Talent & Money

Will Money find its way to Talent?

This is the third blog in the series of understanding the nature of “Talent“. The first two blogs were as follows: Talent I, Talent II.

The question we are looking to answer now is “Will Money find its way to Talent?“. This answer is important as most of the time we think that “Money finds its way to Talent or the best man in business and Customers will always find the best products over time”. Is this true? My instinctive answer is no, lets find out more about this.

Money is usually given through contacts and not to the best man in business. Usually for security. The chances of the best man to come to market would be very slim (the odds would be like 1 in 1000). Even if the person develops a product, the marketing channel would inhibit any incumbent to come in the front.

Talent is a very long-term game (years & decades of hard toil). Hence very few people would believe or back it. By the time, the talented product comes to market, the market would be already flooded with a host of inferior products at a cheaper price. This would make it very difficult for the outstanding product to go through to the customer (less visibility, less margin for distributors and retailers).

The hierarchy (politicians, established business, the common man) disallows for the talented to go ahead (Rat race). There are many reasons to this: most of all, that talent breaks down existing business relationships and tries to find new ways to reach customers as well as offers very high quality products to them. This makes the politicians, established business, the common man run for their share of apple pie. And no one likes to run when they can walk.

Hence, Customers would keep getting inferior products. The market would keep becoming inferior in quality and customers would keep on loosing faith. This also means in long-term, the extinction of our species.

So, the most important question now is, how do you channel the money to talent? Good question, lets explore in our next blogs.

Caution: This might be all theory

Spark

Spark

In the heat
of the
Sun

The skin
gone dry
& black

Earth & Water
out of the
body

Endless dunes
around

Not a Soul
in sight

All that
remains is
a Spark

Streets with
a different
name

Not even
a familiar
face

The land
taken away

No friends
no family

The city
a strange
place

All that
remains is
a Spark

The journey
of a thousand
miles

The soul
bare &
scarred

And the
body naked

Mind caged
in the
past

The Spirit
waiting to
fly away

All that
remains is
a Spark

Caution: This might be all theory

Talent II

Talent II

This is an another blog to demystify Talent & probably an addition to my earlier blog about Talent :

What is Talent? Talent is the art of creating something very unique, something which is yet to be created and something which goes on to become priceless.

Talent comes only 1 in a million

If you look at the history of mankind, talent seems to occur at the ratio of 1 in million. This is mostly raw talent, which means talent is due to a property in genes or which is hereditary. With a little bit of focus, it can be honed to create exceptional value.

However exceptional talent comes only 1 in a billion and it has little dependence on genes. It is mostly created due to hard work, perseverance and focus. People with exceptional talent go on to create never seen wonders by swimming against the tide and are unparalleled. Talent is rare but exceptional talent is impossible to find.

Talent can be created by probability. If you clone and mutate people (1 in million would have raw talent). However Exceptional Talent cannot be cloned. Not even in 1 in million, 1 in billion, 1 in trillion,…. Never. It is the probability of talent (1 in million) and all the decisions made by that person in her or his lifetime (millions and billions of decision points).

Exceptional Talent, once in a blue moon

There are few distinctions between Exceptional Talent and the rest of the World. One of them is courage. From making a decision from “No” to “Yes”. Or being aware of oneself (as preached by the Upanishads). Most of the World is being driven by external events. Only a few are aware of what is happening around in their environment, what they are doing and what they should be doing.

Exceptional Talent was never intended by Nature. Still in some ways it is a product of Nature. So what is Exceptional Talent? And how do we slot them? The answer to this is unknown to me and perhaps the world also. And it is the holy grail of mankind.

A few Examples of Extraordinary Talent:  Che Guevara, Van Gogh, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Google Founders (Sergey Brin, Larry Page) & Yahoo Founders (Jerry Yang, David Filo), Howard Hughes, Einstein, Den Xiapong, Martin Luther King, Mohammad Yunus

Caution: This might be all theory

An Inquiry into my personal Values, Morality, Intent – Part IV (Law)

An Inquiry into my personal Values, Morality, Intent – Part IV (Law)

At times, I found myself in a situation where I was in need for external intervention (mostly law). And this made me very unhappy. Here are some of the thoughts:

1. Gandhi’s quote “There is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed”

2. Has the rat race eaten up all our morality, goodness? Shouldn’t each of us question to themselves “Why do we need more fame, more money, more luxuries and more and more? When to say enough?”

