An interesting strategy building session at AU ..

It was interesting to have an interesting 4 hour interaction of Area Chairs with Prof. Dr. B V Krishnamurthy, the Advisor to the Pro Chancellor of Alliance University in Bangalore on the first of April 2021. 

 

We are taking up the step after a Bench marking session, an Operations Strategy exercise where our University was bench marked to some of the world's best and we fixed the targets to reach these standards in the next five to ten years. It was great to see an Operations strategy exercise to compare our Institution with the best in the country being deployed in our University. (Click here for the HBR paper How to measure yourself against the best, Tucker et al, Jan '87 that mentions Xerox's experience initially with Bench marking and how it grew to be global in quality eventually)

We brainstormed over 4 hours on Thursday from 10.30 AM to 4.30 PM to find how to proceed to beat the competition and remain among the top in the NIRF survey where we were ranked among the only three schools in the top Bschools from Karnataka along with IIM Bangalore and TAPMI, Manipal. Other business schools were far behind and we hope in the near future they will offer us credible challenge and competition to the top position. 

Some of the interesting points that came up for discussion with the Area Chairs is mentioned here with illustrations. 

Mentorship : 

Mentorship is the influence, guidance, or direction given by a mentor. In an organizational setting, a mentor influences the personal and professional growth of a mentee. Wikipedia 

The purpose of mentoring is to tap into the existing knowledge, skills, and experience of senior or high performing employees and transfer these skills to newer or less experienced employees in order to advance their careers. - www.togetherplatform.com 

One of the most important points was to start mentorship with a different meaning and scope, this time instead of the faculty deciding the mentees, the mentees will decide which faculty member will be their mentees for the next one or two years, till the student passes out of the University. This is a real challenge to the faculty as they will be put to test in the eyes of the students. Students would naturally like to align with those faculty whom they feel will help them with good quality industry knowledge enabling them to perform and shine in the truly competitive business world. (click here for an interesting HBR article on mentorship in August '20 by Landry and Lewiss)

Detention of the bottom 5% : As is being done usually in some of the top ranked Bschools of the world, to bring competition and excellence inside the classroom, the bottom 5% is detained or asked to repeat the course. For Institutions with high academic performance and global rankings, industry work experience requirements and high GMAT entry scores are a must. One of the AU  faculty member's son happens to be studying in IESE Barcelona where the last 5% of the class is asked to repeat the course. In the said Institute for a course on Economics while the boy scored 90%, the class average was 92% and the 5 percentile score was 76%. The students at the bottom 5% percentile were asked to reappear in the subjects in the following semester. ie. 95 percentage of students in the class scored above 76%. The class average of 92% was indicative of the high academic standards in IESE Business school, Barcelona, the Economist global #1 ranked Bschool of 2021 .. Can we employ similar standards in ASB ?

Some of the other interesting points that were discussed included 

1. Taking concrete steps to improve peer learning 

2. Incorporating SWAYAM MOOCS from Govt of India to help improve the quality of instruction delivery.

3. Proposal for faculty to prepare a detailed subject outline for any subject which was currently being taught and to follow it up for all subjects in future

4. Taking steps to improving the strike rate of student placement from the 5-7 lakh band presently to 7-11 lakh band 

As per Prof. Krishnamurthy, when the 

• faculty demonstrates real passion for teaching and 
• students know that the faculty member really cares in their individual growth and continuous excellence, 

it results in the success of the student and faculty relationship.

We hope to discuss some more exciting practical points in the coming days.

George

MOXIE on NASA Perseverance

Congratulations to Dr John Solomon for being awarded by NASA for his outstanding support on the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, better known as MOXIE.

 NASA is preparing for human exploration of Mars, and MOXIE will demonstrate a way that future explorers might produce oxygen from the Martian atmosphere for propellant and for breathing. Dr John Solomon is an alumnus of CET, 1998, Industrial Engineering batch.

Keep your legs strong .. exercise life long ..

KEEP YOUR LEGS STRONG regular exercise like walking - A MUST READ ARTICLE - from the Internet ..

▪️When we are old, our feet must always remain strong.

 

▪️When we gain ageing / grow aged, we should not be afraid of our hair turning grey (or) skin sagging (or) wrinkles.

 

▪️Among the signs of longevity, as summarized by the US Magazine "Prevention", strong leg muscles are listed on the top, as the most important and essential one.

