The Yaxis Live by Rajesh Kumar

Sukumar has done a post on a lecture by Dan Tapscott who has authored Wikinomics ( The full title is Wikinomics- How mass collaboration changes everything ) with Anthony Williams. Actually this book has been in my to read list for almost a year and it is only now that I have been able to lay my hands on a copy – thanks to Odyssey. One of my old agonies with bookstores in India is that they don’t get books till it is branded as a success in the western world. Somehow, in this respect, the world is not flat yet!

Though I am just forty pages deep into it and hope to post again once I am done reading, I remain quite convinced on how IT enabled mass collaboration is changing the world as we know it- come on, we knew it even before we started reading this book – Wikinomics appears to give our own thoughts that much more backbone of reasoning to make it more believable.(In the below Video, Dan talks at Google on the thoughts that make Wikinomics).

I shall be back once I am done reading, but meanwhile, would love to read comments from others who have read Wikinomics. And to those who do not read books too often, high time you took a break and bought this one.

Dr Jagdish Sheth, renowned thought leader was at Madras Management Association on 15th Oct and as a member I had the privilege of attending his talk, which I can describe as simple and mind boggling. Dr Sheth spoke on Seven Self Destructive Habits of Good Companies which is published as a book. Dr Sheth pointed out at the beginning of his presentation that a third of the companies listed in Fortune 500 in 1970 had vanished by 1983!

Dr Sheth spoke about the seven habits as:

1. Denial (of realities)
2. Arrogance (Often success breeds this)
3. Complacency (When companies have tasted the fruits of success and don’t feel the need to better themselves)
4. Competence Dependence (When they have something they have identified as a core skill which seem to have worked for them – the requirement for the skill may get washed out due to disruptive change, maybe technology led)
5. Competitive myopia (Identifying your competition incorrectly and then refusing to see the truth)
6. Volume obsession ( “Let’s give this freebie so that we retain this customer or else..”)
7. Turf wars ( Organizational behaviour)

The talk was compelling enough for me to buy a copy of the above book, which I discovered in the course of my reading, is full of examples of giants who continue to be giants, or those who have fallen by the wayside.

A nice session and the book sounds promising too. However, I have a word of caution on the book. Do not consider this as a pass through book. You would feel the need to reflect and think after every few pages, maybe even try to relate to what you have read earlier, and even Google about some corporate history.

Thanks Dr Sheth!

(PS: Dr Sheth, in response to an answer to an audience question, said that if there were an eighth habit he had to mention, he would say talent plateauing is that eighth organizational habit. Essentially, companies do not want to experiment by giving their employees the chance to work in newer areas, but to retain them in an area in which they have demonstratively performed in the past)

Okay, I admit this upfront.Tim Harford’s Undercover Economist is a must read. Read the below to see a real life problem.

I should have read Tim Harford’s Undercover Economist long ago. This book seeks to find, analyse and explain for a layman, economic sense (blended with copious supply of common sense) behind some of the most ordinary phenomenon from real life. Well, some have compared this to Freakonomics, but I would say my experience with TUE as much superior.

Economics is a field of study which , as some great light said, predicts the past. It tends to be drab, and academic, due to which most of us do not even want to spend (waste?) our time in understanding the economic phenomenon. This would be quite different, if the teacher the Tim Harford.

My favourite chaoters of this book remain “Who Pays for your coffee” ( an eye opener) and “The Crosstown traffic”.

The beauty of this book is that it knows its readers well. So none of the tough economic terms terms for you. Neither do you spend time poring over the x-y axes of curves trying to make sense of some underlying economic phenomenon. Read it in simple English, at a pace that you choose, and start from a chapter whose title attracts you. As I said, a must read.

In my post titled Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid – What I liked and what I didn’t I wrote about my impressions on Dr CK Prahalad’s work titled ‘The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid‘.

