Best wishes for the upcoming year

Dear ex-pats and in-grates, losers and playas, beggars and bankas, vegans and carnivores, skinny farkers and sumo wrestlers, virgins and man-whores, pepsi-drinkers and coke-drinkers, ladies and gentlemen:

Seasons greetings to you and to all the 30,000 unique visitors who come to my blog everyday. Thanks for all the support and encouragement. This may well be the final post of the year so see you all in 2007!

PS: Special thanks to Miz "Tai-Tai" P and Mr. R (you know who you are) who kept my spirits high through some trying times this year.

The Transformation

So the economy is booming, and more and more people want to go to business school. As an alumnus of one of the better known MBA programs, yours truly has been much in demand as a coach, guide, and essay-reading guinea pig. So one of the persons I was helping out with applications, asked me very seriously what was the one thing I learnt in those months that I spent cut off from the rest of civilized folks.

This got me thinking- I mean I have just paid off a loan which almost bankrupted me and half of my family. I had eaten 600 Turkish kebabs filled with mystery meat for lunch and dinner for months. (No breakfast-I was usually throwing up at that time). So what one thing was worth the loss of hair, life-long savings and a nasty stomach ulcer?

So what is that one thing? Hmmm it's not sexual skills for sure. Despite the school's rightful reputation for orgies-yours truly did not get to participate in any. No sirree, I was the gangly, nerdy guy standing in the corner, sipping my rum-and-coke while drunken batchmates hungrily licked whipped cream off each others nipples. It wasn't job skills. I have learnt more on the job than from some professors who only talked about how they had nailed their 4th wife in-between their 2nd divorce. Not social and networking skills, I'm afraid. I only got to know about 2 people really well.

So what did I learn that could possibly justify the expense of labor, time, money, hair, sexual potency? The answer ladies and gents is that I learnt to recognize crooks. You see, I was in a crazy world where you get to see some of nature's finest tax evaders, corporate swindlers and downright charlatans take shape. One giant candy store-fudge-meisters, truth-benders and CV inflators are all available. From the polished, suave, tux wearing, Porsche driving gentleman to the jersey wearing, unshaven rascal with the bhendi-bazar meets Brooklyn accent. Who would you like to watch and learn from today?

End result? After months of this, you develop crook-radar. An in-built intuition that allows you to seek and destroy those pesky cockroaches before they can infect you, your company or your family with their crooked plans.

Fee for the program- Too many euros. Loss of time in the workforce-many months. Ability to recognize crooks before they can hurt you-priceless.

Why do PE firms make out like bandits?

Too many people question the value that private equity firms bring to the table. They claim that PE firms are just a bunch of financial folks who take poorly-performing companies private, do some complicated financial mumbo-jumbo and without doing any significant changes, flip companies on the public exchanges for significant gain.

I recently saw an interview with Larry Bossidy, former CEO/Chairman of a number of Fortune 500 companies and he seemed to completely agree with this view. He even went further-saying that PE firms are full of very poor operations people!

With all due respect to him and others, they couldn't be further from the truth. PE firms may not be full of super-smart operations people but they bring politics-immune common-sense management to any company. How many of us have sat through meetings where we have wondered-now what the hell is going on here? Or been to corporate events where money flowed like water. Or seen IT and HR fiefdoms created due to politics. Or seen sales and marketing folks drink single-malts like fish on the company dime. Or seen people take 4 hour lunch breaks. Or seen expense accounts larger than your monthly salary...

So what do PE firms do? Well nothing complicated. They simply take all those decisions which companies will never take because vested interests will never let them take these common-sense decisions. Maybe they are not brilliant operations people-but maybe that's not even needed.

They spend the company's money like you would spend your own money. So they make out like bandits in the process. And last I checked, that was allowed.

The International Man of Mystery Comes Visiting

A certain friend of mine who is especially charming with the fairer-sex (hence the moniker) has come down to Singapore this week. He is actually planning to move back here soon for more challenging work opportunities-yeah right :-)

So, a bunch of us met up for a coffee and what was planned to be a quick rendezvous turned into a 5 hour marathon session of shooting the breeze. The enormous amount of beer consumed did not help either.

A very coherent discussion on oil and energy security over polite cups of latte turned into a diagnosis of what's wrong with the business school where we all graduated from. When a bunch of alcoholics (read MBA grads) start doing a diagnosis at 1 am you can be pretty sure of the low IQ content of the discussion.

