Journey of Samvad !!!

The Marketing Guru- Philip Kotler

Contributed by: Chandni Tolaney (2012-2014), WeSchool

The most dreadful thing for the first year students was the 600 odd pages textbook of Philip Kotler.Although the Indian examples mentioned in the South Asian Perspective of the Kotler-Keller-Koshy-Jha were easy to relate to the concepts mentioned in the chapter.Philip Kotler (born 27 May 1931 in Chicago) is an American academic focused on marketing. The author of Marketing Management among dozens of other textbooks and books, he is the S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Marketing Students specifically read Marketing Management by Philip Kotler to understand the core nature of Marketing in Corporate terms.Today Kotler is considered to be the best Marketing mind in business world and his experiences in the form of booksare helping a lot of students to understand marketing better and in a more efficient manner. Also a lot of Professionals from Corporates and Professors take the lessons from Kotler’s books.

The most distinguishing fact about Philip Kotler is that he never won any degree in Marketing. He did his master’s from the University of Chicago and then did Ph.D. in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served different positions in Corporate before becoming a Marketing Professor in North Western University. His articles in ‘Financial Times’ and ‘New York daily’ are appreciated throughout the years and received an award in 1985 for distinguished Marketer of the year.

CRUX of Kotler

·   He always writes about Marketing as the primary activity of the Organization. Many Companies who use to concentrate on Manufacturing only, are focusing more on marketing to promote their Manufacturing.

• He gave more Importance to Customers than anything else in its books. Company’s focus needs to be on Customers rather anything on else.
• The most important thing here is that he separates the Marketing from Selling as large number of people use to think Marketing as same as Selling. The confusion was corrected by the examples which he put to clear the differences between both the terms.

Work of Mouth Publicity in Today's Era

Contributed by: Omkar Kelkar (2012-2014) , WeSchool

In today’s times, the entire world has come very close due to Internet and various social Media. It is now possible to connect with any individual quite easily irrespective of the geographical boundaries. Due to these developments, the word of mouth is increasingly becoming popular. Many times wesee Facebook posts such as “Which smartphone should I buy” and “Which college should I apply”. All the expert friends are very happy to answer the queries and they give their opinions which are very crucial in making a choice.In fact, some of them insist so much that we feel very convinced to accept their opinions without a second thought. Thus, word-of-mouth has now become words-on-Facebook.

Word of Mouth is increasingly becoming popular in products where we have little or no knowledge and in things where we feel it is very difficult to make a choice. The most common situations where word of mouth becomes important is especially when we buy electronic goods- we often get confused due to the large number of brands at a competing price. One option which we adopt is putting the question on social networking sites and getting the answer without much trouble. The second situation is mainly when we want to take important career decisions such as choosing a college or deciding when to do MBA. The main advantage of taking decisions based on word of mouth in these cases is that we have insufficient information and it makes sense to ask the people who have “been there and done that”. Experiences of others can be leveraged and shared to take appropriate decisions. Thus, the satisfaction level of a person will decide not only whether the company retains him as a customer but also determine how many people does he recommend. What is very important is that due to the advancement of social network, a person can influence decisions of large number of people unlike earlier days where word of mouth was only face-to-face. But now, imagine the impact of giving product reviews which hundreds of friends are reading and taking decisions based on that.

Other important applications which make use of the word of mouth are the e-commerce websites which not only describe the product, but lets users give reviews of them. Users can also give stars 1 to 5 for the product. This makes it very easy for new customers to make a choice. Also, the number of reviews is mentioned which help in determining the trend of how many people are buying the product. In fact many people have become so dependent on reviews that they don’t even think on their own and simply follow the reviews and make choices.Sites such as Goodreads.com help in deciding which book to read, tripadvisor.com gives recommendations on tours/trips, sites like imdb give movie reviews while some like glassdoorgive company/job reviews. So, the word of mouth in this case is not just limited to products but also has an impact on important decisions in life. Word of mouth has now become a part of almost all phases of life right from decisions of school admission up to investment of retirement corpus. And its influence has multiplied several times due to social networks.

