Category Archives: Perspectives

New Management Models: Do They Make Control-Theory And Information-Theory Sense?

Posted on September 27, 2015 by admin

There has been a lot of talk lately about new management models, that is, the alternatives to centralized top-heavy decision-making that has been the staple of the corporate world for so long. Coursera has had a fun class on this, … Continue reading →

Posted in Communication skills, How the world is changing, In the news, Industry trends, Management, New business models, Uncategorized | Comments Off

Quirky, which Brought us Pawcet and Hundreds of Other Products, Is No More

Posted on September 25, 2015 by admin

Quirky, an invention platform startup that created the magnificent Pawcet, a drinking fountain for dogs, is, alas, no more. After raising more than $180 million from investors and bringing more than 400 products to the market over its 6 years … Continue reading →

Posted in Consumer technology, Creativity, Hardware, How the world is changing, In the news, Industry, Industry trends, New business models, Technology | Comments Off

Experience with Manufacturing

Posted on May 24, 2015 by admin

When I was interviewing for PM positions a couple of years ago, I wanted to do what I do now – build exciting real-world products soup to nuts, concept to manufacturing to deployment, algorithms to software and hardware design to … Continue reading →

Posted in Consumer technology, Good reads, Hardware, In the news, Management, Technology | Comments Off

DARPA Project Experience and DARPA Project Leaders

Posted on May 3, 2015 by admin

Recent Wired Magazine profile of Dr. Regina Dugan, formerly the director of Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and currently an executive at Google (Wired Magazine article available here) led me to a Harvard Business Review article by Dr. Dugan … Continue reading →

Posted in Career and Leadership, Good reads, Management, Ph.D., Technology | Comments Off

PM Candidates: Ask Questions, Please

Posted on February 10, 2015 by admin

All job candidates, for all jobs everywhere, should know to ask questions of their interviewers when prompted. The answer to “Do you have any questions for me?” ought to be never be “no“, for any position. But especially for PM … Continue reading →

Posted in Career and Leadership, Communication skills, Industry, Management, Skills, Tips and tricks | Comments Off

Do not Call People “Resources”

Posted on November 10, 2014 by admin

Managers: if you call your people “resources”, they get to call you “overhead”. Calling people “resources” must be one of the worst habits of the different kinds of managers. Yeah, that is the terminology used in the Project Management Professional … Continue reading →

Posted in Career and Leadership, Communication skills, Management, Skills, Tips and tricks | Comments Off

Value of Meetings

Posted on May 2, 2014 by admin

Recent results from a study on how one hour of executives’ meetings propagates to hundreds of thousands of hours across the organization are not at all surprising, but its good to see the actual numbers beautifully visualized. The Guardian has … Continue reading →

Posted in Communication skills, In the news, Management, Skills | Comments Off

Nike Will Stop Making Wearable Hardware

Posted on April 21, 2014 by admin

Oh, Nike, – really?! Nike’s Fuelband Hits the Wall Nike fires majority of FuelBand team, will stop making wearable hardware A company with such rich history of innovation surely could have tried harder to gain and preserve its strategic positioning … Continue reading →

Posted in Consumer technology, How the world is changing, In the news, Industry trends, Sports, Technology, Wearable computing | Comments Off

Lessons Learned from Running Streaks

Posted on April 5, 2014 by admin

Running streaks – which I define as running at least 1 mile per day for a large number of consecutive days – are surely an interesting thing to be doing. My longest one so far has been 100+ days: I ran every single day … Continue reading →

Posted in Achievement, Running, Sports, Tips and tricks, Training | Comments Off

Post-Ph.D. Job Market: Timelines

Posted on January 4, 2014 by admin

I recently gave a talk at a WimNet group meeting regarding my post-Ph.D. job market experiences and lessons learned. A version of the slides that is not Columbia-specific and applicable to many EECS students is available below: Slides from the … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Career and Leadership, Data science, Graduate school, Industry, Ph.D., Tips and tricks | Comments Off