World's longest free Wi-Fi zone in Patna

PATNA: If you have an internet-enabled device and you are anywhere on the stretch from NIT-Patna on Ashok Rajpath to Danapur, you can now access the internet free of cost.
Once known as a backward state, Bihar has made a strong bid for a mention on the world's infotech map as chief minister Nitish Kumar unveiled the 20km free Wi-Fi zone, the longest across the globe, at a function christened e-Bihar summit in Patna on Wednesday. Kumar also unveiled a 'city surveillance and dial 100' scheme under which at least 100 CCTV cameras installed in different localities of the state capital became operational. A state data centre has also been opened for storing of the 'data' collected by these cameras.

Anjana Reddy goes all WROGN with Virat Kohli to pocket Rs 100 crore

They say that breaking away from legacy is the hardest thing to do for the fourth generation individual in a business family. These individuals cannot survive in an environment governed by age-old structures that do not move with the times. It is only honourable that these young seekers who are soul-searching and looking for a place in the business universe go out and ruffle some feathers in industry.
Anjana Reddy, Founder of Universal Sportsbiz Pvt Ltd (USPL) ,which owns the brands Collectabillia, Imara and Wrogn is not your usual girl. She is a go-getter who works 18-hours a day, loves cars, cares for eight dogs and builds Lego sets to ease her mind after a hard day’s work. If one meets this 28-year-old on the street they would not be able to tell that she runs a Rs 61-crore business well on its way to becoming a Rs 100-crore business by the end of this financial year. Nevertheless, her tenacity to succeed is what made her to break away from the beast of legacy that kills many a fertile mind in business families.

Anjana Reddy founder of USPL, which owns the brands Imara and Wrogn

She’s so unusual

 It's 9 am in the morning and Anjana is already wrapping up her first meeting with hermarketing team.

After that she is constantly in meetings with her design teams and vendors. She minces no words when she commands them to meet "delivery timelines" of the clothing lines on order. She has at her beck and call over 100 factories that make clothing for her brands Wrogn (men's clothing line), and Imara (women's clothing line). By late afternoon she is working out the sales projections for the next quarter and is readying the launch of her third brand soon.

Anjana loathes slow progress. The recent lock-outs in Bengaluru because of political unrest has got her concerned about her delivery schedules. "I cannot have my trucks waiting at the border. It delays my supplies to the consumer and I cannot lose the consumer," she says.

By evening she has a coterie of celebrities that she has to handle. "Yes, I will get it done," she says to a high-profile person, who is the wife of a south Indian superstar. "I cannot ignore her," she adds. Late in the evening she has several phone calls with investors and then reclines in her chair deep in the knowledge that it is only 9 pm and she still has four more hours of work to catch up on.

With the likes of Virat Kohli and Shraddha Kapoor as her brand ambassadors Anjana Reddy has her schedule blocked for the next six months. This entire bustle is part of a plan to build the most well-known brand in the country for the youth. No wonder no one knows the face behind the brands other than the famous people representing them.

"There is a reason I do this. There is no brand that is youth-focussed and aspirational," says Anjana Reddy. She adds that to create a brand one must understand aspiration, the quality of the material and the styling, and not just playing to discounts. She makes it very clear that the GMV game played by e-commerce companies is not sustainable. To scale up she followed a 60:40 offline-to-online strategy, which has worked to bring in revenues.

Her brands sell in 73 Shoppers Stop stores, as a shop-in-shop, and retails in e-commerce sites like Myntra. She has six offline stores owned by her company of her brands and is planning to launch at least 100 more stores by the end of next year. Currently, the company retails around 15 lakh units a year and is in the process of closing its Series-C round. Anjana reveals that she is expected to close a large round of funding, which will go into adding four more warehouses across the country to the current one and in strengthening the brand along with the supply chain.

Anjana and her 350-member-strong team are all set to become a Rs 500-crore business by 2019. But that's not how the story began back in 2010.

Breaking free from legacy

After finishing her graduation –in 2011 and her post graduate studies in the US, Anjana had three options. She could join her family's media business, take up a corporate job in the US or do the most difficult of all things, which was to become an entrepreneur. Eventually, she chose to become an entrepreneur. Interestingly, she founded a company called Collectabillia in her final year in college. The premise was to source sports products and paraphernalia owned by super stars and sell them online.

