Endless Zoom Meetings

Some online meetings just drag on and on...   Happy Halloween 2020!

© 2020 Praveen Puri

Praveen's Stepping Stone Model

Big, audacious goals and complex projects can seem overwhelming, cause procrastination, and trigger resistance.

The key is that, while we want to dream big, we can implement small (and iterate).

Projects and initiatives can be broken down into phases and chunks (which can be further broken down into micro projects).

The advantages of stringing together stepping stones are: quick wins, less paralysis, and more flexibility to pivot (which is important into today's rapidly changing environment).

© 2020 Praveen Puri

"Stock Trading Riches" Return Through 2019

It's now been 15 years since I've invested my portfolio according to the system in my book Stock Trading Riches.

Here is the cumulative 15-year return (Source for S&P500 returns):

Year, Me, S&P 500  

2005, 13%, 4.91%  

2006, 14%, 15.79%  

2007, 22%, 5.49%  

2008, (40%), (37%)  

2009, 44%, 26.46%  

2010, 22%, 15.06%  

2011, (5%), 2.11%  

2012, 13.3%, 16%  

2013, 23%, 32.39%  

2014, 13%, 13.69%  

2015, 1.49%, 1.38%  

2016, 20.88%, 11.96%  

2017, 26%, 21.83% 

2018, 8.31%, (4.38%)

2019, 30.31%, 31.49%

My portfolio had a cumulative 15 year return of +438% vs. +261% for the S&P 500.  
That translates into a 15 year average annual return of 10.35% vs. 6.61% 

© 2020 Praveen Puri

Software Security Vulnerabilities in Unused Code

I work with a lot of clients to make sure their project managers, software architects, developers, analysts, and stakeholders are all on the same page—aligned on the business value of new projects.

Not practicing Strategic Simplicity®, and maximizing value while minimizing waste, can really weigh down technical organizations, and reduce resources for competitive innovation.

Sure, developing the wrong / un-needed features negatively impacts project completion, but delivering the project is the tip of the iceberg: the real pain of badly scoped software becomes apparent once it goes into production.

Not only can badly designed software cause customer service issues, but they can unnecessarily compromise security, and make the whole company vulnerable to hackers.

I've seen software applications regularly fail security audits due to code vulnerabilities in features that are never used.  Even if the features are disabled from the menu, the code is still mixed in and will continue to get flagged.

© 2020 Praveen Puri

Covid Airline Innovation

Yesterday, I read an article in the Chicago Tribune that I found interesting: Finnair is going to start selling their business class airplane meals (like reindeer meatballs and arctic char) in supermarkets.  They want to appeal to people who are missing the flying experience, as well as keep their catering staff employed.

© 2020 Praveen Puri

Puntastic

After the cow jumped over the moon, the other cows said "That's udderly ridiculous!" and refused to jump.

They were grounded beef.

© 2020 Praveen Puri

UK GOVERNMENT "LOST" 16K COVID CASES

Here is "IT Mastery" at work:

The UK government lost 16,000 Covid cases because it was tracking cases in an Excel spreadsheet (as opposed to a database) but apparently didn't know how to use a spreadsheet. Instead of adding a new row for each case, they were adding a new column.

An Excel spreadsheet has a limit of 16,384 columns, but they didn't realize right away that they ran out of space, and kept adding cases—which are now lost.

https://boingboing.net/2020/10/05/uk-government-lost-16k-covid-cases-because-it-used-excel-to-track-them-but-doesnt-know-how-to-excel.html

© 2020 Praveen Puri

Underwater Cloud Computing Data Centers?

I was just reading and article in The Economist that Microsoft recently completed a years long test of locating a dozen server racks under the sea off the Orkney Islands.

The underwater data center suffered just 1/8 of the equipment failures of a land-based data center.

According to the article, some other possible advantages to locating data servers underwater:

1. Cooling is a big expense on land.

2. Land in cities like New York or London are expensive, but not the nearby sea floors.

3. More than 1/2 the world's population lives within 120 miles of the sea.

© 2020 Praveen Puri

Haunted House Innovation for Covid

I'm not sure if haunted house "actors" are considered an arts group but, since haunted houses are banned this year, I saw that at least one in my area was innovating.  They set up a haunted experience on some access roads through a camp ground in the woods, where they built different scenarios, each with a team of actors to perform.  

You have to stay in your car, with the windows rolled up.  You drive slowly, and they have red light/green lights set up (like a car wash) to let you know when to drive into each scene and then park.  They perform the scene, and then let the next car drive up.

I would think that you could apply that to other types of performers.

© 2020 Praveen Puri

Interesting Amazon Review of My Book "A Strategically Simple Look at Business Innovation"

Today, I received an interesting review on Amazon for my book A Strategically Simple Look at Business Innovation:

Strategic simplicity is strategically simple

You know you’ve picked up a great book on simplicity when you find it’s only 20 pages long. If you need a 300 page manuscript to describe simplicity, then you’ve picked up the wrong book. This is brief, easy to read and chock full of ideas. One thought provoking idea is that we are now in the Attention Scarcity age. We are bombarded every few seconds by more and more. Delivering real value is more important than ever. This is a great read, I highly recommend it.

© 2020 Praveen Puri