Anindya Ghose Sees Life Getting Even Faster With Tech

on Boomberg Radio. This week on the podcast, I have professor a Nindia Ghosts of n y U Stern, where he focuses on mobile technology and information services. We spent a lot of time talking about his new book Tap Unlocking the Mobile Economy, and rather just repeat what we discussed, I want to give you a visual to think about.

I'm a big fan of science fiction and um anything that Philip K. Dick wrote that is subsequently turned into a movie, including Minority Report, and everybody focuses on the precog aspect of that movie, the ability to anticipate who's gonna cause a crime. There's a lot of very forward

technologies in the movie. But there's a scene in the film where Tom Cruise The main character is running through a shopping district and is bombarded with advertisement, not general ads, not billboards, but three D holographic ads specifically tailored to him. The retailer identifies him as a unique individual. They have access to his prior um shopping preferences, and they're showing him specifically tailored advertisements as he passes through in pursuit

of whatever it was. I don't remember the fascinating aspect of this, uh in our My conversation with Professor ghost wasn't that, hey, this is the future. This is a hundred years or fifty years off in the distance. But rather mobile technology are uniquely identified phones, all the data we generate when we shop, when we use apps, when we just move about in the city, means that that sort of minority report technology is only two or three years away. And I found that to be absolutely astonishing.

It's a fascinating conversation about technology and the future, and it turns out the future ain't that far off in the future. It's practically here now. So with no further ado, my conversation with professor A Nindia Ghosts. My special guest today is a Ninda Ghosts. He is a professor of Information Operations and Management Science and n y used Stern School of Business. He is the youngest ever recipd being of the prestigious Informs I S S Distinguished Fellow Award.

He has been named by Business Week as one of the top forty professors under forty worldwide. Analytics Week called him one of their top two hundred thought leaders in big data and business analytics. He's written more than a hundred peer reviewed papers and is the author of his first book, tap Unlocking the Mobile Economy and Ghosts. Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you very much for having me. I'm

very excited to be here. You cover some sections of the the economy and some sectors of technology that I find absolutely fascinating. In fact, you cover a broad range of topics consumer behavior, internet, digital marketing, big data, social media, and older related business analytics. How did that broad collection of topics come together for you as a as a searcher. So I first started working in this area in two thousand four, and you know, I was basically curious about

all things Internet in two thousand four. You know, we were just about seeing the emergence of e commerce. You know, the likes of Amazon cropping up and people buying and selling books on the internet. Um, so that's how the journey started. Um, as the Internet evolved, you know, we saw the emergence of companies trying to use that as a platform to market their products. So that's why we saw the emergence of search engines like Google come in. We saw the emergence of you know, other kinds of

digital marketing platforms on the Internet. And so I've always had this, you know, interest in figuring out what is it that consumers are doing on the Internet and how can companies leverage those differences in behavior, you know, to

better accurate products and market products and so on. And as the Internet eventually moved into mobile, by two thousand and eight, the first smartphone was already out there, that really sort of got me thinking more and more deeply about consumer behavior and mobile And on the mobile phone, you're doing social media. You know, you're responding to ads. If you're responding, you're creating a lot of data. And

that's how all these things come together. So so let's talk about the smartphone essentially the intersection of all those different technology sectors we just mentioned. Is this the single most transformative consumer device ever to be created. I would say so. In fact, in my book I actually mentioned this that you know, by two thousand and eight, when I first started thinking about this topic, it was pretty clear to me that the smartphone would be, in fact

the most transformative thing that we've ever seen. And you know, in ten years after that, now we do see, in fact, there's plenty of evidence it is, because it's almost embedded on us. And you know, there's people often ask me, is there's a tipping point. I don't necessarily see that the smartphone is going to become a more remote control button, smart home, smart cars, everything is going to be controlled

by the smartphone. I have to tell you when you look at the amount of tech analogy today that exists. So you can control your nest, you can control your car, you can start your car remotely, you can control the temperature of your pool remotely, your security system, your video camera. At what point does the phone just simply stop being a phone and just becomes a mobile computer? Yeah, I mean I think it's already kind of getting there, right. I mean, by now, the phone is much more than

a phone. You know, it's a camera, it's a flashlight, you know, it's my television, it's my book as well, it's everything, right, So I think the convergence of various digital phenomena on the smartphone has already happened. In my prediction I mentioned this in my book, is that a lot more is going to happen. And and by by what I mean by that is exactly what you said, which is people are going to start controlling their appliances,

their homes, their cars, other sorts of things. Let's let's put let's put a number on some of the venture capital investing in the space. In two thousand and ten, less than four percent of all venture capital funding was going to mobile startups as of fourteen, which is already a good couple of years ago. It's now about eight percent, So we're up a hundred percent or so from Is mobile just going to consume the lion share of all

these new tech startups? I think that number is going to only keep increasing, right, And and there's a couple of reasons for that. One is, over the last five years, we have consumers have been spending more and more time on mobile devices. You know, from from two thousand twelve to two sixteen, the last five years We've come from roughly, you know, about ten percent of our time to about

time on these devices. And what's as telling companies that there's a lot of opportunity for monetization because right now advertisers are only putting in twelve percent of the ad dollars and mobile phones. So there's a disconnect. You know, consumers sure spending twice that time, companies are spending half the money. So does a disconnect. Let's let's look at

the jobs a little bit. The Boston Consulting Group came out and said that mobile technologies are going to be or or just about at a three point three trillion dollar investable sector over the next few years, and they expected to create eleven million new jobs. Is this the next boom sector or or currently the biggest sector that we should expect new jobs from. I think certainly at least one of the top two or top three biggest sectors.

You know, those eleven three point three trillion dollars is only four point two percent of the world's GDP and so you can only imagine it has to grow from here. The other thing that's going to propel jobs is, you know, one thing is that the mobile app economy is growing by leaps and bounds, and so every time you've got a new app, you know you need an entire army of employees. But also aside from the fact is the data. So I talk a lot about how you know, consumer

tapping on the phone to create stata. So they need data scientists and need business analytics, not not just tapping on the phone, but where they physically are, what else they're running, what else they had previously been doing. There's an enormous stream of data that we will create just carrying the phones around exactly. Let's talk a little bit about mobile you referenced earlier, the ad spends. Some of

the numbers are just astonishing. One estimate claims mobile ad spending will top a hundred billion dollars by next year. How effective is this advertising? And what alternatives do marketers have other than mobile? So my studies and projects over the last ten years, in across three different continents, across multiple countries have actually demonstrated very rigorously than mobile advertising is very effective if you do it right, How do you do it right? And what do people who do

it wrong? What are they doing wrong right? So one of the things I talked about my book is companies who are doing it right are the ones who are creating in a concierge or a butler in your smartphone. And the companies who do it wrong are the ones who are creating this creepy stalker. Okay, so if it's some like Uber managed to do both, yeah, it's a full concierge. And then we've just found out they were stalking people even after they deleted, uh deleted the app. Yeah,

I mean they're going to get into trouble. And you know, but I mean for a number of reasons. They've been in trouble for a long time. No one episode of another. But you know, just from a brand advertiser's perspective, um, there's a thin line dividing the coolness and the creepiness. And you know, in my book, I talked about a lot of the case studies where have you've been actually been very successful in remaining cool and not digressing into the creepy stuff. And the book is tap unlocking the

mobile economy. So what can a app provider do to stay on the right side of the cool creepy divide? Right? So two things. One is you want to reduce the frequency of how often your message your consumer through an offer our ad, and you want to increase the relevancy of that messaging. Okay, right now, if you have the opposite, we are getting inundated by ads which are not necessarily very relevant and redundant. Absolutely, So how does the company do that? How do you focus in on what is relevant?

