India is a populous country. There is a competition for resources on the road, for buses, for college admission, for jobs, in hospitals, cricket match tickets, temples, and even in crematoriums. A contrarian position helps reduce the fight and eases life to some degree.
I learned driving while in the US, and when I returned to
India in Bangalore in 1998, I realized driving here needs a whole set of new
skills. For example, taking a right turn onto a main road was a nightmare for
me. I kept waiting for someone to let me in, and became a target of serious
honking from behind. I was no match for the swiftness and guts of the autowalla
who used to become impatient waiting behind me. Soon, I found a trick. I started
letting the auto move ahead, and I began following him. That was much easier. But
I had a bigger Aha moment a few months later.
I realized the streets are empty when there is a cricket
match on TV. I had not followed cricket for almost a decade by then. I started
driving the family around during that time. We visited Gangarams, movie theatres,
Ulsoor lake, HAL museum, Cubbon Park, etc. I began to learn the benefits of a
contrarian position. Now, I haven’t watched cricket for a quarter of a century. Subsequently,
I ended up taking contrarian positions much bigger than don’t-follow-cricket
position, some by design, many others by circumstances. Here are three of them:
No-religion, no-job, and no-certification.
No-religion: By the time I returned to India, I was
convinced that the process of becoming is an illusion created and sustained by society and the culture. You must become successful by acquiring name,
fame, and wealth – has been the dominant narrative. Hindu religion, with which I
had a loose sense of belonging, is no exception. Right from birth to death, a
set of rituals is “mandatory” so that “all will be well” for you during this
and future births. That is the grand promise. For me, it looked like a crooked
game being played by a small community, mostly Brahmins, for millennia. I lost
interest in becoming anyone, and as a side effect, the grand promise of the Hindu
religion looked meaningless to me.
For the past two decades, I haven’t been participating in
any rituals – birth and death included. No idol worship, no temple visit, and
no expenditure on anything remotely ritualistic. Over the last ten days, Gauri
and I travelled from Dehradun to Ghangaria in Bhyundar valley. We trekked to
the Valley of Flowers and to the Hemkund Sahib gurudwara. We have no plans of
visiting any of the Char Dhams including Badrinath where most of the crowd is
headed. Sometimes, I don’t have a choice, in which case I just chill out
nearby. For example, when Gauri visited Kashi Vishwanath temple in Varanasi, I
went to Mani Karnika ghat nearby and watched the sunrise. At the Puri temple, I looked
after her belongings outside. Yesterday, when Gauri visited the oldest temple
of Rishikesh, Bharat temple, I managed to strike a conversation with the school-going fourth graders about what they liked in school (they said – playing,
except one girl who said she likes studies).
I continue to be a serious student of Upanishads, especially
Katha Upanishad (my
blog), that of Nagarjuna’s Sunyata as depicted in the 2nd-3rd
century text Mulamadhyamaka Karika (my blog),
and Ramana Maharshi’s UpadesaSaram (my
blog), none of it requires me to belong to a religion. I study these texts
in Sanskrit. When the Government census guys visited us in 2011, I asked them
if they had “no religion” as an option. They didn’t. So, I got counted as a
Hindu.
No-job: I have been a big beneficiary of capitalist
structures. I worked for a decade after finishing my studies, two years in the
US and eight years in Bangalore. I got stock options, and after IPO, I sold them
and it helped in partial repayment of the home loan. I have been debt-free for the
past fifteen years. However, capitalism demands that every for-profit company keep
growing revenue, profits, and shareholder value. Given my disregard for the
process of becoming, I realized it is better to step away from the corporate
world and make a living independently without any pressure for growth. I quit
my job in 2006, and I have been freelancing ever since. I still needed to pay
the bills and work around the inflation. Moreover, I had to stand out from the
crowd, market myself, create a niche, and deliver value. That’s not easy. I got
lucky, got good collaborators, and kept getting assignments from for-profit,
not-for-profit, and government organizations.
What’s in a name? One may ask. But the name I ended up
giving for my consulting practice – Catalign Innovation Consulting acted as a
beacon. It implied three things I would do: One, my primary role would be a
catalyst – someone who helps an individual or teams move from intent to impact
effectively. The primary role won’t be an activist driving an agenda of my own,
won’t be a solution provider, and won’t be a knowledge imparting teacher. Two, I
would be helpful in aligning strategy and execution. And three, I would help
organizations in their innovation journey.
Can innovation capacity building become obsolete, making me
redundant? Sure, it can. However, if I look around, I see some of the
innovation world leaders struggling right now, like Intel,
Boeing,
even Apple. Indian
companies – both startups and established players are under pressure to
innovate, especially in deep-tech innovation. I clearly see an opportunity in
innovation capacity building in India at least for another decade, perhaps more.
I also see myself playing a role in raising awareness on the dark side of
innovation – using innovation towards predatory practices allegedly used by big
corporates like Apple, Google, Amazon, Meta, Flipkart, etc. In short, I don’t
see any dearth of opportunities right now.
No-certification: Indian society is obsessed with
certificates. If you have a certificate from a prestigious institute, good for
you, or better still if it is from a foreign institute. The obsession is
understandable given the number of applications for any position and the number
of bogus certificates floating around. I have been a big beneficiary of two certificates,
one a bachelor’s of technology from IIT Bombay and the other, a doctorate from
University at Buffalo, USA, both in Computer Science. I got my last certificate
in 1996, almost thirty years ago. And then I decided to stop playing the
certification game. I let my writing and my work become my credentials. This is
a contrarian position, given that the three areas I work in: innovation
capacity building, design thinking, and mindfulness have very little to with
Computer Science. I have no certificate in any of these areas. My father finds
it odd how I make a living by claiming expertise in areas in which I carry no
certificate.
One implication of no-certification is that I don’t take an
existing framework (or a case study for that matter) and adapt it. For example,
I don’t do a certification in executive coaching or I do not do a certification
from a foreign product management program and resell it in India. These are
great and lucrative business models. But I don’t go there. I only work with my
frameworks published through my books and blogs. Of course, these frameworks
are created by building on top of existing studies and frameworks, and they are
given due credit (each chapter of our innovation book has an average of 35
references).
All my frameworks have one common assumption that is
uncommon. They assume a biased-agent model versus a rational-agent model. If a
president, a prince, or a portfolio manager participates in underage sex trafficking, it can happen only under a biased mental model. I was blown away when I heard Daniel
Kahneman say, “Rational agent model is a non-starter” more than a decade ago, and it stuck.
