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Vision India 2020: Sramana Mitra gives away $B entrepreneurial ideas |
| By:deepika bajaj on Wed 17 Feb 2010 5:05 PM under Business, Career and Money, Entrepreneurship |
Unveiling a sweeping array of business opportunities in India today, Sramana Mitra conveys her ideas on Indian entrepreneurship in her latest book, Vision India 2020 (February 2010).
Set in the year 2020, this rousing book looks back on the building of 45 entrepreneurial ventures in India, from start-up to $1 billion enterprise. Each business idea is gleaned from the many opportunities that have captured Mitra’s attention through her years of experience as a Silicon Valley strategy consultant to over 80 organizations, a serial entrepreneur operating in both the US and India, a Forbes columnist, the author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series, a blogger at Sramana Mitra On Strategy, and through her regular online strategy roundtables with entrepreneurs.
I had the opportunity to talk to Sramana to talk about her latest book. I had special interest in it since I am originally from India and am intrigued by the opportunity of entrepreneurship there and who better than Sramana Mitra to learn from.
DB. Sramana, please tell us more about your recent book ??Vision India 2010″?
SM: I have been working on Vision India 2020 for almost two years. The book is a collection of my 45 business ideas leveraging India’s strategic advantages, spanning a diverse set of sectors ranging from technology to education, healthcare to infrastructure, film to rural development.
These are big ideas, each with the potential of becoming billion dollar businesses, while addressing specific market opportunities in unique ways. I have, in effect, given you access to my notebook of ideas, so that some of you can take these ideas forward.
As you might imagine, there is no way I will be able to do 45 ventures of this scale on my own. But these ventures deserve to be built. These opportunities deserve to be attempted. And my hope is that I will be able to work with some of you in bringing them to fruition.
At heart, I remain an entrepreneur. But it is no longer necessary for me to be the CEO of everything that I am involved with. I can play the role of a facilitator, an advisor, a collaborator, a connector of dots, even a recruiter of teams. This way, I may be able to make a bigger difference with greater leverage.
I don’t know yet how these ideas will find their ways to fruition, but I have decided to put them out there with one simple thought: “Not only do ideas have consequences, only ideas have long and lasting consequences.” I believe they will capture the imagination of entrepreneurs who are willing to put 10, 20, 30 years of their lives into building these great enterprises.
I have written the book as “business fiction”, as if we’re already in 2020, looking back on building these exciting companies. It has detailed strategic nuances, characters – some real, some fictional – and in the dedication of the book, I have asked the Indian youth to “close your eyes, exist in this future, be each entrepreneur.”
It is, in a sense, a futuristic retrospective. I have experimented not only with business ideas, but also with the form of the book, as well as the publishing model.
DB. At Invincibelle, we have a group of exciting and cool women who are business professionals, entrepreneurs, artists, writers and change agents working in non-profits, what are some opportunities for women entrepreneurs in India?
SM: Opportunities are no different from women entrepreneurs in India. The opportunities I discuss can just as well be attempted by women as they can be my men.
DB. What are some challenges for Indian entrepreneurs?
SM: Lack of experience outside of the outsourcing industry is a major challenge. Hopefully, in this decade, we will get past that. I have addressed this in the book.
DB:. Where are some opportunities for innovation in India in the next decade?
SM: Opportunities for innovation are in every sector. I have dealt with technology, technology-enabled services, education, healthcare, banking, rural development, lifestyle brands, entertainment, and infrastructure. Vision India 2020 is a very comprehensive look at innovation opportunities for India in this decade.
DB: What motivated you to write this book?
SM: I have been making notes of business ideas for India for over 15 years. I needed to collect my thoughts and synthesize these ideas. As I started doing that, I realized that I have a book coming together. I first published some of the ideas in a somewhat rudimentary format on my blog in 2008, and simultaneously syndicated the columns to DNA India. Then, I developed them further and added many more ideas to finally get the book together which came out in February 2010. One of my motivations is to connect with entrepreneurs who are interested in working with me to implement these ideas and build significant companies out of them.
Please get your copy: Click here: Vision India 2020
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Just Don’t Do It! |
| By:deepika bajaj on Tue 09 Feb 2010 5:06 PM under Career and Money, Get Organized, Personal Success, balance |
If you are like most people, you have a lot on your plate. Chances are you are busy and have a to-do list a mile long. One secret of successfully managing time is being able to delegate tasks properly. Choosing the right person for the right task is a valuable tool in getting stuff done in record time!
Whether it’s at home or work, you can benefit from learning the art of delegation:
Lose control. One thing holding many of us controlling types back from delegating is the fear that it won’t get done right. “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!” Remember that old saying? But, if you take the time to educate someone on how to do a task properly, it pays off in the long run.
Show your spouse and kids how to do household chores correctly, and give step-by-step guides at your workplace. Follow up with lots of positive reinforcement and only constructive criticism. Think, “It helped me out so much last week when you handled those tasks, feel free to step in whenever you can,” not “Can’t you do more around here?”
Decide what to delegate. Deciding which tasks to do yourself and which to hand over can be tricky, but starting with the chores that you are bad at, and like the least, is a good place to start. It’s not that you are dumping all the grunt work on someone else, because we all have to do chores we don’t like, but delegating things we aren’t good at can be a good use of time.
Continue Reading the article on Yahoo! shine:
Just Don’t Do It! The Art of Delegation
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Are you in a long-term unmarried relationship? Hannah on”A Little Bit Married” |
| By:deepika bajaj on Tue 02 Feb 2010 9:28 PM under General, Personal Success, balance |
Hannah Seligson is a journalist who divides her time between New York City and Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. This is her second book. Please visit her website: www.hannahseligson.com.
