This year brought a cold winter to Israel, and the fact I can’t really hike drove me back to the kitchen. I was always fascinated by the variety of dishes made with, or out of Eggplants. Eggplant is kind of a taste that grows on you (and around you, if you live in the Middle East). Most kids tend to stay away from Eggplant dishes; maybe it’s the complex texture or the in inherent bitterness that people tend to appreciate better as they mature.

Eggplant eaters all have their tricks for a proper pickup. Yet, weather it’s the complexion of the skin, the curvatures of it’s figure, or the measured weight in your palm – you can never ever tell the true nature of an eggplant before you cut it open.

The most challenging of the Eggplant dishes is also the simplest: grilled eggplants. With fried or backed eggplants, you first cut the fruit, and if you see the dark clusters of the seeds you know it’s hopeless. But a good grilled eggplants salad is a mystery.

I wash the aubergine skin and watch the light playing reflection tricks as the water drops away from the tied skin. I puncture eggplant softly and put it on the hissing grill. The grill must be burning red, as it scorches one side of the eggplant and than the other. I then take it off, and let it cool down at a slight angle to let the bitter juices flow out. Than comes the moment. You can be absently minded as you cut the burned skin, or enjoy an instant thrill of discovery a second before finding if your efforts were in vain. No matter how many times you did it before, you can never truly know the outcome until you reach the point.

Eggplant originates in India, sister to one of the most common heeling herbs in India. It is widely spread in Asia through East Europe. The Eggplant is a close relative to tomato, potato and… tobacco. They are all part of Solanceae Family.

Eggplant is a fruit and botanically it is a berry.  The bitterness in the seeds are nicotine alkaloids.  It’s purple skin hints of anti-aging capabilities.  It is a fruit and a toxin all in one.

Eggplant is called ‘Aubergine’ in UK. The word is French, originating from the Catalan word ‘Alberginia’ , originating from Arabic, originating from the Sanskrit word ‘Vatiga-Gama’ : which means… : ‘Egg Plant’.

There you go:  a full circle in meaning. The tao of things.

But sometimes an Eggplant is just an Eggplant.

The first start-up company I was part of was back in ‘98; the idea came few months before I was ‘honorably discharged’ from the IDF.  The endeavor was to develop a hand help device that will replace a book, allowing users to download content off a web-based storefront. Funny thing is that I was never much of a gadget person, and was very late to owning a cell phone. I made most of my calls from the Base public pay phone, and the concept of walking around with a ‘phone’ seemed quite strange at the time.  It was fun and very creating project encompassing software, hardware, and product design & engineering, web store, PC device connectivity and what have you.

CyBook miserably failed for various reasons, but the prototype we developed was not very far from Amazon Kindle that came good ten years later after CyBook returned it’s soul to the start-up heavens. I’ve been keeping an eye on the electronic book industry since than.

One of the things I realized somewhere in the middle of that venture is that Paper is a darn good piece of technology. A Chinese named Ts’ai Lun invented paper around 104 AD, but paper said to have existed in China since the 2^nd century BC. Paper is thin, flexible, tangible, crispy, smelly, and colorful. Paper has ‘presence’… You can write you own ‘user-generated-content’ on paper, print on it in color, double sided, formatted as newspaper, and articles. Not to mention that binding papers into a book used to be an art on its own.

You think electronic books are better for the environment? Think again: paper is recyclable, and several of treeless paper materials are in wide use today. Electronic Book require charging hence increase energy consumption, the devices radiate, and the materials they are made of are bad for you and bad for the environment. Tree-less paper fibers are a lot better for the environment, but not perceived as ‘sexy’ in the modern iPad age.

I love reading books, all kinds of books, but I’m far from being a technophobe. I strongly believe though, that we should be cautions about our electronic consumption habits and understand that an ‘overdose’ of technology is bad, and understand where to draw the limits. Technology should serve a good purpose and need, using a ‘trendy’ device that you don’t really have to use is just waste of energy.