After being suitably well lubricated with beer, yours truly also threw in half a dozen performances of "I don't f'ing care!" the phrase made popular by a certain Mr C in business school. I think next to Cuba Gooding Jr's "Show me the money", this phrase is the most popular phrase in our lexicon.

So my apologies Mr C because I don't think I do it half as well as you. I tried pounding the table, leaning back, waving my arms and did my best impression so you should give me full marks for trying though.

Big Box Mart

Very funny clip of how giant supermarkets deflate the local economy. While the context is American, this could well be on the minds of many Indians as the giant chains move into India.

Probably America with its 4% unemployment rate can afford to lose factory jobs. But India with rural unemployment closer to 25% can't.

http://www.jibjab.com/originals/originals/jibjab/movieid/122

Inter-cultural screw up

If the recent posts have been a little acidic, that is entirely due to the state of mind of yours truly. I have been busy working on a Japan project and the cultural nuances have driven me up the wall.

For one, hai doesn't mean yes. It's not a no, it's not a maybe, it's not a yes so what the hell is it? Well it's just a noise that is made to show that the words coming outta your mouth have reached the ear drum of the listening party. Nothing more. Anyone who assumes anything more is in for a rude shock.

And in Jap-nglish, every action has a however attached to it. Pronounced "Howaibal", this is used to qualify every single statement. For example, Tom is an excellent guy howaibal he's a serial rapist. This company makes very shitty products "howaibal" they are Iso 9001 certified. Chuck is the top scorer in the league "howaibal" he cannot hold a baseball bat. After you listen to several paragraphs of these "howaibals", everything dissolves into a giant mush of grey. No black and no white just black "howaibal" white.

A few weeks of this and I am wondering how do people make any decisions in such a completely "howaibal" society?

Ok, I need to go take a leak now "howaibal" I feel a giant turd coming.

PS: On a serious note, a shout out to R and P for the good news. Congratulations :-)
PPS: I just realized that two of my fav couples are P and R , R and P so just to clarify, the congratulations are for R and P.

PPPS: Ok so there are just too many Insead couples with the initials P, R. Mea Culpa, the congrats are for Pee Are and R.

Everything in life fits in a 2x2 matrix

I have been thinking a lot recently (yes I do think-for those of you skeptics out there) of how business schools and their graduates are perceived.

For those of you who took Global Strategy and remember the 2x2 matrices, I have put down my thoughts in an easy-to-read format :-)

So every school sells their graduates as A- smart as a whip, team-players. The professors know that the students in their classes are not team-players-they are obnoxious as hell. But, they do hope that in-between the sexual orgies in the French chateaus and champagne drinking in class, these students develop some basic skills and are reasonably competent i.e. they are B.

What the outside world sees are straight C. Absolutely delusional losers who think they are top management material.

PS: There are no "nice fools" in business school. Well maybe in the faculty-but those don't count do they?

Bio diesel start-up offers franchises for US$2 million

An amazing little start-up called Xenerga (www.xenerga.com) in the US is experimenting with an innovative business model for bio diesel and is getting a lot of press coverage.

With an investment of $1.95 million for a franchise, which mostly goes to facility construction and installation costs, franchisees are supplied with waste cooking oil to use as a feedstock, a 5-million-gallon-a-year plant and at least one customer lined up to purchase the fuel.

The plants are designed to be smaller in scale than typical biodiesel plants and serve only local markets, making them less expensive to operate. Only a two-person team consisting of a general manager and operator or driver is needed to run the plant, according to the company.

The first plant will open in Orlando in December and the company is planning on 40 more in the U.S.

You have to hand it to entrepreneurs-while big companies talk and talk about alternate sources of energy, here comes an amazing innovative idea out of a start-up.

India to look at FDI limits in retail

A day after Wal Mart announced its entry into a JV with Bharti, India's commerce ministry has announced that they would like to look at the deal-
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/624780.cms

With the leftists raising a big hue and cry over possible loss of employment and the huge impact on neighborhood stores, this was bound to happen. I only wish they don't push Wal Mart away completely.

As my negotiation professor used to say, instead of thinking of every negotiation in terms of a pie with one party trying to get a bigger share than the other, you should look at creative ways of expanding the pie.

