From Discomfort Zone column by Shombit Sengupta in Financial Express and Indian Express

Before reaching Johannesburg from Zambia, I’d asked friends about the city’s must-see sights and sounds. Surprisingly, all I got were scary warnings. We could be mobbed at anytime, the hotel should arrange airport transfers, even driving a rent-a-car is not safe. This immediately raised my curiosity about South Africa’s inner picture that hadn’t changed even after liberation from official Apartheid racial segregation laws since 1994.

The bitter black-white-skin divide still matters. In most workplaces I observed African natives doing menial work, their bosses were white. A week before we met Japh, our native South African guide, a young white boy had deliberately smashed his car’s rear windscreen. Why? Because he could not overtake him as the traffic light turned red. The white boy’s mother was driving the car, but she didn’t interfere. The boy toted a gun. Instead of getting into a fight, Japh went into the police station. However, without witnesses the police hesitated. The Government of this ‘rainbow’ nation represents 40 million black native Africans, 4 million coloureds and a million Asians and 5 million whites. Yet since historical times, the money’s largely been in with white people. They drive the economy even today, so the blacks tread warily.

Downtown Johannesburg looks very disturbed. You don’t see white people on the street, daytime or night. The whites were mugged and robbed here during the black uprising, so they fled. Now indigenous Africans and Indians man the shops. If you’re unfamiliar with the neighbourhood’s unexpressed feelings, you’re advised to stay away. Only the financial section didn’t move out, these large downtown buildings housing banks have white employees. But white tourists are not encouraged here. In fact, even when we wanted to see a jazz show downtown, our hotel in Sandton was on the lookout for the right taxi to take us, wait for us, and deposit us back after midnight.

The torture and indignity Apartheid inflicted on the blacks, making them homeless, herding them into make-shift black-only colonies like Soweto (South West Territory) created about 50 kms from Johannesburg cannot be forgotten so easily. But today all areas are technically open to all. Soweto had boasted 23 native African millionaires a decade ago. However that number has dwindled in Soweto as wealthy blacks are moving to costly, sophisticated places earlier reserved for whites. The Dutch and English together monopolize the mining rights for diamond, gold and mineral mines that South Africa is rich in. Their exclusive mine owners club is so exclusive that even women are barred, although of late they’ve condescended to allow women through a side door! White living areas are up-market, resembling places like Monte Carlo. Native Africans, poor and in lower stations in life, are generally intimidated from navigating such places. So the continuous racial and rich-poor clash has made a foreigner’s movement in South Africa uneasy and frightening.

We crossed beautiful farms en-route to the Stone Age anthropological site named Cradle of Humankind. In these limestone caves near Gauteng, over 500 hominid fossils were discovered from 3.5 million years ago, including the first human fossil nicknamed Mrs Ples dating back 2.3 million years. In this land we can visibly realize how human beings have evolved to conquer nature and rule the world. “This countryside environment we are passing has gone through many changes in recent times,” explained Japh. Earlier white farm owners used to build homes for their farm hands, provide for this captive labour force generation after generation. But now the owners have hired white managers to run the farms. These managers have asked native labourers to vacate those homes. Their fear is that they will be accused of keeping farm workers as bonded slaves, snatching away labour rights and liberties. So a large number of blacks have become homeless. During Nelson Mandela’s Presidency he started a housing scheme for the homeless. From the highway we can see these rows of basic council houses. If people can prove a certain low wage and homeless situation, they’ll be allotted a house free of cost.

Why did the rich white farm owners leave their land? Japh’s perspective is that they have fled to coastal towns Cape Town and Durban so that if, by chance, the sleeping volcano of native anger erupts, they can quickly take boats to escape the country. “This burst will surely come, we cannot say if it will be in 5, 15 or even 100 years,” Japh said. “White people will have to exit one day just like they did from all our neighbouring African countries.”

From Uncle Tom’s days to Apartheid, racial strains have choked societies in North America and Africa. So the black community in both continents has inculcated a warrior mentality against the whites, a mentality that erupts as soon as the occasion arises. Except when it comes to the arts, white society has gleefully borrowed from African culture, thus enriching the arts and themselves. In his famous African Period (1907-1909), Pablo Picasso painted in a style strongly influenced by African sculpture. The seminal black influence on Rock-n-roll King Elvis Presley was Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s black gospel music. African rhythm and sounds, first brought to the US by African slaves, led to the creation of blues and jazz. It can be established that African music is at the root of a very significant portion of all recent popular or vernacular music in the West, including genres like heavy metal, punk rock, pop music.

Musicians like Paul Simon, Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger have contributed to lessening the skin matter, but it has never been resolved. It seems to be like the solar system that cannot be displaced. There have been great integration initiatives from white Americans, but their mindshare is somehow blocked, the two colours cannot make the same cup of tea. The black and white races of the world continue to carry this shame to this day.

To download above article in PDF Skin matters

Financial Express link:http://www.financialexpress.com/news/skin-matters/864267/0

From Discomfort Zone column by Shombit Sengupta in Financial Express and Indian Express

Continuing our 4-siblings&spouses family reunion in Africa, we reached Kapani safari camp outside Mfuwe, Northeast Zambia. Here I learnt of a certain ecological balance from the animal-jungle habitat we were immersed in. It’s night-time; a guard is escorting us to our cottage in the middle of the jungle. He waited to take us for dinner by the river deck. Shining his torchlight he casually showed us what looked like a big cow within 15 meters of our lodge. In reality it was a wild hippopotamus that had wandered into the camp and was grazing grass. I almost collapsed! Will we become the hippo’s dinner? The guard assured us hippos are vegetarian; if we don’t disturb them, they’ll never attack. That was tough to believe. My mind’s eye recalled Discovery channel where we’d watched, in the safety of home in India, animals enjoying each other as food. Was there much point in travelling to the southern hemisphere only to be eaten by them instead?

