App stores and APIs: It's the ecosystem, stupid

If you make a web application or mobile platform, one of the trendiest things you can do is add APIs and a software marketplace to it so developers will extend your product. Google is previewing its application market for Android (link), T-Mobile USA has promised a new applications store for its phones (link), and many people I've spoken with believe Microsoft bought Danger in order to get its software store technology.

The idea of encouraging third party developers dates back at least to the early days of MS-DOS, but it was associated mostly with operating systems until Web 2.0 applications took off a few years ago. Google played a big role in that change, by exposing APIs to Google Maps that made it possible to embed maps in other web applications. That helped Google Maps quickly blow past established mapping services like Mapquest, while the installed base of Google Maps extensions made it hard for Microsoft's web mapping product to gain traction.

The drive for web APIs got another big boost when Facebook enabled developers to extend its functionality, driving an explosion of widgets for Facebook that helped it grow past MySpace to become the #1 social network in the US (at least according to Alexa).

The web app people all noticed Google's and Facebook's success and furiously started adding APIs to their products. Today it's unusual to hear about a new web app that doesn't have some sort of API story or future plan to add them.

In mobile, applications have an interesting history. Lately some new mobile players have generated huge attention for their application marketplaces. The chart below shows the one year growth in the developer base for a certain well-known mobile platform:



If you're like most people in Silicon Valley, you probably think that's an Apple iPhone developer chart. But actually it's Palm OS ten years ago, from 1998 to 1999.

Disturbing, isn't it? The idea that a platform could take off like that and then crash and burn...makes you wonder if the same thing could happen to the platforms that are popular today.

And in fact, if you look at the history of APIs on both mobiles and web apps, the failures are more numerous than the successes. If you're a developer trying to pick the right platform to create your apps on, that choice is very dangerous -- you're betting the success of your company on something that has a better than 50-50 chance of failing.

If you work at a web or mobile company creating APIs or an app store, the news is equally disturbing: The odds are that you won't succeed.

So it's very important to look at the history of those failed platforms, to figure out what goes wrong and how to avoid it. When you do that, the answer is pretty clear:


It's the ecosystem, stupid

The success of a developer program is not driven just by the beauty of the APIs or the store, but by how the overall ecosystem works to enable developers to prosper. The two parts of the ecosystem that are most important to developers are the ability to create something cool, and the ability to make money. Coolness gets developers to try your platform in the first place. Most developers, especially the innovative new ones, gravitate to a platform that lets them easily create something cool that will impress their friends. But as those developers get older and more responsible, they eventually get tired of drinking lemon drops with Mark Cuban (link). They need to pay rent, buy food, and do other things that require money. If they can't make money from a platform, they will move away to the next one. So the financials are what makes developers stick around over time.

If the ecosystem breaks down anywhere in the chain, the developer community will eventually collapse. You can see this in process driving the history of some prominent web and mobile platforms:

Facebook. Earlier I said Facebook apps were a success because they helped the company grow. That's definitely true from Facebook's short-term perspective, but if you talk to Facebook developers the story is much more mixed. Some people online say there are lots of ways to monetize Facebook apps (link), but other reports say it's difficult to actually make the revenue come in (link). The online attitude toward this when Facebook's platform launched in 2007 was pretty dismissive. One commentator wrote (link):

The problem of not making money with your app is not a Facebook problem. It's your problem!

That's the right attitude for a developer to take: Control your own destiny. But monetization becomes a Facebook problem if nobody can make money. Developers poured into the Facebook platform like the tide in the Bay of Fundy, but a lot of them couldn't make money and promptly poured back out. I can tell you from personal experience that some are pretty bitter and unlikely to do anything with Facebook again.

