Links - Latest

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8004343747717655794
About IIT

From cost-cutting to a must-have for competitiveness
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/06_05/
B39690605outsourcing.htm

Dr. A.P.J Abdhul Kalam's Inaugral Speech in the CII's partnership Summit. An execution plan for a developed India.
http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/jan/18spec.htm

Link this with the Lead User Methodology discussed in my books sections. Developing nations are brimming with Lead Users. Here is an article.
Business Propfet - C.K.Prahalad

Interesting. Intriguing. Why India has a good chance because of its Math prowess?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_04/b3968001.htm

Another good view point...
What Innovation Advantage?


Free phone calls anywhere in the world!!
A new wifi phone from Netgear with Skype software enabling one to make a call wherever there is an Accesspoint.

http://www.netgear.com/pressroom/press_releasesdetail.php?id=305

Some important stories missed by the mainstream media.
http://ia.rediff.com/news/2006/jan/06rajeev.htm?q=np&file=.htm

A Blue card? Reverse Brain drain? A Significant story
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/index.html

JetBlue - A nice story
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1342.cfm

The telecom executives are talking about the internet bandwidth being theirs! Its not. Once the consumer pays (rent) for it, the bandwidth is consumers'.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_52/b3965067.htm

Clause 49: India's Answer to SarbOx?
But the only way to lead is to let others question and answer.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1332.cfm

The third phase of globalization!
Phase 1: Developed countries benefited by gaining access to the consumer market
Phase 2: Emerging countries benefitting by gaining access to the producer market
Phase 3: Geography doesn't matter. There will be several Mesa del Sols'. A person sitting in Koundampalayam / Thotilpaalam / Mesa del Sol could be finishing up the task for any MNC.
http://www.businessweek.com/@@tmRalIcQAs6DMAwA/
magazine/content/05_50/b3963137.htm
(copy paste the above URL)

Please email me (4rajesh@gmail.com) with your email id if you would like to get notified whenever there is a new post in my blog. I intend to write atleast once a week but either due to lack of ideas that are of interest or laziness (one or the other) I don't. So, intimating the readers of any new post would be a good thing.

Movies & its impact

Of late I started catching up with movies that I wanted to watch in the past. I watched one of them "Motorcycle Diaries", this week and the other one is a usual flick - After the sunset (Pears Brosnen & Salma Hayek, seen for the later). The former one is a spanish language film made in south america about "Che" Guevera - the rebel behind Cuban revolution and assasinated in 1967 with the help of CIA. Movies / literary works such as this one that shows the "making of" the personality interests me a lot. The book E=mc2 by David Bodanis is one such thing about the formula in itself.

The dialogues "what made the invaders to destroy this to build this" in the ruins of machu pichu (Peru) and another one "the indegenous people knew astrology, science, medicine but the invaders had gun-powder" reflect on the early days of his revolutionary mind. This is in fact true in the case of India too. So what made the indeginous people lose the lead to the euorpeans is the gun-powder. But in the course of time, what they lost is themselves! Both the Indians as well as the south american natives identified things with nature, understood the meaning of life and was once a fledgling civilization. They lost their culture to the colonial powers, started thinking their knowledge is always inferior to the colonials over period of time and lost themselves! Its a cycle of thousands of years and what goes up, comes down and that is the only thing that is constant.

Vaikunta Ekadesi and my memoirs

Today being vaikuta edadesi, (for details click -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaikunta_Ekadasi), I went to the Bridgewater temple in New Jersey and went through the "Sorga vaasal". I was thinking about how this became a practice for me over the years. I was reminded of my days in Erode, Kumbakonam and Pondicherry. My father would take all of us to the Perumal temple every year. When we continued the practice in Kumbakonam, we were surprised to find no "Sorga vaasal" and on enquiry it turned out to be that Kumbakonam is also called "Bhoologa Sorgam" and hence no perumal temple in Kumbakonam have one.

Parents take kids to the activities, which they feel the kids should be exposed to and by taking them to places they communicate the significance of those specific activities. In the companies, if the manager wants to show how much importance he / she attaches to a programme, the manager expressed it through the physical presence and incentives. Until the kids can understand the importance of various things, the parents repetitively expose kids to the activities of their interest and this way the culture, values, customs gets communicated and reinforced generations after generation.

People from Srirangam, Triplicane and Tirupathi will have their own experiences. You are welcome to share.

Recent Books... Updated

Democratizing Innovation - Eric von Hippel, an MIT professor.
Read a review of this book and writers' interview. Like to read this book as the author expands on the paper I read as part of my MBA (Rutgers) known as Lead User Methodology and talks about getting rid of Marketing research. How to come up with innovative products? One way is the visionary world like Apple iPod and the another way that is being used widely, is this Lead User Method. A Lead User is one who takes a product, modifies to fit his needs and probably uses it to satisfy a need that it is not intended to.

Haven't been paying much attention to the books of late. Today, I forced myself to Barnes & Nobles. Found a bunch of interesting books in the management / business area.

"Search" - about Google and the ilk. This book explores the search process in the current soceity; forsees a era of semantic or AI enabled search and how various internet media companies esp. Google goes about doing this. I'm not convinced that a human mind could be mechanized!

"iCon" - about Apple Steve Jobs second round. I love this company.

Recently read an english translation of Bhagavad Gita by Barbara Stoler Miller. Its written in amazingly simple english. I felt that she has brought the essence of the words of Gita in a beautiful poetic form.

enjoy reading.