Since her family owned the cricket franchise team called Deccan Chargers at one time - and the fact that in the USA, where she was studying, branded sports merchandise was a big business - Anjana conceived this idea around sports memorabilia. She began sourcing goods from sports agencies that handled the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and footballers playing in the English Premier League. "Again I was obsessed with building a brand and I went all out to work with the best sporting names," says Anjana.

Eventually, in 2012, Sachin Tendulkar became one of the co-investors in a Series-A round in Collectabillia, when the company raised $2.7 million. At the time Anjana was over the moon because she had chased Sachin for over a year for his involvement. "It's not easy to get people to back a youngster with an idea," she says. Accel Partners had partnered in that first round too betting on the fact that there was a room to build brands away from the usual e-commerce businesses. They eventually put in $7.26 million to build this company.

Just when she thought she had it made, the sports memorabilia business did not scale up. The company had burnt close to a million dollars and Anjana had to make a quick decision to turn around the business. She noticed that branded apparel – endorsed by celebrities – was selling very well on the platform. In late 2013 she met investors and explained to them that she could make a turn around by launching two apparel brands. There were people within the industry who wrote the youngster off. With just 30 people on board at the time she brought in some designers to build a clothing line. She quickly launched two brands – Imara and Wrogn.

Things were not easy, as the factories that USPL approached in 2014 asked them to provide huge guarantees and did not want to supply small quantities. Anjana made USPL take that bet and worked on her masterstroke business strategy.

The bet on Virat

In the summer of 2014 she made an unprecedented bet that could have made her business or killed it. Virat Kohli was going through a tough series in England and all the punters had written him off, saying his best had passed. Even Virat himself was not sure of signing up with a brand called Wrogn especially after failing to perform in the England series. However, the persistence from Anjana's team prevailed over the cricketer's reluctance and they convinced him that he was signing up with a brand that was catering to his fan base.

The next thing you know, it all played out like a fairy tale. The brand became a runaway success and Virat became a bigger star than before because of his exploits in Australia in late 2014. In six-months' the youth began to look at the brand as a clothing line owned by Virat Kohli.

Now combined with the success of Imara, the company began to increase its revenues and it closed the financial year 2014-2015 with Rs 24 crore in revenue. The last financial year it more than doubled its revenues to close at Rs 61 crore.

"We invested in Collectabillia when most others were wary of a brand-centric model," says Mahendran Balachandran, partner at Accel Partners. He says that there was a clear white space in the 16-to-35-year-age group fashion category. "While some of the international brands were able to enter the market early, there were still gaps when it came to product and style assortment at affordable price points," says Mahendran.

So the bet paid off for Anjana when she decided to create high-quality, celebrity-led fashion brands with an international appeal, at an affordable price, and with an omni-channelstrategy.

"Building a brand is what we set out to do more than a decade ago and it is important for every entrepreneur, regardless of the industry that they cater too, to think of building a brand," says Kishore Biyani, Chairman and MD of Future Group. He says it was very important to understand young India's aspiration to build a fashion brand.

Mahendran adds that building a brand had inherent challenges and risks. "It was our strong faith in the founding team that hedged our risk," he says.

The company is yet to turn profitable. If you look at all retail businesses they work on high volumes and low margins. The average break-even period for a brand is five years. USPL has all the right ingredients to launch multiple brands and it will focus on reaching consumers in smaller cities.

For Anjana the future is only secure when she knows that she has built multiple brands that associate with the consumer, and the celebrity is the face of it. She is happy to be sitting back and making things work at the corporate level as a leader. Her younger brother Vikram Reddy supports her in running the operations of the company. No doubt her qualities are bestowed upon her by the blessings of her parents and grandparents, whom she considers as her inspiration.

What Makes Your Mobile App Underperform

This guest column is by Mehul Rajput, CEO, Mindinventory

Mobile applications have dominated the way online commerce world works. Everyone has a smart phone and want to perform every action using their phone. Almost 50% of traffic online is driven through mobile apps which makes it a big opportunity for businesses to promote customer engagements and retain them. This makes it an obligation for mobile app development companies to have a strong mobile strategy, because failing to having an app that can cater to user requirements will move your users to your competitors and you lose your customers.

