Internet Trends (Mary Meeker)

Mary Meeker's customary annual analysis on the state of the Internet industry is out. She presented it yesterday during The Wall Street Journal's D: All Things Digital conference in California.

One of the key takeaways for me was the mismatch between the mobile growth and mobile monetization compared to desktop, as more and more people go online and spend more of their online time on their smart phones. Facebook and Google are already facing this challenge.

But again, we're currently in the early stages of the mobile Internet revolution.

Below is the full report.

KPCB Internet Trends 2012

Left Mela (Verismo Networks)

This is to announce that I have left my position as the President, Entertainment Services, Verismo Networks/GM, Mela with immediate effect.

The main reason for my move is the dis-agreement on the right strategy and direction of Mela with the CEO of Verismo Networks. There were also a lot of Verismo legacy issues which made it very difficult to provide the right focus to Mela, which I launched as a new consumer business within Verismo in October 2011.

My excitement about solving the global distribution problem for premium South Asian entertainment content however remains intact. The Verismo experience in that regard was invaluable. Going in, we had more questions than answers. We were not very sure about the right business model, the right content mix, and the right platform strategy. The last one being more of a Verismo specific issue, given its legacy in the set top box business, than a market issue. We therefore iterated in the marketplace in order to get the product-market fix right, and learnt a lot.

This is what we achieved over the past one year.  We launched the service on three platforms (Mela dedicated set-top box, Roku and iPad) and quickly grew the service globally.  Today, consumers in more than 55 countries are enjoying Mela. In order to suit various customer needs, we offered multiple content packages (live TV, regional South Asian content, Bollywood movies - catalog vs new, regional South Asian movies, etc) and pricing (subscription with bundled all-in, stand-alone movies). Mela became the first major dedicated online Bollywood service to stream new movies in international markets simultaneous to their theatrical releases in India. This has huge potential -  less than 10% of new movies released in theaters in India get a theatrical release in international markets. Mela was also the first such service to stream Bollywood movies in high definition.

We however never got the chance to fully and properly execute at Verismo the strategy of the Digital Entertainment Corp of India (DECI), the company that I founded in this space and the pre-cursor to Mela. DECI, for example, was mainly a PC play. Mela was never launched on PC, the biggest online global distribution platform. The promised synergies which prompted me to launch Mela under the Verismo umbrella instead of DECI never materialized because those synergies never existed to begin with.

I'm now evaluating new options to capitalize on the highly exciting international OTT video opportunity. South Asia is arguably the most diverse content factory in the world. Bollywood is the world's biggest film industry in terms of the number of movies produced and box-office tickets sold annually. There is no consumer service today that fulfills the demand of global fans for this content in a convenient manner. If one gets the execution right with the right strategy, it presents an extremely attractive business opportunity.

Stay tuned!

Mela announces First Day First Show

Mela announced a major initiative today - First Day First Show (FDFS). Mela will start releasing on a regular basis new Bollywood movies worldwide simultaneous to their theatrical releases in India.

Bollywood fans are already enjoying the Mela service in more than 55 countries, a list that is growing on a daily basis. Under FDFS, studios and producers will be able to reach a global audience simultaneously. Fans will have the convenience of enjoying new movies in great quality without leaving their house, no matter where they're located worldwide. We're starting with new movies which normally do not get an international theatrical release. Today, pirated solutions are the only options for consumers outside of India to watch these movies when they get released in India. Not any more. Mela is committed to fixing this global distribution problem. We're fortunate to be able to work with a slate of pretty progressive content owners who share our vision.

Mela was labeled as the "Netflix for Bollywood" when we launched. With our FDFS initiative, Mela is further pushing the envelope and moving way beyond Netflix, which has been unable to secure new Hollywood movies until several months after their theatrical releases.

Our press release is below:

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Mela Becomes the First-Ever Global Online Service to Release New Bollywood Movies Simultaneous to Their Theatrical Releases 

Chaurahen releases worldwide on Mela on March 16th simultaneous to its theatrical release in India

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 16, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Mela, a global multi-platform consumer entertainment service with one of the largest aggregations of premium South Asian content, today announced the launch of First Day First Show, an initiative under which it will release new Bollywood movies in international markets simultaneous to their theatrical releases in India. Bollywood movie fans outside of India will now be able to enjoy new movies from the comfort of their living rooms no matter where they are located in the world.

Mela is the first-ever major Bollywood movie service in the world to launch such an initiative. Bollywood is the most prolific movie industry in the world, releasing more than three times as many movies per year as Hollywood, its more popular rival. Despite its global popularity, Hollywood has yet failed to simultaneously release new movies in every country in the world.

Mela is announcing the formal launch of its First Day First Show initiative with the simultaneous global release of the award-winning and multi-starring Bollywood film Chaurahen. The film will release globally on all Mela platforms - the Mela Bollywood movies channel on Roku, the Mela app on iPad and the Mela High Definition set top box on Friday, March 16. The film is being released the same day in theatres in India by its local distributor, Priya Village Roadshow (PVR).

Chaurahen (Crossroads), a film directed by Rajshree Ojha, who previously directed Aisha, in addition to two other popular specialty projects, boasts an impressive ensemble cast that includes Soha Ali Khan, Victor Banerjee, veteran Bollywood actress Zeenat Aman, and Kiera Chaplin, granddaughter of the silent film superstar Charlie Chaplin. The film is an adaptation of short stories by celebrated author Nirmal Verma. Ojha describes the three vignettes that comprise Chaurahen as "snippets of collected photographs, bringing together similar disconnected people trying to find their path." Originally completed in 2007, Chaurahen went on to screen at 11 international film festivals before securing theatrical distribution in India by PVR Cinema and global online distribution by Mela.

