Consulting Parlour

They say the ‘pen is mightier than the sword’. The power of words is so intense it can cut through systems, strategies, operations and perception of masses. That’s the force of verbal expression. When words are expressed with clarity, vision and profound perceptions they evolve into management thoughts and principles. People with this gift then become what we have phrased ‘Management Gurus’. Internationally there are renowned personalities known for their management concepts and practices. The likes of such ‘management celebrities’ are Tom Peters, Edward DeBono, Philip Kotler, Peter Senge, Bob Watermann, Stephen Covey and many more. Micro-scoping on India, we too have prominent ‘Management Gurus’, from legends to contemporary trend setters. But before we delve into our journey on their works, a noticeable fact is that these business thinkers have studied, travelled, worked, operated, managed and made their presence felt in many parts of the globe.

(1) C.K. Prahalad
If you wish to refer to one of the greatest Indian business thinkers, C.K.
Prahalad should be on the top of your list. He needs no introduction;
every management student in India and internationally knows the name C.K.
Prahalad. He is known not only for his prolific works also for his
management perceptions and strategies.
CK Prahalad is a professor, researcher, speaker, author and prominent
consultant. Business Week has called him “a brilliant teacher at the
University of Michigan” and also described him as “maybe the most
influential thinker on business strategy today.”
In addition to serving as the Harvey C. Freuhauf Professor of Business
Administration at the University Of Michigan Business School, Prahalad
specializes in corporate strategy and the role of top management in large,
diversified, multinational corporations.
In 1994 he co-authored the bestseller, Competing for the Future, with Gary
Hamel. Translated into 14 languages, it was named the Best Selling
Business Book of the Year in 1994. Prahalad is particularly well known for
the work he has conducted with fellow strategy expert Gary Hamel. This
includes the articles The Core Competence of the Corporation (Harvard
Business Review, May-June, 1990), Competing in the New Economy: Managing
Out of Bounds (Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 17, No. 3, March, 1996)
as well as the bestselling book Competing for the Future: Breakthrough
Strategies for Seizing Control of Your Industry and Creating the Markets
of Tomorrow (1994).
He has won numerous awards. The most recent include the McKinsey Prize
three times, the SMR-PWC award, and the ANBAR Electronic Citation of
Excellence.
A prominent world-class guru, Professor Prahalad has consulted with the
world's foremost companies, such as Ahlstrom, AT&T, Cargill, Citicorp,
Eastman Chemical, Kodak, Oracle, Philips, Quantum, Revlon, Steelcase, and
Unilever. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of NCR
Corporation, Hindustan Lever Limited and the World Resources Institute and
services on the Board of Directors of NCR Corporation, Hindustan Lever
Limited and the World Resources Institute.
His latest book, ‘The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating
Poverty Through Profits’, proves that the future will develop from serving
the poor, because the innovations that are developed are superior-- top
quality, low price, high volume and world-scale. Only the best innovations
will work for both sides of the equation, those in poverty and those in
the “developed” countries.
Books by C.K. Prahalad
The fortune at the bottom of the Pyramid (August 25, 2004)
Competing for the future (Co-authored with Gary Hamel)
The Future of Competition: Co-Creating Unique Value with Customers (2004
- co-authored with Venkat Ramaswamy)
In search of excellence
Multinational Mission: Balancing Local Demands and Global Vision (1987)
C.K. Prahalad is also the author of numerous award-winning articles.
Harvard Business Review awarded the McKinsey Prize to him three times for
the following articles:-
"The End of Corporate Imperialism", co-authored with Kenneth Lieberthal
(1998)
"The Core Competence of the Corporation", co-authored with Gary Hamel
(1990)
"Strategic Intent", also co-authored with Gary Hamel (1989)
"The New Frontier of Experience Innovation" published in Sloan
Management Review won the SMR-PWC award for the best paper published in
2003
"Weak Signals vs. Strong Paradigms", published in the Journal of
Marketing Research (1995) was awarded the 1997 ANBAR Electronic Citation
of Excellence
"The Dominant Logic: A New Linkage between Diversity and Performance"
(1986), co-authored with Richard Bettis, was selected the Best Article
published in the Strategic Management Journal for the period 1980-88
"The Role of Core Competencies in the Corporation" (1993) received the
1994 Maurice Holland Award as the Best Paper published in Research
Technology Management in 1993
"A Strategy for Growth: The Role of Core Competence in the Corporation"
won the European Foundation for Management Award in 1993
(2) Gita Piramal
More often than not, a journalist’s viewpoint is considered to be
critical, biased and dynamic. But a journalist with a PhD in business
history is a potentially intense combination. This profile describes, Gita
Piramal an author who has written for many years on the corporate sector
for leading Indian and international publications such as the Financial
Times and the Economic Times, and is a consulting editor of the World
Executive’s Digest. She also has been involved in the making of television
programmes on Indian business for the BBC and Plus Channel. In 1986, she
co-authored India’s Industrialists, and in 1991 contributed to Business
and Politics in India—A historical perspective, published by the Indian
Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. She divides her time between London
and Mumbai.
Through her works, she describes the Indian corporate sector with Indian
historical and political references as the foundation. How earlier systems
have an influence on contemporary operations and radical changes or
‘Business Mantras’ required to keep abreast in this dynamic environment.
Gita Piramal is one of India’s foremost business writers. She is now the
managing editor of The Smart Manager, India’s first world-class management
magazine.
Books by Gita Piramal
World Class in India: A Casebook of Companies in
Transformation(4/15/2002)
Business Legends(4/1/1999)
Managing Radical Change(co-authored with Sumantra Ghoshal).
Business Mantras
Business Maharajas
(3) Sumantra Ghoushal
If you attempt to visualize a mentor, an author and a consultant in one
being you are sure to find one personality, Sumantra Ghoushal. Born in
India, educated in the US and currently living in Europe, he is a teacher,
author and consultant in the field of international management. He is also
founding dean of the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, a new venture
jointly sponsored by Northwestern University and the London Business
School.
He has published eight books, over forty-five articles and several
award-winning case studies. The book “Managing across Borders: The
Transnational Solution”, co-authored with Christopher A. Bartlett, has
been listed as one of the fifty most influential management books and they
have become one of the world's most respected business thinkers.
His most recent work focuses on the need to develop strategy which
encompasses people. He has been critical of the current fad for knowledge
management.
Books by Sumantra Ghoushal
A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers Harness Their Willpower,
Achieve Results, and Stop Wasting Timepublished on 7/1/2004
World Class in India: A Casebook of Companies in Transformationpublished
on 4/15/2002
Managing Across Borders : The Transnational Solution (1988)*
Transnational Management (1990)*
Organization Theory and the Multinational Corporation (1993)*
The Individualized Corporation (1997)*
World Class in India: A Casebook of Companies in Transformation
Managing Radical Change(co-authored with Gita Piramal)
* (co-authored with Christopher A. Bartlett)
(4) Ram Charan
If you want to know how to strip down a concept to its core meaning and
then put it into action, you should consider the works of Ram Charan. He
is a highly acclaimed business advisor, speaker, and author. Ram has
coached some of the world's most successful CEOs. For 35 years, he has
worked behind the scenes at companies like GE, KLM, Bank of America,
DuPont, Novartis, EMC, Home Depot and Verizon.
Ram is a favourite among executive educators. He won the Bell Ringer (best
teacher) award at GE's famous Crotonville Institute. He won similar awards
at Wharton and Northwestern. He was among Business Week's top ten
resources for in-house executive development programs.
Apart from authoring fine books, he also tailors his books for specific
client companies such as Gateway, Ford, and EDS. His articles have been
published in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Time, Information Week,
Leader to Leader, Director's Monthly, Directorship, The Corporate Board
and USA Today. Ram is a director of Austin Industries and The Six Sigma
Academy. He was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Human
Resources. He serves as a co-host for the Fortune Forum on Corporate
Governance and also serves on the National Association of Corporate
Directors' Blue Ribbon Commission on Corporate Governance.
He is known for his practical, real world perspective. His expertise
