Olina Qian

I met Kiran Jethwa in SIPACON. He seems a very knowledgable person. So we did a catch up yesterday. I got lots of interesting concepts from him and feel like to share with you.

For example: Triple bottom lines. It is Profit, People and Environment.  Profit refers the basement for Entrepreneurs and business. People refers to what value you can bring to other people or society. Environment refers to what’s the impact do you bring to environment. I think most Entrepreneurs focus on the first two lines. But with the environment getting worse, it is timeto think about what we can do for our children on everything we do now.

Carbon Footprint, I’ve never heard this term before either. It refers to how many carbon you consume per year , means you impact to the enviroment as a person. Here is an interesting website to calcuate it. Very interesting calculation!

Also, he mentioned that most high tech companies are focus on profits and productivity. There are actually three types of products in the world: Cancer Killer, Ispirin and Sugar Candy. Cancer killer is something people need definitely. Since without it, they will die. Ispirin helps to kill the pain, but doesn’t solve the problem. Sugar Candy refers to something funcy or makes your happy, like Luxary products. We all agree that social media falls into this category too. But being a startup, maybe it is more valuable to make Cancer killer or at least Ispirin, don’t focus on sugar candy.

Green Tech is a buzz recent years, but I am too dummy to figure out what’s really included. Finally I got it clarified by Kiran, it includes Energy Efficiency, Engergy management, Energy Storage, Renewable Energy and Smart Grid. Sounds interesting! I fell like that’s the direction I should go next step.

I like Kiran’s thought on Education, he said Education makes your mind think structurely, knows how to solve problem. That’s really true. Think about how many knowledges you learned in school and how many you are really using today! Guess what we learn is not important, how we learn it make a difference!

Final thing I wants to share is the product life cycle. Since I am working on Product strategy recently, Kiran Jethwa’s blog has a full product life cycle there. I believe you know the cycle already, but it will be interesting to see the best practice part and compare it with your company. Oh, I like his quote too:

What you don’t Monitor, you cannot Measure! What you don’t Measure, you cannot Improve!