A Brave New World Beckons Indian Innovators and Entrepreneurs - India Knowledge@Wharton

via Knowledge@Wharton: "Jagannathan: Are we actually innovative as a country or not? Mr. Haque, what's your observation when you look at Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and here? Do you think Indians tend to be innovative? I know Indians tend to be innovative in areas that are extra-legal -- which is the lead story in the first edition of India Knowledge@Wharton -- but how are they when it comes to actually delivering things that are successful? Do you see any traits here that aid or hinder innovation among Indians and Indian companies?

Haque: I can speak more about the U.S. experience. We're investing quite heavily in India, but we're still learning about the Indian market. It's fair to say that if you look at the technology sector in the U.S. market -- where I spend most of my time -- a good 40% to 50% of enterprises getting created today, whether in the software arena, silicon or even Web 2.0, are founded by Indians. A fair number of companies also get founded by the Chinese.

Indians tend to be entrepreneurial. In the U.S., policies and the environment foster innovation and entrepreneurship, and Indians have taken pretty good advantage of that. Given the right circumstances and the right environment, where entrepreneurship can be fostered, I don't think there is any impediment to Indians being able to take advantage of them.

Jagannathan: Mr. Haque spoke about how the North American environment fosters innovation and entrepreneurship. India, of course, has the largest actual number of entrepreneurs, because if you don't have a job, you have to be an entrepreneur. You have to sell vegetables in the street or whatever else you need to do. But how good is the Indian environment for innovation when it comes to organized or formal business?

Viswanathan: Many Indians have innovative minds. We innovate mostly in terms of crisis, but there is a huge [flow] of innovate ideas. The question today is how do we harness and transform them? We worship several goddesses in the country. The question is: How do we translate Saraswati (the Hindu goddess of learning) into Lakshmi (the Hindu goddess of wealth)? So much of a knowledge base is available; how do we convert this knowledge base into capital? If you provide a more fostering environment, you'll find more and more entrepreneurial talent coming in to make this happen.

Toppling a Taboo: Businesses Go 'Faith-Friendly' - India Knowledge@Wharton

via Knowledge@Wharton: "'Cultural competence is a big buzz word right now. But you can't be culturally competent without understanding something about religion, because religion is the largest component of culture,"says Georgette Bennett, president of the New York City-based Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, a pioneering organization in the field of religious diversity in the workplace.

9 Reasons Why Software Offshoring Won't Work (and Why You Shouldn't Believe Them)

9 Reasons Why Software Offshoring Won't Work (and Why You Shouldn't Believe Them):

Excuse #3: "It takes too much time to explain to someone far away what we need to have done."

What this means: Specifications for features, enhancements, etc., should be written down, defined, and diagramed so that the programmers know what to do.

Excuse #5: "We need a special person to manage offshore."

What this means: Managing remote people requires effort and special skills.

Excuse #6: "We don't have anyone in the company from that country, therefore we won't be able to relate to or work well with an offshore team from there."

What this means: Only people from the same country can relate to each other and successfully work together.

Does Culture Matter?

via Global Services:

We would like to list out a few examples of failure in communication, with specific reference to the Indian scenario:

•		An Indian programmer is being briefed by the foreign client about the required changes in the new program. When asked if everything is clear, he replies, “Yes.” When his work is being received, it turns out that he had not understood everything; in fact, major parts in the software were wrong. Like many other cultures, Indians are reluctant to say “No.” Indians may say “Yes,” when they mean “No,” as they may not want to communicate a negative feeling. This is called a “wobbly yes.” For instance, to a straightforward question like, “Do you know ERP 4.5?” the Dutch engineer will reply “No,” an American engineer will reply “No, but I would be happy to learn,” and an Indian will reply with a “wobbly yes.” A further inquisition will reveal the difference. The only solution for making an Indian forthright is to create an atmosphere of trust and informality.
•		Indians are less likely to engage in small talk in comparison to most of their western counterparts, as opposed to the British, who are said to “feel the terror of silence” in an elevator. The lack of small talk is usually interpreted as unfriendly. To make matters worse, some Indian providers train their employees not to ask any personal questions in order to avoid cross-cultural embarrassment.
•		Indians tend to be too optimistic about time and schedules. If an Indian is asked how much travel time is needed to reach a certain destination, the answer will probably be inaccurate and will not include the possibility of encountering traffic jams. Though this may stem from the noble intention of giving a friendly impression, it does tend to create difficulties across cultures. Potential problems or delays are not considered. A jest on this goes as follows, “When an Indian programmer says the work will be finished the next day, it only means it will not be ready today.” With experience, one can anticipate the same and ask probing questions to find out the issues that have been overlooked.
•		The Indians complain that the Dutch are sometimes rude and impolite. For example, the Dutch want to be clear and direct. If something is wrong, they will not hesitate to mention this. An Indian lady programmer, who had recently started to work in a project for a Dutch client, was found crying one morning, in front of her screen. She had just received an e-mail from the Dutch project leader, with a list of what she had done wrong. For her, it was a very impolite and unfriendly message. For the sender, it was just a number of topics, which had to be corrected; it was definitely not meant personally.
•		A good sense of humor can surely improve social interaction. However, what we consider funny, might not be the same in other cultures. For instance, the Dutch refer to a person who makes an outstanding contribution to teamwork as, “The best horse in the stable.” A Dutch project leader once used this phrase while complimenting a talented Indian programmer in the team. Although it was translated into English, the Indian programmer did not understand the positive meaning of the remark and considered it as him being linked to an animal, which obviously meant a feeling of hurt.

