Prisoner’s Dilemma

It is a classic example of a game. Consider two suspects for a murder against whom there is insufficient evidence. They are lodged in separate cells and questioned separately.

These are the possibilities:

  • Neither suspect confesses. They would be let off then as the evidence against them is not sufficient.
  • Both can confess, thus incriminating them. They would be behind the bars.
  • If one confesses but the other does not, then the confessor gets the benefit and the non-confessor will be punished.

Would they confess? Game theory shows that what the suspects would do differs from what they should . Here the suspects make a decision privately — without any communication with the accomplice in crime.

He could reason, confessing puts me at an advantage. I confess and as a welcher get the benefit, assuming the other would not confess. He is thus better off confessing. But the same thinking also occurs in the brain of his co-suspect. That leads him to confess too. That results into punishment to both the suspects. This is called Nash equilibrium. If an individual acts privately, trying to do the best for himself, he often ends up in outcomes in which everyone in the group is worse off.

Nash worked on such non-cooperative games. That earned him PhD and later a Nobel. The basic assumption of game theory is that people are rational.

There are situations where everyone could lose, or everyone could gain.

Achhut Kanya

Achhut Kanya (1936) was Ashok Kumar’s debut movie. He was just working as the lab assistant at Bombay Talkies. He got the role after Himangshu Rai, the producer reconciled with his wife and heroine of the film Devika Rani who had eloped with Najmul Hasan, the leading man. Ashok Kumar’s original name was Kumudlal Ganguly.

In-film Placement

When the product becomes a part of the film’s story, we call it in-film placement. It is good promotional technique. MakeMyTrip placed itself in Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani (YJHD). In past, they have tied up with films such as Dostana and My Name Is Khan. Nokia too was placed with YJHD. Several other branded products have been placed, e. g. KitKat, BSA bicycles, L’Oreal Paris in films such as Break Ke Baad, Student of the Year and Aisha. Shah Rukh’s Ra.One had collaborated with 25 brands including Sony Playstation, YouTube, Nokia, McDonald’s, Nerolac, Videocon, Western Union Money Transfer and ESPN Star Sports. Barfi had nine brands collaborating with films. Sometimes the brand is incorporated in the title of the film — Mere Dad Ki Maruti. The studio has to approach the marketing department of the company whose product is to be place in the film. The brand can then advertise along with the film, once the film is released. Munni Badnaam Hui had Zandu balm in its lyrics and that boosted the sale of the brand.

Prabuddha Dasgupta

Prabuddha Dasgupta passed away on August 12, 2012. He was a fashion photographer who got his first assignment from Enterprise of Mohammad Khan. He did exceptional work from French fashion designer Pierre Cardin’s launch in India. He wrote a book Women, a classic collection of nudes, and Ladakh. He stayed in Goa. Over the last three decades, Dasgupta worked with models like Lara Dutta and Lakshami Menon.

Garam Hava

The new wave cinema appeared in 1972. The FFC funded such films. M S  Sathyu’s Garam Hava is a story about a Muslim family that chooses to stay back in India after Partition in 1947 but gets uprooted in the process. This film is included in Best Films lists. It was released in 1974. The movie has now been restored and was rereleased in the theatres. A near-forgotten cinema has been resurrected.

Audio Books

To begin with, we conceived books as paper books in print. There was a graduation towards e-books later. And now comes the audio books. Printed books are read, e-books are read from a computer or smartphone or other devices. Audio books are listened to . Thus readers have become listeners. This keeps pace with the changing life style of urban population. As they spend time in the commute to work, they have an opportunity to listen to an audio book.

An audio book formerly was put on casettes. Then it was burnt on CDs. These days it is available in digitally compressed format that hardly occupies 25-30 MB of storage space. It can be downloaded from the publisher’s webside or other e-commerce sites. They are available at popular physical book stores such as Landmark.The smart phones with Android and iOS have an application for this. The book downloaded is with you for life time. It can be shared on five digital devices. The average price of a book ranges from Rs. 200 to Rs. 400. Here the challenge is that if the print book and audio book cost the same, the buyer is likely to opt for the print version. It is, therefore, necessary to bring down the cost by reducing the cost of production.

The publishers issue subsidiary rights of their titles to audio book manufacturers. It enables the latter to convert the print book into audio format. They have to engage narrators, directors, sound artists, engineers and quality control people while making this conversion. They can rope in celebrities to read out the a book. However, that increases the cost. In India, they set up small recording studios at the residences of the narrators on their panel who can do the reading and recording in their free time. That saves the hire charges of a professional studio, and the cost of taking the narrator to such a studio.

The genres amenable to audio version are best selling novels, self help books, spiritual books, religious books, classics, Indian language books, comics, biographies, children books and so on.

In India, Reado.com operates in this field. Audible.com is an Amazon owned audio book retailer. We have Charkha Audiobooks.