And how do you avoid haranguing um? Because you know, I use an a service called limail because I'm loath to give anybody my real email address because you know, if I buy something, it's not an invitation to send me a daily update. In fact, you know what once a month is plenty for most of the retailers or what have you I'm interested in. But it seems to be all right, we have this person's email address, let's let's bang on their head daily and hopefully they'll buy something.

Usually I unsubscribe, I delete the app, and limail allows me to whether they actually unsubscribe him or not. It allows me to turn that email off so they can market to me all they want. I never see a single a single thing from them. So so where is that line and how do you stay on the right side of it? So basically, right now, what's happening is, you know, companies are sending like hitting dots in the

air and hoping one will stick. Right. And the reason it's happening is even though this might seem very surprising, they actually don't have enough information on consumers on a given consumer. And this might seem astonishing given this world of data, right. The reason is because and I talked about this in the book a Lot, is the data is actually fragmented. It's all in silos, so somebody has

to come and stitch it together. And absent that, what's going to keep happening is companies will keep in undating us with these offers. So you would think that Apple in iOS and Google with Android are the ones who can stitch all that data together. They have access to all the data that every app generates. Are they moving in that direction? And are we creating a monopoly or all a goopoly amongst the big players who have access

to all our data? Right? So what's really fascinating is that, you know, Google and Facebook are sort of the two lead players who are essentially putting this infrastructors together. Meaning what meaning that between the publisher and advertiser, they have created these intermediaries called add exchanges and dsp s and SSPs and a lot of the technical jargon, but the basic job for these companies stitched the data together. And what's also fascinating is the next big challenge to these

companies is going to come from telecom providers. So WIDD Verizon buy out, a O L wided Verizon buy out Yahoo. Verizon does not see itself as a telecom provider anymore, if they're not just the pipe there just say actually, if you ask their top management, they will say, well, you know, we are actually the next big media tech company. We want to take on Google and Facebook and they

can like us. They have so much data right that that's that's quite fascinating, you know, when we look at some of the data points that mobile is generated, I'm fascinated by this. After the launch of the iPhone, voice minutes amongst eighteen to thirty four year olds fell from twelve hundred to nine hundred minutes per month within two years, so that's a twenty drop over the same time period. Texting more than doubled from six hundred to four hundred

messages per month over that same period. The impact of this is really quite enormous it is. I mean, look, first of all, there is a very you know, non trivial consumer behavioral chain. Right, if you're not talking on the phone anymore, you're tapping and texting, right, every tapping, every texting is creating data about our behavior. But more importantly, you know, coming back to the study comp providers, because

that's how they get the services. They are not making that much money anymore on those products that they used to make money on, which is Internet advice and and text messaging. That's why, you know, whether it's Verizon or Telephonic and Germany or China Mobile Estelecom, they realize the next big bed is monetizing the user data, the user location data, our behavioral data, you know, all of the

contextual data. And that's what they're moving into. Here's another fascinating data point from the book of text messages are read within ninety seconds of delivery. Are we at risk of never being disconnected? And what are the ramifications of that? UM? So, you know, I, I guess I belong to the group who does not think there's a problem in that. UM. I do not mind the fact that we are immersing

our devices. UM And the reason is because you know, everything that I've seen is that there's actually a positive site of this as well, which is which is going back to my argument before that the reason company is sending us all these offers is they don't have enough information. But the more of immersals from the device, the more data generates, and the more information not companies will have, which will then let them reduce a frequency of the

messaging increase the relevancy. Let's let's talk a little bit about mobile retail and what the impact is. A recent report from Credit Swiss estimated that there could be undred store closings this year, which would be higher than the peak in two thousand and eight and significantly higher than last year. What is the state of retailing in America? Okay, So this is a great question and one of my favorites, because mobile as a studio over the years is a

double a sword for retailing. Okay, And here's why. On one side, you know, offline retailers have been petrified by the fact that consumers have been mobile showrooming, meaning that while they're inside a physical brick and model store and they found something they like, and yet they're actually looking for the same product online on their phone looking for a cheaper price. Let me interrupt you and ask you a question about that. I used to have an app

on my phone called Amazon price Guard. I'm gonna actually have to take a quick look at it, and yet Amazon ended up. I don't want to say price check is the name of it. Amazon doesn't seem to be supporting that app anymore. Um, is showrooming still the problem that was a few years ago? Okay, so yes or no in the following sense. So showrooming was a massive

problem up until recently. The likes of these physical brick and motor retailers were losing fifty of the traffic the likes of Amazon, and someone would go into Best Buy, look at the television or whatever, find it was fifty bucks treeper on Amazon, and walk out, it's right and buy it on Amazon. So you just lost one customer there,

So one in two people were doing that. Now. The reason I say it's a double that sort is today the offline retailers have a tremendous resource in the same phone which was once a threat to them, because now, using these location based tagging technologies, they can send you a coupon in real time when you're invest buy to

prevent you from walking out without buying the TV. And in my book, actually I talk a lot about these case studies where based on you know, whether it's the WiFi in the store or the beacon in the store or the GPS, these retailers are able to sense where you are and send you an offer and delight you and impression surprise you. So couldn't they simply have just

matched the Amazon's price to begin with. And and you know, if Amazon is providing a lower price, or any online retailer is providing a lower price, Uh, what is the advantage of the coupon? Or is it that some people come in and pay the full price anyway and the price insor of people get the coupon and they go that way. That's exactly what it is. Basically. You know, any sort of location based mobile coupon strategy has to

be intrementally useful to the company. You don't want to send a blanket price matching policy for everybody, right, because many people will just be happy to paying the higher price when they buy, they're out with they don't want to be bothered, right, It's the stragglers that really price as they folks the bargain hunters whom you don't want to lose. That's where the location based technology is, folks. So I'm gonna I'm gonna move to advertising because it

relates back to this. In the old days, we used to take ink and spray it on mashed up trees and and it was called the newspaper or magazine. Back in the nineteen fifties, there was something like fifty there was something like fifty four million paid subscriptions to newspapers. That number is under forty three million as of two thousand ten, but relative to population, it's a seventy decrease.