Mobile Java's problem was that it's not a real platform. Handset vendors and operators were allowed to break compatibility between their implementations of Java, forcing developers to tweak their java apps almost endlessly, dramatically raising their costs and making it hard to scale their companies. The selling model for Java apps was also seriously broken -- to get prominent placement on a phone, developers often had to cut special deals with carriers. Some of the most successful mobile Java game developers have survived because they're great deal-makers; they figure out how to develop for a big brand that wants to create a mobile presence, or they hook into the promotion of a movie. This business model favors a few companies with the skill and contacts to cut the deals; the current mobile Java world is not an ecosystem that can support huge numbers of developers.

Palm and Windows Mobile both succeeded at first in enabling developers to create a lot of interesting applications. Although both operating systems had technical flaws, they were reasonably open to any developer, and the "write once run anywhere" idea mostly worked. Unfortunately, the marketing and sales model for those applications started out mediocre and got worse over time. There was no software store on device, so users had to go out on the web to find apps. This cut the number of people looking for applications. Those who did look online usually landed in the mobile application stores, which over time took a larger and larger share of the developer's revenue. Eventually, the stores' cut grew to more than 50% of revenue, making development uneconomical for many companies. When sales of Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices failed to grow rapidly, the financial model for many developers fell apart, and the ecosystems faded.


What to look for in an ecosystem

If you're a developer looking to find a viable ecosystem, or a platform vendor looking to build one, here are the things to look for.

How easy is it for developers to create something cool? How powerful are the APIs? Can the platform be programmed using standard development tools? Eclipse seems to be the preferred platform among much of the web app crowd, and it's free.

Is the platform programmed in a language that's obscure or difficult to use? This has long been one of the big barriers to Symbian native app development.

How do applications get visibility? Is the store displayed at the first level of the smartphone? How easy is it for users to navigate the store? Online stores like Handango are notoriously hard to navigate; the user experience is about like walking through a flea market.

Can good apps rise to the top? In some software stores, the developer has to pay for prominent placement on the store. This is incredibly corrosive to the ecosystem. The big software companies with money to pay for placement are often the least innovative. So users see an app prominently featured, try it, are disappointed, and never try another one. If web search worked this way, there's a good chance that the web as we know it would never have developed. The practice of pay for placement is a self-defeating, regressive tax -- it penalizes most the small developers who are most likely to create compelling new apps that make a platform more successful.

Ideally, placement on the store should be based on independent user reviews, so the best new apps can rise to the top naturally.

What are the terms of business? Can a developer bill for an app through the user's phone bill? Forcing people to input their credit cards separately slows adoption of software. Can the developer choose different forms of payment? Developers should be enabled to experiment with freeware and subscription payment systems, just as they do on the web. How much of the developer's revenue does the store keep? The ideal cut is no more than 20%.

Are there restrictions on the application's functionality? This is a sore point for iPhone developers. Apple won't allow intermediate platforms that run other applications. So no Java, no Flash, and no emulators like StyleTap's Palm OS emulator (link). This also inhibits other developers who want to expose APIs within their applications.

What is the overhead for security? Some platforms require applications to pay for a new security certificate every time the app is revised. The cost is typically a few hundred dollars, which doesn't sound like much to a big operator or OS company, but is a huge burden to a small company with several apps. They're basically punished every time they fix a bug, which is very unwise -- you want developers to fix bugs instantly, because that increases user satisfaction and reduces support calls. Basic security certificates can and should be issued automatically by the software store, at no charge.

How big is the user base? This will be a more and more important issue over time. For a developer, the ideal platform would let them sell to the whole base of mobile phone users, not just one brand or model.


Room for improvement

Based on those tests, no mobile platform offers an ideal ecosystem today. Apple probably comes closest at the moment. Here's how I'd grade it:

--Power: A-. The iPhone APIs give developers a huge amount of power, and there was a lot of delighted commentary on the web when the APIs were first revealed. But there is a learning curve for iPhone development; Apple has its own tools and its own variant version of C. And support for some typical OS features (such as cut and paste) is missing.