entails areas of business like: Profitable Growth, Business Acumen,
Leadership, Execution: Discipline of Getting Things Done, Tools for
Changing a Social System, Global Matrix Organization, Innovation,
Corporate Governance, Succession & Leadership Pipeline, Building Top
Management Teams.
Books by Ram Charan
Confronting Reality (October 2004)
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. Execution reached
number one on the Wall Street Journal list, and has been on the New York
Time's best seller list for more than fifty weeks.
What the CEO Wants You to Know
Boards at Work
Every Business Is a Growth Business and Profitable Growth.
Profitable growth is everyone’s business
(5) Arindham Chaudhuri
Speaking of contemporary business thinkers, another fine entrepreneur,
educator, author and enterprising personality is Arindham Chaudhuri
Professor Chaudhuri is the Dean, Centre for Economic Research & Advanced
Studies at IIPM (The Indian Institute of Planning & Management, New
Delhi). In the year 1996 he founded Planman Consulting which is now one of
the fastest growing Indian Management Consulting Firms. After being
associated with the production and marketing of two Bengali movies, in the
year 2001 he formally launched Planman Life: A fully dedicated production
and communications venture.
His latest book ‘Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch’ for which he got
an unprecedented seven figure record advance has created a new benchmark
in India by selling more than 80,000 copies in just 8 months! It has been
in all national best seller lists from the first week of inception, till
date.
As a management consultant he specializes in the areas of Strategic
Vision, Leadership, Social Sector Consulting, Comparative Management
Techniques and Global Opportunities & Threat Analysis.
His contribution to the field of management studies in India can be found
in the iconoclastic “Theory ‘ i ’ Management” which he has developed for
India Inc. “Theory ‘i’ Management” is about India centric management
ideas. For the last few years he has been conducting workshops on
Leadership and Strategic Vision exclusively for CEOs, MDs, Directors and
Presidents from the corporate sector. From the Managing Director of Hero
Motors to the President of Tata Chemicals, from the Executive President of
A.V. Birla Group to the CEO of Ernst & Young… have all taken leadership
training workshops from him. As a celebrated speaker he is regularly
invited to speak at various annual conferences and national conventions.
He also happens to be highest paid speaker in the country.
An economist by passion and education, during Bill Clinton’s historic
visit to India he launched his Great Indian Dream -: India can beat
America, a series of seminars for every Indian. Held in all the metros of
India, these seminars had thousands of people pouring in from all walks of
life. In these seminar’s he not only highlights the inherent strengths of
the Indian culture but also talks about an alternative resource
mobilization and allocation package for an Indian turnaround. To
facilitate social activities based on this he has started the Great Indian
Dream Foundation in memory of his brother Aurobindo Chaudhuri.
He was recently rated as one of the 50 leading thinkers in South Asia by
Wilton Park (an organisation supported by the European Commission and
British foreign office).
Further, he was awarded the Academic Gold Medal while completing the Post
Graduate Diploma in Planning and Management from IIPM. Prof. Chaudhuri was
awarded “Management Guru 2000 Award” by Chennai based Om Venkatesa Society
which annually honours management experts.
Books by Arindham Chaudhuri
Count your chickens before they hatch
The Great Indian Dream
(6) Promod Batra
Have you ever been in a situation when your need a trigger to propel those
business thoughts? The answer lies in a think tank that provides distilled
wisdom of finest minds, ‘Management Thoughts’. This book was written by
Promod Batra, which was a new concept in 1991 and the first of its kind in
the world. It is a collection of simple management thoughts, supplemented
with full page illustrations by Mickey Patel, a cartoonist of repute. It
has sold over 2,00,000 copies in India and abroad a record by itself.
Promod Batra got his professional training with General Mills Inc.,
Minneapolis , Minnesota, and the Soyabean Council of America. On return to
India he joined Escorts Limited in 1963, and retired as Chief General
Manager in 1996. His tenure with the Escorts Group included his assignment
as Chief Administrator at Escorts Heart Institute & Research Centre for
six years. He is now devoting full time to writing, publishing and selling
books on Management of Self, Family Employees and Customers, and
conducting Attitudinal Seminars based on his books
A co-author with Promod Batra is Vijay Batra, the first non-Japanese to
join Kankaku Securities as a lifetime employee. In 1994, he was promoted
to Vice President of the New York branch. During his tenure with Kankaku
Securities, he was directly involved with various Japanese and American
companies. From 1997 to 1998, he returned to India for a one year period
to study the Indian situation with the objective to create seminar and
training programmes suitable for Indian professionals. Vijay Batra has
succeeded in creating a relationship with PHP, a think tank affiliated
with Matsushita Electric Industry. The relationship with PHP will allow
Think Inc. to introduce fundamentals of Japanese management to Indian
professionals.
Books by Promod Batra
Management Thoughts
Born to be Happy
Born to Win
Cows Don’t Give Milk
The Family
Management Articles
Management Ides in Action
Management Think Tank
Management Wisdom
Pearls of Wisdom for Managers
Pearls of Wisdom for Happy Living
Selling is a Noble Profession
Simple ways to manage stress
When the customer has a problem
Simple ways to make your boss succeed
Management Thought Starters (co-authored with Vijay Batra)
Profitable Passion discovers the spy (co-authored with Vijay Batra)
(7) Shiv Khera
In this dog-eat-dog business world, if you are not self motivated, self
confident and unique, you WILL be trampled over. At such times look into
the works of the distinguished management guru and motivator, Shiv Khera.
His gospel:- "Winners don’t do different things, they do things
differently”
Shiv Khera is the founder of Qualified Learning Systems Inc. An educator,
business consultant, a much sought after speaker and a successful
entrepreneur. He has taken his dynamic personal message around the world.
Shiv has been recognized as a "Louis Marchesi Fellow" by the Round Table
Foundation. His client list includes the who’s who of the corporate world.
He has authored three bestsellers, amongst other books. His first book
“You Can Win”, which came out in 1998, has sold over a million copies
worldwide. His second book “Living With Honour” hit the stands in August
2003, becoming an instant bestseller. Then within a span of six months in
February 2004, his third book “Freedom Is Not Free” was released, also to
become a bestseller.
His first two books are on an individualistic level, where he defines the
winning edge as achieving excellence rather than perfection, as excellence
paves the way for progress. He also conveys that it is better to be
honourable than to be honoured. His work offers direction for living with
pride in a cluttered environment. His latest book concentrates on society.
Here he firmly believes that a progressive society is the basis for
individual progress of its people.
Transforming his years of experience as a motivator into a practical tool,
he has developed a core program/workshop known as the Blueprint for
Success (BPS). This program motivates people to recognize their true
potential and gain success - personally and professionally.
Books by Shiv Khera
You Can Win (1998)
Living With Honour (August 2003)
Freedom Is Not Free (February 2004)
Attitude Determines Altitude
Attitude – the key to success
Discipline your way to freedom
Ethics of Values
Winner’s Edge
Winning Strategies
Apart from the prominent business thinkers mentioned above, India also
presents other management thinkers who have a substantial influence on
business minds and operations. To name a few:-
(8) Venkatram Ramaswamy
Co-opting Customer Competence (co-authored with C.K. Prahalad)
(9) Vijay Vishwanath
The Art of Developing Leaders at Kraft
(10) Partha Bose
Alexander the Great’s Art of Strategy
(11) Rita Bhimani
Corporate Peacock
Face Up!
(12) Jeetendra Jain
Sack the CEO!
(13) Ashwath Damodaran
Corporate Finance
Damodaran on Valuation
Investment Valuation
The phrase “Management Guru’ describes a person who is intellectual,
experienced, ingenious and a person who develops business perspectives
that provide beneficial outlooks and practices. With reference to the
adage ‘An idea is only a thought until it is materialised’, the most
successful Business Thinkers are those who have ensured the successful
implementation of their thoughts.
In the past, the benefit of such resourceful business practices was
limited to only those people who were privileged to have communication
links with knowledgeable business tycoons. But currently in India, the
exposure has broadened. Perspectives and practices of Indian business
personalities are now made available to almost anyone in the form of
workshops and seminars. So with an open mind, think ‘WOW’, act now and pay
attention and participate with our Management Personalities who are
willing to impart their knowledge.