3. Isn’t the pharma, law, police, and a whole lot of industries working because of our qualities of hatred, jealousy, greed. People hurt themselves and others because of hatred requiring pharma and doctors. They also need the police and law sometimes mostly because of greed and jealously. If we didn’t have these qualities or a whole lot less of them, we would never need the long hand of law.

4. If we have love, empathy & compassion, we would hardly need such industries. We could instead concentrate on innovation & contributing to a richer environment around us.

5. We would be a whole lot healthy, wealthy, law-abiding if we had the above mentioned qualities.

6. Would we need all the temples, mosque and church to calm our already calm spirit?

7. We would lead a high quality life with love and without greed & hatred.

Caution: This might be all theory

A Life Well Spent

A Life Well Spent

The free
spirit of
the Soul

A friend
by the
side

The sweet
smell of
Sweat

A toast
for the
Lunch

Laughter
ringin in
the senses

A day
well spent

Love in
every tick

Of the
heart

Peace in
the mind

The streak
in the
body

The Soul
immortal

Society a
happier
place

The free
spirit of
the Soul

A life
well spent

CAUTION: This might be all theory

The Purpose Of My Life

The Purpose Of My Life

The question
which comes
to me now

Can I find
the purpose

Of my
Life?

All the
hard work

All the
money

All my
belongings

And everything
else under the
sun

Belongs to
the World

The question
which comes
to me now

Can I find
the purpose

Of my
Life?

35 years
passed by

All I got
with me

A few moments
of Love

A few moments
of Friendship

A few moments
of family
togetherness

The question
which comes
to me now

Can I find
the purpose

Of my
Life?

I must
find my
way back

Back to
my youthful
exuberance

Back to
the heat

In the
body

To discover
the World

And discover
myself

Back to
the Love

In my
heart

The question
which comes
to me now

Can I find
the purpose

Of my
Life?

CAUTION: This might be all theory

The Schools Of Tomorrow

The Schools Of Tomorrow

Currently the schools have a rigid curriculum giving little interest to the students liking. This makes it difficult to churn out innovators, leaders and people who can make a difference to the Society. All that comes out of schools are mechanical workers who contribute to the outdated social, economic and political arena of this World. All is not lost, we can change all this. Here is a glimpse of what a School could be like.

Interest or Like Based

The whole idea of education should be driven by interest or what the student likes the most. She or he then should be allowed to pursue that particular topic all her or his life. All other topics could be picked up by the student on the side as long her or his appetite for the main interest is satisfied.

Pick up a topic and do it all schooling of your interest

The idea of a school should not be to teach students. It should rather be to allow students to learn on their own and only help in extreme students or when the student is about to give up the education. The teachers should only play the role of a mentor.

No timing no compulsion to attend lectures

 There should not be any school timing at all. The student should be allowed to come to school at her or his fancy. There should be no compulsion to attend lectures too. All the school should provide is mentors and reference information for the student to dig into her or his interest.

Discipline will come from interest

The question now would be is, where the discipline in a student come from considering there is no compulsion to come to School or attend lectures? The answer is interest. History has shown if a person is allowed to pursue what she or he likes, the person itself takes the responsibility to see that the area of interest is given full attention and maximum interest. So discipline will come from interest.

Need to contribute to the Society

The whole infrastructure – the School, the teachers, the facilities and the students should be oriented to contribute to the Society. Without any contribution to the Society, any area would be empty. Some of the things which could be done to tune into the Society needs are – field trips to different places (countries, villages, towns), interaction with different people from different customs-religion-age groups, live projects with government & companies.

Until unless we change the whole infrastructure of the School from scratch, we would only be creating machines. Machines who can obey orders and not leaders who can create a healthy Society. The choice is ours and ours only. We should rather asking around how to change our neighborhood School now or be prepared to live with one more machine for our life. Is anyone listening?

Caution: This might be all theory

The Division of World

The Division of World

The Division of World By People Quality (Not by Adam Smith)

There are only 100 odd people* in the World in any century who really do earth shattering things. The rest of them do the following:

1. Politicians want power: Not good of the country, continent or the world

2. Businessman wants profits, not good of the environment (Hence even though they are creating jobs but by harming the environment, they are negating any positive effect created by them for the poor)

3. Philosophers are thinkers, but want no action (I belong to this category as off now, although I would like to hop over to the action stage soon)

4. Common man is only concerned for their individual survival and not good for the community

5. Middle Class? They are erased by all the mechanical work and “Yes Boss” mentality

* Some of them: Che Guevara, Van Gogh, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Google Founders (Sergey Brin, Larry Page) & Yahoo Founders (Jerry Yang, David Filo), Howard Hughes, Einstein, Den Xiapong, Martin Luther King, Mohammad Yunus

Caution: This might be all theory

How Business is done in India?