Robotics

Robotics is still at the stage computing was at when we had just mainframe computers. Robots are used commercially now to automate the dirty or hard jobs or to the repetitive jobs such as cargo handling and agriculture. In medicine, robots are making a big impact. They are used in unmanned air vehicles too. There are stories of automated cars. The technology should move in the direction of mini-computers and PCs being made in a robotic sense so that they can be used at home.

The cost has to come down. It is not a computing problem anymore.It is the physical costs of sensors and hardware holding it back. The breakthrough would be a low-cost 3D sensor which will enable a robot to understand its environment economically. It would enable it to do the household jobs such as serving tea.

Robotics, according to Hugh Durrant-Whyte, a former professor of mechatronic engineering, Sydney University, is the intelligent connection of perception to action.An arm in a factory or a surgical robot do not have intelligence at all. They are just mechanical things, though it is clever mechanics. They are just machines. A robot is different from a machine on account of its ability to perceive its environment, understand it and make decisions on what to do. Each time the decision could be different.A robot has to understand a particular plant and all other plants.It has to do generalization of the perceptual understanding. We humans understand a tree, and all other trees. This is taken for granted. Robotics really asks that fundamental question — what makes us intelligent ?

Though robots of future are feared, the real possibility of being scary comes from human clones, rather than electronic robots.Human clones are biological robots. Some countries think of robotizing their armies in the next 20 years. Robotics should make the world safer and should not harm it. The choice is moral, and not technical.

Robots vs Humans

The new jobs that technology  makes possible more than compensate for those jobs which are lost through substitution. This is the proposition put forward by an MIT economist David Autor. Some pessimists feel that machine intelligence may be revolutionary, rather than evolutionary. Two breakthrough techniques are cloud robotics in which robots learn from one another. It leads to a rapid growth in competence. Another technique is deep learning in which robots process vast amounts of data to expand their capabilities, forming associations which can be generalized.

The tasks which can be affected by technology can be categorized. Tasks could be cognitive and manual, and could also be routine and non-routine. Middle management tasks which are cognitive but routine are vulnerable to automation. If the task is cognitive but not routine, it gains from technological change. It enables faster processing and presentation. Machines take over previously manual jobs and non-routine ones. Many jobs still require a bouquet of skills, flexibility and judgment. They are not so amenable to codification or being performed by robots.

Will robots eat our lunch? It depends.

Brand Breakout

Although the world’s most respected companies from the developed world  draw more and more revenues from the emerging markets of Asia including China and India, it is a fact that these developing economies have not thrown up global brands so far. Though branding has focused on differentiation, there is so much to be said in favour of an emotional connect with the consumers. The overriding image of the country of origin does affect the brands. At times, these are negative associations. Local brands can enter the global arena by eight possible routes, as enunciated by Nirmalya Kumar and Jan Benedict E M. Steenkamp in their recent book Brand Breakout (Macmillan ).

The Asian tortoise Route  A decast product at a low price is introduced e.g. Japanase and Korean cars. They climb the value chain later.

The Business to Consumer ( B 2 C ) Route First they sell the product to business so as to gain entry later to consumer segment, e. g. Huawei, China’s mobile network company entering  the handset market.

The Diaspora Route  Products are sold to migrants from the original country, e.g. Dabur, ICCI Bank.

The Brand Acquisition Route  Foreign brands are acquired to get a foothold in the market, e.g. Lenovo and Jaguar.

The Positive Campaign Route  Negative associations are slowly wiped out, e.g. Hyundai.

The Cultural Resources Route  Here the heritage is leveraged, e.g. Yoga from India or silk from China.

The Natural Resources Route  Champagne is made from the grapes from this region in France. The rest is just sparkling wine.

The National Champion Route  The support of the State is leveraged, e.g. Emirates Airline from Dubai.

Piyush Pandey

Piyush joined O&M as an account executive in 1982 and made his first ad of Sunlight soap. He created in 1987 Chal Meri Luna campaign. In 1989, he created Dam Laga Ke Heisha for Fevicol. In 1991, he created Each One, Teach One for National Literacy Mission. He became a Creative Director at O&M, Mumbai in 1993, and National Creative Director in 1994.His work on Cadbury chocolate was recognized in 2000. At the same time, he was recognized for his commercial of Fevikwik. He was inducted into Ogilvy’s worldwide board in 2006. The AAAI gave him the Life Time Achievement Award in 2010. In 2012, he becomes the first Indian and the first Asian to receive the Clio Life Time Achievement Award, New York.

Video Content : Online and Mobile

More more Indians are consuming content online, on cell phones and tablets. India has 125 million Internet users, of which 35 million consume video content online. There are 30 million smart phone users and 66 per cent of the data consumed by them on their 3G devices is video. In 2014, there were 100 million smart phone users. The consumption of video is around 60 per cent. Star India has launched Starsports.com in 2013 and it is a paid platform right since its launch. Sony has launched Sony Liv. The cost of one-minute ad spot on Sony Liv or any broadcast platform ranges from Rs 400 to Rs 600 per minute. For high TRP programmes, the rate could be even Rs 800 to Rs 1000 per minute. By 2020, almost 70 per cent video content consumption will happen on mobiles and tablets.