Accenture Study Yields Top 50 ‘Business Intellectuals’ Ranking of Top Thinkers and Writers on Management Topics
Who are our best-known, highest-profile business intellectuals?
Accenture’s Institute for Strategic Change has compiled an intriguing ranking of the top 50 living business gurus, most of whom are business school academics, consultants, journalists or business executives. “For the purposes of this study, we define business intellectuals as influential thinkers and writers on business management topics,” said Tom Davenport, an Accenture partner and director of the Institute, which conducts original research focused on providing insight and ideas into strategic business issues. The list was compiled as part of a broader study on the circulation of new ideas in business. A team of Institute researchers headed by Davenport conducted the study, which took seven months to complete. “The list is sure to cause some discussion around the water coolers of the business world,” said Davenport. “Yet it does give an objective, quantitative ranking of those individuals in the business arena whose ideas, writings, and teachings are forefront in the public consciousness.”
Topping the list is Michael E. Porter, who has been called the world’s most influential business school academic. The Harvard Business School professor and strategy expert is the author of Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, which is required reading for every Harvard MBA student. Finishing tied for second are Tom Peters and Robert Reich. Peters is the management consultant who 20 years ago wrote In Search of Excellence, the bestseller on what it takes to compete and win in the world of business. Reich is the former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, a social and economic policy professor at Brandeis University, author of several books, including The Future of Success, and Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts. Completing the top 10 are: Peter Drucker, a business philosopher and consultant for 60 years who is widely recognized as the father of modern management; Peter Senge, MIT professor and author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization; Gary Becker, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on human capital, and an Economics and Sociology professor at the University of Chicago; Gary Hamel, Chairman of the boutique consulting firm Strategos, and author of Leading the Revolution; Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock and The Third Wave; Hal Varian, dean of the School of Information Management & Systems at the University of California at Berkeley, and author of Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy; Daniel Goleman, journalist and author of the best seller Emotional Intelligence. The list uses the same criteria followed by Richard A. Posner in his book Public Intellectuals:
1. Michael E. Porter
2. Tom Peters
3. Robert Reich
4. Peter Drucker
5. Peter Senge
6. Gary S. Becker
7. Gary Hamel
8. Alvin Toffler
9. Hal Varian
10. Daniel Goleman
11. Rosabeth Moss Kanter
12. Ronald Coase
13. Lester Thurow
14. Charles Handy
15. Henry Mintzberg
16. Michael Hammer
17. Stephen Covey18. Warren Bennis19. Bill Gates
20. Jeffrey Pfeffer
21. Philip Kotler
22. Robert C. Merton
23. C. K. Prahalad
24. Thomas H. Davenport
25. Don Tapscott
26. John Seely Brown
27. George Gilder
28. Kevin Kelly
29. Chris Argyris
30. Robert Kaplan
31. Esther Dyson
32. Edward De Bono
33. Jack Welch
34. John Kotter
35. Ken Blanchard
36. Edward Tufte
37. Kenichi Ohmae
38. Alfred Chandler
39. James MacGregor Burns
40. Sumantra Ghoshal
41. Edgar Schein
42. Myron S. Scholes
43. James March
44. Richard Branson
45. Anthony Robbins
46. Clay(ton) Christensen
47. Michael Dell
48. John Naisbitt
49. David Teece
50. Don Peppers

Bishop William Lawrence University Professor Michael E. Porter is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor, based at Harvard Business School. A University professorship is the highest professional recognition that can be awarded to a Harvard faculty member. In 2001, Harvard Business School and Harvard University jointly created the Institute for Strategy and competitiveness, to further Professor Porter’s work. Professor Porter, the author of 17 books and over 125 articles, is a leading authority on competitive strategy and the competitiveness and economic development of nations, states, and regions. He received a B.S.E. with high honors in aerospace and mechanical engineering from Princeton University in 1969, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He received an M.B.A. with high distinction in 1971 from the Harvard Business School, where he was a George F. Baker Scholar, and a Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University in 1973. TeachingProfessor Porter's ideas on strategy have now become the foundation for the required strategy course at the Harvard Business School, and his work is taught in virtually every business school in the world. Professor Porter’s primary course for Harvard graduate students is a University-wide course, Microeconomics of Competitiveness, which is taught not only at Harvard but at 56 other universities around the world using video content and instructor support developed at Harvard. Professor Porter also created and chairs Harvard's program for newly appointed CEOs of billion dollar corporations. Professor Porter speaks widely on competitive strategy, competitiveness, and related subjects to business and government leaders throughout the world.

