Kaustubha's Blog

"Steve Jobs: the CEO as auteur" Ajit Balakrishnan

2011-09-16T18:02:00.002+05:30

I wish to share this.
Steve Jobs: the CEO as auteur
Ajit Balakrishnan
Steve Jobs, co-founder, visionary and CEO of Apple, whose creations much of the word craves, left centre stage in August this year. He is only 56. His 142-word resignation letter was as minimalist as the design of Apple products. It read: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
News items about retiring CEOs feature almost daily nowadays and I, for one, barely look at them. But I must confess to shedding a silent tear when I read about this one
A kaleidoscope of images flashed through my mind: the TV commercial that introduced the first Macintosh; the unveiling of the iPod in 2001 that inaugurated the era of gadgets connected to the Internet; the 2007 launch of the iPhone instantly rendering all other mobile phones obsolete; and, most of all, Mr Jobs’ moving speech at Stanford in 2005.
“My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption,” he had said describing the painful situation following his birth. His biological parents were Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian, and Joanne Simpson Schieble, an American — they had met as graduate students.
The declaration of the arrival of the Information Age for many of us was the Macintosh computer and the TV commercial that introduced it. The commercial was subtly based on George Orwell’s novel 1984. It opened in a dark blue and grey industrial setting with a line of workers marching in lockstep through a long tunnel. A woman appeared carrying a large hammer, chased by security guards in black uniforms. She raced towards a large screen with an image of a Big Brother-like figure, hurled the hammer at it and the screen was destroyed in a flurry of light and smoke. This was followed by a caption that suggested Macintosh would liberate the world from the tyrannical and centralised world that George Orwell had prophesied.
Mr Jobs’ resignation has prompted various eulogies, with many aptly calling him America’s greatest industrialist ranked right up there with the likes of Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie. But many also made references to his “micro-managing”. Such reports make me sad.
I believe Mr Jobs will be remembered the most for his alleged micro-managing. It showed that he was the first “auteur” CEO of a major company. The term auteur, French for author, is used in film theory and holds that a film reflects its director’s personal creative vision. In the early days, film-making was seen as an industrial process. Then, directors like Alfred Hitchcock with Psycho, The Birds and Rear Window and Ingmar Bergman with Wild Strawberries, showcasing their distinctive, recognisable style, lifted film-making from its base industrial level.
In the world of management, the CEO is seen by many as the manager of administrative processes. This misunderstanding can be traced back to Alfred Sloan and his famous memoir, My Years with General Motors. Mr Sloan idealised the CEO as a rational, shrewd plutocrat managing a firm with detachment. Much of management theory, keeping industrial era firms in focus, has been based on this. The CEO, in this vision, is seen to be the man on top of the pile, the unemotional head of a command-and-control hierarchy. Even the one emotion that was allowed to him, a messianic belief in the gospel of shareholder value maximisation, has been denied since Jack Welch, the legendary former CEO of GE, has dismissed that as “the dumbest idea in the world”.
Mr Jobs’ place in management history is assured for being the role model CEO who spent most of his waking hours obsessing about making their products “insanely great”.
His auteur touch was evident when the iPhone debuted in 2007. The mobile phone industry was dumbfounded. The keyboard, once seen integral to a mobile phone, had disappeared, replaced by a software keyboard animated by touch. The rest of the industry spent the next four years trying to catch up with this.
A new reality had appeared. Even for physical products, the software platform on which they were built and their aesthetic usability became the source of competitive advantage. Manufacturing the physical part of the product contributes so little to the competitive advantage that it is outsourced to low-cost producers.
And like Hitchcock and Bergman, the “micro-managers” of film-making, auteur CEO Steve Jobs lifted the modern firm out of the Industrial Age and brought it into the Information Age.

"HUMILITY" The Most Beautiful Word in the English Language

2011-09-16T17:59:00.000+05:30

This a Letter i received from my friend.

Humility

The Most Beautiful Word in the English Language
By Bruna Martinuzzi

Many years ago, one of my university professors mentioned that "windowsill" was voted the most beautiful word in the English language. Being an armchair linguist, this factoid naturally stayed with me. Words have enormous power. They can make us erupt into laughter or bring tears to our eyes. They can influence, inspire, manipulate and shock. They can build and destroy. Some words have different effects on different people. One such word is humility. It is one of those words that are seldom in neutral gear. Some, like me, love the word and all it stands for. Some almost fear it and interpret it synonymously with lack of self-confidence or timidity.