Basically if your mobile app is not able to connect with your users and give them an intuitive user experience, then your users will start looking for other apps that can better serve them, giving your competitors to swoop in and take your customers. Most of the mobile app development companies are working hard since past few years for developing innovative and rich user experience for their customers. However, while 87% of C-Level executives say they have a formal mobile strategy, “only 2 of 5 companies have made good progress on their mobility efforts.” So why is it that so many mobile strategies have produced only mediocre results?

>In this article, the major causes of underperformance of a mobile app are discussed and avoiding the same can help you overcome these blockers.

Security Breach

Mobile applications are exposed to violations and attacks of its security policies. Gartner survey shows that 75% of mobile applications will fail due to failure in basic security testing. “Enterprises that embrace mobile computing and bring your own device (BYOD) strategies are vulnerable to security breaches unless they adopt methods and technologies for mobile application security testing and risk assurance,” said Dionisio Zumerle, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Most enterprises are inexperienced in mobile application security. Even when application security testing is undertaken, it is often done casually by developers who are mostly concerned with the functionality of applications, not their security.”

Incompatible to Cross platforms

Cross platform compatibility is about making your app compatible to various ecosystems like iOS, Android, and Windows; beside it should be able to support website to app compatibility. These days users want to be in synchronized whether they are accessing a service from a mobile app or a website. For example, Facebook provides such seamless cross platform compatibility, by allowing to access Facebook from various operating systems as well as also from its website. Not just this you can access the app from various types of hardware/handsets like smartphones, iPads, Tablets, laptops, etc. Such sort of cross channel compatibility is required these days, failing to which your app can underperform.

Lengthy Process

Users like the mobile apps for its faster and easier processes. For example, most of the users prefer to register using a Google or Facebook accounts, and avoid going through the process of filling the registration form. Hence, in case you have made registration process for users a lengthy affair, then users might uninstall the app straight away. Similarly, if we talk about the ecommerce websites, the checkout feature must be quick and show trustworthy payment options.

No Intuitive Design

A mobile app must have an intuitive design, which means users are not required to refer to any help guide, but they can themselves operate the application without any help. If your mobile app is lacking such intuitive design, then there are high chances that the users are shifting towards your competitors. So be careful when the application is at design stage. It’s a big mistake to make it a replica of your website. An ideal mobile app must offer a personalized user experience. It must allow users to easily navigate across the app without need of any assistance. The app must be designed keeping in mind the targeted users and how they will use the app, and this approach can only help you in making it more user friendly.

Poor Marketing Strategy

Marketing is the continuous process of the promoting your application and reaching out to your customers. It is not one-time process which you can perform at the time of launching the application. The surveys say that approximately 25% of the customers will stop using the app after downloading it, it is crucial for mobile app development companies to make the marketing strategy that can help in retaining the customers. Marketing strategy can be devised by keeping close check on the users’ most used features, and come up with campaigns that can tempt users to further use the app. Sending notifications promoting key features or giving offers does also help user engagement and retain them. But app development companies have to make marketing an on-going activity.

These are some of the factors that app development companies do not focus on and as a result the app performance decreases. The users always need something new and improved, and hence it is crucial for the app development company to keep innovating and provide better user experiences. That is the only way to survive the cut throat competition in this mobile app era.

After noodles, Baba Ramdev launches desi jeans. ‘Sanskari skirts’ next?

Photo credits : Aditya

Baba Ramdev told reporters that,

We have already set up our units in Nepal and Bangladesh and our products have reached the Middle East and became popular in some of the countries, including Saudi Arabia. We should be concentrating in poor countries as the profits from those countries will be utilised for development work there itself. The entry to Pakistan and Afghanistan will mostly depend on the prevailing political situation, and if the situation is politically conducive, units will be set up there.

He said their company products are reaching right up to Canada. Patanjali has already entered Azerbaijan which has 90 per cent Muslim population, he said claiming that a top industrialist there has shown interest in his products.
Ramdev said Patanjali will also venture into garments area and a ‘swadeshi jeans’ will be launched by end of the year or early next year.

