As I read other blogs, I mark out the blogposts that I really like. You can see these blogposts in the “Linkroll” in the sidebar (it’s just above the Blogroll section). Think of it as a bonus blog that you get with this main blog!
Archive for April, 2007
The current patent system is under strain and is failing to cope up. Right now the average waiting time to win a patent is 27 months and rising. There is a huge backlog which is a being blamed for a fall in quality of inspections of the patent applications. One interesting suggestion is to open up the patent process to peer review. A pilot effort for 250 patent applications is getting underway…
News Corp. Bets on In-market Incubation
Published by April 28th, 2007 in organizational design and new-media industry. 1 CommentNews Corp.’s decision to finance a Chinese startup rather than import its hugely successful MySpace.com unit is part of a larger trend. In-market incubation will generate the next wave of growth in emerging markets.
Yahoo! announced today that I will be their CEO of India Research and Development. Why am I joining Yahoo!? Read on…
Warren Buffet is Coming to Town! Well, Maybe
Published by April 23rd, 2007 in new-media industry. 4 CommentsNew media is giving old media US and Western markets a run for its money. But old media is thriving in BRIC countries. If you were Warren Buffet, what would you do?
My year-long buyout experiment has come to an end. In this post I describe what I was doing and why it failed. I have no regrets that we tried. That’s the essence of entrepreneurship. In the coming days, I’ll talk about what I plan to do next.
Pointer to Santosh Gurlahosur’s summary of the NASSCOM Workshop for early-stage product startups that Prat Moghe and I did yesterday.
In Praise of Jugaad Innovation
Published by April 18th, 2007 in innovation and entrepreneurship. 5 CommentsIn the last two weeks Carlos Ghosn (CEO, Renault) and Rick Wagoner (CEO, GM) have praised jugaad innovation in Indian manufacturing. They are putting their finger on the most important characteristic of the Indian innovation ecosystem. India has leant that oftentimes less is more and innovation happens, not despite, but because of limited resources.
Confronting Cultural Gravity
Published by April 16th, 2007 in entrepreneurship and inter-cultural issues. 4 CommentsProduct startups in India have to overcome the cultural gravity that exists on account of IT Services firms. Here are five cultural changes that are needed…
Hype has surrounded the word innovation and a backlash is underway. Although Clayton Christensen has introduced a useful framework around disruptive and sustaining innovation, a commonly understood taxonomy hasn’t taken shape. So let me take a shot at proposing a layman’s terminology…
The recent row about the 60% salary increase of Ministers in Singapore government is reminiscent of the furor created by egregious salaries of some US CEOs. In fact, the similarity goes deeper. One way to understand Singapore is to think of it as a mega-corporation with a live-in workplace…
YEGA IS Rising!
Published by April 11th, 2007 in software industry and adaptable infrastucture. 2 CommentsI like Vinnie Mirchandani because he doesn’t beat around the bush. He responds to Paul Graham’s article “Microsoft is Dead” by simply stating that its not just Microsoft but also IBM, SAP and Oracle (see his post “MISO is dead”). In a way he is right. They are all part of the fading edge. What’s rising in place of MISO is YEGA. The yahoo, eBay, Google and Amazon are part of the leading edge. But if truth be told, my respect goes to GET-IN, a slight twist on letters that represents GE, TI and Nokia…
Cultivating Intercultural Competence
Published by April 9th, 2007 in inter-cultural issues. 3 CommentsAn IHT story about Dutch soldiers in Afghanistan brings out the cultural difference between Americans and Dutch people. On Geert Hofstede’s masculine/feminine dimension Americans are staunchly “masculine” while Dutch society one of the most “feminine” in the world. This difference has created problems in the past as well and is emblematic of the problems businesses face in managing truly global knowledge workers. Developing intercultural competence is now critical for the new multinationals to succeed.
I had extensive travel in March but managed to keep the blogging rhythm going. I feel good about that. Happily the comments are also building up. March saw an average of 2.2 comments for every post. Traffic continues to grow. The page views increased 29% in March to 1864 a day. My guess is that the feed subscriptions are also growing though I have no way knowing for sure as I don’t use FeedBlitz. Here are the most popular posts of March. Check them out if you missed any…
Keeping the Trains Running On Time
Published by April 6th, 2007 in adaptable infrastucture. 0 CommentsAny successful business has to “keep the trains running on time”. Ten years back, in our industry, the focus was on telephone service outages. Now the focus is on web site outages. Yahoo is the most reliable with zero downtime. Amazon has 21 mins of downtime which makes them 7th (among top 20) in terms of outage performance.
Passion, Happiness, Work, Play and Life
Published by April 5th, 2007 in book review and personal. 1 CommentWork-life balance is about ditching the Deferred Life Plan. Not only shouldn’t family be deferred, Randy Komisar suggests that passion also shouldn’t be deferred. He describes passion as something that pulls you towards something you cannot resist while drive pushes you towards something you feel compelled or obligated to do. “If you know nothing about yourself you can’t tell the difference”. This ties in very well with Martin Seligman’s research on happiness. He suggests that true happiness doesn’t’ happen unless you know your own strengths. After all, it’s playing to your signature strengths that brings passion alive. Read on…
For me the real battleground between the copyleft and copyright movements is not music but higher education. This is why I am really interested and emboldened by MIT’s Open CourseWare program. This has implications for India as the hiher education system undergoes some serious reform.
Internet, satellite television and handheld devices like cell phones and iPods enables us to stay ensconced in our culture even when we travel. This is creating micro-cultures. The danger of this is that radicalism can get a boost. I look at more optimistic scenario where the improved rooted-ness will manifest as a heightened capability to deal with change in areas outside of music, religion and politics. Read on…