The dictionary defines humility as modesty, lacking pretense, not believing that you are superior to others. An ancillary definition includes: "Having a lowly opinion of oneself, meekness". The word "humility" first struck me in the context of leadership when Jim Collins mentioned it in his seminal work Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't. In this book, Collins examined companies that went from good to great by sustaining 15-year cumulative stock returns at or below the general stock market, and after a transition point, cumulative returns at least three times the market over the next 15 years.

Among the many characteristics that distinguished these companies from others is that they all had a Level 5 leader. Level 5 leaders direct their ego away from themselves to the larger goal of leading their company to greatness. These leaders are a complex, paradoxical mix of intense professional will and extreme personal humility. They will create superb results but shun public adulation, and are never boastful. They are described as modest. An example of such a leader who epitomized humility is David Packard, the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, who, in Jim Collins' words, defined himself as a HP man first and a CEO second. He was a man of the people, practicing management by walking around. Shunning all manner of publicity, Packard is quoted as saying: "You shouldn't gloat about anything you've done; you ought to keep going and find something better to do."

Another great leader is Patrick Daniel, CEO of North American energy and pipeline company Enbridge, who espouses two leadership attributes: determination to create results and humility, shifting the focus away from himself and continually recognizing the contributions of others. "I have learned through the lives of great leaders," he said, "that greatness comes from humility and being at times, self-effacing."

Clearly these leaders, and many others like them, don't espouse the meaning of humility as "meek". On the contrary, it is a source of their strength. But the notion of being self-effacing is one that we struggle with in our competitive culture, prescribing that we take every opportunity to toot our own horn, and that we don't dare leave the house without our dynamic elevator speech all rehearsed.

We often confuse humility with timidity. Humility is not clothing ourselves in an attitude of self-abasement or self-denigration. Humility is all about maintaining our pride about who we are, about our achievements, about our worth - but without arrogance - it is the antithesis of hubris, that excessive, arrogant pride which often leads to the derailment of some corporate heroes, as it does with the downfall of the tragic hero in Greek drama. It's about a quiet confidence without the need for a meretricious selling of our wares. It's about being content to let others discover the layers of our talents without having to boast about them. It's a lack of arrogance, not a lack of aggressiveness in the pursuit of achievement.

An interesting dichotomy is that, often, the higher people rise, the more they have accomplished, the higher the humility index. Those who achieve the most brag the least, and the more secure they are in themselves, the more humble they are. "True merit, like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes". (Edward Frederick Halifax). We have all come across people like that and feel admiration for them.

There is also an understated humility of every day people we work with who have the ability to get the job done without drawing attention to themselves. Witness the employee who is working at his computer into the late hours, purely motivated by a keen sense of duty, the executive assistant who stays after 5:30pm on a Friday night in an empty office to await a courier, or the manager who quietly cancels an important personal event to fly out of town to attend to the company's business. This is akin to the philanthropist who gives an anonymous donation.

Humility is also a meta-virtue. It crosses into an array of principles. For example, we can safely declare that there cannot be authenticity without humility. Why? Because, there is always a time in a leader's journey when one will be in a situation of not having all the answers. Admitting this and seeking others' input requires some humility.

Another mark of a leader who practices humility is his or her treatment of others. Such leaders treat everyone with respect regardless of position. Years ago, I came across this reference: the sign of a gentleman is how he treats those who can be of absolutely no use to him.

Something interesting happens, too, when we approach situations from a perspective of humility: it opens us up to possibilities, as we choose open-mindedness and curiosity over protecting our point of view. We spend more time in that wonderful space of the beginner's mind, willing to learn from what others have to offer. We move away from pushing into allowing, from insecure to secure, from seeking approval to seeking enlightenment. We forget about being perfect and we enjoy being in the moment.

