From the Bookshelves
.jpg?impolicy=website&width=360&height=270 "Binod Chaudhary: Making it big in Nepal")
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Steven Levy: Why Alphabet is more conventional than Google ever was
Steven Levy has updated his book 'In the Plex' and now takes a look at how Google has changed over the last decade. In the middle of the decade, Larry Page decided to call the company Alphabet. Alpha meant Google and Bet means the new bets or the moonshine projects it will undertake. Levy believes this structure has made it tougher for these bets like the fibre optics business to succeed on their own and a lot of them have eventually failed. He says Google has become something the founders never wanted to be—Conventional
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Jayadevan P.K: How Xiaomi built a cult following
In the summer of 2010, Xiaomi Corporation chose to launch as the force behind MIUI, an operating system based on Google's Android OS. Xiaomi officially launched as a mobile phone maker in August 2011. Since then, it has become the largest-selling smartphone manufacturer in India, the 2nd largest smartphone market in the world. In his book on 'Xiaomi', Jayadevan P. K., a tech journalist, traces the journey of China opening up a market for smartphones with Motorola, and how it brought lessons for entrepreneurs in China, including Lei Jun, the main man behind Xiaomi
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Vivek Wadhwa: Now the Goliaths eat David for lunch
The book's title 'From Incremental to Exponential' is a giveaway and its author, Vivek Wadhwa, a tech entrepreneur and a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School and Carnegie Mellon University joins us on today's episode where he points out there will be more disruption in this decade than in the last 50 years. Wadhwa take us through how legacy companies cut the middleman to stay in the game, why he says AI is an excel sheet on steroids, and why Amazon's monopoly is not a good thing for the Indian market
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Jeff Immelt: My legacy was controversial at best
GE was created in 1892 and it finds its roots with Thomas Edison. But after 110 years, in 2018, GE was booted from Dow Jones. Many pointed fingers at the senior management. In this tell-all podcast, Jeffery Immelt the ex-CEO of GE talks about his time leading the conglomerate, including decisions that went wrong and some which will bear fruits later. In his book Hot Seat, Immelt talks about the various business verticals in detail, especially the breaking up of GE Capital which was one of the drivers of the conglomerate
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Nitin Rakesh: 8 principles for companies to follow in post pandemic world
The book 'Transformation In Times of Crisis' by Nitin Rakesh, CEO of Mphasis and Professor Jerry Wind, who taught at Wharton School, delves upon how enterprises are rewiring themselves and adapting to the new normal to survive. The book outlines key eight principles which include agility, mental models, digital transformation, tapping open talent resources, among other ideas. The book prods companies to ask themselves to build their new strategy for the new normal
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.jpg?impolicy=website&width=360&height=270 "Shiv Shivakumar: How to deal with the ten most important career dilemmas")
Shiv Shivakumar: How to deal with the ten most important career dilemmas
All of us go through career dilemmas at some point. Shivakumar discusses the top ten dilemmas that we may experience and backs them with research and data to analyse how we can make better career moves. In his book, 'The Right Choice', he says India produces nearly half a million MBAs every year but less than 5 percent of an IIM batch makes it to the CEO's office, thus explaining that merely possessing a degree from a prestigious institute does not guarantee a ticket to the corner office. He discusses the importance of career moves, board membership and CEO's dilemmas
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Raja Rajamannar: Marketers should harness new tech to stay relevant
Marketers, globally, are facing an existential crisis as more companies are losing confidence in what marketers can do for their brands. In this book, Rajamannar points out what he calls quantum marketing, the fifth paradigm, that can help marketers to stay relevant in the business. The need to adopt experiential marketing, harnessing machine learning, artificial intelligence, 5G, and more relevant data to create campaigns which can resonate with customers. He also talks about the new ways that he is planning to launch campaigns for Mastercard
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Challenging the myths of meritocracy, with Prof. Michael Sandel
As more people feel dislocated in the face of the inexorable forces of globalisation and lash out against immigrants and free trade, Professor Michael Sandel, one of the foremost philosophers in the world and a professor at Harvard University, challenges the usual notions of meritocracy in his latest book, 'The Tyranny of Merit: What's become of the common good?' While the book delves more into Donald Trump's win and Brexit as the base for its narrative, it has lessons for everyone as education plays a key role in how citizenry votes around the world
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Dr Sudipta Sarangi: Why we like free stuff, and the economics of other small things
Dr. Sudipta Sarangi's debut novel 'The Economics of Small Things' questions our small actions and why we do things the way we do them, and the economics behind them. The book explains concepts of economics with real life questions, like why we ask for freebies while buying vegetables, and more importantly, why the shopkeeper will give you freebies. The book presents some interesting case studies, including the correlation of the pied piper of Hamelin in the context of economics
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Chinmay Tumbe: Why pandemics, economics and politics will always be inter-connected
Every pandemic that tore through the Indian subcontinent like in 2020, brought businesses to a standstill. In 1907, India's GDP contracted by 5 percent, and in 1918 India's GDP fell 10 percent while inflation was high, creating a supply-side shock as 20 million Indians died. The Age of Pandemics by Chinmay Tumbe argues the close connection between pandemics, economics, and politics that have shaped Indian history and why we need to give a central role to pandemics
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Understanding Amartya Sen, with Lawrence Hamilton
Noble laureate Dr. Amartya Sen is a celebrated economist but he is highly misunderstood in India. The book is an attempt by the author to bring his economic theories and other ideas in a simple concise manner to common readers. Amartya Sen has never been shy of being critical of the Indian government's identity politics and economic reforms which has not gone done well with a lot of politicians and intellectuals alike. The book distills his ideas of the capabilities approach, choice theory among other things, and why his ideas are all the more important in the pandemic era.