Chaurahen is not the first Bollywood movie to make its international distribution debut on Mela's global platform simultaneous to its theatrical release in India. Mela earlier released Puja Jatinder Bedi's Ghost and Sudish Kamath's Good Night Good Morning. The performance of these two smaller budget titles convinced Ojha of the effectiveness of Mela's global distribution platform.

"The quality of the Mela service, engagement of its audience, and the global reach of its platform will appeal to any content owner looking for a highly effective global distribution platform," expressed Ojha. After an arduous process to seek adequate distribution, she is optimistic that simultaneous worldwide release of the film through Mela will bring her already acclaimed film to an even broader global audience.

Sab Kanaujia, the General Manager of Mela, commented, "Mela is proud to become the first entertainment service to provide Bollywood producers and studios arguably the most effective global distribution platform. Now, quality content can reach its fans immediately, no matter where they are in the world. We are excited to acquire Chaurahen. While we are starting with mid- to small-budget movies under this initiative, we are confident that over time we will be able to acquire big-budget movies by demonstrating the value of our distribution platform."

Almost fifty percent of new Bollywood movies released in India every year do not get a simultaneous theatrical release in international markets due to various reasons. Limited number of available screens for releasing niche content and high traditional distribution and marketing cost are the main reasons why many Bollywood movies after releasing in India do not reach their global fans. As a result, rampant piracy has taken root in international markets to meet the growing demand of ardent fans who don't want to wait until official DVDs are released several weeks or months after a new movie's theatrical release in India. Additionally, cheap, pirated DVDs, available within days of a movie's theatrical release in India, have almost killed the home box office market because the price of official DVDs has remained very high comparatively.

Mela has been working with various producers and studios in India to ensure that a wide selection of films can leverage its global distribution platform and provide Mela subscribes a high-quality movie watching experience when the demand is the highest. Content owners will, for the first time, be able to distribute and monetize their content on a worldwide basis from day one. Fans will have a very compelling, legal alternative to enjoy new Bollywood movies in a high quality that was previously unavailable to them.

About Mela: Mela, a division of Verismo Networks Inc, is a multi-platform entertainment service that provides global consumers one of the largest collections of premium South Asian movies, music videos and TV content. Mela offers dozens of live television channels covering news and entertainment, hundreds of Bollywood, South Asian regional and independent movies, with an increasing number of titles in high definition, and selected premium videos from the Internet. Mela's content partners include India's leading and most popular film studios and television networks. Mela is available on multiple distribution platforms including Mela's high definition set-top box, the popular Roku streaming player, and Apple iPad. Mela's popular Bollywood movie service is available for $4.99 per month for instant, unlimited viewing of over 1,000 hit Bollywood and South Asian regional movies. Mela also offers a bundled package which includes its award winning, high-definition set-top-box with over seventy live television channels and 1,000+ popular movies available on-demand for a promotional price of $149 for one year of service.  Mela plans to later roll out its service on other major platforms including PC, tablets, Internet connected televisions, video gaming consoles, phones, Internet connected Blu-ray players, and other over-the-top devices. Mela is owned by Verismo Networks, a Silicon Valley based company that offers business customers worldwide solutions to bring  seamless convergence of IPTV linear channels, video-on-demand, Internet videos, social networking and personal media playback directly to consumer's television. Verismo is backed by Intel Capital. To learn more about Mela, please visit www.mela.com. To learn more about Verismo, please visit www.verismonetworks.com.

Mela launch announced today - Global "Netflix/Hulu" for South Asian content

Today we announced the launch of Mela, a multi-platform entertainment service that will provide consumers worldwide one of the largest collections of premium South Asian video content.

We had an action-packed day today with three launch events: press conference in the morning, Strike-a-Pose with Abhay Deol contest in the afternoon, and a private screening of Abhay Deol's latest Bollywood hit, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara in the evening.

Here is the video:


Mela represents the diversity of genres, tastes, languages, and regional flavors present in the rich cultural heritage of South Asia by licensing premium content from some of the biggest movie studios and television broadcast companies in the region. Mela brings directly to your television premium entertainment that includes dozens of live television channels covering news and entertainment, hundreds of hit Bollywood and regional movies, with an increasing number of titles in high-definition, and hundreds of independent films and selected premium videos from the Internet.

The Mela service at launch will be available on television through Mela’s high-definition set-top-box. Mela plans to later roll out its service on all major platforms including PC, mobile phones and devices, video gaming consoles, Internet connected televisions, Internet connected Blue-ray players, and other popular over-the-top devices and set-top boxes.

Today is, of course, a big day for the Mela team. It is also a big day for the South Asian content industry (film studios, television networks, actors, and everyone involved in creating compelling story telling). But most importantly, it is a big day for the fans. There is no reason why in this day and age, fans should not have access to their favorite content delivered to them in a manner that fits their connected, digital lifestyle.

It is the goal of Mela to fix this global distribution problem. If we don't, not only will piracy continue to ravage the industry, consumers will continue to be frustrated, and in a world of abundant choices, they will move on to other activities to entertain themselves. Everyone will loose in that case, except, of course, the content pirates.

Today is the start of Mela's journey in its pursuit to become the global "Netflix/Hulu" for the South Asian content.

Check out for more exciting updates soon...

A new chapter

Today we announced my new role at Verismo Networks, a venture-backed Silicon Valley startup that offers business customers worldwide solutions to bring seamless convergence of IPTV linear channels, video-on-demand, Internet videos, social networking and personal media playback directly to consumer's television. Verismo's end-to-end solutions enable MSOs/OEMs to cost-effectively expand their reach globally while giving subscribers an unparalleled viewing experience.

