Certain Recent Events

Certain recent events made me write this. Though they are distinct and separate incidents, both could not be ignored. First of it, is the Encounter death of Saddam Hussein. Yes! the so called Trial by any count can not be justified in any form. Yes Saddam committed those atrocities and there is no two things about him being punished. But this whole tribunal business, looks like this is the only task the so called Iraqi Government achieved. Every day people are getting killed in droves, no business is happening, no new improvements in the lives of the people of Iraq. Now, they (the US & Iraqi govt.) say that the Judgement is handed and they are just implementing the Judgement. Why wait so long? Just the troops could have shot him outside the hole he came out of . This is nothing but an encounter killing. But Justice will be done.

The second incident is that of Steve Jobs of Apple. The story is that Jobs chose dates in the past to benefit him. Apple conducted an internal review and has cleared Jobs of any wrong doing. According to them, even though, he picked the dates of the option grants, he didn't benefit from it by selling the stock! Come on. Who are they trying to fool? In the end, Jobs may be forced to give up his role in Apple because of this stupid mistake. This reminds me of the Insider Trading story of Waksal of Imclone.

It is Time for Indian Silver Screen to evolve

The other day I was listening to a report on Tsunami reconstruction in Banda Aceh, Indonesia in NPR, the report started with people in temporary tents watching a dubbed Bollywood movie. Another day on a report on Afghanistan, the report started with a dubbed Bollywood movie. I've heard similar reports as far as the Gulf to the borders of Africa. The teritory from Africa / Arabia to east asia, there is no other big Entertainment Industry. The other big countries China / Japan has a film industry. We could say that probably Japanese film industry produces some quality movies. Being a communist country, China lacks the creative class. But on shear volume basis, no other film industry comes close to the Indian entertainment industry in Asia. China is slowly opening up but its a long way for the people of china to develop a free mindset and for an industry to grow. Thus it is high time that the indian goverment lays out a path to recognize the film development as an industry. Even though I'm personally skeptical about managing creation / innovation, various management gurus and academics have come up with frameworks. The western world is operating the film development as a industry (succesfully to a major extent). Lets brace the inevitable.

Book of Interest

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More (Hyperion , 2006)
The book talks about the latest management fad of concentrating on the Niches to make money. The usual 80/20 rule applies to any business and the Long Tail approach is to concentrate on the 20 and increase the target market rather than concentrating on the 80 where the margins are so thin.