industry is also being pulled into the vortex of vast technological developments. The emergence of data analytics in the investment space has enabled firms to hone in on investors and deliver tailored products and automated investing. Additionally, innovations in lending and equity crowd funding are providing access to asset classes formerly unavailable to individual investors such as commercial real estate.

When asked which part of the Financial Services sector is the most likely to be disrupted by FinTech over the next 5 years, 74% of insurance companies identified their own industry, 51% of asset managers said their industry will be disrupted.

Venture capitalists are looking very closely at start-ups dedicated to reinventing the way we invest money and buy insurance. Annual investments in InsurTech start-ups has increased fivefold over the past three years, with cumulative funding of InsurTechs reaching $3.4bn since 2010.

The pace of change in the global insurance industry is accelerating more quickly than what is being imagined. The industry is at a pivotal juncture as it grapples with changing customer behavior, new technologies and new distribution and business models.

Fintech is built on Microservices

Today, we have the web at our fingertips. We are now deeply connected to Internet for most parts of our daily life. We are moving whole business segments from brick and mortar to the online space. That's not really big news - it is just called as progress and we observe it with more or less interest day in, day out. With the digitalization also comes a shift in the nature of the services offered to us. Consumers will change, the service landscape will change and banks will need to adapt - which means they will drastically change, too.

Customer centricity and brand value experiences are key for Banks

Banks are institutions which touch a multitude of business services. Banks are trusted by the customers more than any other business. If banks make use of their trustworthiness and develop a strong and intelligent branding, they have the chance to not only endure the great transformation of our service landscape, but to step out of it as the big winner.

Until then, banks will have to be open to tremendous structural alteration and put some serious effort into developing better customer experience. Because the change of the service landscape as we know it brings along increasingly sophisticated customers who are subjected to distractions from countless competing products and providers. If a bank can create an exceptional customer journey, it will rise again. If it cannot, it may just sink like a stone. Time to make a move, banks!

FinTech is now built on microservices

In the past two years, I have seen how Fintech has changed finance and banking . In next 20 years, banks will be a hub for financial services in one way or another, with these services developed in cooperation with, or solely by, third-party companies.

In retail finance, we can observe another trend: fragmentation. For ages, banks have been managing all the financial needs of everyone. Want to store your money securely? Bank. Need a loan for your house or your business? Bank. Need to transfer money? Bank. Especially these two areas of the banking business – lending and payment – have been subject to disruption by smaller competitors for some years now and banks have lost tremendous revenue to innovative and tech-savvy fintech companies. What used to be in the hands of very few institutions has been split up between numerous competitors.

There were only one a handful of options to get a loan ten years ago, which were mostly extremely time-consuming and involved providing loads of information about yourself. In this day and age you can choose between many online-lenders using sophisticated algorithms to calculate which loan you qualify for and you will receive the money only hours later. Payment has changed on several levels: not only are there several major service providers which integrate seamlessly into your preferred apps and services. But there are even alternative currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum based on the blockchain system.

Other areas will follow and the finance market will arguably become increasingly fragmented with more but smaller service providers, offering more diverse and individual products. Finance serves as a great example for how a new change is coming about, as the fintech scene is booming and most consumers have already used basic fintech products, if they are aware of this or not.

Still, this is only the tip of the iceberg in fintech and analogous to this, many business segments are already evolving. Or are about to.

Bank will become a hub for multiple types of services

In the past two years, I have seen how Fintech has changed finance and banking . In next 20 years, banks will be a hub for financial services in one way or another, with these services developed in cooperation with, or solely by, third-party companies.

Banking and finance are changing and so will insurance, healthcare, automotive, education and even agriculture or legal services. Many areas are ripe for disruption. Through collaboration and partnerships, banks, insurances, healthcare etc., could build strong bonds with customers and build a strong brand.

Fintech - Success Factors for Innovation

As a technology disrupter, challenging an entrenched incumbent, Fintech products must be innovative solutions. But just being innovative is not enough - for example, developing a new way to make cashless payments is not enough. Success depends on several other factors.

There are three common factors behind every successful technology product. Working judiciously on these factors can create a successful product. Now, lets take a look at those three factors.

Factor 1. Think 10X

To be successful against an entrenched incumbent, one has to be truly innovative. One way to be innovative is to think 10X. For example, if it takes 120 seconds to make a payment with a credit/debit card, a cashless payment system must be able to do it in under 12 seconds! In the second iteration of the product, the transaction times must further decrease by 20% , i.e., under 10 seconds and so on.

10X factor must be applied to all aspects of business. For example, how can the business grow 10X in 1/10th the time taken by the incumbent?

Unless one does not aim high and deliver on it, customers will not switch to the newer technology.

10X formula in business forces one to rethink every aspect of business, and forces innovators to solve more complex challenges of tomorrow today, instead of incrementally solving today's problems.

Factor - 2. Be very agile after product launch 

"No Battle Plan Survives Contact With the Enemy"  said the German military strategist Helmuth von Moltke. The same is true when launching a new & innovative products. A product is always designed with certain assumptions and all those assumptions must be verified on the ground - when customers are using the product.

Product development teams must be agile to respond to the customer feedback, learn what works (or doesn't) and make changes rapidly in response. A smaller "beta" release helps to make rapid iterations of the product based on customer feedback and never stray too far from what market really wants.

There are no holy cows or egos to massage. If a feature is not liked by customer, be ready to drop it. Remember that the entrenched competition cannot move as fast as the challenger, and Agility is the key for success.

Factor 3. Share all knowledge

Collaboration is essential for innovation. Collaboration happens best when everyone shares information openly and discuss it freely. In case of Fintech, there are several points of data collection and this data & the analysis must be shared openly within the organization - so that the entire organization can act on that information & be agile.

Remember, innovation thrives in a culture of openness.