iCompass White Paper

Imagineering your potential with the confluence of information, collaboration, cooperation, conversation & motivation

-‐ A shift to Virtuous Living Powered by “iCompass”,

Dream-‐Design-‐Do-‐Demonstrate-‐Delight A platform for human improvement aided by technology

Satya Chari Imagineering India Email: [email protected]

LinkedIn: Satya Chari

Face book: satyachari

Cell: +61 413 078 871 (Australia) Driving value based opportunities with India forward… Insightful Advice – Considered Strategy – Execution Leadership

iCompass: Find Your Direction, Track Your Progress, Live Your Dream, Achieve! Overview This white paper describes the “iCompass” concept and gives a “big-‐picture”, presenting the need for such a platform, and the various ways in which it can be used for improvement in the lives of individuals, or for organizations/teams/groups seeking to achieve their goals.

The intended readership for this paper is potential investors, architects, decision-‐makers and management in technology companies who can help make this concept, a reality.

This paper follows the “iCompass” slide deck. If you have not reviewed the slide deck, please contact the author to access it.

iCompass: Find Your Direction, Track Your Progress, Live Your Dream, Achieve! Introduction What is iCompass?

“iCompass” is a concept for a central virtual canvas, where users can pursue:

• Ideation of their goals and aspirations, supported by logical suggestions drawn from matching structured & unstructured data, contributions, conversations, publications, citations from the vast and growing internet,

• Seek validation of ideas vs. stated goals & objectives, o Plan action, o Model / Visualize, o Perform, o Record activity / progress, o Track progress / what-‐if or gap / delta, o Calibrate / re-‐align,

• Find motivation, collaboration, conversation, support and share amongst friends / family / or peer groups…at one’s choosing of privacy level setting,

• Find support from professionals, experts, leaders, champions, coaches, mentors, NGOs, charities, organizations, governments…pro-‐bono (philanthropy) / for fee (commerce),

• Reach / achieve, be delighted, share, publish, be recognized, • Take up the next challenge and / or give, contribute…lead, • Drive can-‐do, relevance, self-‐esteem…engage in constructive living, • Live Virtuously.

Where a contributor / giver / philanthropist can,

• Sync with people who share common interests, goals and principles and are keen to take up the challenge and willing to commit,

• Reach-‐out and let their passion blossom in the wider-‐world efficiently, • Help nurture and develop -‐ pursue elevated living, • Act on belief, • Deploy resources more efficiently.

Where businesses can,

• Target the current and future customers more efficiently, leverage another channel of reach and service delivery,

• Build and develop one-‐on-‐one relationship in privacy with customers with declared common interest / pursuit (recognize and act on the power of choice at “personal level” and “value before be valued”,

iCompass: Find Your Direction, Track Your Progress, Live Your Dream, Achieve!

• Forge trusted partnership by engaging at the level of contemplation / mental imagery / emotional deliberations / construct,

• Foster common interest group on shared value / principles, locally tuned but networked virtually and globally,

• Find and nurture future markets…demography, stitch and build scale, better manage business cycles,

• Engage with people who are passionate about matching profession, industry or ideals with promising prerequisite and commitment. Demographic studies clearly foresee intense competition for talent in the coming times, which is no slave of a particular race, society, geography or archaic policy formulation.

Where a government / global-‐organization can,

• Better target resources to people who are actively pursuing the goal of common interest -‐ e.g. “Give up Smoking”, “Manage Diabetes”, “Complete High School”,

• Measure citizen’s priorities, interest levels, commitment, completion rates…engage better with citizens via media of the future / on topics of your citizen’s choice,

• Understand the world better, increase your odds of serving your citizens better, lead rather than manage.

Where a NGO can,

• Reach target of interest better, via one more channel, • Deploy resources efficiently, • Find your next volunteers / contributors by matching philosophy / outlook / interest, • Track and measure effectiveness of programs, • Share success stories amongst common interest groups / motivate, • Pursue better outcome.

The entire gamut of activities happen in a protected virtual space, where each user may choose how they wish to pursue their respective goals, whether privately; with an invited list of friends, supporters and motivators; by communicating with professionals in their chosen space who can provide expert advice and knowledge; or by throwing their virtual space open to the public for validation and motivation. The environment of trust thus created and controlled by the user will help them turn their dreams into achievable goals; at a pace, level of collaboration and visibility and mix of user’s choosing.


Ref: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs1

The virtual space will provide all the necessary tools that will enable the user to reach their maximum potential in structured steps.

