We are rounding the home stretch… Apologies for the 2-week hiatus!
| Category | Dinesh | Kaushik | Satya | Raj |
| Last Week | 4 – 1 | 3 – 2 | 5 – 0 | DNP |
| Season | 21 – 9 | 26 – 9 | 5 - 0 | 7 – 3 |
| Season Winning % | 70% | 74% | TBD | 70% |
Kalpana Chawla, M Night Shyamalan, Subramanyan Chandrasekhar, Amar Bose, Amartya Sen, Zubin Mehta, et al. What do these luminaries have in common? They all have or had a connection with
I am positive that you would recall Indian dailies screaming at least some of these headlines in bold font on their front pages…
“Kalpana Chawla – First Indian woman to fly in space”
“Indian director gets critical acclaim for
“Indian physicist Chandrasekhar claims coveted Nobel prize in Physics”
“Amar Bose – Indian entrepreneur starts company excelling in acoustics”
“Indian economist awarded Nobel prize for his yeoman work in Economics”
“Zubin Mehta continues to receive international accolades for his music prowess”
Of course, this is merely an infinitesimal cross-section of the Indian presence in the world. Observing closely though, I am tempted to think how much credit can
Dr. Kalpana Chawla was an American Citizen when she flew in space. Her master’s degree, doctoral degree and astronaut training were all in the
Some of them do leave a sour taste in our mouths too. Think Kaavya Viswanathan. All of us crowned her as a teenage prodigy, who can beat the best in the cut-throat world of fiction writing. A plagiarism exposé by The Harvard Crimson and withdrawal of future book offers later, we are left holding the bag for being on her bandwagon. This is not meant to be a scathing attack on Kaavya (although I don’t condone her actions in any way, shape or form). Rather, it is intended to show that NOT everything done by our community abroad is noble and great.
Finally, I would recommend moderation and restrained enthusiasm in proclaiming these expat achievements as
A mixed week in the offing…
| Category | Dinesh | Kaushik | Raj |
| Last Week | 3 – 2 | 4 – 1 | 3 - 2 |
| Season | 17 – 8 | 23 – 7 | 7 – 3 |
| Season Winning % | 68% | 77% | 70% |
Boy, the Gators used a lot of trickeration to upstage LSU. The Tebow dude looks like the real deal. The Horns literally pounded the Sooners into submission.
This week looks pretty ordinary.
| Category | Dinesh | Kaushik | Raj |
| Last Week | 3 – 2 | 4 – 1 | 4 - 1 |
| Season | 14 – 6 (70%) | 19 – 6 (76%) | 4 – 1 (TBD) |
Hook ‘Em Horns! When the dust settles, it will be 24 – 21 to the Longhorns at the Cotton Bowl
Texas Tech orchestrated a brilliant final drive to beat
This week looks very interesting on paper! Here are the match-ups.
Pick Accuracy
Kaushik
Last Week: -4 – 1
Season:---- 15 – 5 (75%)
Dinesh
Last Week: 4 – 1
Season:--- 11 – 4 (73%)
Chess is a vicious, mercilessly brutal sport sans the bloodshed. Not unlike the cut-throat corporate world. The resemblances between the two are plenty and thought-provoking. Sixty four squares, thirty two pieces and two minds at battle open up a combination of thousands of moves (literally). Extending this to the hundreds of corporations (players) doing business, one will be able to appreciate the millions of endless choices, and hence, decisions (moves) that have to be made in the business world day after day.
Business success is determined, to a large extent, by a company’s ability to play to its competitor’s strength and survive long enough to make them to play to their own strength. For instance, Company A may be a great innovator. However, we all understand that new product life cycles are highly unpredictable and risky. Company A cannot just look at innovation for its daily existence. They have to have a “stable” product established in the market, revenues from which will fund the daily operations and the cost of innovation. If this “stable” product does not meet the quality and/or price point of a similar product from Company B, then, it is doomsday! In other words, Company A has to have some skill in staying in the ring with Company B till the “innovative” product kicks in and catches Company B off-balance. At this point, Company A has successfully transformed the playing field to match its strength.
According to Garry Kasparov, this is true in Chess too. There are two major types of chess players. Player A, who concerns himself with the next few moves and maximizes the advantage or Player B who looks at the big picture and tries to attain the goal through risks and exploration. If you see, Player A characterizes a great “Manager” in business and Player B, a great “CEO”! Undoubtedly, both are indispensable for the success of the company. What’s more, if Player A and Player B are engaged in a game of chess, they have to be able to play the other’s game, at least until they can get their opponent to play the way they do! Not too dissimilar to the business situation described in the paragraph above.