--Store: A-. The store is built into the device prominently, so apps are easier to discover. And there is a user-driven rating system. Developers can bill through Apple's iTunes system; not as convenient as billing through the carrier, but not bad. Apple takes 30% of revenue, which is not ideal, but is better than the 50% or more cut that burdens mobile app developers elsewhere.

--Terms: C+. There are significant, ambiguous restrictions on what a developer can do on the iPhone. The most onerous terms restrict the ability of developers to add functionality to applications and create software that run other applications. The terms cause a lot of confusion among developers; I'm on a mailing list for iPhone developers where they have been trying to figure out whether they can download content to an iPhone app. The answer: it's unclear as to whether content is a form of functionality, and you should ask Apple's lawyers. That is an incredibly intimidating message to app developers. It feels far too much like doing business with the operators.

--User base: Incomplete. It's relatively straightforward to make money from iPhone apps today because the number of developers is still relatively low. But over time, I think it's unlikely that Apple will be able to grow its user base at the same rate as the developer base is growing. If that happens, life will get much less pleasant for iPhone developers.

The ideal mobile app ecosystem would have the API power of the iPhone and the discovery experience of the iPhone store, coupled with business terms that allow add-on APIs like Flash, Java and Google Gears, all working across a much larger base of devices.


What it all means

If you're a software developer and some platform vendor or web company comes around evangelizing their software store or their APIs, you should evaluate the overall ecosystem they're providing, not just the store or APIs alone. If they haven't thought through issues like billing and discovery, it's a big warning sign.

If you work for a platform or web app company that wants to create a developer community, you need to plan the whole ecosystem and make sure it'll all work. This is especially important for a mobile company that wants to compete with the iPhone store. The way to fight iPhone for developers is to create a superior ecosystem. Apple's weak point is the business and technical restrictions on its developers, and the limited reach of the iPhone APIs. If another vendor -- say, Nokia or Google or Microsoft -- can pair a great store and powerful development with more openness and broader reach, they might be able to give Apple some serious competition. Elia Freedman had some good suggestions on ways to start (link).

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PS: Thanks to MobHappy for including my post on smartphone share in the Carnival of the Mobilists (link).

Conference time

I'll be doing the Grande Tour des Conferences in the San Francisco area next week. Let me know if you'll be in town and want to meet. My contact info is here.

On Monday, I'm speaking at Mobile Web Megatrends in Berkeley. My topics are:

Mobile data: Convergence or divergence?
The press is predicting a clash of the titans as Apple, Google, Nokia, and a host of other players all try to dominate the smartphone market. How is the battle likely to turn out? Will one company dominate the market? And where should a mobile app developer invest?

and

Apps for mobile devices - What happens next?
Apple's iPhone app store is getting a lot of publicity, and some industry players, such as TMobile USA, are rumored to be working on something similar. What's the future of mobile applications? Will the market grow explosively? What are the barriers to growth? Can a competitor beat the iPhone app store, or is everyone just going to play catch-up?

The speaker lineup is interesting, and I'm looking forward to it.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I'll be at the Tech Crunch conference in San Francisco (not speaking there, just taking notes). On Thursday it's CTIA, and then on Friday I'm an un-panelist at the Mobile Jam Session at CTIA. The folks at WIP have set up some very interesting discussion sessions.

I'll be posting some notes on what I hear, both here and at Rubicon's website.

THE STRANGE EXISTENCE OF JAGDISH SHETH

Two years back, when I heard this name being whispered in management circles, it sounded more like that of a garment trader’s [think about it, Jagdish Sheth & Sons...] than like that of the leading management thinker of modern times. At that time, Fortune had mentioned this media-avoiding former MIT & Columbia professor’s name in a futuristic article, with reference to his unique Rule of Three [a rule that competitive industries, in general, will finally only be left with three significant players]. An year later, this 67 year old imp of a powerhouse called Sheth combined his years of exhaustive global research on the world’s leading corporations and wrote the rule book on why CEOs of the world’s leading and most successful corporations will destroy themselves and their companies [The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies] because of a simple reason, “Complacency!” (The book was picked up by the famed Wharton Publishing).

