A HARVARD TEAM OF ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT consultants did a sampling of nearly 14 years covering 2000 Chief Executives of global companies listed by S&P. The sampling and tests were fairly exhaustive and unique, and presented a vivid picture of the Executive boardrooms that saw many major global economic events including the Y2K IT burst, Oil-price surge and dive, and 2007-down-turn, among others. Though the headline making "attribute" of the published list came out highlighting that three of top 5 best performing executives do not have a formal degree in management. Three of the top five are connected to IT industry, and the other two are from petroleum and energy sector. Broadly, four out of 10 successful leaders in IT and six out 10 in energy sector do not possess such formal b-school enrollment.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Atlas' Second Coming, and the Shrugs
THE GLOBAL MELTDOWN MIGHT have made the mighty Atlas tickle, or so it must have seemed if one takes the metaphor literally. But Atlas, in spite of shrugs, is going strong on its part.
Interestingly, Audacity of Hope by President Obama was overtaken by Atlas Shrugged on the sales charts for a while just before the presidency change. This is the second coming of Ayn Rand that started in 2007. Over past ten+ years I must have gifted her books, selectively and carefully, to at least three people of my immediate reckoning (all of whom fell out of touch. Not so carefully, after all!). Honestly though, I never got this book right. There was always something ultra-right about the acceptance and success of her (cold-war incubated) concepts of having a platonic state of a democracy (where one would be expected to demonstrate as much dexterity with the left hand as the right).
Ayn Rand's rendition of the perfect world -- much more vividly worded in her previous notoriety: The Fountainhead -- could only be realised by having a robot driven logic drinking mathematical machine state, with humans as its 'individual' sentinels possessing extreme selfishness. There is no room for spirit or an experience of it (except perhaps in nakedness, which is to be perceived without sensitivity -- ask Mr. Wynand, who, according to a female friend, is the real hero for her). Event though they claimed to keep the torch burning when the oil ran out.
The Economist argues today that the current financial crisis, and various bail-out announcements, have a direct correlation with unit sales figures and sales rank of Atlas Shrugged (See chart. source: ecomonist.com). The author attributes the pattern to mass social media -- such as Facebook, and certain user groups aiming at personifying the storytelling as if "Atlas Shrugged is happening in real life". Plus, it is believed that Alan Greenspan is a fan of Rand's work, and thus his every recent move was like a stimuli to the book's gift-wrapping counters at Amazon.com.
However, it is to take it too far to compare Rearden's (one of the book's characters who invents a unique metal) visit to the ministers with that of the Banking CEO's meeting with the US congress these past weeks.
I am at a loss of expectations from the movie based of Rand's works which is in the making for a 2011 release. I can only shrug for the moment. As a fan of Rand's, however, it actually makes sense, for it largely belongs to the fairyland.
Let's wait and see who is John Galt?
Update: Have you read "The Driver" (try here) by Garet Garrett? Arguably, Rand lifted a few key concepts and phrases from this rather obscured 1922 work. His first work in 1911 was titled "Where the Money Grows and Anatomy of the Bubble".
Interestingly, Audacity of Hope by President Obama was overtaken by Atlas Shrugged on the sales charts for a while just before the presidency change. This is the second coming of Ayn Rand that started in 2007. Over past ten+ years I must have gifted her books, selectively and carefully, to at least three people of my immediate reckoning (all of whom fell out of touch. Not so carefully, after all!). Honestly though, I never got this book right. There was always something ultra-right about the acceptance and success of her (cold-war incubated) concepts of having a platonic state of a democracy (where one would be expected to demonstrate as much dexterity with the left hand as the right).
Ayn Rand's rendition of the perfect world -- much more vividly worded in her previous notoriety: The Fountainhead -- could only be realised by having a robot driven logic drinking mathematical machine state, with humans as its 'individual' sentinels possessing extreme selfishness. There is no room for spirit or an experience of it (except perhaps in nakedness, which is to be perceived without sensitivity -- ask Mr. Wynand, who, according to a female friend, is the real hero for her). Event though they claimed to keep the torch burning when the oil ran out.