Research on Strategy
Professor Porter’s core field is strategy, and this remains a primary focus of his research. His book, Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, was his first book-length publication on strategy. The book is in its 63rd printing and has been translated into 19 languages. His second major strategy book, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance, was published in 1985 and is in its 38th printing. His book On Competition (1998) includes a series of articles on strategy and competition, including his Harvard Business Review article 'What is Strategy?'
(1996). 'Strategy and the Internet' was published in 2001.Professor Porter’s next major book on strategy will be completed in 2006. Competitiveness of Nations and Regions Professor Porter's 1990 book The Competitive Advantage of Nations was motivated by his appointment by President Ronald Reagan in 1983 to the President's Commission on Industrial Competitiveness. This book kicked off his second major body of work, which addresses competitiveness and economic development. The book presents a new theory of how nations, states, and regions compete, and their sources of economic prosperity. It was followed by an extensive body of publications on the influence of locations on competition, with a special focus on the role of clusters. These ideas have guided economic policy throughout the world.
National Competitiveness.
Building on The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Professor Porter has published books about national competitiveness on New Zealand, Canada, Sweden, and Switzerland. Most recently, his book Can Japan Compete? (2000) challenges long-held views about the sources of Japan's economic miracle and offers a new path for that nation's future. It was selected as one of the top non fiction books of 2000 by The Economist.
Professor Porter co-chairs the Global Competitiveness Report, an annual ranking of the competitiveness and growth prospects of more than 100 countries released by the World Economic forum. Clusters. Professor Porter’s ideas on clusters, first introduced in 1990, have given rise to a large body of research on cluster-based economic development and hundreds of public-private cluster initiatives throughout the world. Professor Porter’s research on clusters is summarized in “Clusters and Competition: New Agendas for Companies, Governments, and Institutions” in On Competition (1998) and other publications listed in his curriculum vitae.
Regional Competitiveness.
Professor Porter has extended his work on competitiveness to sub-national regions. He led the Clusters of Innovation project (2001-2002) which studied five major U.S. regions, developing new theory, new sources of data, and new methodologies for fostering innovation and prosperity in regional economies. Growing out of this research, the Harvard Cluster Mapping Project was developed and provides rich data on the economic geography of U.S. regions and clusters from 1990 to 2003. The Cluster Mapping Project has over 8,000 registered users. His article ‘The Economic Performance of Regions’ (2003) summarizes some of the important findings from this data.
Innovation.
Professor Porter is co-author (with Scott Stern) of a body of work on the sources of innovation in national economies, including The New Challenge to America's Prosperity: Findings from the Innovation Index (1999), 'The Determinants of National Innovative Capacity' (2000), and 'Measuring the 'Ideas' Production Function: Evidence from International Patent Output' (2000).
Inner Cities.Professor Porter has conducted extensive research on economic development in America's distressed inner city areas, beginning with the Harvard Business Review article 'The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City'. In 1994, he founded The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC), a non-profit, private-sector organization to catalyze inner-city business development across the country. Professor Porter is Chairman of the ICIC, a national organization with a staff of more than 40 professionals. The ICIC has conducted extensive research and practiced extensively in this field, and a bibliography of work is available on the organization’s website.
Rural Development.
In 2004, Professor Porter published a study commissioned by the Economic Development Administration on rural development, Competitiveness in Rural U.S. Regions: Learning and Research Agenda. This study marks a new streamof work on economic development in sparsely populated rural regions which have weak economic performance relative to urban areas.
Environment.
Professor Porter has examined the relationship between competitiveness and the natural environment. His Scientific American essay 'America's Green Strategy', showed that economic competitiveness and environmental improvement could and should be complementary. This essay triggered a body of literature and new policy thinking, including publications by Professor Porter: ‘Green and Competitive’ (1995), 'Toward a New Conception of the Environment-Competitiveness Relationship' (1995), and 'National Environmental
Performance Measurement and Determinants' (2002). The so-called “Porter Hypothesis” has been much studied in subsequent literature.
Philanthropy and Corporate Responsibility.
Professor Porter has devoted growing attention to philanthropy and especially the role of corporations in society. His Harvard Business Review article with Mark Kramer, 'Philanthropy's New Agenda: Creating Value' (1999), offers a new framework for developing strategy in foundations and other philanthropic organizations. He co-founded the Center for Effective Philanthropy, an organization dedicated to creating concepts and measurement tools to improve foundation performance. Professor Porter’s Harvard Business Review article, 'The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy' (2002), addresses how corporations can create more social benefit by integrating their philanthropy with their business context. A forthcoming article tackles the strategic underpinnings of corporate social responsibility.
Health Care.
Recently, Professor Porter has devoted considerable attention to competition in the health care system and addressing the problems of the U.S. and foreign health care systems. His article with Elizabeth Teisberg, ‘Redefining Competition in Health Care’ (2004), has stimulated national dialog. Based on two years of additional research, his joint book with Professor Teisberg, Redefining Health Care (Harvard Business School Press) will be published in May 2006.
Advisor to Business and Government
Professor Porter has served as a strategy advisor to numerous leading U.S. and international companies, among them DuPont, Entel (Chile), Edward Jones, Navistar, Procter & Gamble, Royal Dutch Shell, Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, Sysco, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Professor Porter also serves as a senior strategy advisor to the Boston Red Sox, a major league baseball team. Professor Porter currently serves on the boards of directors of two public companies, Parametric Technology Corporation and Thermo Electron Corporation. He has also advised community organizations on strategy, including the Institute of Contemporary Art, WGBH public television, and others. Professor Porter is also a counselor to government. He plays an active role in U.S. economic policy with the Executive Branch, Congress, and international organizations. He chairs the selection committee for the annual Corporate Stewardship Award given by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. Professor Porter is a member of the Executive Committee of the Council on Competitiveness, a private-sector organization made up of chief executive officers of major corporations, unions, and universities, and has provided intellectual leadership for a number of the Council's major programs. Professor Porter has also advised national leaders in numerous countries. He has personally led major studies of economic strategy for the governments of such countries as Canada, Kazakhstan, India, New Zealand, Portugal, Thailand and most recently Libya. He has advised national leaders on economic policy in dozens of countries including Armenia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom, and his ideas have inspired national competitiveness initiatives in Ireland, Finland, Norway and elsewhere. His thinking about economic development for groups of neighboring countries has led to a long-term initiative within Central America, including the formation of the Latin American Center for Competitiveness and Sustainable Development (CLACDS), a permanent institution based in Costa Rica. Professor Porter has also assisted many state and local governments in enhancing competitiveness. His work has inspired competitiveness initiatives in regions such as the Basque Country, Catalonia, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. In his home state of Massachusetts, Professor Porter's work led to a new economic strategy, beginning with the report The Competitive Advantage of Massachusetts (1991). This effort resulted in new legislation, numerous state initiatives, and the creation of Governor William F. Weld's Council on Economic Growth and Technology, which Professor Porter chaired. Professor Porter has also served as an advisor to the state of Connecticut since the mid-1990s in creating a new economic plan. In addition, Professor Porter has advised Governors and private-sector leaders on economic policy in states and regions such as Mississippi, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Columbus, Ohio.
Honors and Recognition
The awards and honors won by Professor Porter include Harvard's David A. Wells Prize in Economics for his research in industrial organization. He received the Graham and Dodd Award of the Financial Analysts Federation in 1980. His book Competitive Advantage won the George R. Terry Book Award of the Academy of Management in 1985 as the outstanding contribution to management thought. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Management in 1988 and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in 1991. In 1991, he received the Charles Coolidge Parlin Award for outstanding contribution to the field of marketing and strategy given by the AmericanMarketing Association. Professor Porter was honored by the Massachusetts State Legislature for his work on Massachusetts competitiveness in 1991. In 1993, Professor Porter was named the Richard D. Irwin Outstanding Educator in Business Policy and Strategy by the Academy of Management. He was the 1997 recipient of the Adam Smith Award of the National Association of Business Economists, given in recognition of his exceptional contributions to the business economics profession. A Fellow of the International Academy of Management since 1985, he received that group's first-ever Distinguished Award for Contribution to the Field of Management in 1998. In 2001, the annual Porter Prize, akin to the Deming Prize, was established in Japan in his name to recognize that nation's leading companies in terms of strategy. The Academy of Management recognized Professor Porter with its highest award, for scholarly contributions to management in 2003. In 2005, Professor Porter was honored by the South Carolina legislature for his efforts in assisting and promoting economic development and competitiveness in that state. In 2005, Professor Porter became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and was awarded the John Kenneth Galbraith Medal (presented by the American Agricultural Economics Association. He was also honored as the recipient of the 2005 Distinguished Contributor to Case Research and Teaching by the American Case Research Association. Professor Porter has received five McKinsey Awards for the best Harvard Business Review article of the year, including an unprecedented three first-place awards.Professor Porter has been awarded honorary doctorates by the Stockholm School of Economics; Erasmus University, the Netherlands; HEC (Hautes Ecoles Commerciales), France; Universidada Tecnica Lisboa, Portugal; Adolfo Ibanez University, Chile; INCAE, Central America; Johnson and Wales University; and Mt. Ida College. Professor Porter has also been awarded national honors including the Creu de St. Jordi (Cross of St. George) from Catalonia (Spain) and the Jose Dolores Estrada Order of Merit, the highest civilian honor awarded by the Government of Nicaragua.
Personal History
Professor Porter was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and has lived and traveled throughout the world as the son of a career Army officer. He was an all-state high school football and baseball player. At Princeton, he played intercollegiate golf and was named to the 1968 NCAA Golf All-American Team. After graduating from college, Professor Porter served through the rank of captain in the U.S. Army Reserve. He maintains a long-time interest in the esthetics and business of music and art, having worked on the problems of strategy with arts organizations and aspiring musicians. Professor Porter serves as a trustee of the Buckingham, Browne & Nichols School (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Professor Porter and his two daughters reside in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Well for some people Iron Maiden and other metal bands meant as noisy affair in an affluent area. They keep on criticising as to these mentally disordered people do not see any meaning through life.
Oops, I just want to tell those logger heads if they at all understand songs and its lyrics better they should face their brains not mouth.
I substantiate….watch it out
WASTED YEARS
From the coast of gold, across the seven seas
I am travelling on, far and wide
But now it seems, I am a stranger to myself
And all the things I sometimes do, it isn’t me but someone else
I close my eyes, and think of home
Another city goes by in the night
Ain’t it funny how it is, you never miss it till it’s gone away
And my heart is lying there and will be till my dying day
So understand
Don’t waste your time always searching for those wasted years
Face up…make your stand
And realise you are living in the golden years
Too much time on my hands, I got you on mind
Can’t ease the pain, so easily
When you can’t find the words to say it’s hard to make it through another day
And it just makes me want to cry and throw my hands
Up to the sky
So understand
Don’t waste your time always searching for those wasted years
Face up…make your stand
And realise you are living in the golden years

VIRUS

There is an evil virus that is threatening mankind
Not state of the art, a serious state of the mind
The muggers, the backstabbers, the two faced elite
A menace to society, a social disease
Rape of the mind is a social disorder
The cynics, the apathy one-upmanship order
Watching beginnings of social decay
Gloating or sneering at life’s disarray
Eating away at your own self esteem
Pouncing of every word that you are saying
Superficially smiling a shake of the hand
As soon as the back is turned treachery is planned
When every good thing’s laid to waste
By all the jealousy and hate
By all the acid wit and rapier lies
And every time think you are safe
And when you go to turn away
You know they are sharpening their paper knives
All in your mind
All in your head
Try to relate it
Try to escape it
Without a conscience they destroy
And that’s a thing they enjoy
They are a sickness that’s in all our minds
They want to sink the ship and leave
The way they laugh at you and me
You know it happens all the time
The rats in the cellar you know who you are…..Or do you?