Here are a few suggestions on practicing humility:
1. There are times when swallowing one's pride is particularly difficult and any intentions of humility fly out the window, as we get engaged in a contest of perfection, each side seeking to look good. If you find yourself in such no-win situations, consider developing some strategies to ensure that the circumstances don't lead you to lose your grace. Try this sometimes: just stop talking and allow the other person to be in the limelight. There is something very liberating in this strategy.
2. Here are three magical words that will produce more peace of mind than a week at an expensive retreat: "You are right."
3. Catch yourself if you benignly slip into over preaching or coaching without permission - is zeal to impose your point of view overtaking discretion? Is your correction of others reflective of your own needs?
4. Seek others' input on how you are showing up in your leadership path. Ask: "How am I doing?" It takes humility to ask such a question. And even more humility to consider the answer.
5. Encourage the practice of humility in your company through your own example: every time you share credit for successes with others, you reinforce the ethos for your constituents. Consider mentoring or coaching emerging leaders on this key attribute of leadership.

There are many benefits to practicing humility, to being in a state of non-pretense: it improves relationships across all levels, it reduces anxiety, it encourages more openness and paradoxically, it enhances one's self-confidence. It opens a window to a higher self. For me, it replaces "windowsill" as the most beautiful word in the English language.

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2011-08-23T18:39:00.001+05:30

" India on the streets "

by Chetan Bhagat

We have all had that one uncle who keeps on reminding you how India is terrible. He tells you about how every government authority takes bribes - from the RTO to the ration shop to the municipality. He will tell you how no government department does its job well - the potholed roads, abysmal conditions at government schools and poor healthcare all being examples to support your uncle's theory. It is hard to argue with him, for he is right. Things don't work. There is no justice. Power talks. Equality doesn't exist. All of this, even though uncomfortable to hear, rings somewhat true.

However, the uncle goes on to say this: "Nothing will ever change." He is convinced that our society is damaged irreparably, and India is destined to live in misery. Uncle Cynic goes on to doubt almost everyone, assumes the worst in people, and anyone who is trying to improve the country is branded as someone with a hidden agenda.

This is where i think the uncle gets it wrong, horribly wrong. For it is one thing to point out the problems, it is quite another to give up trying to fix them. Cynicism is not a counter-argument, it is an attitude. For the fact is we still have good people in the country: in society and even in government departments. It is just that they are crushed.

I don't want to give you the reasons why you must support Anna Hazare. It is almost beneath Anna's dignity that he actually has to beg or make a case for support when he is fighting for you, against an abusive, corrupt regime. Still, let me do a quick recap of the facts.

Anna did a fast in April, which became the nation's movement and spread virally. Concerned, the government agreed to make a good Lokpal Bill, shook hands with the activists and in principle agreed to Anna's version, designed to truly check corruption. Since then, the government has insulted Anna's team, thrown away their draft, and come up with its own almost pointless draft of the Lokpal Bill.

The draft the government is presenting to Parliament will not check corruption. Only 0.5%, or one in 200 government officials are under its purview. Your corrupt ration shop, RTO, passport office, panchayats or municipal authority will not be covered. State scams will not be covered - yes, the Adarsh society scam or the Jharkhand scams are all out of its purview. The prime minister is excluded as well. Ever heard of a corruption law in a democracy that only applies to a certain section of people?

The government is throwing magic dust in your eyes - and counting on India's illiterate and ignorant to not know the difference. However, you reading this are educated. You know when wrong is being committed. You know that while you have lived your life with corruption, you do not want your children to do the same. A bad Lokpal Bill may not affect you today - but tomorrow it will hit you when your child does not get a college seat, when your hospital gives shoddy treatment, when your government work doesn't get done. We live in a poor country - poor not because we don't have what it takes to be rich, but because our leaders have let us down. We have given them too much power, and they consider our vote as a mandate to steal and be incompetent. They hate accountability. However, without accountability, our progress will stall. There are countries where the average income per person is 50 times more than in India. Don't we deserve the same?

Thus, whatever your personal view on Anna, it is not him but his cause that needs support. The government can crush a few activists. However, it cannot crush India on the streets. A peaceful, firm, decisive protest is every Indian's birthright, and must be exercised in times of need. Come Monday, and we Indians have a job to do. We have to save our country's future.

A word for the government too. Just what exactly are you thinking when you are trying to shove an impotent law down people's throats? And what makes you feel that threatening, crushing or insulting Anna will take away people's need to rid India of corruption? Anna did not create an anti-corruption sentiment, he merely tapped into it. Crushing Anna will not take away that sentiment. It will just make it fester more. Right now, the movement is still controlled. By going back on your word, displaying arrogance and not listening to the people, you are risking the country's descent into chaos. Be careful. Accountability is much easier to deal with than anarchy. Fix the Lokpal Bill now, please.

