Top 5 Best Performing CEO's and Why MBA's Are Paid Higher

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.

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".

• See also:
• Go here for WSJ.com jumping in the bandwagon with "'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years".
• Go here for Amazon.com bestselling list among Classics where four out of top 10, including the first three, are Rand's books as of this week (Feb 28, 2009).

ImagineCup 2008 - Runnup

"Achieve What You Can Imagine." --imaginecup.co.uk

invention, innovation, inspiration, imagination...

If any of the i's tantalise you, entertain yourself with this cute little 1.5 minute teaser video, which in fact is a runnup to the ImagineCup 2008 due this month.

"Great innovators don't imagine things in the future;
They imagine them in the present,
and change the future..."

Go here for a list of Software Project designs that made it to the semi-finals of the innovation competition this year.

[The video above is one among many created by the students of Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication. Go here for the video on YouTube, and here for other possibilities from Microsoft.]

Edit: The '08 finals will be held in Paris between July 3 and 8, 2008.

A Blog, A Book and A Paper

What is the reason for someone to create and maintain a Weblog?

Blog is a tool to put ideas, reactions and observations into public. A personal diary in public.

In the process, one creates content, expresses likes and dislikes (and gives opportunities to Web2.0 apps to sell you a relevant product!), have the contentment of speaking it out (and, in some cases, being 'heard' also), and it creates a possibility for an interaction for you where someone might respond to your views.

As to the frequency of blogging, I do not suppose there could be any rules as such. I think if you get one good idea per week to talk about in your blog, and you keep that practice for an year, effectively you would end up having about 50 good ideas. I would say, that makes a really productive year: 50 good ideas! Not bad...



This also goes on speaking about the new Social dynamics that the technology has infused among us.

On the downside, the chief one, as I see it, is that there is a real threat to a prospective book that one may write... All the ideas that one found worth talking about, are already in one's blog in the public... What would one write a book about?

[Well, being conscious about this, I am keeping the topic and ideas about my book private :-) At the same time, I do wish to marshal certain skills for a more effective book by writing a blog.]

Having said that, if a blog manages to bring reputed and like-minded folks together and becomes interactive where people could review and audit ideas, concepts, observations of the peers', it could surely lead towards a paper. And a paper that is peer-reviewed always carries higher credibility and authority compared to a book which practically anybody could write and publish.

So, essentially what I am saying is, if you are reading this, and if you do maintain a blog as well, go ahead, drop in a comment and I would have a look at your 'stuff' also...

Mind, the Gap

AN ANCIENT SANSKRIT SAYING has it:
तुंडे तुंडे मतीः भिन्ना।
(tunde tunde mateehi bhinna)

Which literally means that every head has a differing mind. Less subtly, everyone has a different opinion.

It may remain unsubstantiated at this hour, but I may argue that this difference and diversity is stemming from the ‘Genetic diversity’ as found prevalent as a principle under Biodiversity as a hole. Biodiversity, in a sense, is a science of studying all the various species and their interdependence that gives the significance to the ecology and bio-ecosystem of the Earth. Taken a few logical steps further on the same line, this would translate into the social phenomenon classified as Cultural diversity, and so forth.

It is the Mind, the psychology, that divides and at the same time units all individual aspects under the single ecology of the cultural fabric.

In other words, things are as they are in the world, good or bad, because of this Diversity principle - what may be considered good for one may not be good for someone else... If one applies this theory to the state of one's living, saying that the solution to your given prevailing unfavourable personal condition lies is a certain product or service, one becomes a party to the economy. For this very principle is also an integral part of world economy. (Look around and you would find examples are aplenty.),

It is that Gap, disparity, demand vs. supply, the fundamental logic behind any economy, that gives goals and 'purposes' to individual lives in the contemporary world.

And, as we just argued, that gap, the economy, stems from Mind, the psychology.

Having said that, one may approach psychology through economy and argue that - economy also contributes into framing of an individual psychology. Which is absolutely true as well - for economy is largely responsible for the socio-political environment one lives in. This environment influences one's thought process all the way from childhood - which the psychoanalysts know as conditioning of the 'mind'.

Now, here we have Mind (the psychology) stemming from the gap (the economy).

So, I suppose it is safe to say that both of these are like best buddies, going hand-in-hand, none leading the other, nor one following the another. They are like the two aspects of the duality that is so omnipresent in the world at large.

These two, always co-joined, create what I would want to call a Mind Gap, which is perhaps more significant than all other gaps – generation gap, cultural gap, socio-political gap, et al. And it is this combination of psychology and economy that rather 'rule' and 'runs' the world.

Mind, the Gap.