He trains India's poorest students for the IIT

From Rediff.com: Read full article here. His father, a post office clerk in Bihar, couldn't afford private schooling for his children. So, Anand Kumar studied at a Hindi medium government school where, at an early age, he fell in love with mathematics. During graduation, he submitted papers on Numbers Theory that were published in UK's Mathematical Spectrum and The Mathematical Gazette.... (Read full article here.)

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HOW TO: Build the Ultimate Social Media Resume

Link from Sharethis.com: HOW TO: Build the Ultimate Social Media Resume

Social media resumes are important for attracting hiring managers directly to you, without you having to submit your resume, blindly, to them. The problem with submitting your resume online to job postings is that most job postings aren’t (read more...)  Posted using ShareThis

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Process of transformation.

Image Credit: CareerDevelopmentPlan.net

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Ethics and leadership - a personal event to recall

While being a student's leader during graduation, I discovered a racket that conducted free blood donation camps and then illegally sold the units collected. On the one hand, I found them saving lives and on the other hand, a cancerous culture of bribing, fraud and illegal trafficking of medical blood-units was thriving. Ethics was getting murdered, though lives were being saved selectively (by those who had money). I decided to campaign against this racket. At times I got life-threats and even faced the ire of needy patients (who could give anything for a few units of life-saving blood). Taking support from the ADM (Additional District Magistrate), plus the Rourkela chapter of the Red-Cross Society and fellow students, we could counter hordes of unofficial agents who illegally traded blood-units.

The integrity of a professional reflects in his daily work. Although this was just one incident of many that I have faced, the nature of lessons learned are applicable everywhere. Today, I have conducted numerous camps for eye-care, met numerous influential people who trade favor with values and once, I have had to decide between hiring a meritorious candidate vis-a-vis a less apt one but relative of my boss.

In life, we will continue facing similar ethics (or the lack of it!). But when we look at the bigger picture, we always can understand the right direction to go, even if it is seemingly difficult or temporarily unpopular. I believe that if we are determined and courageous to go ahead with the better path, any hurdle (be it government machinery, public misunderstanding or personal loss) can be constructively overcome.

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Supervising the Board

What is the best way to advise the advisory - probably a board that controls another board? See how this system is a new model to discuss and adapted. Indonesian business culture is already one with this arrangement. Indonesia’s two-tier board system works well and could be a model for other countries.

Quoting Tanri Abeng of PT Telekomunikasi:

“The board of commissioners cannot just say, ‘I’m non-executive, so I’m going to play golf.”

What are the pros and cons of a two-board system? Does it handle the issues raised by a single board system? Is it a good idea to ward-off (or nullify a bit) board politics?

Read here for more on this.

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Launching LinkedIn From a Living Room

The founder of Linkedin opens up in an interview here. From 350 personal invites to 4500 within one month, and 50 million users today, this is a story to read! Click here.

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"How do you manage business objectives and social objectives?"

HEC Social Business Conference: Our Decision Today, Our Impact Tomorrow
Keynote speaker: Emmanuel Faber, Co-Chief Operating Officer, DANONE.

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Blinds.com - Periodic table of marketing

Credits: Blinds.com
Click on image for a better picture!

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The Zero Carbon Car

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A different reason for this recession

Why are we in a recession? An NBER paper by Ravi Jagannathan, Mudit Kapoor, Ernst Schaumburg.

In quotes:
"Arguing against conventional wisdom about the causes of the recession, the authors say that the inability of existing financial and legal institutions to cope with the huge increase in the world’s labour supply in a very short time period, led to the recession."

This paper is available as PDF (741 K) or via email.

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Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of 'SixthSense' technology

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Turning the underprivileged into successful entrepreneurs!

Rediff.com: An effort inspired by the Prince of Wales, by Lakshmi Venktaraman Venkatesan, founding trustee and executive vice president of Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust, is the daughter of former President of India, the late R Venkataraman. The idea behind Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST) is (Read more..)

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Dismay and Delight

Though I was officially briefed about it before embarking on my visit (in June '09), but it did little to alleviate my astonishment during my stay. The way they look at life, reactions and behavior, mannerisms (with specific ways to sit/stand/talk/wait), honesty, discipline and ultra-politeness (at times, artificial), ultra-cleanliness, addiction to work as well as video-games and cell phones, pervasiveness of electronics in daily life, with folks in trains either engrossed in their mobile phone or reading something or just with eyes closed and ears plugged to media players, the variety of food (preparation and eating manners, thanking everyone from the farmer to the fish being eaten), their handling of extreme stress  and their lovely music - it was a series of observations. My stay in the US was not that shocking even though the culture is very different from India. Also, it was not just differences but even similarities in culture that surprised me in the land of Fuji-san. My parents, my spouse, and myself have been brought up in different states in India and I am not new to culture diversity, but in Japan, I was impressed, awed, and fascinated at things - made me think deep about the global evolution of humans and how  values of a society reflect in the norms of the land. I discussed these with my spouse staying in the UK and compared this with my previous experiences with US, Indonesian and Burmese friends. My daily interactions with my Japanese teachers only strengthen my awe for a culture built on philosophies and thoughts of the highest good. And after all, there is so much similarity between the Indian aspect of higher thoughts and the Japanese aspect.
How thin is the line between dismay and delight!?
Life is a beautiful amalgamation of everything nature can provide us and the notion of right/wrong, and culture dismay/delight looks so relative to our thoughts!!

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A 'green' entrepreneur's success story

It has been 25 years of entrepreneurship for Pramod Chaudhari. A successful entrepreneur, he describes his experience as an exciting journey full of ups and downs. Read the complete story here.

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Entrepreneurship and Positioning

Be sure to be go through the two posts of Sramana Mitra that discuss Entrepreneurship and Positioning. In a talk with Phil Widley, she discusses her thoughts on starting-up, job creation and related topics - inviting to a series of free online Round Tables.

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Japanese and Deutsch

Since January this year, I have had some intellectual transformation of the kind that happens to you when you are in Kingergarten - only that, this time, I was painfully aware of some changes occurring to my brain. Over the year, I have been associated with learning two new languages, (at different times of the year), Japanese and Deutsch - the need primarily came from dealing with customers from both these nations, on a daily basis. I did Deutsch A1 and A2 (from the Goethe Institut, Bangalore), and Japanese (JLPT Level 4) from Navis Nihongo.

One of the most important attributes I (re)developed was my ability to attend classes. I was facing teachers who were trained to teach alphabets to adults. I was made to do homework (which I avoided in the initial stages but found to be a useful tool for my brain - wish they named it something better). My patterm recognition abilities have improved manifold (well, for the uninitiated, the Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji scripts in the Japanese language are worth learning from this aspect). While learning two different set of rules of grammar, I could understand the commonalities in very varied human behaviour.

We had various session on inter-cultural business etiquette (with certifications).

Not being afraid of the unknown is seen more in my classes than even in my corporate life. One I translated a sentence from English to Japanese as 'Please sleep well' and it got translated as 'Let us sleep together' - you can imagine the expression on the face of the young teacher. By the way, not falling asleep in class (and to get to sleep well when unable to doze) are two other attributes of this training.

During the last few weeks of the Japanese class, I used to attend Deutsch classes as well and my brain got mixed signals varying from insanity to amusement while mastering the vocabulary - add to this the fact that my wife speaks a different language from me (the common languages between us are Hindi and English and her mother-tongue is Marathi, mine being Odia) - it has been an amazing cocktail of experiences for my brain.

Overall, the result has come out quite positive and I am able to speak the fundamental parts of speech in both the languages. In both languages, they taught us how to shop in the mall, buy train tickets, talk formally/informally and so on. In both classes, we had hilarious sessions of mistaken language and terrible sessions of taking 'achievement tests' (I passed!).

While talking to the encryption expert in my firm, we both observed the necessity of tickling our brain with such experiences. It really sharpens you up! :-)

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Engineering with a Cause – Chewang Norphel, Ladakh

Meet Chaweng Norphel – better known as the Glacier Man of India, who has developed a simple technique to harvest water into an “Artificial Glacier” using simplest of locally found materials and pipes. Norphel has made seven such glaciers. One artificial glacier costs just $7,000, compared to $34,000 for a cement water reservoir! Read on..

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Corp Morality!