While there are lots of advantages of word of mouth recommendations, there are some things which are negative. The decision making power of an individual has reduced and “herd mentality” has increased. People have become very lazy to try different things themselves and blindly follow the so-called experts who may misguide them in some instances. Also innovation is disappearing since people feel safer to follow the tried and tested path rather that doing something new which does not have word of mouth reviews.Word of mouth thus has to be certainly used for considering various opinions but should not be followed blindly so that it kills our creativity and increases dependence.

Image Source: flickriver.com

Adam Smith

Contributed by: Chandni Tolaney (2012-2014), WeSchool

He is the Scottish philosopher who is best known for his work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Another famous work of this pioneer of political economy is The Theory of Moral Sentiments. He was born on 5 June 1923 in OS Kirkcaldy, Scotland. He studied in one of the best secondary schools there till the age of 14 and later entered University of Glasgow and studied moral philosophy.

The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776,the book offers one of the world's first collected descriptions of what builds nations' wealth and is today a fundamental work in classical economics. This is the reason why no class of Economics goes without a mention of this book.Through reflection over the economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the book touches upon broad topics as the division of labor, productivity and free markets.The book received splendid response and its first edition was sold out in the first six months.

Back in Edinburgh, Adam Smith moved in intellectual circles and gave a number of public lectures that brought him to the attention of the wider intellectual public such that at the age of twenty-eight he became Professor of Logic at Glasgow University in 1751. Shortly thereafter, in 1752, Adam Smith secured the more richly rewarded professorial chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow.

Some of the interesting facts about Adam Smith:

• ·         As a child he was always close to his mother and she was the one who motivated him to pursue his scholarly ambitions
• ·         He remained a bachelor his entire life
• ·         Smith was a reserved and absent minded individual much inclined to enjoy the books in his own library
• ·         In 1777 he was named lord rector of the University of Edinburgh and in 1778 was appointed as commissioner of customs in Scotland
• ·         During the latter part of his life, he took a tutoring position that allowed him to travel throughout Europe, where he met other intellectual leaders of his day
• ·         Smith has been commemorated in the UK on banknotes printed by two different banks, making him the first Scotsman to feature on an English banknote

On July 17th, 1790, Adam Smith died at Edinburgh; he was buried in the Canongate churchyard.

Book Review: Connect The Dots

Contributed by: Aniket Sawant (2012-2014), WeSchool

Rashmi Bansal’s latest book ‘Connect the Dots’ is a follow up to her preceding and hugely successful best-seller ‘Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish’. On the paths of her first book, which had stories of successful entrepreneurs who were graduates from the IIM’s, ‘Connect the Dots’ is a book comprising of stories of 20 entrepreneurs without a formal MBA degree, who had a vision and the audacity to find their own way to live their dreams.

The book has stories classified in 3 main sections:

·  Jugaad

Here in, we have stories of entrepreneurs like Prem Ganapathy, the founder of Dosa Plaza, Kunwer Sachdev, Su-Kam inverters and Sunitha Ramnathkar, Fem Pharma Care. These people had no formal training or experience in business. They learnt primarily through observations, experimentations and application of mind.

·  Junoon

This section comprises of stories of people who were driven by a particular passion in their mind or an idea. N Sriram, the visionary of Crossword and Sunil Bhu, Flander’s Dairy along with other inspiring entrepreneurs form this section. 

·   Zubaan

The third and the final section includes creative geniuses, who needed a platform to showcase their amazing abilities and after doing so they eventually turned out to become successful businessmen themselves. The inspiring stories of Abhijit Bansod, the creator and designer of Titan Raga, Paresh Mokashi, the film-maker who’s movie ‘Harishchandrachi Factory’ took Marathi film industry to unparalleled heights and Kalyan Varma who left a dream job at Yahoo and pursued his passion of wild life photography are stellar examples which prove that Artists can cross milestones when it comes to entrepreneurship.