I sincerly believe you will agree with me that these guys are some kind of social consultants.
Ciao

We come across zest of many executives be in finance or operations or any other domain who have exceeded their potential and produced world class strategies.

In my current stint at Middle East I came across an Indian Beard Man. Yup a man having slight beard, Chartered Accountant by profession leading the finance domain of one of big corporate houses in Oman. Looking at job profile and going by the exact wordings of his designation one would presume him as the head of finance. No my estimation was wrong, he is heading the company ahead of anybody else; be it engineering/management graduate from pioneer institutes. And it exists in a company where marketing remains the top most priority.

Well honestly the company principle of handling matters is unique. It’s like playing Davis Cup at Wimbledon stadium. You got one center court that’s the Head Office, various courts for profit centers (basically retail marketing). For court other than the center court we have “non playing captains” or the division heads who are overshadowed by their own past. They chase a bunch of unrest, money starving, for whom things have gone wrong suddenly, particular breed /community of people for so called unruly profits in a highly monopolized market. As far as the center court is concerned you can see only one man-yeah the legendary “Beard Man”. He is non-playing captain, among players, among benches-you name anything.

The beard man moves in leaps and bounds in last decade, jumping from one height to another, soaring past targets. Compensation manifold to numerous extents. He earned many facets in this journey- be it foes, disciples (these are all Gandhi’s talking monkey who smiles as soon as the beard man signals bonus like malnourish umpire signaling wicket and he earned highly biased match referees (owners) too!

All this does not perturb the beard man, after a smooth year of politics a fat cheque goes into kitty leaving behind the change for disciples. The non-playing captains cry foul, complaint against beard man to the match referee. Referee takes a sigh, move his head back. No egalite, only jeu for beard man.

His post retirement benefits stands at couple of million dollars. The regular earnings also a million dollar per annum. The beard man is adding more and more fat cheques to the piling stone of “moneyment.”

The Company structure came as a bonaza for the beard man. Company boasts domain where engineers are forced to sale products and non-engineers sitting in the dark room churning away so called IT revolution of Oman without peeking at mights of others. Like a ship of fools run aground to fly the paper doves during night!

The sordid saga of beard man is still going strong- simple ethics and principle. Don’t look at the bush at all; you don’t have to clarify for the birds inside the bushes!

Lets take the routine cycle of beard man-

Highest paid CFO Beard Man

Salary 2-3 million USD 1 million USD
Post retirement benefits 2 million USD 1 million USD

We found a difference of 2-3 million USD, then how can I say he is the highest paid while he is miles away from competitor.
Ok- let us put it this way

Difference with highest paid CFO 3 Million
Less:
Compensating factors for working
Hours 0.5 Million
Non involvement in strategy 1.0 Million
Even advisory level!
Free lance politicizing 0.5 Million
Effective working hours
50% time beard man do not work 1.0 Million
Commission from employee strategy 0.5 Million

That leaves us with a galloping difference of 0.5 Million USD. The undoubted king among CFO!

His employee strategy is unique and has seen many historical changes over the years. His brilliancy in cutting employee salary, putting new circulars to cut expenses is simply outstanding.

Perhaps it’s sanguine to blame beard man for his witty. You might argue that anybody in that position would have done the same thing. After all what is the harm in crying for a few million dollars, but the point remains same. Cry, cry louder but do not hurt anyone to move up in ladder. You are bound to succumb, only incident is a matter of time.

The draw a bottom line for Beard Man will be a very complex and difficult task. What you will call him; a genius employee crusader or an asshole sitting on pot of gold trying to make a hole in pot.

Answer is mute???

You can sing a song meanwhile- “monkey sitting on a pile of stones asking almighty for a yellow submarine to destroy all the oceans”

Serious Note- if anybody on earth does have prudent thinking as an ordinary human being kill these soft beasts before they over power you. It’s happening in many places leaving a trail of betrayal, disloyalty, and hatred among millions of employees. Yet employee, sundries never found a solution as to how to push these highly undesirable characters out of mainstream. An apathetic owner, greedy disciples making situation more miserable.
I wish someday management will take serious note and take stern against people like beard man; of course it has to come before doom’s day. Till that point of time lets wish for those who dedicated themselves into mainstream irrespective of returns and rewards. My sincere salute to them.

The rapid changes in internal audit methodologies including the function itself completely off track the middle east in different circuit. What I perceive the major bottlenecks could be are-

Audit Practice- the current audit practice though differs from the horrible practices followed in earlier regime, yet a long way to go to substantiate the hard-core definition of internal auditing. The paradigm shift in internal audit connotation towards management consulting really put the internal auditors on rocking knowledge boat where you are open to some sharp teethed management sharks desperately waiting when the engine is going to be stopped.
The current audit practices lack clarity on:
Audit integrated consulting- its often said if you can not hire the high ranked management consulting firms then most of the times internal audit plays formidable role of identifying management consulting innovations and best practices to large extent. Faultfinding and neat picking connotation are gone by, one has to embrace the new age. Notable improvement areas will be credit rating system, supply chain management, customer relationship management to name a few.
Surprise checks- this is considered as one of the subsidiary tool of famous tool examination. Often it results in lucrative outcomes. But frequent exercises of the tool make it a redundant and superfluous activity. Currently for surprise checks exercises the cost of control completely outclass the expected benefits. Its needless to state that when cost of control is on higher side then it is required to be modified or amended.
Internal control - An internal control activity is analysed from different angles like cross check, review, authorisation/approval and pre defined limits set for a control. If worth of USD 10 purchase has to go with a bunch of commercial procedures then benefits of a practice will never accrue to the company. Before putting a practice in place the volume needs to be looked into. Small process activities are addressed through entity wide controls eg. Small amendment in item code request form is even authorised by unit heads. One can expect the entity level involvement and its cost! Largely documenting controls on the lines of SARBOX reveals at least 60% deficiency. From the top everything looks rosy, online controls are in bits and pieces-not integrated to large extent, paper generation is highly excessive, e-authorisation is a distant possibility. Further we are fortunate that some solid individual supervision from sharp unit heads have mitigated the shortcomings to large extent.
Standard Operating Procedures- or often referred as SOP, this is one of the most accurate way of describing the activities of any division whether its profit centre, cost centre or support function. I do agree that preparing a SOP and more equitably up keeping it requires lot of resources and manpower. Nevertheless a definite needs to enhance activity management at a macro and micro level.