We should be concentrating in poor countries as the profits from those countries will be utilised for development work there itself. The entry to Pakistan and Afghanistan will mostly depend on the prevailing political situation, and if the situation is politically conducive, units will be set up there, he said.

There is a great demand from youths, and therefore Patanjali has decided to launch the Indianised jeans to compete with foreign brands, he added.

The company’s refined edible oil will also be launched this year, he added.

On expansion, Ramdev said Patanjali will be setting up its biggest unit on a 40-lakh sqft at Mihan in Nagpur, which will be bigger than its first unit at Haridwar and biggest in the country. The total investment in the city will be to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore with a potential of providing employment opportunities to 10,000 to 15,000 youths from Maharashtra. An export unit in the adjoining SEZ will be set up as Nagpur provides better connectivity, he said.

Patanjali is in the process of setting up big units in Madhya Pradesh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka, besides establishing subsidiary units in a number of places, as part of supply chain.

Our target is Rs 50 lakh crore in the FMCG segment, Ramdev said.

Programming Languages for Social Networks – Which One to Choose?

This guest column is by Tatsiana Levdikova, Web Design and Development Expert,

We can hardly imagine our life without social networking websites like Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest, etc. Such websites have become much more than news portals or tools linking people from all over world – they are now sources of income not only for their owners, but also for businesses that use these networks to build their online presence.

With many businesses being interested in running their own social networking websites, development of such websites is gaining traction right now. There are many programming languages that can be used to develop social networks. We are going to discuss the most popular ones that are often chosen for websites development.

PHP

This programming language is very popular among social network developers: it is recognized as a very powerful tool enabling to make dynamic and interactive web pages. According to estimates by W3Techs, PHP is used by more than 80% of all the websites whose server-side programming language is known. Besides, PHP is made use of in most out-of-the-box social networking software.

Major social networks like Facebook and Pinterest use PHP. Facebook started off as a PHP website. Now Facebook uses HACK, its custom-tailored dialect of PHP. The Russian social networking giant, Vkontakte, also developed its own version of PHP – KPHP – to improve performance of the website. KPHP is believed to be much productive that HACK.

Websites written on PHP often face hacker attacks: many people know this language, and some of them turned to the “dark side of the Force” and started stealing valuable data that can be used by their bosses or sold to someone else. One more problem is the direct correlation between growth of a PHP website and a number of servers required to run it.

Notwithstanding this fact PHP remains a programming language that makes it possible to develop a social networking website in a very quick manner. Besides, a cost of such projects is not very high if compared to other languages.

Java

Java is often chosen by those developers who plan to create high-traffic websites which need room to grow. And the main reason for that is that websites built using this language outperform others in terms of speed. Another advantage of Java is that it is platform-independent due to availability of the Java Virtual Machine. Java does not requires a compiler to become readable on any platform – the Machine interprets compiled Java binary code for a computer’s processor.

One more factor making Java so attractive for social network developers is its great development ecosystem. This programming language also has a big community of developers and, consequently, can boast excellent documentation as well as support coming along with it. Java makes both sever-side and client-side programming possible. If you plan to develop a complex website (e.g. a social network) that will be reliable enough Java is the best choice in this case.

But there are some factors that should be considered before launching a Java project, and a high cost of such a project is the first one to take into account. A team of Java programmers costs much more than any other programming language team. Other factors are high server and client requirements and complex infrastructure that must be developed and supported.

So if you plan to develop a small social network or a community think twice before choosing Java for this purpose.

Perl

A high level language designed to be fast to write and fast to run, Perl was developed around three decades ago, but it became useful for web programming in the late/mid 1990-s when developers started to use it to create dynamic web pages. This language has been losing ground since PHP was designed as a language for web development.However, those who think that Perl is not used any more for websites development are mistaken. Though there are many websites written on other languages, Perl is still made use of. A number of well-known websites were built using this programming language: Craigslist, IMDb, Amazon, and more.

Perl can boast a large and friendly community. That is why it is easy to find good code examples or get answers you need using online forums or discuss best practices with other Perl developers. This language is still live – a new version of Perl (Perl 6) was released last year.

