---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Das, Reshmi
Date: 2009/4/27
Subject: FW: SAVE WATER
To:
From: Das, Reshmi
Date: 2009/4/27
Subject: FW: SAVE WATER
To:
Monday, April 27, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
FW: Global Heroes: Article published in The Economist
From: Abhijan Nandy
Sent: Thursday, 16 April, 2009 5:24 PM
To: Abhijan Nandy
Subject: Global Heroes: Article published in The Economist
Global heroes
Sent: Thursday, 16 April, 2009 5:24 PM
To: Abhijan Nandy
Subject: Global Heroes: Article published in The Economist
Global heroes
Mar 12th 2009
Despite the downturn, entrepreneurs are enjoying a renaissance the world over, says Adrian Wooldridge (interviewed here)
IN DECEMBER last year, three weeks after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai and in the midst of the worst global recession since the 1930s, 1,700 bright-eyed Indians gathered in a hotel in Bangalore India
Back in 1942 Joseph Schumpeter gave warning that the bureaucratisation of capitalism was killing the spirit of entrepreneurship. Instead of risking the turmoil of “creative destruction”, Keynesian economists, working hand in glove with big business and big government, claimed to be able to provide orderly prosperity. But perspectives have changed in the intervening decades, and Schumpeter’s entrepreneurs are once again roaming the globe.
Since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution of the 1980s, governments of almost every ideological stripe have embraced entrepreneurship. The European Union, the United Nations and the World Bank have also become evangelists. Indeed, the trend is now so well established that it has become the object of satire. Listen to me, says the leading character in one of the best novels of 2008, Aravind Adiga’s “The White Tiger”, and “you will know everything there is to know about how entrepreneurship is born, nurtured, and developed in this, the glorious 21st century of man.”
This special report will argue that the entrepreneurial idea has gone mainstream, supported by political leaders on the left as well as on the right, championed by powerful pressure groups, reinforced by a growing infrastructure of universities and venture capitalists and embodied by wildly popular business heroes such as Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson and
The world’s greatest producer of entrepreneurs continues to be
The company that arranged the oversubscribed conference in
The globalisation of entrepreneurship is raising the competitive stakes for everyone, particularly in the rich world. Entrepreneurs can now come from almost anywhere, including once-closed economies such as
For most people the term “entrepreneur” simply means anybody who starts a business, be it a corner shop or a high-tech start up. This special report will use the word in a narrower sense to mean somebody who offers an innovative solution to a (frequently unrecognised) problem. The defining characteristic of entrepreneurship, then, is not the size of the company but the act of innovation.
A disproportionate number of entrepreneurial companies are, indeed, small start-ups. The best way to break into a business is to offer new products or processes. But by no means all start-ups are innovative: most new corner shops do much the same as old corner shops. And not all entrepreneurial companies are either new or small. Google is constantly innovating despite being, in
This narrower definition of entrepreneurship has an impressive intellectual pedigree going right back to Schumpeter. Peter Drucker, a distinguished management guru, defined the entrepreneur as somebody who “upsets and disorganises”. “Entrepreneurs innovate,” he said. “Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship.” William Baumol, one of the leading economists in this field, describes the entrepreneur as “the bold and imaginative deviator from established business patterns and practices”. Howard Stevenson, the man who did more than anybody else to champion the study of entrepreneurship at the
Innovative entrepreneurs are not only more interesting than the replicative sort, they also carry more economic weight because they generate many more jobs. A small number of innovative start-ups account for a disproportionately large number of new jobs. But entrepreneurs can be found anywhere, not just in small businesses. There are plenty of misconceptions about entrepreneurship, five of which are particularly persistent. The first is that entrepreneurs are “orphans and outcasts”, to borrow the phrase of George Gilder, an American intellectual: lonely Atlases battling a hostile world or anti-social geeks inventing world-changing gizmos in their garrets. In fact, entrepreneurship, like all business, is a social activity. Entrepreneurs may be more independent than the usual suits who merely follow the rules, but they almost always need business partners and social networks to succeed.