Rashmi Bansal has yet again succeeded in delivering the best to her readers. Her simple yet methodical and narrative style of writing has won the hearts of many. To know about an entrepreneur is one thing and to portray about them so effectively is another and Rashmi Bansal has managed to do it perfectly. So much that her writing surely inspires many a budding businessmen to emulate the success stories about the people she has covered in the book.

To sum it up, ‘Connect the Dots’ is a beautifully composed novel and it surely stands as a must read for the new generation of India.

Platform BPO - Platform for Growth

Contributed by: Omkar Kelkar (2012-2014), WeSchool

As the software industry is growing and it has matured to a great extent the thing that is worrying the IT Companies is “How to sustain the Growth” and how to find out ways to increase the revenue without increasing the workforce by the same rate. This is also called as non-linear growth.

Current situation is that if an IT company grows the revenue at 30 percent, it has to increase the workforce too by 30 percent which will not be sustainable in the long run. Thus the companies are looking at the non-linear growth models where revenue growth is faster than the workforce. The only thing that can make it possible is “Re-usability of applications and using Shared services”. One of the major area in which every IT company wants to invest for the long term is “Business Process as a Service (BPaaS)” or “Platform BPO” or “Technology cloud” which can improve the efficiency greatly and helps them to increase  revenue per employee and achieve a non-linear revenue trajectories.

What is Platform BPO?

Platform-based services can be defined as “hosted technology services delivered on a pay-as-you-use model.” When hosted technology services are offered on a managed services model, they are referred to as Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) or Platform BPO.

Platform BPO is basically a new business model in which the company uses Platform-based system as a service. This may be an ERP system such as SAP or Oracle. Not only is the Server managed by the vendor but the service delivery also is managed by the vendor. The company will get entire benefits of a full-fledged ERP system without actually owning them and without actually buying the license. The company simply has to pay for the implementation and maintenance according to the use.

Platform-based BPO is the new buzzword in the industry with most big players betting heavily on this segment. Though the concept of platform BPO has been around for some time, it is only now that they are picking up. Platform BPO marks a paradigm shift in the way outsourced business processes get delivered.

In Platform BPO, applications, infrastructure and BPO services are bundled into a single service framework where the vendor  takes complete ownership of customer’s non-core but critical activities, thus enabling them to focus on core and strategic functions. Platform BPO, a bundling of technology, consulting and BPO, helps synergistic value creation and delivers transformational value using strategies such as global sourcing, technology innovation, process optimization, scale and centralization.

Platform BPO is about providing ‘Business Processing’ services using a domain rich vertical or horizontal application (platform). Good examples for Horizontal application would be F&A, Human Resource Outsourcing, and Procurement etc. There are innumerable vertical platforms. Some examples are Mortgage Processing, Collection Management, Insurance Benefits Administration, Policy Administration, and Claims Processing.

The Evolution of Platform BPO

Platform BPO has evolved gradually over the years from Pure BPO.

Image source : http://www.sourcingnotes.com/

Why Platform BPO

Platform BPO is best suited for Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). These are companies which are showing growth but typically don’t have the resources to adopt a full-fledged ERP system. Even though they may afford to use ERP, there businesses are small and hence the capacity of ERP is wasted.

Hence they can adopt the Platform Based ERP system such as SAP Platform which is owned by a third party vendor. Once the implementation is done, the company can use the ERP system on pay-per-use basis. Typically the company can make a implementation contract along with the Service delivery contract for certain period e.g. 5 or 10 years.

The vendor studies the business process of the client and implements the ERP system. The vendor basically customizes the standard processes according to the requirements. Even though there are more than one client using the same ERP hosted by the vendor, the client data is strictly safe from the other tenants in the platform. Only the client specific data is provided according to which client is using the ERP. So, for e.g. if 3 companies A, B, and C are using the same platform based SAP system owned by vendor V, the companies will A B and C's data will not interfere with one another.

Who are in the Game.

