Month: June 2010

Value at the molecular level

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My first boss demanded respect. He demanded it.  He expected people to raise up when he walked in and we had wish him but he just walked past so bored with all this. But he demanded it. He told us what has to be done, he called th shots.  In just 25 years I have seen changes taking place in front of me.  You try to tell a young professional what has to be done, he may not even listen to you.  If you are a boss you suck, you make no difference.  ‘You are there because Iam here’ that is exactly the approach.

How did this happen. Only the simple minds will say, that youngsters are so different these days.  They have no respect for the elders.  No thats not it.  It is just that we have, over the past 50 years, presided over the growth of the Infotech era and soon see its maturity and decline too.

With this era came a new mindset and a new language.  Sharing, networking, collaboration were the new buzz words.  The way we do business has changed.  We realised that being isolated is not possible, we need to be connected with one another.

Now the information ecomonmy has not matured yet, already the next economy is in the wings.  The ideas and technologes of these tow economies will afftech each other in the coming decade – creating a rapidly evolving climate of business and management.

The key driver of the next economy, Biotech economy, will be ‘CREATION OF VALUE IN THE MOLECULAR LEVEL’

Acknowledgments :   Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer

Conversation with Abel

Abel was probably the person who helped me open my eyes to the light. We have some meaningful conversations.. Here is one we had today on sms

Abel : God is not jealous for church numbers. He is jealous for dwelling uninhibited among His people. The end of Gods mission can never be planting of churches. the church is only important for God since it provides Him the ground to present His Son in all His creation. Where have the seven churches of asia gone? God in Christ goes out of the churches which have lost this capacity to have God dwell amidst them . Bottom line? God does not run institutions. He works through his chosen people

Benny; All institutions are bound to fail, from mental hospitals to schools to churches. Institutions were an industrial age edifice when top down system worked. Not any more, as the Q4 of the Infotech and Q1 of Biotech eras intersect, institutions will crumble. But work of Christ will go on. For He continues to work int he hearts of people.

Abel : Super! may we enter an era to serve the Living God and not dead organizations anymore

Benny : He surely will make it happen.. He is at work.. and our eyes will see it

Abel : Amen

The Conscience of Capitalism Arun Maira

Jun 22, 2010

When a citizen does wrong, you know whose ass to kick. When a corporation causes harm, who exactly should take the rap? Moreover, unlike a person, as Nace points out, a corporation can do the Houdini — disappear and reappear in another body with a new name — and avoid being punished.
Such are the questions that President Obama and the American people, and also the Indian government and Indian people, are grappling with. Whenever the leaders of the US and India come together, as they will again when President Obama visits India later this year, they proclaim the partnership between the two largest democracies in the world. Along side such visits, business leaders from both countries also meet to promote investments and trade.

Should not these dialogues between government and industry leaders also be about the evolution of better institutions of democracy, and capitalism, and within that, the role of corporations? Because, as leaders of the largest democracies, they must also show leadership in the evolution of ideas and institutions.

Mankind has developed many powerful ‘dual use’ technologies that can do great good but, in the wrong hands, can do great harm too. These include nuclear energy and bio-genetics. Who can be trusted with their power? What safeguards must be in place? The large, limited liability corporation is also a powerful ‘dual use’ concept invented by man. The agenda for co-operation between the US and India is fraught with debates about these ‘dual use’ technologies.

Business needs freedom to take risks, innovate and increase wealth. Governments must protect their citizens and promote the common cause. Therefore, even as governments promote business, they must also regulate it. Business leaders resent regulation. They would rather be trusted to regulate their own behaviour. They must always remember that corporations are given a licence to operate by society, and that society can curb or even withdraw that license. The most egregious illustration of this is the conduct of the East India Company. It was given a charter by the Crown to trade in the East. The minutes of its board meetings in London show that the board was hardly concerned about the conditions of the people in the places in which the company operated. It was concerned about financing the missions; it charged its operators abroad to make profits; and it decided the dividends for the investors. When the conduct of the Company’s operators became intolerable, the people rebelled, and the Crown was compelled to withdraw the Company’s charter.

