The Hindu Business Line : Engineers are among the key people in the world

Engineers should be happy to read that the `single most important lesson' that Steve Wozniak learnt from his father was that engineering is the highest level of importance you could reach in the world. "Someone who could make electrical devices that do something good for people takes society to a new level... To this day, I still believe engineers are among the key people in the world."

Thus reads a snatch from chapter 1 in iWoz, a book in which the computer cult icon talks for the first time about `his childhood, phone phreaking, pranks, working for Hewlett-Packard, meeting George Bush Senior, a life-changing plane crash and his passion for teaching.' The book, co-written with Gina Smith, and published by Headline (www.hodderheadline.com) gets to the core of Apple's inventor.

First get introduced `the Electronics Kids' or the gang of pre-teen boys, who would hang out at Sunnyvale Electronics, get buzzers and switches to work on a secret project: a house-to-house secret intercom system so that the boys could talk to each other in the middle of the night! "We were a group of kids who loved climbing out our windows and sneaking out at night. Maybe it was just to talk, or go out and ride bikes... " reminisces Woz.

Take a tour through the school science projects that the author recounts with verve - be it a working flashlight `with a light and a couple of batteries and a little wire' in the third grade, or the demonstration, with a click of switch, of how many electrons orbit each atom in the periodic table, a couple of years later. In the sixth grade, Woz built a tic-tac-toe machine, using and and or gates, `the basic building blocks of computer technology'.

Though the game system didn't win a prize, because `the night before the competition, some of the transistors started to put out smoke', Woz realised what was more important than getting an award: `that you've done the learning on your own to figure out how to do it'. He writes, "For me it's the engineering, not the glory, that's really important."

Looking back at all the science projects he had participated in school, Woz is grateful for `a central ability' that he gained in the process, to help him throughout his career. What was that? Patience. "I learned to not worry so much about the outcome, but to concentrate on the step I was on and to try to do it as perfectly as I could when I was doing it."

Patience is usually so underrated, he rues. "Not everyone gets this in today's engineering community... You always find a lot of geeks who try to reach levels without doing the in-between ones first, and it won't work. It never does." The mantra, according to him, is simple: "One step at a time."

The book concludes with a chapter titled `rules to live by' with insights for `kids who feel they're outside the norm'. First, `believe in yourself,' he urges those with ideas in their heads and a desire to build them. "The world isn't black and white. It's greyscale. As an inventor, you have to see things in greyscale." Means? "Be open. You can't follow the crowd. Forget the crowd. And you need the kind of objectivity that makes you forget everything you've heard, clear the table, and do a factual study like a scientist would."

Woz parts with an exhortation: "The world needs inventors - great ones. You can be one. If you love what you do and are willing to do what it takes, it's within your reach." He assures that the rewards will be `worth every minute you spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design or build'.

Fabulous read.

Adopt service strategies

In contrast to the product-led growth in the twentieth century, it is now servicesstrategy that wins, avers the book.

How to transform a product-led to a service-led company? Mark Cerasale and Merlin Stone compile the answers in Business Solutions on Demand, from Kogan Page (www.vivagroupindia.com) . The book is important because it is based on transformation driven by the Big Blue, both within IBM and for its clients.

One of the first myths that the book breaks is about best-practice benchmarking. The widely used management tool can turn out to be `the antithesis of innovation and growth,' and `ultimately kill margins', caution the authors. "Conforming to the opinions and behaviour of others is natural human behaviour. The same behaviour applies to companies and strategy." The moral, therefore, is: "Best practice is operational, not strategic."

You can transform entire industries with new business designs, demonstrates chapter 2, walking the reader through the frozen food industry in the UK. Learn about how information technology (IT), rather than production technology, played the enabling role in the chilled ready meals sector, where `computer-controlled inventory management' is critical for success.

"Electronic point of sale (EPOS) systems replenish chilled stock in the limited space available on shelves. New scanning technology, which was introduced in the mid-1980s, has also improved supply chain management."

In highly competitive and commoditised markets, it is not enough to be low cost, you must be lowest cost, insists a chapter on `the low-cost business model.' Using the Net and IT you can achieve it, but to sustain the advantage `the extended enterprise (including suppliers and business partners) must be transformed and aligned to create and deliver low-cost customer value.'

In contrast to the product-led growth in the twentieth century, it is now services strategy that wins, avers the book.

"Two of the world's largest manufacturers, GE (General Electric) and IBM, adopted service strategies during the 1990s." A 2002 quote of Lou Gerstner, then chairman and CEO of IBM, cited in the book, reads thus: "Over the next decade, customers would increasingly value companies that could provide solutions - solutions that integrated technology from various suppliers and, more important, integrated technology into the processes of an enterprise... services-led, not technology-led."

Highly instructive.

Tailpiece

"Our CTO has a technical way of saying even ordinary things... "

"Such as?"

"Describing an addition to his bookshelf as a new vertical!"

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