Our guide Lawrence mentioned that, on average, 2 fishermen die in the crocodile-hippo infested Luangwa river every year. He said white tourist guides with little practical knowledge or feel for the jungle come with books to guide others. He narrated a sordid tale of fatal bravado. A few years ago an American tourist group had a highly professional swimmer who wanted to absolutely cross this dangerous river. He’d out-swum man-eating sharks and other predators in different parts of the world’s waters, so what’s a slow-moving crocodile in comparison? Everyone in the forest camp forbade him, but the adventurer had to prove his point. During the hot mid-afternoon siesta, he slipped out alone. Of course a croc chewed him up in the river. In the ensuing chaos, a local forest guard went tracing the American’s footprints. Unfortunately, he too couldn’t wriggle out of the crocodile’s big jaws. This gruesome drama was happening just below a bridge from where another guard shot the culprit crocodile. Inside the crocodile’s stomach they found dismembered body pieces of both men. The American’s hand was intact and still wearing his watch. This is all his family received as testimony of his demise.

I was conversing with Andrew, another extremely knowledgeable local guide, about the jungle’s heart being so divergently different from the digital world we’d left behind. Andrew pointed to a pile of animal dung and asked, “Is it so different really? Look at the ‘poo’ of the civet animal. Perhaps the inventors of email, Facebook and dating or matrimony websites were inspired by it.” As I stared at him incredulously, he explained the animal kingdom’s communication methods. Every male civet marks his territory by leaving his droppings in several places in the forest. Every day he opens his Facebook account by visiting his marked places to check who has responded to his activities. It seems animals can find out from every ‘poo’ heap which animal the faeces belongs to, the age, sex and health condition of that animal, and at what preparatory stage of mating the female is in. If the female civet visiting the male civet’s ‘poo’ site is interested in dating him, she leaves her email address by doing her own job next to his. Then at regular intervals she leaves her ‘poo’ trail so that her chosen mate can find her in this vast jungle. In a day, if about five female civets have left messages indicating their interest, the male civet examines them all, then makes his life-plan. Of the five, one may be about to ovulate in 2 months, another in 2 days, a third may be much older than him, the fourth much younger but she has some illness, and the fifth about his age but with no indication of when the mating time will come. If he wants a family immediately, he’ll go for the second girl, if he wants to play around and be fancy free he’ll go for the fifth one. So who said human beings are superior inventors to animals?

When Lawrence heard about my fascination for Chitalele dance, he was so enthused that an Indian knew his culture that he immediately organised nearby village folk to perform. It was marvelous. Under acacia and ‘sausage’ trees, a dry riverbed as backdrop in this wintry afternoon, no microphones, no speakers, just six voices were singing with gospel harmony. Their astonishing voices had multiple chords synchronized with African percussion accompaniment. If you’d not seen this with your naked eyes you’d think the dancing was to pre-recorded playback songs. The fabulous Chitalele involves call-and-response songs, coordinated hand clapping and energetic legwork. They danced to local song-stories of elephants destroying crops, the tweets of myriad birds, interspersed with some humour using impromptu paper props of binoculars and cameras to caricature how white people go into the forest to watch animals and birds.

In the far distance behind the dancing we could see an elephant family bathing in the wet-spots of the dry riverbed, a hippopotamus foraging for food, a male deer whistling. Lawrence had explained that when the deer whistles thrice, he’s communicating his presence to females during mating time. If he whistles continuously, it means there’s danger, a predator is nearby, so everybody, just run! In the forest the next day, Lawrence suddenly stopped the safari jeep. He showed us the pug marks of a crocodile that had crossed this way the night before. The crocodile would have felt very hot and was going towards water. In-between the feet marks we could decipher the tail inscription. It seems the crocodile progresses slowly as he has to drag his very heavy tail, so he needs to rest every five minutes. I marveled at the language of the jungle, so different from our metro, urban or rural civilization. Here you can feel you’re in a world apart. What’s the balance or reconciliation between the two eco-systems, nature’s technology and digital technology?

To download above article in PDF Jungly Facebook

Financial Express link:http://www.financialexpress.com/news/jungly-facebook/860379/0

From Discomfort Zone column by Shombit Sengupta in Financial Express and Indian Express

From California came my sister-in-law’s invitation for a family get-together under the African sky.  My in-law family composed of multiple nationalities, Indian, American, Canadian, French, were getting ready to celebrate her 20^th marriage anniversary amidst nature and animal beauty. Before the safari trip my wife would regularly turn on Discovery channel. I found my eyes riveted to lions and crocodiles killing their prey.  Was she mentally preparing me on how we’ll soon be gobbled up by all kinds of animals? 

So there we were in Livingstone, a Britisher’s name in Zambia. Just like our mountain Everest is etched with an English climber’s name. That’s supreme branding done by British colonial explorers who’d then bequeath their discoveries to the international community. In so doing they’ve maintained 5 aspects: (1) missionary zeal to convert people to Christianity, (2) discovery of unique natural phenomena, (3) looting the colonized societies, (4) creating the black-white people divide and (5) making the colonized speak English. Scottish missionary David Livingstone discovered the world’s highest waterfall called Mosi-oa-Tunya, literally meaning Smoke that Thunders, and named it in honour of his Queen Victoria.  

Nobody knows how many Zambian natives had seen the falls before him.  But Livingstone marked his discovery, the town got his name. On the banks of Zambezi River bordering Zambia and Zimbabwe, people told us that dangerous crocodiles and hippopotamus inhabit the calm 3,540-kilometre waters. If you fall in there, the crocodiles will not take more than 7 minutes to put you in their stomach. Then suddenly the river’s beauty changed dramatically, tumbling headlong down 108 metres to become the gushing, misty Victoria Falls. Victoria is followed by Iguazu Falls between Brazil and Argentina, the world’s second highest at 82 mts, and third highest is Niagara Falls, 51 mts at the USA-Canada boundary. In worldwide fame it’s Niagara’s majesty we’ve always heard of, perhaps because its part of the developed West. But when we compare, the widest falls is Iguazu at 2700 mts, followed by Victoria 1708 mts, with Niagara the third widest at 1203 mts.

Driving from the airport, Livingstone didn’t seem too different from an Indian C town. Except there were fewer people and tourist information in English indicated tourism to be the most important income. The good part of British colonization is that it paves the way for livelihood of local natives. The few hotels and hired cars in Livingstone proved they were living off tourists. Election billboards had smiling mug-shots of the president, others of his opponent called for corruption clean-up. It was still not clarifying to me that we’d reached Africa as I was coming from the same phenomenon in India. An insurance company hoarding displayed a big electric bulb pointing out you can die of electric shock so it’s better to insure! This signaled to me that we may be in Africa. Going forward, a man on a bicycle was overloaded with plastic cans. It appeared we’re back in India again. But why was he nervously waiting by the roadside? Our guide Simon clarified that he’d stopped for fear of crossing the elephant pathway. We gasped as we suddenly spotted several huge wild tuskers and baby elephants ahead. They were frolicking on both sides of the road, enjoying an afternoon’s picnic stroll. Simon halted for our obvious camera clicks, but warned us not to get off the vehicle. What I learnt is that if you are at their same ground level, wild animals can attack. But as they don’t recognize machines or read them as prey, you’re safe when inside a vehicle.