So how could they expand the pie. One idea that immediately comes to mind is that the Indian government could force retailers to source locally. This will give a huge boost to Indian manufacturing. If everything that Wal Mart and others sell in India comes from Mexico, Philippines and China, India will lose out big time. In India, approximately 40 million people are employed in the un-organized retail sector and a big chunk of this sector is going to be wiped out due to the entry of giant retailers. The best way out is to generate employment elsewhere.

Over the long-term, if Indian suppliers manage to get themselves embedded in the Wal Mart supply chain and do well on metrics like quality and relaibility, they could potentially get access to Wal Mart globally.

So I hope that this is treated as an opportunity and used to its full potential by the Indian government. And there's plenty of them lining up-Tesco, Carrefour, K Mart who knows-there's after all, a fortune to be made at the bottom of the pyramid in India.

PS: Since I royally screwed up my final exam on negotiation and scored my lowest grade on this elective, maybe I am not the right person to be offering advice on this situation.

Wal Mart and Bharti start retail venture in India

CNBC and Bloomberg were abuzz yesterday with the news that India's Bharti and Wal Mart are planning a retail joint venture in India. Bharti will handle the front-end of the business while Wal Mart will handle the logistics and supply chain. Total investment is expected to be $100 million or thereabouts.

The total size of India's retail market is 300 billion US$ and this is expected to increse to 427 bn US$ by 2010. So the pie is large and attractive. However, the Ambanis are also investing 5.5 billion US$ in also setting up a retail venture and the Birlas also planning a similar venture. So the amount being invested by Bharti pales in comparison to the competition.

Let's see how the game plays out. Bharti is planning to roll out the first store by August 2007. With all three of India's smartest business minds and Wal Mart in the fray, this is going to be one hell of a fight.

PS: So now, the unemployed youth and the retired elderly will be able to work as "greeters" in giant retail stores. I can almost see them in their blue uniforms- "Welcome to..."

A Crude Awakening

Excellent article from five Stanford professors on energy independence-
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2006/novdec/features/energy.html

The dollar declines

Pundits have been predicting the demise of the dollar for a while now. Lower housing starts they claim are predicting the end of the US housing boom. This will significantly impact the economy and the Fed will have to ease rates next year to stimulate growth.

The second and ever popular argument used is the negative trade balance. Cheap imports from China being especially to blame. The trade balance should be a negative 750 billion or thereabouts they say.

And the final argument is that robust growth in the EU and the UK will lead to better investment prospects there and the ECB will be raising rates for a while to contain inflation. All in all, it looks pretty bleak for the dollar doesn't it? It is now at a 18 month low and predicted to continue a steady decline against the Euro and the Pound.

However, these same pundits have been proclaiming the death of the US economy for years. Despite what they say, the US continues to be the engine of the world's economy. Not only that, I don't see any decline in the number of bright, smart people who wish to study in top US universities. Yes, there have been job losses in recent years due to offshoring of low-skill tasks and artificially cheap imports from China but in the total context of the US economy, these are insignificant. Despite being so large, the US economy continues to grow and produces ample jobs to ensure that the unemployment rate is among the lowest in the world.

Will the dollar lose value. Yes. But let's not get overly-dramatic ladies and gents. There is zero chance that the dollar will no longer be used as the world's reserve currency. In fact, I see more problems for European and British companies. Their goods and services are already uncompetitive with those from China. Now, they will become less competitive even with the US.

Indeed, the dollar would quote Mark Twain and say that -"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated"!

Greed is good!

Tomes have been written about how hard and stressful an investment banker's life can be. 80-120 hour work weeks. Being a slave to excel, being on-call 24/7. You know the spiel...

And yet you have some of the fittest bodies in banking. I have seen bankers around the FiDi (Financial District for you less hip types) who look like they have been pumping iron 8 hours a day. Gelled hair, Armani suits, Pierre Cardin watches....I guess it must take 45 minutes to get dressed in the morning. And oh, I forgot the sun tan-unless the banks are handing out tanning lotions and have tanning salons in the office, where do they get that bronzed tan if not by sitting on the beach :-)

Truth be told, I am sure they work pretty hard-but so do consultants, marketing and sales people and operations people. Imagine being a supply manager in a large oil and gas company-how much stress would there be in your life. How much of the company's money is riding on you doing your job well. It sure can't be fun. Or being a sales lead on telecom projects who is putting together tender after tender for large multi-million projects-with a slim to nothing chance of success. No job is more accountable than sales.

So why exactly do bankers make multi-million dollar and pound bonuses?

Do women have it easier than men?