Finally, for the people of India, it is time to prove Uncle Cynic wrong. There is a bigger truth than his 'nothing ever changes in India'. That truth comes from the Gita, which states "Nothing is permanent". The Gita also says, "When the pot of sin overflows, something happens to restore order." Now, it is up to you to determine if the pot of sin has overflowed. It is for you to say what it means for Indians to act out their dharma. And you, and only you, will decide if it is time to come on the streets.

(The writer is a best-selling novelist)

Risk Inverse: The Third World Is Now a Better Bet

2010-06-02T01:11:00.000+05:30

Risk Inverse: The Third World Is Now a Better Bet

By Zachary Karabell

The unfolding drama of the Greek economy has roiled markets and awakened fears of global economic calamity that had been dormant for more than a year. The $1 trillion rescue package assembled by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund may be enough to keep the Greek disease from infecting Spain, Portugal, Ireland and other overleveraged European countries. But the events of the past weeks echo the lessons of the near global meltdown of late 2008 and early 2009: the world is indeed a risky place, although not in the places most people think of as risky. The global economy is indeed riddled with problems, but not in the places most people think of as problems.

For most of the past 40 to 50 years, the world has been divided in various ways: communist and capitalist, democratic and authoritarian, West and East, First World and Third World, and developed economies and emerging economies. When it came to business and investing, the First World — the Western world and the developed world — was seen as secure, stable and capital-rich, while the Third World and the emerging economies were seen as unstable, capital-poor and highly risky. Think of the much heralded and much needed bailout of the Mexican peso in 1994, the contagion of currency devaluations that started in Asia in 1997 or the periodic hyperinflation that has plagued Argentina.

The crises of the past two years, however, stemmed not from the risky parts of the world but from the supposedly safe havens of the U.S. and the euro zone. Risk is no longer over there; it's here. It isn't in exotic parts of the world; it's in the cradle of Western civilization. In the fall of 2008, it wasn't oil shocks in the Middle East that triggered the meltdown; it was subdivisions in Phoenix and financial wizardry on Wall Street. In the 1970s, sovereign-debt defaults in Latin America hit Citibank hard; in the past two years, the near default of Citi rocked Latin America.

Investors haven't adjusted to this new reality, though. Rates on emerging-market bonds — a good proxy for how much risk investors perceive there to be — from countries like Brazil are more or less on par with the rates charged on Greek and Spanish debt. And the latter two are dead broke. American pension plans, which have every incentive to reduce their risk, allocate on average only 2.1% of their portfolios to emerging-market debt, compared with double digits for U.S. and European debt.

Or take the continued misreading of China's economy. Before 2008, it was commonly assumed that the Chinese banking sector would bring that economy to a halt — either in a soft landing, as the loans were written off and the government recapitalized those banks, or in a hard landing, when the banking sector imploded. Turns out Chinese banks weren't the problem; American and European banks were. It wasn't China's nonperforming loans that should have caused anxiety; it was ours.

Today it is the Asian, Brazilian and Indian banks that are well capitalized and run conservatively. Yes, China's banks are chock-full of sketchy loans, but many of those are government-backed, meant to finance an industrial build-out that is key to economic growth. They are less like bad loans and more like government expenditures, and unlike the social handouts of Greece and the E.U., those expenditures are going into infrastructure and investment rather than just consumption. Look around the world and you will see growth and capital discipline born of hard experience in those places still associated with risk; you will see capital profligacy and anemic growth in those parts of the world still seen as safe.

Granted, some of this is human nature. People everywhere suffer from home-country bias — the belief that one's own society is safer and more comprehensible than others'. Investors tend to put more money in local stocks and bonds. But for the first time, home-country bias makes sense if you're in Brazil or India or China or dozens of other regions. And it makes much less sense if you're American or European. Although world stock markets are down this year more than U.S. and European ones, that is largely because big institutions in America and Europe have been selling non-U.S. assets to bolster their balance sheets and average investors have remained skittish about a risky world beyond their borders. In short, while the reality of risk has shifted dramatically, the perception of it hasn't.

The Great Recession, so great in the West, is the Great Emergence for the rest, and risk has moved from far away to uncomfortably close. Our compass is broken, and our desire for safety is leading to ever greater risk. We need to understand that new reality, and quickly.