Behind the elephants we heard the thunderous rumble of Victoria. The African jungles parted into an unending chasm. We were awestruck as the sunlight created unimaginable colours, reflections and illumination in the mighty waterfalls. But when you look down, you feel the vertigo. While our family members went to minutely check Victoria from the Zimbabwe side, my wife and I decided to visit Simon’s village. Without understanding the social aspects of African life, this trip would be incomplete for me.

Simon’s village folk lived exactly like they’d always done. The small round mud huts with low roof had a single door and no window through which animals can attack at night. Villagers perforce went far out for water and firewood. We met a 17-year-old girl holding a baby. Simon told us she was raped by a married man. For this abuse the tribe’s headman obliged him to pay regularly for the child’s upkeep. Others from this small village were away to work in another village, a few children greeted us, they had goats and chickens for company. In such native surroundings you see a different kind of life from the beauty of the jungle, river and animals that tourists get to know.  You can ask whether its poverty or culture that makes people live like this without being eaten up by capitalism or digital world devils.

The open markets of Livingstone were gypsy-like with fruits, vegetables, dry fish, furniture, second hand apparel and the occasional touristic handicraft-ware all hanging under temporary thatched shelters. By 7pm everything shuts down. This is like the weekly bazaar (haat) on Indian village outskirts, but here it’s the main city market. So it’s easy to gauge that investors of different hues were yet to come to Livingstone.

Simon’s biggest crib was against the current president Rupiah Banda whose election slogan was “A President for all Zambians.” His party’s been ruling for 20 years. Michael Sata, a former train-station sweeper nicknamed “King Cobra” for his rough-spoken ways, was his electoral opponent. He’d served in the ministry of Kenneth Kaunda, liberated Zambia’s first president. Aside from anti-corruption, Sata is against Chinese investment. China is Zambia’s biggest foreign investor with $2 billion in copper, cobalt, nickel and coal mines. The day we left Africa we heard “King Cobra” had won. Even under the African sky, anti-corruption has become the contagious winning strategy.

To download above article in PDF Rhythm under the African sky

Financial Express link:http://www.financialexpress.com/news/rhythm-under-the-african-sky/854527/0

From Discomfort Zone column by Shombit Sengupta in Financial Express and Indian Express

Technology has given the world a new religious order, that of the code. In most activity domains, efficiency and perfection go through the filter of a technology chip. The last overwhelming change in people’s lives had come with the innovation of electricity. Night time and darkness are irrelevant in stopping anything. Technology’s pinpricks are introducing discomfort today, turning the world upside down inspite of people trying to protect their habits. When workplace automation was introduced, people just couldn’t sit on those discomfiting enemy pinpricks of technology in the fear they’d lose their jobs. In time technology created its own avenues, very much like nature’s storms and waves, proliferating into newer spaces. Who would have thought of technology in traditional areas like marriages? Weddings are conducted in cyberspace now, without the neighborhood priest’s help.

Indian consumers are exposed to discomfort from many quarters. A few years ago when I saw a newspaper displaying Madonna and Britney Spears kissing in a public concert I wondered how Indian women would perceive such an act. Men get disturbed seeing a physical homosexual act, but women in the West have generally accepted lesbianism. In Indian culture, women are taught never to be honest about their desires, to suppress them. Surprisingly, my different consumer interactions here have revealed that women could enjoy such a fantasy.

If consumers are accepting the discomfort of sexual expose, are Indian manufacturers keeping pace by addressing them with new understanding? Are they analyzing deeper psychological and sociological impact to inject it into business? Somehow I’ve found Indian organizations to always be in a questioning mode: Will it work? Has our Indian consumer advanced to this level? Do we have the capability to do that? Will everyone in the organization or trade unions support this? Will the trade accept it? By sadistically defending their inaction, Indian organizations avoid discomfort. The protected economy seems to have paralyzed our competitive killer instinct. In today’s competitive scenario when global companies are steadily overtaking market share in every category, making incremental improvement may not be adequate for a company. A radical transformation is required to upgrade intellectual human capital along with a working process that co-opts and drives the consumers’ latent trend.

There is no single way of driving discomfort into an organization’s culture. Western headquartered global organizations proactively play with discomfort as they experienced positive results when they’ve co-opted the demands and desires of society and the masses. When organizations change their culture to better serve consumers, they go through dramatic discomfort. But consumers are oblivious of this and it’s of little consequence to them. Just consider your wife/husband, mother, sister, brother, son, daughter as consumers, they expect and demand quality products and services, period.

Compared to the past, the West today is saturated of discomfort, and somehow snoozing in material comfort. People are preoccupied with social fracture, sex related disease, terrorism, their initiative to work is deteriorating, the avant-garde character is missing. I visualize tremendous pressure from the extreme right wing. If you look back at history, Nazism was born in the lap of German recession. The extreme right has always taken advantage of economic reasons like unemployment and recession to hook people through psychological rationale. Unemployment is growing, but poor productivity is making European countries hire immigrants to support labor-intensive work. That raises political issues, so the new method is to outsource to India and China. Yet they worry about how India and China will become future economic powers that will harm their economy. Even when no physical danger exists, Europeans somehow create discomfort in society as though it’s a need. Unfortunately, extreme economic pressure has made love and affection very artificial there. The fear of AIDS makes them feel vulnerable and insecure. In India where livelihood is the priority, a conjugal relationship may become mechanical. Discomfort can break the monotony of married life, re-vibrate a couple’s world of fantasy and re-ignite passion.

What’s the comfort zone? It’s continuous incremental improvement. The discomfort framework has seven requirements: (1) Be deliberately curious. This can be achieved by obliging people to dramatize things so as to see them differently. (2) Value lateral action. Apples always fall from trees, but one man, Newton, used this falling phenomenon to discover the laws of gravitation. (3) Make the unstated obvious. Penicillin is fungus. (4) Belief in commercial value. Diagonal reading makes you aware of the usage benefit and saves time. (5) Change work culture. Prioritize discipline to structure creativity that results in a process that facilitates mass scale change. (6) Work with a sense of urgency with every moment operating discipline (EMOD). This will result in continuous cycle time reduction. (7) Time bound. Be driven by the day you have to deliver, don’t count in weeks and months, but in days.