Transformations and subsequent change management- its better to have one bird in hand rather having two birds in bush. Fair enough, but somebody has to identify two birds in bush first so as to make a legitimate comparison and sit back happily! Identifying the best practices and cross-fertilise into mainstream should always remain in an open end and encouraging.
Transparency and lifting the veil out of opaque integrated system- It is clearly visible that many of the datas, records, information’s are not available to internal audit department. The systems department who got all this doesn’t understand the functional reality of the business process. A more cohesive and one-way approach will result in identifying better practices.
Documentation- If Sarbanes Oxley throws GBs of documentation yet it defined a model to concrete on a foolproof internal control system. We mean documentation as hard copy and garbage’s of pile paper. Cabbage and garbage do not differ if not understood in English way!
The power of consulting- Frankly speaking the Herculean effort required for implementing a CRM or any other business management fad model is mind boggling and catastrophic. It includes some intangible brainstorming, acumen of entrepreneurs, needless to say involvement of some multi-functional brainy characters. Sitting at micro level a middle agent like me it sound too much of optimism before proving the fads. But I strongly sense strategy engine once in while should be given to patriarch of management gurus or the biggest innovator of practices i.e. the management consultants for routine checking. It will enable us at least to know where do we stand?
Absence of management consulting units in the region, outsourcing of education system testify that internal audit practice have to go long way in attaining knowledge wisdom.

Quite a hard time since 9-10 months. Lost contacts, updation, life become stagnant.

Things have stopped at 12 o clock. Need re charge the batteries.

No stopping, hence I won’t spit past difficulties.

The show must go on.

Cheers

History
Management consulting grew with the rise of management as a unique field of study. The first management consulting firm was Arthur D. Little, founded in the late 1890s by the MIT professor of the same name. Though Arthur D. Little later became a general management consultancy, originally specialized in technical research. The first pure management and strategy consulting company was McKinsey & Company, still considered a leader in the field. McKinsey was founded in Chicago during 1926 by James O. McKinsey, but the modern McKinsey was shaped by Marvin Bower, who believed that management consultancies should adhere to the same high professional standards as lawyers and doctors. Andrew T. Kearney, an original McKinsey partner broke off and started A.T. Kearney in 1937.
After World War II, a number of new management consulting firms formed, most notably Boston Consulting Group, founded in 1963, which brought a vigorous analytical approach to the study of management and strategy. Work done at McKinsey, BCG, and Harvard Business School during the 1960s and 70s developed the tools and approaches that would define the new field of strategic management, setting the groundwork for many consulting firms to follow. Also significant was the development of consulting arms by both accounting firms (such as Arthur Andersen) and global IT services companies (such as IBM).
Current State of the Industry
Management consulting has grown rapidly, with growth rates of the industry exceeding 20% in the 1980s and 1990s. As a business service, consulting remains highly cyclical and linked to overall economic conditions. The consulting industry shrank during the 2001-2003 period, but had been experiencing slowly increasing growth since. In 2004, revenues were up 3% over the previous year, yielding a market size of just under $125 billion
Currently, there are three main types of consulting firms. First, there are large, diversified organizations, such as IBM's Global Services and Deloitte Consulting offer a range of services, including IT consulting, in addition to a management consulting practice. Second are the large management and strategic consulting specialists, like the venerable McKinsey, that offer purely management consulting, but are not specialized in any one industry. Finally, there are boutique firms, often quite small, that have extremely focused areas of consulting expertise, such as Canback Dangel in corporate analytics or First Manhattan in banking.
Approaches
Management consulting has become the primary source for innovation in the practice of management, forming a bridge between academia, firms, and thought leaders in other fields. As a result, management consulting firms use a variety of tools and techniques to approach business problems. See strategic management for more information.

Criticism
Management consultants are often criticized for overuse of buzzwords, reliance on management fads and a failure to develop executable plans that can be followed through. A number of highly critical books about management consulting argue that the mismatch between management consulting advice and the ability of business executives to actually create the change suggested results in substantial damages to existing businesses, see, for example Dangerous Company by James O'Shea.
Not surprisingly, management consulting is also the butt of many business-related jokes, such as: "Question: What’s the difference between a management consultant and a used-car salesman. Answer: A used car salesman knows when he is lying."
Leading Firms
The Vault Guide to Top Consulting Firms lists the following as the top five management consulting companies:
McKinsey and Company
Boston Consulting Group
LAWADM Consulting Group
Bain and Company
Booz Allen Hamilton
Monitor Group

Books about Management Consulting
Managing the Professional Services Firm, by David Maister
Guerrilla Marketing for Consulting, Jay Conrad Levinson and Michael W. McLaughlin
Flawless Consulting, by Peter Block
The Professional Services Firm Bible, by John Baschab
Managing Transitions, By William Bridges

Ummmm......
Dont know how to rant now. End was not perfect like a typical hindi movie where people starts jumping with holding each other's hands. No communcation...no plesantary... it seems for couple of days things have stopped at the dead end.
If certain people thinks that i will cut my life and pieces for the shake of idio synchrocity then its nothing but fallacy of meganomalism. Are we not transparent enough to switch street lights on "the road to hell".
Anyway... wonderful time with the firm i worked. Loves from different corner from various people yet sanguinity lies in the point that we are still hypocrats. I wonder whether hypocrasy should be part of consulting curriculum.
But the show must go on for everybody....
I wish we should nt be afraid to shoot the strangers...

Adios......
Going back in memory lane resumes some escatic and random musings over the years. Some wonderful time in Bangalore....excellent academic opportunities.
Yet life should go on... one more new light in UK. I just cant get over the management consulting blues.
Will pen u more from Manchester....
Till that time very very best wishes
Ciao

