A few good books to read

 

A Business and its Beliefs Thomas J. Watson		Art of War Sun Tzu		Art of the Long View Arie de Guis
Built to Last Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras		Beyond Entrepreneurship James Collins		Catalyst Code Evans & Schmalensee
Crossing the Chasm Geoffrey A. Moore		Competitive Strategy Michael E. Porter		Economics of Strategy Besanko et al
Freakonomics Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner		Good to Great Jim Collins		Innovation & Entrepreneurship Peter F. Drucker
In Spite of the Gods; The Strange Rise of Modern India Edward Luce		Inside the Tornado Geoffrey A. Moore		Intelligent Enterprise James Brian Quinn
Made in Japan Akio Morita and Sony Corporation		Only the Paranoid Survive Andy Grove		Select Essays on India Economy C.Rangarajan
Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators Vijay Govindrajan & Trimble		The Google Story David Vise and Mark Malseed		The Road Ahead Bill Gates, Nathan Myhrvold and Peter Rinearson
The Innovator's Dilemma Clayton M. Christensen		The New Argonauts; Regional Advantage in a Global Economy AnnaLee Saxenian		The World is Flat Thomas L. Friedman
The Wisdom of Crowds James Surowiecki		Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell		Wealth at the bottom of the pyramid CK Prahlad
Winning Jack Welch and Suzy Welch

 

Powered by ScribeFire.

New Media New Marketing

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

Powered by ScribeFire.

Escape Mundanity

This article is a brief pointer to the original article by Guy Kawasaki. Credits for the original post, to    .     

Click here for the complete article.

How to Escape Mundanity

Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World

In this interview, Pamela Slim explains how to escape the mundanity of corporate cubicle life. Pam is a business coach and writer who helps frustrated employees do just that. Her blog, Escape from Cubicle Nation, is one of the top career and marketing blogs.  Her expertise in personal and business change was developed through many years consulting inside corporations such as Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and Charles Schwab. Her new book is Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur.

1. Question: How do you know when it is time to quit your day job?

   Answer: There is no perfect formula to ensure that you are 100% ready to quit your job and start a business—if I could figure it out, I would be rich!  But there are a few critical things you need to take into consideration in making the decision.  First, you have to have a really clear, realistic picture of your financial life and understand the specific risks you are willing to take.  For some people, this is a defined pile of cash to burn through, for others it is a period of time you set aside to see if your business will work.  Second, you will feel much better about your decision if you have been working on ..... Click here for the complete article.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Subways and Coconuts

Long back, at the IIT Bombay campus, I saw a guy whose T-shirt had a monk in the front side and a caption at the back that said "it's all about control! - syscon iitb". (Syscon refers to the department of Systems and Controls at IITB.)  Recently, when I read about the book, 'Dance with Chance: Making Luck Work For You', it was a mixture of technical and non-technical thoughts that flowed through my mind. Insead Knowledge reviewed the book here, with a title that said 'The illusion of control: dancing with chance'. Well, is it really 'control' and is it really an 'illusion' that we are speaking about? Let me explain my last statement...

Certainty and uncertainty have been at the forefront of many ideas. Predictions with analysis always has been an interesting topic in a variety of fields. And the book mentioned above emphasizes that while we do have to live with unanticipated situations, we can always reduce the risks involved with proper analysis and decisions. What is an unanticipated situation? Something which was not visible to the observers in the initial stages(?). It might be due to lack of data or due to change in the nature of current data.  It might also be due to incorrect assumptions in the analysis. So, the prediction of such situations is basically a process to find out the probability of correctness of the data, the assumptions, and the process of analysis. (This later forms the basis of later assumptions and analysis - so, an error in the previous analysis may get carried forward.)

The topic of Subways and Coconuts is mentioned because of the difference in  the probabilities of correctness in predicting events related to them. You can do research and be relatively sure that the subway will be predictable most of the time. On the other hand, you know that coconuts fall from trees, but you can’t predict when they will fall or where they will land. So, you can plan for the subways, but it is difficult to plan for the coconuts. Although for the common man, it is really true, but if you are analyzing the falling of coconuts, you can still predict their falling by looking at the wind speed, the stage of growth of the coconut, and some other factors that we generally ignore or which are generally not as visible as the variables around a subway. (This point is slightly missed out by the authors.) So, the secret to predicting the falling of a coconut is to look at more variables that can impact your experience (of being hit by a falling coconut) that are not as visible but as important. (How many times do we think of wind speed when we are trying to predict the falling of a coconut?) All uncertainties and the associated illusions can be predicted to expected or near-expected levels of accuracy - they do not really remain uncertainties nor illusions then! Read on below..

                                                  

Could we have predicted the economic slowdown then? Yes if we had all the variables and parameters with us - which is not always the case. There are many parameters and variables we should have (could have) looked into. Since it is not possible to look into all of them, we really need to focus on things where we have larger control and manoeuvre things so that the ones which we cannot predict have a lesser impact on the overall aim of our analysis. Financial domain is some place where all the variables may not get defined with the appropriate weights in the beginning.

I appreciate the efforts of the authors to put a complicated topic in a simpler manner, and show how risk management forms an integral part of the daily life of the common human. They have also pointed out the importance of accepting the fact that there are things beyond our control (we will never have all the variables). The book is authored by Spyros Makridakis, Robin Hogarth and Anil Gaba. To quote the Insead review:

First you accept that there are things you can’t control. Then you try to assess the uncertainty and finally augment your plan to make sure you manage risk more effectively.

That means using models, independent opinions, internal and external advice and any other means to assess the unknown risks and to make your business nimble and open to change when the unexpected happens.

“You are better off focusing your energy on planning for the range of possibilities that could actually happen,” Gaba says.

For example, he says it’s very difficult to tell which start-up businesses will be successful in the early stages. If you accept that, a better strategy is to try to diversify over a number of projects just as venture capitalists do. Not all the projects will pay off but you diversify your risk so that you have a better chance of nurturing one that will succeed.

By all means, a very good book to mentally and technically prepare you to manage risk in a more calculated (or prepared) manner than now. It covers a variety of domains and gives you tools to handle uncertainties in life, and particularly in business. Deal with chance or rather dance with it!

Powered by ScribeFire.

A Better India, A Better World ( Narayan Murthy )

Since when was life fair! As India strides ahead in the fields of technology, entrepreneurship, and industrialism, it also is struggling with facts about undernourishment, illiteracy and disease. You have huge advancements being talked about in India, coupled with certain stark truths such as those shown in 'Slumdog Millionaire'. Life is like that. There have been constant attempts to bridge this great divide. 'A Better India, A Better World' shows us some avenues.

Quoting N.R. Narayana Murthy, who pioneered, designed and executed the Global Delivery Model that has become the cornerstone of India’s success in information technology services outsourcing, shows us that a society working for the greatest welfare of the greatest number—samasta jananam sukhino bhavantu—must focus on two simple things: values and good leadership.

This book also shows the importance of an emerging India in the world, and how the progress of India is intimately linked with the progress of the rest of the world as well. To quote the book, "A better India holds the key to a better world."

While talking with Shishi Bhate, Murthy says, "Every nation from time to time will face difficulties in the economic scenario and that is the time when we all have to show greater determination, sacrifice, and commitment."

Based on lectures delivered around the globe, the book makes a great reading and is specially relevant for the youth.

Click here to buy yourself a copy. (No affiliation of the author with this seller.)