I am extremely excited about this move. The partnership with Verismo provides us very strong, complementary capabilities to continue to execute on the vision of Digital Entertainment Corporation of India ("DECI"), a global entertainment venture that I launched last year after leaving NBC Universal.   

The full press release is included below.

Watch out for some exciting updates in the coming weeks... 
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Verismo Networks Gets Into Entertainment Services

Sab Kanaujia, a Media Veteran and Ex-NBC Universal Executive, Joins Verismo as President of Entertainment Services

Mountain View, CA August 9, 2011 – Verismo Networks, the leading provider of a complete end-to-end solution to enable broadband entertainment and video delivery over broadband networks, today announced that they will be launching a new business unit focusing on entertainment services. Sab Kanaujia, a globally renowned media industry veteran, has joined Verismo as the President of Entertainment Services. Kanaujia had earlier launched Digital Entertainment Corporation of India (“DECI”), a holding company that focused on launching entertainment services to a global audience.

In his new role, Kanaujia will head Verismo’s new entertainment business unit and will be responsible for all areas including content acquisition, product, operations, marketing and distribution. Kanaujia brings more than 15 years of global experience to the company, with an impressive career that spans NBC Universal and Time Warner AOL, amongst others.

“Verismo Networks continues to set lofty goals for developing and delivering content-rich broadband entertainment solutions for our customers," said Prakash Bhalerao, Chairman and CEO of Verismo Networks. "Delivering new entertainment content and content rich services over our proven and widely deployed broadband entertainment platform is a high priority for Verismo Networks. Kanaujia has been a proven innovator in his previous roles and we are excited to have him join our team.”

“Verismo Networks shares the vision that prompted us to launch DECI. They bring extremely complementary strengths that will enable us to successfully execute on our strategy," said Sab Kanaujia. "With a globally deployed broadband entertainment platform, an opportunity to partner with a seasoned entrepreneur in Bhalerao and strong backing of a blue chip investor like Intel Capital, I am delighted to join the Verismo team at a crucial stage in its growth phase.”

Prior to founding Digital Entertainment Corporation of India, Kanuajia was the Vice President, Digital Product Strategy & Development at NBC Universal (NBCU). Based out of the company’s headquarters in New York City, he ran its global digital product strategy and development across its television broadcast network, cable TV channels, Hollywood studios and digital properties. He joined NBCU in August 2006 as part of its corporate digital media team that incubated Hulu.com, one of the world’s largest online premium video networks announced in March 2007 as a joint venture between NBCU and News Corp. 

He was the General Manager of NBCU’s strategic digital venture with Ten Sports, the most watched sports channel across theIndian sub-continent and Middle East. Working with NDTV, one of India’s biggest media companies and a strategic investment of NBCU at the time, Kanaujia led the business deal to help re-launch several of its digital properties including its flagship global news destination, www.ndtv.com. He was also the brainchild behind NBCU’s corporate social media initiative that distributed firm’s content covering over a dozen brands including NBC, CNBC, USA Networks, NBC Sports and Olympics, SyFy, MSNBC, Universal Studios, iVillage, Telemundo, Oxygen, and others to fans through viral distribution. He quickly grew this initiative, which within two years accounted for over 25% of the total reach of NBCU’s network of online properties, providing the firm’s content a global footprint with presence on more than six million destinations worldwide.

Earlier, Kanaujia held various key roles in product strategy and corporate development at Time Warner AOL. Amongst his several achievements at AOL, he successfully launched AOL Hi-Q Video, a key high-quality distribution platform for AOL’s In2TV service, the first broadband television network in the U.S., providing thousands of hours of on-demand, full-length classic TV shows from Warner Brothers.

Kanaujia is a Charter Member of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) in Silicon Valley, and a Senior Volunteer with the American India Foundation. He attended the University of Michigan Business School at Ann Arbor, MI for executive management training, and earned his MBA with honors from the University of Maryland at College Park, MD. He received his Bachelor’s in Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, India.

About Verismo Networks

Verismo Networks provides an end‐to‐end solution for the easy deployment of Broadband entertainment services by ISPs, Telcos, OTT and IPTV service providers globally. Its Broadband TV platform is globally deployed and the leading solution that brings seamless integration of IPTV linear channels, video on demand, internet video, social networking and personal media playback directly to the TV. The Verismo end-to-end platform and cloud based services enables the fastest time‐to‐market for any content owner and service provider to expand their reach globally and cost effectively while giving subscribers an un‐paralleled viewing experience. Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment organization is an investor in Verismo Networks. For more information, please visit www.verismonetworks.com

Media Relations Contact:

Teena Touch PR for Verismo Networks 415-310-3125 teena@teenatouchpr.com

Governments need to prevent formation of big monopolies in the new global digital economy

I attended the first e-G8 Forum in Paris last week. The purpose of the Forum was to engage in debates and discussions about the Internet and the digital ecosystem in order to set the agenda on this important topic for the Heads of State and Governement of the Group of Eight – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – during this year's G8 Summit that was held right after the e-G8 Forum.


The format of the e-G8 Forum was very similar to The World Economic Forum that is annually held in Davos. After every debate/session, three to five key messages were captured, which were at the end again massaged and prioritized to frame the final agenda for the G8 Summit. While the process was a bit frustrating, I think an honest effort was made by Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France and the current President of the G8, to incorporate feedback from all the stakeholders. I commend Sarkozy, who addressed us while inaugurating e-G8, for this initiative, which may become a regular event during all future annual G8 Summits.


