K Anji Reddy: Innovator Forever: With his consistent focus on new ideas, K Anji Reddy encouraged several of his colleagues to start their own businesses

K Anji Reddy: Innovator Forever

by Seema Singh | Nov 13, 2013

With his consistent focus on new ideas, K Anji Reddy encouraged several of his colleagues to start their own businesses

I always believed that whatever the West has done, we could do as well and I’ve proved it time and again,” said K Anji Reddy during a conversation a few months before he passed away in March 2013, at the age of 72. Much before innovation became fashionable, and eventually inevitable, he invested in research and within three years licensed new molecules to multinationals, beginning 1997. Much before globalisation became commonplace, he took Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL) global in the early 1990s and set up businesses in the regulated markets of the US, Europe as well as in Russia. And much before entrepreneurship became cool, he, a first-generation entrepreneur, vitalised the entrepreneurial culture of Hyderabad, encouraging several of his colleagues and employees to start their own businesses. Today, at least a dozen sizeable companies and scores of ancillary businesses can trace their origin to the company that Dr Reddy started in 1984. So infectious was the influence that the founders of Divi’s Laboratories, MSN Laboratories and Virchow Laboratories even carried forward the name ‘Laboratories’ with them. Read more of this post

Take a Crooked Path to Growth; Successful companies don’t grow in a straight line. Here are three ways growing companies manage their growth through the ups and downs

Take a Crooked Path to Growth 

KARL STARK AND BILL STEWART

Successful companies don’t grow in a straight line. Here are three ways growing companies manage their growth through the ups and downs. There is no cookie-cutter approach to growth. Success stories never turn out the way they were meant to be. When entrepreneurs set out to build a business, they have grand plans about investment, customer acquisition, and eventual stardom. They show a typical hockey-stick chart that shows investment and low revenues in the first few years, followed by a sudden and sustained surge of astronomical growth. Read more of this post

Here’s What The Swedes Get Right About Parenting That Americans Don’t

Here’s What The Swedes Get Right About Parenting That Americans Don’t

KATRINA ALCORN, MAXED OUT: AMERICAN MOMS ON THE BRINK NOV. 12, 2013, 3:43 PM 10,229 25

Editor’s note: The following excerpt is from “Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink” by Katrina Alcorn. The book tells Alcorn’s personal story of managing her career, children, and marriage, and what she learned about “having it all.”

Available from Seal Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2013. pgs. 349-351

The poet William Blake said, “What is now proved was once only imagined.”

Let’s take a moment to imagine a world where more people are involved in the work of caring for children. And by people I mean, specifically, er . . . men. How could this one fact change our government policies, the dynamics of the workplace, and our relationships with each other?  Read more of this post

Powering Employees With More Than a Paycheck

NOVEMBER 10, 2013, 4:35 PM

Powering Employees With More Than a Paycheck

By TONY SCHWARTZ

More than two-thirds of employees around the world, a recent Gallup poll found, feel disengaged, dispirited and fatigued at work. Why is that? A value proposition is no more than the promise of a fair deal: I provide you with something you want and, in exchange, you give me something I consider worth the trade. That trade between employers and employees, since the dawn of capitalism, has been time for money. Read more of this post

The great middle-class identity crisis; ‘Fewer stay in the same profession for life. We are ceasing to be our jobs’

November 8, 2013 12:09 pm

The great middle-class identity crisis

By Simon Kuper

‘Fewer stay in the same profession for life. We are ceasing to be our jobs’

Ionce had dinner in San Francisco with a group of independent bookshop owners. How, I asked them, do people end up running their own bookshops? Oh, they said, there was a set route, pretty much the equivalent of taking holy orders. Read more of this post

For Better Performance, Hedge Funds Seek the Inner Trader; The industry is increasingly turning to self-help programs, sometimes referred to as “mindware” products, to try to improve its game

NOVEMBER 11, 2013, 1:42 PM

For Better Performance, Hedge Funds Seek the Inner Trader

By ALEXANDRA STEVENSON

In the hedge fund industry, as in sports, performance is everything. So after several years of lackluster performance, the industry is increasingly turning to self-help programs, sometimes referred to as “mindware” products, to try to improve its game. To cater to this demand, a whole new cottage industry has cropped up in which statisticians track performance data, and coaches and psychiatrists work to help hedge fund managers make smarter decisions by getting them to talk about their personal histories and biases. The thinking goes that if an athlete can use coaches, why not traders? Read more of this post