Let’s come back to your business. The basis of human evolution has always come from discomfort. Unless managements are deliberately pushed to dive into discomfort zone, it’ll remain a gossip metaphor, not serious action. Initially it would seem esoteric to go outside the routine, but you’ll soon realize you’ve become the actor rather than the audience. After a certain effort discomfort becomes your chronic link that delivers exceptional growth. Revive your strategic planning to deal with discomfort as a project. Create a task force that’s totally aligned with the consumers’ latent trend, with the clear objective, in a given timeframe, to surprise the market with a deliverable that disturbs the competition to make your product benefit higher than the competition. Discomfort is pinpricks in your backside, you cannot sit on it, you just cannot ignore it, you have to deal with it in a hurry to bring change into the world.

To download above article in PDF Pinpricks in your backside

Financial Express link :http://www.financialexpress.com/news/pinpricks-you-cant-ignore/844666/0

From Discomfort Zone column by Shombit Sengupta in Financial Express and Indian Express

Being a reverse wave, a trend stuns people, creates discomfort in society. It forms as a distinct character in the backdrop of history, and mainly emerges from human manifestations of being anti-establishment. This multi-directional catalyst is related to economic power that takes life forward or back. Social rebels want to be so different that people stop in their tracks and contemplate on their activity. An individual can be impacted by the trend soberly, subtly or exuberantly. It depends on the individual.

Different types of trends emerge at different times. The advent of denim jeans was a trend that cut across society; the poor, rich, middle class, executives, farm hands, old and aged, almost everybody went through the trend. In business, it’s important to understand the latent trend. Having an inkling of the future allows you to direct your business in the right growth path. Although technology is creating a futuristic trend which people have not been associated with before, a trend takes the future as a hook to climb from, even as it is anchored in the tremendous cycles of history.

A brand at the core of the trend absorsb and anticipates the future, it drives the latent trend. Let’s see how Benetton did just that to ride global business with USD 2,751 million in 2010, 15% operating profit margin.

Benetton case study: Luciano Benetton transformed his company when he changed his brand from Benetton to United Colors of Benetton. The brand thrives on expletives and stands for anti-racism. His extreme provocations have shock value that shakes up the shackles that bind civilized society. But the point he raises is a serious social cause. Being a Caucasian, he alerts fellow Europeans to the racism ingrained in their minds. He’s proved that curses and abuses can be over-stretched to defend a social cause.

Till the 1970s, racism went unbridled. Even poverty-stricken Caucasian countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal were considered inferior; the French would arrogantly dub Portuguese to be good only as concierge of condominiums. African or Arab communities hated the ‘high and mighty white attitude’ which oftentimes led to violence. In this atmosphere, fashion designer Benetton had the caliber, vision and guts to use abusive visual communication with anti-racism as his platform. Fashion’s origins can be traced to royalty that distinguished itself from the proletariat; it has no obvious connect to racism. By whipping up collages of different cultures, Benetton turned the sophisticated world of fashion upside down.

Not only did his anti-racism pitch disturb the Establishment, Benetton fought for social justice. His political and humanitarian rights causes won him appreciation from liberals, intellectuals and the young. He plastered Western cities with daring, controversial visuals that attracted people of all societies. These people became his buyers. His platform became large, intense and inimitable.

United Colors of Benetton is always linked to colors, in clothing and in uniting races of different skin colors. His messages never abuse anyone, his images expose the totally taboo. Just imagine an outsize billboard in a prime metro’s prime area exhibiting innumerable male and female sex organs of multiple colors and races, with nothing else but a tiny United Colors of Benetton sign-off. You may publicly denounce such a picture, but wouldn’t you be curious to openly see the United Colors of sex for your personal hedonism? This outrageous picture created havoc in society.

Benetton billboards communicate people’s subliminal desire to see the unmentionable such as horses, symbolicall white and dark, making love. This sexual fantasy with the opposite color is hidden, especially the colored person’s revenge over white supremacy through sex. Benetton proves that a desirable object can break racism. He spoke out against incest in societies too, and iconized his clothes to reflect the wearer’s liberal personality.

Fashion codes change every year, but the professional success of United Colors of Benetton is its single message magnified to overwhelming proportions. For over a quarter century, it has not bored people. The media mileage his communication gets is incredible. Just a few confrontational billboards in a country, and the media automatically start different kinds of debate. Millions of people, shocked, disturbed or supportive of the pictures, watch these TV debates at prime time. No company can hope for such mileage even if they invest huge sums of money. Protests and turbulence have frequently knocked his door. But the cacophonous attentions his unrelenting salvos receive establish that people love to be provoked. People enjoy public exhibition of their unstated desires; they are keen to openly indulge in controversy to keep life dynamic.

A trend is a non-stop wave that has an undercurrent. It is extremely difficult to swim against the undercurrent. Trying to do so can be very laborious, and can drown you. You could ignore companies like Benetton as not being relevant for your business but you do so at your peril because you totally miss the consumer’s deeper social insight, not her subjective or individualistic views. Consequently you may fail to analyze and understand the consumers’ fantasies that other industry domains are addressing. By not riding the trend your business may fall into the undercurrent. Your organization has to create a wave to connect to that ocean of consumers over whom you will never have physical control.

Today’s trends such as hip hop, iPod, Rbk, Niketown, Fcuk, Smart car, Swatch, homosexual marriage, Bose sound, Starbucks, health and fitness are cords that link to consumers, they are not in a vacuum. If managements like Benetton have intellectually translated the world of business to a socio-philosophical mode to create the latent trend in business, so can you. Connecting to these trends will help you generate the latent trend, that better cook of current and past trends.

To download above article in PDF Whats a trend

Financial Express link :http://www.financialexpress.com/news/Whats-a-trend/818437/0

The Financial EXPRESS article

Years ago, India’s famous music director SD Burman sang, “Dheere se jana khatian me, O Khatmal.” Its literal meaning is, “Bedbug, move unhurriedly on the bed (towards your stealthy purpose of sucking her blood” is implied). There was a lateral meaning too. In those days, romantically approaching a young girl was taboo. The song figuratively indicated that the man invisibly creeps slowly, like the bedbug that society doesn’t see, and bites her tactfully, but not get caught, the way you can never catch a bedbug.

