Entrepreneurship | Technology | Innovation | Collaboration

So many people are starting companies these days that I am beginning to feel some sort of global peer pressure about starting up. May be there is too much money floating around through a bunch of crazy billionaires that's fueling these start-ups, and may be this is the right time to get a share of that excess money in the world, and thereby make some fortune by pretending to be building some next-gen super-shit. But still I am not able to clearly figure out (a) whether I should do it, and (b) whether I can do it, and (c) whether it is really what it looks like.

The 3 most abused words of this generation are - Entrepreneurship, Technology and Innovation. This is how they are defined these days:

• Entrepreneurship: Doing any shit that is not a salaried job
• Technology: Anything that has anything to do with smart phones and similar devices
• Innovation: There is so much of it that some people literally innovate every second in whatever crap they do. Perhaps there should be an internationally certified authority appointed by the American President to qualify an activity as innovation. (You cannot trust any other heads of states or organizations you see. The American President is sent by God. Also I cannot mock any Indian leader here, coz in many ways they are Gods themselves, and can torture me if I angry them :P.) In fact the sales and presales teams of most Indian IT services companies have ready-made powerpoint slides on how innovation comes naturally to them and is ingrained in every little thing they do. Doing things without knowing much of what and why they are doing also requires innovation built into each individual in these industries! There are also ideas thrown around on how they generate innovative ideas in large volumes like little products in factories - where the product is in demand and the factory is running.

I hear a lot of these so called technology/eCommerse startups are making huge losses by selling stuff very cheap. They run and survive and compete on funding, so I hear. Therefore, it makes a great sense for me to be diverting all my consumption to be sourced from these, so that I decrease my own spending, by playing a part in increasing their losses and pulling a share of all that money which is getting invested.

This thought often leads me to the conclusion that one is better off as a consumer than someone running a company that all want to consume from. And the present times seem great for a middle-class consumer in India. But then, it doesn't necessarily have to be an either-or situation - i.e., one can be a voracious consumer, and at the same time run a company that everyone wants to consume from. But this makes sense only if the guy is making the kind of money that makes it worth all the effort and also enough to consume like crazy, in spite of the losses the company is making. Perhaps he/she does. I know a lot of people would argue that such things are not always done for money and there are other kinds of achievements - intellectual and other blah - that may be more motivating than the money that may or may not be made. And that the stuff starting-up teaches you is beyond what anything else can ever teach. And I agree with all that. But it still doesn't totally help me make a choice.

On another note - a question - is this life meant for going on learning things? I often hear people say - I hate this job coz I am not learning anything - I am okay with any job as long as I am learning - I want to learn - etc. etc. I think they lie, coz there is always something you will learn. The issue is whether you want to learn it or not. And honestly, I don't think we all want to keep learning all our lives. Too much learning either frustrates or bores or intimidates most people in jobs, and they start looking out for job change or may even quit without one. Learning is a necessity to survive in this ever-changing world, rather than a choice. And we cannot take it beyond a limit. We all have areas where we want to learn more, and areas where we don't enjoy learning anything at all. We lie either to motivate ourselves or to fake looking motivated. What do you think?

Of course, there are exceptions coz the world is full of them. My point of view may be biased by who I am and may apply only to people like me - that's how all points of view are, and are therefore not correct representations of reality. And so, share your views and let the reality be built through collaboration (another highly abused word) :). But then, collaboration here is limited to the number and kind of people who read this post! So, reality, as stated, will always be skewed. Share your thoughts, in any case...

Make in India

I am glad that through my blog I am contributing to "make in India"! How? This blog-site is owned by an American company and hosted god-knows-where, but the content for the blog is totally generated in India. With Modiji promoting make in India everywhere, I think we also need to creatively propose what all can be made in India. We are a nightmare for manufacturing hard stuff and shipping them to places in the world, given the pathetic state of infrastructure in the country. But the official make in India seems to be focussing on just that... check out the makeinindia website.

