Praveen Puri

Wednesday, May 29, 2024

Three Ways to Be An Innovative Leader in Your Field

1. You have to learn, learn, learn. If you don't have the passion to read and learn outside of work, you should find another field because you won't be an innovative leader. Also, learn in adjacent areas. for example, if your field is healthcare, also learn and be curious in technology and consumer care.

2. Use data. You don't have to be a data scientist. You can work with programmers and data experts, who can help you put together the queries. The main skills you need is the ability to think up the queries by thinking about cause, effect, and relationships between measures, and testing your hypothesis.

3. Set both clear (in pen) and "in pencil" goals. For example, if you're in health care, set the clear goal of identifying a way to kill a certain cancer cell. But, then you want to set an "in pencil" sub-goal, such as can substance X affect the cancer cell. Because, then you want to test this hypothesis, and either pursue it further or quickly discard it (fail fast). "in pencil" means don't be wedded to it, and be willing to pivot based on the evidence.

Monday, May 27, 2024

Go Team Go!

The Economist had an article about how researchers are now working on building teams of chatbots. These open up more powerful opportunities than single chatbots.

The bots can self-organize, assign each other tasks, and review each other's work.

Latest Fortune Cookie Advice

"Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it."

- From today's fortune cookie

Thursday, May 23, 2024

Actual Execution Should Be Thoughtless

You need to strategize and plan, so that you take the right action. But, when you actually take action, you have to not think, and just execute, if you want to be successful.

I noticed this when I threw a crumpled paper into the garage can. I made the shot because I didn't aim, or think about whether I would make it in. My mind was a void, and I just tossed it in.

Tuesday, April 23, 2024

How Not To Do Projects

San Francisco built a single public toilet. The stats:

$1.7 million with a two-year timeline

$91,800 in project management fees

$90,000 in architecture and engineering fee

Thursday, April 4, 2024

"My AI agent will be in touch with your AI agent"

In the future, I think we will have AI assistants who complete tasks and schedule things for us.

For example, instead of booking travel yourself, you tell your AI. It knows your preferences, goes out to your favorite travel site, finds and presents to you 3-4 options, then books your choice.

At first, site connections for your agent may need to be cobbled together, but I think standards will emerge. AIs will have access to directories listing APIs for different websites so that, when your agent needs to interact with a site for the first time, there is little or no initial setup required.

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

You Can't Fail At Innovation

You can't fail at innovation. It's not "success or fail"–it's "success or iterate." If you give up on innovation, your business will fail. If, instead, you pivot, review what happened, and adjust, you can always grow your business, add value to your customers, and increase the value of your business.