But today’s bug mania is openly discussed, it’s digital, it’s the virus on your computer. American capitalism empowered the open economy, similarly, digital bugs have democratized society with multiple meanings, interpretations and options. What you’d analyze as bad could be good for me and her, what’s ugly for me is good for him, bad for another. Clearly the eclectic nature of digital technology delivers BUG mania, B for bad, U for ugly and G for good. The bug in your computer is an error, flaw, mistake, fault or failure in the system or software, but BUG mania is our obtuse digitalization of human foibles.

B=bad: Disturbs privacy. Earlier, you’d handle landline calls adroitly. If father received the call and suspected hanky-panky, the situation would roller-coaster into family chaos. The mobile phone has changed the privacy code. Is prostitution declining? No longer do hookers saunter the streets petulantly, lipstick and mirror in hand, obliquely keeping tabs at male movements behind them. Actually escort agencies have taken over, escort solicitations now secretly land on your handset, emails or print advertisements.

Grandmothers have lost happy moments of narrating fairy tales. On a click, the net takes children to unimaginable wonderlands, pornographic sites and violence videos. Does that make technology bad? Remote controlling their lives, tech-born kids visit virtual farms, clean animal pens, feed the goats everyday. They start blogs for their pet dogs, exchange cyber conversations with other dogs. They multi-task on the computer, take no phone calls they don’t recognize, send endless sms messages. If they write they expect automatic digital correction because, “Is spelling more important or the expression?” Is social networking bad for making us unsocial, giving us access to exploitation through pictures, negative propaganda?

Should the terminology for “adult at 18 years” be changed? With Freud’s Oedipus and Electra psychological complexes at the back of their minds, and hands gripping mobile phones, hide-and-seek about sex may have misplaced relevance for children. Notwithstanding amorous sexual depictions as religious culture in Khajuraho and Konark temples, Indian adults want to hide sex under the carpet or ignore its phenomenal impact on 12-year-old children upwards. This is not to criticize digitalization ruling our lives, but its analysis is not black or white.

U=ugly: Revolting political mudslinging on our liberalized electronic airwaves. The public is fed up with political debates with no code of conduct or ethics, screeching fights where nobody can understand anything. Take another technology-enabled ugly scene, the mms disclosing sexual intimacy between lovers. Cuckolded men or ditched boyfriends often, and quite disgracefully, take secret revenge on the woman by circulating such an mms on the mobile. Everyone enjoys this sharing point save the not-so-innocent victim. When a TV channel encourages people to send videos by mms of their instant newsy experiences for telecast, it uses such material to raise the channel’s TRP, and so encash more advertisements. But does it not also excite people to fabricate anti-social horrors? Remote Indian villagers buy higher GB SIM cards only to get blue film downloads integrated inside. Of course they’ll justify the higher spend on watching feature films or songs.

Insensitivity can be ugly, like a minister’s tweet on traveling cattle-class. Perhaps a playful aside of upper class arrogance, but it exposed how condescendingly politicians treat their innocent, under privileged electorate. It also exposed Twitter’s online power of disruption. Another “U” bug is haggling to buy sportsmen. “It’s not cricket” was an expression understood to mean unfair, non-gentlemanly practice. India’s IPL 20/20 has blown the lid off such sophisticated aspects of cricket. Reigning today is the mentality similar to commercial transactions with slaves, animals or women in ancient Middle Eastern bazaars. So Shah Rukh Khan has every right to invest in an appropriate player-purchase, but Kolkatans went crazy that their star item for sale fetched zilch. When that’s shown on TV, weren’t they devaluing their hero instead?

G=good: Digitalization has widened society’s mind-sphere. Sitting anywhere you can interface anything virtually, yet be personalized. It’s particularly thrilling when, after 40 years, you suddenly discover through internet social networking, a childhood woman friend whose face and name has changed after marriage. Ranjeet and Bonita subscribe to a matrimonial website to satisfy parents, but actually they use it to find dating partners. The obsession is for multiple options. Sometimes they meet only once, sometimes many times. Aside from aiding romance, technology enhances careers too, giving you the opportunity to quietly change jobs at the click of a keyboard.

Comfort and convenience are good in digitalization. It’s so easy to complain service deficiencies and get instant response, create awareness on critical issues, generate mass following for Save Tigers, Help Girl Child, or buy movie tickets. Twenty years down the line you’ll only have Kindles or iPads, no physical book library at home, the way vinyl records vanished, and cassettes, CDs fast disappearing. Digitalization enables global peace and harmony, people of all religions text each other on festivals. The banyan tree took hundreds of years to download its roots, but within nano-seconds the Internet creates a human banyan tree.

Digital technology established BUG mania, where bad, ugly and good aspects happen simultaneously. Today’s below 30 Zap generation absorbs and enjoys this incomparable BUG trend, but older generations segregate the bad, ugly and good. That’s where the chasm invisibly bites, like the bedbug, resulting in attrition at work, switching off from talking to parents at home. If you can cuddle into contemporary lifestyle and thinking, embrace BUG mania to feel young again, you may enlarge business too like L’Oreal did.

About 40 years ago when civilized society found Punks undesirable, L’Oreal took inspiration from Punks and created hair gel and color to drive the fashion revolution and make big business.

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The automobile is an adult’s ultimate aspirational toy. People use it to stamp their differentiation. Look at how musician John Lennon expressed his anti-war philosophy in 1965. He paid £2,000 to a Dutch team of gypsy artists to paint his thoughts in his Rolls Royce. The car turned out so psychedelic it made it to the Ripley’s Believe-it-or-not Museum. Automobiles have inspired several artist painters. Such expressions are normally visible in apparel fashion, but in the summit of painting their imagination, people extend fashion to the automobiles they possess. On the 100th birthday of the automobile in 1986, pop icon artist Andy Warhol was commissioned by DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Mercedes Benz and BMW to paint a series about cars. BMW also had artists Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein and Ernst Fuchs do art cars.

