Narayana Murthy's 5 success mantras for entrepreneurs

N R Narayana Murthy, co-founder and chief mentor of Infosys Technologies talks about the best business decision he ever made, the reason why the core Infosys team has been together for all these years, the Satyam fiasco, what money means to him and what aspiring entrepreneurs need to succeed.

The five things are:

1. You must have an idea whose value to the market should be expressible in a simple sentence, not a complex or a compound sentence.
2. You must have a team that brings mutually exclusive, but collectively exhaustive set of skills, expertise and experience
3. The market must be ready for your idea. If the market is not ready for your idea, doesn't matter how smart your idea is, you will not succeed.
4. You need a good value system, because entrepreneurship in the beginning is all about sacrifice, hard work, deferred gratification, disappointments. It is the value system that creates confidence in each member of the community that other members too are doing the same to make this company succeed.
5. You need funds. . . but that is easy, finance is not a problem.

I read this on Rediff as part of Murthy's discussion where he says, "We use facts to resolve differences. That is why we say, In God we trust, everyone else brings data to the table."

Importance of entrepreneurship

Babson College President Leonard Schlesinger and Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer share their definitions of entrepreneurship, including how to teach it and why it's so important in the workplace.

Toward India 2020: Challenges and Opportunities

MIT World is a free and open site that provides on demand video of significant public events at MIT. Saw this amazing video recently.

People sometimes ask Montek Singh Ahluwalia questions loaded with “aspirational objectives,” such as when India will “get rid of poverty.” Few are as well equipped to respond as Ahluwalia, one of the architects of India’s breathtaking economic transformation.

The current income of an average Indian citizen is about 1/15th that of a U.S. citizen. Ahluwalia envisions increasing India’s per capita income ten fold. He sees this as a matter of “simple arithmetic.” To achieve this advance, India must sustain GDP growth of 9% a year (which corresponds to a 7%/year growth in personal income) -- for 32 years. By 2040, India’s 1.5 billion people could be living more like Americans. “Regrettably, I won’t be around to see it,” says Ahluwalia.

By 2020, though, assuming such sustained economic growth, he would be around to witness “more modest results.” Indians would double their annual income to $6,600, and the nation would be able to “provide a basic level of services to the vast majority of its population,” essentially leaving behind its problems of poverty. This kind of growth, “an extremely worthwhile objective” for India, would also leave its mark on the rest of the world. It would inspire other emerging economies, for one thing. It would also shift the balance of power in global trade, with the combined economies of India and China taking on the U.S.

So can India really achieve this kind of relentless economic progress? Ahluwalia’s not sure, but invokes the successes of Japan, Korea and China, and sees reasons for optimism. Over the past eight years, India’s averaged a 7.2% GDP growth rate, and looks likely to land on its feet after the current worldwide recession. On the other hand, the nation’s vibrant democracy (420 million voted in the most recent elections) can make agreement on economic policy and its implementation difficult. Ahluwalia is “not complaining,” but acknowledges that this kind of participative society “means we’re taking longer to get done what needs to be done.”

He sees institutional strengths that will enable India to push its development agenda forward: a sense of confidence pervades Indian society; past reforms have “unleashed tremendous energy in the private sector;” the economy has opened up to greater domestic and foreign markets; and in spite of changes in government, the general economic policies continue to evolve. Ahluwalia acknowledges that defeating poverty may not address everyone’s goals for success. The true objective for India, he believes, is “inclusive growth,” an equitable and constructive distribution of economic gains via market forces, government and public means.

GE’s Immelt: We Actually Hire People

Here is an interview of GE CEO Immelt at a conference held by Wired.com in June 2009. He talks about the challenge of driving continuous growth and innovation in a company of GE's size as well as the impact of the financial crisis.

Future of Global Equities Markets

Amazing conversations in this video by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation about how a turbulent financial market combined with accelerating technologies will affect tomorrow's equity markets by three of the nation's leading market experts.

Following an introduction by Kauffman Foundation President and CEO Carl J. Schramm, the discussion is led by Harold Bradley, chief investment officer of the Kauffman Foundation, and features Duncan Niederauer, CEO of the NYSE Euronext, and Peter Bloom, managing director of General Atlantic Partners, a global growth private equity investor. The 90-minute discussion addresses current challenges in the equities markets and the trading of stocks, bonds and derivative securities in a global marketplace.

Organizational Behavior

No need to explain anything.
Saw this on the blog http://socialbusinesssa.blogspot.com/

Bill Gates Unplugged

A passionate techie and a shrewd businessman, Bill Gates changed the world once, while leading Microsoft to dizzying success. He plans to do it again with his very own style of philanthropy.