Imagining the Future
Entrepreneurs create our future. This is what I had written in one of the posts in my Proficorn series: “An entrepreneur must imagine the future and get there first. One is not building just for the next few months – one has to imagine tomorrow’s world and create that future. If you get there first, you win. This journey is what makes entrepreneurship so exciting. It is a race – where there are many competitors, known and unknown. But there is a second race – in the entrepreneur’s mind, to create and craft a future that isn’t yet unknown. The entrepreneur then also has to persuade others (employees, partners and customers) about that future. It is the ultimate reality game!”
In 1994 as I was thinking about the ideas that eventually led to the launch of IndiaWorld (India’s first Internet portals), I would think about what the Internet could do. A phrase I remember from that time is “connect Indians globally into an electronic informational marketplace.” That helped me envision what tomorrow’s world would look like and make the right business decisions to succeed in a competitive marketplace. In 2011 when I began to think about India’s political future and the 2014 elections, I started thinking about how the BJP could get a majority on its own. That led to the formation of Niti Digital and its multiple initiatives in media, data, analytics and volunteering. In both cases, I was imagining a future that didn’t exist and then working to make it happen.
Over the past few months, I have spent a lot of time thinking and writing about microns. The more I have written, the more excited I have become about the possibilities. Ideating is a long and painstaking process; while the basic idea may just pop up, refining it into something practical and doable takes time. As I have thought more and spoken with people, it has become better. Transforming brand-consumer communications is a hard problem to solve, and yet, as I have thought about microns and what can be done, I have come to believe it is increasingly possible and even necessary.
It was in this context that I had written about the micron-verse a few weeks ago: “Microns can have widespread usage because of their simplicity and brevity. They take 15 minutes to create and 15 seconds to consume. They come right into the inbox – which we all check many times during a day. When we think of emails, we think long, boring, never-ending newsletters, with lots of scrolling. When we think of microns, we should think short, exciting, fun, interactive content, available on a single mobile screen (no scrolling required). This is what will take the 15% open rate of emails to 100%. Whether for customers or employees, microns can help brands and businesses open a richer world of greater engagement and interaction. Welcome to the micron-verse and the 100% opens movement!”
In this series, I will peer into the future – like a science fiction writer – and give a glimpse of how our lives will be different in the micron-verse.