However, there was a cloud of suspicion throughout the entire Forum that the event was an effort by entrenched big corporations and governments to establish policies and laws which will essentially hijack this fledgling new medium to meet their vested interests at the expense of small startups and masses. The latter are primarily responsible for most of the innovation and creativity enabled by the democratizing nature of the Internet medium that is thus far free from restrictive government laws.


Unfortunately, I doubt that the above concerns were resolved after the conclusion of last week's inaugural e-G8 Forum. 


Internet continues to lead an economy with "winner takes all" outcomes in most of the industries it is affecting fundamental changes. Google, Apple, Facebook are clear examples of very deep, entrenched players in the digital ecosystem. 


To give an example, despite what Google officially argues with policy makers in Washington DC and EU, the numbers prove the fact that the company is a clear monopoly in most global markets in the online Search and Advertising industry (China being a major exception, for different reasons though). Google continues to leverage its dominant position in online search and advertising to attain dominance in emerging, new adjacent areas of the Internet economy like mobile (Android). When Google is not able to win through its organic efforts, it has a history of successfully acquiring key startups which were able to establish market leading positions. DoubleClick (online brand advertising) and AdMob (mobile advertising) are  two clear examples. These acquisitions were approved by the U.S. Justice Department.


The entrenched players have erected major barriers for entry for new players which are needed to keep the new digital economy competitive. While a very healthy, venture-funded startup activity continues to encourage new entrants, increasingly, the only exit for them is an acquisition by a handful of established, entrenched players in the sector. 


If I have to give one key message to the G8 leaders on their role in the Internet and digital ecosystem, it will be to ensure that they closely scrutinize anti-competitive business practices and acquisition activities of the industry's dominant players.


Europe gets a grade B, and U.S. gets D in this test thus far.

e-G8: Internet and digital ecosystem will be on G8's agenda this year

Couple of days back I received an invitation to attend the e-G8 Forum in Paris in a month's time. The e-G8 Forum, the first of its kind, will be held immediately preceding this year's G8 Summit, the annual meeting of the leaders of the eight most advanced countries in the world, which is hosted by France this year. Apparently they want to provide the leaders of G8 fresh ideas about the Internet and the digital ecosystem.

I don't know what to make of it. I've no idea what to expect. One of the reasons that may be driving high interest in the Internet and digital media amongst governments around the globe is the role the Internet medium has played in the Arab Spring. We all have witnessed over the recent months how ordinary citizens, armed nothing but a simple cell phone connected to the Internet, using social media tools like Facebook & Twitter, have been able to create a groundswell of uprisings resulting into social revolutions which spread overnight like a wild fire and overthrew decades-old dictatorial regimes across the Arab world. By contrast, America's war in Iraq to free that country of a brutal dictator and replace it with a democracy took almost a decade, over which hundreds of billions of dollars were spent and thousands of lives were lost (both American and local). Tunisia and Egypt achieved that within weeks, without any costly external invasion and massive bloodshed.

I'm happy that France is being pro-active to engage people from the industry and start a dialog at the highest level. I hope that the e-G8 Forum is not a pre-cursor to unnecessary regulations that may be implemented in order to govern the Internet, a nascent and still evolving new medium for open communication and sharing across global citizens. History is a proof that governments of all shapes sizes and colors have tried to control the press in order to influence the public debate and sway its citizens in supporting policies designed by non-democratic legislatures. Internet is the "press" of the 21st century youth, and it truly transcends national boundaries.

Given my curiosity, I've accepted the invitation. Spring in Paris should be fun anyway. I also hope to catch some French Open tennis...the grand slam tournament kicks off in Paris that same week.

I've included the full invitation below. It provides their thinking behind the event.

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Dear Sab Kanaujia,

A the initiative of Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the French Republic and the current President of the G8, the Heads of State and Governement of the Group of Eight – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – have decided to place the Internet and the digital ecosystem on the agenda of next month’s G8 Summit. This will mark the very first time that information technology formally takes a place on the agenda of a summit of heads of state – a recognition of how critically important these sectors are to sustaining and accelerating global economic growth.

In order to provide G8 political leaders with fresh ideas, President Sarkozy has asked me to coordinate the organization of the e-G8 Forum to take place in Paris on May 24 and 25. This will be a unique gathering of the world’s top Internet and digital leaders, not only from across the G8 nations, but further afield. Through our debates and discussions at the e-G8, we can and we must bring our reflections, ideas and experiences directly to the G8 leaders.

As the e-G8 Forum’s Chairman, I am therefore honoured to invite you to come to Paris to take part in this historic event. I believe it is vitally important that your voice be heard during the Forum. Only a true diversity of opinion can guarantee a good outcome.

Discussions at the two-day Forum will be a mixture of plenary sessions and in-depth workshops where a wide variety of themes will be addressed, including:

- The Internet as key driver for economic growth
- The emergence of global digital citizenship
- The digital technologies of the future
- How best to promote innovation clusters
- The mobile revolution and its impact on commerce, media and advertising
- Privacy and IP protection

President Nicolas Sarkozy will himself deliver the opening keynote address at 10:00 a.m. on May 24.

Various items of useful information are here available, including a pre-program of the event and a factsheet. (Factsheet, Pre-program)

Please note participation in the e-G8 Forum is strictly by personal invitation only. To register for the e-G8 Forum, please simply click on the link below
http://registration.eg8forum.com
and use the following password: xxxx

I look forward to welcoming you at the e-G8 Forum next month.