Business schools fawn over them-offering them plenty of scholarships. Banks and consultancies love them. Industry managers at top companies have their KPIs now defined by how many women are among their direct reports. Headhunters fawn over them. So do women indeed have it much easier than men in the business world today?

On the other hand, let's look at CEO positions. Only 10 of the fortune 500 have women CEOs.
A very surprising study by the two Olin business school professors points out that investors have less confidence in companys that are run by women CEOs. Here is the link to the entire article.
http://news-info.wustl.edu/news/page/normal/6414.html

And, Kellogg says that exclusion from an organization's informal network, gender-based stereotyping, and the lack of role models are the top three barriers for women seeking high-ranking positions.
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news/hits/050210cdh.htm

But just getting to the corner office is just one metric. What about middle managers and mid and small-sized companies? Do women perform better at men in middle-management roles? Apparently so-more than 50% of middle and entry-level jobs are held by women.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06206/708431-28.stm

So do women have it easier than men? Maybe so at entry and to a certain extent in middle-management. That's about it.

The jar of life

A finance professor stood before his MBA class and instead of talking about WACC, ROIC and NPV, he told them a story.

Take a large empty jar and fill it with rocks. Then pick up a box of pebbles and put them into the jar. The pebbles, of course, will roll into the open areas between the rocks. Next pick up a box of sand and pour it into the jar. Of course, the sand will fill up everything else.

"Now," said the professor, "I want you to recognize that this is your life. The rocks are the important things -- your family,your spouse, your health, your children -- things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else. The small stuff.

If you put the sand into the jar first, there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal. Take care of the rocks first -- the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

The habits of highly effective people

I have been awfully busy the last 2 days-had been dodging this mandatory class on the 7 habits of highly effective people but finally succumbed to repeated reminders (and threats) from HR. This means that my work day has effectively doubled. I attend the class at a city hotel from 8:30-6ish and then do my regular work in the evenings.

Maybe that job in Investment banking wouldn't all that bad? I could atleast drive myself to spontanous orgasm by looking at my bank balance when I feel depressed :-)

Honestly, the class is pretty good and is being taught by our CFO and general counsel so the discussions are pertinent and insightful. The food ain't bad either-have been to an Indonesian and Japanese restaurant so far.

I also find the class more tuned towards self-actualization than your professional life. The questions that are put before you can be a bit unsettling. If you died tomorrow, what would your epitaph read for example? Did you have a "mission statement" for your life? Would you be remembered as a good son, brother, spouse or uncle? Would there even be something worthy to put on your epitaph?

Oil price concerns

Why are oil companies buying back so much of their own stock? The reason is that they don’t have a lot of truly attractive opportunities for investing in new production. Most of the oil reserves are either legally off limits for the them or they’re de facto off limits because they’re in places where it’s so hard to do business.

Although all of us are seized by the high price of energy, the major energy companies are concerned that prices are going to decline sharply. If there is a recession, which would dampen demand for energy, or the capacity to produce oil around the world improves, then prices will decline. That fear retards a lot of investment because these investments have a very long capital lifetime, and need to be protected against low prices over an incredibly long time horizon.

So high oil prices are good for us because they incentivize oil companies to invest in more efficiency?

Wrong! In reality, much of the revenue from high oil prices is accruing to state producers like Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the Soviet Union’s most dangerous adventures correlated with the high oil prices in the 1970s. And when oil prices came down, the Soviet Union collapsed. Geopolitical tensions can only increase as undemocratic producers become increasingly wealthy and dictate terms to the US, India and China.

High oil prices do have some positive effects though-photovoltaic startups are springing up all over the world. Toyota, Honda and the Detroit 3 continue to innovate on electric vehicles. Ethanol production from corn in the US and from sugarcane in Brazil is rapidly rising.

Finally, we have Christmas carols from India :-)

One of my friends pointed me to this hilarious video on You Tube. It's a desi version of a very popular Christmas Carol we all have heard. You can watch it here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owK5tHjL0aE

The band which sang this has released an entire album. I bet they are all hilarious.

Here is the link to the band's website. It's called BoyMongoose and the descriptions of the various band members are especially funny. Think you know someone?
http://www.boymongoose.com/

(Accelerated) Mid-life crisis

It used to be that when you hit 40 and lost all or most of your hair, you would buy a Porsche convertible. Driving well above the speed limit with your two strands of hair blowing in the wind was the trusted antidote to your mid-life crisis.

Well times have changed haven't they? For one there is an accelerated version of everything on the market. So you don't want to spend 2 years stuck in a horses-arse neighborhood of Philadelphia-then do a 10 month MBA program with a switch to Singapore. You don't want to drink 10 jugs of beer to get drunk-then do 3 shot glasses. You don't want to wait 20 dates to get to 2nd and 3rd base with snooty women in London-move to Asia and take-up a job in banking, securitizing ass-ets. You get the point...

So there's also an accelerated mid-life crisis aka quarter-life crisis on the market. It occurs when
you've spent more time with excel and powerpoint than with you family. Except you can neither afford to buy a Porsche on your salary nor do you wish to lose your two remaining strands of hair by driving too fast.

So what do you do? You start writing a shitty blog...

93,000 miles and counting...

Yours truly has clocked 93,000 "cattle class" miles on United Mileage Plus this year. Not bad for ten months.

Too bad I don't work in an investment bank or a wildly profitable oil and gas major like some of my friends otherwise all these miles would have been in first class.

So here are my travel tips for frequent flyers (including that one insane guy who has spent 90% of his life on the Munich-KL-Munich route).

1. Get an aisle seat. This will ensure quick getaway in case the passenger in front of you lets loose one of those silent deadly farts that come out of nowhere with zero advance warning.

2. Watch the Devil Wears Prada on TV and laugh loudly. This will convince the bloke beside you with bad breath and stinky armpits that you are gay and he may ask for a seat change.

3. Drink lots of beer or other alcohol. This will soothe your brain and you will be able to sleep like a pig.

4. Bring lots of sensible reading. Nothing is worse than reading about the azure blue sea in Langkawi in the in-flight magazine for the tenth time on a 14 hour flight. Who the hell comes up with terms like azure blue anyway?

5. If your last name ain't Smith or Jackson, keep all your cavities well-lubricated as you may be subject to an-all cavity search at any time.

(Very) air-conditioned city

Walk into any shopping mall or office building in Singapore and you will find your teeth chattering due to the cold. It could be 31 C outside but indoors it's a positively frigid 15 C. This effect becomes more severe around September/October.

One of my friends (a serious conspiracy theorist) has an easy explanantion for this. He says that designer labels want to sell their Fall and Winter collections in Singapore and the low temperature is designed to encourage women to spend even more of their shopping dollars.

So now you know that nothing is sacred-even the temperature is hostage to the marketing push.

By the same token, shopping malls and offices in Helsinki should set their thermostats to 35 C in April/May.

Barbarians at the semiconductor gates

Private equity has been giving semiconductor companies a lot of attention. First there was the sale of Philips semiconductor (now called NXP) to a consortium comprising of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR), Bain Capital, Silver Lake Partners, Apax and Alpinvest Partners.

Then there was the surprise Freescale Semiconductor sale to a consortium for significantly more than the price for NXP despite the similarity in the two companies’ 2005 revenues.

I tried to look for some empirical evidence for the sudden and new found interest of these very savvy investors in semiconductors.
1. Less volatility through the cycle- the industry once notoriously cyclical has seen less volatility. Indeed if you look at Capex/Sales, it has shrunk considerably as companies have begun to better manage their investments.
2. Higher Free Cash Flow due return to high EBIT margins-Better utilization (due to better capacity planning) and better Average Selling Prices are giving better margins.
3. Lower capital market valuations semiconductor companies- As companies have improved, their market multiples have compressed. The Market cap/sales ratios have severly shrunk since the early 2000sIs it any surprise that the barbarians are knocking at the gates?

Three for three

First we had the Hair-Pakistan incident and Hair being given a swift kick in the behind. Good riddance!

Next we had the Pawar-Ponting row. Where Ponting should have been given a swift kick not only on his behind but also out of India.

Now, a new scandal. Apparently English player Monty Panesar was called a "stupid Indian who can't speak English" by an Aussie spectator.

Anyone else see a pattern here?

Looks like down unda iz turnin into ocker paradise mate?

Can poor countries afford democracy?

Some people claim that India's lack of rapid economic growth is due to our democracy.

This brings me to a critical question. Can a poor society like India's afford democracy? Is democracy a luxury of the OECD countries? For someone who lives in one of the poorest regions of India and who puts his thumbprint to vote for which ever political candidate that gives him a kg of rice, does democracy matter? Democracy does not satisfy hunger pangs or lack of clothing.

India's founding fathers had the entire developmental model wrong. They should have focused on India's basic problems and solved them before opening up the pandora of democracy. Now we are stuck with an obstructionist system where each political lobby (the leftists, the rightists and the corruptists) has to be paid off before the country can move forward an inch.

Make no mistake, India's growth is being suffocated before our eyes.

The wisdom of the layers

Say you're a 25 year old engineer and you are working on a cutting-edge idea which would be targeted at 20 somethings. So you go with your concept to your boss who makes some suggestions for changes- he's your boss after all and controls your raise. Then your boss takes your newly modified idea and goes to his boss who also makes some suggestions for changes. And so on and one till the idea reaches the desk of the CEO.

The problem is that you're 25 and know what's hot. Your boss is 32 and less in touch with what the market needs. His boss is 45 and positively over the hill.

By the time your idea reaches fruition, what started as an ipod has turned into a vinyl-record player. Now everyone hates the idea but since the CEO approves, no one dares say so.
Such is the wisdom of the layers in any organization!

The product is built and bombs on the market.

India and China part deux

Similarities
•Population: 1.3 b in China, 1.1 b in India (2005)
•Occupation: 50%-60% of the population is engaged in agriculture ~30% live in urban areas
•Political Stability: Very stable one-party system in China and stable democracy in India
•Economic Stability: Ample foreign exchange reserves with little impact of high oil prices

Differences
•GDP/capita: China’s GDP/capita at US$ 1700 is 2.2 times that of India
•Infrastructure spending: 870,000 miles of highways, USD 25 b/year on roads in China-10% of this in India
•Foreign Direct Investment: Very high-USD 61 b/year in China (2005) 10% of this in India
•Technology penetration: PC, mobile phone and internet penetration all 3-4 times higher in China than India
•Literacy: 95% total literacy in China and 68% in India

The making of a CEO

My boss passed me a HBS case study on GE. It is called GE's Talent Machine-The Making of a CEO. Written by Christopher Bartlett (yes the same guy who co-authored a lot of stuff with Sumantra Ghoshal), this talks about the rise of Jeff Immelt from 25 year old fresh Harvard MBA to 44 year old CEO of GE.

Indeed surprising that Jeff was being actively watched by GE's top management team right from the time he entered GE. All his experiences from Plastics to Appliances to Medical Systems were actively orchestrated in order to give him the much-needed trials by fire.

Looking at most of my batchmates from INSEAD, I would be surprised if their employers had any clue what to do with them beyond 6 months leave alone 20 years! Well, not entirely true-I can think of one person who is being actively "groomed" for a CEO role at a Fortune 10 corporation.

So I suspect this case study is written in the same old "I told you so", Monday morning quarter-backing, 20-20 hindsight style that most case studies are written.

Or maybe it does happen and HBS MBAs are indeed treated differently from INSEAD MBAs :-)

Corporate Fiefdoms

A few weeks ago, I attended a talk by Bob Herbold- former COO of Microsoft. Bob is the author of “The Fiefdom Syndrome” and husband of the US Ambassador to Singapore. He also recently became a senior executive in residence at INSEAD. Nice catch J. Frank!

The book and the talk dealt with how individuals, groups or divisions - out of fear - try to protect their turf and reshape their environment to gain as much control over it as is possible. How managers and employees to become fixated on their own activities, their own careers, and their own territory or turf to the detriment of those around them.

Bob is a very engaging speaker and he gave good examples from Sony (how they missed the ipod even though they invented the Walkman), Porsche (how they became the most profitable car company in the world) and Microsoft (how they had problems even closing their financials at the end of each quarter).

He also mentioned Samsung as the example of a company that is actively working to avoid the formation of fiefdoms. Now this is where the talk became interesting-because he explained the success of Samsung to their lack of insularity but other authors such as Chan Kim/Mauborgne have attributed Samsung's success to their Value Innovation Process (VIP).

I also found that some of the thoughts were strikingly similar to those of Clayton Christensen of HBS and one of the INSEAD professors-Ron Adner when Bob talked about companies failing to innovate or missing what the customers need.

In any case, a very engaging talk and a pity that the book is not yet available in Singapore.

The (ficticious) rise of India

Of late, I am getting sick of reading about the rise of India. I have read the usual rabble from the rabble-rousers. If I was sitting in downtown Manhattan and I read all this drivel, I might have actually believed it!