 

▪️ If you do not move your legs for two weeks, your leg strength will decrease by 10 years.

 

▪️A study from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark found that both old and young, during the two weeks of inactivity, the legs muscle strength can weakened by a third which is equivalent to 20-30 years of ageing.

 

▪️As our leg muscles weaken, it will take a long time to recover, even if we do rehabilitation and exercises, later.

 

▪️Therefore, *regular exercise like walking, is very important*.

 

▪️The whole body weight/load remains and rest on the legs.

 

▪️The foot is a kind of *pillars*, bearing the weight of the human body.

 

▪️Interestingly, 50% of a person's bones and 50% of the muscles, are in the two legs.

 

▪️The largest and strongest joints and bones of the human body are also in the legs.

 

▪️"Strong bones, strong muscles, and flexible joints form the "Iron Triangle" that carries the most important load on the human body."

 

▪️70% of human activity and burning of energy in one's life is done by the two feet.

 

▪️Do you know this? When a person is young, his thighs have enough strengths, to lift a small car!

 

▪️The foot is the center of body locomotion

 

▪️Both the legs together have 50% of the nerves of the human body, 50% of the blood vessels and 50% of the blood flowing through them.

 

▪️It is the large circulatory network that connects the body.

 

▪️Only when the feet are healthy then the convention current of blood flows, smoothly, so people who have strong leg muscles will definitely have a strong heart.

 

▪️Aging starts from the feet upwards.

 

▪️As a person gets older, the accuracy and speed of transmission of instructions between the brain and the legs decreases, unlike when a person is young.

 

▪️In addition, the so-called Bone Fertilizer Calcium will sooner or later be lost with the passage of time, making the elderly more prone to bone fractures.

 

▪️Bone fractures in the elderly can easily trigger a series of complications, especially fatal diseases such as brain thrombosis.

 

▪️Exercising the legs, is never too late, even after the age of 60 years.

 

▪️Although our feet/legs will gradually age with time, exercising our feet/legs is a life-long task. 

 

▪️Only by strengthening the legs, one can prevent further aging.

 

▪️Please walk for at least 30-40 minutes daily to ensure that your legs receive sufficient exercise and to ensure that your leg muscles remain healthy. 

How can AI immediately help business ..

Having read lots about the benefits of AI and how AI would transform humanity, I was very inquisitive to know in spite of all the hype around AI, have we started using AI in a big way. 

In 2018, I was attending a one day program on AI at the Indian Institute of Management , Bangalore which had an afternoon session with IBM engineers. Towards the end of their demo, I asked the engineers what were the actual applications of AI by IBM in the present day world, at least in India. The engineer was frank enough and admitted that it was just chatbot applications.

While going through the paper AI for the real world by Prof. Davenport and Ronanki in Feb '18, HBR, I was able to understand what were the business benefits of AI and in general what were the AI challenges that global organisations face. 

Why are organistions sceptical ,of implementing AI when there are so much hype around it is a question that would naturally come to any manager or engineer working in the industry. 

An anagram IEPPIO is apt for this occasion as per primary research conducted by the HBR paper authors on 250 executives in 152 AI projects, gve the real challenge faced by AI in the real world. 

I - ntegration

E - xpensive

P - oor understanding

P - eople

I - nnovative technology and 

O - verhyped technologies

The world is yet to fully understand the cognitive ability of humans, how humans distinguish one decision from another and in spite of the best intentions, fails completely in this area.

Of course, the technologie are too expensive, which takes it out of the realm of ordinary startups and medium sized organisations. 

We are yet to fully understand the nuances of AI and its applications

We do not yet have the real human resources to support full deployment of AI acropss organisations

Even though we extrapolate saying what all the technologies can do, we have immaturely developed technologies, ie. over huping it.

The overhype or over selling of the technology has created a sort of glass palaces in the minds of the public and they expect AI to change the world radically overnight, which is not possible.

Once we know the challenges faced by AI, it makes sense to understand how we can overcome it. 

Understanding the Business benefits of AI

• I mprove
  
• O ptimise internal systems
• F ree workers from monotoinous tasks to do creative work
• B etter understandiong of p[roducts and processes
• C reate new products
• O ptimise external processes like Marketing etc
• P ursue new markets
• C apture new knowledge to venture into new products and processes
• R educe headcount at organisations
  

AI behind Google translate ..