Mukesh Ambani on retail and SEZ plans

via Rediff: "Is there this kind of arbitrage in agriculture?

Let me give you some numbers. Take potatoes, the most common food across the world. From Bill Gates to my driver, everybody eats potatoes. Now, plot the prices. Farmers in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar get about Rs 4-5 a kilo; in the Middle East, the wholesale price is about Rs 25-30 a kilo. In the US, Sam's Club, it is Rs 90 a kilo. In Europe, it is Rs 110 a kilo. The arbitrage is 1:20. If we get our produce right, and if the US market is opened up, you will be surprised how quickly we reach $20 billion.

The food market is much bigger than the software services market. And the money goes straight into the hands of millions of farmers. The spinoffs are enormous -- jobs, houses, durables, a whole new consumption boom will start in rural areas."

The country produces 150 million tonnes of fresh produce today. We can go to 300-400 million tonnes fairly quickly over a few crop cycles, as long as we can move those millions through the system and have world-class quality.

This means that when you go to the market -- doesn't matter whether it is Reliance or Bharti -- you should have the confidence that you are buying quality and it is safe to eat. After meeting the needs of Indian consumers, how do we take advantage in fresh through exports and value added industry such as processing?

It's really a yield-productivity-distribution story that we are involved with right now.

We are driven by creating purchasing power first. The farmers will have purchasing power and their staff will have purchasing power. Today, the farmer with two acres of land has five people in his family. It is like running a factory, but one that is only running 20% of the time because 80% of the time he cannot sell his products.

He doesn't have the inputs to produce the right quality. What we have to do is win his trust and bring him to his true potential so that he can run his two acres at 90% and increase his income by nine times.

We studied what people want to spend their money on at all income levels and in different geographies.People first want to spend money on food -- that is common across the world. The second, in India, is education. In many parts of the world, it comes way down the list of priorities. So, there is a huge opportunity.

'Our farmers can face the world' : HindustanTimes.com

via HindustanTimes.com: "Bhagwati's recipe for success in this is a cocktail of democracy and free market policies, and pragmatic policies to address poverty without policy-makers being bogged down in academic measurements in defining who the poor are. 'Poverty is like pornography. When you see it, you know it.'

Bhagwati is not quite a radical poster boy like his Columbia colleague Joseph Stiglitz, who has questioned globalisation. In his own words, he is a real-world economist who uses what he calls Gujarati pragmatism to inform his science.

He is not sure if India can sustain the nine per cent GDP it is showing in the current year. 'It doesn't seem supportable to me. I think it will need substantial opening up on the infrastructure side.'

If his views on India are tempered, Bhagwati's tone on China is downright critical. He said China's growth was on shaky ground as it was at a heavy environmental cost, with no NGOs, judiciary or political opposition, as in India, to countervail communist commissars, who, he said, were effectively involved in a state-run land grab — while infrastructure remained poor. That may be heartening to India, as would be the fact that he considers New Delhi's leaders more prone to independent thinking and multilateraism than counterparts in stronger economies like South Korea."

Indology must change with the times

The Hindu : Open Page : Indology must change with the times: "Indologists' role as interpreters of India ended with independence in 1947, but many Indologists, especially in the West, failed to see it. They continued to get students from India, which seems to have lulled them into believing that it would be business as usual. But today, six decades later, Indian immigrants and persons of Indian origin occupy influential positions in business, industry and now the government in the U.S. and the U.K. They are now part of the establishment in their adopted lands. No one in the West today looks to Indology departments for advice on matters relating to India when they can get it from their next-door neighbour or an office colleague."

The etiquette of bribery | How to grease a palm |

via Economist.com: "Jakob Svensson, an economist at Stockholm University, has cut through cultural stereotypes to search for hard data on corrupt economies. He has found that socialist and recently socialist economies show higher levels of corruption than others. Among the factors he has tested for correlation with corruption is the overall education level of the adult population. A second is openness to imports (measured by imports as a proportion of GDP), which is linked with opportunities for smuggling. A third is freedom of the press (as ranked by Freedom House, a civil-liberties watchdog), on the hypothesis that independent journalists will expose, and thereby curtail, corruption. The fourth is the number of days needed to start a business, a proxy for the number of permits required, and therefore red tape. Mr Svensson found clear correlations between all these variables and the overall level of corruption."

Immigrants behind 25 percent of tech startups - Tech News & Reviews - MSNBC.com

via MSNBC.com: "One of the study's biggest surprises was the extent to which Indians led the entrepreneurial pack. Of an estimated 7,300 U.S. tech startups founded by immigrants, 26 percent have Indian founders, CEOs, presidents or head researchers, the study found.

Indian immigrants founded more tech startups from 1995 to 2005 than people from the four next biggest sources — United Kingdom, China, Taiwan and Japan — combined.

'People who come from India are laser-focused on technology,' said Rosen Sharma, who immigrated from India in 1993 and is now president and chief executive officer of Palo Alto-based management software company SolidCore Systems Inc. 'They come here and they learn to tell a story and paint a vision. Once you have those two things, you're off to the races.'"