Skip to main content

Thought from Driving Honda

I started reading Driving Honda by Jeffrey Rothfeder.  More about this book soon, but as someone who reads business books - it strikes me that Japanese companies have so much 'Japan' in their culture.

Read about any Japanese company and there is so much Japan in it. To a large extent it is because a lot of manufacturing principles that are taken as granted today originated there.

Having known and worked with a few companies - the French companies have a bit of France in them, German companies have a lot of Germany in them and American companies have a lot of America in them.

But when we read about Indian companies - there is very little India in them. Yes, we have our own 'partha' system. But we have done precious little to make it our own. When I read 'Rokda' (refer earlier post - there definitely was a touch of Indianness in them - but nothing that makes you think.) And this from a nation that has a rich history of philosophy of over a thousand years.

And what about our home grown IT services companies? Despite having practically created an industry - there is very little Indian about them apart from the nationality. In fact, having worked and interacted with a few of them - I can say with certainty that there is almost nothing 'Indian' in them - the way we see about the Japanese.

Indeed, even in companies that have been set up with collaboration from abroad - while they do doff their hat to India, the culture is largely imported.

Why is that so? 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

No conferences

Decided not to attend any conferences this year. Atleast not the typical ones I have often ranted about here. Will be both choosy and intentional about which ones to attend.  The ones to attend are the ones put up by practitioners of a craft. The rest is marketing one way or other. 

And the unconference happened

 Most conferences have an agenda. No, not the stated agenda, but an agenda of marketing, airtime to sponsors, ensuring the past and future customers are invited, of ensuring that the "stars" of the industry are invited and attention showered of them. All in all it is a your scratch my back, I scratch your back syndrome. Some of these become cliques and claques and therefore the real point behind a conference is lost. And then there is the unconference - organised and run by the alumni of the ISABS ODCP program. And as the name suggests, this is truly an un-conference organised by the alumni, for the alumni. No funders - except the alumni themselves. No sponsors. Just the team.  I havent seen a more tastefully organised conference (yes, its an unconference).  To begin with - the location - not a typical star hotel, but an outdoorsy place. The food - simple. The welcome - personal. It was like a homecoming. The setting was warm and welcoming. It was a smaller conference. Ju...

The power of jotting down ideas

 Long long ago, I always used to carry a small letterpad with me. To jot down ideas that might occur. Over the years, it has changed from a notepad to evernote to google keep, but the power of jotting down ideas is immense.  Small ideas go into keep.  Anything to be quickly typed goes into whatsapp as a self message.  Bigger or better formed ideas go into Google docs A few are still written, but I manage to copy them into a digital format sooner rather than later.  But the power of jotting down is immense. My google keep is an encyclopedia of ideas - most of which may never get implemented.