I encountered the flattening of the world quite by accident. It was in late February of last year, and I was visiting the Indian high-tech capital, Bangalore,
I Was working on a documentary for the Discovery Times channel about outsourcing. In short order, I interviewed Indian entrepreneurs who wanted to prepare my taxes from Bangalore, read my X-rays from Bangalore, trace my lost luggage from Bangalore and write my new software from Bangalore. The longer I was there, the more upset I became -- upset at the realization that while I had been off covering the 9/11 wars, globalization had entered a whole new phase, and I had missed it. I guess the eureka moment came on a visit to the campus of Infosys Technologies, one of the crown jewels of the Indian outsourcing and software industry. Nandan Nilekani, the Infosys C.E.O., was showing me his global video-conference room, pointing with pride to a wall-size flat-screen TV, which he said was the biggest in Asia. Infosys, he explained, could hold a virtual meeting of the key players from its entire global supply chain for any project at any time on that supersize screen. So its American designers could be on the screen speaking with their Indian software writers and their Asian manufacturers all at once. That's what globalization is all about today, Nilekani said. Above the screen there were eight clocks that pretty well summed up the Infosys workday: 24/7/365. The clocks were labeled U.S. West, U.S. East, G.M.T., India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia.
''Outsourcing is just one dimension of a much more fundamental thing happening today in the world,'' Nilekani explained. ''What happened over the last years is that there was a massive investment in technology, especially in the bubble era, when hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in putting broadband connectivity around the world, undersea cables, all those things.'' At the same time, he added, computers became cheaper and dispersed all over the world, and there was an explosion of e-mail software, search engines like Google and proprietary software that can chop up any piece of work and send one part to Boston, one part to Bangalore and one part to Beijing, making it easy for anyone to do remote development. When all of these things suddenly came together around 2000, Nilekani said, they ''created a platform where intellectual work, intellectual capital, could be delivered from anywhere. It could be disaggregated, delivered, distributed, produced and put back together again -- and this gave a whole new degree of freedom to the way we do work, especially work of an intellectual nature. And what you are seeing in Bangalore today is really the culmination of all these things coming together.''
At one point, summing up the implications of all this, Nilekani uttered a phrase that rang in my ear. He said to me, ''Tom, the playing field is being leveled.'' He meant that countries like India were now able to compete equally for global knowledge work as never before -- and that America had better get ready for this. As I left the Infosys campus that evening and bounced along the potholed road back to Bangalore, I kept chewing on that phrase: ''The playing field is being leveled.''
''What Nandan is saying,'' I thought, ''is that the playing field is being flattened. Flattened? Flattened? My God, he's telling me the world is flat!''
Here I was in Bangalore -- more than 500 years after Columbus sailed over the horizon, looking for a shorter route to India using the rudimentary navigational technologies of his day, and returned safely to prove definitively that the world was round -- and one of India's smartest engineers, trained at his country's top technical institute and backed by the most modern technologies of his day, was telling me that the world was flat, as flat as that screen on which he can host a meeting of his whole global supply chain. Even more interesting, he was citing this development as a new milestone in human progress and a great opportunity for India and the world -- the fact that we had made our world flat!
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This has been building for a long time. Globalization 1.0 (1492 to 1800) shrank the world from a size large to a size medium, and the dynamic force in that era was countries globalizing for resources and imperial conquest. Globalization 2.0 (1800 to 2000) shrank the world from a size medium to a size small, and it was spearheaded by companies globalizing for markets and labor. Globalization 3.0 (which started around 2000) is shrinking the world from a size small to a size tiny and flattening the playing field at the same time. And while the dynamic force in Globalization 1.0 was countries globalizing and the dynamic force in Globalization 2.0 was companies globalizing, the dynamic force in Globalization 3.0 -- the thing that gives it its unique character -- is individuals and small groups globalizing. Individuals must, and can, now ask: where do I fit into the global competition and opportunities of the day, and how can I, on my own, collaborate with others globally? But Globalization 3.0 not only differs from the previous eras in how it is shrinking and flattening the world and in how it is empowering individuals. It is also different in that Globalization 1.0 and 2.0 were driven primarily by European and American companies and countries. But going forward, this will be less and less true. Globalization 3.0 is not only going to be driven more by individuals but also by a much more diverse -- non-Western, nonwhite -- group of individuals. In Globalization 3.0, you are going to see every color of the human rainbow take part.
We are now in the process of connecting all the knowledge pools in the world together. We've tasted some of the downsides of that in the way that Osama bin Laden has connected terrorist knowledge pools together through his Qaeda network, not to mention the work of teenage hackers spinning off more and more lethal computer viruses that affect us all. But the upside is that by connecting all these knowledge pools we are on the cusp of an incredible new era of innovation, an era that will be driven from left field and right field, from West and East and from North and South. Only 30 years ago, if you had a choice of being born a B student in Boston or a genius in Bangalore or Beijing, you probably would have chosen Boston, because a genius in Beijing or Bangalore could not really take advantage of his or her talent. They could not plug and play globally. Not anymore. Not when the world is flat, and anyone with smarts, access to Google and a cheap wireless laptop can join the innovation fray.
When the world is flat, you can innovate without having to emigrate. This is going to get interesting. We are about to see creative destruction on steroids.
How did the world get flattened, and how did it happen so fast?
It was a result of 10 events and forces that all came together during the 1990's and converged right around the year 2000. Let me go through them briefly. The first event was 11/9. That's right -- not 9/11, but 11/9. Nov. 9, 1989, is the day the Berlin Wall came down, which was critically important because it allowed us to think of the world as a single space. ''The Berlin Wall was not only a symbol of keeping people inside Germany; it was a way of preventing a kind of global view of our future,'' the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen said. And the wall went down just as the windows went up -- the breakthrough Microsoft Windows 3.0 operating system, which helped to flatten the playing field even more by creating a global computer interface, shipped six months after the wall fell.
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The second key date was 8/9. Aug. 9, 1995, is the day Netscape went public, which did two important things. First, it brought the Internet alive by giving us the browser to display images and data stored on Web sites. Second, the Netscape stock offering triggered the dot-com boom, which triggered the dot-com bubble, which triggered the massive overinvestment of billions of dollars in fiber-optic telecommunications cable. That overinvestment, by companies like Global Crossing, resulted in the willy-nilly creation of a global undersea-underground fiber network, which in turn drove down the cost of transmitting voices, data and images to practically zero, which in turn accidentally made Boston, Bangalore and Beijing next-door neighbors overnight. In sum, what the Netscape revolution did was bring people-to-people connectivity to a whole new level. Suddenly more people could connect with more other people from more different places in more different ways than ever before.
No country accidentally benefited more from the Netscape moment than India. ''India had no resources and no infrastructure,'' said Dinakar Singh, one of the most respected hedge-fund managers on Wall Street, whose parents earned doctoral degrees in biochemistry from the University of Delhi before emigrating to America. ''It produced people with quality and by quantity. But many of them rotted on the docks of India like vegetables. Only a relative few could get on ships and get out. Not anymore, because we built this ocean crosser, called fiber-optic cable. For decades you had to leave India to be a professional. Now you can plug into the world from India. You don't have to go to Yale and go to work for Goldman Sachs.'' India could never have afforded to pay for the bandwidth to connect brainy India with high-tech America, so American shareholders paid for it. Yes, crazy overinvestment can be good. The overinvestment in railroads turned out to be a great boon for the American economy. ''But the railroad overinvestment was confined to your own country and so, too, were the benefits,'' Singh said. In the case of the digital railroads, ''it was the foreigners who benefited.'' India got a free ride.
The first time this became apparent was when thousands of Indian engineers were enlisted to fix the Y2K -- the year 2000 -- computer bugs for companies from all over the world. (Y2K should be a national holiday in India. Call it ''Indian Interdependence Day,'' says Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign-policy analyst at Johns Hopkins.) The fact that the Y2K work could be outsourced to Indians was made possible by the first two flatteners, along with a third, which I call ''workflow.'' Workflow is shorthand for all the software applications, standards and electronic transmission pipes, like middleware, that connected all those computers and fiber-optic cable. To put it another way, if the Netscape moment connected people to people like never before, what the workflow revolution did was connect applications to applications so that people all over the world could work together in manipulating and shaping words, data and images on computers like never before.
Indeed, this breakthrough in people-to-people and application-to-application connectivity produced, in short order, six more flatteners -- six new ways in which individuals and companies could collaborate on work and share knowledge. One was ''outsourcing.'' When my software applications could connect seamlessly with all of your applications, it meant that all kinds of work -- from accounting to software-writing -- could be digitized, disaggregated and shifted to any place in the world where it could be done better and cheaper. The second was ''offshoring.'' I send my whole factory from Canton, Ohio, to Canton, China. The third was ''open-sourcing.'' I write the next operating system, Linux, using engineers collaborating together online and working for free. The fourth was ''insourcing.'' I let a company like UPS come inside my company and take over my whole logistics operation -- everything from filling my orders online to delivering my goods to repairing them for customers when they break. (People have no idea what UPS really does today. You'd be amazed!). The fifth was ''supply-chaining.'' This is Wal-Mart's specialty. I create a global supply chain down to the last atom of efficiency so that if I sell an item in Arkansas, another is immediately made in China. (If Wal-Mart were a country, it would be China's eighth-largest trading partner.) The last new form of collaboration I call ''informing'' -- this is Google, Yahoo and MSN Search, which now allow anyone to collaborate with, and mine, unlimited data all by themselves.
So the first three flatteners created the new platform for collaboration, and the next six are the new forms of collaboration that flattened the world even more. The 10th flattener I call ''the steroids,'' and these are wireless access and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). What the steroids do is turbocharge all these new forms of collaboration, so you can now do any one of them, from anywhere, with any device.