So when I think of all these retailers, I remember it was always the best bicircular in the Sunday paper. There was always a target circular. I assume that still goes on. I just hardly read a print paper the way I used to. What does the the diminishing of print as a communication channel, how how does that impact retailers and what are they doing to overcome the loss of that channel? Right? So it means two things. One is, and if you're a retailer, you're still spending money on

physical newspapers for advertising, You're wasting it. Now, people only spend six percent of the entire time reading a physical newspaper or magazine, right, Unfortunately, that's what it is. So what they should be doing is actually putting that money

on that magic device, which is the smartphone. Right, So instead of spending money in print newspapers, you should actually spend money investing in these location based advertisement and locations cool pons, all of these technologies that enable companies to do so in real time. Let's talk a little bit about travel and what we see uh here in the United States there are about a hundred and fifty million smartphones. Of these are use location services. Is how is this

data being shared and who has access to that data? So? Um, A lot depends on how the app is actually owned. Right. So if the company, the travel company or the travel site owns the app, then clearly you know the app Delapa belongs to the company and they own it. If it's a third body, a developper, then the abdulopper will have it and highly likely they will be sharing it

with the company because that's how the arrangement is. Um. So those that happens for sure, and we were talking uh off air before, but let's let's bring this up. There seems to be a sort of ambiguous nous about what people say their concerns with privacy actually are and then what they actually do. So I'm pretty concerned about privacy. I don't like sharing my email address, or my location or a whole bunch of other data points with companies.

But yet the generation that's younger than me, they seem to they could not possibly care less about these privacy issues. They share the data free, freely. What is the standard? What's going on with that? What should an app company

reasonably expect from their users? So, you know, various studies we have done and others have shown that millennials are very willing to share their data as a currency to get something in value, right, Um of Generation Z and Generation Y a willing to do the same less so

it baby boomers. Um. But you know, if you are a marketer today and you're thinking about your target segment, target population, right for the lot for the most part, it's actually Gen ZS, gen X, gener wise and millennials, right, So you want to stay with the trend and keep targeting them, and if they are actually responding to this data exchange data boutter economy. So what you really want to do is be their butler and concierge by sending

a curated, relevant message. That's what you want to be doing. So supposedly this was just reported the Times not too long ago when Tim Cook discovered that Uber was capturing the unique identify er the fingerprints of each phone and using it to track Uber users, even those who have removed the app. Um, he threatened them with taking kicking them out of the app store. So raises a couple of questions. First, how bad is the behavior of Uber? And second, it seems like Apple has an awful lot

of power because have they kicked Uber out? That pretty much would have been the end of Uber. Sure, I mean, first of all, it's terrible behavior on part of Ober. They violated the two simple mantras of data privacy, which is notice and consent. You need to notify consumers what are you doing with the data? And then you need to ask for consent. They wanted at them both, right, They didn't tell them they were tracking them, and they

obviously never got consent exactly. Um. And of course, you know, if you at the end of the day, it's an app, it is a big eighty billion dollar company, but it is an app. The way people access app is through an app store. If an Apple or Samsung decided to kick them out, that's it for them. I mean, how are they gonna It's fatal? Another way, you would think no one would want to mess around do anything that

would even remotely put them at risk. I'm surprised Apple didn't just freeze them out for a week to flex some muscles and say, hey, anybody else thinking about doing this, It's gonna cost you a lot of money. But it raises the question does Apple and Android have too much power over the the app economy and modern technological life. I mean, I don't see that way. I don't think they have too much power. I think they have appropriate power. It is their own store at the store, and you know,

consumers have a choice. You know, they can go to a Google Player store or an Apple app store, and some of the other third party companies also have their Amazon as an app store. Tour. Um, I think, you know, their power is a reflection of consumer preferences and so right, so um, that's that's quite that's quite fascinating. Let's let's talk about the location based advertising numbers you you were referencing it earlier. It's expected to grow to fifteen billion

dollars in eighteen. This was under two billion just three years ago. That's a compound and annual growth rate. How long can this continue? Global real time location based advertising? How long can this grow at that astonishing rate for many years? In the forceable the future? Right now, we're only scratching the type of the iceberg here, right And it's because a small fraction of people are the ones who are opening up their GPS data and saying, Okay,

here's where I am send me an offer. That number is only gonna grow. And in everything that I've seen last ten years in different parts of the world is telling me that, um, you know, this is a very tiny portional the actual potential of how much can be

monetize in this space. So there's a fascinating um data point in the book where you talk about the psychological component of how people behave in groups and they're using apps and when they're UM shopping, and and the data point that jumped out in there were about five and a half million people riding the subway in New York

City every day. That puts it about seventh worldwide. You did a study that found on crowded subways, people were twice as likely to respond to a mobile offer than commuters on non crowded train What is the thinking behind this? Why would crowdedness affect mobile purchases? So this is actually

one of my favorite studies in the book. Basically, you know what we did is we exploited leverage the variation in crowdedness and different parts of the time, different times of the day, in different cities, and send people offers and effectively measured how people responded to these offers when they're in this crowded train station or subway stations, right,

and these are real time, real DEO sinc. So it's just this one station, even this one, so we know exactly we are working away a telecom provider which has sending person of the market share. We know where you're which train you are in. In five we also know which compartment in the train you are in. So that's a level of because you know, the definition of location has changed completely in our companies can identify you within

three feet. So what we saw is that as the level of crowdedness increased from one person persquire meter to up to five percent persquire meter. The propensity for people to positively respond to these marketing offers continue to kept increasing, and to the point where at five m pers cwire meter was fairly crowded, they were percent more likely than to respond to the offers uh than in the previous metric.

