Mukesh Gupta's Blog, page 40

How Different Human Societies Name Colours And the Not So Surprising Fact!

I recently saw this interesting video that shared some interesting facts on how names of colours evolve in different parts of the world independent of each other and how it still follows a similar pattern. 

The thing that is surprising and what we can learn from it is that in some sense, all of the different cultures around the world evolved in a similar fashion.  

Irrespective of which part of the world we grew up in, irrespective of what languages we speak, irrespective of what religion we...

Why Good Ideas Don’t Fly and What To Do About It?

Every leader talks about the importance of innovation to their business. In public, every leader talks about how they and their teams are at the fore front of innovation. In private, the very same leaders confess that they are nowhere near the level of innovation that they would like to be at. 

On one hand, they confess that they are struggling to get the innovation process work as effectively as any of their other functions. On the other hand, there are good ideas that languish within their...

Crafting an Effective Elevator Pitch

I am sure that at some point in time, you would have had the need to come up with an elevator pitch for an idea that you wanted to share with others to either inspire them to action or elicit a commitment.

There are a lot of ways one can go about designing an elevator pitch but I came across Randy Olson‘s TEDMED speech where he shares this simple framework for crafting an elevator pitch. 

“{Premise} and {premise} but {problem} therefore {Solution}” 

This is a simple yet powerful framework fo...

Within Chaos Lies Opportunity – Bruce Lee

In this interesting talk Shannon Lee (Daughter of one of the great martial artist and philosopher – Bruce Lee). 

Hope you enjoy the talk! 

Rocking Your Next Brainstorming Session!

I am sure that at some point in your career, you have been either invited to or hosted a brainstorming session to come up ideas. Ideas to either solve a specific problem or to create a new product or service or for something else altogether. 

Most brainstorming sessions don’t work. They either don’t get the creative ideas that you expect to come up with or nothing happens after the brainstorming, which leads to a feeling of fun but wasted time.

But it need not be like that. I’ve hosted more t...

Imagination – Our Greatest Strength and our Greatest Weakness

One of the greatest strengths of the human race is also one if its weakest link. Our ability to imagine is the source of all the innovations around us that has made our lives and our species so dominant in the also what causes us to trip in a lot of our pursuit.

Imagination can be both productive and destructive. 

We could end up living in our imaginary worlds and never see the reality. This is the reason why so many of us (individuals and organisations) are never able to realize our potenti...

Coming to a Concert Hall Near You, The next music superstar – AIVA, Artificial Intelligence

I watched this TED video where Pierre Barreau presents music that was created by an artificial intelligence called AIVA and was blown away.

He and his team were able to feed into an algorithm a whole array of music which then was analysed by a neural network and the application is now able to compose original music based on input criteria. It decides what note should come after a specific note when we are looking for a certain kind of effect the music should create in a listener. 

Watch his...

4 Pathways to Innovation

I was facilitating a group of senior leaders who were tasked with leading the innovation effort in their respective organization and started the facilitation with the simple yet profound question –

“How do you define innovation?”.

The best answer I’ve so far received to this question is the following:

“Innovation is applied problem solving leading to generation of value.”

The next question to ask then is the following:

“Which problems are worth solving and where do we find them?”

This is th...

Personal Data Replaces Cash at this Cafe

Shiru café looks like any other coffee shop. But the similarities end there. If you were to go to the café for some hard earned caffeine, the chances are that you will be refused your caffeine unless you are either a student or a teaching staff at a university. Simply put, no college ID >> No coffee.

What’s more, if you are a part of the teaching staff, you can pay for your coffee with cash.

However, if you are a student then to get your cup of coffee (or tea), the currency that you need to p...

You cant innovate when,

I read this blog post by Mike Shipulski which resonated really well with me. His post is as below: 

You cant innovate when, 

Your company believes everything should always go as planned.
You still have to do your regular job.
The project’s completion date is disrespectful of the work content.
Your company doesn’t recognise the difference between complex and complicated.
The team is not given the tools, training, time and a teacher.
You’re asked to generate 500 ideas but you’re afraid no one will d...