“I used to think that competition destroys good companies. Strangely, I found that’s not true: companies destroy themselves… Success breeds complacency. The average life span of corporations is declining, even as that of humans is rising.” Out of the seven self-destructive habits of corporations, Sheth lists “The No-One-Can-Beat Me Syndrome: Arrogance & Complacency” as number one! From Prof. Carl Robinson of University of Maryland, [Why Great Companies Fail] to the famed Courtman & Wild of Turnaround Management Association [Avoiding Common Traps That Lead to Distress], leading management scientists now accept that complacency of CEOs is the Number 1 reason why companies get destroyed! In fact, now the most famous Prof. Clayton M. Christensen of HBS notes, “Leading companies decline and sometimes die not because of competitor’s advances, but because of new players with lower-quality solutions!” However out of this world this might, this is exactly what Sheth warns about. The first one to forecast that GE is self destructing itself in turf wars, all Sheth got from the world were chuckles. Today, Immelt has proved to be the worst performing CEO of all times for GE. During Immelt’s 7 year reign, GE stocks have plummeted by 30.2% [Jack Welch’s first 7 years had seen a 140.2% rise: Bloomberg].

CEOs have completely forgotten the concept of visioning. Forget visioning, unbelievably so, CEOs have even stopped “thinking.” Ask a CEO a modern management paradigm, and all you’ll see is a blank face. Ask yourself, when was the last time you sat down to ‘think’. Sheth is the first to statistically prove that where earlier “a [Fortune] company would be in existence for 50 to 60 years, now its life cycle is down to just 10.5 years!” Shocked? Sheth’s corporate clients roster now includes Cox Communications, Delta, Ernst and Young, Ford, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nortel, Sprint, 3M, Whirlpool, and even General Electric itself, the same company he doesn’t lose an opportunity to criticise. BusinessWeek now notes, “Dr. Sheth is one of the most globally acclaimed academicians, authors, and Board Advisors,” connected to 186 board members across the world [he’s now even a Director at Wipro]! Cut to June 2008, Sheth wins the Guizeta Global Innovation Award; it is presented to him by John Quelch, Senior Associate Dean at HBS in a small ceremony... It’s seriously a strange existence for this man I know of as Jagdish Sheth. And imagine, you hadn’t even heard of him! That’s complacency! This is a special double issue of 4ps B&M and as we have burnt a lot of midnight oil, I guess it is time for us to take time off and be a little complacent. we will be back after a break issue. Cheers!!!

Does anybody really know what smartphone market share is?

An article in Wired online this week had a chart showing US smartphone market share (link). The chart gave more detail than I've seen recently from other research companies, so I thought it was worth reproducing the data here:



The source is Nielsen Mobile, formerly Telephia. The interesting thing about them is that they do much of the service quality monitoring for the operators, so they have much more direct access to mobile usage information than folks like IDC and Canalys, the people usually quoted for smartphone share.

Wired was focused on Palm's loss of market share, which is indeed striking (but not exactly news). But take a look at the chart again; there are a couple of other items that I think are more newsworthy.

The first surprise is that Nielsen shows Apple in fourth place in smartphone share. That's wildly different from what Canalys, the source usually reported, has been saying (link). Here's how they compare for Q4 2007:




What in the world is going on here?

I'm not sure, but I have some guesses. Canalys doesn't directly measure market share, it receives self-reported shipment reports from the manufacturers and then adds them up. That means Canalys measures shipments into the channel rather than sales, and it depends on the hardware companies to be honest.

Riiiight.

Nielsen Mobile doesn't explain on its website exactly how it measures share, but apparently it's using a mix of survey results and the usage data it gathers from the operators (link). So its numbers should reflect current usage of phones rather than shipments. If Nielsen is measuring installed base share, rather than share of current sales, that might explain the difference. Although in that case, share should not be changing as fast as Nielsen shows. So I'm still confused.