And what was happening was people basically said, look, when I'm surrounded by all these strangers, I don't really know them. The first thing I do is I take my phone out. I immerse myself in this phone. This is my escape. This and at that time, in those twenty minutes of commute, if you can send me a relevant offer, you've got me there, you know. I love There's this old photo of everybody standing waiting for a commuter train, and it's from the fifties, and the men have hats and the

women are wearing dresses, and everybody has newspaper open. And then they the same train station you see taken recently. It's the same run of people, only everybody standing looking at a cell phone. So what is it about crowding on a train or anywhere else that generates those negative emotions? Is it simply it's a relief to to think about

something else, And is that why people respond to ads? Say, in those circumstances, it's an escape device, right, So when you're surrounded by people that you don't know, it creates and conjures many negative emotions, you know, some sort of adversity, hostility, stress, and so on. So shopping is actually a big stress reliever. You know, psychologists have talk even for millennials because we keep reading, well, these millennials are all about experiences and

not consumerism. Is that true? I don't Actually, we didn't see any study evidence so far. I mean, I think we've been consistently looking at different demographic splits and we continue to find certainly, you know, with like gen X and gen Y, it's a lot more, but it's still the same qualitative result with millennials. And we've been talking about mobile phones, but mobile tablets are also a significant

part of the market. Or these devices in the midst of essentially killing the desktop PC, is that a dying um product um? I don't necessarily think so, okay, I actually think that, you know, desktops or laptops are actually here to stay. Part of the reason is there's still a tremendous amount of productivity and work that you can get done on these larger devices that it's just hard to get done on a tablet or a smartphone. I find I generate contents on the desktop and I consume

contents on the mobile device. And you know what, people still buy products a lot more on desktops than on tablets. Okay, but that being said, you know, one of the biggest myths that unwrapped in the book is that, you know, the smartphone or the tablet is not very effective in marketing.

Actually that's not true. It may lead to four or five percent of your sales, but it has had an influence up to your all of your sales because people first got exposed to your product on the smartphone, so they see it on the smartphone and then we'll either book market or email themselves or what have you um in order to make the purchase on the desk exactly. Is that a temporary phenomenon as we just get used to mobile technology tablets or is this just an ingrained

behavior that's not going to change. It is changing. It is changing. In fact, you know, when I first started doing this studies into tos and ten or nine, just one the tablets were being introduced. You know, we saw these numbers were one one and a half percent. Today they are up close to five percent, so it's increasing. Uh, it takes some time, but there's a ton ahead room. There a lot of room. We have been speaking with Professor An India Ghosts, author of the book Tap Unlocking

the Mobile Economy. If you enjoy this conversation about all things mobile technology, will be sure and check out our podcast extras. You can find that on Bloomberg dot com, SoundCloud and Apple iTunes. Be sure to check out my daily column. It's on Bloomberg View dot com. You can follow me on Twitter at rit Halts. I'm Barry Hults.

You're listening to Masters and Business on Bloomberg Radio. What could your future hold more than you think because at Merrill Lynch we work with you to create a strategy built around your priorities. Visit mL dot com and learn more about Meryll Lynch. An affiliated Bank of America, Mary Lynch makes available products and services offered by Merrill Lynch. Pierce Federan Smith Incorporated, a registered broker dealer. Remember s I PC. Welcome to the podcast, um and India, thank

you so much for doing this this is. This is an area I find absolutely fascinating. I I consider it a privilege to have been born in a period where I got to watch the arc of technology changed so dramatically. The Internet came out, I was still young enough to a stop to it, but it wasn't always there. It's something I had to learn at a point in my career. As opposed to you know, I'm fascinated by my nephews

and nieces who they grew up. There has always been smartphones, has always been tablets, has always been um Internet, and to them it's just second nature, as opposed is to a And I'm fascinated to watch how that effects um, the way they interact with it. Tell me, UM, some things about the book that we didn't get to what what what do you think is significant that we simply didn't touch in any of our questions previously? Well, I guess you know, Um, we go out a lot um.

One of the things that we haven't talked about are you know these forces that are actually going to help companies unlocked this economy? Right? So I actually in my book of Forces Shaping the Mobile Economy, and you list about ten of them, and there are nine forces. There are nine context, location, time, saliency, crowdedness, trajectory, social dynamics, weather, and text mix. We didn't talk about whether I have to ask about that because that's fascinating. Um, how does

weather affect people using mobile technology? Okay? So, um in various space? You know, it's if I have to, if I had to ask somebody. Um, if it's a nice, sunny and bright day, are people more likely to be on their phones? Are less likely to be on their phones? My instinct is to say less likely they're out and about enjoying the weather sturn start. Actually it's actually the opposite. Okay, Um, they may be up and about, but they're still on

their phones. Um. So I might be taking a stroll in Center Park and I'm there for three hours, but in at least half of that time, I've been on my phone. And so you're taking pictures, you're doing Facebook or Instagram, you're using the mapping software. As opposed to if it's a really nasty, rainy day, you're inside watching TV or on your computer. Right, if it's a rainy day and nasty day, you are watching TV, but then you also have your tablet in front of you. So

people are doing prow processing and multiple devices. So, um, you know, one of my colleagues are quotas on a different paper. He actually had a study. Um I wasn't part of it, but he esteemed did it, and they actually showed that on a sunnier day, people are more likely to spend time on their smartphones and make more purchases in the online space done in the offline space. Really that's quite fascinating, But what's the psychology behind that? Is it they're just out enduring the day, or you

would think presence is such a big movement these days. Hey, it's a nice day, we're out and about must your face being the phone is a constant harangue. I'm sure lots of people have heard from their significant others. Are we always engaged with our phones? Even on a on a beautiful day. If you're on the high Line or in Central Park or wherever you happen to be, you're more likely to purchase online than offline. So they actually

related back to one simple thing, which is mood transformations. Basically, when the day is sunnier and nicer, you feel much better. I mean you're mooding, You're in a better mood overall. Right, when you're in a better mood overall, you're more likely to actually go down to that device and start looking for things to do, Like shopping is another mood and answer. So, now you've got a brighter, sunny day, You've got you know,

online shopping that is very easily accessible. Would you rather step out and walk a few blocks to get to the store if you can get that done online on your phone. Turn sut that most people prefer to continue to be wherever they are, at work, at home, get

on their phones and buy that product. So controlling, and this was a nice control fee experiment, you know, the test group and the control group, and they continue to find that we are more likely to actually buy things on our smartphones, even on anice or sunnier, brighter actually extend, extend the mood, elevate or why do I want to go into a fluorescent lit whatever shopping supermarket, whatever when I could be outside? And I recall there have been studies.