The world got flat when all 10 of these flatteners converged around the year 2000. This created a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration on research and work in real time, without regard to geography, distance or, in the near future, even language. ''It is the creation of this platform, with these unique attributes, that is the truly important sustainable breakthrough that made what you call the flattening of the world possible,'' said Craig Mundie, the chief technical officer of Microsoft.
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Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O., who in 2004 began to declare in her public speeches that the dot-com boom and bust were just ''the end of the beginning.'' The last 25 years in technology, Fiorina said, have just been ''the warm-up act.'' Now we are going into the main event, she said, ''and by the main event, I mean an era in which technology will truly transform every aspect of business, of government, of society, of life.''
As if this flattening wasn't enough, another convergence coincidentally occurred during the 1990's that was equally important. Some three billion people who were out of the game walked, and often ran, onto the playing field. I am talking about the people of China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and Central Asia. Their economies and political systems all opened up during the course of the 1990's so that their people were increasingly free to join the free market. And when did these three billion people converge with the new playing field and the new business processes? Right when it was being flattened, right when millions of them could compete and collaborate more equally, more horizontally and with cheaper and more readily available tools. Indeed, thanks to the flattening of the world, many of these new entrants didn't even have to leave home to participate. Thanks to the 10 flatteners, the playing field came to them!
It is this convergence -- of new players, on a new playing field, developing new processes for horizontal collaboration -- that I believe is the most important force shaping global economics and politics in the early 21st century. Sure, not all three billion can collaborate and compete. In fact, for most people the world is not yet flat at all. But even if we're talking about only 10 percent, that's 300 million people -- about twice the size of the American work force. And be advised: the Indians and Chinese are not racing us to the bottom. They are racing us to the top. What China's leaders really want is that the next generation of underwear and airplane wings not just be ''made in China'' but also be ''designed in China.'' And that is where things are heading. So in 30 years we will have gone from ''sold in China'' to ''made in China'' to ''designed in China'' to ''dreamed up in China'' -- or from China as collaborator with the worldwide manufacturers on nothing to China as a low-cost, high-quality, hyperefficient collaborator with worldwide manufacturers on everything. Ditto India. Said Craig Barrett, the C.E.O. of Intel, ''You don't bring three billion people into the world economy overnight without huge consequences, especially from three societies'' -- like India, China and Russia -- ''with rich educational heritages.''
That is why there is nothing that guarantees that Americans or Western Europeans will continue leading the way. These new players are stepping onto the playing field legacy free, meaning that many of them were so far behind that they can leap right into the new technologies without having to worry about all the sunken costs of old systems. It means that they can move very fast to adopt new, state-of-the-art technologies, which is why there are already more cellphones in use in China today than there are people in America.
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If you want to appreciate the sort of challenge we are facing, let me share with you two conversations. One was with some of the Microsoft officials who were involved in setting up Microsoft's research center in Beijing, Microsoft Research Asia, which opened in 1998 -- after Microsoft sent teams to Chinese universities to administer I.Q. tests in order to recruit the best brains from China's 1.3 billion people. Out of the 2,000 top Chinese engineering and science students tested, Microsoft hired 20. They have a saying at Microsoft about their Asia center, which captures the intensity of competition it takes to win a job there and explains why it is already the most productive research team at Microsoft: ''Remember, in China, when you are one in a million, there are 1,300 other people just like you.''
The other is a conversation I had with Rajesh Rao, a young Indian entrepreneur who started an electronic-game company from Bangalore, which today owns the rights to Charlie Chaplin's image for mobile computer games. ''We can't relax,'' Rao said. ''I think in the case of the United States that is what happened a bit. Please look at me: I am from India. We have been at a very different level before in terms of technology and business. But once we saw we had an infrastructure that made the world a small place, we promptly tried to make the best use of it. We saw there were so many things we could do. We went ahead, and today what we are seeing is a result of that. There is no time to rest. That is gone. There are dozens of people who are doing the same thing you are doing, and they are trying to do it better. It is like water in a tray: you shake it, and it will find the path of least resistance. That is what is going to happen to so many jobs -- they will go to that corner of the world where there is the least resistance and the most opportunity. If there is a skilled person in Timbuktu, he will get work if he knows how to access the rest of the world, which is quite easy today. You can make a Web site and have an e-mail address and you are up and running. And if you are able to demonstrate your work, using the same infrastructure, and if people are comfortable giving work to you and if you are diligent and clean in your transactions, then you are in business.''
Instead of complaining about outsourcing, Rao said, Americans and Western Europeans would ''be better off thinking about how you can raise your bar and raise yourselves into doing something better. Americans have consistently led in innovation over the last century. Americans whining -- we have never seen that before.''
The long-term opportunities and challenges that the flattening of the world puts before the United States are profound. Therefore, our ability to get by doing things the way we've been doing them -- which is to say not always enriching our secret sauce -- will not suffice any more. ''For a country as wealthy we are, it is amazing how little we are doing to enhance our natural competitiveness,'' says Dinakar Singh, the Indian-American hedge-fund manager. ''We are in a world that has a system that now allows convergence among many billions of people, and we had better step back and figure out what it means. It would be a nice coincidence if all the things that were true before were still true now, but there are quite a few things you actually need to do differently. You need to have a much more thoughtful national discussion.''
The main challenge to America today is from those practicing extreme capitalism, namely China, India and South Korea. The main objective in this era is building strong individuals.
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Meeting the challenges of flatism requires as comprehensive, energetic and focused a response as did meeting the challenge of Communism. It requires a president who can summon the nation to work harder, get smarter, attract more young women and men to science and engineering and build the broadband infrastructure, portable pensions and health care that will help every American become more employable in an age in which no one can guarantee you lifetime employment.
We have been slow to rise to the challenge of flatism, in contrast to Communism, maybe because flatism doesn't involve ICBM missiles aimed at our cities. Indeed, the hot line, which used to connect the Kremlin with the White House, has been replaced by the help line, which connects everyone in America to call centers in Bangalore.
When it comes to responding to the challenges of the flat world, there is no help line we can call. We have to dig into ourselves. We in America have all the basic economic and educational tools to do that. But we have not been improving those tools as much as we should. That is why we are in what Shirley Ann Jackson, the 2004 president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, calls a ''quiet crisis'' -- one that is slowly eating away at America's scientific and engineering base.
''If left unchecked,'' said Jackson, the first African-American woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics from M.I.T., ''this could challenge our pre-eminence and capacity to innovate.'' And it is our ability to constantly innovate new products, services and companies that has been the source of America's horn of plenty and steadily widening middle class for the last two centuries. This quiet crisis is a product of three gaps now plaguing American society. The first is an ''ambition gap.'' Compared with the young, energetic Indians and Chinese, too many Americans have gotten too lazy. As David Rothkopf, a former official in the Clinton Commerce Department, puts it, ''The real entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.'' Second, we have a serious numbers gap building. We are not producing enough engineers and scientists. We used to make up for that by importing them from India and China, but in a flat world, where people can now stay home and compete with us, and in a post-9/11 world, where we are insanely keeping out many of the first-round intellectual draft choices in the world for exaggerated security reasons, we can no longer cover the gap. That's a key reason companies are looking abroad. The numbers are not here. And finally we are developing an education gap. Here is the dirty little secret that no C.E.O. wants to tell you: they are not just outsourcing to save on salary. They are doing it because they can often get better-skilled and more productive people than their American workers.
These are some of the reasons that Bill Gates, the Microsoft chairman, warned the governors' conference in a Feb. 26 speech that American high-school education is ''obsolete.'' As Gates put it: ''When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad, I am terrified for our work force of tomorrow. In math and science, our fourth graders are among the top students in the world. By eighth grade, they're in the middle of the pack. By 12th grade, U.S. students are scoring near the bottom of all industrialized nations. . . . The percentage of a population with a college degree is important, but so are sheer numbers. In 2001, India graduated almost a million more students from college than the United States did. China graduates twice as many students with bachelor's degrees as the U.S., and they have six times as many graduates majoring in engineering. In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind.''
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We need to get going immediately. It takes 15 years to train a good engineer, because, ladies and gentlemen, this really is rocket science. So parents, throw away the Game Boy, turn off the television and get your kids to work. There is no sugar-coating this: in a flat world, every individual is going to have to run a little faster if he or she wants to advance his or her standard of living. When I was growing up, my parents used to say to me, ''Tom, finish your dinner -- people in China are starving.'' But after sailing to the edges of the flat world for a year, I am now telling my own daughters, ''Girls, finish your homework -- people in China and India are starving for your jobs.''
Thomas L. Friedman is the author of ''The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century,'' to be published this week by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and from which this article is adapted. His column appears on the Op-Ed page of The Times, and his television documentary ''Does Europe Hate Us?'' was shown on the Discovery Channel on April 7 at 8 p.m.
Forwarded by- Mr. Srikanth Balakrishnan, Bangalore based proffessional involved in transaction taxation advisory services