Guerrilla Marketing!!

Something fascinating happened this weekend at the library. I was there looking for some books on marketing for online businesses. I found the books I was looking for and left to head back home. Once I started sifting through one of the books, I found the visiting card of a real estate agent in the south bay area, California. Initially, I thought the guy must have used it as a page mark or something and I used it as such. After a while I asked myself what if the card was there deliberately? If it were, then how many people can this guy actually reach, by slipping his card into some inane business book.

Just for kicks, I went back to the library and to the same section. I went through all the books on that row and yes, I found his card in 4 out of maybe 10 books. This piqued my interest, so I went to the real estate section and looked for books on marketing in real estate, amazingly I found the card in a few books there as well. This guy was definitely using the books to advertise. Given the state that the real estate business is in the country, I wasn't really surprised that agents were resorting to such gimmicks as cost cutting measures, and I just empathize with these guys. Sure it may actually be illegal or atleast immoral for the guy to market through public property, but heck he thought of something different.

On an aside, what could be the total number of patrons at Santa Clara library? Correct me if I go wrong with my reasoning, based on its location, I think patrons from about a 2-3 mile radius would come regularly to the library. So that encompasses south Santa Clara, parts of Cupertino and some part of San Jose. I would like to assume that these areas contribute roughly 3-5 % of that city's population which is 100 thousand, 50 thousand and about a million roughly, respectively. So that would mean a pool of 55 thousand people. Wikipedia says that roughly 35% of  residents in these cities are between 25 and 44, so I can safely assume that this would be my first filter, so that gives me 19 thousand people. Assuming a 95% literacy rate we have 18 thousand people. Given that the high tech industry in America is pretty much head quartered here, we can say that close to 50% of that number may directly or indirectly be involved in businesses dealing with the high tech industry in some capacity or the other. Of that number I would think there would be 1 business person for every 10 non business professional in the bay area. Thus, my estimate is that the real estate agent was looking at a market of about 900 people on the upside. Of this number, somehow I feel less than 50% would have the need to come to the library to access information, so realistically he was looking at something like 300 or 400 potential leads. Was it worth it? Not quantitatively but qualitatively?

Resources on Product Management

I have listed a few sources of information for anyone interested in product management. Although not strictly restricted to product management, the links below represent the most relevant resources I have come across on the net regarding issues pertinent to product managers and/or people looking to move into product management(me!). It is not, by any means a definitive list, and as such I would gladly add any other source onto this list as I come across them during my learning process or if you could suggest any. I would also love to have more resources which might help me learn more about product management from a perspective which is kinder to a newbie, without a specific background in the subject nor the opportunity to gain some experience working with someone in my current company, learning the ropes as an understudy. Please feel free to comment with links, I shall add them gladly to the repository.

I have tried to find blogs/webpages, reading lists, interview questions and preparation resources, and also some courses on product management. I shall try to keep this list as current as possible. Going forward I'll be posting links to interesting articles or individual blog posts. Hope this helps.

BLOGS:

1. How to be a good product Manager

2. Silicon Valley Product Group

3. 280 Group

4. Free Management Library

5. Product Marketing and Management

6. Career path: Engineer to CEO

7. On Product Management

8. Tom Grant: Forrester Research

9. Red Canary: Discussion forum

10. Pragmatic Marketing

11. Gopal Shenoy

12. PM book anthology: Go to the third link

13. Opus Plus

14. PDMA

15. School for Startups: Some interesting videos can be found here.

16. All about product management

17. Product Management View

18. VC blog: A VC's perspective.

19. Product Management pulse

BOOKS:

1. Amazon's reading list

2. 280 Group

3. Innovation MIT

4. Allan Kelley's list

Google Public Data Explorer

Google today made available the Google public data explorer, a Google labs project, for restricted use. The product is restricted right now, only in terms of the data available for analysis and viewing. The main utility of this application is in the simplicity with which you can sift through vast arrays of data. For example, I looked at their World Development Indicators data set. I was interested in analyzing the states and market data in this collection. A screen grab is shown below,

Now, I specifically wanted to check what percentage of manufactured exports came from the high technology sector. By default, you will find a graph that shows that percentage for the entire world, which in this case is 18.1% in 2007. I now wanted to compare this number against that for India, China, Brazil, Russia and the United States. This link is the default line graph for the selected data, and shows very clearly and concisely that the US and China exported a huge percentage of manufactured goods from their high tech industry. From the definition of high tech goods, we can also pretty crudely infer that these two countries spent a lot more money on R&D, higher education, and probably had more qualified manpower. Just to make it interesting, I wanted to see how these countries fared over a period of time, to determine how their economies evolved through that period. This is the great feature in GPDE (Google Public data explorer), we can visually track the bubbles( can be chosen by clicking on the last icon amongst the choices at the extreme left) that represent different countries with their relative sizes specifying the percentage of exports coming from the high tech sector ( see below).

OK, the fun part begins when you click on the start button. You observe that China which was on par with Brazil and India until 1993 starts puling away rapidly, until it reaches the US in 2004 and surpasses it in 2006. This representation just gave us an idea as to how a particular country works, its policy making priorities and its ability to go through with its thought process. A sociologist would probably love this tool and would certainly have better insights into what all this data means.

