University based centers for Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Two years back, I was asked by the group setting up Ashoka University in India to share ideas on setting up a university based center for innovation and entrepreneurship in their campus. Based on some of the ideas I shared with them, I am writing this series of posts to outline what a university based center for innovation could look like.

  

Humanity’s future progress will be defined in terms of long term strength of value creating institutions (i.e. both for-profit and non-profits), economic growth (which probably would get measured more in terms of complexity than scale), and growth in technology and indicators of social good like justice, equal opportunity, etc. At this ever-increasing pace of change, human systems of organization too are changing to adapt and evolving as we speak.  Future success of India (i.e. both collectively as a society and the success of individuals in their lives), hinges on how well we will be able to cultivate, nurture and grow individual leaders/innovators of tomorrow.

Universities are supposed to be training ground to produce leaders that the India/World of tomorrow needs. Only thing we are certain about the future is that change will always be happening at an ever faster rate in every possible way. Therefore universities need to design a holistic learning experience which would enable individuals to develop into free-thinking innovators and leaders of tomorrow. While students get exposure to the theoretical ideas (and their applications in the real world) in their coursework, a lot of their learning always happens within the environment of university as a whole. So a university must promote both self-learning and peer learning in an experiential manner.

Innovation/ Entrepreneurship centers therefore have to be a vital part of such university experience for the students. These centers should also be the institution’s preferred means to foster engagement of the university community with the world for building and implementing the ideas generated in it. These centers are set-up to take the challenge of creating, nurturing and encouraging innovation and leadership. So they will have to work towards creating the conditions that allow multi-disciplinary dynamic innovation networks to emerge and flourish on their campuses. They have to build catalytic environment that create conditions conducive for students to form hypotheses and test them quickly to judge the real potential of their ideas.

Activities of the Center should also happen in coordination to the curriculum to help students gain maximum in their learning experience. Following could be the objectives of such centers:

1. Create a nurturing ecosystem for the development and realization of innovative ideas
2. Build and strengthen leadership competencies of the student community at the university
3. Make these centers to be “the place” where smart and innovative entrepreneurs from the larger regional ecosystem would aspire to come to for realizing their ideas into ventures

The program to build innovation capacity in students should be rooted in the belief that deep understanding or expertise, developed through self-learning over a long period of time with a sense of purposefulness, will transform the teenagers joining the universities to become innovators/thought-leaders over time.

Building such innovation capacity must be a part of the students’ learning experience – which in turn must be designed by the university as a holistic life experience for students where living and learning are intertwined. Hence any interventions for building and improving students’ competencies for leadership and innovation should be in sync with the curriculum and other activities in their lives on campus.

The broad approach should be to work with the students to:

1. Enable them to become hands-on leaders and innovators through the Center’s interventions
2. Provide access to role models with similar beginnings as themselves to stimulate domino effect
3. Build their capacity to identify and analyze real life problems to be solved, and provide opportunities to actually do so by either venturing or for organizations in those fields
4. Provide multiple types of support (financial/professional/expertise, etc) to students for realization of those innovative ideas which qualify for such support through a selection process
5. Opportunities to interact with highly inspiring leaders and thought leaders from various domains

Qatar's promise for future

Qatar’s Promise

Having moved to Doha some time back, I have been trying to observe and understand this new land and the dynamics and cultures of people who live here. While one can definitely encounter people fitting various stereotypes, but my personal experience so far is that there are far too many of the exceptions for each of those stereotypes that generalizing the group traits is certainly an exercise in futility. Easiest claim to make would be that all groups and communities here have quite similar distribution of various behavioral traits and beliefs as most of the world would. Again, opinions can always vary because an American might be tempted to say that s/he doesn’t see much of amalgamation of cultures happening here. At the same time, as an Indian I could argue that I see so many commonalities in the culture and even language, that I cannot refuse that as evidence for amalgamation of cultures.

While it is tempting for many to accept preconceived notions (based on hearsay from the people in their social networks) about Qatari youth as over-indulged brats from a conservative society, willingness to look at Qatar with an open mind gives a different picture.

It probably is hard for the some people to be able to relate to the pace of change and values of the cultures not like theirs. What is most interesting to me is that people here are trying really well to push the boundaries in many different ways in an organic/natural manner. That is, they are doing so without losing a touch from their heritage or destabilizing the peace and prosperity they have. