Education, as we all know, is a fundamental driver of a society’s development. Both China and India, with massive populations, roughly spend the same % of GDP on education. But China’s economy is three times larger than India’s – so per capita China spends a lot more on education than India.
China is developing institutions of higher learning with a vengeance. And therein lies a lesson for India...
Sunday, 31 May 2009
Friday, 29 May 2009
Five things China can learn from India - 3. Innovation
Innovation is not the greatest of strengths in China. China is disciplined, but that is a strength as well as a weakness. Innovation, and even entrepreneurship, is not on the same page as in India. That’s a difficult lesson for China to learn.
In the last post, I argued that Chinese are disciplined in their work. I said “In the BPO business that I was involved in, you could rely on the team in China...
Thursday, 28 May 2009
Five things India can learn from China - 3. Work Ethic
The word “follow up” is rarely used in China – at least by me. I would like to dreamily believe that there is no word for follow up in Mandarin (not true of course). The Chinese work hard, but with a difference – and therein lies a lesson for India to learn.
In the office, once the job is well understood and within the capability of the individual to perform, you can leave him alone. He needs little...
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
What China can learn from India - 2. Go Global
Chinese are reluctantly going global. Indians are enthusiastically going around the world. And therein lies a lesson China can learn from India.This is another counter intuitive lesson than I am proposing. After all Chinese have gone everywhere in the world. There’s a Chinatown in virtually every city. And yet, I say Chinese are reluctant globetrotters. In the past, Chinese migrated and travelled...
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
What India can learn from China - 2. To get rich is glorious
In the spring of 1992, Deng Xiaoping visited Shenzhen and uttered 9 words that changed China. “To get rich is glorious, Poverty is not socialism”, he said. The rest is history.Remember, where China was at the end of the Cultural Revolution and the Mao era. For Deng to say that is the most visionary thing that has happened in the world in the 20th century. Some 300 million people were yanked from abject...
Monday, 25 May 2009
Five things China can learn from India - 1.Cost competitiveness
This might come as a surprise, but China is not as cost competitive anymore. China has a cost problem it does not recognise.I am alternating posts between what India can learn from China and what China can learn from India. This is the first of what China can learn.China’s great strength is that it can produce at low cost and on scale. There are other countries which are cheaper eg Vietnam. But none...
Sunday, 24 May 2009
Five things India can learn from China - 1. Infrastructure
China’s wonderful infrastructure is an obvious lesson for India to learn. This is a no brainer , but it is so much of a competitive advantage for China, that even though its glaringly obvious, I am covering it as one of the things India must learn from China.China is an infrastructural marvel. Everything is being built on a scale that will stagger the imagination. Cities, Railways, Airports, Roads,...
Saturday, 23 May 2009
China and India
It had to happen. An Indian living in China, cannot but compare these two great countries. So I am going to post for the next 10 days “Five things India can learn from China” and “Five things China can learn from India”. Purely in a business context.It has to come with lots of statutory warnings. While I know India very well, I can hardly claim to know China. I’ve worked only in one city Guangzhou...
Friday, 22 May 2009
The Railway Minister
Only in politics, and especially in India, are competence and performance irrelevant words.I am reacting to the sacking of Laloo Prasad Yadav as the Railway Minister of India . He was, without doubt, one of the most competent ministers of the last five years. He was probably the best Railway Minister India has ever had.Indian Railways is one of the most complex business organisations to run. It is...
Thursday, 21 May 2009
The stock market is an ass
For the last three days, I have been watching the Indian stock market with utter amazement. On Friday, the BSE Sensex closed at 12173 . On Tuesday, it closed at 14302. A full 17% increase in two days. You would have made a killing if you bought on Friday and sold on Tuesday.Nothing has changed in India except that the Congress won an unexpectedly comfortable victory in the general elections. On “sentiment”...
Tuesday, 19 May 2009
Women in Indian business
Nasscom in conjunction with Mercer Consulting has published a report on Gender Inclusivity in India. According to press reports on this study, India has more working women than any other country in the world. 30% -35% of the overall 400 million workforce is women.Nasscom sites (www.nasscom.org) has a link to the report. Click (http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshowpics/4524928.cms) for a...
Monday, 18 May 2009
Communicating with fellow bloggers
Well, my "tunnel" is dark, and I really can't see very well, so I'm using this post to communicate with my fellow bloggers as there is simply no other way.I can post on my blog, but can't add pictures. No control over formatting and I can't edit. Can't comment. But I can post, which is something.I can read all your blogs, for the moment. When you don't have access to a blog, is when you realise how...
Sunday, 17 May 2009
Sneaking in !
You can't keep a determined blogger out. I stumbled on a way to "beat the system". Don't know how long it will work, but I'll enjoy it as long as it does. Its a little painful, but hey what the heck - its a lot better than getting completely blacked out. Posts may not look perfect, things might be out of synch (thanks to the sneaking I am doing), but at least its something. If I go again missing for...
