mind × the + gap

ANYONE WITH A SOMEWHAT SERIOUS SLANT towards one’s blogging lines would want to publish something in a physical paper format (read: book) at some point in time. At least that is what my general observation has been. On one hand, while the technology of bringing words online in the forms of Blogger, LiveJournal, MySpace and alike have made content creation a one-click job and in doing so might have taken the ‘authors’ away from the traditional book-publishing process, on the other hand it is really interesting to see how the same technology loops back and makes publishing a book in paper format an equally user-friendly and accessible experience. Add to that the ability to enable Creative Commons options, variable pricing options, and manufacturing (physical printing on paper and binding) and shipping on-demand, provides the new dimension of flexibility in the hands on authors. This is the modern technology looping back to aid the traditional medium of publication rather than clipping it.

The concept first came with Bob Young (co-founder of Red Hat Linux) and Stephen Fraser when they founded lulu.com – winner of 2007 Web 2.0 awards, and arguably, the largest print-on-demand service for books in the world at this point.

[Above: Bob Young, Co-founder of Red Hat. Aug 2007]

The cook-book about publishing your book through lulu is readily available on the site, and is rather straightforward. One can also provide custom-made front and back covers for the to-be-printed book. The content could be a simple word document which would be converted and formatted by lulu automatically as per requirements. (The structure of the uploaded document/book should be in one of the prescribed format.) One can easily buy an ISBN number as well for the work to be published.

I got this thoughtful advice recently from someone I like to trust and respect: “Write your book at [the age of] 40, but dream about it for at least five years…” So, even if it is not time yet for you to start publishing (and making money out of what you write!) I suppose it is still always worth-while to open your ‘storefront’ on lulu that ‘sells’ your book(s). You may stop by my store on lulu. It is still empty though, but you may would want to keep a watch on it! 😉

For an interesting interview of Stephen Fraser by Creative Commons, go here.

Crowded ‘Facts’:

“I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent.
Depend upon it – there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
— Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)

Quite interesting it is that the same context, when applied to the premise (mind attic) of Business Analysis, holds equally true. It is the weeding out of ‘useless’ facts from the assortment of information is what makes of an effective analysis.

Learning to Observe:

“Like all other arts, the science of deduction and analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study, not is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfecting in it.
Before turning to those mortal and mental aspects of the matter which present the greatest difficulties, let the inquirer begin by mastering more elementary problems. Let him, on meeting a fellow-mortal, learn at a glance to distinguish the history of man, and the trade of profession on which he belongs.
Puerile as such an exercise may seem, it sharpens the faculties of observation, and teaches one where to look and what to look for.”
— Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)

It is much telling that the century-old master analyst has termed ‘science of analysis’ as an art.

April 23 – TODAY BEING ST. GEORGE’S DAY is also considered to be the Birth Day of William Shakespeare. (Nobody knows for sure of the bard’s exact date of birth.)

Just wondering if the alchemists of that era would have got a couple of ‘immortality’ pills of which one was taken by Shakespeare such that he would still be alive at this time, what kind of blogs would he be maintaining..?

Perhaps a blog with the highest hits on the net!

Footnote: Sampling only Technorati may perhaps be a rather narrow view, but looking at their popular index stats available of top 100, the most popular blog as of this moment is – The Huffington Post, closely followed by (my personal preference) TechCrunch. (Well, by including weblinks here, I just contributed one more point to the ‘authority’ count on Technorati for both.)

THEY CALL HIM “FRED THE SHRED…”. If you count “few good men” who took the lead in the “rationalisation” of workforce in the conservative European banking and Financial services, Fred has to be in the front row.

Sir Frederick Anderson Goodwin, remained in the news in Europe, mainly Britain, for his often visionary yet unorthodox methods of running Britain’s second largest Banking group. After he assumed control, the RBS groups, perhaps for the first time, saw a rather American-styled cost-cutting, or Shredding as the Britons prefer to call it.

Managing nearly 1000 people worldwide at the age of 32, the acumen more than the aggression made Fred the CEO of the Clydesdale Bank at the age of 36. He has been quoted as famously saying, “I have no time for cynics, spectators or dead wood”. And as we speak, being with the RBS group, he is the longest serving CEO in the FTSE-100 index. (That precisely makes me wonder if the pool underneath is in a pull-down mode…)

Knighted at the age of 46 for his services in Banking in 2004, the RBS group saw its highest ever rapid inorganic growth since Fred was brought in by another Scot and the then Chairman of RBS Group, Sir George Mathewson. Whilst being at a couple of bids of hostile acquisitions, he has been quoted saying, “There may be some possible mercy killings”.

