Rajesh Jain

Business Standard: “Do words really matter in a world dominated by visuals? Chris West is one of those staunch votaries of the power of words for the simple reason that, as he argues, we invented language to share ideas and deepen relationships. “We invented brands for the same reasons. An authentic, differentiated brand voice is uniquely suited to building understanding, building relationships, and building your businesses,” he adds…So what goes into the creation of a distinctive brand voice, one that connects deeply with the audience, creates unflinching loyalty, and keeps itself ahead of competition? Strong Language, punctuated by case studies and practical insights, offers a three-layer framework that can help businesses understand what they are doing, what they are trying to create, and how to go about it.”

Zvi Mowshowitz on how to best use Twitter: “Tweetdeck or another similar alternative application. Knowing who to follow and read. Lists. Unfollows, filters, mutes and blocks.”

Economic Times quoting Raghuram Rajan: ““I would like to see a careful analysis of PLI. Thus far I haven’t seen a careful analysis. What is PLI? It is on the one hand we elevate tariffs and on the other hand we give subsidies. Manufacturers love this; it is like the old licence raj. If you remove the tariffs, if you remove the subsidies, can they stand independently? Or are we in a permanent situation of using taxpayer money to produce?” says Rajan. He says real damage in the economy is to SMEs, but those are not the companies applying for PLI…He says protection once given is not easy to withdraw. “Work on improving your capacities, rather than protection,” added Rajan.”

HBR: “In 2021, when we asked executives from 60 companies around the world how their managers were doing, we got unanimous reports of frustration and exhaustion…The problem isn’t hard to diagnose. The traditional role of the manager evolved in the hierarchical workplaces of the industrial age, but in our fluid, flatter, postindustrial age that role is beginning to look archaic. The irony is that we actually need great people leaders more than ever…In this article we’ll make the case for redefining and even splitting the role rather than simply continuing to let it evolve, which is a potentially costly and disastrous course of action.”

The Generalist on AngelList: A Venture Constellation. “Naval Ravikant’s company is both a unicorn and a creator of unicorns. It may just be getting started.”

Anticipating The Unintended: [The PM’s and FM’s] words indicate that the primary goal of Aatmanirbhar is quite clearly Import Substitution Industrialisation (ISI). The goal of becoming a major export power is now a distant second goal. ISI as a developmental strategy for India is as old as the Republic of India. After independence, as part of ISI, trade and economic policy measures were designed with the explicit aim of replacing foreign imports with domestic production. India went for one of the most extreme versions of ISI across the world. The results are for all to see. And yet, we seem to be going back to that path. Moreover, this focus on reducing imports misses the point that imports are critical for exports. They allow a nation-state to build on its own strengths while leaving it to other countries to produce what can’t be done efficiently here. And so, it shouldn’t surprise us that as exports rise, imports will also rise concurrently. The world’s top two exporters are China and the US. And the world’s top two importers are also the US and China. There is no contradiction here. Hence, the government’s obsession with reducing foreign dependence is anachronistic and self-defeating.”

Samuel Gregg: “Industrial policy seeks after all to alter the allocation of resources and incentives in particular economic sectors that would otherwise transpire if entrepreneurs and businesses were left to themselves to innovate and compete. It involves the government engaging in targeted economic interventions in order to: 1) produce particular outcomes in terms of capital investments, provision of goods and services, type of jobs, and employment levels; and 2) encourage the advent of economic sectors that, it is argued, would struggle to materialize without state-intervention. The forms taken by industrial policy range from subsidies to preferential tax treatment, loans at below-market interest rates, outright grants of capital, joint public-private enterprises, and special regulatory treatment. Alas, there are good reasons to doubt industrial policy’s effectiveness in producing a more broad-based economy. East Asian miracles like South Korea and Taiwan are often touted as examples of industrial policy achieving this goal. The ground-breaking study of these cases undertaken by the distinguished Indian-American economist Arvind Panagariya, however, indicates that industrial policy played at best a marginal role, and often produced dysfunctional effects. Even the instance of Taiwan’s development of its world-class semiconductor industry turns out—contra the economic nationalist refrain—to have had relatively little to do with industrial policy.”

