Category: Business Insights

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“There was the Long Depression, then the Great Depression, and now we are in the early stages of a third depression. This one is primarily a failure of policy.”

I would recommend  this to students of the global economic crisis. Paul Krugman, the author, is a Nobel Laureate in Economics and a columnist in New York Times.

The tension between continuity and change is said to constitute the groundwork of history. Not only nations but organisations experience this tension in some form and measure. Continuity is guarded by solid, stable no-nonsense administrators while change is advocated by a small band of impatient innovators. One rests largely on traditions and conventions and is highly procedure oriented. Every time you suggest a new idea they would give you five reasons why it will not work. They would sacrifice results for rules. The impatient innovator, on the other hand, tends to measure success in terms of results obtained even at the cost of bending the system. Continue reading

Myths, legends and authentic stories abound in visionary organizations. Some see great instructional value in story telling; it is said that storytelling is fundamental to informal learning and that 70% of the skills, information and competence in the workplace is acquired through informal learning. Stories build trust, raise vital issues and communicate more effectively than cold analysis of the organization’s vision and core values to its stakeholders. Social service organizations like World Vision India and Cry put them to good use in India. The medical profession recognizes the healing attributes of story telling. So do religious leaders.

Even in formal learning, the cases taught at business schools resemble story telling and these are used for analysis, generation of solutions and understanding of intricate issues… Publications like the Harvard Business Review and the Wall Street Journal have published articles on the uses of business story telling. At business schools in the U S, offering courses in story telling for leaders is a growing practice.

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“Our abilities to capture, analyze and recognize patterns in dynamic data have reached critical mass and now provide us the ability to anticipate future business events with a high degree of probability. When combined with the flexibility and agility to act before an event occurs, this creates a powerful new way of conducting business.”
This is essentially the message of the book. The author compares the impact of predictive business to that of corporate networks linking desktop computers and servers in the 80’s.

Vivek Ranadive is Founder and CEO of TIBCO, a business integration and process management software company located in Palo Alto, California. His earlier book THE POWER of NOW, published seven years ago, was a New York Times business best seller. This is a take-off on that book.

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