Dan and Chip Heath made a splash with their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (my 2007 review) and now the Heath brothers are up to it again.
Their follow up book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard is expected in early 2010.
If Switch is anything like Made to Stick, we’ll have our hands full of more great lessons about change.
I have begun reading a really good book called Bangalore Tiger and have become very impressed with the closing of the fifth chapter and second section called People Principals to Lead By.
This book is about Wipro, one of India’s great IT companies. This chapter concluded with an overview to their companies’ social responsibility initiatives and volunteer efforts in India called Wipro Cares:
The education program provides training for teachers, administrators, and parents –with the goal of fostering more creative and analytical curricula in pubic schools, rather than rote learning. In an effort that targets underprivileged children, Wipro volunteers spend two hour every Saturday tutoring and encouraging these kids…..The Azin Premji Foundation is an attempt to help transform Indian society through improving public education. Premiji established the foundation in 2000 and it became operational in 2001. To date [Azim Premji] has contributed $125 million in Wipro stock –and has pledged to keep replenishing as money is spent.
The main focus is on convincing education that they need to retool their approach to education and on giving them the tools to do it. So far, one Indian sate has agreed to switch to analytical learning……”What we’re focused on is quality education,” says Dileep Ranjekar, a former head of HR who is now CEO of the Azim Premji Foundation. Premji’s charity. Unless India fundamentally addressed the quality issue and the shifts from rote learning to analytical learning, it can’t realize its dream of becoming one of the world economic superpowers.”
There’s obviously a crucial side benefit for Wipro. Unless the Indian public education system improves dramatically, Wipro won’t be able to fulfill what it sees as its destiny – becoming one of the world’s great companies by offering up India’s brainpower to the world.
America needs this type of innovative company that can lead change in our education system. As Intel’s CEO has stated many times America will continue to graduate more masseuses than engineers. At some point this will catch up with us. And by the looks of it when that time arrives India will be prepared to step in.
Tags: India, Wipro, Bangalore Tiger, globalization, education, technology, reading, trends
There are interesting lessons in The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Learn to look for trends, events and all the gems in life that seem hidden, out of place, under the table and around corners?
At 400 pages its no quick read but Taleb has presented his research by sharing stories and analysis about randomness in his own life. Taleb has suggested that technology and history is primarily driven by Black Swans.
There are many lessons for IT leaders when it comes to Black Swans. The BBC wrote an interesting article about how black swans in the area of information technology enterprise systems. One in six big IT projects go over-budget by an average of 200% Why? Once you see his point of view it will be much easier to notice black swans within your organization. His book’s takeaway? Unexpected and rare events and even novel ideas have a huge impact on the world.
David Weinberger’s book Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder is really amazing. It follows on the footsteps of Tom Friedman’s The World Is Flat and Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail.
This book presents an interesting look at the digital data we have access to via the internet and how the distribution of data will forever change business, education and society.
What is the biggest change outlined by David Weinberger? The world’s data will be tagged and freely shared, all on the internet.
From the Dewey Decimal System to Flickr and everything in between … is now miscellaneous.
Suzanne Berger and MIT’s Industrial Performance Center wrote a book after concluding a five year study of the new global economy How We Compete: What Companies Around the World Are Doing to Make it in Today’s Global Economy.
If you want to learn more about globalization, this is a necessary addition to your bookshelf. Today companies must compete.
The study moves beyond the often discussed Dell approach to manufacturing. Lessons from auto and textile industries are included and should not be missed. How America can compete against the global marketplace?
Students entering the real world after school makes this book mandatory reading before graduating … from high school. By the time your set to graduate from college — it may be too late.
Companies that need to compete are shifting production … sometimes to very interesting locations for very interesting business reasons. Understanding this process and the major impacts of globalization will help us all prepare for tomorrow’s shifting economic climate. There are powerful lessons from many industries that have shifted into a highly competitive marketplace with a global reach. In doing so, these companies now compete with global brands.
Globalization can be very complicated. This book suggests very intriguing lessons from companies who need to compete are outsourcing their products, production lines or selected low end solution simply to survive against the competition.
We have a lot to learn from the Japanese and the Italians!