Frankly when I read the book, I did not come out fully convinced.It all sounded very nice, but not very pursuasive. My curiousity led me to search a bit more on this debate. I came across a paper by Prof. Aneel Karnani published in California Management Review. The paper titled Fortune at the Bottom of Pyramid: A Mirage comes out hard on the BOP concept as enunciated in Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by Dr Prahalad.

While Dr Prahalad’s work focusses on how corporations can make money selling even to the marginal wage earner, Dr Karnani questions the viability of such a proposition, even talks on issues such as affordability of this segment of consumers. He even questions the suitability of the cases used to substantiate the BOP proposition (such as Annapurna salt).Frankly anyone who has been to countryside markets where many of India’s marginal earners live and seen the buying behaviour would tend to agree to Dr Karnani’s paper. I would recommend that you read Dr. Karnani’s paper in entirety.

Dr Karnani’s paper also comes down hard on the facts and figures quoted in this book.If one were to believe the BOP work, an Indian housewife send an average of 60 text messages a day(Page 43, paperback edition) on their mobile phones. Frankly, I am not an expert on numbers but find this quite ridiculously high. A tenth of this number would have sounded more convincing.

The good thing is that the debate talks about a segment that is not SEC A which is where most of the strategic thinking generally remains focused. Followers of the BOP school have created a site to carry on the argument and it is interesting to watch this debate growing. Dr. Prahalad’s arguments for a change sound defensive, quite indicated by the Ads in Google if you run a search on ‘CK Prahalad’ which read ‘Learn about Prahalad‘s BOP strategy and his response to criticism‘.

Interesting!

I was reading Robert Scoble and Shel Israel‘s great but slightly old(well, in tech arena, one year is fairly old) book titled Naked Conversations (Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers) The book is such captivating read, and no, time had no effect on the relevance of the contents, which is blogging as a medium of communication.
At some point NC tries raises the question on whether (corporate) blogs can be equated with Marketing. A new term conversational marketing emerges, and I feel it is quite apt. I tried hard to think of reasons on why in today’s world blogs are getting adopted as a medium for individual or group communication, but not so quicky as a channel for corporate communications. The following is my hypothesis:

BTW, Naked Conversations is a great book and a must read for marketing guys. Only a word of caution. Create your personal blog and run it for a while before you read it. But consider this as a compulsory reading material, at the very least. And do it fast, before your idea of marketing becomes a living dinosaur.

Still wondering who are Scoble and Shel Israel? No I am not telling you, go Google them!

As I wrote in my earlier post, I read C. K. Prahalad’s thoughts on Eradicating Poverty Through Profits through the lenses of the book titled “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid” ( Wharton School Publishing).
As is my habit, I started by reading the preface where I was pleasantly surprised to see the name of a former colleague of mine, Praveen Suthrum, who went to be Dr. Prahalad’s student and contributed to this book.
The central premise of this book appears to be that one need not be in the developed world to create a world class enterprise – there are companies that have created a niche in their own ways wherever they are. And while doing things differently, they have not sacrificed the profit motive – they are hugely successful, famous and respected.The book has studied some very successful and homegrown companies in South America and India and attempted to bring out what made them successful.
This book is a break for Indian B-School students, who for generations have been fed on cases from the west. This covers companies such as Casa Bahia ( Brazilian Retailer ), (CEMEX Cement Manfuacturer- Mexico), quite a bit on HLL, Jaipur foot, Aravind Eye care, ITC e-Chaupal etc from a social transformation point of view.
But with due respect to CKP’s scholarship and the initiative, few words on the editing. If a book calls Sankara Nethralaya as Shankar Netralaya (page 106) , Doordarshan as Doordharshan (somewhere), starts talking about a name( Dr Pramanik) on page 177 and tells his introduction only on page 184. As the saying goes, another pair of eyes never hurt. The language inconsistency is all too apparent as one reads this. The text often appears disjointed in the central message is lost in the verbosity of dry text. Somewhere, you feel you have to hold your attention too hard to continue to follow.
The video CD that came with the book is much better though. It has short clips shot by the students themselves.