The Economist argues today that the current financial crisis, and various bail-out announcements, have a direct correlation with unit sales figures and sales rank of Atlas Shrugged (See chart. source: ecomonist.com). The author attributes the pattern to mass social media -- such as Facebook, and certain user groups aiming at personifying the storytelling as if "Atlas Shrugged is happening in real life". Plus, it is believed that Alan Greenspan is a fan of Rand's work, and thus his every recent move was like a stimuli to the book's gift-wrapping counters at Amazon.com.However, it is to take it too far to compare Rearden's (one of the book's characters who invents a unique metal) visit to the ministers with that of the Banking CEO's meeting with the US congress these past weeks.
I am at a loss of expectations from the movie based of Rand's works which is in the making for a 2011 release. I can only shrug for the moment. As a fan of Rand's, however, it actually makes sense, for it largely belongs to the fairyland.
Let's wait and see who is John Galt?
Update: Have you read "The Driver" (try here) by Garet Garrett? Arguably, Rand lifted a few key concepts and phrases from this rather obscured 1922 work. His first work in 1911 was titled "Where the Money Grows and Anatomy of the Bubble".
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Language, Commerce, and Google Translate (by Jason Adams)
WILL DURANT CHRONICLED IN HIS HISTORICAL COMPILATIONS THAT ancient trade provided the necessity for the invention of the alphabets. A theory contested by many, but not rejected in its entirety.
In this guest post, my friend and Language Technology researcher Jason M. Adams discusses the mutual history of language and commerce by looking at some of the ways that each has been changed by the other and how they will continue to shape each other going forward.
Commerce is a human convention deeply entwined with language. Economic motivations were among the many reasons ancient (and modern) empires conquered other lands, spreading their languages beyond their natural range. Traders would travel to distant lands, encountering speakers of exotic languages. Recent study of the immediate commerce and trade (focusing mainly around the era of last 500 years of European Maritime expansion) describes the exchange of languages at trade as follows: In cases where bilingual speakers were few to none, Pidgin languages –with simplified grammar and vocabulary– developed, which come about as a means of communication solely for the purpose of trade. When flourishing trade routes last long enough, and at the hubs trading travelers start settling down locally, a Pidgin starts being spoken widely enough. The children of such a community start growing up learning a Pidgin as a first language. This is when a Pidgin language changes into a Creole language (having many fascinating characteristics of its own). Contrary to simple trade relationships, when a conquering or dominating group of people bring their own languages, it either supplants the native language or influences it heavily, and later goes for linguistic homogenization. Pidgins, on the other hand, develop because speakers are motivated to communicate in order to trade.
[Above: "The Lydian Lion", arguably the oldest surviving coins, representing organized trade and the associated language it bore which gave it its "value".]
Commerce is one of the many factors that drive linguistic homogenization. In the modern era of the internet and mass media, attention is the scarce resource. Choosing a language of commerce (e.g. English being adopted as a language of business by other European and former Russian communities) helps to maximize one's reach in business. On the personal aspect, the attention economy of modern mass media is highly language dependant as well.
In this guest post, my friend and Language Technology researcher Jason M. Adams discusses the mutual history of language and commerce by looking at some of the ways that each has been changed by the other and how they will continue to shape each other going forward.
* * *
Commerce is a human convention deeply entwined with language. Economic motivations were among the many reasons ancient (and modern) empires conquered other lands, spreading their languages beyond their natural range. Traders would travel to distant lands, encountering speakers of exotic languages. Recent study of the immediate commerce and trade (focusing mainly around the era of last 500 years of European Maritime expansion) describes the exchange of languages at trade as follows: In cases where bilingual speakers were few to none, Pidgin languages –with simplified grammar and vocabulary– developed, which come about as a means of communication solely for the purpose of trade. When flourishing trade routes last long enough, and at the hubs trading travelers start settling down locally, a Pidgin starts being spoken widely enough. The children of such a community start growing up learning a Pidgin as a first language. This is when a Pidgin language changes into a Creole language (having many fascinating characteristics of its own). Contrary to simple trade relationships, when a conquering or dominating group of people bring their own languages, it either supplants the native language or influences it heavily, and later goes for linguistic homogenization. Pidgins, on the other hand, develop because speakers are motivated to communicate in order to trade.
