Sunday Posts

Steve Jobs' death certificate says that he was a 'high tech entrepreneur'. Indeed, but he is more than that: He is an entrepreneur's entrepreneur, an icon, a representative of a generation that is now passing. In his famous Stanford commencement address, he talked about his feeling that 'he dropped the baton as it was passed on from the earlier generation of entrepreneurs'. He was not just a carrier though: He was one who redefined the game. An entrepreneur exists to solve problems. Steve Jobs was not a technology whiz or a finance guru. Steve Wozniak talked about his 'instinctive feel' of what the people wanted from technology. That makes him a rare genius, because most tech entrepreneurs don an evangelical garb and preach to people on technology. Steve Jobs seemed to have turned this evangelism on its head and became people's voice in the world of technology. That's where he made a difference. Indeed, he famously said - 'it is not custo...

Here's to the crazy ones.  The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.  The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.  They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo.  You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them.  About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things.  They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.  Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. (Apple Inc.)

I lost a friend. The theme of this year for me is - death. I lost four people I knew closely in 19 days. This includes my brother, my longstanding political mentor and finally, PRC, as he was popularly known, an ex-colleague, ex-friend (we drifted apart) but most importantly, the person who changed my life. Without PRC, I would possibly be a company man today, warming some pointless chair in a name-heavy organization in one of the Indian cities. I would live the life scripted for me - built around the cycles of job, mortgage and pensions. I shall possibly be happier, submerged in the ignorance about the possibilities of life. I lived that script once upon a time, but can't any longer imagine what it would be like to go back. In a way, he helped me to free myself, forever. I was always a dreamer. But in 1998, I had a good job. Things were going well for me. I was married, got a decent raise, a promotion was around the corner; my mentor and boss was very supportive, and she was layin...

Writing an obituary for Jyoti Basu is as difficult a writing task as any I could have attempted. This is because he had a universal presence in my political consciousness. This presence was for real – he was the Chief Minister of the state I lived in for quarter of a century. I grew up seeing him as the Chief Minister, and he did not retire until after I left home and started living abroad. In a way, I have never known any other Chief Minister of West Bengal. Besides, there is another, emotional, dimension to that presence. He was the last of a generation of people who presented a linkage to our pre -independence past, those who shaped the ideas in modern India and carried it to the present day. In his imperious, Bengali babu style, Jyoti Basu was an unlikely communist. Though he created and led, with others, the pre -eminent Left party in India, he was Nehruvian , in his thinking, in his approach, in his ideas about Modern India. He will be sorely missed. He is possibly one person ...

Benazir Bhutto is dead. She has been shot dead [most probably] in Rawalpindi, the garrison town of Pakistan. The world's leaders are shocked. They should not be - there was enough forewarning of this coming. Nawaz Sharif said - this is a sad day for Pakistan. Good of him. Prez Musharraf so far said nothing. It happened under his watch, in his city. Probably he knew it all along anyway. This is a sad day for Pakistan, indeed. But I fear - it is a sad day for the entire South Asia. May be, this will have an impact in shaping the world history. This makes the hopes of democracy and stability in Pakistan even more remote. This gives the madcap dictator Musharraf even more time. With a nuclear arsenal under his command, he is the most dangerous man in the world today. So, jail for the Justice Chowdhury, and bullets for Benazir. Sharif possibly does not count as he will do a deal. The present American administration indeed has a Pakistan policy, which is working no better than its Iraq o...

Alfred Chandler passed away last month. It's funny that I chose Alfred Chandler as my nickname on Second Life. Playfully, I wanted to be the business historian of the Second Life businesses :-) However, having lived in the age of Internet, I am an worshipper of enterprise. For me, managers are outdated and out of touch, and completely incapable of leading because the environment is fluid and expectations are uncertain. For me, the entrepreneur is the hero. Chandler had just the opposite view. For him, managers were real heros. They were the value creators. He saw it at the pinnacle of the industrial age. More importantly, he worked it out with Alfred Sloan and GM, which needed all of Sloan's efforts after living on the brink under William Durant's management by the seat of pants. Chandler is also remembered for his contribution on strategy thinking. He is remembered for his studies of strategy and structure, which is ever more relevant today, when the companies need to reas...