80 N Koreans executed for watching TV drama from South: report

80 N Koreans executed for watching TV drama from South: report

Staff Reporter

2013-11-13

About 80 North Korean citizens were ordered to be executed on Nov. 3 for the crime of watching television dramas from South Korea, according to the South’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper. Read more of this post

Steve Jobs On Android Founder Andy Rubin: ‘Big, Arrogant …”

Steve Jobs On Android Founder Andy Rubin: ‘Big, Arrogant …”

JAY YAROW NOV. 12, 2013, 11:05 AM 14,281 45

Steve Jobs did not like Android, or the guy that ran it, Andy Rubin, according to a new book on the Google-Apple smartphone wars. Jobs told friends that he thought Rubin was a “big, arrogant f**k,” according to Fred Vogelstein’s, Dogfight: How Apple And Google Went To War And Started a Revolution. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, Google was already working on Android, its own smartphone operating system. Google bought Android, which was Rubin’s startup, for ~$50 million in 2005.  According to Dogfight, when Apple announced the iPhone, Rubin realized he would have to throw out what he was thinking of launching. Read more of this post

This Is Allegedly A Photo Of An Uncooked McRib

This Is Allegedly A Photo Of An Uncooked McRib

ASHLEY LUTZ NOV. 12, 2013, 1:52 PM 13,976 12

We normally see the McRib cooked and covered in colorful barbecue sauce. A photo posted by Reddit user DJDanaK claims to show the McRib without any of the fixings. “My buddy works at McDonald’s and sent me this photo of raw McRib meat,” DJDanaK writes. We can’t verify the photo’s authenticity, but the frozen meat patty does resemble a McRib.  Judge for yourself:

And this, of course, is what the McRib looks like in all its sauce-covered glory:

Woven into the industrial fabric; Andrew Seal bought recession-hit mills to protect his wool business

November 12, 2013 5:55 pm

Woven into the industrial fabric

By Andrew Bounds

Thirty-five years ago the young Andrew Seal was getting used to being sent away with a flea in his ear. As he traipsed round the textile mills of Bradford, which had until recently been the woollen capital of the world, trying to sell raw fibre, “they told me to come back when I’d been around a while,” he says. Now he owns many of the famous mills that turned him away. SIL Holdings, started by his fatherin 1970, has not only become one of the biggest remaining British woollen operations, but it is credited by many with saving parts of the domestic industry from recent near collapse.

Read more of this post

Microsoft Abandons ‘Stack Ranking’ of Employees; Software Giant Will End Controversial Practice of Forcing Managers to Designate Stars, Underperformers; “The boss’s job is not to evaluate. The boss’s job is to make everyone a five.”

Microsoft Abandons ‘Stack Ranking’ of Employees

Software Giant Will End Controversial Practice of Forcing Managers to Designate Stars, Underperformers

SHIRA OVIDE And RACHEL FEINTZEIG

Updated Nov. 12, 2013 7:34 p.m. ET

Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.61% is abandoning major elements of its controversial “stack ranking” employee-review and compensation system, the latest blow against a once-popular management technique. The Redmond, Wash., software company said it would no longer require managers to grade employees against one another and rank them on a scale of one to five. The system—often called “stack” or “forced” ranking—meant a small percentage of Microsoft’s 100,000 employees had to be designated as underperformers. Read more of this post

The common DNA of innovative companies; where a climate of mistrust exists, employees may be unwilling to avail the organisation of their ideas as it may be at their own expense

The common DNA of innovative companies

To reinvent themselves over and over again in response to customer demand for cheaper, faster and better round-the-clock availability of goods and services, companies have looked to various management theories for a blueprint for success — with each fashionable theory giving way to a subsequent one expounding new processes and methodologies to be slavishly followed.