Maurice Lévy
Chairman of the e-G8 Forum
Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe

India crosses 100M Internet users: Google

Google, which dominates the online advertising market in India, claims that the country now has over 100 million Internet users. That makes India the third largest Internet market in the world, behind China (600M) and USA (300M). Rajan Anandan, Google India head, speaking at the VC Circle E-Commerce Forum last week, also mentioned that the time an average user in India spends online is 16 hours per week, at par with the average time spent on television, which along with print are the leading advertising platforms in India.

Given the low PC penetration in India, but its dynamic and huge mobile market, the mobile phone would become the predominant Internet access point for users in India. Already, more than 40M Internet users in India go online on their mobile phones, per Google.

Google India has an important role to play in evangelizing Internet and pushing for a higher allocation of India's fast growing advertising market to the Internet. The company has already reached its growth limit in India with the size of the country's current online advertising market. More brand advertising needs to move online in India. It requires scalable premium advertising inventory, which would be fueled by more premium content moving to digital platforms. Advent of 3G on mobile phones and upcoming mobile broadband (LTE) launch by service providers should provide the necessary high-speed connectivity and access.

Poem for the day

"Love after Love"  

By Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.

Display advertising technology landscape

Online display advertising is getting increasingly complex as publishers look to increase sell-thru rate and halt the downward slide of CPMs driven by explosion in available inventory, while advertisers look for better relevance, targeting and performance. A lot of venture capital has therefore gone into funding innovative technology companies to find solutions for publishers and advertisers. The resulting technology ecosystem that supports display advertising has become increasingly complex.

The chart below (courtesy Luma Partners) does a good job of capturing all the components of the display advertising technology landscape. Click on the chart to enlarge it.

Pursuing happiness: Video with the Dalai Lama

In the video below, American Public Media's Krista Tippett interviews four dynamic religious leaders on the meaning of happiness: Dalai Lama and scholars from world's three biggest religions, Jonathan Sacks (chief rabbi of the Commonwealth), Katharine Jefferts Schori (presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church), and Islamic scholar Seyyed Hossein Nasr. This event was held at the Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia on October 17, 2010.

Pursuing Happiness with the Dalai Lama from onBeing on Vimeo.

The subject is pursuing happiness, the most important and persistent endeavor of our society since the beginning of the human dawn. Even though the meaning of being happy has changed over the years, given we have increasingly become more aware over time, my key takeaway is that compassion is the single most important virtue of a happy life.

A lot of other great material on the subject can be found on the APM's onBeing show site here.

Below is a simple, commonsensical flow chart one can use to see how he/she can be happy:

The Android juggernaut keeps rolling

The Android mobile phones are on a roll. Thanks to the muscle of Google behind it, more open and developer friendly nature of the operating system (OS), and backing by major handset manufacturers, Android has gained significant market share worldwide in a very short period of time. Despite competition's headstart, Android has come from behind and is expected to overtake Apple (iPhone) and RIM (Blackberry) this year to become the second most popular mobile OS in the world behind Nokia's Symbian. I can't wait to dump my iPhone for Motorola's Droid Pro, the first global, Android-based smart phone made for business users.

Below is the illustration of Android's success in numbers from GigaOm. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Traveling out of the country

I'm leaving for India tomorrow. I'll spend the first few days in Delhi and then two weeks in Bombay. I'll be stopping by in London around Oct 3rd on my way back to NYC. This trip is mostly for work, related to a new global digital venture that I've been working on for the past several months. I'll spend the next weekend with my parents in Lucknow, where other family members will also be joining us.

For folks out there who would like to meet up in Delhi/Bombay/London, please ping me. 

Looking forward to spending some quality time with the family, and a productive work trip. 

Privacy on Facebook is an illusion. Mother arrested over photo of baby with Bong

HBR article: How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen

Clayton Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business School and the author of one of my favorite business books, The Innovator's Dilemma, has written a great article titled "How will you measure your life?" in the recent Harvard Business Review magazine.

This is a question that I ask myself on a very regular basis. Since becoming a father in March, the answer to this question, and my priorities in life, seem to have already been greatly impacted.

Christensen's article is consistent with the message in Steven Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, another one of my all-time favorite books.

Here is the link to the article, which I've included below. I recommend everyone to read it. Definitely a must-read for all business school students.

How will you measure your life?

by Clayton M. Christensen

Editor’s Note: When the members of the class of 2010 entered business school, the economy was strong and their post-graduation ambitions could be limitless. Just a few weeks later, the economy went into a tailspin. They’ve spent the past two years recalibrating their worldview and their definition of success.

The students seem highly aware of how the world has changed (as the sampling of views in this article shows). In the spring, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply them to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life. Though Christensen’s thinking comes from his deep religious faith, we believe that these are strategies anyone can use. And so we asked him to share them with the readers of HBR.

Before I published The Innovator’s Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, “Look, stuff has happened. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel.” I said that I couldn’t—that I needed a full 30 minutes to explain the model, because only with it as context would any comments about Intel make sense. Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: “Look, I’ve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.”

I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could understand how disruption worked. I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills.

When I finished the minimill story, Grove said, “OK, I get it. What it means for Intel is...,” and then went on to articulate what would become the company’s strategy for going to the bottom of the market to launch the Celeron processor.

I’ve thought about that a million times since. If I had been suckered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the microprocessor business, I’d have been killed. But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own.

That experience had a profound influence on me. When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.

My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone I attach different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions of a general manager’s job in stimulating innovation and growth. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.

On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.

As the students discuss the answers to these questions, I open my own life to them as a case study of sorts, to illustrate how they can use the theories from our course to guide their life decisions.

