Ashesh Badani's Weblog..: Past, present and future

A few weeks ago, I attended a talk hosted by TiE featuring Ed Luce, the author of In Spite of the Gods. While I havent read the book, my impression is that it describes how India got to where it is today through a mix of research and interviews and travel around the country. Ed has lived in India for several years as the former New Delhi bureau chief for the Financial Times and is married to an Indian. He is in a position to have a good perspective - not too close yet not too far.  He spoke very eloquently and he is clearly a believer in the long-term growth prospects for India.

What struck me was his contrast of the physical infrastructure in China versus the social infrastructure of India. China clearly has superior roads, airports, power, manufacturing facilities and the like that we expect as a pre-condition for an economy to progress into the first world. In contrast, India is lacking in those areas but does have a thriving democracy, property rights and an independent judiciary which Ed Luce calls social infrastructure. And he contends that in the long run, the benefits of the social outweigh the advantages of the physical.

If you've ever been to India, I doubt you would describe the country as anything but chaotic. Investments in infrastructure would go a long way in accelerating the country's growth. At the same time, it is fairly obvious that people do not want to trade away the freedoms of democracy. But I wonder if some planning and investment needs to be imposed to provide more order? Or is that a slippery slope to tread?

Its been a while since my last blog entry - Rich said the second entry was the hardest but in my case its been the third...

I was traveling recently so brought along a book I had read halfway through to pick up where I had left off. The book - Wisdom of the Crowds - is a fascinating read but I found it hard to start reading at the page earmarked and had to go back to get context. I am realizing it is not the best idea to have long gaps when you are trying to follow a narrative.

The ideas that fascinate me in the book are around the notion that large groups are more effective/accurate decision makers or predictors than smaller teams. The Iowa Electronic Markets is a great example of a group of inviduals being able to collectively better predict the outcome of elections than experienced pollsters. The book's author describes how small groups in NASA made poor decisions that resulted in awful outcomes. But we've also all been in situations where decisions by large committees take too long and ultimately go in directions that nobody really wants and takes into account so many perspectives that nobody is completely satisfied.

In the same vein is a book about too many choices in our world today. While I havent read it, I can certainly see the point - the other day I was in a pharmacy and was blown away by the number of choices I have to pick something up for a cold or flu - several brands, flavors, day/night relief, dosage strength. Not sure it was productive for me to spend about 10 mts trying to figure out what exactly matched my need.

So are we much smarter and more effective when large groups of people are involved? Or do we get confused and paralyzed into inaction because we are attempting to digest too many voices and opinions?

For the hundreds of people keeping track, I mentioned in my initial blog entry that the next one would be a little more about me. As things would have it, I got tagged (blog tagged? blagged? b-tagged?) by b-school and work alum Ken Oestreich who now works at an interesting startup. So now I guess I have to come up with 5 things about me...here goes...

1. When I was 2 or 3 years old, I think I almost died from drinking kerosene. I am told I woke up from my nap, crawled out of my crib and down a flight of stairs in search of water. Then I happened across a plastic tumbler which had kerosene in it (somebody was using it to oil the hinges of the refrigerator) and thinking it was water, gulped down a few sips - as you can tell, I was clearly a bright child. I immediately fell over and turned green/blue and had to be rushed to a hospital where they pumped most of it out of my system. Growing up, I often used this as an excuse for aversion to a variety of foods!

2. When I was little (under the age of 10), one year my parents suggested we not have a big party for my birthday and instead give the money to charity. Being a child, I was very resistant to the idea but ultimately agreed. I went to the charity and gave some food and clothes and the administrator of the charity agreed (after much pleading) to come to our house just for a couple of minutes to thank us for this gesture as she said too many kids didnt give up their birthday parties. Little did I realize at that time, the lady who came to my house was Mother Teresa and had no idea until much later what a big deal this was. She sat with us and wrote me a note that I still have after all these years.  

3. The first time I truly encountered snow was when I went to college in upstate New York which was also my first time in the USA. I was born in and grew up in Calcutta (now Kolkata) which is hot and humid for much of the year with a robust monsoon and a pleasant though brief "winter". No snow. Ever. My holidays in India were never too far up north where the Himalayas lie. The first weeks of snow were fun and exciting but the fact that it just kept piliing up and stayed on the ground for months was tiresome.

4. Although I work in Sun's software marketing group now, I started my career as an investment banker for Merrill Lynch in Manhattan. M&A, equity and debt offerings, valuation, etc. It was an intense and gruelling experience where I learned a lot from the 80 hr weeks we sometimes had to put in.

5. If it werent for the weather, I would love to live in London. I spent a year there (junior year abroad) when I was in college and found an incredible mix of international influences and culture. I adore cities (though I am suburban now!) and have had the good fortune of living in some of the world's greatest cities - New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore and San Francisco. Energy. Grit. Drama. Beauty. Diversity. Cities just have so much to offer and the resurgence of downtowns in many cities around the globe is a very welcome sign.

The way this game works is that I now have to tag my people in turn (sort of like the spam mail where you are required to forward to 5 other people only in this case none of your loved ones will suffer a fatal accident if you dont) - so I am tagging the following: Nicholas Carr, Aisling MacRunnels, Neil Ward Dutton, Jennifer Lee, Rahul Roy Chowdhury, Dev Khare. Not all of these people blog so I am hoping this is the nudge they need to join the conversation.

So I enter the blogosphere with some trepidation. I am a fairly avid reader of blogs and am amazed by both the incredible wisdom and the utter inanity I find out there. One thread I found common among a lot of the more popular blogs was the ability to be controversial, intentional or otherwise.

I consider myself opinionated but not controversial. Hence, I thought there was really no point writing a blog since nobody would be interested in reading it anyway. So what changed? An entry on Seth Godin's blog where he says that even if nobody reads your blog, the very act of writing it forces you to be clear in your thoughts and makes you "approach writing with humility". Clarity and respect. If blogging can do that, I figure I ought to give it a shot.

I wonder if the so-called A list bloggers feel like Jim Carrey's character in the film "The Truman Show" when he finally manages to escape from his make-believe world in a boat and bumps into a wall and stares right into the camera realizing that it is beaming a close-up of his face to millions of viewers. Since I am so far away from that phenomenon, I feel more like a little goldfish in a glass bowl looking out at the family that brought him home from the petstore...hello world, please be gentle and remember to feed me regularly!

My next blog entry will be a little more about me and what I find interesting...the things that I am curious about and make me ask why...