Fortunately, I don't rely on secondary information to form my opinions. I do travel to Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi once a month. The only rise that is happening in India is the rising costs, rising pollution and the rising amounts of corruption. I don't see any physical infrastructure, any social programs and any improvement in the lives of the common man.

Call me a sceptic but when I hear terms like Chindia, I gag. Even Malaysia and Thailand have better infrastructure. Check out the new Suvarnabhumi airport at Bangkok for instance. After 50 years of independence, it is a shame that India doesn't even have one world-class airport. Thomas Freidman rightly called Bangalore airport- a greyhound terminus with an airstrip attached.

Sure there's probably good things happening in the private sector in India-but how does this affect the vast majority of Indians? The big business houses get richer and the offshoring bodyshops continue to scale revenues with increasing headcount. That's it.

The wise and obscenely rich captains of Indian industry would have us believe that answering telephone calls for an American bank based in Wichita Kansas is the Indian dream.

I simply refuse to accept this.

Clothes or lack thereof

South East Asia is known for a bunch of things-the exotic food and the unique culture come to mind rightaway. What it should really be known for is its skimpily dressed women.

I have lived in the US and in Europe but have never seen women walk around with so little on. Well maybe in the nude portion of the Englischer Garten in Munich I saw more skin-but that was mostly fat guys with beer bellys the size of Bavaria.

Some of the about-town wear here puts 2 piece bikinis to shame. Wonder what i would feel as a dad if my daughter was walking around town dressed in nothing or more correctly almost nothing. Maybe I think too much. Maybe I am too damn conservative but I am sure the older folks around here can't be too pleased.

Location, location, location

I was in Delhi over Diwali. While there, I made a few enquiries about buying an apartment. Ten minutes and I knew that I had been pretty much priced out of the market. Apartment rates were 7000 rupees/sq foot in Gurgaon all the way up to 27,000 rupees/sq foot in Chanakyapuri.

That means that a measly 1000 sq foot 2 bedroom apartment perched on the 23rd floor in a non-earthquake-proof building would cost me 70 lakhs minimum in Delhi. That's 150,000 US$ or 225,000 SG$ which is what something similar would cost in Singapore.

Not too shabby for a country with a 25,000 rupees per annum/capita income!

Vanity Fair

Michael Wolff has written an interesting piece in Vanity Fair about the Iraq war and the eerie parallels it has with Vietnam. He calls it Survivor-The White House edition.

In a Shakespearian twist, he claims that act two is over with Rumsfeld out of office and act three will follow when John McCain becomes VP. He claims that the entire drama is over and the only thing left is the mad scramble among the key players now to save their reputations.

Nice read, however time alone will tell if how true Michael Wolff's predictions come.

PS: So I'm reading Vanity Fair now. Yeah it's true-I'm getting old.

A lazy weekend

This weekend was very lazy. For once, I didn't have a steering committee to prepare for or a flight to pack for. Consequently, I was able to watch two of my favorite movies on HBO -Jerry Maguire and As Good as it Gets.

I remember watching Jerry Maguire for the first time at Palo Alto in 1997. I remember this so clearly because the next day I went to San Francisco by Caltrain with two friends and through the entire 45 minute journey, we kept repeating "Show me the money"!

Wow how quickly time has flown. What a movie. Cuba Gooding Jr. still cracks me up-although I think Tom Cruise still plays the same damn role in every single movie he acts in -Tom Cruise!

A Hair-raising experience

Woohoo. The past week was better that expected. First the most controversial umpire Hair was shit-canned. Talk about getting a solid kick on the rear. Thanks to some clever politicking, the Asia block was able to trimuph over the Anglo block which went to great lengths to protect him.

The second hair-raising experience was the narrow win of the democrats in the US senate and congress races. In Virginia, Allen made famous by the "Macaca" remark was defeated by Jim Webb- a minor victory for South Asians.

Two for two I would say. I won't be surprised if "Macaca-power" becomes a buzz word in US politics.

Impressions of Japan

Is a week even enough time to get to even scratch the surface of a culture so rich and complex? Absolutely not. Yet even as a newbie, you clearly see the sharp contrasts. Purple-haired gothic kids and black-suited businessmen in the metro. 50 storey office towers and little houses. Raunchy manga comics and prudish Japanese women.

And another interesting factoid I picked up while there-there are over 300 Indian restaurants in Tokyo alone- beat that Tandoori-Chicken eating London!