This December through January, I traveled with my family throughout India. We spent two weeks in an extremely modest environment—a roadside Super 8 Motel would be five-star accommodations in comparison. We toured villages where we were welcomed with open arms into modest homes where more than 20 people sleep in candlelit 8- x 10-foot rooms with no air conditioning. They cook in a little courtyard, and restroom facilities are in the back in a ditch with wooden planks. Temperatures hovered around a steamy 32 degrees Celsius, in the middle of winter.

It was an amazing experience. Not only were all the people we met gracious, but they were also seemingly content with their lives. The village children were overjoyed as I took pictures of them with my digital camera and was instantly able to show them the results. It became clear that the children of these villages are voracious learners; when given an opportunity to study, they eat it up. They dream of something bigger, and believe it or not, none of the children we met had ever seen a digital camera.

My father-in-law lives in Hyderabad, India, and has founded about 13 colleges and schools there, mostly for the underprivileged. We went to one of the colleges to check out the computer and mechanical engineering programs, as well as various other departments. He introduced me to a number of professors, and in the process they asked if I could do a talk there for their graduating class.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to speak about at first because I really didn’t know much about the audience, but as I met a few of the students coupled by what we saw in the village, it started to become clear.

When you think about IT in India, two things naturally come to mind: call centers and database development. But there are other vastly unexplored areas.

So I spent a few days on and off campus talking to people, researching online, and touring here and there. I was very impressed by what I found, both in terms of the base of knowledge in the area and the pragmatic way in which the people we met go about solving the problems they face.

Pollution is a huge problem there, and I met a professor who made it his life’s work to research new ways to power motor vehicles. His Air Car runs completely on air, recycling the air via the exhaust back into the system, and currently uses a small tank of compressed air. The inventor wants to swap out the cylinder of air in favor of an air pump, or as he described it, a breathing apparatus that works like a lung. The concept may seem way out there, but he has a working model and it’s quite impressive. Although it is only a 5hp model, it would be simple to create a 20hp prototype using a similar method.

A car that runs on air, you say? That is correct. I daresay anything is possible, and this was just one of a few research projects that I got to see firsthand. After much deliberation, I knew what I would talk about in addressing a group of Hyderabad graduates. I wanted to give these students something to think about going forward. They are living in a society that’s highly commoditized and are naturally put into positions where their talents are used as a commodity to compete against richer countries. While this can be a highly profitable business, it can also be bad when the people end up commoditizing themselves and devaluing their own work.

So my talk consisted of a few ideas that many of us could stand to keep in mind:

• Find something you’re passionate about and make it your area of expertise.

• Find a problem that needs solving in your area.

• Don’t fall into the trap of commoditizing yourself.

• Don’t face a giant head-to-head; rather, find ways to complement the giant’s strengths so that eventually you will have the potential to exit or partner.

• Constantly revisit your strategy and see if it makes sense. (Thanks to Mike Perkins for this one!)

Well, that’s it for this month. I took some great pictures of our expedition that you can view at vdhd.zenfolio.com.

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