[Above: "The Lydian Lion", arguably the oldest surviving coins, representing organized trade and the associated language it bore which gave it its "value".]Commerce is one of the many factors that drive linguistic homogenization. In the modern era of the internet and mass media, attention is the scarce resource. Choosing a language of commerce (e.g. English being adopted as a language of business by other European and former Russian communities) helps to maximize one's reach in business. On the personal aspect, the attention economy of modern mass media is highly language dependant as well.
On the other hand, the same internet proliferation and mass media has provided us with what is called "Machine translation services", such as Google Translate. As the quality of these services improve, it becomes less and less necessary to publish exclusively in commerce languages. Linguistic homogenization may not be the inexorable force it appears to be today. Will the quality of machine translation improve fast enough, and will the business case for them be strong enough to turn the tide of linguistic homogenization? Certainly those betting on machine translation services hope so. But there is a dueling problem here: Tackling human languages using machines requires a significant investment. However, at the same time, in order for machine translation to truly counteract linguistic homogenization, it has to be freely available as a ridiculously cheap service.
While the future progress of commerce and language may be uncertain, what is certain is that they will continue to heavily influence each other. And there's nothing new about that.
[Go here for Jason Adams' blog website, and here for his twitter profile.]
[Go here for further discussion on "attention is the scarce resource".]
Friday, June 27, 2008
So Long, King Gates
FINALLY, THE IT TZAR TAKES THE BACK SEAT. And as Mr. Bill Gates completes his last full working day by the EOD today - June 27, 2008 - at his Richmond, WA office, an era of Biggest, Richest, and Fastest draws to a close. Call him Innovator, Software Evangelist, Chief Software Architect, or by any other name, above all, Mr. Gates is a successful businessman, Zero-to-billions kind. And that is how I would want to reckon him, for Mr. Gates is not perhaps a mesmerising orator, neither a charismatic leader, nor a magnanimous personality. Even if he is all of these, they rather remain secondary, for the bottomline is, Mr. Gates knows business, does business and means business. Period.
The world's most famous dropout - and thus perhaps the tallest example that education and money may not have a direct corelation - wrote the first BASIC compiler 17 years ago, and left the legacy as the world's richest man with such words: "There is nobody getting rich writing software that I know of...".
[Left: Bill Gates, CEO, about 27, in his Microsoft office in 1982. Source: time.com. Do you also feel that the DOS screen in front of him reads something very similar to "Bad Command or File name?"]
Mr. Gates indeed has been the biggest catalyst for last two decades for the IT industry and for the global economy at large - Windows OS still runs more than 90% of personal computers in the world, and Microsoft Office artefacts are the de-facto standard for offline information and data transaction. This has made Mr. Gates the richest man on earth; reaching there in the fastest possible manner - at the speed of thought, if you like...
On my part, it was a wonderful experience to listen to him from a mere few feet away in Sep 2002 while he was delivering a lecture and providing with his vision (such as, "XML is the future...") at the time of the launch of Windows XP. It being my first encounter with a global leader at close proximity left me with a lasting impression.
Competition has not been kind to Mr. Gates, and visa-versa is probably equally true. Sort of a reminder of the old saying that Friends come and go, enemies accumulate...
The success of Microsoft Corporation undoubtedly has contributions from many more than Mr. Gates and his "Big Picture" memos alone, but in the world-wide (Globalization?) game of business where media and economy are increasingly tying up, and where winner takes it all, the credit nonetheless has almost always been attributed to Mr. Gates as the poster-boy face of Microsoft. At the same token, the discredit of bad designs, security flaws and sloppy software performance is also to the discredit of Mr. Gates.
[Right: Culturing Innovation; Sponsoring ImagineCup. Bill Gates in Korea for the event in 2007.]
It would be an interesting experience for Bill Gates to become a user from the owner of Microsoft products. His displeasure towards many thing Microsoft, especially the usability and user-friendliness, has been known. (Here is the full text of a rather interesting and lambasting email supposedly from Gates himself.)