WSJ: “Government didn’t build America. Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and millions of investors, innovators and small-business people you’ve never heard of did that. No nation can stifle the genius of someone like Jack Ma and have any hope of becoming the world’s dominant economy. In all probability China has hundreds of Jack Mas who will never be discovered as they try to do business under a system that one Chinese investor described as “restrict this, cancel that, regulate this, censor that.” The greatest economic liberator in the postwar world was Deng Xiaoping, not Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan. His reforms starting in 1978 turned a stagnant, starving Chinese economy into an economic powerhouse. He did it by reducing the role of government in the Chinese economy, which permitted the natural entrepreneurial ability and genius of the Chinese people to generate an economic miracle. But as market freedom grew to challenge the power of government, the Communist Party choked off freedom.”

Alchian and Allen: “Fortune does not hand down information and guidance to discover improved techniques of production and distribution of better products. It’s obtained by investing in risky exploration and experimentation with one’s own wealth. Some experiments, perhaps most, fail. The failures disappear with little publicity.” [via CafeHayek]

Rita McGrath: “You have power when you have control over a scarce and valuable resource. That could be formal power, as in control over raises, promotions or budget approvals. That could be informal power as in access to a respected inner circle of decision-makers or the possession of a great brand or stellar reputation. Power can also come from expertise and skill. The more invaluable you are to the organization, the more likely people are to tread carefully around you.”

FT on ARK’s Cathie Wood: ““Boom. That’s when it hit me. Why don’t you apply the technologies that have been disrupting other industries to your own? Think about it: your industry finances all of these disruptions that have changed other industries, and it hasn’t embraced them itself.” Within five minutes, the key foundations of what would become Ark’s approach came to her: adopting open source research, embracing online media, investing in innovation…An important element of Wood’s vision — and one of the drivers of her seemingly boundless optimism — is that the deflationary trend of recent decades and generally low interest rates will continue: technological innovation suppresses costs, while companies whose products are being rendered obsolete will have to cut prices.”

Atanu Dey: “In reality what we call the government is just a bunch of people, and people have various goals and motivations. The people who constitute the government can be broadly classified as politicians (who are periodically elected) and bureaucrats (who are unelected and enjoy lengthy tenures.) The politicians…do what they have to do to get re-elected. They may care about the general welfare of the country but that concern comes a distant second to their self-interest. Expecting them to be self-sacrificing for some greater good of the nation is delusional idiocy. The same goes for the bureaucrats; their first concern is how to expand their budgets and their power over the fiefdoms they ruthlessly rule. Practically nothing they do is ever beneficial and most of the time they inflict immense harm…The government is ultimately a reflection of the soul of the people. If the people are morally and ethically weak, they will suffer morally and ethically bad governments.”

Forerunner looks at the future: “We see the seamless blending of two worlds bearing out in multiple capacities. Digital is merging social and professional life together, too. Today’s consumers are no longer just consumers; they are businesses–creating, curating, and coaching their way to financial independence online. In this shift lies an economic empowerment opportunity: Users are willing to pay for access, service, and expertise, and the emergence of Web3 is set to enable more value exchange and efficient payment, only increasing the potential for consumers to monetize…We’re also seeing new paradigms in purchasing. We’re just starting to see the rise of digital goods, with ownership and economic interests aligned with the creator–look for more of this in the years ahead. The consumer has been activated, both socially and economically, and is embracing their power; there is information about all kinds of products at scale, and people will be increasingly willing to “vote their conscience” through their spending decisions. The 2032 consumer will spend an increased share on services, and though they still want to buy, they’ll do so with a stronger interest in recycling, upcycling, and limiting waste.”

Arjun Subramaniam: “An icon who is studied in detail at war colleges across the world is Thucydides, a Greek general and historian from the 5th century BC, who superbly chronicled the Peloponnesian Wars between Athens and Sparta. This set of wars threw up several lessons for posterity in laying out a template for the geopolitical and behavioural drivers of conflict between an established power and a rising power. On another plane, the fine print of Thucydides’s narrative rests on the trinity of fear, honour and interest — a framework that fits most of the ongoing conflicts and less-than-war scenarios that seem to be playing out in contemporary times even if they do not conform to his classical rising power vs established power paradigm.”

Francis Fukuyama: “Liberalism is a doctrine, first enunciated in the 17th century, that seeks to control violence by lowering the sights of politics. It recognises that people will not agree on the most important things — such as which religion to follow — but that they need to tolerate fellow citizens with views different from their own. It does this by respecting the equal rights and dignity of individuals, through a rule of law and constitutional government that checks and balances the powers of modern states. Among those rights are the rights to own property and to transact freely, which is why classical liberalism was strongly associated with high levels of economic growth and prosperity in the modern world. In addition, classical liberalism was typically associated with modern natural science, and the view that science could help us to understand and manipulate the external world to our own benefit. Many of those foundations are now under attack.”