I'm going to mangle this, so I apologize in advance. There have been studies that look at stock market performance based on weather and around the world, not just in New York, around the world, rainy day and sunny days actually have a skew that correlates with sunny days better market absolutely days worse, which just tells you, Now, I wonder how that changes as we replace human specialists with algorithms, but historically there's been this art correlation. Um, let's talk

about saliency. What is saliency relative to mobile technology? Okay, So this is also one of my favorites. You know, we live today in the world of information overload and attention deficit economy, too much information, too little attention. Saliency is the force which basically says, can I give you the best offer? As a company? Can I give you the best offer and prop it up right at the

top where you can see it? Okay? I don't want you to have to incur the cognitive cost of having to search things or browsings or you know, there's a lot of clutter out there, okay. And so what salience it refers to is the ranking effect. How do I get my ad or my offer to be ranked at the very top up so that more people are likely to see it, respond to it, and it does not get lost in the clutter down the screen. How do

you do that? Okay? So here's where, you know, the combination of the same ranking algorithms used by search engines in sort of the online internet space can be deployed in the mobile app economy. So when I open up Yelp today, for example, just to give an example, UM, yelps will Yelp has a standard set of algorithms which is not actually necessarily based on the kind of bidding

our auctions that happened on search engines. Right. So I am foreseeing a world where within a given app, when you've got multiple competitors wine for your tension, we will get back into that bidding an auction space, and companies will want to bid more, get a better placement and a better rank to get more of attention. Um. And

we did. There's actually, uh you know, elements of this in Germany in a massive study involving three seventy four cities and towns of Germany with three thousand companies using one single app, and we saw these ranking effects were dramatically powerful, quite fascinating. And then the other one I wanted to ask from from the nine forces trajectory, what is trajectory? Okay, so this I have to say, I guess I get excited about all of them, but this

is the most fascinating just because it's the most futuristic. Now, I would tell you know, our listeners brace for impact because this might be like, wow, it's really happening. But here's what it is. Blooming Days is right next door, big store, multiple floors, mass a few blocks away, right, multiple floors. What if imagine a world where the retailer knows not just where you are, but also where you have been in the past. We're not too hard to

figure out. You get that data pretty regularly. Well now, basically, you know, the WiFi in these department stores is a great instrument for them to get access to our real time horizontal and vertical data. Which floor do you go to, which or do you go to, how much department within a store, which department within a store, which floor, how much time you're spending when that's department store? And we

actually did that. So my chapter on trajectory talks about the studies we have done with chopping malls in different parts of the world, where again it's very important for us to follow the notice and consent formula. Notified consumers when they sign on the WiFi that you will get tracked, but in return for that, we are going to send you more relevant and less frequent offers. And it works like a charm. And what what is the responsive consumers

who are participating in those sorts of exchanges. Are they spending more or they're making more purchases? So we have thirty five percent higher response rates, we have an order of vanguage like twice two and a half times more spending. The individual store is benefiting. The overall mall is benefiting too. And another nice thing is with this trajectory best advertising. Because of the fact that our recommendation and go itthems is so accurate, we can make you spend more money

and spend less time so as to prevent crowdedness. And these stores, So let's talk a little bit about these big um suburban malls and other types of shopping areas we've seen. We mentioned in a number of stores that have been closing, we've generally been become over retailed is an expression. I like that in the nineties, all these big stores, you don't flick the switch and open them all their multi year in some case decade long projects.

They began building them, really expanding them. In the eighties nineties and two thousands and failed to acknowledge or think about what the Internet was going to do to those retailers.

And now we've seen a ton of empty stores, a lot of retailers that that over retailing, that excess retail footprint is in the process of I hate the phrase right sizing, but coming back to what is in a more appropriate per capital footage square footage, we're i think twice as much retail square footage as in America versus Europe. How much can technology bridge that gap for these retailers. Can they really make the store experience more relevant, faster, smarter,

more enjoyable. Um. Yes, So the answer for all of this is yes, yes, and yes. And here's why. Right so that the WiFi technology that I mentioned, you know, that's been used to cure it offers in real time to people shoppers in real time. It's not just about the commercial aspect of it. In terms of retailing. We have now seen evidence where they can use the same data to redesign the department store or the mall to figure out, you know, where are crowds, you know, sort

of aggregating and how do you dispose the crowds? How do you optimize the workflow so as to have more homogeneous distribution of crowdedness. Okay. In addition, you can find know where the hot spots are and have a higher retail price for those stores to we have their stores in the hot spots, right. Um, So there's a very interesting you know, and since you mentioned you have interested in architecture and design, there's a very interesting architectural element

to these trajectory data. It's not just about you know, commercializing three shoppers. You can actually completely change you know what We're talking with airports now in the Middle East, for example in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, about how these trajectory data can be used to redesign the layout of the retail segment of the airport. Um. And you know, where should be? Where should the most coveted stores be. Should they be closer to the terminals are further away?

You know, does and all of those things. That's quite fascinating. With the malls, it's not gonna be the Is it going to be the individual stores or is it gonna be the the mall owner that's going to have to implement these technologies. Yeah, so between the department store and the mall. There are these differences. You know, some of most centralized ammonies centralized um you know stores right right um. In fact, in the US, the Mall of American Minneapolis.

I have a colleague here who was a professor in the University of Minnesota at Carlson, and he was telling me that, you know, he was beginning to do these talks with them all of America. And you know, most likely I'll also get involved, because you know, both of them are aware of the work that we have done

in the Far East. But look here in Minneapolis, in the U. S small of America wants to use WiFi data to Sandy's trajectory based offers to consumers and use it for you know, design layouts and all of that. So it's not just that they're in this department in the store. They could say they're walking towards Macy's. Let's get them a Macy's coupon. Yeah. So, in fact, and more than that, so even within Macy's, you know, are you walking to the two me luggage store or to

the Armani's men's session. It is getting very granular and I and I find this awesome fascinating. That's amazing. It's amazing. It's it's reminds me of the scene in Minority Report X where Tom Cruise is walking in the store is giving a customized pop up add to him. It's not on his mobile phone. It's a three D hologram projected in space in front of him, and the the expectation is they're either tracking him by his mobile device or some other piece of technology. We're going to get Minority

Report on steroids. Really, yes, and that very soon because and they have to take years, five years how far away is and I would I would reckon two to three years really, because they have to do this otherwise these guys are going to go out of business. Then there's only going to be the Amazons and the jet dot coms. And it's just too competitive. If they're not grabbing people's attention, they're in a desk place. Wow, that's that's amazing. So I know I only have you for

a limited amount of time. Let's let's jump to some of my favorite questions that I ask all my guests. Um, let's let's start a little bit out your background. Have you always wanted to be in academia? You also do a lot of consulting work as well. What were you doing before, um, h N while you you were briefly Warden if memory serves, UM, I was at Warden for a new year between two total eleven and two thousand and twelve. UM. But before you know, I decided to

join academia. UM. Well, I know I did my PSD. Everybody has to do it. But before that I worked in the industry for a couple of years with IBM and with a company called HC. L. Hewlett Packard. Both of them were in India. And you you mentioned your you get both a master's and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon, that's right, and from there to IBM or from there to Warden. No, so from there I joined n YU after my PSD, and I've basically spent twelve years at

en VYU and one year at Wharton UM. But before my master's and PhD in the US at Carnegie Mellon, I did an NBA in India UM and undergraduate and engineering. And where does IBM fit into that timeline? So after my m b A, UM, you know, I wanted to do something in I T consulting, so I got a job with x C L Hulett Packard and then I spent a year there and then I moved to IBM again very similar portfolio, e commerce consulting. That's really when