(Karabell is the president of River Twice Research and a co-author of the forthcoming book Sustainable Excellence

Kaustubha's Blog: How We Should Be

2010-05-11T01:31:00.000+05:30

Kaustubha's Blog: How We Should Be

Have Breakfast… or…Be Breakfast!"

2010-03-06T14:41:00.000+05:30

Have Breakfast… or…Be Breakfast!"

By Y. L. R. MOORTHI

Who sells the largest number of cameras in India ?

Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.

Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling stand alone cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.

Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India ? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).

Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India . That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel's parent) are breathing easy you can't be farther from truth.

Nokia confessed that they all but missed the smartphone bus. They admit that Apple's Iphone and Google's Android can make life difficult in future. But you never thought Google was a mobile company, did you? If these illustrations mean anything, there is a bigger game unfolding. It is not so much about mobile or music or camera or emails?

The "Mahabharat" (the great Indian epic battle) is about "what is tomorrow's personal digital device"? Will it be a souped up mobile or a palmtop with a telephone? All these are little wars that add up to that big battle. Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question – "who is my competitor?"

Once in a while, to intrigue my students I toss a question at them. It says "What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?" The smart ones get the answer almost immediately. Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won't compete on pure audio? "Elementary Watson". So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as "digital."

In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today's competitor. Today's competitor is obvious. Tomorrow's is not.

In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India ? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget. So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. ( India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton 's law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India . PC's price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!

India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film's competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment) . Cricket season might push films out of the market.

Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years. When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I don't remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.

One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!

On a lighter vein, who are the competitors for authors? Joke spewing machines? (Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, himself a Pole, tagged a Polish joke telling machine to a telephone much to the mirth of Silicon Valley ). Or will the competition be story telling robots? Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said "Have breakfast …or…. be breakfast"! That sums it up rather neatly.

—Dr. Y. L. R. Moorthi is a professor at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore . He is an M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and a post graduate in management from IIM, Bangalore

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What Asia Can Really Teach America

2010-03-06T14:37:00.000+05:30

Hello friends this a artical i came across , so adding it on my blog.

What Asia Can Really Teach America

By Michael Schuman

For the past 40 years, Americans have looked at Asia's phenomenal economic growth and asked, What are they doing right, and what are we doing wrong? Today the question rings louder than ever. As Asia surges out of the Great Recession, experts are searching furiously for the secrets of the region's resilience, those nuggets of Eastern wisdom that could rejuvenate a tired and confused U.S. economy.

Don't get your hopes up. Asia can surely provide lessons for the West, but Americans often take the wrong lessons from Asia's growth stories — and we seem to be doing it again now.

That's because many people mistakenly believe that Asia offers a superior political-economic model for meeting the modern world's economic challenges. That perception, however, is based on the incorrect notion that Asia's success is the product of intrusive governments. In the 1980s, when Japan was Asia's rising giant, some said its state-led economic system, in which bureaucrats "picked winners" by targeting industries for special support, was better than the more laissez-faire practices of the West. Today, pundits see China's "state capitalism" as the contender for global dominance. The heavier hand of the Chinese government, this thinking goes, acts as a source of strength in hard times while firmly guiding the nation into the industries of the future. China's vibrancy has even led Americans to question the viability of the very tenets of democracy. "It is intellectually and politically unsettling to realize that, if the West cannot quickly straighten out its systems of government, only politically unreformed states like China will be able to make the decisions that a nation needs to survive in today's high-speed, hi-tech, increasingly globalized world," scholar Orville Schell recently wrote.

Sure, the authoritarian rulers in Beijing can sometimes implement policies more efficiently than the argumentative democrats of the West. That's exactly why Beijing's recession-busting stimulus plan proved more effective than Washington's. With no political debate to get in the way, China's bureaucrats splashed money everywhere to toss up shiny new infrastructure. The slumping economy needs more credit? Well, that's easy — if you own the banks. Just open a spigot and watch the money flow. China's government can also push ahead on important long-term projects with greater speed. While health care reform in the U.S. languishes in Congress, China is building an extensive health care system to cover nearly all of its 1.3 billion people.

But there are few things more annoying than pundits in the democratic U.S., who are firmly protected by the Bill of Rights, waxing poetic about the virtues of dictatorships. What they're forgetting is the frightening downside to China's authoritarian state capitalism, and not just in terms of human rights. China's stimulus program might have produced growth, but it could very well have undermined the health of the banking system. The Chinese economy is riddled with excess capacity, inefficient state enterprises and asset bubbles.

