Wednesday, January 7, 2004

India - The next five years Conversations with Dina: Says Mashelkar: 'I can confidently predict that if India plays its cards right, by 2025, it can become the number one knowledge production centre of the world.' With India as 'the number one knowledge production centre,' and China as a [the?] driving economic powerhouse, the US and Europe may have to reconsider their places in the world, not to mention their very self-identities. Is anyone -- which think tanks? (surely no political leaders) -- begining to do that groundwork, to dip toes in those dark, unknown waters? 9:46:47 PM    comment []  trackback []

Pointless power Don Norman on PowerPoint Usability. http://www.sociablemedia.com/articles_norman.htm [xBlog: The visual thinking weblog | XPLANE] PowerPoint is NOT the problem. The problem is bad talks, and in part, this comes about because of so many pointless meetings, where people with - or without - a point to make - have to give pointless talks. The problem is that it is difficult work to give a good talk, and to do so, the presenter has to have learned how to give talks, has to have practiced, and has had to have good feedback about the quality of the talks - the better to improve them.... Tufte misses the point completely. 9:32:30 PM    comment []  trackback []

'The talent myth' bBlog: This 'talent mind-set' is the new orthodoxy of American management.... None, however, have spread the word quite so ardently as McKinsey, and, of all its clients, one firm took the talent mind-set closest to heart....The company, of course, was Enron.... Enron was the ultimate 'talent' company....The one Enron partner that has escaped largely unscathed is McKinsey, which is odd, given that it essentially created the blueprint for the Enron culture. [bBlog: The sales, marketing and business weblog | XPLANE] The tool is never enough. How it's applied is always as important. Talent was far from enough for Enron. Innovation hasn't been enough for Apple. Mark Twain recognized the problem of single-minded focus: When your only tool is a hammer, you tend to see all problems as nails. 9:18:36 PM    comment []  trackback []

What's Special About This Number? bBlog: If you know a distinctive fact about a number not listed here, please e-mail me. Divisors, algebra, primes, sums of powers, powers/polygonal, matrices, graphs, combinatorics, Fibonacci, digits, perfect/amicable, bases, repdigits, geometry... [bBlog: The sales, marketing and business weblog | XPLANE] F'rinstance: 87 is the sum of the squares of the first 4 primes. Kuwuhl. 8:58:21 PM    comment []  trackback []

With G!d on our side? The God Gulf. I wish we could recall how Abe Lincoln achieved moral clarity without moral sanctimony.. By Nicholas D. Kristof. [New York Times: Opinion] Amazing factoid: Americans increasingly telling pollsters that they believe in prayer and miracles, while only 28 percent say they believe in evolution 4:23:28 PM    comment []  trackback []