“iCompass” will:

• Enable users to visualize dreams / aspirations in a virtual sand-‐pit, where technology trawls & leverages the ocean of growing data / information from the virtual-‐world (e.g. Google / Yahoo…)…what if, like this!, how about!...,

• Will be built on open technologies, ubiquitous, always on, anywhere / anytime / any device, and multi-‐lingual, cross all demographics without distinction,

• Provide for self-‐assessment...a 360-‐degree view of self…to start with, • Match / Map / Suggest…utilizing intelligent logic / hooks…applying reason and

rationale in choosing the goal…assist the process of choosing the goal, • Assist in the development of tailored online project plan…using the information on

selected goal vs. self-‐assessment, applying logic…this may include assistance from professionals, mentors, coaches, institutions, friends, peers…per user choice…in private or at large or anything in between,

• Enable recording of progress…tracking…what if scenario…calibration…validation, • Enable milestone recognition, broadcasting, options…reviews, • Validate completion…on-‐line membership of specific achievement

groups...certification by organizations, • Encourage Virtuous Life.

1 Maslow, A.H., “A Theory of Human Motivation, http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm, 1943 [Originally published in Psychology Review]

• A protected space that aids you to reach your maximum potential in structured steps

• An environment of trust that Self-‐Actualization

The Need for Esteem and Respect Needs The Need for Love and Belonging Safety and Security Needs

Physiological Needs


Genesis What is the problem we are trying to solve? What is the lacuna we aim to fill?

Evolutionary forces have always favoured the agile, curious, active and motivated species. Life, under constant churn is a beehive of possibilities that rewards ingenuity, adaptation and pursuit of excellence in the race to survive and thrive.

The Age of Information takes this conundrum to newer heights: opportunities are found and lost at warp speed; the stage and the actors are continually redefined from the structured-‐coupled-‐physical to unstructured-‐loosely coupled-‐virtual.

Whilst reflection on and association with the past is essential and a definitive source of knowledge, continuity and comfort; the present is the experience, reward and the capital for “Tomorrow” – available to all without distinction, but under one rule -‐ “Use it or lose it”.

Social networking has been the phenomenon that has been (and is) ruling the Information Superhighway over the past five years. But the various social networking sites offer only piecemeal solutions for possibilities for human collaboration and improvement: for example, users must go to one site to meet their friends (Facebook), another to meet professional peers and mentors (LinkedIn), yet another to lose weight and become healthier (Livestrong).

Google offers a vast universe of information – news, data, information and multimedia – across public, premium and professional websites. But it can be a sheer clutter, even bewildering chaos for the untutored layman. There are also real dangers of getting side-‐tracked/bogged down in trivia, while trawling the web via Google and losing sight of the long-‐term goal.

Additionally, while the possibilities are endless, the dangers are endless as well – who does one trust with one’s dreams? Who is the friend/mentor/coach who will support one’s endeavours and not disparage them in a public forum? Where can one put up images/multimedia/tracking data that shows progress towards the goal without fear of scepticism, random criticism or plagiarism? While each site mentioned above offers access control and privacy measures, none is a complete solution in itself.

A virtual space like “iCompass” will add value, where a user can model on their dream, address the needs as well as wants, (optionally) invite friends, mentors and coaches to cheer them on, and to achieve.

There is currently no trusted place on the internet devoted to helping people reach their maximum potential

iCompass: Find Your Direction, Track Your Progress, Live Your Dream, Achieve! iCompass The solution

The concept of iCompass represents a paradigm shift. By taking social networking to the next level; by utilizing the basis of social networking to maximize human potential, iCompass may be termed as a tool for human achievement via technology.

As described earlier, iCompass is a concept for a central virtual canvas where users can pursue ideation of their goals, seek validation of their ideas, perform tracking of ongoing efforts towards meeting their objectives, find motivation by communicating with peer groups, coaches, professionals and supporters and finally to garner recognition/validation when their goals are met.

The features that iCompass will offer include:

• Leveraging existing knowledge repositories and multimedia to offer appropriate data and content to the user,

• Support and encouragement from role models and peer groups [entirely optional for the user],

• Tools to validate goals and objectives [or the option to work in complete privacy],

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• Enables goal setting via tracking and monitoring tools, • User-‐controlled collaboration: keep it private, collaborate with peers or open up to

the public – “your privacy is defined and controlled by you!”.

How will it work?

Fig: How iCompass will work

iCompass may be architected and built as an independent platform/stand-‐alone website, an application/add-‐on to current social networking websites, an application made available via various mobile and online channels etc.: the possibilities are endless, and constrained only by the vision of the software architect.

However it may be deployed, the core iCompass platform will include the following features:

• An ubiquitous application, technology and platform agnostic, multi-‐lingual, free for the user and paid for commerce,

• A “blank canvas” for the user to express their needs, desires and goals for the future: Visualize and Model tools,


• Security, access and authorization controls entirely managed by the user for their space,

• Support levels ranging from passive (providing data and content from the web) to active (plug-‐ins to online forums, coaches/mentors, websites etc.),

• User-‐driven collaboration modes – private, collaborative or public, • Tools for planning and tracking of the structured steps necessary to achieve the final

goal, • Provision to validate the performance of the user against the structured steps, • Platform to record and recognize the achievement once the goal has been reached.

iCompass: Find Your Direction, Track Your Progress, Live Your Dream, Achieve! The Possibilities Where can iCompass be used?