I therefore think we need to look at alternatives... something else needs to be made in India:

1. Babies - We make them most here... and the best ones... I guess we have the right warmth and oxygen content in the atmosphere to get the best stuff to right places... Come here and just do it... deliver kahin bhi kar lena... This in other words would mean promoting tourism, luxury hotels, Osho Ashram, exotic destinations, nude beaches, etc. etc. - whatever makes the mood.
2. Manure - We have more living beings in this country per square unit of area than anywhere else in the world. And together we make more shit than anywhere else. And earth's getting so hot, we need to grow more trees. Come here, collect all this shit and process it to make manure. I am sure we have enough shit to cover all the rest of the world. And believe me, this is very fertile shit, but we are short of land in India to spread it and grow trees over it. It's just that our shit has not been able to cross our shores because of VISA limitations - we have been sending people out to spread the shit, and that's damn inefficient. And our animals are getting no opportunity. Let's manage logistics better and get the shit out. I can assure you this shit will convert deserts to dense forests.
3. Movies - We manage to make a lot of good movies, more than anyone else. From Slumdog Millionaire, the west has seen that India offers a different look and feel in movies through its filth and poverty. We have good amount of it which they can exploit a lot more. And once they get bored of it, we have the modern India as well, which is also pretty decent, and Indian movies are doing okay to showcase it. By carefully taking care of what's coming in the camera frame, we can get views like the west in many locations in India.
4. Textiles - (This is already part of the official make in India campaign, as per their website. But, what the heck, I'll still talk about it :P.) We have our styles of clothing, exquisite textiles and are pretty good at making those. Try Indian clothing - it's really cool. And besides, we have also accepted and adapted all kinds of fashion in the world. We can make everything for you, and for quite cheap. Add some premium for quality and invest a bit for quality control. Raw material is not a challenge for us in this sector. Local logistics before export will still be a challenge, but I guess it's not as bad as shipping machinery. 
5. Problems and Solutions - This one's our USP. We have so many educated young people here without anything challenging to do, and yet alive and breathing - so hungry. And all quite intelligent, analytical and argumentative. We can design academic problems for you - all subjects, all topics. And since the rest of the world is getting dumber and dumber in theoretical academics, we'll also give you solutions to those problems. We're not like cruel Resnik & Halliday who only gave answers to odd numbered problems; nor like I.E.Irodov, who wrote a whole book of problems but never cared to write one with solutions to those. We are kind and we understand that a book of problems is useless without answers to all questions at the back of the book, and another book with solutions by the side.

The above list is only indicative, and there is a lot more we are good at which the white guys can leverage to make in India. But it doesn't look like Modiji is thinking about all these things. If he's only thinking about manufacturing of machines / parts, we are going nowhere. If he's thinking of all the other things we can make, we will take the world by storm!

work, leaders - a few thoughts...

Most of us carry on with our boring meaningless jobs. And yet motivational media continues to talk about pursuing meaningful careers, doing what one wants and all that shit. Perhaps it's an illusion which if adopted, can motivate us to carry on with hope and optimism. Like God, it has the power to make us do stupid things in hope that something better will come out of the stupidity.

 

Belief in God is a fundamental necessity for most humans. For some of the rest, the belief simply does not make sense. And for the remaining individuals, like me, even the concept of 'sense', as we know it, does not apply to these things and therefore, choosing to believe or not believe is simply not feasible based on any rational explanation. I've written about it many times, so will not flaunt my agnosticism again. But brought this up to draw parallels with one's trying to find meaningful work or meaning in work or building meaningful careers.

 

I am not sure exactly when I wrote the above two paragraphs... may be some time last month. However I totally don't have any memory of writing these. I just found this now in my drafts. Happens with me often, when I look back at my old blog posts, I often cannot recollect having thought and written down all that shit past 10 years! But I do think I did a good job making sure they survived this long and will last forever if internet and the content on it can be trusted for its longevity.

 

Going back to where this post started, it seems to me now, that as humans evolved, and so did leaders among humans, the part where the leaders motivate other humans to work became the most critical aspect of leadership. Deep down, the purpose of leadership is to make sure the show goes on. And the biggest show on earth is our human civilization. The illusion of building something meaningful and in turn achieving something meaningful out of it is necessary to keep leaders motivated. However most followers are motivated by lesser incentives, like staying alive. These respective motivations are probably instinctual for both leaders and followers. Their respective concepts of rationality are built on top of basic framework defined by what drives them by design.

