Anticipating the Unintended asks if India can industrialise: “Despite all the hype around Make in India and the rising ease of doing business rankings, it is still quite difficult to start and run a business in India. The state is deeply entrenched in controlling capital in India, and it enjoys the arbitrary power that it has over them that it is impossible to change this with just better optics of ‘single window’, tax holidays or investment roadshows. In the last two decades, the state has retreated a bit in some areas, but paradoxically, with greater digitisation, it has more information and, therefore, greater power over industry. My general contention is that the state can continue with its welfarism (or whatever else you may call it) on the social and political front, but for India to industrialise, the state has to retreat on the economic control it wields. This looks very difficult today because the state’s first goal is to perpetuate itself. It will require the PM to go back to some of his campaign promises of pre-2014 with real conviction…My view is we will industrialise a bit faster than in the past, but we are going to fall short of the expectations of the kind of industrialisation that’s expected for us to increase our per capita income from $2000 to $10,000 in the next 15 years.”
Andre Plaut writes that Twitter’s killer app is real-time search: “Twitter has a tremendous amount of live, real-time data about what’s happening where. This makes Twitter unique as a service—it encourages its users to create in-and-of-the-moment content. They share what they’re seeing, thinking, feeling, and experiencing now…Something happens, and seconds later, people turn to Twitter.”
Raghu Raman: “Leaders across organizations follow growth journeys through four stages: Tactical, Operational, Strategic and Doctrinal. Leaders (or heroes, since every individual is the protagonist of one’s own life) begin their journey at the tactical stage. This is usually the first 5-10 years of their career where the key success components are basic knowledge of their professional domains, a high degree of positive energy and a can-do attitude. At tactical levels, the idea is to forge ahead under guidance and figure out a path along the way. Once leaders transition to the operational stage, their role requires an ability to create collaborative alliances. They must recognize that ostensibly adversarial attitudes within the same organisation are required for robust growth…At strategic levels, the primary role of leaders is capacity building for the future. A leader must have a view of ‘over the horizon’ events and discern sense from feeble signals heralding changes in the environment…At the doctrinal stage, the leader attains the altitude and influence to be able to shape the environment in terms of guiding policies, mediating intractable short versus long-term choices, navigating contradictory asks and also advocating orbit-shifting ideas.”
Paul Zak (HBR, 2014): “My research has also shown that stories are useful inside organizations. We know that people are substantially more motivated by their organization’s transcendent purpose (how it improves lives) than by its transactional purpose (how it sells goods and services). Transcendent purpose is effectively communicated through stories – for example, by describing the pitiable situations of actual, named customers and how their problems were solved by your efforts. Make your people empathize with the pain the customer experiened and they will also feel the pleasure of its resolution – all the more if some heroics went in to reducing suffering or struggle, or producing joy. Many of us know from Joseph Campbell’s work that enduring stories tend to share a dramatic arc in which a character struggles and eventually finds heretofore unknown abilities and uses these to triumph over adversity; my work shows that the brain is highly attracted to this story style…When you want to motivate, persuade, or be remembered, start with a story of human struggle and eventual triumph. It will capture people’s hearts – by first attracting their brains.”