Chosen as the “Businessman of the Year – 2002” by Forbes, Fred began with the humongous acquisition of NatWest in 2000 with unusual amount of due diligence of nearly 500 man-days, and the latest is acquiring of ABN AMRO for about Euro 70bn by the consortium let by RBS Group. All in all, in last nine years that Fred has been with the BRS group, their ‘shopping list’ lists 26 buy-outs at the value of GBP 33bn (about USD 66bn). (See also: The “Richest” CIO)

[Above: (L-to-R) Maurice Lippens, Executive Chairman of Fortis, Jean-Paul Votron, CEO of Fortis, Fred Goodwin, CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), and Emilio Botin, Chairman of Spanish banking group Santander Central Hispano (SCH) in Edinburgh, Scotland, 10 August 2007, at the time of acquisition of ABN AMRO by the BRS-led consortium.]

It is that time in the turning wheels of world economy that the Citigroup reports a loss of USD 5.1 bn, and the chairman of UBS already fallen on his own sward, Fred is equally under fire for (yet undisclosed) rights issue coming from RBS for nearly GBP 9bn.

It is perfectly all right, I suppose, that there are other, younger, aspiring ‘leaders’ waiting in the wings to take command, the aegis of Fred and the likes has to be honoured nonetheless; for what it is – the aegis; though you may also count those rather “dodgy deals” that Fred supported for the sake of “business” at “huge” environmental costs in the Oil & Gas sector… (See also: The Green wall of China)

Though it remains to be seen what the final outcome in Fred’s chair would be, personally I feel would hold on…

WINDMILLS WERE A THING fascination, especially in the farmland of picturesque Europe, more so perhaps because they spoke of a bygone era that I felt I just missed. To much delight, the winds continued to blow in their directions, as it were, and the windmills kept going around. With time, however, as the water-table got deeper and deeper, the Netherlanders found other ways and means to keep them spinning, namely, Electricity generated by turbines spinning by the winds. And I would say, this is a niche electro-mechanical engineering field – building a very energy efficient and ‘light’ turbine, such that the winds can spin at, and at the same time it gives sufficient torque to the dynamo to create electromagnetic charge that could be refined as usable domestic electricity. And along with all that technical things, the ROI turns profitable within reasonable metrics (and also, that we don’t end up having a dog catching its own tail).

Now, so far there was no direct conflict of interest, if you like, between oil-burning (read: automobiles) energy devices verses electricity generation using water-spun, coal burning or nuclear turbines. And while saying that, I am choosing to ignore that portion of energy consumption where European and American homes prefer to use gas instead of electricity for domestic heating in the winter. I appreciate that this percentage might be big enough to ignore, but let’s keep it simple here for the sake of argument.

As Al Gore would love to tell you in a dark room with a huge LCD projector – both of these ‘consume’ natural resources, which are not renewable. And (to some degree) he is right. Unfortunately, the Earth could host only as many dinosaurs as few million years ago to turn them in oil today that could go on and on.

The interesting part begins when the ROI (return on investment: time to turn profitable) for the oil companies starts stretching with every oil well getting deeper, water-source running dry, coal-mines hitting hard-rocks, and atomic energy falling hostage to missile-making men. For them, ‘going green’ proposes the logical next ‘green field’.

The news as it is reported by Reuters today says that Mr. T. Boone Pickens, the legendary Texas Oil Billionaire it ‘going green’. The Oil-man has plans to pump in USD 10bn into Wind-energy, and the proposal, which would start acquiring land next month, is to create the world’s biggest wind farm. The estimates have it that when those 2,700 wind turbines would eventually generate 4,000 megawatts of electricity – the equivalent of building two commercial scale nuclear power plants – enough power for about 1 million homes.

Mr. Pickens would also want to take the ‘pressure off’ the automobile sector by freeing up gas by not using it for energy production, but to let it go to those (billion dollar) refineries to pump out gasoline and diesel for the cars. At the same time, also take the pressure off from the American auto manufacturers to be energy efficient (and shake Toyota and Honda off?).