 

I am wondering whether the above line of argument leads to the conclusion that leaders are born, but cannot be made. I am not sure. Depends on whether some of these instincts are natural or can be built through nurture when the mind and personality are taking shape. I don't have sufficient information to derive a logical conclusion here. And also, to classify all humans into 2 groups - 'leaders' and 'followers' - doesn't seem very right... There must be many more types, and it might just be the limitation of our language that we can't identify shades of gray, and shades of all the other colors possible.

Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox

Am in Go Air flight G8/284 from Pune to Bangalore... I must say, and mean, Bengaluru... A good hour and a half to work on a blog post. Thanks to this blogger mobile app, blogging on the go is quite convenient... Am surprised I said that, coz the app has been around for quite some time, yet I've not been more regular on the blog... I guess laziness does have a degree, but convenience is not one of the parameters it depends on.

I realized just now that this blog completed 9 years recently. Although it has changed hosts from o3.indiatimes to livejournal to blogspot, sochvichaar has always been the same in nature and character, and grown in volume, although very slowly in the past few years. It has taught me how to put my thoughts together. It has even taught me how to think. But the kind of thinking I do here is of little consequence in the small part of the outside world where I am struggling to make a living. Where expressing thoughts is difficult, coz they are not really respected. But ironically, you are encouraged to think and blamed for not thinking. And when you think too much, you get a kick on your ass. Where there are good thoughts and bad thoughts. And where one is also not supposed to waste time thinking. And some people claim to know what anyone is thinking, and they also decide who is clueless... And they must be right, as a clueless man would also be clueless about his cluelessness... So someone who has clue should be trusted. It's crazy, I think.

But the beautiful thing about thoughts is that they are yours, your own. And it doesn't really matter whether the world cares about them or not, they are still your own, and they define you. Although it is indeed true that most of us want the section of the world that matters to approve our thoughts, just to feel normal, we still have our thinking and it makes us who we are. And thinking is what we do and what makes us do what we do... To say anyone is not thinking is to say he/she is not alive. "Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box... They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe" - the Beatles wrote.

Too much turbulence... I went to pee thrice and was sent back on the first 2 occasions saying the seat-belt sign was on! In all this tension I missed the snacks. I had planned to eat samosas with coffee, get a receipt and put for reimbursement - official trip you see... But... Sad, this free meal wasn't mine... Don't want to call the girl back... I'm too shy to speak out of turn with an air-hostess! Let this plane land... Will definitely grab something at Bangalore airport...

Someone just figured out there was no big bang... That the universe was always there. Quite possible. Why should something have a beginning? Probably coz of this thing called time that has to be accounted for... Beginning and end are built into our existence, and being part of this framework, our thinking is bound and limited to what we can imagine. It works fine when we try to explain what we can see and feel. But for what's beyond, how should we go about? It doesn't feel to me like mathematics is the answer. It's something else.

Landed in Bangalore / Bengaluru. Bye for now.

Is there hope, still?

Happy New Year. I do understand it's not so new any more, but it was when I started writing this post.

 

I realize that people are gradually losing patience to read long posts, and the popularity of blogging has declined tremendously over the past few years making way for micro-blogging and stuff like that. I myself never liked reading long blog posts by readers of my own blog who expected, understandably, that I'd return the favor by reading theirs'; and also by writing some comments, which would prove that I did indeed read and also that the blog has some really interested readers. I find it quite difficult to focus for so long on long boring posts to figure out if they say something insightful. So, couldn't ever return the favor in the right manner. I often even find reading my own posts very boring. Writing is okay, it's just an additional task of typing along with what the mind constantly does anyway - thinking.

Of late I've been traveling a lot for work. And I've realized that Traveling is one of the most wasteful expense most companies incur these days, with complete belief that it is benefitting the company. Rather, the belief is expressed and owned by the very people - the top management - who themselves travel a lot and who make others travel... others - the middle management. The former probably truly believe that travel is benefitting some cause that is of interest to them. The latter are a mix of those who do it out of compulsion, coz their bosses have the belief, and those who do it with the belief. And there are also those in all layers of management who do it to have some fun at company expense.

I am one among the middle management whose bosses have the belief and who measure the effectiveness of an individual from the amount of travel he's done and the extent to which he has ditched his family and to which his family has given up on him. And I am being very ineffective in my job by choice. Or, in other words, I am unwilling to pay the price for seeming effective.