I started getting interested about the Internet. It is nine song just the Internet was kind of blowing up, blowing up, and I guess you know, I didn't find those two years very satisfactory. Um. I guess I wasn't. You know. You call it intellectual challenge or not enough curiosity, and that's what made me think about academia. And you also, you still do a lot of consulting for a lot of retailers and uh, tech companies, mobile companies. Who do

you consult for? So I've considered a lot for you know, telecom providers, for tech companies Facebook and Apple and Samsung. And then you know, I also worked with Esctelecom in South Korea with China Mobile. Um I've worked with other smaller startups and so on. UM. So I try to mix it up and it keeps it always interesting and I love it. I love it. So tell us about some of your early mentors, who were the people who

affected how you think about the world about technology. So I think I, I, you know, my early PhD days at Carni emil and is when I had you know, a few amazing individuals who played a role. Um. You know, one of them was a professor in economics. His name is Odeya Ragin. He's a professor now in the University of Michigan and an Harbor, and you know, he became my closest mentor. I would basically spend you know, a

lot chunk of the time with him. Um. In fact, he even brought me a laptop, so you know, PSC students, you know, poor people every dollar accounts. And the fact that he would go out of his way, he didn't have to write, um, just buy me a laptop was amazing. And it just so happened that we connected very well. And you know, he gave me some awesome advice over the years. So he had a huge role at the beginning.

And then when I came to n YU as a very young junior assistant professor, there's a professor and why you called body of Wisenfeld. She's a professor of management. UM. She was appointed as my mentor. And initially I was

a little surprised because she's from management. I am a more of a con person, but it just founded that I was the best decision and why you probably took for me really because she has and I thank her very explicitly, both her and the origin and my acknowledgments that there's a couple of lines just for them that you know, I'm in depthing grateful to them and why

you does this. As a matter of course, they have a mentoring program between junior and senior professors, Is that right, Yeah, So we try to do this because you know, the world of academia is very cutthroat, especially in these very competitive top tier schools. You know, getting tenure is a non trivial process. You know, lots of people come in, as in your professors, only a handful of them get tenured. You can get lost along the way, you know, you

can get devastated. You So having a mentor is really useful, and I think Stern really does it well by also pairing, you know, sort of different back people with different backgrounds. So I had a quant background. They could have given me somebody from the quant area. They didn't. They decided to give me somebody who's more qualitative in terms of you know, or more behavioral, but somehow that you know, that is magical that that's a great, great idea, quite

quite fascinating. Tell us about, um other thinkers who influenced your approach to looking at and analyzing technology. So this might sound very very strange, but my biggest influences in this space haven't necessarily come from technology. Um. One of my biggest hobbies, which I try to pursue religiously, is mountaineering. I'm basically altitude climber. Someone a previous guest was also a high altitude climb I'm trying to remember who it was.

But I was surprised because I didn't expect it was like really yeah, yeah, so yeah, I and most people think I'm crazy, right, you know, why would you want to go and climb these mountains with big fifty sixty backpacks? But? Um, what what have you climbed recently? Um? So, I've climbed a fair bit in South America and you know, Bolivia, Ecuador. I climbed climbing Jarrow in Africa. I have climbed parts of the Himalayas. I've climbed a lot in the Cascades,

Rainier and a fur forty. How did you find your way into mountaineering? Like, how did how did that become a thing for you? So almost you know, like by luck, I guess. So I started doing my undergrad in a the northern part of India, in a state called pun Job, which is actually very close to the photos of the Himalayas. Now, you know, every other weekend or every other month, my friends and I would just back our backs and go hiking. And I realized that was when I was eighteen, and

I'd gone these hikes a few times a year. I loved it. And then I also realized some are physically and mentally it was easy for me to do these things compared to some of the others other friends, and they started egging me that, hey, you know, if you're just good at this hiking, maybe you should take it up a notch and think about something more challenging. And I said, yeah, you know, I could do that. So

I joined this Himalin Mountaining Institute. Of course, a one month boot camp course, very very tough, you know, like forty people got in, only seven came out alive. Kind of camp. But um, that really kind of uh you know, taught me that outdoors is where I belong. Um, you know, if I had my way, my job would have been that of like a professional mountaining guide. Um, but then I realized, while, uh, you know, it's not the best

paying jobs, so maybe I should do something else. Why, you know, continuing to claimb So before I interrupted you, you're gonna say that one of the people who influenced your thinking right was ad Vestures. He's a one amazing legendary American climber. He's climbed all fourteen eight thousand meter mountains without bottle oxygen. And here's why I was most I read all his books, in many books, but his mantra has been there are no short cuts of the top.

It's all about diligence, you know, the kind of preparation, preparation, planning discipline. You know, in my profession, people often say, wow, you know that person is so super intelligent. Okay, I've always believed that in academics, intelligence is highly overrated. Success to me is diligence and one percent intelligence, And that the fact that it's all about diligence and planning actually came from reading and sort of experiencing vicariously what d

Vestures has been doing all his life. Yeah, I referenced Michael Morbison's paradox of skill all the time, which is, in the market, you have lots of really smart people. It's a given that these folks are smart, and paradoxically

that makes luck all the more significant. If you put a whole bunch of really sharp people in a room, whoever gets a lucky break and and it turns out to be the same in sports, where you have all these people who are physically gifted, hardworking, and so they're also highly skilled, and then a lucky bounce uh uh an officiating mistake, the lucky break often affects the outcome. It's just a given everybody is smart or skilled or what have you. And I also believe that you know,

you can create your luck to some extent. You know, if you are our discipline, hardworking, planning, you know, driven person, you can influence some extent that luck. Um there's an expression, and I know I'm mangling this, but it's hard work is the mother of of fortune, meaning the you know, the harder you work, the lucky you tend to get. Although that said, every now and then a little bit of luck the right way if you go along a long way. So so back to mountaineering, what do you

do to prep to do? Forget an eight thousand meter meter or foot meter eight thousand meter mountain? What do you do for a five thousand meter So a lot of training and I would train easily four or five months continuously in a given year. What are you doing when you're training. I'm carrying big backpacks and I'm climbing

hundreds of floors every single day. And some of the security guards and the tall skyscrapers of New York City, you know, there's weird you know, Indian American guy who comes with the backpack and says, it's kind of use the stair of it. So I've had to get permission from the condor the CoAP boards to do funny um. But I do a lot of that um and then our stairs roughly equivalent to going up the side of

a mountain or is it just the vertical exercise? Yeah, you know, it's not nearly as great as it lambing a real mountain, not even the same. But it's about the closest thing you can do in a city like

ours where we don't have any mountains. Right that said, every now and then, you know, when I'm getting in the middle of my training, I do take a drive out to you know, New Jersey or Upsett, New York, Bear Mountain and so on, and do multiple rounds with heavy backpacks, run up to the top down Yeah, yeah, as fast as possible, go up and down, up and down. You know, it's about feet or sort of the top

two or three rounds and that's pretty exhausting. What can you do to prep for altitudes where the oxygen is thinner? Is there is there something you could literally because the last trip I had to Colorado where we were in um, I'm drawing a blank on which of the ski resorts veil. I was shocked at at how much the lack of oxygen impacts you. It's not even like running a mile. You're walking a hundred yards across a space and you're like, wow,