If anybody can shed more light on the source of the difference, please post a comment. I've also asked Nielsen, and will let you know if I hear anything.

The conflict in the numbers underlines how ridiculously useless the publicly-available third party sales numbers are in the mobile phone market, and how little attention the press is paying to the inconsistencies. Apple's share varies from 8% to 28%, and no one even notices. Hey, we got a pretty chart and it confirms what we wanted to say, so don't ask questions.

If you want more information on the problems with mobile market share tracking, I wrote a detailed post here (link).

I said there were two newsworthy things about the Nielsen numbers. Can you spot the second one?

That's right, since the iPhone was released, RIM has been gaining share. So much for the folks who predicted at the launch of the iPhone that it was going to take the smartphone market away from RIM. Instead, at least in the first round of competition, we see what you'd expect from a segmented market -- RIM appeals to some customers, Apple appeals to a different group, and both companies do well.

I can't wait to see what the numbers will look like in six months, after the iPhone 3G has been out for a while. Although probably Canalys and Nielsen will still disagree wildly on what's happening.

Only 10% of Japanese people know how to use all the functions in their mobile phones

A Japanese survey of mobile phone users, translated by What Japan Thinks, reports that only about 10% of Japanese mobile phone users say they have mastery (or a good command) over all the functions of their mobile phones (link). About 75% of users say they have mastered less than half of the functions in the phone.

The most confusing functions were e-wallet, applications in general, music player, and Internet access.

What Japan Thinks concludes that few people in Japan "are really comfortable with their phones," which I find reassuring because it says that people in Japan aren't all that different from everyone else on the planet. In many countries there's a tendency to believe that people in Japan (and Korea) use mobile devices so differently from everyone else that there's nothing useful to learn from them. It's as if they're on a different planet. But the reality is that even in Japan, a phone overloaded with features and cryptic menus is confusing to anyone except the most dedicated technophiles.

It is interesting that so many mobile phones in Japan have e-wallet, applications, music, and Internet built in. That's a result of the aggressive rollout of integrated phones and online services by Japanese mobile phone operators -- the real driver that I think makes the Japanese mobile market so different.

(By the way, in case anyone's interested, another survey determined that 14 percent of Japanese cats won't go to the bathroom if someone's watching [link]. Who knew?)

THE LOVE GURU! YEAH, BABY, YEAH...

Ahuja! That was his name! He was my first boss and the teacher of my most important leadership lessons. He taught me exactly what never to do as a boss; because everything he did was, well, horribly wrong! I called him the Love Guru much before Mike Myers even made his first movie, because Ahuja showed me how much a ‘leader’ could be hated! He evoked that emotion – and much more – in almost everybody in office. I personally considered him the worst leader history had ever seen. And I realised all that one had to do to be a fantastic leader was to never do the things he did! Mr. Love Guru’s biggest claim to fame was that he never used to mix ‘work’ with ‘fun’! And he used to preach how the world’s top corporations reached ‘there’ because of this rule only. Ugghh!

If only Ahuja had even smelt of an imp of a company called Google! The 2008 Fortune 100 Best Companies To Work For list ranks Google at the brilliant position of #1 amongst all the companies in the world. In their in-depth analysis, Fortune writes, “Why is Google so great?... [Apart from other reasons] Google’s employees like to have a lot of fun during the work day – to relieve stress, build camaraderie and fuel creative thinking.” In fact, the “opportunities to learn, grow, travel and have wildly zany fun during the workday” are what sets the Google culture thoroughly apart. Google’s official “Top 10 Reasons to Work at Google” document clarifies amusingly, and in reality, “Work and play are not mutually exclusive.” Interestingly, Fortune writes that Quicken Loans, the 2nd Best Company to Work For, is also up there because of “its fun, family friendly workplace.” And that’s the common thread through the list. Digest this – Fortune’s year 2008 Best Paying Companies list gives the same Google the unbelievable last rank; clearly proving that being the best company to work for has nothing to do with pay!