For me, there is no real reason to buy a book on a Kindle (or similar source) vs. buying one in store. I know that maybe content is more ‘accessible’ this way, but I can wait few weeks (worse case) to get a book delivered to me, if it’s none existent in a near-by store. Not to mention that a visit to a bookstore is always an experience for me, and I’m willing to spend few extra $$ for that.

I do see reasons for electronic consumption of books, publishing a book requires a lot of money and makes economic sense on wide distribution only, content that fits a small audience makes sense to be consumed electronically (nobody will ever publish my blog for example…). Electronic consumption is great for academic usage, or when browsing for technical information. It has its uses and it has it’s place, but for entertainment or leisure? That’s over technology for me… I can easily see electronic content as an extension to printed materials, providing more background, references and discussions, but do we really need to replace a printed paperback novel with an electronic book? Why?

I think my major dislike is that electronic books try to imitate printed books, and I dont much see added value in them. I think this might be a wrong approach, even though it seems to be quite successful economically. Electronic books should be something else; they have the power to take the reading experience to the next level, but not in display technology but in knowledge structure terms. Think of an electronic book that adjusts the story telling to fit its reader’s preferences? Language? Age? Background? Think of the art of literature transcending beyond linguistics to the art of metaphysical descriptions and ideation? Thinking of writing as a form of creating ideas, building worlds, interactions, relationships and ‘print’ is only one ‘view’ of this imaginary world?

For me,  this concept was first create by Neal Stephenson is one of his earlier books ‘The Diamond Age“,  where Stephenson described an electronic book-like device that grows and protects the person it grows with.

Until such devices exist, I think I’ll stick with my old reading habits. Let me sign off for now and get back to the novel I left for writing these lines…

Amichay

I’ve never been a theoretician of processes, and always believed in intuitive approach to getting things done, but recent establishment of Innovation Process had me take a step back and do some thinking. There are a lot of creative people in our industry, but not all companies register as innovative. At the same time, a lot has been written and said about Innovation by better and greater than me. In this post I try to crystallize three points, which in my mind are obstacles when transforming an organization into an innovator. Comments are welcome…

#1 – Feel the Pain

Anyone going through “Start-up 101” knows that first step in forming any solution is identifying the pain to be addressed. But that’s trivial. My point is different: pain should be felt in the organization in order to drive innovation. It’s not by chance that a lot of the most timeless, unique creations through history were done by artist in pain; either physical or mental. When an organization has its belly full, there’s no real need to innovate. In my mind, having a large group of people working on innovation, with limitless resources is no more than a group of people trying to fill their workdays. Innovation should be done in small teams, short on resources, limited on time with lots of passion. Innovation organizations need to be hungry.

Israel is considered as a place with impressive amount of innovation per capita, but many don’t understand where it comes from. Innovation might be rooted in our culture, but it’s not something we do, it necessity to survive in a hostile environment. Just throw couple of guys in a hot dessert with short supplies: if they don’t innovate they won’t walk out of there. Give us enough resources and time, and it becomes a disaster (don’t believe me? read a local newspaper) .

#2 – Independent decision making

Innovation for sake of innovation is no more than an academic exercise. The tipping point is when the organization needs to make the decision if to take an innovative idea / concept / product into the mainstream. That decision point is somewhat of a dichotomy, executives have a lot on their minds: tons of emails to handle, board members who hassle them, fires to put down, annual objectives to met and what have you. Now go convince them your innovative idea is the next big thing. Good luck. It’s nearly inhuman to ask bandwidth to make a decision on something new under those conditions. Three ways around this, if you’re in an organization lead by an inhuman person – you’re lucky. But just before you move to the next point, might want think if you’d like to work for an organization run by an inhuman person..that normally backfires in other alleys.

Some organizations make innovation their core business and by-pass this, well actually only one organization really does that, but he’s now on a medical leave.

So for the rest of us, we need to get to a point where the organization let us make independent decisions that does not need to go through all the approval processes. When that happens though, and you’re out there independent (and hungry) its now up to you – nobody to roll your faults on – just make sure to get an extra pack of big balls.