I am genuinely out of breath and out of shape. So, you know, one can be the most well trained athlete on sea level and yet suffer the worst altitude mounted sickness MS. Right, It's just one of those things where it's very difficult to plan and predict how it's going to be for me myself, you know, for the same level of training for similar altitude I've experienced different symptoms. Sometimes it's been fantastic, sometimes not so good. What can

I do? Not a whole lot. You know, there's something called a training mask. You may have seen those pictures of you know. Sometimes it has three different nozzles. You know, each nozzle represents a certain percentage of air that can come in. You can try to simulate the high altity thing. It's not nearly as great as the real thing. Some of the real professional climbers, they use a tent, a tent that is able to actually suck out the oxygen um.

I forget the name of the tent, but it's a new product I'll just launched by some of the big sporting companies who encourage climbers to spend twenty four hours before they fly out of the big So it's the opposite of a hyperbaric chamber where you're pumping in that's right here, you have less oxs exactly. Yeah, you just suck it out. Yeah, that's that's amazing. So let's shift gears a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about books.

Tell me about some of your favorite books. What do you like to read so well, you know, like I said, I love all books in mountaineering. I've I've basically read a ton of them and not just give us a few names. Okay, well, no short coust of the top and my favorite, no shortcuts to the top by my advers yours. It taught me a lot about life lessons. Um. Then you know there are there are books written by written on K two. The Savage Mountain, you know, is

one of them. Why is K two considered so challenging versus others? So? Is it just the sheer assent or um? So? K two is basically built like almost a perfect pyramid. It's extremely steep, and you know it is um So even though Everest is a dead but higher it's considered less technical from a climbing perspective than K twys Um. There's also you know, it's more treacherous because of the steepness and the terrain. The weather comes in very quickly,

quickly and very unpredictable. And if you look at the stats, you know, one in seven climbers of climb Everest have died really one in seven, right historically, um, And that number is you know, going down all the years because technology has improved so much, so we have fewer debts. But up until you know, two or three years back, that was a number. With K two, it's one in three. That's even more instant, it's even more insane. And that's

not the worlds. The world's actually statistically is Annapurna, which is also one of the telemeta mountains, and it's one in two. So, um, flipper coin, maybe you make it? Maybe you know something like that. Yeah, yeah, I, UM, I don't watch TV this weekend. I'm not climbing anything. Um, give us some other books. But what else do you like along the lines of K two? Have you ever read uh, the Shackleton Story Endurance. Um, it's a fascinating book.

It's very familiar. I may have read it. Um. This is Antarctica now, okay, Okay, I know the name because of the store. There's an amazing narrative about the book. The book came out, I want to say, in the thirties or forties. Maybe it was right before the war or right after the war, fifties, and it did okay, but you know, no great shakes. And thirty years later somebody both the rights to it reissued it and it

just explodes. It was the right time and it's one of these stories that you the same thing about the no shortcuts. Everybody should have died, and I don't. I won't spoil the ending, even though everybody knows it. But it's just that the ship gets caught in the ice. The ice crushes it. You're in Antarctica with essentially you don't have a cell phone, you don't have any way to communicate with people. There's a hope that you're supposed

to meet people six months from now. How do I get from this side of the world to there with essentially whatever supplies we can scrape up from the ship as it's you know, being crushed in the ice. It's in It's insane, I'm sure. Um. Some of the tales of K two are are similar. Let's let's move away from extreme um activities. What other books, technology, economics? What else have you enjoyed over time? So um, I mean this is not necessarily technology. But again, you know, one

of the other breed of folks. I greatly respected by our special forces. Um, so I have. I'm fascinated by the U. S. Navy series, the Delta Force, the Army Rangers, and again, just like movies, I've ready a tone of these books. One of my favorites Lone Survivor, which became a movie yea, with marks Mark Wahlberg as the guy, but the real guy was Marcus Lottrell. Um So, I actually follow his Twitter feed. Um So again, I think, you know, I read a lot of these books written

by on special forces. Um in the world of technology, you know. Um, I tried to read not necessarily so many books, but a lot of the internet websites like you know, Mashable and tech Crunch and Fast Company, because one of my occupation has us is I have to be always updated with the latest and the best right and so in some ways, if I have to do that, I have I don't have a whole lot of time to actually spend reading an entire book. Um So, it's

it's sort of a trade off there, you know. And early in my career I started on a trading desk and the head trader was a former Marine jungle combat instructor. And I share your um interest in special Forces and you hear some of the stories you hear are just astonishing, and it's amazing how parallel it is to other aspects of life. It's really and we're we're finding more and

more things are applicable. One of the things that I found astonishing, and this is out of the Special Forces before they go on a mission, the night before, they go through a visualization technique where they're going through each step of the of the plans, whatever the insertion or event is, and part of the training is okay, X goes wrong, visualize not only what your tools and resources are and how you can respond to it, but imagine

how you're gonna feel emotionally when this happens. And so what people have said to me is when something actually goes wrong and you feel that panic rising, you've already prepped yourself for it and you can manage it. You can deal with it because left unshaft, your emotions in those circumstances are deadly and you can't have that happened. And it's so parallel to investing. If when you say to people, all right, so the market's gonna be down thirty,

how are you gonna behave? What what's your emotional state going to be? If you could get people to go through those exercises, their behavior is better when events actually hit age that. That's any other books on special services or special forces that you think are are worth mentioning. Well, I really loved um. I think it's called thirteen Hours

in Benghazi. Uh, you know came out last year to last year in the book and the movie has made awesome recommend that highly again like and I'm biased, um, but again, you know, you get to understand the psychology, psychology on the mental fortitude and the process of these special people. And you know that really motivates me because it's not just about what I have to deal with an mountains, but even in daily life, like you mentioned, you know, we have a lot of academic publication is

a tough process. I mean, you know you've you published our parish, right, So it just teaches me to be more resilient. Um, you know, just be stronger mentally. So it makes it it makes it easier for me to deal with these things. It's really astonishing. My my office is about fifteen percent veterans. We find they work very well in the world to finance because they're dealing with complex logistics and and getting them done. And in our office there are no bullets was in by your head,

so it's actually easy for them. What most people look at and say, gee, this is really hard this really complicated. Well, you're not in a plumbing aircraft. Nobody's shooting at you. It's relatively easy compared to And you know, my favorite NBA students or e m BAS students, and I might get beaten for this, are the wets because these guys are the most disciplined in the class, that the most ready, they have prepared, and that the least in so flashy

flamboyant or showing off. Damn my favorite stuff. If I just teach a class with only wets, I would just do anything for that. Do you have a lot of people who come out of the Armed services? Yeah? So, you know all the most of the top business schools have special programs for um X R vets um so. In fact, in last fall, I actually had an ex

X Navy Seal person in my class. No one a mess with Yeah, yeah, absolutely not UM but it was such you know, and he was one of a few other UM you know, X Army, X Special Forces, X Marines. It's just awesome to have them in the class. You know. I I shouldn't tell these stories, but we used to go out off the trading desk and one of the guys is a forming Army ranger. The head of the desk is a former Marine combat instructor. I'm like a skinny nothing back then, as opposed to a fat nothing now.