But will Perl work for a social network? Those who love this language will give a positive answer. Indeed, Perl can be used for anything. However, you will need many man-hours to create a web framework that will work properly. Development of a complex social networking website in pure Perl will not only take much time, but also result in significant expenses.

Python

Python is known as an easy, flexible and powerful general purpose programming language that is good for web development. This programming language is used by such online properties as Pinterest, Reddit, Youtube and Disqus, to name a few.

However, Python can handle only the back-end part of a social network. You will have to do the front-end part in different languages (e.g. HTML) since Python does not support them. There are many frameworks that can be used to make websites in Python. Developers can create their frameworks, as well.

That sounds promising, isn’t it? But is Python a good choice for custom social networks? Social networking websites have many users and many instances of all their pages run simultaneously, thus representing high-load environments. Generally recognized as an interpreted language, Python needs more time to process requests than compiled languages need. So compiled languages are preferable when it comes to social pages.

One more problem is that Python is not supported by many cheap web hosts, while PHP is supported by nearly all web hosts. A cost of Python projects is relatively high, while this language is believed to be a little bit outdated irrespective regular releases of new versions.

.NET

Though it is not a programming language, this framework is worth being included in this list. It has become very popular given support provided by Microsoft, its developer.Some of the biggest social networking websites were created using it. Myspace is one of these websites.

Social giants like Facebook would choose .NET for their websites if they were developed today. This platform has many advantages. For instance, there are many developers working with this .Net. You can be sure that a website developed using .NET will have solid and quick performance.

This framework continues to develop, and it has a large community which provides solid support to all its members and it is very friendly to newcomers.

But there are some cons, as well. One of them is that open source databases and messaging platforms that are commonly used by websites like Twitter often have little or even no support for Windows. .Net is also often associated with its early versions which lagged behind PHP to a great extent. If you plan to continue developing you social networking website you may face great expenses as a .NET project becomes more expensive per server.

All in all, there are many programming languages that can be used to develop a social networking website. A number of factors will impact the choice of a language: a complexity of the project, future development plans, a budget of a project, etc. The first step you need to take is to discuss your idea with a company having experience in social network development.

Why the Smartwatch Trend is Here to Stay

The growing trend of buying Smartwatches reveals the changing consumer behaviour. World’s technology giants like Apple, Garmin, Vivoactive, Samsung Gear etc. have introduced their own smartwatches to club with their smartphones or other compatible devices. As stated by the director of Android Wear, David Singleton, in the next 50 years of time everyone would learn to live a life with wearable technology and all of us would be living like this. The rising demand of smartwatches has immersed with the growing need of consumers. People demand a gadget which can keep them accountable, and fitness monitors are a bonus for most. This leads them to invest in wearable devices like Fitness bands and Smartwatches.

What Does the Current Trend Say

If the facts and figures are to be believed, the smartwatch technology will witness a tremendous growth and will amount to 70% of the total wearable technology shipments by 2019. As per another data published by International Data Corporation (IDC), the shipment of wearable devices has seen a whopping increase of 67.2% since 2015, which is quite a big number.

Another study made by Garner Inc. points on the same lines and it says that smartwatches sales is on a rising trend currently. As per the same forecast, the total sales of wearable electronic devices would be about 274.6 million units globally by the end of 2016, which clearly indicates 18.4% increase in sales compared to 2015 when 232 million units were sold globally. As far as the revenue generation is concerned, wearable electronics will generate $28.7 billion in the year 2016 in which $11.5 billion would be fetched only by smartwatch business.

With big players like Apple and Samsung investing resources in research and development of hi-tech devices, the user base would increase by 48% in 2017 as compared to 2015, a big move indeed. The increased sales of smartphones would also indirectly boost the sales of smartwatches as both are connected!

Currently smartwatches segment is explored by only a small section of the society as it comes under premium gadget category. Soon, it will penetrate strongly in the urban market as the rates are competitive as many big and small companies are bringing in this gadget to Indian market. Chinese players are also doing their best by introducing feature packed smartwatches in affordable range and forming a habit of using it in Indian market.

Why Smartwatches?

Smartwatches are quiet useful because of their versatile features. They have different apps that can be very useful while working outdoors, travelling, workouts etc. Some carry a camera which stays on the strap of the watch to take pictures with ease. Smartwatches are now available for Android, Windows and iOS platforms, which are the most popular operating systems for smartphones.