I wanted to make this more interesting. I felt, that the infrastructure in a country has a direct correlation to its ability to produce, market and ship high tech products or for that matter, products from any sector. So, I went ahead and changed  the X-axis to reflect my need for an additional constraint of knowing the percentage of paved roads in that country. The next image shows the status of roads in 1993 and the link to the animation will show how they progressed up until 2007.

             What the animation proves is that there is a direct correlation between the infrastructure in the state and the levels of industrial production. I am no economist nor a sociologist, but I find this tool interesting and informative. But it is  not without its flaws. I have put together what I feel works for this tool and what doesn't.

Pro's:

• Easy to learn
• Intuitive interface
• Rich representation
• Good to get a quick insight before going on to more complex data analysis

Con's:

I understand its still in the labs but, I would have loved to see the ability to make the other bubbles disappear once I checked the few which I wanted to track.

The ability to change colors of the bubbles and especially the lines that point to those bubbles ( I can't see them on my computer!)

More data sets. I am sure students will love it. Enjoy this talk by the phenomenal Hans Rosling at TED. Have fun!

Sir Ken!

Brilliant at many levels!

What am I upto?

Currently reading "Silence and the Scorpion" by Brian Nelson.

Update: I just finished reading the book, and all I can say is that a Wiki entry on the subject of the revolution in Venezuela will probably be more coherent and hence interesting. I wouldn't recommend it, nevertheless if you want to buy it on Amazon and help me make some money, I won't stop you:)

Outliers--Malcolm Gladwell

The main thesis of this book is about Gladwell's idea of success and the factors contributing to that success. He proposes the thought that hard work, intelligence, genes do not necessarily ensure you will reach the top of the pile.

He argues that luck, being born to middle or upper-middle class families, having access to the best resources as a result thereof, makes it more likely that you will reach the top sooner and stay there longer.

He supports these hypotheses through some vaguely relevant, at the same time eclectic collection of data. For example, he purports that the best hockey players in Canada are the ones born during the first few months of the year.  The observation is based on the view that since they were born at that time of the year, they would be physically more developed than their counterparts born a few months later. This seems like a reasonable assumption, given the fact that adolescents have a rapid curve for physical growth through their early years. This advantage cascades through time, since they are  picked over their slightly younger friends earlier, and as a result would have practiced playing the game more. At this point he makes an observation, which as it happens, is it the only thing I wholeheartedly agree with.

He says that once these kids were selected based on their date of birth, they would have practiced roughly 10,000 hours by the time they make it to the Stanley cup winning teams. Thus as a result of them being born during the latter half of the year, the other kids don't get to go to special practice sessions and thus get robbed of valuable time in the rink. This manifests in them not making the cut into either their high school teams and later any NHL team. So far so good with his thesis. The problems arise when he extends this hypothesis to explain the success of Bill Gates, and the opposing fortunes of Christopher Langan and Robert Oppenheimer, both men blessed with exceptional intelligence.

He argues that Gates made his fortune since he was born to well to do parents, because of which he had access to probably the only lab  in any school in the 60's or 70's that had a computer in it, which the rich mom's of the school had purchased for their wards. That' s a short-sighted analysis, to put it mildly. How come none among his hundreds of classmates and/or schoolmates make it as big? They went to the same private school with possibly similar parentage and certainly similar opportunities.

I think the point where Gladwell's thesis unravels itself is in the fact that he concentrates on a very singular and often "pop economics" based outlook of either successful or at other times, less successful people. He glaringly, also omits a lot of examples of fortitude and hard work of people from cultures outside of his home in New York.  By concentrating on such vague and often unscientific explanations for socio-economic issues that need proper redressal, he trivializes them, and sadly, diminishes the significance of disparities that still exist in societies all around the world, and certainly in his home town of New York.

This book could have been so much better if he had done some research to get real and relevant data to explain why some people succeed while others don't. Alas, it fails to do any such thing and it exacerbates me to think this book was a best seller. I just hope people who read this book, take his argument with a pinch of salt and realize that this is just the observation of a sensationalist reporter, a very good one in this case.

Good read for its simplicity, bad for the appalling lack of any science in his studies of significant socio-economic problems.

The Reader --- Bernhard Schlink

Fascinating book about moral dilemma. Would you keep a fact about you a secret? A fact that you consider more shameful than murder? Although your revelation of that secret would absolve you of those murders! Hanna Shultz an ex-Nazi does that and her lover Michael Berg, who is half her age spends a lifetime figuring out why.

Micheal falls in love with Hanna while he is at school and finds her reciprocating his feelings, albeit with a stipulation that he has to read to her everyday. He also finds himself on the jury years later that convicts Hanna of murder or rather murders. This is Micheal's story of understanding his lover and his tragic realization that Hanna's defense and proof of innocence was him reading all those books to her.

So, why dint Hanna defend herself. You need to read the book to know:)

Book has a very nice narrative, with a dreary picture of post war Germany as the canvas. Good read overall and highly recommended.