Self regulation requires a conscience. Corporations are the engines of capitalism. Wherein lies the conscience of the corporation — an inanimate, legal construct devised by man? That is the question at the heart of corporate governance. Does it lie in the board, which society should trust to ensure that the corporation causes no harm? If so, is the board equipped with the moral precepts, intellectual ideas and norms of conduct that will enable it to discharge its responsibility to society? The responsibility of the chairman of the board is to ensure that the board is so equipped. A capable board with a conscience can ensure that the corporation’s executive management is well equipped to act responsibly too.

Finally, as the woman from Nigeria said in Sweden, the people want the buck to stop somewhere. They are tired of buck-passing. Great leaders admit the buck stops with them.

(by Arun Maira The author is a member of the Planning Commission)

Caning in schools

Hot subject now.  That young 8th standard boy from La Martiniere hangs himself for being caned by the headmaster.  Iam 51 and I will never be able to understand why a naughty kids should not get the stick and worse still, why ever  he must hang himself.

I remember, when I was 7th standard, when I dropped some marbles in the class room to have fun while the class was going on.  The teacher, Mr Venugopala Rao, was actually a fun loving guy yet I got his goat.  He tracked me down to my table. I stood my ground defiant unwilling to answer his questions and he took my hiding.  I had marks all over my body, hardly any in my report card. I think I cried too, not the boooooo hoooo cry, gentle sobbing.  The class paid their respects by being silent for a minute or so.  The bell rang and I was hanging, around with my friends as usual – we never spoke of the punishment, if  at we did it was heroic talks.

There have been many occasions when I have been on the wrong end of the stick.  Now what is the difference between now and then.  Has the texture of the cane changed? surely not.  The kids are becoming touchy, they are being pampered at home.  You dont get to see kids learning  how to cycle without side wheels.  I haven’t seen a kid with bruises for a long long time.

Now the teachers are different too.  My teachers were strict but seldom angery.  They punished to discipline us not because they were angry with us.  Iam sure in a highly stressful world, the teachers are lot more stressed out than before.  Handling pampered kids can be a major stress in itself.  I assume they punish the kids from their stressed out minds.

So should corporal punishment be banned?   YES to save the tree – perhaps.  Why not think of some ecologically friendly, info era way of punishment like  with a nasty facebook update or  by sending group sms to all the contacts in the students phone, or upload the video of the erring student on youtube.

Fathers Day

Now what the hell is happening to me?  I really never used to care for these days.. then these social networks are imposing these on to me.  I want to be celebrated as a father.  I want my kids to pamper me on this day.  Big deal they do it everyday.. so this fathers day bit does not make much of sense to me.

So I remember my Dad.  Its a pity I got to know him very late in life.  When was down with cancer and he was in his last stages.  Its only then that I got to touch him and talk to him with kindness.  Those few days were wonderful.


I remember my Dad in my childhood, he got all the neighbourhood kids around, he sat on his easy chair, and read comics for all of us.  Phantom, Mandrake and Tarzan.. he used to do with sound effects and animation (no TV those days)  How we loved those comics and the comic reading sessions.

He was a very kind man, was moved easily. Pitied and helped people.

Email on non GPRS phone from Jaamun ‘Jaa

Email on non GPRS phone from Jaamun

‘Jaamun’s tagline is “email on any mobile,” and this simple service is what they are providing — for the simplest of phones.

‘Jaamun’ is a venture by IIT Delhi alumni Pratiroop Mehta and Mayank Kumar. Mr. Mehta was previously working for the new product development team at Reliance, while Mr. Kumar was part of the enterprise software division at Microsoft India.

They started out building a mobile email client, but found that a lot of users have phones that do not support GPRS. The solution, they found, would be to leave GPRS out of it.

“Any IMAP/POP supporting email server can be configured via ‘Jaamun.’ And you can sign up online or by sending an SMS with the email ID and password to 9773467755. Once you map the mail ID and Twitter handle to the mobile number, you are ready to receive, reply, forward and compose mails on your basic phone,” Mr. Mehta says.
source #thehindu
http://ow.ly/20LOd