Did you read the text of the MBA oath being taken some months back (and even now..)? Something similar to the oath being taken by medical professionals.. Well, there is this surge of morality even in boardrooms and courts. (There was this judge getting down from the bench deciding the Ambani's case - because his daughter was legal advisor for another Ambani firm.) How much of it is cosmetic or real is something that varies from case to case - but the way it is being put forth in media is something appreciable. With Tata Tea doing a campaign on anti-corruption drives, and with Google being branded as the best place on earth to work ('Don't be evil!' is their motto) - life looks cleaner? Corporates forgot profit maximization? Corporate good or an illusion of public relation? One company recently donated a day's salary of all its employees to the Karnataka Government for relief work in floods - but no individual employee got the associated tax benefits from the company. Reason - the company was building a good relation with the labor ministry of the state and got incentives at the company level - with its employees' salary money - and no employee is directly involved! What do you say - good? Bad? Depends? Of course, this is a positive environment being built (or rebuilt?) and it will have its associated issues of implementation - but better few than none and better late than never! I am sure that the impact made in B-school blackboards and corporate boardrooms is going to be big. Recession corrections or just another passing fad?

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Mickey Mouse in IIMA

Mickey Mouse sneaked its way into the Louis Kahn Plaza causing a flutter on the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) campus which is recovering from the jolt of the global meltdown. For the first time Walt Disney picked interns from Asia’s best B-school for ... (read the full story here) [IIMA has retained the topmost rank amongst India's B-schools: Read here.]

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Decision Process Vs Decision Outcome

http://StrategicFraming.com Roch Paryre, Ph.D. describes the challenge of rewarding decision process instead of decision outcome. Excerpt from a 2008 talk on strategic thinking and decision making.

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Why violence

Why does someone resort to sudden violence? It is not about people whose way of living is violence but about people who are very peaceful historically - and then are found to resort to unimaginable levels of violence. There is an observation that if someone who is not addicted to anything (say, smoking) starts an addiction, (s)he ends up being more addicted than normal folks. It is as if a suppressed feeling is suddenly let out once the borders of tolerance are broken.. The recent Maoist violence in the country is an example of this behavior. It is the lack of basic resources that they have been deprived of continuously in the last many decades and this has resulted in such a outrage. In fact, one of the groups is named as 'People against police atrocities'. Instead of looking at the visible violence, we really need to look deeper at the root causes involved.. ..

It's a failure of listening to the people. If the state consistently doesn't listen to the people who are the sovereign, then what results may seem like "irrationality."

Shall we start listening please..? I am sure this internal violence is a passing phase for the country's economic growth. In fact, the mineral rich tribal areas are going to further contribute to the economy once peace prevails.

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Most Significant Achievement?

Although some achievements like being the state topper in matriculation, or getting into one of the topmost engineering colleges, look significant to people close to me, I differ.

This takes me back to 1999 when the eastern coastal state of Orissa in India was ravaged by a super-cyclone (officially called Cyclone 05B). I volunteered to be with one of the teams doing relief work.

I call this as an achievement because I found myself working with the army, handing over food packets to people who were hungry enough to kill each other for a handful of rice - I found myself collecting floating corpses so that they could be burnt before deteriorating further - drove a jeep in knee-deep mud to rescue kids surrounded by flood waters - and could not forget the face of hunger and calamity plus a determination to survive for the joy of life. Strangely enough, I also witnessed the worst faces of humans when I saw things like robbery, bribery and rapes even in such dire situations - it metamorphosed me emotionally as well as intellectually.

It taught me how to look beyond categories of people, and showed me the core of life's existence. As I sit today in my office in an air-conditioned environment, I feel one with Mahatma Gandhi's description of  his experiences in the Red Cross camps of South Africa (1906). I learned to have a vision bigger than individualistic goals and to 'be' the change that I want to see. It taught me real leadership when a single decision can save as well as jeopardize lives. It brought out the real leader in me. Life teaches..

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Debate: Global Impact.. of Global Indians

WSJIDEBATE: What Does the Galleon Scandal Tell Us About the Impact Made by Indians Abroad?

What does the Galleon Scandal tell us about the impact made by Indians abroad? Click here for an interesting debate.

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What is Strategy?

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Entrepreneurship gains ground as a career choice on campuses

Campus incubation centers are filling a vital gap but must offer the right mix of seed money and mentorship.

Click here to view full story

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CleanTech Flight - First Flight Takes Off on Kerosene from Natural Gas

A Qatar Airways flight from London to Qatar has become the first passenger plane to be powered by cleaner-burning natural gas that was converted to kerosene. Click here.

