Roll-call for ISB Class of 06

Read an article about the Class of 77 from IIM-A in today’s Brand Equity supplement. Here’s the who’s who from that class… Vindi Banga – Unilever, Rama Bijapurkar – Independent Market Strategy Consultant, Arvind Wable - ED & CEO, FCB-Ulka, Atul Sharma – Burger King, APAC, Javed Usmani – Executive of the PMO, Anand Halve – Chlorophyll.

I know that most people from non-marketing and non-advertising fields have never heard of these names. Neither had I, before reading the article. But the point is that all of them are dominating their chosen field and how!

So where’s the illustrious Class of 06 going to be, 20 years down the road? Here’s my take on the likely positions of just some of my peers from ISB…

Mandy – will be teaching Branding in some god-forsaken university through his ultra-bright fluorescent PPTs (yes he will still be using PPTs!) and getting orgasmic about his latest theory on brand valuation.

Warikoo – Will be running a massage parlor for female gorillas on the beaches of Africa (only Africa may have unexplored beaches then). He will have special bunker-beds so that he can massage 5 of them simultaneously. And the song in background will be… yeh hai meri kahaani

Pawmee – will be rearing chickens on his farm, after having tried his hand at being a suave marketer, a gigolo, the next Shahrukh Khan of ISB, sarpanch of Belgaum, an F1 race driver, an author, etc, etc.

Kapil Sharma – without any doubt, he will be the leading porn star of the age. He would have patented his special dance moves by then and would be earning royalty from ISB Campuses across the world where he would be conducting the course “Leadership lessons through dirty dancing”.

Suzie – would romancing her 200^th boyfriend while simultaneously juggling the demands of being the CEO of her realty firm, launching her own line of clothes and writing the most (in)famous weekly gossip column ever.

Chotu – will be running a special school for adolescent boys from Ujjain so that she’s never in short supply ;)

Mitika – will be doing something nobody can predict. If you can predict, you don’t know Mitika!

And that’s what I call DIVERSITY!!!

Easy Money

5 of us went out last Saturday. We spent 6k on the dinner itself. Wondering where the money is coming from. More importantly, I wonder how my dad would react if he came to know that I blew 1/3rd of his last drawn salary on a silly weekend dinner! Are we so flushed with money right now that we can simply afford to flush it down our throats and not care a rat’s whisker about it?

They say the hunt for talent is the biggest battleground in Corporate India. Every industry is rising in India right now – IT, Finance, Retail, healthcare, Entertainment, Auto, Manufacturing, Textile, Chemicals, Energy… you name it! No wonder executives are being lured away with fatter pay packets. Consumer Product managers are moving from selling soaps to software. Retail managers are moving from selling clothes to durables to entertainment. Sales managers are moving from confectionaries to entertainment. IT managers are moving from project delivery to strategy. It’s a classic demand and supply case stupid! No wonder executives are paid their weight in dollars, even in India. Is it still a wonder how we can afford those dinners and clubbing nights and after-party revelry – it’s just a measly few thousand rupees after all!

What could I have done better with that 6k INR?

Perhaps I could have…
- donated them to a charitable cause
- bought a gift for my sister
- taken a small trip into the country side and rediscovered the rain-soaked tracks of the hinterland
- invested in equity
- bought some food for some street urchins
- bought some great books
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But hey, isn’t that 6k a sunk cost? So why am I still thinking about it? I don’t know, you tell me…

Insecurity, Empathy and Collective Learning

Waiting for the DHL courier to arrive from USCIS. Meanwhile, someone’s request for a work permit was denied. It’s funny how it makes you nervous about your own permit. Suddenly you want that assurance that your case has been approved. Insecurity is such a fickle state of mind. It makes you apprehensive, although you can’t relate exactly to the other person’s experience.

What does it mean to relate with another’s experience? You can never be in another’s shoes… never! Each person’s experience shapes his/her response to the given circumstances. And you can’t replicate the exact set of experiences across 2 different human beings. Yet, all that is just theory. A logical impossibility can be disproved by that human quality of empathy. When you relate, you empathize with the other person. It may not necessarily evoke any compassion. It could be just a cold and impersonal identification of the other person’s frame of mind.

And the more experiences I gather – in first person or indirectly – the better I will be at relating to other people, their situation and their thoughts. That’s why I am a sucker for collective learning. I can never learn alone what I can learn when working in a group. And that – working in groups – was the best part about the year at ISB!

Random stuff…

Could not finish Against the Gods. The lesson in history of probability theory got a little too boring after the first few chapters. The initial part is very well written. But after the first 60 pages or so it becomes a history of mathematics. Anyway, I could not have read that over the weekend when I was visiting Nagpur.

So, I picked up Bill Bryson’s Neither Here nor There. This one’s a revelation. The man has a serious talent for writing travelogues. And he’s funny to the point of being wicked! Outrageously funny at times and a laugh-by-the-minute description of Europe at its quirkiest – this book is a must read.

Found 2 more interesting titles while browsing around the library catalogue and Amazon. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins and The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford. Have added them to my To be Read Soon list.

