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Last weekend, I finished reading - What I learned about investing from Darwin . It is a fascinating book that shows how evolution theory can be used to create an investment strategy. I might be biased towards liking the book because I used evolution theory to explain how Silicon Valley works . I found the following two concepts particularly interesting: 1. One selected behavioral trait of animals can trigger many physical changes in animals over generations. Following edited excerpt clarifies the idea: A sixty-year-long study focused on selecting silver foxes for only one trait: their willingness to be tamed. The researchers were not interested in body size, coat color, skull shape, ear stiffness, or any other physical characteristics. They took great care to ensure that selection was based solely on tameness. However, this single behavioral characteristic triggered many physical changes in the animals.  This principle is applied at Nalanda Capital (NC), the investment firm ...

Why is it that most humans evolved to become right handed?

Why do some animals evolve to become venomous for survival? 

Why do humans find it easier to remember the truth vs the lies? Is it result of evolution? Does any other species lie?

The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner. - Richard Dawkins  

Not long ago, the big retailers were considered as the sharks eating the small independent retailers. Today, these sharks are getting eaten by the web savvy companies. Booksellers are good examples. Borders is bankrupt. Barnes and Noble is not doing so well. These are the same companies that were thought to drive independent booksellers out of business. Now they are going out of business. The Internet companies may the new Goliaths . However, the new Davids may be the ones who combine web savvy with mobility and social networks. I see business very similar to biology. The species (companies) that survive are the ones who are the most adaptable to the change in the environment [ Darwin ]. 

In my never-ending pursuit to better understand human behavior, I recently attended a workshop by Dr. Warren Farrell to learn how women think. Dr. Farrell has done a remarkable job of combining Psychology, Sociology, and Biology to create pragmatic insights on Romantic Relationships between Men & Women in the US. Following are my random notes from the workshop: The more creative a thought is the faster you will forget it because creative thoughts by nature are out of context and the brain does not retain thoughts which are out of context. So, when you get a creative idea, write it down immediately. The secret to happy marriage is mutual respect between husband and wife and a happy wife. There is truth in the saying, "Happy wife = Happy life". In their pursuit to find a man, women exercise "veto power" i.e. they wait for the men to approach them and then decide, after sizing up the men, if they want to go out with the men who approached them. Most women don'...

Why is it that only human brain evolved over millions of years and no other brain did? Are cows smarter now than they were when they came about? We evolved from monkeys. Is there any other species which changed its form?

Last week, I attended a workshop on Global Human Potential at Esalen . It was an educating workshop taught by three distinguished people: 1) Ralph Abraham : Chaos theory pioneer and mathematician 2) Mary Catherine Bateson : Cultural anthropologist and Margaret Mead's daughter 3) Jean Houston : Philosopher The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don't know. Following are a few interesting things I learned during the workshop: The teachers are worried about the cultural crises we are in. Humans are facing multiple crises- Identity, Intimacy, Generative, etc. If we don't take an initiative to change things today, the civilization may end in 150 years. Fractals , which are a fascinating phenomenon in nature i.e. a self repeating pattern which creates a shape that is like the self-repeating part, has a philosophical definition as well. In philosophy, fractal is a boundary between two regions. Humans repeat same patterns over and over and these patterns come to define ...

In business, everything that makes sense, eventually happens! No matter what the power of incumbents is. Following are a few examples: 1. Mobility makes sense. Hence, we have mobile phones, laptops/netbooks/smartphones, portable gaming gadgets (PSP, DS), etc. 2. High-Speed Internet makes sense. Hence, we have broadband for which the speeds will continue to increase. 3. Web Services/Cloud Computing makes sense. Amazon has taken the lead, others will follow. 4. All IP Network makes sense. All wireless carriers are moving to LTE or WiMax both enable all IP networks. The idea is very similar to evolution in biology. Evolution is a natural phenomenon. No one can stop it.

Why is brain on top part of the body of most organisms? Is it because the brain is always close/connected to the eyes? Then, why are the eyes on top? Is brain always inside in the "head"? Why is there only one head?

Let's go back in time just a few years. The days when social networking was done in person:-)Think about the dial-up/AOL days. There was not much you could do on the Internet except email and read web pages (Web 1.0). In those days average speed was less than 56kpbs and now the average broadband speeds in the US are between 2Mbps and 5Mbps . Even if you take the lower number i.e. 2Mbps it is 35x increase over what we had 10-12 years ago. The new applications have increased in the same proportions. For example-Youtube, social networking, Grid computing, online gaming, flickr, tagging, blogs, movie downloads, second life, etc. etc. And, Web 1.0 has evolved to Web 2.0 . Most of these applications evolved to become popular (widely adopted) because of increased bandwidth availability. Similarly there are applications (mutations) being created today which will evolve to become popular when the bandwidth availability increases from the current levels. Bandwidth and Applications create an...

Over a long period of time, humans evolved from "monkeys". Now that we have become intelligent beings and are making intelligent machines, can we predict what we will evolve to in the next thousands/millions of years?

I recently spent three weeks in Asia. It is fascinating to learn about the cultural differences among various countries. Most of the time, I was in Japan, Singapore, and China. All three countries are very unique. Following are a few random observations from the three countries: Japan Japan is the most advanced country in wireless communication (South Korea may disagree). All the new cool stuff, mobile wallet, mobile audio/video streaming, etc., I have been reading, writing, and talking about for last 11 years, I saw it first hand. Did you know that nobody uses SMS in Japan? They all send emails to each other using iMode or similar services. What impressed me the most was the humility and humbleness of the Japanese. Japan is the second biggest economy in the world and they rose from nothing after the second world war. Gadgets are a basic need in Japan. The electronic market Akihabara is like a flee market selling games, laptops, phones, etc. However, the stuff sold is world class an...

Creation is relatively easier than evolution. You can start fresh with the creation and go wild with your imagination. However, with evolution you have to think about making changes to how things are today. Evolution is a much longer process than Creation. That is why most of the innovation (Creation) comes from new companies and not from big companies who have to think about evolution. Creation of human life takes a few seconds and its evolution takes a lifetime. Someone in silicon valley said that god created the world only in seven days because he did not have to think about the embedded base:-)

Structure defines function! We evolved to become humans from single cell organisms because of the ecosystem structure. Companies evolve or die because of their structure. We are the most intelligent life form because of our brain structure. And, form follows function. When the ocean got too crowded, as a survival strategy some fish developed legs to be able to live on earth.

I remember a time when going to Starbucks was a pleasant experience. At that time, Starbucks had less than 2,000 stores and now it has more than 12,000 stores. Starbucks has a centralized control structure which makes it very difficult to evolve successfully. Most of you may not be familiar with Complex Systems principles so that's all I will say about evolution. Check out Howard Schultz memo These days, many times in the morning, Starbucks is out of coffee. Isn't that ironic, coffee store is out of coffee? If it happened a few years ago and if it did (rarely) you got a free coffee for the inconvenience. Now, it is every week occurrence and there is no free coffee or apology. Another example, I order a no-room grand drip coffee (medium black coffee) every morning and more than 60% of the times, they get the order wrong. I could not think how someone could get a simple coffee order wrong. So, I tried various tactics to place my order. Mainly, I changed sequence of words and pa...