The history of high-tech start-ups reads like a roll-call of business partnerships: Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Apple), Bill Gates and Paul Allen (Microsoft), Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google), Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes (Facebook). Ben and Jerry’s was formed when two childhood friends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, got together to start an ice-cream business (they wanted to go into the bagel business but could not raise the cash). Richard Branson (Virgin) relied heavily on his cousin, Simon Draper, as well as other partners. Ramana Nanda, of Harvard Business School (HBS), and Jesper Sorensen, of
Entrepreneurship also flourishes in clusters. A third of American venture capital flows into two places, Silicon Valley and Boston, and two-thirds into just six places, New York, Los Angeles, San Diego and Austin as well as the Valley and Boston. This is partly because entrepreneurship in such places is a way of life—coffee houses in Silicon Valley are full of young people loudly talking about their business plans—and partly because the infrastructure is already in place, which radically reduces the cost of starting a business.
The second myth is that most entrepreneurs are just out of short trousers. Some of today’s most celebrated figures were indeed astonishingly young when they got going: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell all dropped out of college to start their businesses, and the founders of Google and Facebook were still students when they launched theirs. Ben Casnocha started his first company when he was 12, was named entrepreneur of the year by Inc magazine at 17 and published a guide to running start-ups at 19.
But not all successful entrepreneurs are kids. Harland Sanders started franchising Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 65. Gary Burrell was 52 when he left Allied Signal to help start Garmin, a GPS giant. Herb Kelleher was 40 when he founded Southwest Airlines, a business that pioneered no-frills discount flying in
The third myth is that entrepreneurship is driven mainly by venture capital. This certainly matters in capital-intensive industries such as high-tech and biotechnology; it can also help start-ups to grow very rapidly. And venture capitalists provide entrepreneurs with advice, contacts and management skills as well as money.
But most venture capital goes into just a narrow sliver of business: computer hardware and software, semiconductors, telecommunications and biotechnology. Venture capitalists fund only a small fraction of start-ups. The money for the vast majority comes from personal debt or from the “three fs”—friends, fools and families. Google is often quoted as a triumph of the venture-capital industry, but Messrs Brin and Page founded the company without any money at all and launched it with about $1m raised from friends and connections.
Monitor, a management consultancy that has recently conducted an extensive survey of entrepreneurs, emphasises the importance of “angel” investors, who operate somewhere in the middle ground between venture capitalists and family and friends. They usually have some personal connection with their chosen entrepreneur and are more likely than venture capitalists to invest in a business when it is little more than a budding idea.
The fourth myth is that to succeed, entrepreneurs must produce some world-changing new product. Sir Ronald Cohen, the founder of Apax Partners, one of
The fifth myth is that entrepreneurship cannot flourish in big companies. Many entrepreneurs are sworn enemies of large corporations, and many policymakers measure entrepreneurship by the number of small-business start-ups. This makes some sense. Start-ups are often more innovative than established companies because their incentives are sharper: they need to break into the market, and owner-entrepreneurs can do much better than even the most innovative company man.
But many big companies work hard to keep their people on their entrepreneurial toes. Johnson & Johnson operates like a holding company that provides financial muscle and marketing skills to internal entrepreneurs. Jack Welch tried to transform General Electric from a Goliath into a collection of entrepreneurial Davids. Jorma Ollila transformed Nokia, a long-established Finnish firm, from a maker of rubber boots and cables into a mobile-phone giant; his successor as boss of the company, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, is now talking about turning it into an internet company. Such men belong firmly in the pantheon of entrepreneurs.
Just as importantly, big firms often provide start-ups with their bread and butter. In many industries, especially pharmaceuticals and telecoms, the giants contract out innovation to smaller companies. Procter & Gamble tries to get half of its innovations from outside its own labs. Microsoft works closely with a network of 750,000 small companies around the world. Some 3,500 companies have grown up in Nokia’s shadow.
But how is the new enthusiasm for entrepreneurship standing up to the worldwide economic downturn? Entrepreneurs are being presented with huge practical problems. Customers are harder to find. Suppliers are becoming less accommodating. Capital is harder to raise. In
The downturn is also confronting supporters of entrepreneurial capitalism with some awkward questions. Why have so many once-celebrated entrepreneurs turned out to be crooks? And why has the free-wheeling culture of Wall Street produced such disastrous results?
For many the change in public mood is equally worrying. Back in 2002, in the wake of the scandal over Enron, a dubious energy-trading company, Congress made life more difficult for start-ups with the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation on corporate governance. Now it is busy propping up failed companies such as General Motors and throwing huge sums of money at the public sector. Newt Gingrich, a Republican former speaker of
Yet the threat to entrepreneurship, both practical and ideological, can be exaggerated. The downturn has advantages as well as drawbacks. Talented staff are easier to find and office space is cheaper to rent. Harder times will eliminate the also-rans and, in the long run, could make it easier for the survivors to grow. As Schumpeter pointed out, downturns can act as a “good cold shower for the economic system”, releasing capital and labour from dying sectors and allowing newcomers to recombine in imaginative new ways.
