Business to the Buddha

Tag: Patent

  • Microsoft plans to make its Operating System Open Source!*







    With Ashar and Vineet

    Microsoft is considering making its operating system (OS) business open source. Microsoft started it operations in 1975 and had become formidable in desktop computers operating system market between late 90’s and the first decade of 21st century. During that time it captured more than 80% market share of operating systems. Microsoft is one of the companies which has fought maximum number of patent infringement cases over last two decades. Microsoft’s last five years strategy also suggests that this move could have been decided in 201I when it started allocating its resources of OS business to other lucrative business propositions.

    The plan of Microsoft is motivated on various factors, including but not limited to – reducing popularity of the OS amongst the partner companies such as Dell, Lenovo and HP reducing market share of Microsoft in OS worldwide, reduction in profits from OS businesses due to huge investments in patent infringement cases and availability of other more lucrative businesses opportunities.

    Over the years Dell, Lenovo, HP and others have started providing different options to purchasers. This has caused huge dent in the market penetration of Microsoft. With the advent of Cloud Computing in late 2000’s, it was evident that there are going to be large scale changes in the OS and OS businesses worldwide. The shift started with the Google’s OS Chrome and other electronic devices such as mobiles, iPad and Kindle. In late 2000’s many mobiles and other devices started replacing Desktop and laptop for day today office and personal applications. Internet on the move and office applications on mobiles created tough competition for Microsoft. The smaller competition from Linux based Open Sources was another trouble for Microsoft. Different flavor of Linux and Android based OS has already taken substantial lead in different parts of the world.

    Microsoft has fought many patent infringement cases in past each causing almost 300 million dollars to the profits of Microsoft. The numbers grew slowly from none in 1997 to more than 40 in ten year and this growth of number of patent infringement cases continued resulting in expenditure of over 12 billion in late 2000’s. This statistics forced Microsoft to look back at its strategy which eventually happened in 201I, now slowly Microsoft is moving away from the USPTO and other patent offices for few of its software products.

    Analysts suggest that this move of Microsoft will cause immense turmoil not only in IT industry but also in software patent (IP protection) industry. Other IT companies producing identical software would not be able to protect their IP eventually they may also follow the suit and the domino effect will eat up the software patent industry.

    Microsoft has already redeployed its resources towards development of other products. It is also considering development of more entertainment based product under the leadership of new CEO Donald Murphy, who largely has been involved with games and other entertainment based products for a long time of his career. Additionally, the money not pumped in the patent infringement cases would be used to sustain its open source development and the Bill & Melinda Gates foundations.

    *WELL THIS WAS A 1st APRIL BLOG… Do not take it to your heart. Some numbers are facts as per 2005-10 however this blog is a work of fiction. The year 201I is no year as such. 201 is number whereas last digit is ‘capital-i’. Name of the CEO ‘Donald Murphy’ is also a work of fiction – Donald from Disney’s character Donald (relating to Games and Entertainment) and Murphy (character from Happy Feet – movie on Penguins. Penguins which is related to Linux).

    What if this becomes a reality?

  • Humans are social animals







    Have you ever asked a question to yourself – why? Why am I doing it? Why am I running from pillars to posts either aimlessly or with an aim. Once the aim is achieved – what next? Every strategic question stems a WHY in the mind of management also, right?

    So the question, why? Leads organizations as well as individuals. This question has led me to think about far in the future how we (individually, socially and economically) might evolve, as well as how I see things should/could happen. This is where I see the collaboration would play a bigger role. Look at crowd sourcing, look at open source. My assumption is – in a given day – maximum downloads in the world are happening from Android market place. That is again a collaboration – a freemium service (free+paid).

    *If I talk about some more technical stuff – at times companies make their intellectual properties ‘public’ without a patent, for example SQL. It was invented at IBM however was kept open (not patented, of course you may argue on the possibility of software patent in 1970s etc etc). Also you may argue that it was a mistake.*

    A couple of years back I wrote articles on format wars and the failure of Betamax (and of HD DVD). Have you ever seen there are times when you have to stop fighting and start working together? There may be times when a company has to collaborate because of its dependence or loss in the market place. The fact of the matter is – at times collaboration is forced and in other cases by choice. Yesterday I read a news article on The Hindu that RIM (manufacturer of Black Berry) introduced its new operating system (OS) for its BlackBerry PlayBook tablets with additional functionalities, including the ability to run Android-based applications. Nokia with Windows, Blu-ray with content providers and manufacturers, VHS with OEM. I am confident the future businesses would be built on Collaboration, association and aggregation.

    …And as the cliche is – humans are social animals – we would remain social animals and collaboration would be the name of the game. So, for business some “business rules” would go on shelf and some new rules would evolve.

    * Readers are warned that the IBM and SQL part is not a professional advice as a registered patent agent, the example is used as representation of authors thoughts about the future.

  • The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ)







    I have written few blogs using concepts of TRIZ, so let me explain what is TRIZ?
    It is a problem solving methodology, more below from my earlier post at other place.
    How do we look and try to solve our problems?
    Generally, it is observed that everyone thinks in his circle of intellectual dominance (emotional, intellectual, social or technical). But when our interest is to find out solution for any problem relating to any particular technical field this becomes rather more obvious and clear that we tend to search into our field of expertise to find a better way or solution for anything. I shall explain this with a joke I heard when I was doing my Engineering:-

    Once four Engineers, namely mechanical, Electrical, Chemical and Computer science, were traveling in a car. Suddenly the car stopped and everyone was puzzled. Mechanical Engineer suggested that that there is some problem with the engine. Electrical Engineer suggested that its due to the fault in ignition system. Chemical engineer said “no-no car was making some strange knocking and the problem was with the fuel.” Suddenly the computer science Engineer intervened and said that “I think we need to go out and then come in the car (log out and log in).”

    The above joke may give you an idea about the “circle of intellectual dominance” I am talking about, that is everyone tries and looks into his field of expertise for finding solution of any problem.

    A new look at same things
    This “circle of intellectual dominance” called “Psychological Inertia”, which limits even experts to come up with better perhaps “OBVIOUS”, solutions (in terms of expert of other field) for any particular problem or improvement.
    TRIZ provides a big leap for experts to learn to look beyond their area of expertise and get a general look at a problem, find a similar problem in other field and its method of solving the problem then customize the solution according to need. Thus, it gives a generalized method for solving virtually every problem in any field.
    History
    TRIZ is a Russian acronym which means “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving”. This concept and theory came in to existence when a Russian Patent Expert Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues studied over 200,000 patents looking for problems and the way they were solved. Of these only a small fraction 40,000 had somewhat inventive solutions; the rest were straight forward improvements. With these studies Alshuller came up with a systematic approach, termed TRIZ. It was a generalized way for finding out solution of any technical difficulty or for any further improvements.

    TRIZ concept in nutshell
    The method used in solving problems in TRIZ can be summarized in the following points –
    1. Identifying the problem or finding out opportunity for improvements in the present product, design etc.
    2. Formulating the problem and searching for similar, previously solved problems with an overview to understand the concept of solution.
    3. Looking for analogous solution(s) for presently defined problem or conceived improvement.
    4. Applying the best identified analogous solution.

    Thus, TRIZ gives a general concept, for virtually every field, to find out opportunity and solutions for problems or improvement sought. I myself have played with concepts of TRIZ beyond engineering fields such as social sector innovation, medical field, Travel infrastructure in Mumbai and currently working in management domain specially economics, marketing and finance.