Ashutosh Nilkanth's Blog

We have so many choices these days, and so little time to make a choice. From the choice of the right breakfast cereal to the choice of the right health insurance, we are trapped in an endless spiral of everyday choices.

Last night, I watched a TEDGlobal talk by Sheena Iyengar, a Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, about her research on “choice”. Yes, choice, or choices – depending on how you interpret modern dilemmas. It’s a really insightful talk about the gullible nature of choices:

The [second] assumption which informs the American view of choice goes something like this. The more choices you have, the more likely you are to make the best choice. So bring it on Walmart with 100,000 different products, Amazon with 27 million books and Match.com with — what is it? — 15 million date possibilities now. You will surely find the perfect match. Let’s test this assumption by heading over to Eastern Europe. Here, I interviewed people who were residents of formerly communist countries, who had all faced the challenge of transitioning to a more democratic and capitalistic society. One of the most interesting revelations came not from an answer to a question, but from a simple gesture of hospitality. When the participants arrived for their interview I offered them a set of drinks, Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite — seven, to be exact.

During the very first session, which was run in Russia, one of the participants made a comment that really caught me off guard. “Oh, but it doesn’t matter. It’s all just soda. That’s just one choice.” (Murmuring) I was so struck by this comment that from then on I started to offer all the participants those seven sodas. And I asked them, “How many choices are these?” Again and again, they perceived these seven different sodas, not as seven choices, but as one choice: soda or no soda. When I put out juice and water in addition to these seven sodas, now they perceived it as only three choices — juice, water and soda. Compare this to the die-hard devotion of many Americans, not just to a particular flavor of soda, but to a particular brand. You know, research shows repeatedly that we can’t actually tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi.

…In reality, many choices are between things that are not that much different.

While this phenomenon may be cultural, some of it also has to do with the notion of individualism in many societies. “We are what we choose”, remarked Jeff Bezos in his speech to the Class of 2010 at Princeton University. But thinking too hard can often lead to poor choices.

What if most, if not all, of the choices could be simplified with something simple — a default option.

A default option, provisioned through careful analysis, can have an immense impact on us, specially in the social and economic landscape. What if the default option for the delivery of your utility bills or bank statements is email instead of paper mail? What if the default option for the enrollent in a retirement plan is inclusive instead of exclusive? What if a school cafeteria displayed the healthiest foods at the front? What if a $1 donation is a pre-selected option in a magazine renewal form? The simplest way to get more organ donors is to make the system “opt-out” instead of “opt-in”. People use the default choice most of the time, since they believe it is default for a reason.

Changing the defaults can be a powerful incentive to changing behavior. Having said that, choosing a good default is equally important. A wrong default for an array of choices can be counter-productive. Facebook’s privacy settings are a good example of poor defaults.

In the book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, Prof. Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler talk about the science of choices and defaults:

The human brain is amazing, but it evolved for specific purposes, such as avoiding predators and finding food. Those purposes do not include choosing good credit card plans, reducing harmful pollution, avoiding fatty foods, and planning for a decade or so from now. Fortunately, a few nudges can help a lot.

In present day and time, we often forget that when we have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.

Here’s a meme that resounds quite often in the startup world:

Execution is more important than ideas.

Good ideas are only so good in the mind of the beholder, unless proven to be useful or effective through execution. Ideas matter. The execution of those ideas matters more. But, what is execution?

Execution may mean different things to different people. In it’s basic form, execution means:

a carrying into effect or to completion

I believe that execution fundamentally derives from two inter-related facets: achievement and focus.

Achievement comes from continually completing a thing, more than repeatedly starting many things. Initiation is important, but without completion it’s worthless. Having said that, it’s practically impossible for one person to start many things and complete all of them. So, basically, the secret to achievement is to start fewer tasks or projects, and focusing on completing them before starting anything new.

Focus, and more precisely – uni-focus, is related to achievement. It’s an equally important factor in execution.

Let’s look at an example of a toaster. It’s a common gadget in many households, available in many shapes and sizes. Its primary function is to toast bread.

The ‘Back to Basics Egg & Muffin Toaster’ does it all. It has a 4 slice toaster, 2 egg cooker, slots for toasting muffins & bagels and a host of device controls.