Jobs are full of shit. And I realize that each moment now, more than I used to a few years back, when I was less exposed to corporate decision making and greedy leadership opportunism. Lower down, in the early days of my career, it was more about hard work, quality job and honest day's work. Either that, or just fun. While getting paid, of course. Now, a bit higher up, it is about smart work, relationships and perceptions. And each word in the last line is a euphemism - for tons-of-bullshit. As organizations become huge, these things become more and more important as tools for the employed leadership to make merry from the huge riches the company is able to generate because of a mechanism of getting things done by smartly putting axes at the right throats and letting some blood drip, and create spots at the right places. And there is a layer of men whom the system rewards for holding axes and sporting wicked smiles while suppressing their giggles for private times. While their masks can generally be seem through, the axe is for real. And so is the death it can bring.

Sometimes I feel the world needs to be fixed. Humans need to be fixed. But if all this evolution and human civilizations have come to this, is there some reason for it? Are we more stable collectively as a species when we are a threat to each other? Is being civilized just another euphemism for being able to smartly lie and deceive while seeming to be kind and caring? Or is there still any hope for a different kind of world?

Politics at workplace

Why do all organizations turn political? A few days back I was doing a subconscious analysis to figure out in my mind what drives people to play politics in their workplace. And I felt the biggest driver is laziness. An urge to avoid work and yet draw all credit and recognition for the job. Isn't it logical? It would be if you consider the following presumptions I made:

1. Most of us are lazy most of the time. And we totally know it.
2. Most of us want to be seen as successful, capable, smart and friendly.
3. Most of us get offended if we are called or seen as dumb, lazy, useless, incapable or aloof. We resist, and we almost believe we are not any of that and have strong reasons to explain to others and ourselves that we are not.
4. People give too much credit to how one handles arguments, appearances and image, rather than the actual work.

And if all the above have to be true at the same time, we need a really screwed up way of going about in life. And of course such a way will work only with really screwed up people, like most of us are - we can live in illusions of parallel realities at the time and space. Therefore, I've presumed that the world is a screwed up place with nutcases running all over fooling each other and spending their lives creating illusions other nutcases admire.

This can be a really long post with thorough analysis, which nobody will read on a blog. I guess I'll write a book about it. For now, let's end with the conclusion that we are all crazy, lazy nutcases craving for money... and hence - politics.

Change

It's so difficult, complicated and almost impossible to get some of the basic things done in the 'right' way in India, that it doesn't take long for one to conclude that 'right' is actually terribly 'wrong' here. Registering a marriage, registering a vehicle in a state different from the one where it was bought or paying the corresponding road tax, getting one's name in the right voter list, police verification for passport, getting a postpaid mobile connection if you are not married or home-owner, not having an electricity bill, gas bill, ration card, aadhaar card, or some such shit with your name on it - are just a few examples.

The past few years, I have suffered a lot of inconvenience because of one document that everyone seems to want and for which I am always forced to resort to crazy meaningless workarounds - it's the 'local address proof'. It's insane to expect everyone to own a house in the present times, and that too in the city/state one is living in, when a lot of guys and gals in cities are originally from somewhere else and live in rented apartments, which most even share with others. Given that, a rent agreement should be accepted, but it's not accepted, probably coz it's easy to create an agreement when none exists. There is something called a 'registered' agreement, which is hardly accepted anywhere; not even by government agencies. Workarounds exist, most of which are just acceptable documents not really proving what they are accepted for but actually standing for something else - bank statement as proof of address, for example.

Why can't we have a rule that is relevant, convenient and meaningful, so that we don't have people lying about something that could be so simple and transparent? That India is large, crowded and complex is not an excuse. We have made India 100 times (or 100x100 times or whatever) more complicated than it should have been. And this is true even about the way India's private service companies work. Political parties' election promises still include things like water in taps and electricity connections to homes. And that reflects the fact that for a country that still doesn't have the basic things in place, nor a strong will to do so, talking of processes, imperfect procedures and fraudulent paperwork is too much ahead of its time.

As Manis and I were discussing about how pathetic the state of affairs is in India and how badly we have failed to manage this Country, an analogy occurred to me as to what we do with a company with lot of valuable assets yet unable to do profitable business - either the company is sold or its assets are sold.