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Google on What is a Browser

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New Media New Marketing

Seth Godin: 10 Bestsellers: Using New Media, New Marketing, and New Thinking to Create 10 Bestselling Books

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Confidence Picks Up in Clean Tech Funding: Report

Full article on the CleanTechies Site : Credits: 

Brief Pointer: Thank billions in government funding for helping to lift clean technology investment in the third quarter, said the Cleantech Group and Deloitte in a report Wednesday.

The quarterly analysis reiterated that the recession has kicked but not killed investments in this sector, which remain... (Full article)

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Six Sigma Lean v/s Theory of Constraints

Credits: Scribd.com User Puneet Mehta

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8 Reasons (You Never Thought Of) That Sustainability Will Change Management

By Michael S. Hopkins

As sustainability affects how the world works, so will it affect how business works in the world. Here are eight changes that smart managers are already talking about.  Click here for the full article

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Facebook For Nonprofits

Facebook 101 For Nonprofits

View more presentations from frank barry.

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The 15 Best Technology Podcasts - WebStudio13

by ANDREW RAN WONG on SEPTEMBER 30, 2009
Click here or on the image below

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Reasons Why Change Fails

This is a 2007 article from 'Be Excellent ® ' blog. Link for the original article: here. I suggest you visit the 'Be Excellent® - The Official Six Disciplines® Blog', and see some superb articles on strategy.

Quoting the 'Be Excellent ® ' blog:

Reasons Why Change Fails

It isn't inadequate processes, strategy or technology that lead so many organizational change programs to run into the sand.

The main reasons for failed change are all about people. 

Management-Issues reports that a study from Deloitte Consulting suggests that change programs need to tackle issues in an integrated and focused way and, in particular, look at the people issues facing the business before, during and after the program.

The research has come as a conference of 165 HR directors organized by PricewaterhouseCoopers has separately predicted that a growing focus on people issues means there will be a chief of human resources on the board of most organizations by 2015.

According to the research, there are eight key people-related areas companies need to be addressing:

1. People risk and impact management
2. Leadership alignment and stakeholder engagement
3. Communications
4. Culture
5. Organizational design and governance
6. Talent requirements and HR programs
7. Workforce transition
8. Learning and capability transfer

BOTTOMLINE: "Companies don't transform themselves just for fun, but to stay competitive, innovative, and operationally effective."

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Action or Omission: Triumph of the entrepreneurial spirit

You really cannot judge events in life till quite some time has flown by, and you realize what has been achieved compared to how much could-have been. In a recent reading of the "LESSONS FROM THE POOR: Triumph of the Entrepreneurial Spirit", (edited by Alvaro Vargas Llosa and foreword by James D. Gwartney), I could see the mind boggling story of how extreme poverty can be mutated into abundance by the entrepreneurial efforts of the people of Nigeria. To quote the book,

Half the people in the world live on two dollars or less per day and roughly 600 million live on no more than one dollar per day. With thousands of international relief organizations, strategic government programs, and billions of dollars in foreign aid, why do so many underdeveloped countries remain unable to grow their economies beyond mere survival?

Many a times, you may have heard the phrase, 'change is unavoidable'. But, I feel, progress is something that is in our hands. Change and progress differ in the direction they lead us. And in this context, it is important to remember the mantra, that 'entrepreneurial spirit is the best catalyst for progress (not just change)'.

Folks, mostly women, have used their entrepreneurial efforts in creating wealth, without no governmental wealth. Why I titled this post as 'Action or Omission..' is primarily because of the attitude of the government towards these workers and they have proved that in either case, an entrepreneur can succeed. In stead of helping, the policies of the government have at times been road-blocks to their progress, but it seems these measures have failed to deter anyone in the long run.

Indigo dyeing has been an old industry and more of a culture amongst the residents than a source of earning.

How many cultural aspects can you think which can become commercial venture, able enough to wipe-out poverty and create wealth as an alternative to redistributing wealth? Have a read.. 'Lessons from the Poor'.

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Imagine...