Katherine Karl (Marshall University) and Joy Peluchette (University of Southern Indiana) perhaps wrote the rule book on this issue, How does workplace fun impact employee perceptions.... Their finding was succinctly put; and they wrote, “Our results showed that employees who experienced fun in the workplace had greater satisfaction with their job!” Renowned international behavioural scientist Robert Nelson comments, “There’s a big difference between getting people to come to work and getting them to do their best work. Making work fun brings out the best in people.” The notoriously likable Herb Kelleher, CEO, Southwest Airlines, quotes about the employees he hires, “What we are looking for, first and foremost, is a sense of humour!” The last century’s most admired CEO, Jack Welch, writes in this issue of 4Ps B&M how you, as a CEO, have to be “dead serious” about managing employee emotions and being passionate about it at every moment! Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple (Yes! With Steve Jobs!!) gave the following title to his 2006 autobiography – How I invented the PC, co-founded Apple and had fun doing it. Of course, work is worship. But fun mixed judiciously with work is what the world’s excellent CEOs recommend if you want the very best out of your people.

And that, unfortunately, is what my first Hitlerian boss never understood... In fact, I still get nightmares of Ahuja. He’s my Vietnam post-war trauma experience. My wife now calls my symptoms the Ahuja Syndrome. I call it the Love Guru’s kiss. Yeah, baby, yeah...

THE LEAGUE OF INCOGNITO MAFIOSI!

This happened to me a few years back. It was my eight-year-old nephew’s annual school sports meet [I call him Kit; he calls me Mama]. And the apt ‘grand’ final afternoon event was a classic seven member 350 metre relay race. There were five teams pitted against each other – three mean looking teams from the sixth grade, one more hooliganish clearly over-aged team from the fifth grade, and the last one, my bespectacled nephew’s motley ‘we-were-better-off-in-the-shade’ three-foot tall team from the fourth grade. I realised right away that their chance of winning was worse than what the term ‘impossible’ could have defined; but still, I was all for cheering them like crazy! Come on, they seemed truly excited, and winning wasn’t everything, was it!? Yeah, right, till the time dear Kit, balancing his spectacles on his nose, ambled over confidently to me and shoved a relay-race baton into my hand, with the quasi-order, “Come fast Mama, the seventh member has to be a guardian, and he has to run first!”

The ten seconds of silence that followed, with me looking perplexed, was a lifetime. Me?!! A relay-race runner?!?! The sun was burning down hotter than in a western movie; I could smell the sweat running down the back of my head into my spine. Worse, the cannibal competitors seemed all set to massacre the ‘fourth’ graders. No way could I be humiliated like this in public. Neither was I fit, nor was I on the right side of 30! And my team’s incompetence was more evident than the burning dust on the track. I shoved the baton rudely back into Kit’s hands, ordered him to find somebody else, and shouted, “Anyway, what difference can I make in a team born to come last?” I felt the words hit him like a ton of bricks. His expression changed from eager enthusiasm to sudden disappointment... For a moment, I regretted my words... But then, seriously, can an individual really make a difference? Especially when the team, for the lack of a better word, sucks?

O. E. Graves was born way back in 1811, on a farm near Vermont, to a family in perennial financial trouble. Afflicted with poor health throughout his life, he moved to New York and worked as a mechanic in a railway workshop, where he understood the concept of railway safety brakes. Graves kept wondering why couldn’t such brakes be used in elevators [which had already been invented]. His mechanic teammates kept dissuading him for his inane idea, trying to convince him that elevator lines were practically unbreakable. Despite all negative opinion, Graves conviction grew in his idea and in the belief that he individually could make the change. After years of struggle, and more of financial pecuniary, he invented the first elevator safety brake. In 1853, Otis Elisha Graves founded the world’s first ‘safety’ elevator company, today the world’s largest elevator company.