BY GARY MILES –

3 HOURS 27 MIN AGO

To reinvent themselves over and over again in response to customer demand for cheaper, faster and better round-the-clock availability of goods and services, companies have looked to various management theories for a blueprint for success — with each fashionable theory giving way to a subsequent one expounding new processes and methodologies to be slavishly followed. Read more of this post

Marty Whitman’s Brutal Critique Of Greenwald’s Value Investing Book

Marty Whitman’s Brutal Critique Of Greenwald’s Value Investing Book

by csinvestingNovember 11, 2013

A reader, the Great Sandesh, alerted me to this. By the way, I am not a fan of Prof. Greenwald’s book,Value Investing — From Graham to Buffett and Beyond written by Bruce C.N. Greenwald, Judd Kahn, Paul D. Sonkin and Michael van Biema. But I do highly recommend his book, Competition Demystified,to learn  strategic analysis. Whitman discusses the book in his 2001 TAVF Shareholder Letter. The language used by all academics, including Greenwald, et al, that securities values are a function of the present worth of “cash flows” is unfortunate. From the point of view of any security holder, that holder is seeking a “cash bailout”, not a “cash flow”. One really cannot understand securities’ values unless one is also aware of the three sources of cash bailouts. Read more of this post

1 in 10 surveyed tried Viagra to battle jetlag

1 in 10 surveyed tried Viagra to battle jetlag

Wednesday, Nov 13, 2013
MyPaper
By Samantha Boh

To fight the jetlag monster, Singaporeans have resorted to some interesting tactics, with one in 10 surveyed admitting that they have even tried Viagra in their anti-jetlag battle. This was one of the findings of a new survey by global travel search site Skyscanner on 1,000 Singaporean travellers. A more conventional technique – stretching and engaging in light exercises on flights – was ranked tops by two thirds, or 61 per cent, of respondents. Following closely behind in second and third place were exercising and getting fresh air before the flight (60 per cent) and setting their watch to the new time zone (48 per cent). The latter is a tried-and-tested method for management associate Jonathan Lim, 26. “I always make it a point to set my watch to the new time zone just before take-off so that, psychologically, my body will be primed for major adjustments to come,” he said. Although combining light exercise and healthy eating was popular with fliers, only around half of those who tried it said it was effective in offsetting the effects of a long-haul flight. Over a third – 37 per cent – of travellers also said they consumed alcohol in an attempt to offset jetlag but only a third said that it worked. On the other hand, 31 per cent avoided alcohol onboard, with half saying it was successful in negating the effects of jetlag.

Grain Giants Go Gluten-Free to Plump Profits on Fad Diet

Grain Giants Go Gluten-Free to Plump Profits on Fad Diet

Grain sellers want to have their gluten-free cake and eat it, too.

As the stretchy protein found in wheat and other grains has become the latest dietary bogeyman, sales at companies like General Mills Inc. (GIS), Kellogg Co. (K) and Britain’s Warburtons Ltd. have come under pressure. Yet instead of fighting back against a fad many dietitians contend lacks scientific grounding, they’re boosting output of pricier gluten-free foods while leaving industry groups to defend their traditional products. Read more of this post

Ocean Drones Plumb New Depths

November 11, 2013

Ocean Drones Plumb New Depths

By WILLIAM HERKEWITZ

ATLANTIC CITY — Five miles offshore from the Golden Nugget casino, Michael F. Crowley, a marine scientist at Rutgers University, heaves three lifeboat-yellow drones off the back of his research vessel. The gliders, as he calls them, are winged and propellerless, like miniature Tomahawk missiles. Two are on loan from the Navy, and one, Rutgers’s own, is pockmarked from a past shark attack. As they slink into the Atlantic to begin a monthlong mission, they join a fleet of 12 others across the Eastern Seaboard, from Nova Scotia to Georgia. Read more of this post

The rules of innovation can be flexible; For almost every insight, there is an opposite approach

November 11, 2013 3:44 pm

The rules of innovation can be flexible

By Andrew Hill

For almost every insight, there is an opposite approach

If a destination’s desirability is measured by the number of maps that claim to lead you to it, innovation is the corporate world’s Taj Mahal. Among the manuals on sale is an Innovator’s Guide, a Cookbook, a Toolkit, a Path, a Way, a Handbook and a Manifesto. My addition to the genre would be The Innovator’s Contradictions. Insights gleaned from last week’s FT Innovate conference suggest that, for almost every rule of innovation, there is an innovator who has made a breakthrough – and a fortune – flouting it. Here are seven examples. Read more of this post

