Sunday Posts

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, Peter Drucker observed. And indeed so: Strategy's rational aims and goals are all too often frustrated by ways of seeing and doing things in an organisation. Yet strategy gets so much attention and effort - and, indeed, one hires those fancy strategy consultants - while culture is seen as that soft thing that one can't really define, one can't really measure and ultimately, one can't do anything about. But culture comes from somewhere. It is not a given, an environmental factor that one has to live within. This is possibly the second misconception about culture, that it is an extension of the host society. Indeed, there is that influence of the host society, but an organisation's culture is just that and no more. While the host society supplies some of the precepts, an organisation's culture is a man-made thing, driven by the Founder or Senior Managers and shaped by the 'strategy' of the subordinates to live wit...

Or, I could have said - why I can't read business books. At least, not anymore. This may seem inconsequential, but it is not for me. In fact, it is an existential problem that I face now: I can't read business books! It is very necessary for my career - being well-read is one of the advantages I brought to table as a professional - and indeed, crucial to maintain my professional credential as a Chartered Marketer, which I attained with great effort, once upon a time. And, yet, I can't bring myself to read Business Books. This isn't always there. I did read Business Books, quite extensively, until about three years ago. I did maintain a subscription of HBR, bought Strategy & Business and Sloan Management Review regularly at WH Smith, maintained a small collection of business books all the time with books on marketing and innovation prominently featuring on my shopping list. I even had my favourites: I read all of Clayton Christensen, Henry Chesbrough, Micha...

I love reading books. My idea of a perfect day would be one spent reading a good book. And, if I must try to imagine what kind of book that would be, I can answer it in two ways. First, I can attempt to answer this by recounting a recent experience of one such day, one of those Saturdays inbetween two long overseas trips when I was at home, and I frittered away all those precious time reading Irving Yarlom's 'When Nietzche Wept'. I hardly read any Fiction recently, and I must admit that I did not realise that I was reading a book of pure fiction till I reached the afterword of this beautifully written, almost believable, book. At the end of it, while I noticed the day has almost ended and I did not do anything that I planned to do using the rare weekend at home, still I felt good, satisfied - fulfilled! The other way of answering this is to say what I do no want to read, which is indeed a more common experience. I hardly get perfect experience with books - some I ...

Nirmalya Kumar asks the question and comes up with an interesting answer - that innovation happens within the global value chain, and while Indians remain innovative, their innovation is often concealed within the end product. He cites iPad, among other things, where different components from different countries, with software written in India, come together: The end product is an example of innovation made in the USA, but within it, the innovation made in the UK, China, India, all combined together. This is indeed true. However, we must also remember that in iPad value chain, little is left for component innovation. In fact, for all the talk of China's great strides in manufacturing, and this potentially altering the balance of power one day, one needs to note that global value chains leave very little for the sourcing countries. Yuqing Xing of National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Tokyo, has done some remarkable work analysing such global value chains: His illustr...

I never understood something about the self-help literature: It always assumes that you know where you are going. But, mostly, we don't: Or at least, I don't. I keep setting goals, indeed, because I am told they are a good thing. But I most often abandon them rather than reaching them. I shall argue that does not turn me into a failure, necessarily. It makes me feel like Christopher Columbus, who wanted to go to India using a different route: He took a risk, made a mistake, and what a rewarding mistake that turned out to be. I have always been told goal setting is a good thing. From the school days, when my teachers at school would ask me what I wanted to be and not knowing the answer was a bad thing. So, you then make up the goals, even when they were wholly unsuitable. These goals tend to become more about people around you than about you. May be there are those perfect people who can start with the end in mind, but they are as unreal as Stepford Wives to me. Most of my life...