But an automobile is a big ticket item. How often can consumers get designer cars painted by famous artists or afford to change their cars? Yet everyone wants to be different. Newer kinds of spendthrifts have emerged like the below 30 Digital Zappers. This generation flits from product to product, their needs are many and a-changing, and they influence every purchase made in the home. Reshuffling change is their frenetic new habit which is driving industries out of breath.

The major perpetrator to disrupt market rules with recurrent newness is the mobile phone. It took the landline several decades to change functionality, design and aesthetics. Today’s tech-savvy mobile phone has not just minituarized itself, it has collapsed many industries into a single device in the palm of the consumer’s hand. You have anytime access to the camera, TV, banking, Internet, calculator, music system, dictionary, pen, paper, phone and many more functions. In the home, a refrigerator spent a good 40 years with you earlier, the music system at least 15 years, while the thought of discarding a TV set was unheard of. Then Japanese and Koreans arrived to topsy turvy our belief that electric and electronic appliances vacate the trend-wagon every 3 to 5 years. If home appliances could be changed so radically, why not the automobile?

In this backdrop, auto designers would do well to re-think about how to connect to consumers’ changing needs. Long work hours in developing countries are making working couples spend less time with each other. So adultery is on the rise, as are social stress and divorce. Grappling to find pressure busters, people are becoming more self-indulgent, and their high spend patterns getting into diverse new areas. In the auto industry, in spite of digitalization, consumers cannot change vehicles like they do mobile phones. Nor can the vehicle’s development time be squeezed to below 2 to 3 years.

“Style your own car”: Regular-change auto remodeling accessories could be the auto industry’s quick solution to participate in the consumers’ frequent changing habit. Certain physical elements can be altered to change the car’s overall appearance, without disturbing its internal master engineering. These could be the bumper or steering wheel, bonnet, wheel cap, side mirror, gear holding, upholstery, among others. Remodeling accessories should never be considered as replacement of damaged features. Instead, the auto industry should promote “style your own car” as the contemporary new dimension that takes car owners into the quick changing paradigm.

Consumers generally keep a car for 3 years, which obliges them to stick to its original style. For today’s change mentality, that’s an eternity, total frustration creeps in. Remodeling their cars will definitely perk them up. Multiple visible looks can be generated for people to use different remodeling accessories on different occasions. They need not go for superficial accessories such as crazy horn sounds, music on reverse gear or stylish hubcaps, among others.

Easy-fix remodeling accessories can represent an India-centric trend: India represents only 3.5% of the global automobile market. Considering its 1.2 billion population, every auto manufacturer is focusing on capturing this throbbing potential. The scope for invention using India’s unique diversity of culture, social, language, food, geography is tremendous. With the economy on the boom trend, people are looking for personal identification, status or cultural difference. By testing and proving remodeling accessories in India, this new concept can open a new business horizon in the global market, and promote India’s unique multi-cultural aspect.

Easy-fix remodeling accessories can redefine the service station. Creating a new dimension of activities, it can become a new revenue stream and brand image enhancer for both manufacturer and dealer. Consumers glorify the brand that allows them to transplant their own personality into the vehicle during their period of ownership.

Remodeling accessories must be relevant to socio-behavioural clusters: Over the past decade, we’ve tracked Indian consumers and have identified 8 socio-behavioral consumer clusters in every income group. Society’s drivers are the clusters of Critical, Novelty seeker, Flamboyant, Techy and Gizmo lovers. Remodeling accessories for this group can be complex and exhibitionist, whereas for society followers, the Low key, Value seeker and Sober, they can be simple yet functional. A wide variety in each type will invite consumers of every socio-behavioural cluster to change to get out of boredom.

Auto manufacturers can consider offering easy-fix remodeling accessories for at least 10 features in the car. Each feature will have 4 choices each for the driver and follower groups; for example, 8 pieces of the rear view mirror feature. These should all flaunt widely different characters to connect to these different socio-behavioral clusters of consumers. Different packages can range from $200 to a maximum of $2000 for an automobile that costs about $12000.

Rapidfire change running across industries: Product planning for tomorrow’s vehicle can in-build design that allows easy fixing of remodeling accessories. This could start a new industry where quality, cost and aspiration at any price point are not compromised. Avoid marketing them as gadgets. Take a cue from Swatch, an oft-changing product, which was never marketed as a temporary doodad. Swatch is reputed as serious, low priced, highly aspirational, accompanying everyday lifestyle and the mood change driver of different people in the world. Remodelling accessories could be modeled after Swatch to change the automobile industry’s perception where all vehicles look more or less the same.

American automobiles have a Barbie doll image, Italians show off delicate women, the French ooze fashion and English cars are a royal experience. German cars reflect hardcore sophisticated engineering, the Swedes stress on safety, Japan on quality and cost efficiency, which Koreans diligently follow. This new idea showcasing diversity through remodelling accessories could acquire for India a futuristic image and be our contribution to the auto world.

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Why do brands fail to engage the below-30 Digital Zap generation? Making all business decisions today, Compromise (30 to 45 years) and Retro (above 45) generations continue to drive 20th century culture in the 21st century. So last century’s advertisement style does not connect to Zappers. Using new media does not make much sense if the content is not relevant to Zappers.

Although the century gap is a real phenomenon, it seems to have passed by certain daily usage global brands—brands like Heinz ketchup, Coca Cola, Cadbury’s, Mr Clean, Colgate, Evian and Laughing Cow. They may have very good quarter-to-quarter results, but do they keep up with the breakthrough trends the 21st century’s Digital Zap is dazzling us with? The brands can argue that they are sustaining some old values, but do the disruptive Digital Zappers connect to them?

Eight socio-behavioural clusters: Historically, social stratification, from feudal agrarian to socio-economic classification, followed an evolutionary process. But socio-behavioural clusters that defy all predictable segmentation parameters is the revolutionary way of researching into people’s attitudes, behaviour and aspiration in the 21st century. We have studied this phenomenon every year for the last 10 years and find they are common to the three generations.

In all three generational groups, there exist all eight behavioural clusters—Low Key, Value Seeker, Sober, Flamboyant, Critical, Novelty Seeker, Techy and Gizmo Lover. Digital Zappers supremely influence everything, so connecting to them is crucial for the future. The Compromise generation tries hard to follow Zappers in being trendy but doesn’t quite get there. The Retro generation is generally “stiff.”

