Technology+Business+Philosophy

Technology+Business+Philosophy
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
from Rabindranath Tagore's Geetanjali
This is the place where my thoughts get manifested on the web without any restrictions, rules or fear. If you would like to participate, send me an email and I will add you to the list of members who can contribute.

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Thursday, March 21, 2002

Anderson/Enron debacle - In my mind the federal goverment approach is bit heavy-handed. There were this few partners in Houston office we made bad business decisions, why should the remaining 85,000 people who work for Anderson be punished. Fed should identify the culprits and punish them to the fullest extent of law to create deterence, so all the auditors know that its not fun to fool around.

Clearly, there needs to be separation between consulting and auditing to prevent greed. This is similar to seperation between investment banking and research/analysis wing for financial firms (Merill, Goldman, etc..)

"Smart people always make money" - a chinese saying (a saying spoken by a chinese i know)

posted by Naren 8:05 AM

Wednesday, March 20, 2002

"Lagaan" http://www.lagaan.com - this movie is oscar nominee in foriegn film category. This movie is answers the question - "Do movies reflect society or society reflects movies ?". Briefly, Lagaan is a story of villagers fighting an unjust British goverment officer. This movie epitomizes the indian independence movement. The villagers are challenged by the british officer to learn cricket (a game similar to baseball) and play a match. If the villagers win, they don't have to pay the tax (lagaan) for three years, if they loose they have to pay triple the tax. The protaganist ("Bhuvan") accepts the challenge, cajoles, motivates the villagers and eventually wins.

Similar struggle is happening in real life. The last movie to win an oscar from India was in 1950. The movie is called "Mother India". So for past 52 years not a single indian movie has won an oscar given the fact the indian film industry produces sizeable number of more movies than hollywood. Now, the challenge for the producers of "Lagaan" is and has been to publicize, market and create a buzz around the movie in US and internationally. Things against them are - the movie is 3 hours 45 minutes ( its like watching two hollywood movies back-to-back), there are 6-7 songs in the movie and of course, financial resources.

Interestingly, "Bhuvan" in the movie is played by Aamir Khan. And Aamir Khan is the producer of the movie. And its his job to make sure Lagaan hits a home-run at the oscars. I am sure he is going to draw inspiration from "Bhuvan" which is the character played by Aamir Khan in the movie.

For me, its bit personal. I had the privelege to meet Aamir Khan few days before I came to US in 1992. At that time, he was up and coming star. He used and still lives ( i believe) few buildings from where I used to stay in Bombay. He has consistently strived towards perfection for past 10 years. His dedication to his work/art, is unsurpassed in the Indian film industry. I wonder what drives him. What are his motivating factors in life - personal achievement, money, fame ?

posted by Naren 7:06 PM

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

HP - symbolizes Silicon Valley. The founders of HP were founders of Silicon Valley. They inspired a generation of entrepreneurs. HP is Silicon Valley personfied. Carly is definitely shaking things up. At some level, her argument makes lots of sense. Most people who argue talk about historical precendents. Never in history before has such a merger worked before. Conventional wisdom would say learn from history.

However, to compete with Dells and IBMs of the word, it probably makes sense to combine the might of compaq and hp to generate economies of scale. Its pretty obvious the key factor for success of this deal would - "How fast and smoothly do this two companies integrate ?" John Chambers did it with cisco with innovative way of buying and integrating companies. Maybe, Carly will create history. Five years down the road, analyst will cite her case of how two large companies integrated successfully.

I think she deserves a chance. Also, a more powerful HP (with compaq) is good for the technology industry - sort of like strong multiple parties in a democratic system.

posted by Naren 5:09 PM