And we would go to bars and and any time there was trouble, I always felt like I could say or do anything. I got these two monsters with me. You know, guy wants to cause trouble, It's like, all right, bring it, you know it was. It creates a full sense of of confidence right when you're when you're as long as they're they have your back. But it really is true the attitude that you develop when you think

about these highly technical, highly dangerous missions. You know, the the Armed Services are really good at learning how to do these things, if nothing else, through just repetition and trial and error, and eventually they get it down to a science. And and these guys are really quite amazing. It's astonishing. All right, let's let's get back into uh

no more literal war stories. Let's get back into um our favorite questions in the last ten minutes or so we have so what changes have you noticed since you be again focusing on mobile? How has the industry shifted and is it just a never ending fluxus is always going to be in change or what do you say? Um?

I think the biggest change has been that the change from focusing on strategy to tactics, and that the reason that changes happened is because of the increasing accessibility of data that lets companies actually measure the effectiveness of their tactics. And now they can go back and justify the r O I you know, why am I spending on mobile? And so up until recently, the focus was do we have a mobile strategy, meaning like do we have a

mobile app a mobile website? Today it's more like, well, obviously we have to have one of those, but is the investment worth it? So people are recognizing, hey, this is important yestely, and earlier there was ambiguity. But earlier there was more of a recognition that it's important, but there was no where to measure how important it was, however active it was. And that's changed now. So what's the next big shift we're going to see in this space?

I think it's gonna be this intersection of mobile with the consumer Internet of things, right, and so you know, more of us, more of us varying variable devices and we're talking about this earlier about getting used to you know, you're smart refrigerator, making a phone called reminding you that you just run out of groceries, you know, and stuff like that. I think that's going to be more of

a norm than an exception. So the likes of Alexa or in a Kartana or series and so on, Artificial intelligence is going to start taking an important role in our lives. You know, some may say they will take over our lives. I don't think it's like like that, but I think they'll have a very important influence. And so you know, this intersection of AI, consumer, IoT and the mobile phone is right in the middle. It's all going to be propelled and powered and sort of you know,

influenced by the mobile phone. Quite quite interesting. Let me shift it up, knew a little bit. Tell us about a time you failed and what did you learn from that experience? So, um, just after high school. You know, this was in India, and you know, in India, if you want to do engineering, sort of the one brand everybody recognizes I I T. And everybody wants to go in an Indian Institute of Technology. Correct, right, So a lot of the folks in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street.

Have I T backgrounds. I always thought, you know, I'd be able to get in because I had great grades in high school. I was like crushing it. But for various reasons, I didn't make it. That was devastating because I didn't make it. At the same time, all my friends who I knew would make it made it. That was a big failure. But basically, you know, I learned that, um, you know, yeah, you know, life can push you back, throw you out a few times, but you've got to

just come back. And you know, momentarily there's some disappointment. So I promised myself in my first team of engineering, I'd still went to a decent engineering school. N I N I T y um. It's most people will stay it's it's great. But for me it was a disappointment. But you know, I'm still proud of where I went.

And I told myself in the first year that since I always had a plan to do an NBA and in India, the big NBA brand are these I M S. And I promised myself on day one, I'm going to get to the I M S. You know, come hell or or hell or heaven or whatever it is. Hell or high water hell or high water right? And um, I just religiously studied like a zombie for four years. Just make that happen. And it happened. So so the lesson learned was just double your efforts, don't give up.

I mean, you know, life is a marathon. It's not just a spraint. Okay, you didn't make it to the I I T. But look, if you make your iams and then eventually do the things you want to do, you can still make it happen. And our last two favorite questions. If a millennial or recent college graduate came up to you and said, hey, I'm interested in getting into information services, mobile technology, what have you? What sort

of career advice would you give them? So what I would ask them is and are you thinking it from an engineering perspective or from a business perspective? Okay, that's the first thing, because you're about to enter into an undergraduate program. Do you want to get into more of the technical engineering aspects or more of the business aspects. That's the first thing. Once you decide that, then it's a question if you get into business, you know, do you want to be the strategy is the big sinker?

Or do you want to be the tactical tactician, the one who's going to be analyzing the data, building the models and that sort of thing. So you know, every stage there's a decision tree to be asked, and this is a kind of question I'll ask them. And our last question, what is it that you know about technology smartphones, mobile tech today that you wish you knew ten or fifteen years ago when you first we're starting out. Well,

that's a great one. Actually, you know, sometimes I do wish, um I had known earlier, um, how accurate the measurements will get to be, because basically what I mean is, you know, I've always been a fan of metrics and measurement, and ten years back, the accuracy of the data and the quality of the data was nowhere near as good as where it is today, right um. And so along the way, you know, I had to build models or

design projects, and these are all long term things. So if I knew five years from now how accurate the data would be, how great the metric would be, I would design it differently. So, you know, hindsight is we have been speaking with Professor and India Ghosts of n y U Stern School of business and author most recently of tap Unlocking the Mobile Economy. If people want to find some of your own other researcher papers, they can go to the n y U Stern site to find

your list, your CV and your list of publications. That's right. I have a homepage that's also on the end yu Stone website, so please go there and and again my emails there as well. If somebody has to reach out to me, I'm on email. My Twitter hashtag is a g h y C. I'm on LinkedIn, so either way it's well. Thank you in India for being so generous with your time. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions. Be sure to write to us at m IB podcast

at Bloomberg dot net. Be sure and check out any of the other hundred and fifty or so prior podcast we've had. Just looked up or down on iTunes or SoundCloud or Bloomberg dot com and you could see the full run of all of our guests. I would be remiss if I did not thank my head of research, Michael bat Nick. Taylor Riggs is our producer, and our recording engineer and audio producer is Medina Parwanna. I'm Barry Rihults have been listening to Manasters and Business on Bloomberg Radio.

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