Schumpeter also said that all established businesses are “standing on ground that is crumbling beneath their feet”. Today the ground is far less solid than it was in his day, so the opportunities for entrepreneurs are correspondingly more numerous. The information age is making it ever easier for ordinary people to start businesses and harder for incumbents to defend their territory. Back in 1960 the composition of the Fortune 500 was so stable that it took 20 years for a third of the constitutent companies to change. Now it takes only four years.
There are many reasons for this. First, the information revolution has helped to unbundle existing companies. In 1937 Ronald Coase argued, in his path-breaking article on “The Nature of the Firm”, that companies make economic sense when the bureaucratic cost of performing transactions under one roof is less than the cost of doing the same thing through the market. Second, economic growth is being driven by industries such as computing and telecommunications where innovation is particularly important. Third, advanced economies are characterised by a shift from manufacturing to services. Service firms are usually smaller than manufacturing firms and there are fewer barriers to entry.
Microsoft, Genentech, Gap and The Limited were all founded during recessions. Hewlett-Packard, Geophysical Service (now Texas Instruments), United Technologies, Polaroid and Revlon started in the Depression. Opinion polls suggest that entrepreneurs see a good as well as a bad side to the recession. In a survey carried out in eight emerging markets last November for Endeavor, a pressure group, 85% of the entrepreneurs questioned said they had already felt the impact of the crisis and 88% thought that worse was yet to come. But they also predicted, on average, that their businesses would grow by 31% and their workforces by 12% this year. Half of them thought they would be able to hire better people and 39% said there would be less competition.
FW: The Continuing Ganguly Saga
From: Das, Reshmi
Sent: Wednesday, 24 September, 2008 2:37 PM
To: Abraham, Santosh ; Agniswar Das-Gupta; Anandam Banerjee; Arig Chakraborty; Arunava; c.bhattacharya; Chatterjee, Rajarshi; Chiranjib Dey; d.tanushree; DP Ghosh; dutta_debjani; gh_sarmistha; Ghosh, Chiranjib; ghoshjn; Jayanta.mondal; Mishra,Dipti; Pooja Sethpal; Rupak Giri; saptarshi; saptitude; Siddhartha.Bhadury; Soumik Banerjee; Soumik Bose; Soumik.Banerjee; Sunetra Dasgupta; tanusreedas; Uttiya Chatterjee; Uttiya Chattopadhyay
Subject: FW: The Continuing Ganguly Saga
I found this ‘article’ on ndtvcricket and thought it was worth sharing this around. Enjoy!
The Continuing Ganguly Saga 09 Sep 2008 Mina Anand |
| Thanks & Regards, Reshmi |
FW: Grandma ( Nice Ad )
From: Das, Reshmi
Sent: Monday, 29 September, 2008 5:00 PM
Subject: FW: Grandma ( Nice Ad )
worth watching it!!!
FW: Very touching....Sometimes live for others...it takes 2 minutes to read
From: Subhashree Pal
Sent: Thursday, 09 April, 2009 10:51 AM
Subject: Very touching....Sometimes live for others...it takes 2 minutes to read
Subject: Very touching....Sometimes live for others...it takes 2 minutes to read
At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question: "When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?"
The audience was stilled by the query.
The father continued. "I believe, that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child."
Then he told the following story:
Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, "Do you think they'll let me play?" Shay's father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.
Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, "We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning."
Shay struggled over to the team's bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. His Father watched with a small tear in his eye and warmth in his heart. The boys saw the father's joy at his son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again.. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.
At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.
However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay's life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.
The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.
Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman's head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, "Shay, run to first! Run to first!" Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.
Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!" Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball ... the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher's intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman's head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.
All were screaming, "Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay"
Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third! Shay, run to third!"
As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, "Shay, run home! Run home!" Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.
"That day", said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, "the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world".
Shay didn't make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making his father so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!
AND NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY: We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people hesitate. The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces.
If you're thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you're probably sorting out the people in your address book who aren't the "appropriate" ones to receive this type of message. Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a difference. We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize the "natural order of things." So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a choice: Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up those opportunities and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?
A wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it's least fortunate amongst them.
May your day, be a Shay Day
FW: Small Love Story :)
From: Subhashree Pal
Sent: Thursday, 09 April, 2009 2:56 PM
Subject: FW: Small Love Story :)
Subject: FW: Small Love Story :)
Simply outsatnding story………………
Have a Great Day!