Without having to pull out their phone often, users can answer calls, send messages, store pictures and navigate. The trend suggests that smartwatches will be the future as it is the only way when things can go really online and automation can be rooted to its best.

Top Smartwatch Brands in 2016

There are a lot many smartwatch makers now, as mentioned above. The market still remains to be dominated by a few key players, here are the top 4 of them

Apple Watch

This smartwatch is offered by technology leader Apple. Its design has set a trend in the fashion industry. With the best quality and design, it is available in both 38 mm and 42 mm. It has intelligent interface and has battery capacity of one day. Apple Smartwatch has a compact design and is equipped with all the latest features.

Samsung Gear S2

Samsung smartwatch is leading the industry with its Rotating Bexel, Tizen Operating System, Amoled screen and stylish design. The screen of Samsung smartwatch has Amoled display and is sharp, vivacious and circular. It has a storage capacity of 4GB and has dual core 1.0Ghz processor. Its IP rating is IP68 and has Wi-Fi, NFC and Bluetooth connectivity.    

Moto 360

Moto smartwatch has attractive design and it offers great performance. It has a modular feature and comes with different size options which makes it is very comfortable to wear. The storage capacity of this smartwatch is 4 GB and has Quad core 1.2GHz processor. Its battery can last for 1.5- 2 days and is compatible with Android and iOS. 

How Can You Boost Creative Success in a Team?

As a young manager, I learned that you may be able to invent alone, but you cannot innovate alone.You will need an awful lot of colleagues, partners and bosses to make innovation really happen. That’s because after the ideation of your product, you’ll need to design it, to develop it, to prototype it, to test it, to produce it, to sell it, to invoice it and to service it.

Back in 1989, Steve Jobs had already pointed out the importance of the right team during an interview for Fortune Magazine: “Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”

I would like to inspire you with two recent studies on teamwork in new product development. They generate great lessons to be learned; one being about creative success and the other being  about high team performance. Both are essential at the start of innovation.

New scientific research reveals insights into how some of the world’s greatest video games were created from the adventures of Lara Croft in Tomb Raider to the apocalyptic drama of Fallout. Mathijs de Vaan, David Stark and Balazs Vedres focused on the question: what accounts for creative success when you’re innovating in a team? Their extensive research focused on the video games industry. They collected data on 12,422 video games that were produced from the inception of the industry in 1979 to 2009 and on the teams that developed them.

Here’s a selection of some of their scientific findings:

• Game changers are likely to be developed by teams that include cognitively different groups (subgroups with varying cognitive sets) that tolerate and exploit overlapping membership across such groups.

• Tensions within teams allow for the development of products that stand out.

• A game is more distinctive if the developer team accommodates larger cohesive groups but this effect declines as the mean size of groups grows further.

• Teams comprising industry veterans are less likely to produce games that deviate from the norm. Including newcomers is a significant positive predictor of distinctiveness.

• Teams with many above-average developers are unlikely to develop distinctive games, while teams with a few absolute standouts (and some that performed poorly in the past) are more likely to produce creative outliers.

• Games developed and published by one firm are more likely to be distinctive than games produced by multiple firms, as less negotiation is necessary and consensus need to be reached.

• Teams embedded within older firms produce games that are less likely to stand out, which proves that older firms, which have established their position within the industry, are less likely to provide the context in which distinctive games can be developed.

• Teams with high cohesion, but with cognitively close developers lead to a narrow focus.

• Creative success was facilitated when cognitively distant groups were socially folded. Yes, something must be shared. But it is not necessarily mutual understanding. It creates a workable space where some misunderstanding is tolerated.

In summary, Professor David Stark says the most successful new video games were created because the creative teams behind the most iconic video games had the ideal mix of career backgrounds and working relationships.

There are 7 important lessons for you to boost creative success in your team at the start of innovation:

1.    Set up your innovation team as “a group of groups”.

2.    Make the ‘cohesive groups’ within the team larger.

3.    Work on group tolerance.

4.    Tension sparks creativity in a tolerant group.

5.    Include newcomers.

6.    ‘One-firm’ teams need to compromise less and make more distinctive concepts.

