Payoda Technology Inc

"Ba" & Innovation. Inside our 6-weeks Hackathon - LaunchPad Breakthroughs do not happen in isolation, they are fueled by shared spaces where people, ideas and creativity collide. When we were at Yokohama National University (YNU) in Japan, last May, Daniel Arturo Heller talked in detail about "Ba", a concept that has deep cultural roots in Japan. Ba refers to a shared space or context that enables interaction, collaboration and knowledge creation. Ba is not just a physical space, it can be a conceptual or relational space where individuals experience and exchange ideas and most importantly knowledge. This sounds like nothing new. We have been doing enterprise collaboration platforms for ages. Or LinkedIn / Reddit. If you have been practicing Agile methodology / Scrum, then you do it in the form of Daily Stand ups, Planning, Retrospectives. So what's different? I thought so too. Then, I came to know that Agile Scrum originated from the works of same two Japanese scholars who conceptualized "Ba" - Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi. The emphasis is on continually doing it in several ways, and making new spaces for people to collaborate and bring ideas to life. Toyota does it with "Gemba". Honda does a psychologically safe space, called "Waigaya", where staff expresses freely without regard to Position or Seniority. This method was used in designing the Honda City car, allowing engineers to exchange tacit knowledge and prototype faster. At Payoda Technology Inc, we had our own "Ba" spaces. Years ago, we had "LaunchPad" an org-wide initiative that I helped organize - a 6 weeks long Hackathon exercise where associates form their own teams, brainstorm, conceptualize new ideas and solutions. Interesting ideas do come out of it. In 2015, one of our LaunchPad teams came up with an idea and built a prototype for Healthcare domain - a remote monitoring urine-diagnostic solution with the help of sensors that can be fitted into the Urinals. The solution would then automatically pick the samples and run diagnostics periodically. We just appreciated it as an intriguing idea and had forgotten about it. But in 2023, I was pleasantly surprised to see a start-up doing the same thing, it built an offering around it, became a member of YCombinator accelerator and received funding for it. To me, it was a great reminder that no idea is a bad idea. Just that its time may not have come yet. With that reflection, we unveiled LaunchPad 2025 - a bigger & better event focused on AI solutions and learning for our associates. In what would become an annual tech festival for us going forward, we would have teams competing and trying to build solutions / offerings / products on a particular theme (This year - on AI) and bringing out innovative ideas. Very glad to be spearheading this event along with Prakash Balasubramanian and learning from some of our best minds. #CollaborationMindset #AI #Ba #IMPM #YNU IMPM ? # 1 International Masters Program for Managers