There are 3 players in this space

1. Pure Play BPO Providers : These companies have a strong capability for Service delivery operations but they do not have the experience to implement and transform the business process to the technology platform. E.g. Genpact, WNS

2. IT Services Companies: They have a strong implementation capability. Many IT companies also have BPO division and hence they are best suited to adopt Platform BPO. The only thing they may lag is the domain expertise. E.g. Infosys, TCS

E.g. certain project may require the experts in US Payroll process which the IT Company may not have.

3. Product (Application) Vendors: They already have the product ready but they cannot make so much customizations that the vendors are looking at. E.g. Ariba

The boundaries of pure play BPO providers and IT Services companies have been shaken in the last few years and are virtually non-existent.  The percentage of product vendors going the BPO route is very less. However, the distinction between pure play BPO and IT Services companies is gone.

Book Review: I Too Had A Dream - Dr. Verghese Kurien

Contributed by: Susmita Paria, PGDM (2012-2014), WeSchool

 “In every crisis, if you look carefully, you will spot an opportunity. My insistence is on finding and seizing that opportunity.”  The above line is rightly quoted by Dr. Verghese Kurien in his autobiography; “I too had a dream”. His book will leave no stone unturned to give inspiration and motivate the reader at every page of this marvellous book.

A simple autobiography explaining how an individual can dare to dream, can dare to achieve what s/he aspires and how to turn tides in your favour with the simple mantra that “Nothing is Impossible”.

What will keep the readers hooked up is the truth mentioned right from Dr. Kurien’s disinterest to study Dairy Farming to taking up the manager’s role in farmer’s co-operative in Kaira District in Anand. The book takes the reader through the entire, detailed and a very vivid description of his life journey from thereon. How the “Amul” brand was born, developed, nurtured, diversified and how it is still growing creates ripples in the minds of readers and s/he yearns to know more and more. Mr. Kurien humbly mentions about the support he got from most notable people including Sardar Vallabhai Patel, Maniben (Sardar Patel’s daughter), Jawaharlal Nehru, Moraji Desai, Lal Bahadur Shastri etc at various phases of the cooperative and later on National Diary Development Board (NDDB), which made ‘Amul’ the largest food business brand of India.

The ‘Amul’ model of the cooperative movement not only made the farmers earn more, but also brought about a social revolution by empowering women, increasing the hygiene and medical standards of both people and cattle, breaking caste and religious distinctions, and most importantly making the nation self sufficient in milk production and distribution by implementing the famous ‘operation flood’ program across the nation through the cooperative model that he perfected through ‘Amul’.

Dr. Kurien passes the subtle message to the young generation that everything is possible if one believes in one’s self. He demonstrated Nationalism through the different endeavours in his life. A must read to understand and imbibe that Job Satisfaction, being altruistic is what matters and not money or a White Collared job. Fame and peace of mind is thus the by product of the former.

Book Review: Joker in the Pack

Contributed by Nikita Janpage, (Batch of 2014- We School)


"We know but fail to see, that all it takes to be a star, is an unending fire. A fire that's beneath the surface, the fire that made it the star it is."

'Joker in the Pack' starts off on this note. And although it gives an impression that the book might turn out to be a tad philosophical, it actually turns out to be a fun-filled read! The book is based on the life of an average middle class Joe who initially has very common desires ergo the TV and cricket but is forced by the all pervading middle class mindset to 'pursue a "decent" education and get a good job'. Joker in the Pack narrates the story of this average Joe right from his childhood education to his entry into the respected IIMs and his struggle to survive there.
The protagonist 'Shekhar Verma' is an average student with no plans as such till the dreaded 10th Boards happen his life. Lured by the proverbial carrot, he puts in a commensurate amount of effort to get a respectable 'percentage' and from there starts the journey to the 'decent' education. You can very well relate to Shekhar as he journeys through his graduation and the MBA entrance exams and interviews. Amidst all this, he does find time for love.

As he enters the hallowed portals of the IIM-B, the real fun starts. The description of his first week is what every MBA student would relate to their orientation! Cases, assignments, student committees and averaging an amount of 20 hours of sleep a week, you name it and you have it. And what makes it more fun to read is the archetypal lingo and the classification of the MBA species that happens in every college.