One of the theories that gives great insight on the first question—how to be sure we find happiness in our careers—is from Frederick Herzberg, who asserts that the powerful motivator in our lives isn’t money; it’s the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, contribute to others, and be recognized for achievements. I tell the students about a vision of sorts I had while I was running the company I founded before becoming an academic. In my mind’s eye I saw one of my managers leave for work one morning with a relatively strong level of self-esteem. Then I pictured her driving home to her family 10 hours later, feeling unappreciated, frustrated, underutilized, and demeaned. I imagined how profoundly her lowered self-esteem affected the way she interacted with her children. The vision in my mind then fast-forwarded to another day, when she drove home with greater self-esteem—feeling that she had learned a lot, been recognized for achieving valuable things, and played a significant role in the success of some important initiatives. I then imagined how positively that affected her as a spouse and a parent. My conclusion: Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team. More and more MBA students come to school thinking that a career in business means buying, selling, and investing in companies. That’s unfortunate. Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people.

I want students to leave my classroom knowing that.

Create a Strategy for Your Life

A theory that is helpful in answering the second question—How can I ensure that my relationship with my family proves to be an enduring source of happiness?—concerns how strategy is defined and implemented. Its primary insight is that a company’s strategy is determined by the types of initiatives that management invests in. If a company’s resource allocation process is not managed masterfully, what emerges from it can be very different from what management intended. Because companies’ decision-making systems are designed to steer investments to initiatives that offer the most tangible and immediate returns, companies shortchange investments in initiatives that are crucial to their long-term strategies.

Over the years I’ve watched the fates of my HBS classmates from 1979 unfold; I’ve seen more and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children. I can guarantee you that not a single one of them graduated with the deliberate strategy of getting divorced and raising children who would become estranged from them. And yet a shocking number of them implemented that strategy. The reason? They didn’t keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy.

It’s quite startling that a significant fraction of the 900 students that HBS draws each year from the world’s best have given little thought to the purpose of their lives. I tell the students that HBS might be one of their last chances to reflect deeply on that question. If they think that they’ll have more time and energy to reflect later, they’re nuts, because life only gets more demanding: You take on a mortgage; you’re working 70 hours a week; you have a spouse and children.

For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I understood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra year’s worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.

Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest techniques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It’s the single most useful thing I’ve ever learned. I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they’ll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered at HBS. If they don’t figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life. Clarity about their purpose will trump knowledge of activity-based costing, balanced scorecards, core competence, disruptive innovation, the four Ps, and the five forces.

My purpose grew out of my religious faith, but faith isn’t the only thing that gives people direction. For example, one of my former students decided that his purpose was to bring honesty and economic prosperity to his country and to raise children who were as capably committed to this cause, and to each other, as he was. His purpose is focused on family and others—as mine is.

The choice and successful pursuit of a profession is but one tool for achieving your purpose. But without a purpose, life can become hollow.

Allocate Your Resources

Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy.

I have a bunch of “businesses” that compete for these resources: I’m trying to have a rewarding relationship with my wife, raise great kids, contribute to my community, succeed in my career, contribute to my church, and so on. And I have exactly the same problem that a corporation does. I have a limited amount of time and energy and talent. How much do I devote to each of these pursuits?

Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended. Sometimes that’s good: Opportunities that you never planned for emerge. But if you misinvest your resources, the outcome can be bad. As I think about my former classmates who inadvertently invested for lives of hollow unhappiness, I can’t help believing that their troubles relate right back to a short-term perspective.

When people who have a high need for achievement—and that includes all Harvard Business School graduates—have an extra half hour of time or an extra ounce of energy, they’ll unconsciously allocate it to activities that yield the most tangible accomplishments. And our careers provide the most concrete evidence that we’re moving forward. You ship a product, finish a design, complete a presentation, close a sale, teach a class, publish a paper, get paid, get promoted. In contrast, investing time and energy in your relationship with your spouse and children typically doesn’t offer that same immediate sense of achievement. Kids misbehave every day. It’s really not until 20 years down the road that you can put your hands on your hips and say, “I raised a good son or a good daughter.” You can neglect your relationship with your spouse, and on a day-to-day basis, it doesn’t seem as if things are deteriorating. People who are driven to excel have this unconscious propensity to underinvest in their families and overinvest in their careers—even though intimate and loving relationships with their families are the most powerful and enduring source of happiness.

If you study the root causes of business disasters, over and over you’ll find this predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. If you look at personal lives through that lens, you’ll see the same stunning and sobering pattern: people allocating fewer and fewer resources to the things they would have once said mattered most.

Create a Culture

There’s an important model in our class called the Tools of Cooperation, which basically says that being a visionary manager isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s one thing to see into the foggy future with acuity and chart the course corrections that the company must make. But it’s quite another to persuade employees who might not see the changes ahead to line up and work cooperatively to take the company in that new direction. Knowing what tools to wield to elicit the needed cooperation is a critical managerial skill.

The theory arrays these tools along two dimensions—the extent to which members of the organization agree on what they want from their participation in the enterprise, and the extent to which they agree on what actions will produce the desired results. When there is little agreement on both axes, you have to use “power tools”—coercion, threats, punishment, and so on—to secure cooperation. Many companies start in this quadrant, which is why the founding executive team must play such an assertive role in defining what must be done and how. If employees’ ways of working together to address those tasks succeed over and over, consensus begins to form. MIT’s Edgar Schein has described this process as the mechanism by which a culture is built. Ultimately, people don’t even think about whether their way of doing things yields success. They embrace priorities and follow procedures by instinct and assumption rather than by explicit decision—which means that they’ve created a culture. Culture, in compelling but unspoken ways, dictates the proven, acceptable methods by which members of the group address recurrent problems. And culture defines the priority given to different types of problems. It can be a powerful management tool.

