What is it about alumni meets that transcends all geographies and timelines? We all believe we went to this great place and had a fun time in school/ college/ B-School/ Med School ... you get the drift. Whenever we talk about our college days and college friends there is the entire piece of nostalgia that inevitably wipes off every piece of unpleasant reality during those golden days.
Every year since 1901 the Nobel Prize has been awarded for achievements in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and for peace. The prize for Economics is strictly speaking an award given in memory of Alfred Nobel that was started in 1968. The Economics Nobel winners for this year were announced today a few hours back. And Ezra Klein made the major goof up (and soon corrected it) on the Washington Post site claiming "Larry Diamond wins the Nobel Prize, continues being blocked by the Senate." The Nobel winners name is Peter not Larry points out Stephen Levitt of Freakonomics fame. According to Alfred Nobel's will, the Nobel prizes were to be awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind." The Peace Prize specifically was to be awarded to persons who had been working for "fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses." The Peace Prize has always been the most controversial. This year's decision is no exception. Liu Xiaobo, the jailed Chinese dissident who won the Nobel Peace Prize, was informed of his award in prison and has dedicated it to those killed when the Chinese government crushed pro-democracy protests around Tiananmen Square in 1989, says the Wall Street Journal.
I love the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda's poetry. Had he been alive, he would have turned a 106 on the 12th of July this year. If only I knew Spanish I would have enjoyed the flavor of his poems even more. If reading his translations can be so exhilarating, imagine the impact of reading those poems in in the language in which the poet thought of those words. Writing love poems is difficult. It is hard to become mushy or melodramatic. The ability to express this complex human emotion on paper is not easy. Neruda was a respected diplomat who always used green colored ink to write his poems. He felt green was the color of hope. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1971. He shared his insight on poets and poetry when in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. He said ...
"Let us imagine that you had bought, in secret, the world’s most precious jewel, the Eye of Empire, a massive ruby known to have left a trail of lives—violently lost—behind it as it journeyed across harsh lands in the care of desperate men." So begins Samit Basu's new book Terror on the Titanic - his first Young Adult novel. Meet Samit, India's first fantasy novelist and the first well-known Indian author to cross over into comics. He is the author of an extremely popular trilogy of fantasy novels, the GameWorld Trilogy, comprising The Simoqin Prophecies (2004) The Manticore's Secret (2005) and The Unwaba Revelations (2007). He has written comics for Marvel Comics in India. Outlook featured him along with Shreya Ghoshal - India's top playback singer and Konkona Sen Sharma the brilliant actress. He got inspired to start a career as an author during a dull class at IIM (Ahmedabad) while pursuing his MBA. Read on what this talented writer is all about.
I believe that leaders who bring in a multi function, multi business and multi geography perspective will succeed better since business opportunities are going to lie at intersection points. For instance: When you have a leader who understands not just mobile technology but also consumer needs around entertainment or education, there is a business opportunity. If that person were to be a designer, you have a brilliant combination. I believe the consumer will become more sophisticated and look beyond meeting purely functional needs. They will look for design and aesthetics in the products or services. Leaders who are equally at home in quantitative analysis as they are in understanding qualitative nuances will be more successful. Clearly people who have a more eclectic education - say Finance, Human Resources and Design will be valuable. A more international outlook will make a leader comfortable in not only understanding cultural nuances of the consumer but will also build a more inclusive work environment which will attract the best talent globally.
Work and learning are becoming the same activity in a knowledge economy. Rather than sending executives off to a learning institution, it makes more sense to increase the learning component of their work. In the company I work for, nGenera Insight, our education program is quite simple: Everyone must blog. By blogging, they need to think about what’s going on the world. They need to become knowledgeable and develop their craft of writing. They need to put forward their thoughts and defend them. This is Executive Education fully integrated into work.
There are three states that we experience: (i) Contentment - when we feed the body (ii) Joy when we feed the mind and (iii) Happiness when we feed our soul.
Is Fidelity Outdated? When you ask such a question on Valentine's Day, it tends to grab attention. Anuradha Verma of The Times of India. Pritish Nandy, Suchitra Krishnamurthy, Rupa Ganguly have all shared their views. Columnist and film maker Pritish Nandy says, "Fidelity is not the issue. Has never been. What is at issue is fidelity on demand. You cannot get fidelity on demand in a marriage or any other relationship for that matter. People are faithful when they love someone enough to give up every other option, every other choice. And trust me, despite the contempt with which it is treated by many people today, fidelity is still pretty much common. It is not that impossibility which we think it is."