'Joker in the Pack' has all the contents of a classic 'Chetan Bhagat' creation although it is highly relatable especially to an MBA student right from the agonizing Summers to the final placements. It is extremely fast-paced and difficult to put down. The authors, Ritesh Sharma and Neeraj Pahlajani although alumni, have an irreverent view of the IIMs asserting that it's not all fun and games and the stellar salary package. Although the language is a bit simplistic and the stereotypes get a bit much (you have to turn back a few pages to check, which category a person was assigned!), it is a light and interesting read. Noteworthy is that the authors have managed to portray the actual processes in an IIM without being too disrespectful.

Highly recommended for MBA students, although a onetime read, it is packed with enough meat and colourful language that would make you want to finish the book in 3 hours flat.

Book Review: The Black Swan

Contributed by Nikhil Gavankar (Batch of 2000)

David Hume the father of modern empiricism famously said that the phrase ‘All Swans are white’ is based upon a certain number of observations where in all observed swans are seen to be white and hence the rule above is created which infers that the unobserved swans will also turn out to be white.

Before the discovery of Australia, people in the old world were convinced that all swans were white, an unassailable belief as it seemed completely confirmed by empirical evidence.

The sighting of the first black swan might have been an interesting surprise for a few ornithologists but that is not where the significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our knowledge. One single observation can invalidate a general statement derived from millennia of confirmatory sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single black bird.

What we call here a Black Swan is an event with the following three attributes:
• First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.
• Second, it carries an extreme impact.
• Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

To summarize the Black Swan: rarity, extreme impact, and retrospective (though not prospective) predictability. A small number of Black Swans explain almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives.

Just imagine how little your understanding of the world on the eve of the events of1939 would have helped you guess what was to happen next. How about the rise of Gandhi and India’s independence could have been predicted in 1900? How about the precipitous demise of the Soviet bloc? How about the rise of Islamic fundamentalism? How about the spread of the Internet? How about the market crash of 1987 (and the more unexpected recovery)? All follow these Black Swan dynamics. Literally, just about everything of significance around you might qualify. This combination of low predictability and large impact makes the Black Swan a great puzzle; but that is not yet the core concern of this book. Add to this phenomenon the fact that we tend to act as if it does not exist! All "social scientists" for over a century, have operated under the false belief that their tools could measure uncertainty. For the applications of the sciences of uncertainty to real-world problems has had ridiculous effects; the author has been privileged to see it in finance and economics. Go ask your portfolio manager for his definition of "risk," and odds are that he will supply you with a measure that excludes the possibility of the Black Swan-hence one that has no better predictive value for assessing the total risks than astrology but is getting dressed up as mathematics. This problem is endemic in social matters.

The central idea of this book concerns human blindness with respect to randomness, particularly the large deviations: Why do people, scientists or nonscientists, tend to see the pennies instead of the dollars? Why do we keep focusing on the minutiae, not the possible significant large events, in spite of the obvious evidence of their huge influence? And, as the author says, why does reading the newspaper actually decrease your knowledge of the world?
It is easy to see that life is the cumulative effect of a handful of significant shocks. It is not so hard to identify the role of Black Swans, from your armchair (or bar stool).

If we did look into our own existence and count the significant events, the technological changes, and the inventions that have taken place in our environment since we were born and compare them to what was expected before their advent. How many of them came on a schedule? Look into our own personal life, to our choice of profession, say, or meeting your mate, the betrayals you faced, your sudden enrichment or impoverishment. How often did these things occur according to plan?