How business is done in India?

Are we economically free after 70 years from our Independence day? If your answer is “yes”, then think again. Here is a view of how business is done in India.

Business across India is divided in five layers:
Politicians who control everything,
the second layer companies (Top 50 Companies in India) who contract for the world,
the third layer companies (Small Scale Industries) who contract for the second layer,
the fourth layer (Shops and Home business) who contract for the third layer and finally,
the fifth layer who are in agriculture, hunting & primitive industries.

First Layer

Politicians:

1. They give major contracts, license to the Second Layer Companies in India
2. They would like to keep everything under bureaucratic control
3. Have major ties with Second Layer Companies, they get money for election from these companies and their Swiss bank accounts would be filled by them.

Politicians:  Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambram, JaiRam Ramesh, Complete list

Second Layer

Top 50 Companies in India:

1. Top 25 Private Business in India
2. Top 25 Public Business in India
3. 10 Million are Directly Employed in these companies (50 * 2 Lakh = 100 Lakhs or 10 million )
3. Contract for USA, Europe and the Rest of the World
4. 30 Million People Supported
5. They also give work & money to the Third Layer Companies (Mostly assembly work)
6. Get contracts, land and other deals from the Government for money & other favors

Second Layer Companies: Reliance, Tata, Bharti, Aditya Birla, TCS, Infosys, Wipro, ICICI Bank, SAIL, ONGC

Third Layer

Small Scale Industries:

1. For Each Second Layer Company, there exist 25 Private & Public Companies
2. 10 Million People Directly Employed (250 * 0.4 Lakh = 100 Lakhs or 10 million )
3. 30 Million People Supported
4. They give work & money to the Fourth Layer (Contracting & Assembling for Second Layer Companies)

Third Layer Companies

Fourth Layer

Shops and Home business:

1. For Each Third Layer Company, 25 Private & Public Companies are supported
2. 10 Million Directly Employed (1000 * 0.1 Lakh = 100 Lakhs or 10 million )
3. 30 Million People Supported (Assembling for Third Layer Companies)

Fourth Layer Companies: Your local neighborhood stores

Fifth Layer

Agriculture, Hunting and Primitive Industries:

1. 300 Million Directly Employed
2. 900 Million Supported
3. Mostly supply local demand at very low prices
4. Most of the money is spent in distribution, taxes and wastage

This would be also true for every other country in the World except for Silicon Valley in USA. This is a bit of problem. Markets should be completely deregulated and free. Only then it would enable for the best products to reach the customers. The government should be only involved in taxes and building public infrastructure of the country (sanitation, health, transport infrastructure).

Caution: This might be all theory

The Wealth of World – IV (Quality & Quantity)

The Wealth of World – IV (Quality & Quantity)

I have been always intrigued in the life with the question “What is more important? Quality or Quantity?”. Following are my observations with respect to this question:

1. Quantity will eat up & consume the Nature or the Environment. Whereas Quality can save the Nature and the Environment.

2. Only Quality can innovate and produce goods of more quality & more quantity from little input

3. Without Quality, Quantity would lead up to extinction (Many species of birds, animals & perhaps the human kind in the future)

4. Quantity would never move to the next stage of life (Evolution) without Quality. Even small innovations (incremental innovations) would be not enough to do that. Only disruptive innovations can churn out evolution to the next stage (e.g. Steam Engine, Telephone, Cell, Internet). Incremental Innovation can only improve an existing marker i.e it can improve telephone features if you are in the telephone market or internet features if you are in the internet market. It can never create new markets

5. Quality can be constructive (Issac Newton, James Watt, Che Guevara, Gandhi, Ashoka) or destructive (Hitler). Destructive Quality could eat up the whole world and nature in a second too. As off now, destructive quality cannot be controlled, which is why the world is wary of Quality in general too.

6. Quantity will never be able to appreciate Quality and most of the time work in the opposite direction to Quality.

Overall, if you would like to say at “50” that “you have lived a life”, then you must pursue a life with “Quality” and not of “Quantity“. Otherwise you might have not lived a life at all, but only a life at a very primal stage. The choice is yours “Quality” or Quantity“.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Caution: This might be all theory