John Lennon:

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

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Little Angels on Earth

(Repost)

Two and a half years have passed by since I was first in the campus of Ashraya and even now, when I go there every week, it seems to be a new experience. As I walked to the campus yesterday, I was wondering how quickly time moves. It was not the first time that I was in such a place but it was a very special experience to be with kids around you who are not just special but very talented as well. During the initial days, I was with a GE Volunteers team and had volunteered to teach these kids, mathematics, origami, and lots of fun-making activities. Most of the kids at Ashraya are normal from a physical point of view, but not so from the emotional point of view - I would term them para-normal! They are a bit more mature than their age, which varied between 3 to 13 years. Ashraya has a number of infant orphans as well but we were not interacting with them. This place was unlike the Helen Keller Institute at Vashi, Mumbai where was dealing with special kids with visual and hearing challenges. You need a different level of patience while interacting with these little angels.

They have a garden with swings, slides and see-saws to play with. I used to hold them in my arms and rotate fast - they enjoyed these rides and you should just see the expression on their faces. We were not supposed to take photographs, but over the years, I have taken snaps of the work done by the kids, such as in their coloring books. Last year, for Christmas, I got an idea which was quickly accepted by the other team members - we gifted them gifts which we helped them to make. Let me explain that a bit: We taught them how to make Santa Claus masks, cone caps with bells, and paper toys. Then few of them became Santa and all of them played a game where you have to sing for Santa and get your gifts! There were many sessions when we showed them animated movies - they loved Ice Age 2! They loved Winnie the Pooh so much that it took them no time to learn when I taught them how to draw and later paint, huge Winnie posters.

We have Rakum school for the blind at Indiranagar, Bangalore where I live. This is another place which I frequently visit since I have been in Bangalore. Initially, many of my visits were anonymous, and I felt good that I am able to contribute to the education of such special kids - they needed our time and understanding more than monetary contributions. As per Mr Rakum, there are many folks who contribute money, but the number of persons who contribtue their time is very less. It is a different kind of realization and an expansion of the awareness of your existence, when you are with these kids.

At Rourkela, I used to go to a place called 'Home and Hope', which was on the way to my school (Saint Paul's Rourkela). I used to observe these boys and girls, (I was of their age those days: this is around fifteen years ago) and was amazed at the patience of the caretakers in looking after mentally challenged kids. I continued interacting with these folks even after school, and during my engineering, I visited a similar school at Anushaktinagar, BARC Mumbai. I was gifted a Diwali card made by a mentally challenged 11 year old - you could find more beauty and imagination in the design than any other card you have seen and you will be perplexed when you meet the kid who created it. At 'Asha Niketan' in Koramangala, Bangalore, I met a 15 year old special boy, who asked me if I liked his drawings and would like to buy some. The bigger surprise came to me later when he shared, "I like A R Rahman's music - if you buy few of my drawings, I'll get enough money to get few more of his DVDs". I was dumbfounded to hear this and was really wondering whether he is mentally challenged or the rest of the world is - how come we ignore such talents in our day to day lives of mindless hurry.

Even after I got married, I continued my visits to Ashraya, Rakum School and the Spastics Society of Karnataka in Indiranagar, Bangalore. My significant half, Pallavi, is always with me in all such visits. It has been so many years that I have been visiting such places, and still everyday teaches me something new about life, something really novel. I have had very busy schedules in life, but I have tried not to miss these visits.

At GE India, and later at Mercedes Benz India, I organized some personal visits by volunteers who want to look beyond their problems in life and look at little angles struggling to make meaning out of their existence. We also organized a tree plantation program and 'Teach me Hindi' program for the kids. It was an emotional reconnection with their school days, for many of the volunteers. At times, we organized these events personally (not through the office) so that folks from various companies can join us - we had friends from SAP, Tesco, Yahoo India, HP India, and Infosys to name a few. For us, contributing our bit was closer to heart and meant much more than just logging hours for community service on the company portal.

Life teaches you a lot of things indirectly and it depends on our observation abilities, how much we learn from it. There is a unique humility that you develop with such events and it has a great effect on your management skills. You have a much wider outlook on life. We need to realize how fortunate we are, even in our deficiencies, and how we can still make a difference to brighten someone's smile someday. :-)

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Do-Gooder Auto Driver

Meet: An autorickshaw driver who gives free rides to the blind, pays the school fees for two poor children, donates money to an old age home and is trying to raise funds for the treatment of a sandwich vendor.Read the full story.

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Marketing Management

Marketing Management

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Paul Graham at Startup School '08

Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator, speaks at Startup School 08 about how to create a successful startup.

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