McKinsey on India. “The promise and possibilities for global companies…What factors distinguish winning multinational companies from the rest of the pack? And with the landscape changing so quickly, what is the best time for companies to expand operations within India? To answer these questions, we first reviewed the Indian market’s unique characteristics and then identified five factors that are common to winning companies: taking a long-term view, empowering the right leaders, customizing products to suit local tastes, localizing operations, and moving fast.”
NYTimes: “The Chinese internet giant ByteDance has made some of the world’s most popular apps: TikTok and, in China, Douyin and Toutiao. In the United States, TikTok claims 170 million users. But in China, about 700 million use the domestic version, Douyin, and 300 million scroll the headlines on Toutiao, a news app. Every video that ByteDance’s users watch or post gives the company another data point about how people use the internet. For years, ByteDance has applied that wealth of information to make its apps more appealing, improving its ability to recommend content to keep users hooked. ByteDance is also using the data as the linchpin of a growing business in artificial intelligence.”
FT: “Scientists have recreated in a laboratory the sensory pathway that transmits feelings of pain to the human brain, in a breakthrough that could lead to better treatments. A team at Stanford University in California is the first to combine different neurons grown from human stem cells into a functioning brain circuit in a lab dish. Their experiments…illustrate scientists’ rapid progress in replicating living tissues and organs through synthetic biology. When the Stanford scientists exposed the brain circuit they had created to sensory stimulants, they observed waves of electrical activity travelling along it. The molecule that makes chilli peppers hot, capsaicin, immediately induced a strong response.”
David Brooks: “You have to be able to discern what is central to the situation, envision possible outcomes, understand other minds, calculate probabilities. To do this, you have to train your own mind, especially by reading and writing. As Johann Hari wrote in his book “Stolen Focus,” “The world is complex and requires steady focus to be understood; it needs to be thought about and comprehended slowly.” Reading a book puts you inside another person’s mind in a way that a Facebook post just doesn’t. Writing is the discipline that teaches you to take a jumble of thoughts and cohere them into a compelling point of view.”
Vivek Wadhwa: “India’s education system today, shaped by the legacy of the British who designed it to produce compliant clerks for the empire, is still focused on memorisation, rigid curricula, and standardised tests. It was built for a different age. It cannot keep pace with the demands of an AI-powered world. What is needed now is reinvention. And India has the roots to lead that reinvention. For centuries, knowledge here was passed through the guru-shishya parampara, a system built on trust, mentorship, inquiry, and self-discovery. The teacher didn’t just impart knowledge; they nurtured the soul. In ancient universities like Nalanda and Takshashila, learning wasn’t limited to rote. The focus was on discussion, dialogue, and depth. AI, if used wisely, can become a new kind of shikshak, a virtual guide that supports and adapts to each student, while the human teacher remains the irreplaceable mentor and moral anchor. Students who understand how to work with AI — who know how to prompt, challenge, verify, and expand upon its outputs — will be the most effective thinkers and problem-solvers of their generation. Those who don’t will fall behind. Blocking these tools won’t stop their use. It will only ensure students use them blindly, without oversight, guidance, or understanding.”