PS: I wonder when will B-Schools in India wake up and start taking up such ambitious and tough projects and be known for this rather than the average salary surveys alone.Salaries go up because industry and the economy are doing well, not because the B-Schools inject any special gene in their students. The silent message from this book is – Good Morning Indian B-Schools.

I heard CKP at an academic event couple of years back and was stuck by a mesmerizing presentation he gave on what appeared in the bookstore later as “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid”. As a logical sequel, this book appeared on the shelves of a colleague a months back, and I have helpfully borrowed it, without giving my colleague the chance to say no. So next few days, I will have this highly talked about book for bedtime reading. Shall certainly write when I finish, which I am hoping will be by end of next week.

Updated: Here is the post.

So I was at New Delhi station ready to board a long journey to Chennai and could not find my name in the reservation chart despite having a printout of my e-ticket. Still I went on sat of the berth showing on my ticket, took out the ticket one more time and pored over it for any date errors. Could not find any. There was a newly wed couple sitting there who were in certain need of more private space, and I was feeling very very awkward. The conductor came soon enough and I gave him my ticket with very eerie feeling. Then came the surprise. He informed me that my ticket stood upgraded and that I should take my place in 2nd AC. Class upgrade. What a surprise!
So, I take my small bag and move to my ‘upgraded place’. There I take out Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, which was the plan. The book is about ‘How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference’, claims the cover.The next few hours are spent in figuring out the subject of the book. Some facts that emerge are:

• The book is atleast six years old.
• Has been a bestseller
• Is on unorthodox sociology, if I can use this term

Over the next day I discover I find that the book is about finding the small little reasons which make a ripple into a wave.The book is not a very easy to read book. Malcolm Gladwell packs in lot of facts and observations, and before you can absorb some, he throws lot more at you. Look at his reasoning of why communities should be limited to 150. He says that is the number human mind can really take without creating disconnects. But the reasoning moves from description of human mind to observation of hunter gatherer communities of ancient times and how their average community hovers around 150. Then he brings in a company called Gore Associates, which has a fascination for number 150.Wilbert Gore, one of the founders is quoted as saying,”..we put a one hundred and fifty parking spaces in the lot, and when people start parking on the grass, it is time to build a new plant“.Man, what a simplified strategic planning!
The book, as I read it, made me pretty excited as one should while reading a bestseller.But perhaps no wiser. If you have read Freakonomics and felt confused, this one will obfuscate things even more.So by evening I put the book back in the bag. Mr. Iyer and Mr. Mehta are engrossed in some discussion that I must get involved. Mr. Iyer’s ‘foreign return’ son (America, he helpfully clarifies) is getting married in few weeks. Mr. Mehta is returning home after engagement of his daughter, who is also with him. She is lost somewhere, I could not figure out where but that somewhere is infinite distance focal length across the wall towards ‘dah-ly’, while Mr. Iyer and Mr Mehta are busy discussing the nuances of the marital traditions in different parts of India. Much more interesting than the book. This is my tipping point. So I hook on, uninvited!

Very few people can dream big. Even fewer can pursue those dreams to reality. A visionary, a technocrat and a project manager par-excellence rolled into one is Abdul Kalam for us.President A.P.J Abdul Kalam is one such distinguished person who has proved that dreams can be chased to reality by hard work. No wonder President Kalam is such a popular president. How popular, read on.

Few days before MS Subbulakshmi died, President Kalam visited her at her house in Chennai. It was evening post work hour and due to President Kalam’s visit, the Police had stopped traffic. I was heading home and found myself in a jam at Kottur bridge connecting Turnbulls road with Gandhi Mandam road. We were curious why the traffic is standstill and people including myself felt frustrated. Frustrated till the policeman on duty uttered the word ‘Kalam’. It was a different story that point onwards. People switched off the engines, locked their cars and stood on the road median, just to get a glimpse of President Kalam’s cavalcade, which was visible for few seconds as it approached MS house from IIT side and the closest it came to us was about a km away! The president possibly stayed there for five minutes or so, got back in the car and sped back. All we could see was the car lights. Nobody whined about this traffic delay that day. The only complaint was that we could not see Kalam.

