The Yaxis Live by Rajesh Kumar

Nicolas Carr became famous worldwide when his earlier paper (and then book) kicked up quite a storm. It was titled ‘Does IT Matter’ and argued that IT was no more to give a strategic advantage to any one corporation or entity over other – it would at best  help establish parity. While people are still trying to get over Mr. Carr’s simplistic logic carried in that gem of an argument, he has come out with another piece of work- I personally feel this is another piece of disappointment from Mr Carr. For the records, Nicolas Carr is the former executive editor of Harvard Business Review and has NYT, FT & Wired and this book is called The Big Switch: Rewiring the world, from Edison to Google.

First, the title. Does it represent:

- Switch ~ Exchange(As in a telephone exchange where you get connected to one another)?

- Switch~ Change?

- Switch~ Mr. Carr’s volte-face in going from digital pessimism to digital euphoria between Does IT Matter and The Big Switch?

The books begins with a little lowdown of the great inventor Thomas Edison. Edison and his team were behind the great electricity grid- prior to that, though companies were using electricity, but all was generated and consumed inhouse. And no, towns were not litup the way they are now. The consumers suddenly were not required to worry about generation of electricity, they merely had to open the tap. The net, according to Nicolas Carr, provides the same sense of aggregation, when it comes to data and computing is now more of a service.. He also hints that the world is now on the cusp of possibilities provided by such an aggregation. Why just hint, he talks about them in great details and liberally mentions about Napster, Google, Myspace, MyBlogLog, spam, search, Blackberry,YouTube, Standards, Gates & Page &  Brin etc in support of his ‘argument’. He also mentions quite expectedly mentions about Nicolas Negroponte , David Wise, Jagdish Bhagwati and so on.Why, he even mentions about offshoring as a phenomenon.

What is the point he seeks to make? He points to the twin phenomenon of aggregation and unbundling, both happening at the same time, when it comes to computing in general, and added to the net. The book does not have the clever language that one sees in books such as Wikinomics that can hold your attention, nor does seem to have a thematic thread such as in Blink. If you have been alive to the net and computing in last ten years, this would appear as bland restatement of facts, rather than any trendspotting or a hypothesis. Would I recommend you to buy this? Stay away is my advice.

Friends, I started blogging, I chose a slightly irreverent URL of masoomjanwar.blogspot.com in 2005, When Blogger allowed domain integration, I bought a domain and linked my blog to work on www.yaxis.in. My intention in selecting this location was to have a very simple URL. It served its purpose a great deal, but of late, I have noticed that Google directs lot of traffic from India, but does not do so from other geographies, atleast in the same measure. I also noticed that Google sitemap hints that my blog, because of the .in at the end, is seen by Google to be targeting traffic from India. I felt that this was not what I was attempting to do.  I just want my blog to be location agnostic.

I have moved my blog to a more universal domain which is www.yaxislive.com. This is the new home of my blog. I hope you would continue to follow my blog. Folks who follow this site through feed should not be feeling any difference.

I have also opted for Wordpress and I hope you would like the brand new layout. I also thank Mani  for answering all my silly questions which gave me the confidence to complete something that has been in my mind for a while.

PS: If you are an existing feed subscriber, no action required from you. The new site would take care of that, automatically.

Friends, hi. This is the first post at this new location and I extend a warm welcome. I look forward to your comments on the look and feel – Wordpress as a blogging tool is new to me and I hope to improve as we move along. I have chosen a theme by Jai Nischal Verma – I feel it is very refreshing and classy. Of course, I have tried my hand at tweaking this theme a bit- not sure if I got it right.

Feed subscribers: If you see this post, you are set- no action required from your side. You would continue to get content in your feed reader the way you do.

..Except the fact that when I as looking at these two trade magazines published from two different parts of the world (Auto Monitor – India & Automotive News – US), they looked like lost cousins!

When I run a search on the word ‘innovation’ in the books section at Amazon, it returned over two hundred and forty seven thousand records. Don’t believe this? Try clicking here or see the imagelet below.

What I am trying to highlight is that innovation is probably the most written about subject in last few years. To the point that at one point I sincerely believed the word has become cliched – till I became a believer in this word again.

Dr C.K.Prahalad and M.S.Krishnan have published a recent bestseller on "The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co Created Value Through Global Networks" (It came in a shrink wrap and hence the title of this post).

Frankly, the last time I read Dr Prahalad was BOP and came back with what I can call as subterranean dissonance. With the expectation that beneath the shrink wrap would be a new idea, a new thought argument, I look forward to reading ( and subsequently joining the debate on this subject by kicking off a post) this new rage in town.

Pablo has a nice post and some interesting videos on this subject.

It might appear surprising that I have tried to create a debate around an argument that appears settled – I mean why would you not want to pay income taxes online, when you do not have to write a piece of paper form or a cheque, you do not have to run to the bank, you do not have to stand in a queue, and you can do it with the comfort of your home or work, you can do it last minute and so on. The advantages appear so obvious.