In the world of the Black Swan what you don't know is far more relevant than what you do know? Think of the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001: had the risk been reasonably conceivable on September 10, it would not have happened. If such a possibility were deemed worthy of attention, fighter planes would have circled the sky above the twin towers, airplanes would have had locked bulletproof doors and the attack would not have taken place, period.
Isn't it strange to see an event happening precisely because it was not supposed to happen? What kind of defense do we have against that? Whatever you come to know (that New York is an easy terrorist target, for instance) may become inconsequential if your enemy knows that you know it. It may be odd to realize that, in such a strategic game, what you know can be truly inconsequential. This extends to all businesses. Think about the "secret recipe" to making a killing in the restaurant business. If it were known and obvious then someone next door would have already come up with the idea and it would have become generic. The next killing in the restaurant industry needs to be an idea that is not easily conceived of by the current population of restaurateurs. It has to be at some distance from expectations. The more unexpected the success of such a venture, the smaller the number of competitors, and the more successful is the entrepreneur who implements the idea. The same applies to the shoe and the book businesses-or any kind of entrepreneurship. The same applies to scientific theories-nobody has interest in listening to trivialities. The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be.
Consider the Indian tsunami of December 2007. Had it been expected, it would not have caused the damage it did-the areas affected would have been less populated, an early warning system would have been put in place. What you know cannot really hurt you.

THE HOLLOWNESS OF EXPERTS

The inability to predict outliers implies the inability to predict the course of history, given the share of these events in the dynamics of events. But we act as though we are able to predict historical events, or, even worse, as if we are able to change the course of history. We produce thirty year projections of economic data without realizing that we cannot even predict these for next summer-our cumulative prediction errors for political and economic events are so monstrous that if we seriously retrospect we should stop forecasting. What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it. This is all the more worrisome when we engage in deadly conflicts: wars are fundamentally unpredictable (and we do not know it). Owing to this misunderstanding of the casual chains between policy and actions, we can easily trigger Black Swans thanks to aggressive ignorance-like a child playing with a chemistry kit.


Our inability to predict in environments subjected to the Black Swan, coupled with a general lack of the awareness of this state of affairs, means that certain professionals, while believing they are experts, are in fact not based on their empirical record, they do not know more about their subject matter than the general population, but they are much better at narrating-or, worse, at smoking you with complicated mathematical models. They are also more likely to wear a tie.

Black Swans being unpredictable, we need to adjust to their existence (rather than naively try to predict them). There are so many things we can do if we focus on anti-knowledge, or what we do not know.
Another related human impediment comes from excessive focus on what we do know: we tend to learn the precise, not the general.

What did people learn from the 9/11 episode? Did they learn that some events, owing to their dynamics, stand largely outside the realm of the predictable? No.

We do not spontaneously learn that we don't learn that we don't learn. The problem lies in the structure of our minds: we don't learn rules, just facts, and only facts. Metarules (such as the rule that we have a tendency to not learn rules) we don't seem to be good at getting. We scorn the abstract; we scorn it with passion.
Why? It is necessary here, as it is my agenda in the rest of this book, both to stand conventional wisdom on its head and to show how inapplicable it is to our modern, complex, and increasingly recursive environment.
But there is a deeper question: What are our minds made for? It looks as if we have the wrong user's manual. Our minds do not seem made to think and introspect; if they were, things would be easier for us today, but then we would not be here today and I would not have been here to talk about it-my counter factual, introspective, and hard-thinking ancestor would have been eaten by a tiger while his non-thinking, but faster-reacting cousin would have run for cover. Consider that thinking is time-consuming and generally a great waste of energy, that our predecessors spent more than a hundred million years as non-thinking mammals and that in the blip in our history during which we have used our brain we have used it on subjects too peripheral to matter. Evidence shows that we do much less thinking than we believe we do-except, of course, when we think about it.

A NEW KIND OF INGRATITUDE

It is quite saddening to think of those people who have been mistreated by history. But there are even more mistreated heroes-the very sad category of those who we do not know were heroes, who saved our lives, who helped us avoid disasters. They left no traces and did not even know that they were making a contribution. We remember the martyrs who died for a cause that we knew about, never those no less effective in their contribution but whose cause we were never aware-precisely because they were successful.

And yet, recognition can be quite a pump. Even those who genuinely claim that they do not believe in recognition, and that they separate labor from the fruits of labor, actually get a serotonin kick from it. See how the silent hero is rewarded: even his own hormonal system will conspire to offer no reward.