According to Kasparov, Chess is not just a game of logic. In fact, logic doesn’t play as big a role as one would imagine. After all, even Vishy Anand could only think 10 moves ahead. Intuition is the key. This is definitely true in business too. If logic were the panacea for all business challenges, then the best scientist or mathematician would be the CEO (obviously, that is not the case). A decisive individual who is willing to take risks and explore uncharted waters (with a logical bent of mind, of course) will make a good CEO.
I thought these were very interesting parallels between two seemingly unrelated worlds. So, the next time you are at work yawning in your cube, just imagine that you are in front of checkered board and you will feel better! I know, to some, that’s not sweetening the deal!! But, it is what it is!
Courtesy: Some ideas were borrowed from an interview that Garry Kasparov gave to Harvard Business Review in 2004
I went a perfect 5 – 0 last week. Yay!
Pick Accuracy
Kaushik
Last Week: -5 – 0
Season:---- 11 – 4 (73%)
Dinesh
Last Week: 3 – 2
It is disappointing to learn that “Rang de Basanti” is going to be the Indian representative for a shot at the Academy Award this season.
“Rang de Basanti” rises above mediocrity for the most part. The first half is mostly about making up the reels so that it qualifies as a “desi” movie. God forbid, it should end before the two-hour mark. The songs are incongruous with the storyline and serve to only impede the pace of the narrative.
The climax is one of the worst in recent memory. Is the director trying to tell us that college educated youth who are supposedly inspired by freedom martyrs are naïve enough to think that the assassination of the Defence Minister solves many an ill afflicting the Indian society? And a Bollywood exclusive, the hero belabors to point out the rationale behind the assassination on national radio for the good part of ten minutes. And oh, let’s stop the madness with British dames falling hopelessly in love with our heroes for no rhyme or reason. “Lagaan” and “Rang de” are both are guilty of that. What’s worse, this love theme has absolutely no impact on the story. Goodness! Tamil movies, “Indian” and “Gentleman” would be better candidates and we all know that they were merely good commercial servings!
I’m going to make some educated guesses on why “Rang De” was selected as the Indian representative. Aamir Khan – It is true that his acting performance was very good. In fact, all of the actors were good. But, this nomination is for the movie, not acting. Lack of Other Quality Movies – This could be true. But, with Oscar, I would say, let’s hold ourselves to a minimum standard and not send any movies to the Academy, if we feel we didn’t produce a work close to international standard.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The Chennai economy has grown by leaps and bounds. The growth is being fueled by four industries; Semiconductor, Automotive, Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing. Consider the list of MNCs below that will have significant presence by 2007 in the Chennai metropolitan area.
An intriguing offshoot of the major players entering the field is the suppliers that they bring with them. Dell has brought Flextronics. Ford has brought Visteon. Motorola has brought Foxconn Semiconductor. Saint Gobain supplies automotive glass equipment to Hyundai, Ford, Mitsubishi, etc. When this phenomenon reaches a critical mass, it will establish an entry barrier in other cities. You will find newer companies typically choosing Chennai too because of the strong support infrastructure in terms of supplier firms.
A late bloomer in IT, Chennai has grown faster than expected. Facing stiff competition from
AT
This is some rich fuel concoction that is powering our economic engine. It is not beyond the realm of possibility to think that Chennai could be a major player in
“Replication” is one thing the developed nations don’t take advantage of. For example, we don’t have to spend a lot of time and money in new research on roads. We can simply take advantage of developed nations and the systems that they already have in place. Why reinvent the wheel? After all, didn’t US take the Autobahn from
As a developing nation, we had a lot of catching up to do. I thought of an interesting indicator (see table below) of how we have progressed. The time lag has dropped significantly. The rate of development has been very good and we are at a point where we are close to being on par with the
| Commodity | Commonplace in US (Yr) | Commonplace in | Time Lag (Yr) |
| Television | 1950s | 1980s | 30 |
| Telephones (landlines) | 1965 | 1990 | 25 |
| Internet | 1990 | 1999 | 9 |
| iPod | 2001 | 2006 | 5 |
“Separation Saturday” lived up to the hype. Notre Dame was man handled by
This week is going to be a calm one. Not a lot of great match-ups. Nevertheless, here goes…
Pick Accuracy
Kaushik
Last Week: 3 – 2
Season:---- 6 – 4
Dinesh
Last Week: 4 – 1
Season:---- 4 – 1