7.    Compose a team of cognitively different innovators.

Keep these lessons learned in mind when you are composing your team. Wishing you lots of success on your creative journeys.

How Innovative Ideas Arise

 (Photo Credit: Daniel Alexander.)

In 2010, Thomas Thwaites decided he wanted to build a toaster from scratch. He walked into a shop, purchased the cheapest toaster he could find, and promptly went home and broke it down piece by piece.

Thwaites had assumed the toaster would be a relatively simple machine. By the time he was finished deconstructing it, however, there were more than 400 components laid out on his floor. The toaster contained over 100 different materials with three of the primary ones being plastic, nickel, and steel.

He decided to create the steel components first. After discovering that iron ore was required to make steel, Thwaites called up an iron mine in his region and asked if they would let him use some for the project.

Surprisingly, they agreed.

The Toaster Project

The victory was short-lived.

When it came time to create the plastic case for his toaster, Thwaites realized he would need crude oil to make the plastic. This time, he called up BP and asked if they would fly him out to an oil rig and lend him some oil for the project. They immediately refused. It seems oil companies aren’t nearly as generous as iron mines.

Thwaites had to settle for collecting plastic scraps and melting them into the shape of his toaster case. This is not as easy as it sounds. The homemade toaster ended up looking more like a melted cake than a kitchen appliance.

This pattern continued for the entire span of The Toaster Project. It was nearly impossible to move forward without the help of some previous process. To create the nickel components, for example, he had to resort to melting old coins. He would later say, “I realized that if you started absolutely from scratch you could easily spend your life making a toaster.” [1]

Don’t Start From Scratch

Starting from scratch is usually a bad idea.

Too often, we assume innovative ideas and meaningful changes require a blank slate. When business projects fail, we say things like, “Let’s go back to the drawing board.” When we consider the habits we would like to change, we think, “I just need a fresh start.” However, creative progress is rarely the result of throwing out all previous ideas and completely re-imagining of the world.

Consider an example from nature:

Some experts believe the feathers of birds evolved from reptilian scales. Through the forces of evolution, scales gradually became small feathers, which were used for warmth and insulation at first. Eventually, these small fluffs developed into larger feathers capable of flight.

There wasn’t a magical moment when the animal kingdom said, “Let’s start from scratch and create an animal that can fly.” The development of flying birds was a gradual process of iterating and expanding upon ideas that already worked. [2]

The process of human flight followed a similar path. We typically credit Orville and Wilbur Wright as the inventors of modern flight. However, we seldom discuss the aviation pioneers who preceded them like Otto Lilienthal, Samuel Langley, and Octave Chanute. The Wright brothers learned from and built upon the work of these people during their quest to create the world’s first flying machine.

The most creative innovations are often new combinations of old ideas. Innovative thinkers don’t create, they connect. Furthermore, the most effective way to make progress is usually by making 1 percent improvements to what already works rather than breaking down the whole system and starting over.

Iterate, Don’t Originate

The Toaster Project is an example of how we often fail to notice the complexity of our modern world. When you buy a toaster, you don’t think about everything that has to happen before it appears in the store. You aren’t aware of the iron being carved out of the mountain or the oil being drawn up from the earth. [3]

We are mostly blind to the remarkable interconnectedness of things. This is important to understand because in a complex world it is hard to see which forces are working for you as well as which forces are working against you. Similar to buying a toaster, we tend to focus on the final product and fail to recognize the many processes leading up to it.

When you are dealing with a complex problem, it is usually better to build upon what already works. Any idea that is currently working has passed a lot of tests. Old ideas are a secret weapon because they have already managed to survive in a complex world.

Iterate, don’t originate.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Information for this story was collected from Thomas Thwaites’ personal website, The Toaster Project, and from his TED Talk titled, “How I built a toaster from scratch.”

[2] If you’re curious, I believe the closest living reptile ancestor to birds is the crocodile. You sort of imagine how reptile scales interlink and lay over one another in a similar fashion as bird feathers.

[3] I first read about The Toaster Project in Adapt by Tim Harford. He also discusses the interconnectedness of our modern world. It’s a good read if you’re interested in the idea of applying the concept of evolution to business and life. I recommend it.