Watched The Usual Suspects last night – again! Reminded of the time when Warikoo had arranged for a common screening at AC2 MLT. Oh boy, does that room evoke memories or what! FOGP - miss you guys!

The business of Tagging

I have been tagged... so, here goes...

I am… someone you would easily miss when walking down the street.

I believe… that the universe is full of aliens more scared of us than we are of them. Someday an intergalactic highway will indeed wipe out this teeny-weeny planet that we think of as our whole wide world!

I read… erotic fiction on the web, especially the sadomasochistic kind!!!

I dream… that I am having a threesome with the 2 hottest imaginable chics and they turn into vampires only to suck the life out of me!

I think… about SEX, all the time!!!

I cannot… stop thinking about the mail which said that a Pig’s orgasm can last for more than 30 minutes!!! Lucky pig.

I wish… I could be Calvin for one day – just one day :)

I wonder… what would happen if the function of the sexes reversed all of a sudden. Men started carrying babies, women started wooing men…

I want… to be that pig in my next life. Imagine… 30 minutes of bliss!!!
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All right... if you have read through all that trash.... here are some bytes of reality, read on....

I am… just another guy from small town India, trying to make it big and break the shackles of a small-town middle-class mindset.

I believe… that each day should be lived to its fullest and there’s no point in looking back on a day where you could not do that… Carpe Diem, baby!

I read… anything that catches my fancy, though I seem to be outgrowing fiction with every passing book. Peter Bernstein’s Against the Gods refuses to be put down.

I dance… only when I am forced to. And obviously I suck at it.

I sing… when I am happy or alone.

I cry… not that often, but usually for reasons not to be disclosed here.

I love… my bike. There’s nothing quite as refreshing as the breeze in my hair, whatever little is left of it ;). Also love to sleep… can do that anywhere, anytime!

I would give my arm… for hmmmm… nothing! Nothing can be worth more than what I can achieve by working for it. If I can’t motivate myself to work for something, it ain’t worth having.

I wish… I had wings and my legs never get tired. Then I would be able to walk or fly over every imaginable piece of land and water on this planet. There’s so much to discover… still!

I want… to die a contented being, full of joy brought by a life fulfilled.

I should… post to my blog more regularly. And definitely take a shot at one professional sport, at least.

I cannot… stand the sight of an open wound.

I would love to… go back to Nagpur and do something for the people, maybe do something TO the people and make them more enterprising.

I will… get rich, or die trying :)

I hope… that someday I will understand myself.

I think… therefore I AM!!!

I tag…
Pawmee

The Golden Mean & Fibonacci

The Golden Mean or the Golden Ratio or the Divine Proportion or just call it Phi has fascinated intellectuals throughout recorded history. The golden ratio can be obtained by dividing a line into 2 parts, such that the ratio of length of the original line to the larger section is the same as the ratio of the larger section to the smaller section.

A/ B = B / C = 1.618…

This ratio is the number Phi (1.618…). It can also be arrived at by dividing a large Fibonacci series number by its previous number in the series.

The beauty of this number however lies in its applicability. It provides a beautiful link between symmetry and asymmetry. The ancient Greeks used it to lend beauty of proportion to their architecture. Leonardo Da Vinci found the golden mean in the human body through his anatomical studies – the ratio of length of human body below and above the navel is the golden ratio. It is also found in the length of bones as one travels from the tip of the finger up the length of a human hand. The renaissance painters are supposed to have used it extensively. The ratio of adjacent sides of a credit card works out within 2% of the golden mean. The horizontal member of most christian crosses splits the vertical member according to the golden mean. The General Assembly building of United Nations in New York also makes extensive use of this ratio.

This brings us to Fibonacci. How exactly did he discover the golden mean? Well, he was tackling a problem related to breeding of rabbits when he chanced upon the now famous Fibonacci series and subsequently the golden mean. The problem concerned the number of rabbits that would be born in a year from an original pair of rabbits, assuming that every month each pair produces another pair and that rabbits begin to breed when they are 2 months old. While solving this he found that the number of pairs every month after the fourth month would be: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 243 and so on. The beauty of this series is that each successive number is the sum of the two preceeding numbers. If the rabbits kept up the pace for a hundred months, the total number of pairs would be a whopping 354,224,848,179,261,915,075!!!

But more than anything else, Fibonacci probably established the significance and utility of the Arab numeric system in the eyes of the Europeans. His publication of the Liber Abaci not only intoduced the new numeral system to Europeans, it also demonstrated ways of using this system to solve practical issues like bookkeeping, conversion of weights, etc.

Many people believe that the Fibonacci numbers can be used to make a variety of predictions, especially about the stock market. Although the concept of risk and its measurement evolved in the fifteenth century, Fibonacci in the 12th century perhaps enabled the first step in making measurement a key factor in the taming of risk.

And by the way, Fibonacci means Blockhead. The real name of the mathematician is Leanorado Pisano, and he was anything but a blockhead.

Post inspired by the first few chapters of “Against the Gods” by Peter L. Bernstein.