Our cultures have groomed our minds to develop a lot of emotion for one's country. Whereas, except for a few individuals, those associated with a company are largely motivated by what they earn out of being related. And will be open to moving out if the company is not fulfilling enough - financially or psychologically. The same does not happen so easily when it comes to one's country. Even those who move out for a better life, do cling on to their nationalities and cultures, which they try to protect with all sincerity. Proves that fight for money, and thereby one's claim over earth's resources, makes people behave far more sensibly and practically. And in all this they manage to ignore the hollow words of employers who try to invoke emotions and try to trap employees through drawing connect beyond money and work. Whereas in a country, leaders manage to trap people by invoking emotions, even if they don't really do what they can to ensure people get their fair share of resources.

Just like the fact that a company is much more than its assets, a country is much more than its resources. Ownership of all assets in a country, even land, does not amount to ownership of the country. A company is owned by definite individuals, and they can be paid and parts of the company be bought. A country is not owned by individuals. Individuals only own assets of a country. Even the Government does not own the country. It only governs. Probably nobody 'owns' a country, because none of us 'created' it. Let's say God created this earth. So the country, being a part, is created by God. Whoever played a role in carving out a specific region and defining it as an entity called country can be credited with playing the biggest managerial or leadership role in that country's history. Even that individual would not be the owner of the country because he has his importance and draws his power only from the ideological support of the subjects. If he deviates, he's gone. Probably am thinking in a democratic framework.

A dictator is also not an owner, he just imposes himself on the masses. Same is the case with a king. But with a king, the rule has elements of ownership in the kind of decisions he takes and the hereditary passing of control. And at the root of it is power and might. And a more powerful and mighty can uproot the king and take control. It is therefore 'control' rather than 'ownership'. And power and might, drawn from whatever sources, is at the heart of all forms of control - governments - democratic, dictatorial, monarchial, communist, military, etc. etc.

I could still not answer the ownership question. Probably coz it's unknown. We humans, even the powerful ones, wud be stupid to think we own the world or a country. A few of us just manage to be powerful enough to control stuff somewhere. But that's temporary, in the overall scheme of things. Those few are just more powerful in comparison - to other humans and other living beings.

For the ownership - I guess we should stick to the thing we call God. But then a country cannot be sold, coz God is simply non-existent in the form that is of any use for us to make a transaction. But then, I wonder what would selling a country really mean for us, given that I tried to justify above that a country cannot be owned by an earthly being. In fact, an actual sale would happen between Gods in that case, if there are many. I realize this is a totally useless line of analysis of ownership, as this has no practical significance for us.

What really matters for us is 'control', not 'ownership'. Control can be structured in the right manner so as to ensure that whoever is best suited for a specific task holds the reins for that task, although the ultimate control over everything can lie with some governing idiot. And then, an incentive & penalty model can be designed to further ensure that people incharge are doing their jobs. But who is going to design these models, systems and institutions in the right manner? In a democracy, the ultimate controller is theoretically people, which is not a singular entity, nor has a unique point of view. It's a game of simple majorities, which often means a system with consent of a minority, which itself neither understasnds much nor cares much nor is allowed to participate much to affect things in any significant way. Many sensible people fight for changes which they believe in. Many selfish people also fight to screw up systems in ways that would benefit them. May be we must just hope 'evolution' is the answer over the long term. But I don't have so much faith in evolution, when it comes to our own systems. Rather, not so much faith that things will evolve in ways that are best and right for us humans, at least a large majority of us.

Evolution is a frustratingly slow process. And I am not sure whether there are mini-evolutions happening to ensure right configurations for all systems in the universe. Possibly evolution is 'one' universal phenomenon to maintain a balance and beauty across the universe; and doesn't really care how humans share resources or discipline themselves or treat eachother. May be that's not the case. Who knows. And in any case, it apparently happens over generations. And what excitement would I have in trying to change anything if the change is not likely to happen to a significant extent in my lifetime? I believe those who still fight for changing the system do so not for the end but for the means - they really enjoy fight for change. It's like enjoying a job. It's in such people among us that we rest our hopes, and live with what we've got, that's constantly changing, hopefully for the better. Hopefully for the better of us.