This man struggled to handle his doomed-from-the-start shoe business for many years. His invention was neither a product or a service. He invented a ‘process’ called General Electric! Neither is he Jack Welch, nor is he Thomas Edison [the founder, on paper at least]. His name is Charles Coffin, the man who convinced Edison that rather than simply having a ‘GE’, the company should depend less on individuals and more on self-replicating processes. Coffin understood that world-class companies can succeed over a long term only if the concept of innovation is not restricted to singular people and only when top performing people find their replacement, and in hordes. Edison made him the first President of General Electric. Renowned management expert Jim Collins quotes, “While Edison was essentially a genius with a thousand helpers, Coffin created a machine that created a succession of giants.” Today, the long dead and gone Coffin is rated by Fortune as Number 1 in the list of Ten Greatest CEOs of All Times!

This man used to see Star Trek like nobody’s business. He was so enamoured by Captain Kirk’s “Scotty, beam me up!” calls that he decided to find out how to invent such a phone. Despite everybody dissuading him [because of the unbelievably high costs involved], this general manager in a tiny electrical company kept working on the concept. On April 3, 1973, from a Manhattan street corner, using an apparatus that had no wires attached, he rang up Joel Engel, Head, Bell Labs research, to tell him, “Joel, I’ve beaten you in the race to make the first mobile phone.” Martin Cooper, the inventor of the mobile phone, individually re-invented not only Motorola’s history, where he worked, but of global telecom.

It is the night of September 25, 2000. This promising 23 year old Boston basketball player, who is a draft member of the ‘NBA bench’, is stabbed ruthlessly by hooligans. Medical reports show 11 lethal injuries to the back, face and neck, enough to kill any man. Doctors work relentlessly through the night to save him. Just when they’ve given up, a do-or-die lung surgery unbelievably gets him breathing again. The man lives, but just... Devastated physically, the chances of his coming back are, like I mentioned before, worse than impossible. Eight years pass. It’s June 17, 2008. The judgement night of NBA Finals history. Banknorth Garden in Boston is more than jam packed. The totally unfancied Boston Celtics, who have never won the NBA Finals in the last 22 years, are playing against the second highest winners in history, Los Angeles Lakers [featuring legends like Kobe Bryant, coaches like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar]. The game finally ends. Lowly Boston Celtics have beaten LA Lakers by a margin of 131-92, the largest margin ever in a championship game. The captain of Boston Celtics is an unknown Paul Anthony Pierce. This is his first NBA Finals appearance in life. Though he scores only 10 points, he is surprisingly named the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the NBA Finals, because of the openings he creates... Oh yes, they also comment that he’s the same guy who was stabbed many times eight years back...

I call all these singular people The League of Incognito Mafiosi. We never knew their names, yet they kept working, steadfast in their beliefs, never giving up in the power of their individual self... Kit was still standing there, not letting his three foot persona stoop in front of me, his face grim, yet not stoic. He hadn’t moved an inch. I knew Kit had been practising with his friends for a long time for this race. But I had no idea that the reason he had invited me so fervently to attend the finals was to make me participate as the lead runner! And he had even promised his team members I would be there. The sun seemed to be mercilessly burning my face. The heat was unbearable. The silence, more than that. Kit kept standing there, not moving, and I wasn’t sure but I thought I saw his eyes turning moist, when he looked at me totally teary eyed, and commented in halting words, “Mama, you can make a difference. We don’t have anybody else... and I believe in you.” [The baton felt too heavy when I ran the lap; oh yes, we lost the race; ...and we won too; Kit made sure we didn’t come last; he was our MVP! And this time, I’m practising with them for the next year... An individual does make a heaven of a difference... Kit was that individual... Yes, ‘I’ believe!