Saturday, 16 May 2009
Blocked out
I woke up today to discover that Blogger has been blocked in China. I can’t read blogspot blogs or post in my own blog. Yuk !
This is how things are in China. Suddenly whole sites get blocked by “The Great Firewall of China”. Currently YouTube is blocked, WordPress is blocked and now Blogspot.
I won’t be able to post on my blog, until I find a way out – either shift my blog altogether or find a proxy....
Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
There’s a US TV reality show called “Are you smarter than a 5th grader ?” In this game, adult contestants make a fool of themselves trying to answer questions from 1st to 5th grade in schools. They mostly fail and prove publicly that they are not smarter than a 5th grader.I am concluding my current posts on education, with a non business post on something that’s intrigued me.Two questions come to...
Friday, 15 May 2009
What ails XXX ?
The day I walked into my business school , all those years ago, I heard this term - "What ails XXX ?- substitute name of business school for XXX. Many years on, I still hear this rhetorical question. From many business schools. Its nice that they do ask this question, but often they stop at that and simply gaze at their own navel.Imagine an organisation, where you have virtually irrelevant performance...
Thursday, 14 May 2009
Teaching - A "noble" profession nobody wants to get into
A society can often be judged by the professions it eulogises. What are the professions that are aspirational ? What do people want to be ?Its a sad fact of our times that in no nation would the teacher figure at the top of the list. Very few people really want to be teachers anymore. If the best minds are not working at the schools, colleges and universities, how is a knowledge society like ours...
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Commercial Break
Taking a commercial break from the sequence of posting on Business Education, to write on the Sudirman Cup going on in Guangzhou currently. I am a sports nut, and for those who are unfamiliar with badminton as a sport, the Sudirman Cup is the World Team Championship. China wins this all the time, but...
Tuesday, 12 May 2009
Academicians vs Managers
Management is one of the most applied of all sciences. Its not a theoretical science. You would therefore expect that in this field there is the closest of cooperation between academicians and practitioners. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The two mutually loath each other although outwardly its all bonhomieManagers think academicians are outdated, theoretical and of no use in the "real"...
Monday, 11 May 2009
The Obsolete Manager
How obsolete are we ? If I were to judge myself, pretty obsolete. This week I am posting on Education, as the theme. Starting with an outrageous statement - the manager is obsolete the minute he steps out of business school (or whatever school) and then it is a long road to utter obsolescence until he retires.Management science is a pretty dynamic science. The body of knowledge is expanding at a terrific...
Saturday, 9 May 2009
Spreading the Cheer
Wow , what a beginning to the day. I was declared as a Blogger Friend by Rads. And then by Aparna. I am touched ladies.Here's my list of Blogger friends. They are super bloggers themselves, but above all, they're friends , whom I didn't know before, may have never met, got to know mainly through blogging...
Friday, 8 May 2009
Hail the Coder
Its the coder who has pulled India by its bootstraps and plonked it firmly on the world map. I know, she'll violently object to being called a coder - there are more politically correct, but boring terms available. With due apologies, let me sing an ode to the Indian coder.The coder ranks right up there,...
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Hail the 21st century heroes
In all of history, there have been periods when groups of people have changed the world. Sometimes the soldier, sometimes the priest, sometimes the king, sometimes the philosopher, sometimes the writer.In my view, two heroes have changed the world at the dawn of the 21st century. Unheralded they are,...
Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Change rules to win
I am delighted to present a guest post by Adesh Sidhu. Adesh runs his excellent blog Not being Sarkari. He is a "Customer Advocate, Apple fan, Desi and an avid reader". He writes passionately on customer service - his blog carries many excellent posts. Thanks Adesh for your post that followsBig boys make rules. Big boys want to rule the world by the rules they have created. They have created rules,...
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Remembering ABN Amro
Remember ABN Amro. It was one of the largest European banks, operating in some 60 countries. This venerable institution had a history dating back to 1824.In October of 2007, it was acquired by a consortium of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Fortis and Banco Santander for a staggering price of $ 100 bn....
Monday, 4 May 2009
From Michigan to Guangdong
If your sales grew last month by 25% in the largest car market in the world (at the moment) ; if you were No 2 in the market behind a faltering market leader; if you had beaten the Japanese nicely; if your two most famous brands are household names and aspirational in the market; if your other American...
Saturday, 2 May 2009
Cutomer Service is all about getting the boring bits right
Today's post is a guest post in Adesh Sidhu's blog - Not being Sarkari.Adesh is an avid blogger and writes passionately about customer service. He is also an active member of the IndiBlogger forum.Click here to read my guest post in his bl...
Friday, 1 May 2009
TPOA
Business jargon is complex as it is. It is made even more unintelligible by meaningless acronyms. Think of how much drivel we spout every day in the office.Yesterday, my daughter was telling me of the classes she had in her primary school. She said one of her classes was VCOP. For the life of me I could...
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