Now consider again the events of 9/11. In their aftermath, who got the recognition?
Those you saw in the media, on television performing heroic acts, and those whom you saw trying to give you the impression that they were performing heroic acts. The latter category includes someone like the New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso, who "saved the stock exchange" and received a huge bonus for his contribution (the equivalent of several thousand average salaries). All he had to do was be there to ring the opening bell on television-the television that, we will see, is the carrier of unfairness and a major cause of Black Swan blindness. Who gets rewarded, the central banker who avoids a recession or the one who comes to "correct" his predecessors' faults and happens to be there during some economic recovery? Who is more valuable, the politician who avoids a war or the one who starts a new one (and is lucky enough to win)?

It is the same logic reversal we saw earlier with the value of what we don't know; everybody knows that you need more prevention than treatment, but few reward acts of prevention. We glorify those who left their names in history books at the expense of those contributors about whom our books are silent. We humans are not just a superficial race (this may be curable to some extent); we are a very unfair one.

LIFE IS VERY UNUSUAL

This is a book about uncertainty; for the author, the rare event equals uncertainty. There are two possible ways to approach phenomena.
• The first is to rule out the extraordinary and focus on the "normal." The examiner leaves aside" outliers" and studies ordinary cases.
• The second approach is to consider that in order to understand a phenomenon, one needs to first consider the extremes particularly if, like the Black Swan, they carry an extraordinary cumulative effect.
If you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances, not under the regular rosy glow of daily life. Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining only what he does on an ordinary day? Can we understand health without considering wild diseases and epidemics? Indeed the normal is often irrelevant. Almost everything in social life is produced by rare but consequential shocks and jumps; all the while almost everything studied about social life focuses on the "normal," particularly with "bell curve" methods of inference that tell you close to nothing. Why? Because the bell curve ignores large deviations, cannot handle them, yet makes us confident that we have tamed uncertainty. Its nickname in this book is GIF, Great Intellectual Fraud. . . .

C K Prahalad- Guru of Poverty and Profit

Contributed by: Chandni Tolaney, PGDM BD (2012 - 2014), WeSchool. 

A professor at the University of Michigan, Prahalad was considered one of the world's top 10 management thinkers. His theory about the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, is followed by many corporations in emerging markets. He was also the first Indian-born thinker to claim the title.

He was renowned as the co-author of "Core Competence of the Corporation”Prahalad's theory affected many Indian and developing world retail outlets. It was Prahalad's proposition that businesses stop thinking of the poor as victims and instead start seeing them as value-demanding consumers that drove companies such as Hindustan Lever and Godrej to come out with ultra-small sachets of everything from shampoo to gutka sparking off a retail revolution.

Indeed, his 2004 book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits, became a New York Times bestseller and catapulted him to a rock star among management thinkers although he was already a storied business guru by then. It was a journey CK began in the modest Tamil Nadu town, one of nine children of a Sanskrit scholar and judge.

The story goes that Prahalad learned his first management lesson; ironically it seems now, at Union Carbide, which he joined in 1960 when he was only 19 after completing his BSc in Physics from Loyola College in Madras. This was inspired by noticing that old gloves were given out to workers, this Prahalad soon went on to Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad (where he also met his wife Gayatri), calling the Union Carbide experience a "major inflection point" in his life where he "learned about the extraordinary wisdom of ordinary people."

Prahalad went to Harvard Business School in 1972, writing a doctoral thesis on multinational management in just two-and-a-half years before returning to IIM-A. But socialist India was not the place at that time for a man bubbling with fresh and provocative ideas. He returned to the US, eventually joining the faculty at the Stephen Ross Scholl of Business, where he made a brilliant reputation, and holding the position of the Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Corporate

Strategy at the time of his death.

In recent years, he was fascinated by the potential of the internet as a force of creative destruction. Pushing corporates "to do more with less," he campaigned for standardized cell phone chargers (why does every manufacturer have different chargers for different phones?) and sustainable transport solutions.

