Management Musings

Over the past few years, the Indian government has made various attempts at divesting its stake in enterprises that have been a drain on the exchequer. Every time that this issue is brought up, the socialist India awakens, hoots loudly about how the poor and the labor would be adversely affected by the sale of the public enterprise. A recent article in the Economist on a global trend of poorly performing state owned companies is quite telling in its assessment. While the article only touches upon the performance of the banks in India in comparison with other enterprises across the world, there are any number of examples of Government owned companies struggling to remain relevant in an increasingly fast paced and competitive landscape. The social demographics in India dictated that those who were educated to be a Doctor or Engineer in the 60s, 70s and the 80s would invariably look for opportunities only in the Government sector. It is this trend that got my father into one of the fe...

I simply had to write about the shocking and saddening news of Phil Hughes' demise after being hit by a cricket ball while playing the game. It feels like a travesty to call it that - "playing a game". One can not die while playing - can they? Not cricket, surely?! I do know there have been instances in the past, Raman Lamba, for example, famously died when hit in the head while fielding at forward short leg. That was a freak accident and somehow seems more comprehensible than to die after being hit while wearing a helmet and protective gear while batting. I do not know Phil Hughes. I did not follow his career closely. My impression of his cricketing ability was that he was one of many openers that the Australian cricket team had been trying in the past couple of years, looking for the right combination. Now, I do know a little more about him. I know that he was from the country side in Australia, a capital fellow, by all accounts. It does not matter. Whatever the natu...

In an interesting blog post by Paul Krugman this week, he lays into Amazon and the power that it wields in the books marketplace today. Amongst many other points he makes, he mentions that while Amazon is not a monopoly in trying to use its power as a dominant seller to increase prices but instead, is a monopsony - using its power to keep prices low for its customers. In the particular example of Amazon v/s the book publisher Hachette, Amazon was able to squeeze the publisher into giving a larger share of the book sales to Amazon by disrupting the sales of their books on its website. Books from Hachette would take longer to be delivered when compared to books from other publishers and such. Amazon used its power to influence the market place to benefit itself and also its customers. In the Indian landscape, Amazon has not yet achieved the kind of power that it ostensibly wields in the American market place. E-commerce websites such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and even Junglee were alre...

Continuing from my previous blog post on connected cars, the allure of the networked cars is too strong to resist for the Computer Networking engineer in me. Once the driverless cars are connected to the grid and are able to decide on an optimal route to take to reach a destination, the problem of getting the cars there becomes one that has been solved in the Internet Protocol (IP) routing world a few decades ago. While the Internet itself functions on the ability of the data to be split into "packets" that are transported from a source to a destination via routers that decide on the shortest path to take to reach the destination, it is a very real possibility to apply this thought to the world of traveling. The road networks that exist today offer a ready made infrastructure for travel without drivers and with a reduced incidence of accidents. Smart cars, which would be connected to a GPS system and to the Internet could decide on the most optimal route to take to reach t...

Reading this article on the Economist recently got me thinking on the possibilities of the future. While movies such as the Fifth Element have thrown a glimpse at the future where cars operate in air without the need for roadways, a very feasible scenario is developing on the existing roadways. The connected car as described in the article is capable of understanding the distance between itself and other vehicles on the road, does not need a driver and creates a an accident-free on-road experience as the possibility of human error while driving is removed. It is another story that the possibility of human error now resides in the hands of the Engineers who design and develop these driverless cars but let's assume that we are able to achieve a degree of unparalleled safety via rigorous testing and years of prototyping. The scene depicted makes for compelling viewing - trucks would operate on their own criss-crossing the country as if on remote control. There would be a certain deg...

Recently, I was navigating a particularly pothole riddled road in Bangalore. We get many of those in the city, but this was new territory for me as the locality I was in was the first time that I was there. It being night time and the visibility being poor, I had to slow right down every few feet to ensure that the ride was not more jarring than it already was. While negotiating a particularly deep pot hole, I found that there was traffic overtaking me from the right and the left. The drivers seemed to be able to find a smooth patch of road where all I could find were ditches and speed bumps all along. They were experienced drivers - experienced in driving on this stretch of the road. I pride myself on being smart with finding these "good" stretches on roads that I am familiar with. For example, there is this stretch on one of the roads that I visit regularly - the lane closer to the divider is similar to the moon's surface from close range. The farther lane is like wh...

In the 60s and 70s, bell-bottom trousers were all the rage. I remember seeing pictures of my father wearing these trousers that were shaped oh so weirdly - they would balloon out towards the feet, like a bell. Hence the name bell-bottom. Another rage during the time were over sized sun glasses. Movies made during that era showcased the heroine, in particular, sporting huge eye wear. They would cover about 30-40% of the face and not just the eyes. They might as well have been face wear and not eye wear. While the bell bottom and parallel trousers have stayed away from the male fashion industry for a while now, the eye wear has definitely remained/ had a rebirth of sorts. Nowadays, it is common for women to sport big sized eye wear that covers the eyes and then some part of the face. I cannot claim to have lived in the era of computers that would occupy an entire room - that was the stuff of lore in text books. The technological industry has stayed away from that reverting to that e...