Posts

Depth or Breadth

In Range , David Epstein argues that the “ability to integrate broadly” is our greatest strength. Which is the “exact opposite of narrow specialization”. If we narrowly know only one area very well, we tend to look and find only the “same old patterns”. But: “In the wicked world, with ill-defined challenges and few rigid rules, range can be a life hack.”   Most problems in a field can be solved by specialists in that field. That’s to be expected. But when experts in a field get stuck, quite often we see outsiders with a broad range of knowledge of multiple fields (even if they’re not specialists in most of those fields) finding solutions. Why/how? “The outside view probes for deep structural similarities to the current problem in different ones. The outside view is deeply counterintuitive because it requires a decision maker to ignore unique surface features of the current project, on which they are the expert, and instead look outside for structurally similar analogies.” ...
Post a Comment
Read more

India’s e-Commerce in Smaller Cities and Towns

When we think of online retail in India, we think of Amazon and Flipkart. Which is why I found this article by Manish Singh so informative: “ Flipkart and Amazon’s displacement is coming from two directions simultaneously.”   The first of those are the urban “instant delivery” firms. Think Blinkit, Swiggy’s Instamart and Zepto. The second one are e-commerce sites aimed at the smaller cities and towns. “ Amazon and Flipkart now find themselves squeezed between two models they cannot easily replicate because their expensive infrastructure, designed for catalogue breadth and next-day delivery, proves ill-suited for either 10-minute deliveries in dense urban areas or ultra-low-price commerce in India’s interior.”   I won’t spend much time on the instant delivery firms since we (in urban centers) are very familiar with their speed and convenience.   I will talk more on the e-commerce sites for smaller cities and towns. Meesho is what few of us have ever used...
Post a Comment
Read more

DPI Design Principle #4: Protocols

Another design principle of India’s DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure) is protocols . As opposed to platforms. This needs some explanation, as done by Rahul Matthan in The Third Way . A platform (like Facebook or YouTube) provides a forum where anyone can post material but there are no guarantees on what will be permitted (or how the rules could change with time). A protocol, on the other hand, is a set of rules that are defined upfront so all participants know what is allowed and expected.   The DPI’s protocol model means any participant can create entirely new applications that nobody had thought of, as long as they follow the protocols. This allows for enormous creativity and evolution of applications over time.   And lastly, since protocols are rules, regulations can be enforced via the protocol. The government doesn’t have to chase down every participant to see if they follow the rules. The mere act of agreeing to follow the protocol (in software, remember this ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Man-Machine Chess Combos

Tactics are short-term actions whereas strategy is long-term vision. Surprisingly (to me at least), it turns out that “chess is 99 percent tactics”. Many top chess players admit that you can go a long distance by being very good at tactics alone, i.e., by knowing a lot of patterns.   Computers, even the non-AI variety, are “tactically flawless compared to humans”, writes David Epstein in Range . What happens when man and machine combine forces on a chess board?   While the machine handles tactics, the human can focus on strategy. “It changed the pecking order instantly.” In 1998, when he was still near his peak, Garry Kasparov drew a man-machine match 3-3 with the same opponent whom he had crushed 4-0 in man-only competition… Kasparov, like most top chess players, had been so dominant because he was vastly better at tactics. The difference between him and others when it came to strategy wasn’t much. Shocking.   Once you combine man and machine, it turns ou...
Post a Comment
Read more

DPI Design Principle #2, 3: Interoperability, Federation

The second design principle behind India’s DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure) is interoperability . As any engineer will tell you, systems rarely talk to each other. Every piece gets optimized for itself, and thus is rarely suited to work with anything else. Plus, companies deliberately choose to keep things in proprietary formats so customers cannot easily switch out.   When we say Aadhar is the world’s first digital ID system, it doesn’t just mean that the ID was created and stored in digital format. It means a lot more than that, as Rahul Matthan explains in The Third Way . It means that it was designed to be usable in all kinds of digital workflows, an example of which we saw in an earlier blog on the design of UPI by unbundling things first.   Another example is Aadhar’s integration with Jeevan Praman, a government pension service. Proof of life can be established remotely by a pensioner, thanks to Aadhar’s interoperability. This is hugely helpful in the rural...
Post a Comment
Read more

Dangers in Visualized Data

Image
Visualized data. That’s graphs, pie-charts and all kinds of creative representations of data. While they make it easier to understand many things, they can also be misleading, write Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West in Calling Bullshit . And not always because of malice or bad intentions…   As software makes visual graphics easy, people tend to come up with eye-catching ways of presenting data. Nothing wrong with that, unless… “The attempt to be cute makes it harder for the reader to understand the underlying data.” For example, a 3D graph makes it hard to compare the bars: how much taller is the 3 rd class bar compared to the 1 st class bar? It’s hard to say (visually) since the 1 st class bar is farther away and don’t far off objects look shorter than they are?   Sure, the numerical values are written, but if one has to read it to make sense, then why use a graphic? Even worse, why create an easy-to-misread graphic?   Another common error is to show informat...
Post a Comment
Read more

DPI Design Principle #1: Unbundling

Image
There are 4 design principles behind India’s DPI (Digital Public Infrastructure) . The first one is unbundling , writes Rahul Matthan in The Third Way . What this means is that DPI didn’t just digitize existing workflows. Instead, it broke down existing workflows into their constituent elements and then restructured them to be resilient and interoperable. Then it assembled things back in entirely new ways.   An example helps understand how big an impact this can have. Take the old way of transferring money to someone.   This is why checks took time to encash. Banks had to perform checks and communicate with each other. Unbundling in this case started from scratch. It didn’t look how to accelerate the above system. Instead, it looked at the easiest form of money transfer. Yes, cash. The giver and sender don’t need to know anything about each other; nobody needs to check and confirm if the giver has enough in the account; you just hand the cash. Could payments be digitized...
Post a Comment
Read more