On April 16, 2010, Prahalad died of a previously undiagnosed lung illness in San Diego, California. He was sixty-eight at the time of his death, but he left a large body of work behind.

    

Book Review : India - A Sacred Geography

Contributed by: Manaswi Deshmukh, PGDM (2012 - 2014), WeSchool

>We call it : Strokes of Divinity
Author : Diana Eck

India- The land of colours, landscapes, faiths, religions, languages, music, spirituality, dreams; the land of enlightenment and knowledge; the land of temples and shrines. It is difficult to attribute a set of words to describe a land so diverse, so bathed in a legacy that surpasses all human thoughts. Diana Eck, in her book, “India- A sacred geography”, deciphers this network of threads that binds India’s people- places of pilgrimage.

India has never been a stranger to monuments constructed in the name of God. We have small ones and big ones, makeshift ones to huge, intricate ones. We have rivers and islands, each of them telling a story. We have scores of pilgrims thronging each of these, seeking to acquire whatever possible fraction of this divinity. Eck in this timeless account of research explores the land and its tales that do not fail to fascinate the reader.

She speaks eloquently of the deep-rooted meanings that India attaches to its landscapes; of the soil that constitutes idols of the Goddess; of the holy cow who is worshipped with dedication. Beginning with an overview of the landscapes, she goes on to explore the country with deep insights. She dedicates an entire chapter to a question that probably will continue to be answered till the end of time- “What is India?” From the beginning of all holiness to where it is today, the country has come a long way. Eck gives us a spiritual perspective of this journey. She goes on to reveal an interesting fact that the epics speak about: of India being a “Rose Apple Island”. Whether there is truth in this or not, is to be left to the scholars of the epics. However, it is fascinating to note the imaginative pieces of world view that are preserved in the religious texts that date back to time immemorial. She speaks of the Ganga, which of late has been more of a topic of study of other things than what it is otherwise associated with. Eck takes us back to the descent of the holy river to the earth and charts the journey that humankind has taken with it over the span of countless years. It’s a journey that has less to do with time and more with dedication. The Ganga is worshipped ardently by Indians. She also speaks of the other rivers of India. In the country, rivers are not just watercourses, but “deep resources for Hindu spirituality”. She speaks of Lord Shiva, and his visions that occurred to the gods depicting him as columns of light. Its significance is manifest in the forms that we worship today. She talks of the innumerable forms that dot the landscape of the country, that connect invisibly to establish the spirit of the “Lord who destroys” on the earth. She further proceeds to discussing the form of energy that is manifest in the Goddess. It is fascinating to know the incarnations of goddesses that are worshipped in the country, all of which bear the same soul and denote the unshakable power that can destroy the worst of adversities: Shakti. She goes on to discuss how the spirit of this power is referred to with respect, under the beloved personification of a Mother, and has formed a basis for many-a people’s feelings towards the nation, hence sketching a gentle picture of Modern India. She speaks of the “transcendent god”, Vishnu, who, by virtue of his nature, made bowing down to his feet “a gesture of submission to the Lord”. It is interesting to note the parallel between this and a common tradition in the culture of the country. Moving further, it is impossible to conclude without a mention of the two deities that take a considerable share of Hindu literature- Krishna and Rama. Eck discusses the stories that have enriched many-a childhood.

Critics may argue that the dealing of the book with Hinduism doesn’t do justice to the book’s title. However, what makes the book a must-read, apart from its exhaustive knowledge of Hinduism and spirituality, is the sheer romanticism with which Eck writes. The reader shall seldom find the words disengaging. Though distributed into neatly demarcated zones of chapters, India: A Sacred Geography is a continuing tale of devotion, respect, fascination and beauty. Seen through the eyes of a research scholar and a delightful writer, it sketches, stroke by stroke, a picture that shall remain etched in the memory of the reader for a long time- the magnificence that is India!

Happy Republic Day!

Wishing everyone a Happy Republic Day!

Jai Hind!