More important, the idea that the state made China rich is simply not true. China only started growing when the overbearing government got out of the way and allowed private enterprise, both Chinese and foreign, to thrive. The same is true in India. Across Asia, in fact, the primary engine of growth has always been the market, not the state. All rapid-growth Asian economies — including China's — succeeded by latching onto the expanding forces of globalization, through free trade and free flows of capital. South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore may have had active bureaucrats, but the true source of their economic growth was exports manufactured by private companies and sold to the consumers of the world. Asia's growth story is more a testament to the dangers of state meddling than its virtues. Just look at Japan, which has been suffering for 20 years from the damage caused by too much bureaucratic interference.

Widen your perspective: take into account what's happening in Asia outside of China, and the message from the East looks starkly different. The problem with today's analysis of Asia is that it is far too focused on China. China is not Asia. In fact, in many ways, it is the exception (albeit a big one). Asia's other giant outperformer — India — is a quite fractious democracy. Only one significant economy — Vietnam — is following China's lead. Just about everywhere else, policymakers are rejecting the China model. The severity of the financial crisis hasn't caused political leaders to look to China's success and roll back democracy or copy China's state capitalism. In fact, they are heading in just the opposite direction. The Presidents of South Korea and Taiwan believe deregulation is crucial for the future of their economies. In Japan, newly installed Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has wisely made weakening the power of the bureaucracy — not expanding it — one of his primary policy goals. Asia has also become a leader in promoting free trade, as a proliferation of free-trade associations (FTAs) continues to push back the power of the state. India, another country fingered as a state capitalist, inked landmark FTAs last year with South Korea and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Even in China, autocratic state capitalism has an uncertain future. The story of Asia's economic boom tells us that democracies tend to follow wealth. Asians have demanded more political rights with their expanded economic opportunity. That's what happened in Taiwan, South Korea and Indonesia, all dictatorships turned stable democracies. China believes it can build a full-fledged market economy while leaving its politics unchanged. So far it has. But as China gets richer, can its ruling class survive the forces that undermined autocratic regimes elsewhere in Asia?

The same can be asked about the state role in its economy. The evidence from Asia shows that its economies became more market-driven as they became more advanced. That's been true in China as well. Despite all the talk of state capitalism, Beijing's leaders continue to liberalize the economy. In January, a free-trade agreement between China and ASEAN came into full effect, creating a free-trade zone with more potential customers than NAFTA. China's State Council also approved the very capitalist practices of short selling of stocks and futures trading. The big question about China-style state capitalism is not whether other nations should mimic it to compete in a changing world economy. The real issue is whether China's state capitalism can withstand the pressures imposed by a changing world economy.

Asia's economic strength is not a result of some ancient Chinese secret or a special economic model that Americans must copy to survive. It owes to simple, old-fashioned, free enterprise, the kind Americans love to love. The "democratic capitalism" being questioned in the U.S. is finding new roots in a rising Asia. If Americans want to learn the correct lessons from Asia, they can ironically find them right at home.

How We Should Be

2010-01-12T01:27:00.000+05:30

This is something i feel to write after watching a latest movie, relased in India by the name 3 idiots. After seeing the movie i felt there are few things we never take care as a student, parent, or teacher.....which we should.....

We As Parents:
Parents play a important role in the life of child. They are the first persons through whose eyes child see the world .How a child thinks about society,how he interacts with people and how he differentiaes between good and bad starts from his childhood at home only------. Parents are those person who make him understand the importance of relations. They tell him what is good and what is bad at the tender age. But when the child grow , the pressure of education , marks , stream of education is so hard that the love and tender relation of parents and children end up in a formal relation where the kid wants that parents should understand what he wants to do and on the other hand parents put pressure on kids to do what they want him to do. Because we still live in a place where education is considered as engineers, doctors, CA, IT. But we never understand the kids , like there are avenues in photography , journalism, and lot of filed. So feel that parents should also make them selves aware of the various option available and let there kid come up with it . You be the guiding force and not the dominating force. Make them understand where they go wrong , but don;t stop them form exploring things. I believe that parents should encourage there kids to learn India Classical music, which give them the patience and capacity to think and concentrate.

