The Y-AXIS LIVE!

As a person who buys loves to buy books every now and then, I have faced a constant nag. The stores in the town sell books that in their judgment, will move. They are not necessarily the books that match my taste or are the best. There are many occasions I just spend considerable time in a store and decide there’s nothing worthwhile to buy.Quite simply, there is not a single place where I can know about books, discuss them, and buy them right there.Not upto now at least.

My quest to know about books on marketing, business in general, great companies, business legends and so on got me connected to Shelfari some months back. Social networking to me till that point only meant leaving a few Orkuts scraps in iNcOmPrEhEnSiBlE blob of words and so on. Gradually I started following Shelfari and though I do notice that the level of action is not very high, I love the site for the books specific focus and the ability to have user provided reviews, discussions etc. If you are half sure on a title, ask ‘do you suggest I buy this book’ to folks who own that title.

It was announced today that Shelfari is has followed Skype into being another web property to be acquired by Amazon. Shelfari has seemingly good synergy and complimentary offerings with Amazon book section. It will be safe to assume that Amazon would use the social elements of Shelfari platform to generate book sales. Amazon would be able to tap discussions on books, see get to see early on demand being created by user generated reviews and ratings, opinions and discussions.Book lovers would almost certainly be able to buy those books there. Is social networking taking a new meaning here? Would Amazon use this platform to make people chat on other merchandise it sells?

Logical query: Are we going to see domain specific social networking sites getting consolidated by large ‘downstream’ or ‘upstream’ or ‘proximate’ players’?

If there is one thing I would credit Prahalad and Krishnan for achieving via their latest book, it is to boldly bring Information Technology out of the closet to mainstream corporate strategy. Their book is around innovation and ‘co-creation’ a term used quite liberally in the book. You could read co-creation to mean value generation by collaboration(The New Age of Innovation: Driving Co-Created Value through Global Networks).

The leitmotif running through the chapters is what Prahalad and Krishnan call the new paradigm of R=G a and N=1. It essentially denotes global access to resources and talents (R=G) and ability to individualize experiences for consumers of various products and services. The R=G quest is generally attributed to optimize material and service costs and N=1 is the ultimate personal buying experience. No firm would have the wherewithal to satisfy the experiences of one customer at a time.They also point out that choice or no choice, the world is gradually moving towards this new paradigm. Think the personalized Google (igoogle.com) or the IT enabled personal tutor teaching math sitting thousands of kilometers away.

The implication of this simple to appear idea appear quite profound upon reflection. This model of getting access to the best resources (Wal-Mart =10 BN USD trade with China) and selling it to buyers they way they would like to buy - mass personalization- call for constant innovation and Prahalad and Krishnan have brought ICT into the central core of this innovation space. The message is very clear - the CEO cannot leave IT backbone of the organization to the CIO, the way he cannot leave the financial health of the organization to the CFO alone. In  other words ICT is not a service, but the core of an organization’s DNA. I like this idea.

The idea that has traditionally held ground is that IT is a cost , a type of price one need to pay to get the business going. Prahalad and Krishnan challenge this notion and emphasize that for innovation that may happen now and for times to come, ICT DNA of the firm need to sing in tandem with the corporate DNA of the company. Very bold indeed. And so marvelously persuasive.

And if you have read Nicolas Carr’s thought-piece ‘Does IT Matter?‘, you have an answer in this book. In simple terms one could say that Nicolas Carr had argued that IT would cease to be the source of competitive advantage since all firms have access to the same IT resources. Prahalad and Krishnan hit back so credibly on this notion and say just the opposite - IT (or ICT) is and would remains the source of competitive advantage. What is also interesting here is that while traditional corporate strategy has thought IT has being synonymous with ERPs, Prahalad and Krishnan notice the unbundling that is happening so rapidly, as one can notice through the applications plugging into Facebook. They also note the reality of the existence of proprietary systems serving the typical needs of  firms.

I really loved this book. If there is some grouse I have with this book it is the long narration on ICICI and ITC’s E-Chaupal- these cannot be cited as example of everything everywhere(BOP, Innovation etc etc) - I am sure there are other firms that have done amazing things worth getting that kind of coverage.

On the whole, very exciting indeed. Must read recommendation from me. And trust me, I had a very conservative take on Dr. Prahalad’s book on BOP.

A colleague who is himself a book lover and perhaps know I treasure them too, gifted me Bangalore Tiger by Steve Hamm. It is a book that covers tech giant Wipro, its origin, its growth, the people who made Wipro what Wipro currently is. Coming from the same industry, I felt greatly enthused to read this book. More so because the author Steve Hamm is a no minnow, but a columnist of Businessweek and likes.

Books on corporations are a tradition in the west, with every corporation worth its name has either seen a CEOs biography, or an external author such as recent published superb work Cold Steel by Bouquet & Ousey, or David Wise on Google.

Wipro is a great company. Not just because it is a path breaking commercial success (USD 4.3 BN for 07-08 fiscal), but because it has produced leaders such as Subroto Bagchi and others who are stalwarts of Indian IT industry even after they left Wipro. And of course, don’t forget Premji.

My primary complaint against this book is that it seems to have developed not by some detailed study, but from the PR material Wipro might have made available.Nothing wrong with using PR material. But seemingly relying on that alone? The entire description is dull and text heavy fashion. The descriptive nature of text makes you fall asleep as soon as you hold the book in your hand. Even after you read the book completely, you ask yourself about anything new that might have appeared in the book. Nyet, no. It also does not focus on elements of strategy well enough, rather spending space on the operational excellence. And loads of that. Perils of a journalist as an author.

Frankly, coming from IT industry myself, I had better expectations from this book. Frankly, I would love to read more books written on Indian success stories. And why IT alone, I’d love to see world class books on world class companies from India - my wish list includes Ranbaxy, the Tatas, the Ambanis, Satyam, the TVS group, Dr Reddy’s, Apollo Hospitals. Till then I could wait.

And warning, don’t try reading Bangalore Tiger at airports waiting for a flight- Soporific is the word.

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.