Subhashree
From: SAHU, LOKESH
Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 2:44 PM
Subject: Small Love Story :)
Small Love Story
So I decided that I'd ask her to marry me.
Or ask her if she would marry me.
Or say that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.
Or tell her I loved her, and that I wanted her to be with me forever.
Or give her a ring -- a big, huge diamond ring. Or just get down on
my knees and let my eyes say it all.
Well, I had reached a decision. What exactly I was going to do about
it, I didn't know -- at least not yet.
It's now exactly one year since the first time I had started talking
with her-- an anniversary of sorts. I remembered, because that first
time was New Year.
And tomorrow it's New Year again. And we had become close friends.
And I had fallen in love.
nd since I am a simple-minded sort of guy, I have decided I want to marry her.
But How to tell her, though, was a bit of a problem. There were so
many ways to do it and choosing the right one wasn't easy. And I had
no idea how she'd react.
Would she think I was moving too fast?
Was it too early to suggest marriage?
Was she even interested in me in that way?
Surely, the best way to find out was to tell her how I felt, and ask
her if she felt the same. And if she did, then we could get married.
Right?
These thoughts had been in my head from the moment I had woken up
that morning. And I'd only been awake a few minutes. As I finished
brushing my teeth, the phone rang.
"Hello?"
"Hi!" It was her.
The sound of her cheery voice took my breath away. "Hi!" I replied,
almost whispering.
"Listen," she said, sounding very excited. "I'm having a party at
home tonight. Be there at eight."
"Sure," I replied.
"Ok, bye!" And she put the phone down.
I stood there for almost a minute, staring at the phone in my hand.
And then I stupidly said "Bye" to it.
I would have to reach the party early, to tell her in private. Or
should I say it right there in front of all the guests? Or after the
party, when we were cleaning up after everyone was gone?
And what was I going to get her? Should I get her anything at all?
How about flowers? Roses? Or was that too clichéd? Orchids sounded
better. Or bluebells. Or tulips. Or cauliflower.
I checked my thoughts. No. Not cauliflower.
It's New Year. A gift was definitely in order.
I could get her that moonstone pendant she liked so much. But then it
was a little flimsy as a gift. It was really a toy more than a piece
of jewellery. But did it matter if she really liked it?
Should I get her a book instead?
Or a CD?
Or an earring?
Or should I make her something? I thought about my artistic skills
and decided that that was probably not a good idea.
I spent so much time looking for a suitable gift all day that by the
time I decided that flowers would be a better option, all the florists
had closed. And it was also too late to try to get to her house early
and catch her alone.
So I decided I'd tell her after the party when everyone was gone. And
that I wouldn't get her anything -- more because I couldn't, than
anything else.
Feeling like a fool, and extremely nervous, I reached her doorstep. I
was on time, but there didn't seem to be any noise coming from inside.
Maybe no one had turned up yet. After all, who came to a party on
time?
I stood there and composed myself for a minute. Then, reasonably
confident that the turmoil I was going through wouldn't show, I
knocked.
She opened the door, but only a fraction. She slid out without
opening the door completely, handed me a piece of cloth, and told me
to tie it around my eyes. "We're playing Blind Man's Buff," she said.
Meekly, I put the blindfold on, and she led me into the house. There
was silence, and no one was making a sound. Quite sneaky of everyone,
I thought to myself.
She spun me around a little, and then made me stop. She backed away,
and then said from somewhere behind me, "Ok, you can take it off now."
Though a little confused as to what version of Blind Man's Buff was
played after taking the blindfold off, I complied. And as soon as I
opened my eyes, I froze.
I was standing in the middle of her empty living room, and the lights
had all been turned off. But the room was brightly lit with dozens of
candles.
And on the wall in front of me, was a big poster with the following
words on it:
One year ago, this day we met.
There was an arrow pointing to the right, beside the poster.So I
turned. On the next wall were the words:
One year of friendship
One year of joy
One year of laughter
between a girl and a boy
One year of comfort
One year of closeness
One year of peace
and a whole lot of happiness
On the third wall, was:
One year or Six,
a lifetime it seems,
And yet, it feels just like yesterday
I turned to look at the fourth wall, and there, standing in front of
it, was she, holding up a poster in her hands that said:
I want to be this happy forever .............Will You Marry Me?
Thanks & Regards,
Lokesh Sahu
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