On his popular TV show “The Profit,” entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis repeats this mantra frequently: successful businesses are built on the three P’s; people, product, and process. The concept has its origins in lean manufacturing, but it has since taken hold across a broader spectrum of industries.

October 12^th, 2019 was a red letter day for every athletics fan. That day, for the first time in history a human completed the marathon in under two hours! Eliud Kipchoge the current world record holder did the unbelievable and shaved off a good 2 minutes from his best time. It wasn’t just a triumph of human doughtiness and perseverance. The run was also emblematic of technology and analytics aiding humans in pushing the envelope. Specially made shoes and pacing lasers ensured energy efficiency. The chosen route and formation of pacemakers minimized wind resistance. The location was picked because of its closeness to Kipchoge’s time zone… a number of sagacious data driven decisions contributed to the feat.

It was the penultimate day of my trip to our San Jose office. In the evening Vikas, Dinesh & I went for a short hike at the Alviso Marina County Park. It was a beautiful trail and the hike was uneventful except for Vikas’ narration of his past exploits with a mountain lion. After the hike Dinesh said that we should grab a quick drink and I suggested a nearby Mexican joint. “The place serves amazing guacamole. You should have that with tortilla,” I tried to tempt Vikas’ mostly vegetarian palate.

L: Dick Fosbury doing the “Fosbury Flop” to win the high jump gold medal at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics (Source: International Olympic Committee)
R: Illustration showing path of center of gravity in the Fosbury Flop (Source: Wikimedia Commons, Author: AlanSiegrist)

It was a winter morning over two decades ago. My class mates and I had braved the cold to turn up at the IIT Kanpur airfield to carry out experiments required to complete our course. The excitement was palpable because most of us were going to fly for the first time.

Recently archeologists found evidence suggesting that our seafaring history goes back at least 130,000 years. How our ancestors of that period navigated the vast oceans is not yet known. Till GPS, accurate clocks and reliable weather forecasts became common place, exploration was difficult and risky.

"... You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football. Because, in either game - life or football - the margin for error is so small. ...The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch.  …cause we know when we add up all those inches that's going to make the **** difference between WINNING and LOSING, between LIVING and DYING. … "   -  Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday

Recently I overheard a conversation between two of my colleagues. One was requesting inputs for a task assigned, while the other was protesting that he didn’t have the time to prepare detailed documentation. The term “detailed documentation” appeared to send a shudder down the requestor’s spine. He promptly replied, “Please don’t give me anything lengthy… A half page document with ALL the details is what I need.”