In using this model to address the question, How can I be sure that my family becomes an enduring source of happiness?, my students quickly see that the simplest tools that parents can wield to elicit cooperation from children are power tools. But there comes a point during the teen years when power tools no longer work. At that point parents start wishing that they had begun working with their children at a very young age to build a culture at home in which children instinctively behave respectfully toward one another, obey their parents, and choose the right thing to do. Families have cultures, just as companies do. Those cultures can be built consciously or evolve inadvertently.

If you want your kids to have strong self-esteem and confidence that they can solve hard problems, those qualities won’t magically materialize in high school. You have to design them into your family’s culture—and you have to think about this very early on. Like employees, children build self-esteem by doing things that are hard and learning what works.

Avoid the “Marginal Costs” Mistake

We’re taught in finance and economics that in evaluating alternative investments, we should ignore sunk and fixed costs, and instead base decisions on the marginal costs and marginal revenues that each alternative entails. We learn in our course that this doctrine biases companies to leverage what they have put in place to succeed in the past, instead of guiding them to create the capabilities they’ll need in the future. If we knew the future would be exactly the same as the past, that approach would be fine. But if the future’s different—and it almost always is—then it’s the wrong thing to do.

This theory addresses the third question I discuss with my students—how to live a life of integrity (stay out of jail). Unconsciously, we often employ the marginal cost doctrine in our personal lives when we choose between right and wrong. A voice in our head says, “Look, I know that as a general rule, most people shouldn’t do this. But in this particular extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s OK.” The marginal cost of doing something wrong “just this once” always seems alluringly low. It suckers you in, and you don’t ever look at where that path ultimately is headed and at the full costs that the choice entails. Justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of “just this once.”

I’d like to share a story about how I came to understand the potential damage of “just this once” in my own life. I played on the Oxford University varsity basketball team. We worked our tails off and finished the season undefeated. The guys on the team were the best friends I’ve ever had in my life. We got to the British equivalent of the NCAA tournament—and made it to the final four. It turned out the championship game was scheduled to be played on a Sunday. I had made a personal commitment to God at age 16 that I would never play ball on Sunday. So I went to the coach and explained my problem. He was incredulous. My teammates were, too, because I was the starting center. Every one of the guys on the team came to me and said, “You’ve got to play. Can’t you break the rule just this one time?”

I’m a deeply religious man, so I went away and prayed about what I should do. I got a very clear feeling that I shouldn’t break my commitment—so I didn’t play in the championship game.

In many ways that was a small decision—involving one of several thousand Sundays in my life. In theory, surely I could have crossed over the line just that one time and then not done it again. But looking back on it, resisting the temptation whose logic was “In this extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s OK” has proven to be one of the most important decisions of my life. Why? My life has been one unending stream of extenuating circumstances. Had I crossed the line that one time, I would have done it over and over in the years that followed.

The lesson I learned from this is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time. If you give in to “just this once,” based on a marginal cost analysis, as some of my former classmates have done, you’ll regret where you end up. You’ve got to define for yourself what you stand for and draw the line in a safe place.

Remember the Importance of Humility

I got this insight when I was asked to teach a class on humility at Harvard College. I asked all the students to describe the most humble person they knew. One characteristic of these humble people stood out: They had a high level of self-esteem. They knew who they were, and they felt good about who they were. We also decided that humility was defined not by self-deprecating behavior or attitudes but by the esteem with which you regard others. Good behavior flows naturally from that kind of humility. For example, you would never steal from someone, because you respect that person too much. You’d never lie to someone, either.

It’s crucial to take a sense of humility into the world. By the time you make it to a top graduate school, almost all your learning has come from people who are smarter and more experienced than you: parents, teachers, bosses. But once you’ve finished at Harvard Business School or any other top academic institution, the vast majority of people you’ll interact with on a day-to-day basis may not be smarter than you. And if your attitude is that only smarter people have something to teach you, your learning opportunities will be very limited. But if you have a humble eagerness to learn something from everybody, your learning opportunities will be unlimited. Generally, you can be humble only if you feel really good about yourself—and you want to help those around you feel really good about themselves, too. When we see people acting in an abusive, arrogant, or demeaning manner toward others, their behavior almost always is a symptom of their lack of self-esteem. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves.

Choose the Right Yardstick

This past year I was diagnosed with cancer and faced the possibility that my life would end sooner than I’d planned. Thankfully, it now looks as if I’ll be spared. But the experience has given me important insight into my life.

I have a pretty clear idea of how my ideas have generated enormous revenue for companies that have used my research; I know I’ve had a substantial impact. But as I’ve confronted this disease, it’s been interesting to see how unimportant that impact is to me now. I’ve concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn’t dollars but the individual people whose lives I’ve touched.

I think that’s the way it will work for us all. Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.

Clayton M. Christensen (cchristensen@hbs.edu) is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

July 4th fireworks over Hudson river in NYC

Recently I started dabbling into photography after buying a digital SLR camera when our daughter was born. Here are some pictures of yesterday's Macy's Fourth of July Independence Day fireworks in New York City. 

Location: The banks of Hudson river across Manhattan with the city skyline and the Empire State building in the backdrop. 