On the other hand, the ‘Transparent Toaster’ has a radical design. It’s a novel idea, but it only does one thing. It toasts bread. And it is transparent, so you can see it all happening, thus avoiding the dreaded burned toast. The sad part is that it’s only a concept design. It couldn’t be mass produced due to a lack of heated glass panel technology.

Then there’s the ‘Magimix Vision Toaster’, which is similar to the ‘Transparent Toaster’ concept, only that it is an actual product. It toasts any kind of bread. It has minimal controls, and it is a classic example of uni-focus execution. It does less, yet its streamlined design overshadows the lack of bloat. Most importantly, it’s a finished product with paying customers.

If you look at some of the most popular and widely used Web applications today like Google Search, Facebook, Twitter or even the Google Chrome Web browser, you’ll find a common theme. They are all uni-focused. Their primary function is based on a single point of operation. The Google Search box is where the world starts their search. The Twitter status update box is the epicentre of real-time micro-messaging. The Facebook status update box helps millions of users to express themselves. The Google Chrome Omnibox is another brilliant example of a uni-focused control where you can search and navigate from the same textbox. All of these applications do much more, but 80% of the users only use the primary function on a daily basis.

Execution is about finding the right balance between achievement (the ability to do less, but get more done) and focus (the ability to concentrate and streamline).

The real question is not “how to build” something. There are enough technology experts around us who can build stuff. Capital, technology, processes and standards are only secondary to good product design. The real question then, is “what to build”, or “what to build” better.

It’s a tough question, but an important one for any entrepreneur (aspiring or established) to address early on. Most startups fail because they build something people never wanted in the first place (i.e. it doesn’t really solve a real-life problem or doesn’t add any value to an existing process), or they take too long (often over-engineering) to build something and hence fail to gain early feedback.

Over the past few months, I have observed that a successful (viz. revenue generating at the very least) product should be able to satisfy one (or more) of these four broad scenarios:

1. It directly helps people make money. Such a product would allow the users to monetize their own creations or digital assets. A few good examples of this product category are Google AdSense, Square, Etsy and oDesk.

2. It directly helps people save money. Such a product would allow the users to save money on their current expenditure (personal or business), or at-least help them manage their money better to start with. A few good examples of this product category are Mint and Google Apps.

3. It helps people to collaborate easily. People like to share stuff and stay in sync (across devices), while saving time and effort. That makes collaboration really effective and lucrative. It also makes this the most crowded category of all. Everything from Project Management apps to Social Networking apps to iPhone/iPad apps try to fit in this broad segment. But only a few genuine products survive due to two factors: most products are too bloated to be used efficiently, and secondly the sheer volume of this segment requires ingenuity. A few good examples of this product category are Dropbox, Evernote, Posterous and Basecamp.

4. It helps people customize a physical good or object. People like to stand-out in the physical world, by looking unique or by creating unique things. A few good examples of this product category are Shoes of Prey, Arduino and Blank Label.

These scenarios can be interpreted as statistical buckets. I’m not suggesting that all products follow (or must follow) these scenarios or that these are magical in any way.

On the contrary, I believe that a successful product is ingenious and simple. It should do less, but it should do that better than the rest. It’s not a novel idea, but first and foremost – you should consider building what you want. Keep it small. Build something that you would want to use everyday. Keep it simple. Build something that solves your own problem.

If you enjoy eating your own dog-food, you’ll eventually find others willing to pay you to share your dog-food with them.

For the past few months I’ve been sitting on some ideas (for Web applications) that I’ve scribbled here & there. I’m working on a few (not listed here) in my spare time, but realistically I won’t be able to work on all of them. So I thought it will be better to just publicly share some of the ideas for others interested in driving them.

1. Car Pooling – Sometime back I took a taxi cab to work. I got talking to the driver, a friendly guy with crude English. He mentioned something so simple that it made me think on several interrelated issues (environmental, social, economical) for days. “Only one person in each vehicle. That’s what’s wrong with this f**king world.”, he said. As I looked around in the sluggish traffic, I could really see only one person in each vehicle, for miles. It made me jot down a note to think about promoting car pooling and maybe improve the experience somehow. Eventually, a bit of brain-storming brought a question – what’s a good model for online coordination of car pooling, so that more and more people can easily get on-board and the mechanism is effective?