I have come to admire the old Oil-man, not simply for him shrewdly planning for another ‘windfall’ (no pun intended) of billions, but also contributing to the geographical landscape of North America: Windmills look pretty… Anywhere.

[Related post: Who Pockets The Money You Pay Extra For Gas?]
[For the complete Reuters story, go here.]

[A little background: It had been a few months that I was searching for twin-blade cartridges for the Gillette SensorExcel safety razor that I prefer. I had almost given up on it by now, and was looking towards this seemingly inevitable upgrade to Mach3 or something when I suddenly hit a jackpot – I found a supermarket selling the make and model that I was looking for. I could finally purchase a year worth of supply.

In other words, another year that I would effectively dodge Gillette Mach3 upgrade ‘threat’.]

The history goes that some hundred years ago, Mr. King Gillette was a wealthy but frustrated failure of an innovator at 40. He had written a book called “The Human Drift“, which argued that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public, and that millions of Americans should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by the Niagara Falls.

His boss at the bottle cap company, meanwhile, had just one piece of advice: Invent something people use and throw away.

One day while shaving with a rather blunt straight razor, the idea struck to him that perhaps this reusable razor could be replaced by a ‘consumable’ razor having the blade made of thin metal strips. Somewhere around 1870, Kampfe Brothers had developed a forged razor of a similar kind, which Mr. Gillette gladly improvised upon, registered the patent for the new design in his name, and the world got it’s first safety razor with name ‘Gillette’.

The really unique and path-breaking piece about this safety razor was not the product itself so much so was the marketing model it assumed, and which I called – the Gillette ‘trap’. Known as “Freebie Marketing“, the business model was to give away free safety razors and make profit by selling corresponding blades for them afterwards. In the initial days, however, this marketing model was the product’s weakness for the industrial facilities were not advanced enough to manufacture cheap blades with thin metal strips as mass-production. Mr. Gillette had to struggle almost for a couple of decades more to turn his model truly profitable. That past, the inventor is reaping benefits since than, and the company was valued at nearly USD 60bn in 2005 when P&G acquired it to create world’s largest personal care and household products company.

The year of 2005 is important for this post also because, after acquiring my new supply of cartridges, I thought of using the one cartridge first that I had been saving for a rainy day for quite some time now. The manufacturing date on this old one is May 2005. But interestingly the retail price is exactly the same as the one I bought today in 2008.

This really got me thinking as to how a product could sustain its retail price for almost three years while inflation is nearly 7% yoy, and the input costs for the cartridges, mainly steel, have jumped (e.g. price-rise in automotive sector). Even a 1-2% difference in prising would have killed the motive of this post, but here we are, with three probabilities:

• Gillette products were over-priced in 2005, and hence no price-revision took place in last three years. OR
• Gillette is under price-pressure today, and so is unable to hike prices (and thus making less profit). OR
• There is a twist in the tail for the “Freebie marketing” model now that there is a new owner P&G is running the show (Also, as critiques say, innovation has already taken a hit at Gillette under P&G – could they simply stop adding more blades to the cartridge and try something really innovative?)

If you come up with a better possibility, do let me know! 🙂 I would gladly appreciate it if it helps me dodging the threat for upgrade to Mach3 yet again…

I FOUND IT VERY SYMBOLIC SEEING The Dalai Lama paying homage to Mahatma’s memorial. And, rightly so. Mahatma, who always advocated for equanimity of all religions, was not a Buddhist, yet, without any exaggerations, he was a perfect example of one. Mahatma brought independence to his people through non-violence, and that is what the Lama teaches the world.

[Left: Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama throws rose petals at Raj Ghat, The Memorial to Mahatma Gandhi in New Delhi on March 29, 2008, to attend a public inter-faith prayer meeting for those who lost their lives in Tibet. Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Jain leaders offered prayers along with The Dalai Lama and hundreds of Tibetans and their supporters at the cremation spot of Mahatma Gandhi. – tiskali.co.uk]

The Dalai Lama is a defacto (though dethroned) King of the Tibetan people. And he is at his Kingly duty while he takes on China with respect to the rights for the Tibetans. In doing so, as always, as Bodhisattva incarnate, he has taken the peaceful (middle) path, and his ‘meeting’ the Mahatma was more than a statement to this effect.

