“Innovation”—one of the least spoken words in company meetings, while revenue and profits are often heard.

Large companies & industries have a lot of talent, money, infrastructure, and network of partners—it seems logically right to assume that they have all it takes to be innovative. Counterintuitively, they aren’t. While startups, who don’t have any of those resources are the ones who innovate and disrupt large companies. Though there are exceptional companies that are good at innovating, like Google, while the majority struggle to. The rest of this blog will focus on the majority.

There are multiple reasons why large companies…

It is estimated that the Indian urban population will grow to 60 crores by the year 2030, from about 47 crores today, implying that the urban population is constantly increasing. While this rapid urbanisation helps in terms of job creation and economic development, but at the same time poses a lot of urban challenges.

These challenges are found across sectors of city administration including water management, energy management, mobility & transportation, governance, healthcare, etc. Some of the common challenges include improper waste segregation, increased traffic congestion, lack of access to clean water, and many more.

These challenges are not only…

Indian cities face a lot of challenges due to rapid urbanisation, including improper waste management, increased traffic congestion, lack of access to clean water, etc. Though each city is different, many of these challenges are common across cities.

These urban challenges are complex & unprecedented in nature, thus requires the intervention of advanced technologies & innovations in addressing them.

Technologically advanced & innovative solutions often come from Startups, rather than large companies. But the problem with these solutions is that they need to be co-created & field-tested in the relevant urban environment before they can be bought for large scale…

Reading non-fiction is hard. It is less imaginative, less interesting, and less exciting as fiction is. There are no plot twists, character development, and is less emotional. This is why people find it hard to read non-fiction, especially those who read fiction regularly.

But the problem is not with non-fiction, rather it’s how people read it. Though both fiction and non-fiction are words printed on paper, aka books, reading them should be approached in a completely different way.

Below are 3 techniques I’ve tried and tested that made non-fiction interesting. …

Learning through analogies is easy, fun, and effortless. They offer the quickest way to understand concepts, theories, and models for the first time through examples and metaphors we are familiar with.

But on the other hand, there are downsides in using them too—analogies and metaphors are not a shortcut to learn. It only helps understand concepts on a surface level, and not beyond.

Learnability is one of the key skills everyone should master—both in the present and in the future—so it is important to understand when to use them and when not to.

Why and where analogies should not be used

1. Analogies oversimplify concepts

Take any 5th or 6th grader’s physics…

“I love this place, this is exactly the kind of place I would like to work,” I tell myself as I walk around Forge for the first time. I was quite enthraled by all the gadgets lying around, people glued to screens coding, and the entire buzzing atmosphere. I felt so excited that day and even spoke about what I saw at Forge to my friends.

I always had this fascination to work for a company that is ahead of others in time—Forge was one. A few months later I joined the company. As I write this, 9 months later…

Throughout my life I was trained how to speak—elocutions, public speaking, group discussions, debates, and so on. But I was never taught nor have I heard of someone learn “listening” formally.

One reason could be because speaking is tangible—unlike listening—it makes more noise, quite literally, thus attracts more attention as a skill.

But listening is as important as speaking is. It is an overlooked skill, both in personal and professional lives. As we shall see, it is one of the most important skills you need to master, and it also lays the foundation for other important skills too.

Listening Builds Trust

People are…

When I was a teenager I was happy most of the time. I didn’t have any philosophies to find happiness, my mere existence was all it took to keep me happy. But adulthood changed all that—whatever worked in teenage was absolutely useless in adulthood. And I’m sure this is the case for you as well—it’s universal.

As adults, we need to consciously put a lot of efforts to keep ourselves happy, or at least sane. It’s hard but is worth it. Because it’s the only way to lead a happy and peaceful life.

I’m gonna share 5 principles and realisations…