Quality must not be confused with ‘compliance to standards.’ Quality is the pursuit of ‘perfect, free and now.’
- Prof S Chakraborty

I love tools that allow me to stay disorganized and that’s the reason I love Google. With GMail, I no longer have to organize my emails into folders. With Google Desktop, I no longer have to organize my files. With Picasa, I needn’t arrange my pictures/albums. In fact, these tools now make me more productive than the otherwise organized individual – who would have cumulatively spent hours allocating stuff in the right folder and giving it a nomenclature structure. Chaos, I have a reason to embrace you now more than ever before.

Vision is too vague a term. It doesn’t quite suit me. I don’t know what shape ‘Workosaur’ would take 5 years from now. Neither do I want to be bound by a vision just for the heck of it. Also, the word vision has been abused enough by organizations over and over. None of the employees truly understand or believe in the vision statement’s obsession with maximizing shareholder’s value. I’d rather have something which is simpler and concise (less than 7 words) and which embodies a philosophy that sets a direction for every employee in their individual spheres of work. Much like Philips’ Let’s Make Things Better. It’s a powerful statement and one which sets the ball rolling for every action for every employee/team. It’s a Unifying Philosophy.

I consider myself to be a good PPT/Presentation creator. But when I saw the Results of the World’s Best Presentation Contest 2008, I was blown away. Full marks to SlideShare for this marketing initiative. Good presentation creation skills most certainly increase your sales closure ratio.

Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.
- John Kenneth Galbraith

A bunch of guys running a PE firm recently invited me to their office to advise them on their investment into a Singapore-based company that had diversified into the Internet space. The dot com was started roughly 2 months ago. I had a look and came out thoroughly impressed. I saw great potential – the product addressed a well-defined need and had a proven revenue model tied to it. But the PE firm guys seemed to have a different opinion. They had been losing sleep over the fact that the Internet division had yet not seen any revenue. Thankfully, these guys had faith in my judgment and I was able to convince them that they had invested in a winner. And at this stage, they were better off contributing ideas that could act as hooks to bring in traffic rather than sitting through board meetings with the single-minded agenda of driving revenues.

I don’t remember who pointed me to Scott Berkun’s essays but I found some great stuff there. The essay am particularly fond of and which I do use in my day-to-day life is the one on creative thinking hacks. Highly recommended.

When I watched the videos preceding this post, I got goose bumps. The videos are pitches/demos by the founder of 2 startups – one called BirdPost.com and the other called GoodGuide.com. Am sure when you finish watching these videos, you’ll know why I felt that way. Be prepared to be infused by a change-the-world spirit.

I am tired of seeing startups boasting about being nominated for TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards. When you marry a b-plan competition with a popularity contest, I have no problems with that. But when the voters are not the target audience for most or any of the services, there is a serious problem. In most cases, voters are just employees at the startup or their friends. The awards have become begging contests wherein the startup that stoops the lowest and begs best and most amongst their employees / friends / ex-colleagues / fellow alumni will win. In fact I would never invest in the startups that win this award because it would be a sure shot sign of a company that has nothing better to do. I have great respect for the organizers – TATA / NEN / Live Mint – but they have got it all wrong. One look at the companies leading these awards and you’ll be nodding your head in agreement with what I’ve just said.