Behavioral interviews

I have been using behavioral interviews for a while now while interviewing candidates. More than the technical skills which can be evaluated much easily, evaluating a person's capability to make decisions, do the right thing, act in complex business situations and deal with organizational complexities are more difficult. If you were to ask a person, what would you do in a certain situation, he or she would tell the answer what you want to hear. However with behavioral interviews, you are asking the person to talk about an example of a particular situation and then dive deep on analyzing how the person dealt with the situation.

This technique has been very useful to me in evaluating candidates as it not only tells how the person acted in a certain situation, the values and the methods used and whether the person has the required experience for the job s/he is interviewing.

Disruptive innovation

Disruptive innovations either create new markets or reshape existing markets by delivering relatively simple, convenient, low-cost innovations to a set of customers who are ignored by industry leaders. Disruptive innovation brings in a new class of customers 'non consumers' or caters to 'overshot' customers who do not need performance, quality or product improvements that are focused by established companies - 'sustaining' innovations mainly serving the high margin customer base. Prof. Christensen has done an excellent job in defining this and also gives several examples - steel mills, disc drive industry, etc.

Recently I was thinking about this and analyzing how we at Mitek are disrupting the banking space. Until recently, consumers did not have a way except to drive up to the ATM to deposit a check or buy a office check scanner. We at Mitek have disrupted this by providing a more convenient way for this job to be done i.e deposit a check into the bank account. As soon as you get a check in the mail, just start your banking app on the smart phone, take a picture and click a button and your check is on its way to your account. It is so much better than holding on to the check, hoping to remember that you will take it with you next time you go out and finally stand in line at the teller or the ATM.

The banking space has rarely changed for a long time. The focus in the banking space has been on higher margin services. Mitek has brought in a disruption to the space by providing convenience. Chase was one of the first to adopt Mitek's technology and now most banks are on their way to implement this.

This is becoming ubiquitous with all banking apps and soon you will never have to go to the bank to deposit a check.

In my next blog, I will write about another disruptive technology I had worked on. Stay tuned.

Mobile Deposit - Bank of America

I am excited that Bank of America has launched the Mobile Deposit application for iPhone today. Great team work from Mitek to support Bank of America going live. I tried the application and the user experience is great, seamless and friendly. I like that the deposit is immediately reflected with status as Pending in your account statement. 

With BoA launching, we now have Chase, Citi, Wells (partially launched), BoA, PNC - all the top 5 banks providing the Mobile Deposit feature. Definitely gratifying to see our technology widely adopted and used. 

Additional good news is that, the deposit through Mobile limit seems to be $10000 which is pretty good. This means I can deposit my typical expense checks ( typically $3K) without having to go to the bank or ATM. There are some banks which have much lower limits but users are definitely requesting to increase the limits based on the reviews I have seen on app stores.

Go Mitek!! Go Mobile Deposit!!

Long term value versus short term results

How many companies have you seen focusing on long term value at the cost of short term results. I have not seen many.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos is a genius when it comes to building long term value and doing what is right for the customer.

Over and over again, I have seen company CEOs focusing on the quarterly earnings without dedicating enough time to look at longer term strategy and value. Unfortunately, it is not the fault of the CEO but the boards that judge the performance and the wall street which rewards and punishes based on the results. We have seen over and over again a company's market value going down by 50-60% just because the company missed the numbers even with a narrow margin. Companies depend on the public markets for capital. Company's require the high liquidity that capital markets can provide.

What is the solution to this problem? CEOs are stuck between relying on wall street for capital and are forced to compromise long term value for short term results.

 Any comments welcome....

Mobile deposit

Mitek Systems

I left TCS 4 weeks back and I am now with Mitek Systems where we enable mobile applications with our patented mobile imaging and recognition technology. It is exciting times at Mitek and the timing is right for this technology with numerous applications on the way. Mobile Check deposit is a leading application that is using our technology. I will be posting more and sharing the excitement in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!!

2010 Mobile War quotes

“We did not enter the search business. They [Google] entered the phone business. Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them." - Steve Jobs Feb 2010

“This don't be evil mantra: It’s a load of crap.” - Steve Jobs Feb 2010

"We had been working on Android a very long time, with the notion of producing phones that are Internet enabled and have good browsers and all that because that did not exist in the marketplace. I think that [Steve Jobs'] characterization of us entering after is not really reasonable." - Larry Page

"Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone." - Steve Jobs Apr 4 2010

"You know, there's a porn store for Android. Anyone can download them. You can, your kids can. That's just not a place we want to go." - Steve Jobs

“In reality, we think the open versus closed argument is just a smokescreen to try and hide the real issue, which is, what's best for the customer, fragmented versus integrated. We think Android is very, very fragmented and becoming more fragmented by the day .” Steve Jobs, Oct 2010

Contrasting Google's open OS with Apple's closed system with a “Draconian future, a future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice.” Vic Gundotra, Google

The definition of open: "mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make" - Andy Rubin Tweet

"We are very committed to the integrated approach. No matter how many times Google tries to characterize it as closed, we are confident that it will triumph over Google’s fragmented approach no matter how many times Google tries to characterize it as open" - Steve Jobs Oct 18 2010

"Apple's attempt to draw RIM into Apple's self-made debacle is unacceptable.One thing is for certain, RIM's customers don't need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity" - Mike Lazaridis, RIM

"We've now passed RIM, and I don't see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future" - Steve Jobs, Oct 2010

"For those of us who live outside of Apple's distortion field,.................As usual, whether the subject is antennas, Flash or shipments, there is more to the story and sooner or later, even people inside the distortion field will begin to resent being told half a story." - Jim Balsillie, Oct 19 2010

“They (Adobe) are lazy” - Steve Jobs Feb 2010

"Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice" - Steve Jobs Apr 4 2010

"It turns out that on the internet, people use Flash," Google vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra May 20 2010

"If Flash is the number one reason that Macs crash, it has as much to do with the Apple’s OS…On Jobs’ claim that Flash drains mobile gadget batteries: “Patently false.” - Shantanu Narayan Apr 29 2010

“Flash is an open specification.. It’s a published specification… Open systems always triumph.” - Shantanu Narayan Apr 29 2010