As a generic engine for driving realization of potential, iCompass may be used in a many number of ways:

• By individuals seeking to realize educational, health, professional or recreational goals

• By enterprises seeking a trusted forum to achieve their organizational goals, motivate their employees to perform better and mould their corporate strategy

• By NGOs, governments, governmental departments, extra-‐government international bodies (e.g., WHO), recreational organizations, clubs, professional sports teams, and other groups of people seeking to establish, track and achieve a common purpose

• By companies that want a platform to engage customers, individuals committed to their cause and more

• Service providers, coaches, mentors, equipment manufacturers, trainers, and others who can help in goal realization.

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iCompass: Find Your Direction, Track Your Progress, Live Your Dream, Achieve! A Sample Usage Scenario

Consider an individual who logs into iCompass and has the goal “I want to be a Marathon runner”. iCompass will offer the following tools that will help him/her achieve the goal:

Visualization

• Multimedia information for marathon training • Inspirational stories of role models and achievers • Searchable database of knowledge repositories supported by research and real-‐life

data

Modelling

• A self-‐assessment form to build your personal profile • Recommendations to change the abstract idea into a concrete one • Support: Tips, tricks, challenges and how to overcome them • Different interfaces for users choosing to keep it private vs. those who wish to

publicize it

Planning

• Breaking the goal into achievable mini-‐objectives • Personalized plans, encouragement from role models and/or community • Customized commercial service listings that offer training and support at a cost

Tracking

• Shared space to discuss achievements and challenges • List missed objectives, tick off achieved targets

Recognition

• Shared space to discuss achievements and challenges • Get recognition, offer support to others as someone who’s been there and done it • Link to social networking sites and spread the word!

Why Stop Imagineering!

• I want to be financially successful…go from the need to want…pay off the credit card to being financially independent…

o Imagine if you are a bank, and if you are part of your customer’s financial goal and pursuit, with the insight -‐ the kind of relationship you can forge with your customer. Build trusted relationship for life, be a partner of your


customer’s achievement / progress -‐ design better products / services by partnering with your customers -‐ get into early conversations…

• I want to be professionally successful o Opportunity for coach / mentor / trainer…education provider…

• I want to be successful in my relationship… o For relationship advisers / counsellors

• I want to look better… • I want to be knowledgeable in…. • I like to be sought by my friends or associates… • I want to be respected… • I would like to participate in public service… • I would like to be like….”your role model”…. • I would like to be better than…”you are competing with….”…

Why iCompass? iCompass fills a need for a trusted virtual space for goal-‐tracking and achievement that is absent on the internet:

1) Every motivational site offers only a piecemeal solution targeted towards a specific problem E.g., Weight watchers, Livestrong, powerlung.com etc.

2) Social networking sites are generic in nature despite customizable sections. They lack specific tools for goal tracking, planning and collaboration.

3) Collaborative tools are project-‐ and process-‐oriented and used more in corporate settings rather than for maximizing potential.

4) Online forums and bulletin-‐boards are tailored to cater to specific issues, rather than for a person/group.

iCompass can fill all these gaping voids at one stroke.

Next Steps Interested? Want to take it forward?

If this concept is of interest and you foresee potential value, and if you are in the business of investment / technology / unravelling the relationship and potential of “Information Superhighway” and human behaviour further, then let us discuss the concept in detail covering all aspects of “iCompass”.

iCompass: Find Your Direction, Track Your Progress, Live Your Dream, Achieve! Appendix The imagineer behind iCompass is Satya Chari -‐ a multi-‐faceted, multi-‐cultural technology and management leader; who brings domain expertise in Financial Services, Telecommunication, Automobile, Resources and Energy sectors to the table.

Now the Founder CEO of Business Services Imagineering India, Satya has previously worked with Infosys, Cambridge Technology Partners, Kuwait Oil Company and others in leadership positions interacting with CxOs of global multinationals, building business verticals and mentoring people.

Passionate about virtuous life, thinking of the possibilities and scope of information in the journey and it’s empowerment multiplier effect, sheer joy of seeking greater good; Satya's core values, ethics and gratitude to abundance; combined with multi-‐geographical experiences and heterogeneous technology background, guide all his creative endeavors. iCompass is a concept that arose out of Satya's introspection about the constant dis-‐aggregation and re-‐aggregation of the known, desire to encourage positive living and realization of one’s potential – a shift towards specie from fiat.

He is a student of history, philosophy, behavioral economics and humanities and firmly believes in “greater good is self good”.

Satya is keen to work with a committed team of technologists to convert the iCompass concept into reality.