We As Teachers:
Teachers are someone responsible for creating the future of generation, imparting good qualities in to students and making them stand on their feet to be better citizens of the world..... But somehow these day , teacher don't help the students find their path to success and guide them, they are making 't'students enter the race of obtaining higher marks and good jobs. Also the pressure and the personal ego pulled in by teacher are also too bad these day as students are taking it on there life. Looking at the cases of suicide which are happening, seems as things are not going the right way. Their are teachers who are aware of such situations and are working on it, but the number is so low , that its not making a major change. But i feel if teacher come together on this issue and interact with student i am sure it will make a vast difference to the students and to the society. We will see a change in the approach of students.

We As Student.
As a student we always wanted to score marks more than our friend. All running a race to win more marks , because we feel more marks get us better job.I too, agree that marks and rank is important to get good jobs. But we must also think that in that race we are just becoming muggers.Reading books, mugging the informations in mind and never analysing how that is achieved. So day by day we are becoming muggers, and not some one who want to innovate. We work real hard to achieve marks and get best jobs in the industry and also are successful in our life and earn lot of money, but have we ever thought about what new we are doing in the society?
Have we given something new to this world!!!!!!. The ans. comes out to be NO!!. We are just workers and only workers. The movie says that gayan (Knowledge) is something we need to grasp and not learn it. It say we must run behind knowledge and implementation of knowledge , and if done in right way then success will come to you.
So we need to put ourselves in understanding the process and creating new things out and not just follow what is written. I agree to it , we must rather look at evolving ourself rather than running a race of going ahead.

Point of care Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) Testing

2009-01-21T15:38:00.001+05:30

Hi this is a small FaQ i found on a web site while studing HbA1c

Ø What is point of care HbA1c testing and what are the advantages?

The ADA recommends at a HbA1c tests be performed at least once every six months on every patient with diabetes who are meeting goals, and more frequent testing for those patients who are not meeting treatment goals. HbA1c testing can be done at the time of the patient’s visit, so that results are available immediately, which give the healthcare provider a real time advantage in facilitating self-management goal setting with the patient. The testing kits used are single use, disposable, self-contained qualitative tests for HbA1c and results are comparable to laboratory testing. They can be used in a physician’s office or by the patient at home (with a prescription). It takes approximately 7-8 minutes to complete the test.

Ø What kind of staffing is required to do the test?

The test requires that office staff perform a finger stick on the patient being tested, then run the test on the machine. Most medical assistants are generally trained to do finger sticks, and can be reasonably expected to do the test.

Ø How long does it take to do the test?

While time requirements might vary by specific machines, it generally takes a total of 7 minutes or less to do the test: approximately 1 minute to do the fingerstick and run the machine, and 6 minutes to get the results from the machine.

Ø How much does the HbA1c testing machine cost?

These machines cost around $3,000. Some of the vendors for machines include:

· Bayer DCA 2000 Plus System

· A1cNow Monitor

Ø What is the “per test” cost for doing this in the office?

Costs of doing the test can be broken down into the following:

· Test kit: Typical patient testing kit costs around $8.00- $10.00 (they come 10 to a box).

· Quality controls: Need to purchase “High” and “Low” reagents for quality control testing once/wk. Kit with reagents costs approx $93 and supports approx 100 quality control tests being done (therefore, costs approx $1/wk).

· Staff time: 7 minutes of medical assistant time

Ø What is does an office typically charge and get reimbursed for doing this in the office?

A typical charge for this service is around $49.00, with an average expected reimbursement per test of $13.00 to $20.00.

Ø Does doing this test require any special type of lab certification?

Rapid HbA1c testing is a CLIA-waived lab test. No special certification is required to do this in PCP offices.

Ø Why do point of care testing?

The ease and accessibility of the test at the time of patient visit enables efficient, cost-effective testing and may result in greater patient compliance. A recent study from Diabetes Care also suggests that point of care HbA1c testing can help improve glycemic control

Latest Blood Glucose Moniter

2009-01-21T15:07:00.005+05:30

Hi
All
We have recently launched a latest device in for Home Diabetes Monitoring. I worlds smallest Blood Glucose Monitor. This has some exclusive feature and a great product. Which can help you monitor your glucose levels just in 2 step at any time, just in 7 sec.

I am adding the details product brochure. I hope U will like it. The Best Thing its Costing is JUST RS .888/-