Invincibelle sat down with Hannah to talk about her book ” A Little Bit Married”. Ever wondered about a long-term unmarried relationship. Find out why young people are delaying marriage.
DB: Hannah, please tell us more about your recent book –”A Little Bit Married”
HS: First comes love, then comes a decade of being “a little bit married,” then comes marriage. A Little Bit Married uncovers and spotlights a major trend in dating today: the long-term unmarried relationship. In this book, I shed light on a phenomenon that everyone does, knows someone who does, or is related to someone who does, but no one has named. In this sui generis type of relationship book – Seligson doesn’t just tell readers how to handle a guy dawdling to propose – she blends advice with the context of why young people are delaying marriage.
DB: Why is this book important than ever before?
HS: Because long-term dating (A Little Bit Married) is the new romantic rite of passage for young people! Today, more than 23 million Americans are in unmarred committed relationships. The number of cohabitating couples has grown more than tenfold during the last forty years. Forty years ago, in 1970, only about 500,000 couples lived together in unwedded bliss; now, over five million opposite-sex couples in the United States live together outside of marriage. So it’s critical to understand this new courtship ritual.
DB: What’s the biggest challenge for relationships you found while writing this book?
HS: For couples in this relationship-stage, the biggest challenge is trying to sync their marriage clocks. On the psychological side, the desire among young people “to get it right.”
DB: At Invincibelle, we stand for women to help them in their relationships and ventures, what are the challenges women finding in relationships?
HS: Women have an expiration date on fertility, a biological difference that colors the ALBM years. In short, women have to think about their time differently than men do. There are also some gender differences in terms of how men and women view cohabitation. Research shows that men are more likely to enter a cohabiting arrangement with “maybe I do,” whereas women often enter with “I do.” The convergence is that both men and women in this demo want to get married, the rub often is the timeline.
DB: What are some critical success factors in relationships?
HS: There are so many, so I’ll share two of my favorites:
– They strive for equality. Four Pennsylvania State University psychologists in their book, Alone Together, which looked at data from two studies done on marital quality in the US (one in 1980 and one in 2000) found that people with conservative views toward gender roles (think: Ozzie and Harry) tend to have less marital happiness, less marital interaction, and more marital problems than couples who have a more egalitarian view of marriage.
– They do their marriage homework. Couples who took a pre-marriage class called Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) were found in a five-year follow-up to have higher levels of positive communication and lower levels of negative communication than the control group
DB: What are some pros and cons of long-term unmarried relationships?
HS: Pros: Delaying marriage and waiting until you’ve reached financial and emotional maturity is a good thing for the institution. Studies show people who get married later (after their early twenties) have lower divorce rates.
Cons: It will feel like you are in relationship purgatory and lots of precious time can be wasted.
DB: What does “a little bit married” mean?
HS: The baseline definition is that you’ve been in a monogamous non-matrimonial relationship for at least twelve months. In practice, however, what being A Little Bit Married means varies dramatically. Maybe you and your boyfriend or girlfriend have lived together long enough to reach what many states would deem a legitimate common law marriage. Or maybe you’re not living together, but are fielding questions from relatives about where you two would like to eventually settle down. Perhaps you’ve talked about honeymoons, or made geographical adjustments to accommodate the other’s career.
If A Little Bit Married had an avatar, it would be Prince William, heir to the British throne, and his girlfriend, Kate Middleton, who have been dating for over six years. Although Britain’s betting shops put the odds on a 2009 marriage at 2:1, there has been no official royal press release about an upcoming engagement, bucketing them in with the millions of other couples who are just “A Little Bit Married.”
DB: What motivated you to write this book?
HS: After my first round of being A Little Bit Married, I became intrigued by this new dating pattern that I saw practically every 20-something friend of mine ebb in and out of. Here were these relationship that fifty or sixty years ago would have most likely culminated in marriage, but today often do not. So the book is an attempt to understand why that’s the case.
Click here to GET your copy on Amazon: A Little Bit Married.
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Religious diversity in the Workplace |
| By:deepika bajaj on Sun 31 Jan 2010 7:56 PM under Business, Corporate culture, Immigration, Management |
Today, there are more than 22 major religions in the United States. according to the Pew Forum’s U.S Religion Landscape Survey, religious diversity is growing, and the religious affiliations are constantly changing with every major religious growing and losing adherents.
In Megatrends 2010, Patricia Aburdene identifies spirituality in business as one of the top seven megatrends of the coming decade.
Immigration has contributed to the growing diversity of faith in the United States. An examination of religious affilation and nationality shows that immigramts are heavily represented among Hindus, Muslims, and members of Orthodix churches with 86%, 65% and 38%, repectively, born outside the United States.
Further, younger americans are more likely to e unaffiliated with any specific religion.
Globalization is another factor contributing to the increasing importance of faith in the workplace. While Christianity is practiced by majority of the world’s population, it is less dominant than in the United States.
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AOS interview when you have an arrest record. |
| By:Indu Liladhar on Thu 21 Jan 2010 7:17 PM under Uncategorized |
Q) I have an application for an employment-based adjustment of status that currently remains pending. I just received a letter from the USCIS requesting that I appear for an I-485 interview. I am concerned because I have an arrest record from 2005 for a domestic violence battery case, which was later dismissed. My wife and I are separated. Please advise.
A) If the charges were dismissed, you need not worry about your adjustment of status application. However, you must disclose the arrest and subsequent charges that were filed against you. It is important that you take certified copies of the court records that confirm that the charges against you were dismissed.