I was reminded of this incident recently when I found a colleague of mine reading Indomitable Spirit by Dr Kalam. I ended up borrowing that book which I am reading currently. I was instantly tempted to read this book because I had the chance to read Wings of Fire(co-authored by Arun Tiwari) few years back.

What strikes most about Kalam’s writing is the simplicity with which he talks about his travails of life and the fact that he writes about his failures as much as his success. He is not afraid to talk about what gave him happiness and what made him sadness. And he does that in the most unassuming way. And unlike the politicans who talk about good of the country and never mean it, Kalam comes out as a thankful deviation. Wings of Fire was very inspiring read, and so is Indomitable Spirit which is bound touch you, because it is so easy to relate it to our own pursuits of life. See all his books here. If there is one complaint you would have about his writing is that he does not appear stiff-like-a-president but too humble and real.

Some strange things about Kalam. Like all things Kalam, the official website of the President of India has his personal impression too. The website has all his speeches, but more than that, it has a quiz for children in its Children Corner. Another unique thing about Kalam something that we all know but do not realize, that he is the President of World’s largest democracy and belongs to no particular party!

This is the email I received when I greeted Abdul Kalam on his birthday(In about four hours flat)

So whether you read business or anything else, do read Kalam’s books at your first chance. And if you have read them, please leave comments here for my benefit.We are blessed to be living in his times.

It is perhaps, very tempting, but not an easy task to write about Google as a company. This company did not exist 10 years back, and now commands a market cap of USD 155 BN.(Snapshot taken from Google Finance).

The real challenge in writing about Google is that almost entire net savvy population and businesses are exposed so much to this company’s services in some way or the other and hence have some opinion on this brand.Many people may have very strong opinion based on their brand experience. While most people think of Google as the search service alone, they have so many other successful offerings as well. To the users like me, Google is about search, to website managers, it has a host of quick-to-use tools, to advertisers, it is about instant reach to a target segment via Adsense and Adwords.A crazy cookie, if you consider that it has less than 10,000 employees wordwide.

While John Battelle’s The Search is a lot of adrenalin and reading excitement, David A. Wise’s The Google Story is more sober and readable. There is a glaring disagreement in the two books with regard to how the name Google came about. John’s book echoed the widely believed theory that an angel investor misspelt the name on the cheque he was making, Wise’s version is as follows:

“By the fall of 1997, Brin and Page decided that the BackRub search engine needed a new name. Page was having trouble coming up with that hadn’t already been taken, so he asked his office-mate Sean Anderson for help. “I would go to the whiteboard and start brainstorming and he would say, ‘No, no,no’ ” Anderson recalled. ……..One of the last things I came up with was ‘How about Googleplex …….Googleplex is a huge number’. He liked that. He said, ‘How about we try Google?’ He liked it shorter. I typed in G-o-o-g-l-e and misspelled it on my workstation, and that was available. Larry found that acceptable and he registered it later that evening and wrote it on the whiteboard: Google.com…And I came in the next morning and Tamara had a written a note saying,’You misspelled it. It is supposed to be G-o-o-g-o-l’.Of course, that was already taken “

Strange about Google, when they were predominantly a search company, people wondered where the revenue would flow in. Then they had Adwords & Adsense and this question was considered settled. When the question of web-based email services was pretty much out of fashion, they came out with Gmail, and it became a craze. Recently they gobbled up Youtube for whopping USD 1.6 BN and everyone wonders how they are going to make money out of it. Perhaps this question too will have a Google style innovative solution.(Interestingly, Steve Ballmer who was in India recently, made a statement saying Youtube was an IP/Copyright disaster waiting to happen).

An immensely readable book. Go read it even if you think you know a lot about Google. And read it fast before Google marches even farther in the journey to success. And do leave your comments if you have read this already.An interesting book on a great company.