In the seventh chapter of our book we make a very subtle and important point: "Firms need to treat their employees as N=1 to gain a consumer focus of N=1." The enterprise employee is a consumer, and both need N=1 attention.

If Microsoft isn't going to marry Yahoo after its alter jitters, says Left On Red author Bill Glynn, then Yahoo better get intimate with AOL if it wants to be in the game.

Shame, shame. I'm sitting at the SJC airport in the great Valley of Silicon and it does not breath free wireless. San Diego's commuter terminal is better (net = blazing free). But my cry for freedom is not about wireless connectivity but web-based software in general. I was recently at a meeting with an executive representative of a software vendor. After getting past the initial courtesies we hosed each other with differing views on pricing and value.

BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) has been around for decades and has become increasingly popular in the early 21st century. I'm surprised this didn't take place much earlier, and isn't being done by every business today. Ninety percent-plus of all businesses worldwide are not technology companies -- they are simply supported by technology systems. Why, then, are companies spending trillions of dollars on internal technology development and billions on certain human systems, too? Well, one factor has been the rise of a new corporate rock star -- the CIO.

We're sometimes asked whether the business and technical platforms for N=1; R=G business capabilities (explained in Chapter 4) can be accommodated using customized packaged software applications, or do I need to build my systems from scratch? Our answer is NO. Emerging software technologies like software as a service (SaaS) make that choice increasingly irrelevant.

The formulas N=1 and R=G expose a myth that is common in most large firms, usually expressed this way: "Do you want efficiency or innovation?" Of course we need both. But often it is phrased as an either-or proposition. Why is that?

It's a sultry Sunday PM in Mumbai. I'm sipping Tiger beer and watching and listening to Led Zeppelin sing "Kashmir" on a program called Gods of Guitar on VH1.

The bad news: A lot of companies still use formal mechanisms like focus groups or surveys to find out what their customers think. The good news: A significant number solicit input in a variety of informal ways.

Is N=1 the same as "mass customization" or the customer strategy known as "segment of one?" The answer is no -- not at all.

I was recently in India and I gave a lot of press interviews. One of the interviews was for a journal called Outlook. There was a photographer taking pictures of me during the interview -- and probably listening to the interview and not focusing on camera angles. He told me this story.

Is the iPhone a consumer device or a business device? Is the BlackBerry a business device or a consumer device? And finally, the ultimate duh question: Are you a businessperson or a consumer? You are "whatever," depending on what you do at that point in time.

Who says politicians can't be creative? Or that they don't embrace new ideas? I was totally taken aback when minister Kapil Sibal, Minister for Science and technology, Government of India, was invited to help launch my book, The New Age of Innovation, in New Delhi, India, on April 17th. Here is his basic takeaway from the book.