Blogs

Do you live a globally-unbound life, but your loved ones or colleagues don't? 

Do you feel you keep up with various ways of being in contact while others don't always?

Under the aegis of Global Niche, a community of mobile progressives, tomorrow, May the 18th, we will be talking about this disconnect, and how forward-looking, world-flung types like us can maintain our connections across...

Summer in India brings not only juicy mangoes but also the prospect of frequent planned and unplanned power cuts. The euphemism “load shedding” tries to hide the fact that the grid is unable to shoulder the demand for electricity. This demand is rising with India’s rapid economic growth. This economic growth also means that fewer and fewer Indian citizens have the...

Two deservedly well-regarded investors, Fred Wilson and Brad Feld, have written about why they think start-ups do not need a marketing budget. Both are deliberately a little controversial. Fred Wilson writes, for instance, that: “I believe that marketing is what you do when your product or service sucks or when you make so much profit on every marginal customer that it would be crazy to not spend a bit of that...

The “entrepreneur” is, to many, a mysterious beast surrounded by myths and legends. This book, edited by Techstars founders David Cohen and Brad Feld, seeks to share some of the secret juice that makes for a successful entrepreneur. If, like me, you expect this book to be like Founders At Work (FAW), edited by Y-Combinator’s Jessica Livinsgton, it would be only partially true. FAW contains interviews...

The most fabulous part of my work life over the last decade has been to observe at close quarters the craziness, the inspirations, the quirks, and the discipline of entrepreneurs and serial entrepreneurs. The main thing that separates a first-time entrepreneur from a serial entrepreneur is that the latter have a more profound and pragmatic understanding of risk and leverage.

But I wrote that in the last post already. This post is...

”Let us try.
To-morrow, how you shall be glad for this!”

- Robert Browning

Businesses want to scale. It is especially true for ambitious entrepreneurs. It should be easy, should it not? After all, the smart view is that it is ambition that scales, ’stuff’ does not. But the reality is not linear, not bi-modal, but nuanced. The road to hell is...

This is the week (or month) that Toyota would like to forget. The firm that revolutionised the otherwise unglamorous manufacturing business is in a tough place. The jury is out on the causal pathways, and on whether this signals the end of Toyota or whether it will rise like a phoenix from the ashes.

Car recalls are nearly as old as the history of the car itself. Risks range from fire hazards...

As part of London Social Media week, Alan Patrick and David Terrar organised a session titled “Social Media In Enterprises: The Real Elephant in The Room”. I was due to join a rather illustrious panel but was held back by unforeseeable problems. Here is my 10-minute “firehose”.

My work is about solving strategic problems for customers in “highly regulated industries”. In these industries, strategic options and choices are often heavily constrained by...