On the other hand, there is this ‘fraction’ made up of Tibetan students, who have taken the route of giving the Chinese military a taste of their own medicine – in an equally violent manner. It’s rather natural. But they should be under an effective leadership, and should be knowing what they are doing, else they would likely end up damaging the Dalai Lama rather than China. History has it that every peaceful protest or uprising is accompanied by a violent one, and vice versa. After all, not everybody who would want to attain the same aim would consider one path as the only path.

One of the common most dividing range among peoples of all kinds and cultures – An apparent generation gap..!

The twist truly comes in the way the 2008 Olympics games are entwined into this ethnic issue. China could have done without it at any rate, but the Tibetans saw a ‘global’ opportunity to capture world-attention. It appears that they were also backing upon the by now well-known oppressive nature of the rule that China imposes under its regime. A little provocation by a certain bunch of Tibetan students in Lhasa, and China happily obliged. And when it realised that it was rather a lure to the dragon into the cave, it started calling foul on the Dalai Lama for allegedly ‘master-minding’ the ‘violence’. Too late to figure, I suppose.

[Right: Police pull down a demonstrator along the route of the Olympic torch in London. Protesters advocating Tibet’s independence disrupted the torch’s path in London, Paris and San Francisco. – time.com]

The bad aspect of Olympics being dragged into this is, as I observed in some online forums, that it has confused as well as divided people world over in terms of their support to the Tibetans, and in doing so, have lost some good souls to the opposite camp. Someone said, “Keep sports out of it, whatever it may be… [Sports] is probably only place left with some spirit…”, Someone else, “Olympics does not belong to China, it belongs to the world, are they [Tibetans] boycotting the world?” another said, “Let’s boycott USA for its treatment to the Indians, and Russians for this, and German’s for that, and Britans for another, and… You would not end up having any place [wealthy enough] to host Olympics… ” These people are generally sympathetic with the oppression that the Tibetans have been through, like they do for Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Darfur, or any other place…

On the beneficial part, the Tibetan gained world-stage to put-up their protests, largely peaceful ones, and attracted the attention to their cause. The media, who it appears remained shrewdly divided, have had multiple field-days. While they ‘worded’ condemnation for the Olympics boycott-calls, at the same time, they gave certain people and nations the arm-twisting opportunity to twist China. That said, it is not for the first time that Olympics face a boycott issue; the world has seen it thrice already. But in all those cases, the issues were international and political rather than ethnic.

[Above: Countries that have boycotted Olympics – Montreal-1976 (yellow), Moscow-1980 (blue) and Los Angeles-1984 (red).]

At the end of the day, however, China would remain unstoppable, and the chances of the Olympics being deferred/called-off and next to nil. And the reason is simple: Economics.

Economics and the numbers involved in this Beijing Olympics event does not favour either deferment or cancellation. Today, Sports is a huge business globally. With all due respect to its international ‘community spirit’ and all that, Olympics is after all an economic event of the largest scale in sports today. While it requires a huge investment, it also promises to bring in a mountain worth of foreign exchange within a very short run of about a month. Perhaps, the Bird’s nest has some golden eggs!

China has a lot at stake, for, along with it’s investor ‘friends’, it has infused billions into infrastructure development in/around Beijing to host this event. China’s business plans in terms of first breaking even, expand infrastructure at the cost of tourists’ money and hyper-consume it’s own products in the process, and then make billions in profit, had not accounted for Tibet – Or might have underestimated Tibet, because that’s what it seems now. And I suppose that is where China is at its most vulnerable (numbers are not released by China; for London 2012 the budget is £ 9bn = ~USD 18bn). After all, it’s all about Money. Threats to Beijing Olympics were first proclaimed by China (not the Dalai Lama, as some media had first reported, and then corrected. The Dalai Lama has rather favoured the Olympics, calling them a peaceful event.). One of the reasons why China had to sound the bugle could be for all those US/EU investors to help cover the grounds. It is supposed to be a very effective strategy if executed properly – let those ‘western’ investors resist anti-Olympics (i.e. anti-Chinese) propaganda in their respective home-land for the sake of their own invested money.

The Olympics would go on, on schedule, as planned, and we would get to see everyone falling in line as well.

And at that rate, Tibetans seem to lose out; on one hand they could not dislodge Olympics, they might have made enemies out of innocents, and the ‘uprising’ remains oppressed. (Also, any uprising has to be from within, and not without.)

This is perhaps the toughest time for the Dalai Lama since his exile. And I hope the Mahatma had a word or two of respite for him…