Despite the innumerable opinions and the countless debates about its factual authenticity, the economic history of India is fairly well documented.
Gautam Chikermane
Tata Power quotes at Rs 360 today, but did you know that in 1910, even after the success of setting up the Tata Steel plant, the then chairman of the Tata Group, Dorabji Tata, found it difficult to attract Indian investors. Had it not been for Lord Sydenham, the governor of Bombay and some Indian princes, Dorabji may have had to turn to British financiers, “who would have certainly demanded their pound of flesh” through some control over the affairs of the company.
In most of the civilised world, the consumption of addictive opium is considered illegal, but way back in 1784, Bengal was a major exporter of this drug to the “passionately addicted” China, under the direct jurisdiction of the East India Company. In 1818, about 51,000 bighas of land was under poppy cultivation in central India and another 45,500 bighas in north India. Two hundred years ago, junkies of the time must have had a great time in India.
Book review in Outlook Money
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Wednesday, August 1, 2001
The Essential Drucker
An essential, but incomplete, compendium from the mahatma of management.
Gautam Chikermane
AS I eagerly await Peter Drucker’s next book (the last one, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, was published in 1999), all I get are compendiums–Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management (1998) and, now, The Essential Drucker. No one’s complaining–be it a book, an article, a collection or a speech, there is always a freshness and a deep insight into everything this mahatma of management touches. Even in his early-90s, Drucker is, in a sense, much younger than many young writers (including myself), and more open, more incisive than all of us.
This collection–put together by Drucker himself–is essential, but incomplete. Essential writings on management, the individual and society include masterpieces drawn from his 30 books in a 60-year-long career. So, we have The Information Executives Need Today, a must for all leaders; Picking People: The Basic Rules, a must for every manager; and The Second Half of Your Life, a must for everyone. It is incomplete because it is my firm opinion that Drucker can’t be sliced: in every book, he takes up a theme and expands on it in great detail, and surgical procedures don't do justice to that theme or his handling of it. How, for instance, can you encapsulate the vastness of his 1985 classic Innovation and Entrepreneurship in five small excerpts?
Book review in Outlook Money
Gautam Chikermane
AS I eagerly await Peter Drucker’s next book (the last one, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, was published in 1999), all I get are compendiums–Peter Drucker on the Profession of Management (1998) and, now, The Essential Drucker. No one’s complaining–be it a book, an article, a collection or a speech, there is always a freshness and a deep insight into everything this mahatma of management touches. Even in his early-90s, Drucker is, in a sense, much younger than many young writers (including myself), and more open, more incisive than all of us.
This collection–put together by Drucker himself–is essential, but incomplete. Essential writings on management, the individual and society include masterpieces drawn from his 30 books in a 60-year-long career. So, we have The Information Executives Need Today, a must for all leaders; Picking People: The Basic Rules, a must for every manager; and The Second Half of Your Life, a must for everyone. It is incomplete because it is my firm opinion that Drucker can’t be sliced: in every book, he takes up a theme and expands on it in great detail, and surgical procedures don't do justice to that theme or his handling of it. How, for instance, can you encapsulate the vastness of his 1985 classic Innovation and Entrepreneurship in five small excerpts?
Book review in Outlook Money
Saturday, April 28, 2001
Schools that Learn
New, interesting ideas for old, moribund institutions.
Gautam Chikermane
As my daughter readies to enter school, I am filled with dread. Cursory research tells me that what is imparted to kids in the name of education will only destroy whatever true learning they are capable of -- classrooms like prisons; teachers who treat pupils as trophies to be marketed or as pariah dogs to be ‘disciplined’; institutions that neither question nor allow questions.
Schools that Learn is a collection of 191 pieces by 113 writers, which discusses advances in education. It explores new ideas, pursues new thoughts, and presents exercises that people are adopting to help make institutions more like learning organisations. It suggests that the one-size-fits-all education system that serviced the 19th century industrial world may not work as effectively today. I agree: our children will be more ‘global’ citizens than we, and will need to be creative, original, individual -- things our schools neither provide, nor can provide. A new way is needed. What that is, I have no idea -- neither does the book, but it gives interesting directions, stimulating possibilities.
Book review in Outlook Money
Gautam Chikermane
As my daughter readies to enter school, I am filled with dread. Cursory research tells me that what is imparted to kids in the name of education will only destroy whatever true learning they are capable of -- classrooms like prisons; teachers who treat pupils as trophies to be marketed or as pariah dogs to be ‘disciplined’; institutions that neither question nor allow questions.
Schools that Learn is a collection of 191 pieces by 113 writers, which discusses advances in education. It explores new ideas, pursues new thoughts, and presents exercises that people are adopting to help make institutions more like learning organisations. It suggests that the one-size-fits-all education system that serviced the 19th century industrial world may not work as effectively today. I agree: our children will be more ‘global’ citizens than we, and will need to be creative, original, individual -- things our schools neither provide, nor can provide. A new way is needed. What that is, I have no idea -- neither does the book, but it gives interesting directions, stimulating possibilities.
Book review in Outlook Money
The Internet Bubble: Inside the Overvalued World of High-tech Stocks
Time you geared up to face the internet shakeout.