Equipment: Canon EOS 500D (Rebel T1i), Canon Zoom Lens EF-S 18-55mm, Tripod

Media companies will be surprised by the coming digital disruption: PwC report

PricewaterhouseCoopers has released the eleventh annual edition of its five-year global outlook on the media & entertainment industry (2010 - 2014). They looked at consumers and advertising spending in a comprehensive analysis across 13 industry segments in 48 countries. The report's main conclusion is that the digital transformation of the media industry and the resulting disruption over the last several years is just the beginning. The next five years will witness a much greater turmoil than expected by the incumbents.

The link to the full PwC report is here, and below is the intro para:

Towards 2014: the search for the position in the digital value chain
"The pace of consumers' migration to new digital platforms is running well ahead of the industry’s expectations—and yet non-digital revenue streams will still account for two thirds of total global spending in 2014. Changing consumer behaviour is impacting on all segments of the entertainment and media industry, as companies search for the right role and positioning in the digital value chain that is now taking shape."

The report is not freely available, so below are some of its highlights from GigaOm.

Memo to Media Cos.: Disruption? You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet

Mathew Ingram Tuesday, June 15, 2010 2:30:41 PM

The media and entertainment industries have been through an unprecedented amount of upheaval over the past several years, as content has become increasingly digital, consumers have correspondingly moved their attention online and advertisers have begun to follow. The resulting shifts have caused turmoil in everything from the newspaper and TV industries to Hollywood and Madison Avenue, as companies have tried to move their business models in new directions — many have failed, while others are in the process of failing. But a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers on the future of the entertainment and media industries forecasts even greater turmoil over the next five years.

Mobile and social:
The driving force behind all this upheaval won’t come as any surprise to GigaOM readers: the continuing growth in mobile communications and entertainment, as well as the explosion of social networking and related services.

“The digital pace of change has proven to be even quicker than anticipated, with consumers embracing new media experiences and digital downloads at often-unexpected speeds,” PricewaterhouseCoopers analyst Ken Sharkey said in a statement released with the report, the firm’s annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook. “There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach for E&M companies to stake their position in the digital value chain.”

Digital spending to climb:
Not all of the upheaval will be bad (unless of course you’re an existing media or entertainment company that fails to manage the transition). The PWC report notes that new business models will emerge, as advertising continues to move online and companies find new ways of connecting with consumers. And that creates opportunity for startups and innovation — some of which we’ve already seen with the growth of the likes of YouTube and Facebook.

Over the next five years, the report estimates that digital spending — defined as spending on broadband and mobile access, wired and mobile advertising, video on demand, digital music, online movie rentals, video games and newspaper and magazine advertising — will climb from below 20 percent of all entertainment and media spending in the U.S. to over 26 percent. Globally, the firm expects digital spending to hit 33 percent of all spending on media and entertainment by 2014.

Advertising growing slowly:
The wild card for many media companies and entertainment entities will be the health of the advertising industry, PWC says. While there have been signs of a rebound in spending, the company says ad revenues “remain fragile in nature and spending is unlikely to return to former levels.” By 2014, the report estimates that U.S. advertising spending will still be almost 10 percent below where it was in 2007, although it will be somewhat higher than it was last year (2.6 percent, the report says).

To take just one example of the impact that the growth of online advertising is having on specific industries, Internet ad spending is expected to surpass spending on newspaper advertising this year. PWC’s forecast shows ad spending for Internet, TV and video games growing over the next five years, while spending on ads in consumer magazines, newspapers, directories and trade magazines is expected to shrink. The consulting firm says its research shows that brands are changing their focus from “advertising on a medium, to marketing through — and with — content.”

Mobile, online and engaged:
PwC says the three themes that the media and entertainment industries need to wrap their heads around are as follows:

• The power of mobility: Converged, multifunctional mobile devices are coming of age as a consumption platform, according to the firm: “Consumers are increasingly demanding ubiquity and the ability to consume and interact with content anywhere, anytime, and to share and discuss that content experience with others via social networks.” It expects the number of consumers with mobile Internet access to grow by 40 percent over the next five years.
• The dominance of the Internet: PWC says the consumer “has moved beyond thinking of the Internet as an end in itself, and expects all forms of media to embed the convenience, immediacy and interactivity of the Internet.” This applies to TV, where more and more users want Internet features and services as well as the regular television experience; it also addresses how tablets are reshaping the magazine and newspaper business and the impact of digital music services such as Pandora on the music industry.
• Increasing engagement: Consumers are ready to pay for content, PWC says, but only if media and entertainment companies and their offerings become more engaged with them. “Ongoing fragmentation means that media offerings will need greater consumer engagement and quality,” the firm says. “Consumers are more willing to pay for content when accompanied by convenience and flexibility in usage, personalization and a differentiated experience that cannot be created elsewhere.”

If your company is focused on Internet advertising, video games, TV advertising, radio or movies, PWC says you will likely see growth in the U.S. market over the next five years — ranging from rates in the 3 percent range to as high as 8.8 percent (for Internet ads). But if you’re in the recorded music, newspaper publishing or consumer magazine industries, the firm expects that you will see those markets decline by between 2.4 percent (music) and 2.8 percent (newspapers).

To add insult to injury, the PWC report warns that “today’s E&M environment is one in which it is very easy to get surprised by the pace of developments, even if you have already predicted the direction of travel correctly.”

BP oil spill: Spreading disaster

Delicate patterns in the sea breaking on Orange Beach, Alabama, more than 90 miles from the BP oil spill, cannot distract from the mess four to six inches deep on parts of the shore

Photographer: Dave Martin/AP (courtesy The Guardian)

The Last Advertising Agency on Earth

A short film about what the future of advertising might look like. Produced by Saatchi & Saatchi, Canada.