In my last post I spoke about reading for the pleasure of reading. Interestingly, my randomizer picked up a children’s book for me. It is the story of the puppet whose nose grows longer whenever he lies. The book Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi adds so much to the well known tale of the sentient…
After a very long time, I read a book which was able to reset my thinking. This is important stuff. Similar to most of us, I struggle to optimize the utilization of my time. Time management, Productivity hacks, Mastering time – all these phrases resonate with me. And in the quest of becoming better…
The biography Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance is a wonderful look into the life of one of the most interesting industrialists of our time. I read the biography to prepare for a presentation where our study group at IIM Ahmedabad needed to do an investor presentation on Tesla for our strategy class. I thought…
This post is about a book that is based on a very popular elective for the MBA programs at IIM Ahmedabad. The book is “Elephants and Cheetahs – the beauty of operations”, the same name as the elective and is written by Prof Saral Mukherjee who also teaches the course. One day not too…
Sometimes, listening is enough. At those times, listening is the only sensible thing to do. Cori Doerrfeld has brought this very important message to life in her book – “The Rabbit Listened”. It’s a simple story of a boy called Taylor. One day he decides to build something, he then goes on to build…
After reading Yuganta: The end of an epoch, there were two things that kept bothering me. The first one was Karve’s view of Bhishma, specifically around the incident during the Rajasuya Yagna by Yudhishthir. Bhishma asked for Krishna to be the first one to be respected and in both Shishupala and Karve’s view that…
“You think you know Mahabharata, you should read Yuganta by Irawati Karve”. This was one of the ways the book was recommended to me. I do not claim to know all of Mahabharata, but having read the epic in multiple forms, I thought I knew it somewhat. So I read Yuganta: The end of…
I have been thinking about Snow Crash, a science fiction novel, by Neal Stephenson for a few days now. The thoughts were triggered after reading The McDonaldization of Society article by George Ritzer as part of a coursework for Elephants and Cheetahs by Prof Saral Mukherjee in IIM Ahmedabad. In the article, author talks…
Thirteen days in September is at once a window into history and a lesson in negotiation. Lawrence Wright has successfully brought the tensions of the 1970s Middle East to life and in the process he has also shown what courage can do. The book is based on the thirteen days long negotiation between Egypt…
A question to all the product managers, when you are building a new product what is more important to you – Acquiring Users/Growth or, Engagement? Nir Eyal in his book “Hooked – How to build habit forming products” says that if you want your product to sustain then your focus should be on Engagement….