INKtalks

Why INK?

Apr 3rd, 2012 1 Comment

Why do I work at INK?

As a non-Indian, this is actually a pretty relevant question. I have no Indian relatives by marriage, and before starting work at INK, I’d never even visited the country. As the only blonde-haired and freckled member of the INK team, when I tell people I work for an Indian company, the usual response I get is some joke about reverse outsourcing.

When I think about why I work for INK, I dream big. I dream globally. I think about the role of INK and the future of this company in the next five years. INK is by and for India, and INK’s thought-leaders are India’s global face to the world. I see INK as the trend predictor of India’s future, a pre-release sneak preview, if you will, that we’re lucky enough to see today.

INK is the rural innovator, talking about a homegrown innovation that transformed a village. INK is the business leader, offering insights on India’s position relative to a global product line. INK is the young artist, spinning an entirely unique mélange of culture old and new to create a provocative statement about a nation’s identity. And INK is the seasoned veteran, looking back on a lifetime of lessons learned and prospecting on the state of future change.

So I was thinking about all these things when crafting a new mission statement for the company, and how all of them brew together to form our unique identity. And here is what I came up with:

How does the future unfold, and what drives it? At INK we know that tomorrow is shaped today by visionary men and women. That’s why we are committed to capturing and sharing the best breakthrough ideas, inspiring stories and surprising perspectives. Watch INKtalks and meet the people who are designing the future–now.

INK is forward-looking, using intimate narratives by thought-leaders to understand the future direction we’re all headed. By sharing great ideas, stories and perspectives, in a format that’s quick, easy and enjoyable to understand, INK is enabling everyone—anywhere—to drink from the fountain of knowledge.

By Nina Gannes, INK Head Writer

April 3, 2012

Talking to Jennifer Aaker

Feb 16th, 2012 Leave a comment

When watching Jennifer Aaker’s talk, I bet your first reaction was similar to mine. In essence, I pretty much immediately concluded that Aaker is the $#!+. She’s demystifying happiness. She’s re-imagining marketing to make it a social good. And, she’s saving thousands of Southeast Asians by revolutionizing the concept of bone marrow drives? It sounds too good to be true. When I was a five-year old girl, I wanted to wear pink princess dresses and save the ponies. Aaker is pretty much doing the grown-up version of that—and it’s her job!

So on Monday I spent some time talking to Aaker on the phone. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for, but I think I was subconsciously hoping she would drop me some tips that would enable me to become some sort of adult version of a pony crusader. And my time was well spent. Let me tell you just one of the things I learned.

First of all, here’s a problem in my life. I bet a lot of you feel this way, too. I care about lots of things in this world. I like animals, the environment, social justice, political empowerment, rainbows, cupcakes and sugarplum fairies. I want to help ALL of these causes—but I simply don’t have the cash or attention span to contribute to each and every campaign.

I asked Aaker about this. How can the Environmental Justice Group—or whomever you are—make it easier for someone like me to pay attention and act?

Aaker explained that it’s not so much money—20 bucks, lets say—that organizations should really be striving to compel their donors to give. Instead it’s time. Why? When you contribute time, you get an experience. That hour I spent picking up trash from the park enabled me to personally relate to the Environmental Justice Group, forging a connection between the organization and me. That connection and that experience made me happy. The peaceful, contentment kind of happy. The enduring kind.

Contrast that to the experience of donating 20 bucks on paypal. The process might take 3 minutes, and I have no visceral experience to reward me for my good deed. At best, I’ll get a video in my thank you letter that helps me imagine all the good my money is doing for the environment. That’s just not as satisfying as having the personal experience myself. It’s disconnected enough that it makes me wonder how many lattes I could have bought with the 20 bucks instead. Do I care about lattes or the environment more? Well, obviously I’m going to answer the environment, but…you have to admit, a latte is a more tangible experience in the moment.

Aaker advocates designing moments, experiences, connections, something REAL to encourage people to take action for your org. If you’re not convinced already, she’s shown that once people have had a positive experience, they’re more likely to give money, which makes them want to have another experience, which makes them give money again…and so on and so forth. Aaker calls this the “ripple effect,” and she believes this is a powerful component to the success of any advocacy campaign—or marketing campaign in general, for that matter. As she talks about the 100k cheeks bone marrow drive in her INKtalk, it’s easy to understand what she means.

