Beta Thoughts » Current Affairs

What works in US

Pankaj — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 06:04:46 +0000

In a NYT op-ed about Genius of Jobs, Walter Isaacson made a comment about US ingenuity and how it is THE advantage that seperates US from India and China. In my experience I would say 3 things that work well in US

1. Scaling what works best – Ideas that work are scaled rapidly and money flows to them. You would see no-name companies go from small start to national international in matter of years. Venture Capital does wonders over here. Apple, Genentech, Google and Facebook are prime examples. (Sorry for Silicon Valley bias)

2. Law of Land – is enforced and contracts are followed. Enron, Galleon Hedge Fund, Rajat Gupta etc no one is spared. ( Yeah yeah you can say a lot of folks responsible for Financial Crisis didn’t pay for what they let loose but still I think it is net positive than otherwise)

3. University Education – US has most of the world’s best education institutions. This is one advantage that could erode in future as the cost of education is becoming very high plus new models of education would evolve with ubiquitous internet and collaboration tools it enables.

India Development – Atanu Dey of Deeshaa

pankaj — Sun, 27 Mar 2005 19:20:51 +0000

Atanu’s post over at Deeshaa about India Development are always very pertinent. In his latest post on leapfroggingIndia into a developed nation and his related posts elsewhere on Deeshaa he brings up excellent points. Gist of it is that you don’t go from an agricultural econmoy to services economy, you have to go thru the industrial/manufacturing stage. And for a large economies like India most of the stuff/products should be consumed domestically. It is the last point that got me interested in these posts by Atanu. I was still in college so it must be at least 7-8 years old news. A couple of professors from Berkeley or Stanford were visiting Banglore and they echoed the same things that for Banglore to be the Real Silicon Valley most of the services generated by it should be consumed in the domestic market.

Any way here are the links to Atanu’s posts

*Sequencing — Part 2 or leapfrogging
*The Development Path of Economies
*Agriculture and Development

Tsunami Blog and easiest way to help

pankaj — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 03:29:41 +0000

Various sources (Acorn, Brij et al) point to the Tsunami blog set up by few folks to aggregate the information about Tsunami relief efforts.

This link points to the list of important telephone numbers on the Tsunami blog.

Also contribute to the relief efforts in whatever way you can. Ram Dhan has made it very easy by setting up a site to contribute by Paypal. Click the link below to find more

Contribute via Paypal on Ram Dhan’s Site

The world is really noticing us or it is good PR

pankaj — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 07:25:16 +0000

Stories like A Giant So Big It’s a Proxy for India’s Economy always make me prowd, but then somewhere in the back a thought lurks is it a result of good PR. But anyway this story reminds me of an advice CNET radio anchor for a investment talk show use to give – “Tech stocks are not the real index of economy, shares like Home Depot, Wal-Mart really tell you where the economy is going”

Quote from the article on Reliance at NY Times

In the tumult of putting a new government in place in India, the stock of Reliance Industries was a good gauge of expectations about the prospects for continued economic liberalization.

Another question that comes to mind is while it is good but just like in cricket we need more good players besides Sachin.

Let us all go to India this summer :D

pankaj — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 19:19:41 +0000

Seems like this is the time to go to India. I had no plans to visit India 3 weeks earlier and now I am busy shopping tickets for it. Looks like people and people
have beaten me to it. I am getting tickets in excess of $1450. Steep price boo hoo hoo May be someone will tell me the phone number of an angel travel agent who can procure tickets for the good ol’ price of $1200.

IT to India – look who is watching

pankaj — Wed, 12 May 2004 05:37:42 +0000

I have been reading Brad DeLong‘s writings for quite sometime. I first came across him for one his book “Slouching towards Utopia”. This book made me feel good as it described the life of a worker during Victorian ages and present workers. Brad is a Professor of Economic at UCB and it is good to see how closely he is following IT to India phenomenon. Today on his blog he pointed to a story on Hindu about “Google opening office in India”.