idea-generation 5

Last Friday, 20 Mar 2026, this “Hack of the Day” was published by The Times of India. My agents generated it entirely automatically. Here’s how that happened. On 12 Feb 2026, I met Rohit Saran, Managing Editor at The Times of India. “Our biggest challenge is the starting challenge. What story to do?” he said. “We waste a lot of time and we starve stories because of this.” What if AI could help with that? We talked for nearly two hours - and left asking: “Should we do just a daily visual newspaper?” ...

25 years ago, Mr. Krishnan (IAS) amused us with anecdotes of bureaucrats writing meeting minutes before the meeting. This week, I flipped that. I wrote slides after the talk. I call them AfterSlides. Why. I ran a couple of Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) sessions where the audience set the agenda. I learned their interests. They got answers. No slides prepared. How. I okayed recording with the organizers, recorded on my phone, transcribed with Gemini, and asked ChatGPT to generate the AfterSlides. ...

In a recent talk at IIT Madras, I highlighted how large language models (LLMs) are taking over every subject of the MBA curriculum: from finance to marketing to operations to HR, and even strategy. One field that seemed hard to crack was innovation. Innovation also happens to be my role. But LLMs are encroaching into that too. LLMs are great connection machines: fusing two ideas into a new, useful, surprising idea. That’s core to innovation. If we can get LLMs daydreaming, they could be innovative too. ...

I got access to SORA today. My first attempts was typical. An animated cartoon featuring Calvin, a young boy with spiky hair, standing in a playful boxing stance with oversized boxing gloves. He looks determined as he says ‘Bring it on!’ in a speech bubble. Facing him is Hobbes, a tall and slightly bemused tiger, also in a mock boxing pose with a gentle smile, as if humoring Calvin. The scene is set in Calvin’s backyard, typical of a Calvin and Hobbes comic, with a simple and uncluttered backdrop. ...

What Drives Bloggers? I think what most bloggers are doing is thinking out loud. It’s a little misleading to talk of “putting things into words,” because that implies the ideas come first. In fact, expressing thoughts creates them. And especially expressing thoughts to other people, even people you don’t know. So I think the reason many people like blogging is that they like the thinking it causes.