BillG, as they call him, has never faced any job interviews, and in that respect he would perhaps always remain inexperienced! Unless of course any of the prospective next career moves (as in the following video) click for him :-)
Mr. Gates opened his keynote of TechEd 2008 last month with the following video. This is where Mr. Gates tries various career changes now that he is to move out of Microsoft. It has been making rounds on YouTube since Jan this year, and it's honest, well choreographed, very humorous and well entertaining. Not worth missing at all!
Bill Gates is going to be just fine whatever new avtar he may adorn next. But the industry observers seem to be divided over what would happen to Microsoft in absence of its poster-boy. I recall a media interview a few years ago where the reporter indirectly inquired about the "Google threat".
If monopoly and monarchy have anything in common, we should shortly hear, "The King is dead... Long live the King!"
Let's see who would stand up and say "No, not this time..." for Microsoft next.
[Go here at time.com for the Photo-essays on Bill Gates' early days.]
The world's most famous dropout - and thus perhaps the tallest example that education and money may not have a direct corelation - wrote the first BASIC compiler 17 years ago, and left the legacy as the world's richest man with such words: "There is nobody getting rich writing software that I know of...".
[Left: Bill Gates, CEO, about 27, in his Microsoft office in 1982. Source: time.com. Do you also feel that the DOS screen in front of him reads something very similar to "Bad Command or File name?"]Mr. Gates indeed has been the biggest catalyst for last two decades for the IT industry and for the global economy at large - Windows OS still runs more than 90% of personal computers in the world, and Microsoft Office artefacts are the de-facto standard for offline information and data transaction. This has made Mr. Gates the richest man on earth; reaching there in the fastest possible manner - at the speed of thought, if you like...
On my part, it was a wonderful experience to listen to him from a mere few feet away in Sep 2002 while he was delivering a lecture and providing with his vision (such as, "XML is the future...") at the time of the launch of Windows XP. It being my first encounter with a global leader at close proximity left me with a lasting impression.
Competition has not been kind to Mr. Gates, and visa-versa is probably equally true. Sort of a reminder of the old saying that Friends come and go, enemies accumulate...
The success of Microsoft Corporation undoubtedly has contributions from many more than Mr. Gates and his "Big Picture" memos alone, but in the world-wide (Globalization?) game of business where media and economy are increasingly tying up, and where winner takes it all, the credit nonetheless has almost always been attributed to Mr. Gates as the poster-boy face of Microsoft. At the same token, the discredit of bad designs, security flaws and sloppy software performance is also to the discredit of Mr. Gates.
[Right: Culturing Innovation; Sponsoring ImagineCup. Bill Gates in Korea for the event in 2007.]It would be an interesting experience for Bill Gates to become a user from the owner of Microsoft products. His displeasure towards many thing Microsoft, especially the usability and user-friendliness, has been known. (Here is the full text of a rather interesting and lambasting email supposedly from Gates himself.)
BillG, as they call him, has never faced any job interviews, and in that respect he would perhaps always remain inexperienced! Unless of course any of the prospective next career moves (as in the following video) click for him :-)
Mr. Gates opened his keynote of TechEd 2008 last month with the following video. This is where Mr. Gates tries various career changes now that he is to move out of Microsoft. It has been making rounds on YouTube since Jan this year, and it's honest, well choreographed, very humorous and well entertaining. Not worth missing at all!
Bill Gates is going to be just fine whatever new avtar he may adorn next. But the industry observers seem to be divided over what would happen to Microsoft in absence of its poster-boy. I recall a media interview a few years ago where the reporter indirectly inquired about the "Google threat".
Mr. Gates replied and I quote, "Every couple of years a new company comes up and people say that it would put us [Microsoft] out of business. And every time I say, 'No, not this time'..."
If monopoly and monarchy have anything in common, we should shortly hear, "The King is dead... Long live the King!"
Let's see who would stand up and say "No, not this time..." for Microsoft next.
[Go here at time.com for the Photo-essays on Bill Gates' early days.]
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