2. Comments Aggregation – Most of the decent user-generated content is built around niche online communities, where users often post some great comments on various topics. Most of these comments (however small or big) go unnoticed and get buried over time. If these comments were available for reading on a wider platform (a dedicated website) to a larger audience, then it can add more value. Each deserving comment becomes an independent post/article, linked back to the original post/article. The app can simply be a bookmarklet to clip thoughtful well-deserving comments and a website to aggregate the clipped comments with a clean uncluttered reader-friendly UI to go with it.

3. Social Goals – An application (probably a Facebook app) where anyone can set one or more goals (e.g. lose x amount weight in y days) for themselves or their friends. The user (person who has to achieve the goal) can then post regular updates on their progress. Their network of friends rank their effort on each update posted. Their network of friends can also send them a gift (virtual or real) at each milestone or when the goal is accomplished. The idea is loosely based on Game theory, as it aims to promote action and behaviour change through group motivation.

4. Feedback for Startups – Startups need early feedback as part of customer development. The idea is to create a website for startups to put-up a survey (small or big) and a special offer (e.g. discounts, coupons, gifts, gift certificate, books etc.) to go with it as an incentive to complete the survey. The longer the survey, the bigger the offer to the user. Users (who meet a set criteria) can then choose to participate in a survey and receive the special offer. Startups on the other hand can get the relevant feedback.

5. Food Photos – More and more people are sharing photos of their food. And there’s something about looking at other peoples (real) food. It’s somehow aesthetically pleasing to the eye. New York Times wrote about the phenomenon – People Who Photograph Food and Display the Pictures Online. The idea is to create a website and curate/aggregate food pictures in real-time from various photo sharing sites and social networks (Twitpic, TweetPhoto, Flickr, Posterous, Blogs). Add a bit of social voting and make it elegant for ‘food porn‘.

6. Integrated Blogging Environment (IBE) – Blogging is more common than ever before. From a bloggers perspective, I find that it still lacks a simple integrated tool to write rich articles quickly. Here’s my wish-list for a blogging tool: Web-based, simple WYSIWYG text editor, inbuilt support for dictionary & spelling suggestions, quicker reference to Wikipedia, inbuilt support for search and embedding of images (Creative Commons licensed) from Google Images and Flickr, auto-post to multiple blogs, auto-post to Twitter & Facebook. How about it?

Most of these abstract ideas have emerged from my own needs and observations. These ideas are open for anyone to use, so feel free to go for it. Drop me a message if you make any progress. Good luck.

The other day I was browsing through the list of world’s most popular goals on 43 Things, when I came across something one might call a “true lie”.

Apparently, 25271 people want to “Fall in love” and on average it takes them 9 years to complete this goal. Not too far down the list, 19421 people want to “get married” and on average it takes them 8 years to complete this goal. And there is the fundamental flaw with the typical perception of statistical averaging.

The dictionary defines an average as:

central tendency around the middle of a scale of evaluation.

Averaging has long been an important methodological “assumption” in data-driven understanding. A lot of analysis and decision-making around the world is based on taking the averages of various quantitative measurements. But, is it really a reliable way of result representation?

An average is a single value that is meant to typify a list of values. This can be misleading if misused. I think the problem with averaging is largely related to transparent distribution. For example, on average every person has one testicle and one breast. Misleading, but true. Without valid segmentation, an average doesn’t accurately classify the data set and the inference becomes biased.

In most cases, an average ends up sounding like a generalized fact, mainly to justify a marketing strategy. If a company promotes a product by stating that its been proven to be effective for “75% of people on average”, it leaves a lot unsaid. What age groups, gender, income levels etc. were these people segmented in while deriving an average? The chances of this product being effective, and the chances of anyone buying the product, should marginally diminish with an increasing lack of segmentation made available. However, marketeers know well that it’s this very lack of segmentation that impairs the judgement of people. We buy what others buy, as Game theory comes into action.

On the other side, many market researchers overuse averaging and reach invalid conclusions. Organizations misapply these conclusions, all to their own demise. Most organizations produce stuff that may never be widely adopted, but since their market research was based on generic averaging to start with, they think otherwise.

Averaging of data without clear information around the segmentation of that data is a vague and pointless exercise, which can have grave consequences through cognitive bias. Unfortunately, it’s also the most popular way of drawing abstract conclusions.