‘Invisible’ Bike Helmets Are A Real Thing Now

‘Invisible’ Bike Helmets Are A Real Thing Now

THEJOURNAL.IE NOV. 11, 2013, 6:00 PM 15,669 10

Are you a cyclist who is also concerned about how you look while cycling around town? If so, then two Swedish industrial design students have solved your problem and have created an “invisible helmet” for cyclists. Bike helmets are a very important safety feature, especially for those who cycle around a busy city where both drivers and pedestrians can be a problem. But there is no denying that it can be difficult to find a stylish bike helmet and then there is the issue of the helmet hair. The idea for the invisible helmet came to life in 2005 as part of a Masters’ thesis, when Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin were studying industrial design at the University of Lund.The Hövding (invisible helmet) is actually an air bag, which uses a helium gas cylinder to inflate when its sensors detect a sudden jolt. The helmets are also CE labelled, which means they comply with EU safety standards and have undergone a variety of safety tests.

Machiavelli: A Renaissance Life; The often-vilified Renaissance politico and author of The Prince comes to life as a diabolically clever, yet mild mannered and conscientious civil servant

Machiavelli: A Renaissance Life Paperback

by Joseph Markulin  (Author)

The often-vilified Renaissance politico and author of The Prince comes to life as a diabolically clever, yet mild mannered and conscientious civil servant. Author Joseph Markulin presents Machiavelli’s life as a true adventure story, replete with violence, treachery, heroism, betrayal, sex, bad popes, noble outlaws, deformed kings, menacing Turks, even more menacing Lutherans, unscrupulous astrologers, untrustworthy dentists—and, of course, forbidden love. While sharing the stage with Florence’s Medici family, the nefarious and perhaps incestuous Borgias, the artists Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and the doomed prophet Savonarola, Machiavelli is imprisoned, tortured, and ultimately abandoned. Nevertheless, he remains the sworn enemy of tyranny and a tireless champion of freedom and the republican form of government. Out of the cesspool that was Florentine Renaissance politics, only one name is still uttered today—that of Niccolo Machiavelli. This mesmerizing, vividly told story will show you why his fame endures. Read more of this post

A novelistic biography makes Machiavelli into a Renaissance Zelig. He cracks Leonardo’s code! He listens to Michelangelo kvetch!

Book Review: ‘Machiavelli’ by Joseph Markulin

A novelistic biography makes Machiavelli into a Renaissance Zelig. He cracks Leonardo’s code! He listens to Michelangelo kvetch!

DAVID POLANSKY

Nov. 11, 2013 6:50 p.m. ET

The life of a great thinker presents unique challenges to a would-be biographer. Actions and events are the stuff of biographies, yet thoughts, not deeds, are what chiefly make the thinker of interest to us. As Heidegger reportedly said of Aristotle: “He lived, he wrote, he died.” Niccolò Machiavelli is that rare exception. To paraphrase “The Princess Bride,” his story gives us fighting, torture, poison, revenge, bad men, good men, conspiracies and miracles. All of which is to say that Machiavelli is more suited than most great thinkers for the novelistic treatment he receives in Joseph Markulin’s “Machiavelli: A Renaissance Life.” That this format is less successful than Sebastian de Grazia’s similarly idiosyncratic biography, “Machiavelli in Hell” (1989), is largely due to Mr. Markulin’s inability to manifest the great man’s ideas—to which all the dramatic episodes are secondary. Read more of this post

Black gold: A hundred years after the first excavations, the asphalt pools at Rancho La Brea, in Los Angeles, are still filling in details of life in the Pleistocene

Black gold: A hundred years after the first excavations, the asphalt pools at Rancho La Brea, in Los Angeles, are still filling in details of life in the Pleistocene

Nov 9th 2013 | Los Angeles |From the print edition

TO A parched mammoth or giant sloth, they must have looked heaven-sent: mirror pools of water waiting to slake a thirst. Heaven, however, was not their progenitor, for the pools were traps. Below their siren surfaces lay not mud, but tar. For thousands of years they lured thirsty animals, and also hungry ones—carnivores attracted by the calls of those already stuck—to their doom. Read more of this post