Gautam Chikermane
The epilogue says it all:
An Open Letter
To: Internet Company Investors
From: The Authors
Re: Sell Now!
The bottom line to our analysis is very simple. With very few exceptions, every one of the 133 public Internet companies listed in our Internet Bubble portfolio is overvalued. Our advice to Internet investors is equally simple: If you hold any of these stocks, it's time to sell.
Book review in Outlook Money
Gautam Chikermane
The epilogue says it all:
An Open Letter
To: Internet Company Investors
From: The Authors
Re: Sell Now!
The bottom line to our analysis is very simple. With very few exceptions, every one of the 133 public Internet companies listed in our Internet Bubble portfolio is overvalued. Our advice to Internet investors is equally simple: If you hold any of these stocks, it's time to sell.
Book review in Outlook Money
High tech, high touch
How technology has become the god we love to hate.
Gautam Chikermane
The 70-year-old man couldn't understand it. All he knew was that the Indian Airlines flight to Jodhpur had been cancelled. For this man, a metals trader in Jodhpur, the computerised schedules were formidable. He hobbled behind the customer services man but the customer services man was busy with other younger, more aggressive, stronger men. This went on for a while, and as I boarded my flight to Mumbai (three hours late), I noticed him being taken to a taxi, his tension-filled creases intact.
The old man lingered in my head for a while. Being not as old myself, I thought it must be his "industrial age" thinking that prevented him from understanding the simple things in life -- the various technological screens we live with (computers, TVs, cellphones, and their application to airlines). I didn't understand that what he needed was the human touch. Or so John Naisbitt told me in the two hours to Mumbai in his latest book, High Tech, High Touch.
Book review in Outlook Money
Gautam Chikermane
The 70-year-old man couldn't understand it. All he knew was that the Indian Airlines flight to Jodhpur had been cancelled. For this man, a metals trader in Jodhpur, the computerised schedules were formidable. He hobbled behind the customer services man but the customer services man was busy with other younger, more aggressive, stronger men. This went on for a while, and as I boarded my flight to Mumbai (three hours late), I noticed him being taken to a taxi, his tension-filled creases intact.
The old man lingered in my head for a while. Being not as old myself, I thought it must be his "industrial age" thinking that prevented him from understanding the simple things in life -- the various technological screens we live with (computers, TVs, cellphones, and their application to airlines). I didn't understand that what he needed was the human touch. Or so John Naisbitt told me in the two hours to Mumbai in his latest book, High Tech, High Touch.
Book review in Outlook Money
Profit patterns
The key to business success is to see the ever-changing shifts in patterns.
Gautam Chikermane
Profit Patterns
Are there really "30 ways to anticipate and profit from strategic forces reshaping your business", as Profit Patterns claims? Or even 10? My opinion: no. But I believe books like this have a function: they study businesses, they relate and marry theories and practices, they provide insights. The last is the most valuable -- which is why I read them. And the five authors, all from Mercer Management Consulting, don't disappoint.
The book "is the 'codebook': the specifics of how to identify the shifts taking place in your market so that the performance of your...business can be raised to a level similar to that achieved by reinventors."
Book review in Outlook Money
Gautam Chikermane
Profit Patterns
Are there really "30 ways to anticipate and profit from strategic forces reshaping your business", as Profit Patterns claims? Or even 10? My opinion: no. But I believe books like this have a function: they study businesses, they relate and marry theories and practices, they provide insights. The last is the most valuable -- which is why I read them. And the five authors, all from Mercer Management Consulting, don't disappoint.
The book "is the 'codebook': the specifics of how to identify the shifts taking place in your market so that the performance of your...business can be raised to a level similar to that achieved by reinventors."
Book review in Outlook Money
Management Challenges for the 21st Century
Peter Drucker never disappoints. This time, he's got valuable lessons for the future.
Gautam Chikermane
A couple of books ago, Peter F. Drucker, the father of management, had declared that like the brilliant composer Giuseppe Verdi did at age 80, he too would continue to strive for perfection. This is what he wrote in his 1997 book, Drucker on Asia: "I resolved that if I ever reached an advanced age, I would not give up. I would strive for perfection even though, as I well knew, it would surely, always elude me." Drucker today is 10 years older than Verdi was then. And, like Verdi, he doesn't disappoint: Management Challenges for the 21st Century remains, as all his earlier 31 books, refreshingly -- and predictably -- insightful.
Of course, if you have been following the works of this master, you would have read much of what he has to offer earlier: the chapter on new paradigms of management was published in Forbes; the one on knowledge worker productivity in the California Management Review; the ones on information and managing the individual in the Harvard Business Review. There is a sound strategy of a learner behind this: "The best pilot-test for my writings, I have found, is to pre-publish sections of a forthcoming book in magazines." I might add that the one other place where you can see Drucker's forthcoming book is following his thoughts in the interviews he gives in magazines -- Wired and Inc, among others.