Almost so, till you try it out, something I did last week. The process is simple. You go to this site, locate the form and get going. So far so good. It even matches your PAN number with the Income Tax Department database to see if you have typed the correct PAN Account number, so that typos do not result in disasters of wrong credit. The form has no computational intelligence, which means it will only take values of the tax, surcharge and education cess etc. The portal also appears to offer direct transfer from several banks which is a great help.

All went well, the name matched, the transfer happened alright. Only when the receipt (‘counterfoil’) was being generated, it failed to save on my machine, gave some error, thank you, and failed to save. It was frightening, since the ‘counterfoil’ copy is supposed to be enclosed with the return. Luckily I had a screen shot of the whole document, taken in parts. That one moment was enough to generate sweat beads on my forehead, after what happened last year at ICICI Bank.

Suggestion: Please do take a screen shot of the receipt, atleast of the counter foil and save it. Or select all and save it on MS Word. A great system improvement could be to ask people for an email id and mail them a PDF of the receipt if they want it and also to include a text on what common taxpayer should do, if none of the above works.  

I noticed a TV ad of a ’snack’ featuring Juhi Chawla. This fairly long ad ends with the punchline ‘Tedha hai par mera hai’. True, creative ads need not always come from big agencies. or vice versa as in this case. Someone was kind enough to put the ad on YouTube. Yes, deep pocket clients demand,"Give me something out of the world" and advertising agencies oblige. Yes, this ad is quite out-of-the-world as far as I am concerned. Mindblowing (!) too. And quite jarring too.

I am not buying Kurkure anytime, no I would not. And I would even not take an Airtel connection even if they run the Maddy & Vidya Balan ad five hundred times in three hours.

The creativity of the ad has been killed by the big media budget. They need to pull out some money from the incessant carpet bombing of this ad to creating meaningful ads- more ads with less number of rotations on the TV screen.

Over the last few years, I have read several books around some of the great corporations of the world. Some of them have been written by people who have led those companies. Jack Welch (Straight from the Gut) and Carlos Ghosn(Shift) have written books which essentially talk about business transformation of the companies they have led, or continue to lead. I have also come across books such as those by Madan Birla (I have attended a webinar he gave in my company, not read his book titled Fedex Delivers) who have been senior leaders of some of world’s great companies.I have also come across books on a theme where the reflection of a corporation keeps coming back again and again – such as Tom Friendman’s The World is Flat (Sorry, but I remain a dissenter when it comes to The World is Flat as a book.)

I have almost finished reading Cold Steel by Bouquet & Byron. The books I have read in the past have traced the history of corporations over decades. This one actually traces a momentous event in the steel industry and the events preceding it- maximum spread of the events is just a few months and the level of detail is high, without being excessive. That event happens to be merger of Mittal Steel with Arcelor leading to creation or Arcelor Mittal, which is World’s largest steel company. The personalities are real, Lakshmi Mittal & Aditya Mittal from Mittal Steel side, and Josesph Kinsch and Guy Dolle from Arcelor side, ably supported by their aides, which included the Zaoui brothers( Yoel & Michael, who were advising the opposite parties!).

The books is written like a novel, with very significant description of events as they happened. It hold attention, despite the fact that outcome is known. Lakshmi Mittal’s determination, Aditya’s ability to sync and contribute to the senior Mittal’s vision, Joseph Kinsch’s ability to stand on his own, Guy Dolle’s character in holding their fort show stuff steel tough business leaders are made of.

The narration of the book is excellent. Unlike others who write in a passive voice and impersonal tone, this one has a direct narration of events that happened, giving the impression that the authors were present at all times to record the events. This unfortunately is also the weakness of this book – one does not know when the real facts have been blended with extrapolations to create a readable level of detail. This is also the biggest plus in favour of the book – it helps hold attention.

Go grab!

Cellphones are unarguably wireless devices, and therefore work on waves to route communication but the below video showing showing cellphones working as kitchen microwave is too much.

See corn popping up on a flat table surrounded by four ringing mobile phones. Not sure which company makes those phones, but they sure have an unexplored line of business ready- Portable Microwave Oven or Rechargeable Pop Corn maker.

If they are just another phone handsets, well, I suddenly feel quite convinced the good old wireline phone is such  a great idea. Meanwhile, bhejafry, anyone?

We were at Mysore last Sunday and among other places, we visited the Mysore Royal Palace too. There were three types of tickets available :

So, it has been publicly firmanned that foreigners visiting the palace are neither adults not children. (Somewhat reminded me of my OB teacher Raji Philip who described the boardroom of a company  as having three types of toilets, one each of the ladies and gents, and one for the Directors!!)

The Mysore Palace is grand, and the only downer is that you are not allowed to take your camera inside the palace.

The palace looked absolutely dazzling during the evening lighting though (thankfully, nobody- adults, children, or foreigners needs to buy any tickets to see the lighting), take a look at the picture taken from my phone(the picture hardly does any justice to the real thing but nevertheless). The sheer size of the palace compound appears quite overwhelming.

Ankur has shared some real cool pictures of Mysore.