Foreigners Share What They Find Most Surprising About America

Foreigners Share What They Find Most Surprising About America

MADELINE STONE NOV. 11, 2013, 3:12 PM 20,435 31

The U.S. has historically had a huge immigrant population. But what makes American culture different from the countries immigrants are leaving? Foreigners, as well as others who happen to know people who are new to the U.S., have been using this Quora thread to share what they think makes America unique. Their answers to the question “What facts about the United States do foreigners not believe until they come to America?” were pretty fascinating. We’ve picked out some especially interesting tidbits.  Read more of this post

Iran’s supreme leader built a real estate empire on seized property

Iran’s supreme leader built a real estate empire on seized property

By Tim Fernholz @timfernholz 6 hours ago

When we found out that Iran had secretly owned a Manhattan skyscraper for decades, we knew the country’s rulers had a talent for moving money, but a new Reuters investigation has revealed a $95 billion corporate empire controlled by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. At least some of that revenue comes from the confiscation of property from religious minorities and other presumed enemies of the state, Reuters reports, and the organization, known in Farsi as Setad Ejraiye Farmane Hazrate, provides Iran’s supreme leader with significant economic clout and independence from the elected government. Iran’s parliament even declared that it would be prohibited from exercising any oversight over the Khamenei’s business interests in 2008. Read more of this post

Pay writers or we’ll pull ads, National Library tells arts website

Pay writers or we’ll pull ads, National Library tells arts website

November 12, 2013 – 12:05PM

Ben Butler

The National Library of Australia has threatened to pull its advertising from a new arts website run by Eric Beecher’s Private Media group unless it starts paying its writers. The Daily Review, an offshoot of Private Media’s popular website Crikey, launched yesterday amid controversy over its decision not to pay for contributions. In an open letter, arts writers, many of whom already write for blogs run by Crikey, have asked others not to contribute to the new site for free. Read more of this post

Managing Complexity Is the Epic Battle Between Emergence and Entropy

Managing Complexity Is the Epic Battle Between Emergence and Entropy

by Julian Birkinshaw  |   11:00 AM November 11, 2013

The business news continues to be full of stories of large companies getting into trouble in part because of their complexity. JP Morgan has been getting most of the headlines, but other banks are also investigation. And many companies from other sectors, from Siemens to GSK to Sony, are under fire. It goes without saying that big companies are complex. And it is also pretty obvious that their complexity is a double-edged sword. Companies are complex by design because it allows them to do difficult things. IBM has a multi-dimensional matrix structure so that it can provide coordinated services to its clients. Airbus has a complex process for managing the thousands of suppliers who contribute to the manufacturing of the A380. Read more of this post

Myanmar princess lives ordinary life

Myanmar princess lives ordinary life

Tuesday, November 12, 2013 – 03:00

The New Paper

MYANMAR – In a modest Yangon apartment, the granddaughter of Myanmar’s last king lives simply and unrecognised by her neighbours. Princess Hteik Su Phaya Gyi (above), 90, said the childhood days when her family retained some of its royal status were now a distant memory. The British colonial regime dethroned her grandfather, King Thibaw in 1885. The military junta, which ruled the country for decades, kept the family out of the public eye. Read more of this post

Goodbye to ‘Delhi belly’ with safe street food zone

Goodbye to ‘Delhi belly’ with safe street food zone

Tuesday, November 12, 2013 – 08:15

Nirmala Ganapathy

The Sunday Times

India is known for its many beautiful tourist attractions, from Mughal-era tombs to colonial buildings and national parks. It is also known for a not-so- beautiful condition named “Delhi belly”, the tummy upset that has often befallen the unsuspecting traveller. Drinking only bottled water and avoiding street food are some tips that travellers are given to avoid getting sick. Read more of this post

Honesty That Benefits All

NOVEMBER 11, 2013, 10:55 AM

Honesty That Benefits All

By DOUG STEINER

It seems that headlines too often highlight the bad deeds of players in financial markets. There are insider trading scandals. Traders collude on interest rate manipulation. Executives backdate options. We often hear the excuse, “Everyone else was doing it, so I didn’t think it was wrong.” So if jail won’t keep people from committing illegal acts, what will? Economists of a newer breed say they believe they have some answers. Read more of this post