The Google translate app is a great AI app .. I gave the following sentence in English to check how it translates, if it was a normal translator, it would have translated word by word, but the AI component in it tells us how it has rearranged the words in the sentence to ensure the correct expression with the correct meaning., 

 Test sentence : The meaning of the sentence does not change when translated.

Hindi language - अनुवाद किए जाने पर वाक्य का अर्थ नहीं बदलता है।

Malayalam language - വിവർത്തനം ചെയ്യുമ്പോൾ വാക്യത്തിന്റെ അർത്ഥം മാറില്ല.

Marathi language - भाषांतरित असताना वाक्याचा अर्थ बदलत नाही.

The translation is exact and clean. 

How does Google achieve this ? Machine Learning ?

George..

Types of AI

Artificial Intelligence is growing these days and is attractinmg attention of scientists and managers from across the globe.

Referring to the article 7 types of Artificial Intelligence, in Forbes of June 2019 where the seven different types of AI classifications are briefly mentioned.

The basic classification of Artificial Intelligence is of two types based on the likeness to the human mind and the ability to analyse.

Image Courtesy, Forbes.

According to the classification of AI based on it's likeleiness to the human mind, Reactive, Limited Memory, Theory of Mind and Self Aware AI are the different classifications.

1. Reactive AI machines are 

• limited in their applications.
• do not have memory based functionality
• no ability to learn from previously gained experiences
• can only respond to a limited set or combination of inputs
• cannot improve their operations

An example is IBM's famous chess playing Super Computer Deep Blue. 

2. Limited Memory AI is what we observe in chatbots, Personal Assistants like Amazon echo, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri, all self-driving vehicles.

In addition to the capabilities of Reactive Machines, these AI machines can learn from historical data to make use in decision making. Image recognition that makes use of Machine Learning and Deep Learning is an example of this. 

3. Theory of Mind AI is futuristic and exist only as a concept or work-in-progress

A Theory of mind AI will be able to better understand the entities by being able to discern the needs, emotions, beliefs and thought processes of the entities it is interacting with.  Theory of Mind AI tries to understand humans better.

4. Self Aware AI is akin to the human brain with all it's rationalising and emotional capabilities.

Though it may takes decades or centuries to fully realise and understand this type of AI, it can change humanity for the better or consign it for doom or disaster. The potential for self-preservation of these AI machines, can take over or spell the end of humanity, which can be a great threat to the world.

The other three types of AI are 

Artificial Narrow Intelligence which we see in all our current applications with learning capabilities and ability to perform repetitive tasks autonomously using human like capabilities. 

Artificial General Intelligence is futuristic and is the ability of machines to learn, perceive, understand and function like human beings. They develop competencies across multiple capabilities and domains with reduced learning time to carry out tasks efficiently and accurately.

Artificial Super Intelligence is the ultimate in AI development. Because of their multi faceted intelligence these machines will be better capable at doing all things better than humans because of their faster memory, data processing, analysis and decision making capabilities. These machines can also spell the doom of humanity, thus being a great risk. 

How cn humanity make effective use of these different types of AI to help in growth of humanity and not its doom is a serious question facing human civilization now. Can we, if not control, at least co-exist with AGI or ASi to help humanity for the next millennia ?

George.

Joy of giving .. 4 blood donations in 2020 ..

This year 2020 I donated blood once every three months, which is perfectly safe, what doctors recommend .. 

I used to donate twice a year for many years, this time wanted to check .. gave in Feb, June, Sept and Dec.. no health problems at all, on the contrary have been healthy and active throughout. 🙏🙏🙂🙂 38 in total ..

Though I thought of reducing body weight from 88 kgs, to about 78 kgs, I have been unsuccessful in that .. at around 86 kgs now ..😥😥 During this Covid time, I could save at least twelve patients ..

Maybe I should attempt donating blood every 2 months .. 

There is no substitute for blood. Blood lost needs to be replaced only with pure and fresh blood from another healthy body.

Blood donation is the most healthiest and harmless activity one can undertake ever .. Societal taboos, lack of self-confidence, poor level of medical awareness, poor health due to earlier health complications etc. can distract people from donating..  

Having started donating from age 22, I can donate for another nine years till 65 years. 

As per healthline.com, a 450 ml blood donation can save as much as four lives. ie. till 65, I can save almost another 100 lives.

George.