Is income a factor for audience segmentation? For any business, if you follow the traditional socio-economic stratification of customers, you will not go far today. That’s because the eight socio-behavioural clusters are prevalent across all age groups and generations, all income groups and across all countries. Income is no longer a key factor for purchase of mass products.

The world is moving towards a situation where, at any price point, there has to be cost, quality and aspiration in the selling proposition. Today, even low cost products have trendy aspects. Expensive luxury brands that low income groups cannot afford should not be advertised in mass areas.

Every brand cannot attract every socio-behaviour cluster. For a brand to address all the eight socio behavioural clusters, it requires a huge magnifying glass. It has to unearth the customer behavioural clusters and drive strategic planning accordingly. There will be immense pressure from low cost trendy brands that every one finds affordable. Nike, for example, would connect to the Critical, Flamboyant, Novelty Seeker, Techy and Gizmo lovers. On the other hand, Nivea and Nokia, would address the Sober, Low key, Value Seeker clusters. But the strategy that Swatch watch has created in the West has been so brilliant that it enviably touches all behavioural clusters.

Bulldozing per capital consumption: In developed countries, the consuming base is small, so customers are bulldozed for an increase in per capita consumption. Just look at how many types of product benefits are being offered in the food industry—from functional food to low salt, low fat, organic, sugar free etc. Does this not confuse the customer?

It is amazing that when technology is changing so fast, there is an absolute paucity in creative thinking in the digital world. Digitalisation is commoditising every aspect of business. Look at flat television sets, DVD players and microwave ovens, all brands look the same. These industries suffer from lack of differentiation because the manufacturer’s Compromise and Retro thinking process is not connected to the Zappers’ thinking.

Nightmare of how to penetrate the market: The over-riding phenomenon in developing countries is how to achieve penetration for a product. As the population in these countries is large but the infrastructure poor, the nightmare is how to reach people in remote places. Another challenge is catering to the vast cultural differences of customers.

In India, from one joint family structure there are now seven different living conditions— there are bachelors living alone, young couples, nuclear family with children, either with only the husband working or both husband and wife working, the joint and neo-joint families and retired couples. Family size cues the quantity and size of the product, clarifies stock keeping unit size for efficient supply chain management, indicates the price band and sharpens the inventory. It gives an idea of what products to bundle as special offers, helps to maximise space at the retail as per the catchment requirement, and provides high proximity to different family size buyers and the retailer.

Experiential product research that delves into the psycho-socio-behavioural context gives the socio-behavioural dimension. I have often seen researchers go to the market for validation with structured preparation. So, before the customers even start talking, they have already established what they want to find. This is not right. With a global mind frame, we need to achieve local proximity to deliver extra benefit. Research cannot be like the wheat pasta dough that you can put in a machine to get a variety of different shapes of pasta or noodles as per your expectation.

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Are we ready for the new departure that the 21st century’s digital era is bringing to human society? The innovation explosion which comes every 20 days today as opposed to every 20 years in the 20th century has brought into centre stage, the role of psycho-socio diversity. To understand and measure this 21st century diversity, we have found yesterday’s effective tools to be quite inadequate. Let me take you through our psycho-socio-behavioural discoveries with new codifications. Our global business interactions for different brands have shown us that living in this disruptive century are three distinct generations in eight socio-behavioural clusters:

The tech-born Digital Zap generation (born in and after 1986)

The Compromise generation (born after 1965); and

The Retro generation (born before 1965).

The eight socio-behavioural clusters we have identified are: (1) Low key (2) Value seeker who gets involved only when a worthwhile payoff is seen (3) Sober, who goes about in quiet efficiency (4) Flamboyant who is an exhibitionist (5) Critical who is a perfectionist (6) Novelty seeker (7) Techy, who goes for the digital mode and (8) the Gizmo lover. These clusters were spun off from Digital Zap but are common to Compromise and Retro generations too.

Connecting to Digital Zap: Venturing into Paris at age 19 to fulfill my dream of becoming an artist, I found a huge difference between me and other 19-year-olds. That was in 1973, and as I came from a poor refugee colony in West Bengal, it was natural that I did not connect with them. But I later discovered that even among people of the same generation in Europe and America, there was a disconnect. Winston Churchill once said it was not easy to get European and American youth of the Allied nations to join World War II. In contrast, the leaders of the enemy Axis powers had impassioned their youth to fight for their new-found ideologies. So, with careful communication, the Allies managed to align their youth to go to war against the enemy.

My business travels to different continents has made me realise that the youth today in every country, more or less, have similar ideas on how to live life. This is the real globalisation, the globalisation of the mind. But management decisions in corporate houses across the globe are often made by the Retro and the Compromise generation. That’s why Digital Zap has a huge disconnect to many industries today. A few exceptions would be Google, Apple, Nike, Microsoft and Cisco— companies that Digital Zap connects to.

Change to disruption and convergence: The change process from 19th (mechanical era) to 20th century (electronic era) was big, but evolutionary. For example, there’s no radical difference in looks, mechanism and functioning of a mechanical gramophone and electronic modern turntable. But in the 21st century came the iPod, breaking every known system for operating a musical player. iPod and the MP3 players are disruptive in every sense. The change they’ve rushed in is entirely revolutionary.

Convergence is the name of the game now. The iPhone incorporates several industries and functions—it’s a camera and a photo album, a bank and a data bank, a post and telegraph office, a writing pad and a pen, an audio and a video player, a calculator and an alarm clock and much more. Do you know how to grab this diverse world of disruption and convergence in the 21st century?

Revolutionary change in the 21st century: Using the music player, let’s illustrate 20th century’s innovation from the tape recorder invention to about 20 years later when the Walkman hit the market. In comparison, 21st century’s innovation every 20 days is represented in newer versions of mobile phones, software and digital products. Even the fashion industry has experienced last century’s unsettling detonation but the flow of change was harmonious.

Then bang comes 21st century’s fashion communication. Diesel brand says, “Smart has the brains, Stupid has the balls. Be stupid.” In one of their ads, a boy almost tumbles over a bus window to kiss a girl on the street. Dolce & Gabana shows a woman on the floor, body arched, and four men around her suggesting group sex. An Emanuel Ungaro woman is sensually enjoying hedonistic pleasure. Tom Ford has two nude couples lying on the floor; and Calvin Klein jeans portray an orgy. Such distractions pervade almost every aspect of life globally. What was considered appropriate to be hidden yesterday is out in the open today.