Book review in Outlook Money
Gautam Chikermane
A couple of books ago, Peter F. Drucker, the father of management, had declared that like the brilliant composer Giuseppe Verdi did at age 80, he too would continue to strive for perfection. This is what he wrote in his 1997 book, Drucker on Asia: "I resolved that if I ever reached an advanced age, I would not give up. I would strive for perfection even though, as I well knew, it would surely, always elude me." Drucker today is 10 years older than Verdi was then. And, like Verdi, he doesn't disappoint: Management Challenges for the 21st Century remains, as all his earlier 31 books, refreshingly -- and predictably -- insightful.
Of course, if you have been following the works of this master, you would have read much of what he has to offer earlier: the chapter on new paradigms of management was published in Forbes; the one on knowledge worker productivity in the California Management Review; the ones on information and managing the individual in the Harvard Business Review. There is a sound strategy of a learner behind this: "The best pilot-test for my writings, I have found, is to pre-publish sections of a forthcoming book in magazines." I might add that the one other place where you can see Drucker's forthcoming book is following his thoughts in the interviews he gives in magazines -- Wired and Inc, among others.
Book review in Outlook Money
At any cost
At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric, and the Pursuit of Profit
There's more to it than a good-looking bottomline. For one, there's people -- you and I.
Gautam Chikermane
The bottomline: this is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. One that is making me question my beliefs, convictions, and expectations out of my money, in a way that no other has. It is harsh in its straightforwardness, unpretentious in its balancing of values that run counter to one another. The hypothesis -- that beyond a point, capitalism, competitiveness and the free market need to be controlled -- is convincing: reduntant workers committing suicide on being laid off, dangerous radioactive chemicals running amuck in clear streams, bribes, illegal price fixation, ugly defence deals. The treatment is ruthless. And it reads like a thriller.
The book is not so much about Jack Welch and the company he heads -- General Electric, the world's most valuable company (its market capitalisation on November 23: $309.2 billion, or Rs 12,97,800 crore, against India's GDP of Rs 11,49,000 crore) -- or the management trends of the US economy, or even the ghastly acts that respected companies commit in trying to reach their ends, as it is about you and I, and our place in the new capitalism. An otherwise fine -- possibly the best proven -- system that has reached its nadir. A point where the bottomline is everything.
Book review in Outlook Money
There's more to it than a good-looking bottomline. For one, there's people -- you and I.
Gautam Chikermane
The bottomline: this is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. One that is making me question my beliefs, convictions, and expectations out of my money, in a way that no other has. It is harsh in its straightforwardness, unpretentious in its balancing of values that run counter to one another. The hypothesis -- that beyond a point, capitalism, competitiveness and the free market need to be controlled -- is convincing: reduntant workers committing suicide on being laid off, dangerous radioactive chemicals running amuck in clear streams, bribes, illegal price fixation, ugly defence deals. The treatment is ruthless. And it reads like a thriller.
The book is not so much about Jack Welch and the company he heads -- General Electric, the world's most valuable company (its market capitalisation on November 23: $309.2 billion, or Rs 12,97,800 crore, against India's GDP of Rs 11,49,000 crore) -- or the management trends of the US economy, or even the ghastly acts that respected companies commit in trying to reach their ends, as it is about you and I, and our place in the new capitalism. An otherwise fine -- possibly the best proven -- system that has reached its nadir. A point where the bottomline is everything.
Book review in Outlook Money
Friday, April 27, 2001
A Future Perfect
Neither worship it nor throw stones at it -- just learn to live with globalisation.
Gautam Chikermane
Hindustan Lever is an ‘Indian’ company, with brands that are part of many Indians’ lives -- Dalda, Lux, Lifebuoy. But 74 per cent of it is owned by UK-based Unilever. Infosys Technologies is an ‘Indian’ company, almost all of whose turnover -- and profits -- comes from services delivered outside India. Americans can buy its shares on the Nasdaq as easily as you can on the National Stock Exchange. ‘Foreign’ institutional investors own a huge chunk of this company. So, how ‘Indian’ are Lever and Infosys? Globalisation affects your investments like never before.
You worked for a head-hunting firm that had good business from a big software company. Then, the software company got taken over by a US-based leader, which had its own German head-hunting advisor. Your company closed down. You joined a Finnish cellphone company at four times your last salary, stock options (at the Nasdaq) aside. Globalisation affects your very source of livelihood.
Opinion in Outlook Money
Gautam Chikermane
Hindustan Lever is an ‘Indian’ company, with brands that are part of many Indians’ lives -- Dalda, Lux, Lifebuoy. But 74 per cent of it is owned by UK-based Unilever. Infosys Technologies is an ‘Indian’ company, almost all of whose turnover -- and profits -- comes from services delivered outside India. Americans can buy its shares on the Nasdaq as easily as you can on the National Stock Exchange. ‘Foreign’ institutional investors own a huge chunk of this company. So, how ‘Indian’ are Lever and Infosys? Globalisation affects your investments like never before.
You worked for a head-hunting firm that had good business from a big software company. Then, the software company got taken over by a US-based leader, which had its own German head-hunting advisor. Your company closed down. You joined a Finnish cellphone company at four times your last salary, stock options (at the Nasdaq) aside. Globalisation affects your very source of livelihood.
Opinion in Outlook Money
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