#3 – Failure is not an option, but it will always happen

When you go through all that, and you’re sure your innovative product that finally got a chance, is going to be the next big thing, keep in mind that you’re likely to fail. Statistics. That’s the point to put on that extra pack from the previous point. However, the possibility to fail should not deter you; just keep you sharp and focused. Never be afraid of failure, and most important, once you fail – don’t be afraid to push with same vigor on the next idea. Why? Because eventually, you will be successful: Statistics.

Best,

Amichay

Yesterday we’ve completed the setup of Vonage offices in Israel. When writing these lines I’m sitting on a high chair, overlooking the park and the Mediterranean Sea from the top floor of the Gamla Project. Behind me sits a very talented group of people , focused on creating new product(s), innovating and expressing themselves. Unlike past experiences I don’t need to look back to make sure it’s case – and that’s probably part of the learning experiences of the past months.

No doubt we have the best location, designed and equipped office in our area. Starting fresh is not easy, getting the office setup and hiring the right people is a long and tedious task – but rewarding once completed. Yet, it’s not about cool offices, getting fibers, video room or state-of-the-art equipment – It’s the DNA, the atmosphere – the people. Last week while witnessing the collaboration between the teams in Israel and US it dawned on me that we’re on the right track – the synergy, the assistance and above all the positive energy focused on creating regardless of titles, location, nationality or personal aspirations is what makes it different. It’s pure, and above all I’m happy with the R&D management we now have in place at both locations : mature, experienced, smart, innovative and co-operative. Management that doesn’t escalate but able to resolve issues and help each other, execute, mitigate stress and that’s my personal growth; learning from past mistakes.

At the same time I’m grateful for the support we got from upper management in getting to this point, the credit and leeway we received.

But we’re only starting and it is now time to execute. We have new targets, processes and all it takes to succeed – it’s now in our hands : success or failure is ours. I still have few heros on my shortlist to hire, more capacity to build and optimize, but that work never ends.

The engine is warm – now let’s have some fun

Amichay

I left JAJAH  late January after four interesting years. I still have some friends in JAJAH (I think) and some which are not anymore (pretty sure). I recently saw some posts about JAJAH launching services with O2. I am glad that the integration of JAJAH services and technology into O2 is progressing well. I think that JAJAH impact on O2 services may go way beyond what is currently implemented, and I guess this will be figured out sooner or later. I am very curios to see the long lasting impact on a small technology company on a large mobile operator, if this works well, it will resonate through out the mobile industry. Disruption from the inside, pretty nice, hope the guys understand this mission.

It took me several long month to join Vonage, which were not simple in many aspects. During this time I was involved with two start-up companies Karaboo (that will launch a new cool version in the next few days) and Talkatives (that took life of it’s own with a new CEO) . It’s hard to explain in words the ‘need’ to create, I don’t know how to express myself in singing, or dancing or painting, I can only do software products. It might be pompous, but for me software development and product creation is an Art. It’s not for money, it’s not for fame – it’s the need to express oneself…

At first I didn’t really think I’ll join Vonage, it took several long months for me to get to know the people. On the other hand, it also took a lot of time and convincing to get me into JAJAH in the first place. Maybe it just takes me time. I’m glad I jumped on that ship though. This is by far the most talented group of individuals I ever worked with. It’s kind of amazing how such a large group of talented people have gathered around from various places around the world with a joint missing to disrupt the communications industry. We released our first product last week TalkFree – which spreads like wild fire.  But this is only the beginning.

I’m fortunate to work for a company that gives the space and means to innovate and create without muddy politics and personal aspirations (and no, I’m not up to salary review any time soon…).

I moved from Purple (JAJAH) or Orange (Vonage). For me, Purple represents the boyhood, noisy, kick-ass approach JAJAH once had,  and Orange is the mature passion burning to give a new perspective on communications.

But let’s put things in perspective, we release products, as successful as they may be, but we are all just people, we came from the same place and end in a similar place, and there’s still a lot more in life…