So how does all this relate to my life? On the one hand, it makes me feel good that I don’t have to blame myself for being an apathetic social justicer anymore. After all, it’s the organizations fault for not creating experiences that make it easy for me to get involved, not my fault for not wanting to give up my lattes! On the other hand, though, next time I think about contributing to a cause, I’m going to search out experiences. Not just because it’s easier on my wallet, but because I know I’m going to be more emotionally fulfilled because of it. And lastly, when I finally get around to my “save the ponies” campaign, you can be sure that the first thing I’m going to do is make a list of 10 easy things you can do to help our cause, and the last thing I’m going to do is outright ask you for your money.

 

By Nina Gannes, INK Program Manager

February 15, 2012

To watch Jennifer Aaker’s INKtalk, click here, or check it out below.

 

 

It’s all about the PEOPLE

Dec 29th, 2010 Leave a comment

What do you do when curtains come down on a great show? There is sadness that it’s all over too soon. You comfort yourself you will be there again and get back to life and living, carrying those little ‘soul-uplifting’ moments with you forever. There is so much and more. And we are not talking about the year that will just pass us by.

When we took our bow on the last day of the first-ever INK Conference, in association with TED, this December 12, we felt all of the above, resolving at the same time to come back better and stronger.

It is now more than 10 days since we sat mesmerized listening to so many untold stories, tapped to the beats of beautiful music, or shed a few quiet tears hearing about loss and redemption, love and longing — all on the INK stage. In such a context, distance, as they say, makes one look back on things with a fonder heart. The out-of-moment state as opposed to the in-the-moment one. And the one thing that stands out about an experience like INK is the people who populate it.

The people who tell a story, share an idea, show a new way to look at an old idea – all those up on the stage. Then there are people who make up the audience — the banker, the singer, the entrepreneur, the CEO, the scientist, the artist, the conference junkie, the industrialist, the novelist and the list can go on. These are people who also have their own incredible stories to tell, and could well be sharing the limelight. There’s no way then of dividing INK people into separate categories – some who only talk and some who only listen.

As an INK attendee remarked on the second day, “One will get to hear the Speaker Talks once they are online anyway, but what I am looking forward to at INK is meeting so many people from such diverse backgrounds.”

Rekha Menon, executive director at Accenture and an INK attendee, called the INK experience “INK-credible” and termed it as her “Brain feed.”

A student volunteer at INK was not just a student studying to get a degree, she was an entrepreneur as well.  Sitting under the warm sun with the breeze determined to keep blowing away the empty water bottles from the table, Min Xuan Lee was having a quiet lunch on the last day of INK with her other volunteer friends, happy that all the running around in her role, was worth it. She talked about ‘Playmoolah’ (‘The best ‘real’ way to teach children about money’) which she has co-founded. “We teach little children to value money and how saving is important,” she shared animatedly.

While reviewing his INK experience, attendee Nicholas Foo, who is an assistant manager at the Singapore Tourist Board, wrote in his blog, “I had the fortune of hanging out with the world’s youngest headmaster, a 14-year-old computer animator and a child prodigy. And then I look at myself, all 25 years of it, and asked myself, what have I done and what am I going to do? It was these same 2 questions I stuck on my hostel wall whilst in university. Nearly everyone there (at INK), even those in the audience, had created or started something or another; a social enterprise, a company, an NGO…I’ve started nothing more than a blog.”

Nicholas is just being humble. He can any day make a very good stand-up artiste, as was witnessed by many on the second evening dinner. Nicholas took up the challenge of giving a five minute talk in an Indian accent, and the entire gathering at the amphitheatre was in splits.

Most people at INK carried more than one kind of business card. The businessman who also paints, the scientist who aspires to be a novelist, the writer who runs marathons…you get the drift.

As a news report in a daily put it, “It (INK) also made for interesting people-watching.” True, yet not the whole truth. True, because there were interesting people you could exchange more than a polite hello with during breaks, with say someone like Ralph Simon, founder of the first mobile ring tone company.  Yet not the whole truth. Because at INK it is difficult to just be a curious bystander. You cannot leave it without carrying away a part of it with you. INK is like a campfire site to gather around, listen and exchange stories that make our lives richer and more vibrant.

Dipti Nair