Digital Zap at the cusp of the century: When the 1986 born Digital Zap reached the age of 5 in 1991, they were conscious of, and using, digital technology that had started overwhelming the world. That’s why I consider every one below 30 to be Digital Zappers. Tomorrow there may not be Compromise or Retro generations because Digital Zap will continue to drive future generations. It may become Digital Zap Mature, Digital Zap Ripened and Digital Zap Youth. A century storm is what Digital Zap represents. Engulfed in 21st century’s rapid change, they have no attachment to anything in any sustaining way.

Differences in attitude are clearly visible: To get the news, Retro reads a newspaper at home, Compromise uses the Internet at office, while Digital Zap stays in touch with an iPad while on the go. To communicate, Retro writes letters, Compromise phones and Digital Zapper just texts. The more you think, act and align with them, the more you connect to the happenings in the world. Irrespective of whether they are spenders, Zappers influence purchases in the family. They are a new civilisation of digital connectors.

The way the Baby Boomer generation dominated the second part of the 20th century, Digital Zap is set to revolutionise the 21st century, dictating terms in every sphere. Being in tune with the diverse ways of the world in every aspect, the future of business is with Digital Zap.

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Walking up 72nd Street and Central Park West in New York’s Manhattan, I’ve always been impressed by the Dakota, built in 1884 where the figure of a Dakota Indian keeps watch. Its high gables, deep roofs, profusion of dormers, terracotta panels, niches and balconies give it a German Renaissance character, yet it’s influenced by French architectural trends. Rich and famous artists have lived here such as composer Leonard Bernstein, actors Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Boris Karloff, Robert Ryan, singer Roberta Flack, playwright William Inge and dancer Rudolf Nureyev among others.

But best known as the home of Beatle John Lennon from 1973, Dakota is also the location of Lennon’s murder by Mark David Chapman on December 8, 1980. Yoko Ono laid out the Strawberry Fields memorial in her husband’s memory in Central Park directly across here. It’s now a public pilgrimage place with "Imagine" written in a beautiful round floor mural. Lennon used to frequent here with his second son Sean, and his fans now come, often with guitars, to place flowers for him and sing his songs.
Extending along Central Park South is the landmark 20-story luxury Plaza Hotel overlooking 5^th Avenue, built by the same architectural firm of Henry Janeway Hardenbergh who designed Dakota. It cost $12.5 million to construct at the turn of the century, Donald Trump paid $407.5 million in 1988 and Manhattan developer, El Ad Properties spent $675 million to buy it in 2004. This hotel has been the setting several films including Barefoot in the Park, Scent of a Woman, Home Alone 2 and Eloise at the Plaza.

Apart from stories of these two centuries-old buildings full of artistic and entertainment memorabilia, nothing had attracted me to this high rise concrete jungle. But now a new philosophical landmark has emerged at this corner of 5th Avenue and 59th Street. It is Steve Job’s imaginative idea of a bitten Apple that’s become a magnet for visitors of all age groups.
When mainframe manufacturer IBM was ruling the computing roost from 1936, the colorful, mysterious Apple computer suddenly appeared in 1976 to invite consumers to bite into individual small computers. The name Apple was discomfiting as it subliminally conjured up the Catholic religion’s forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve bit into to discover pleasure in the prohibited Garden of Eden. Apple reflected scientific discovery too as Newton had sat under an apple tree and proved the theory of gravitation. The Beatles had called their record company as Apple, and New York is known as the Big Apple. All these other apple associations may have become history in front of this new Apple store with a glass cube housing a cylindrical glass elevator and a spiral glass staircase that leads to the underground store.

Just as the Louvre Museum in Paris now has a glass architecture pyramid highlighting its ancient treasures, so does this historical part of New York have a glass cubicle that raises your curiosity from a distance when you spot the bitten Apple. Drawn closer you discover an incredible techy bunker full of Apple electronics under the road. Every moment it’s open this huge basement store stays incredibly busy from 8-year-olds to 80-year-olds demanding the attention of sales assistants in blue T shirts. They seem to be from all classes of society, a very BCBG woman sporting a Louis Vuitton bag being trained on the iPad on the demo table, to young students selecting their iPods and techie geeks trying out different computers and accessories.

You become quite crazy in this fabulously designed shop where every item looks precious. In a totally commoditized market of electronics and computers, Apple is exposing tech art here, and people are enjoying the high tech experience here. The difference between exiting the Louvre’s glass pyramid and emerging from the glass structure of the Apple store is that instead of just buying a souvenir in the Paris museum, you come out of the 5th Avenue Apple store carrying happening products from a 21st century museum.
Steve Jobs undoubtedly imagined that a 21st century category product invention has to be introduced by creating a cultural phenomenon. He did this through a store that allows all kinds of consumers, from the rich to the poor, to experience tomorrow. A few years ago he had surprised everyone by taking over Manhattan’s Soho post office to open an Apple retailing store that looked like an art gallery, and had a large glass staircase where no joint could be seen. Soho is New York’s sophisticated art district with plenty of art galleries, although many of the smaller ones have since moved uptown to Chelsea as the area is getting too expensive.

Coming out from the basement Apple store I wanted to think with a cup of tea. What better place than the renovated Plaza Hotel. A young Indian waiter there mentioned that recession has hit Landmark Hotel so they worked out a new strategy of transforming 800 rooms into residential condominiums, and leaving just 200 rooms for hotel occupancy. These private apartments have been sold for as much as $50 million each.

Steve Jobs was highly criticized a few years ago when Apple plummeted into the red. But he believed that Apple is more universal than a technology product. With the iPod, he sprang back up the bottomline re-establishing the Apple way of thinking for an entire generation across the world. Then on introducing the iPad, he had young people queue up in all continents, and sold millions of pieces on the first week itself. This just goes to show that a man’s creativity can change the world. You can argue whether he is a genius who thinks beyond his time or he just has good luck, but you cannot ignore how differently he thought in the commoditized category.

Set amidst fountains in an open sitting place overlooking historic Plaza in the world’s most advanced city, Apple has conjured up totally new thinking by plonking itself in a well established, open space. I can imagine that 5th Avenue can one day have its name changed to Apple Avenue. This may be the inner dream of Steve Jobs. His sustaining high value business is not only about making shareholders happy with money, it’s also about enriching different generations to experience technology and think differently by owning or touching an Apple from Steve’s thinking tree.

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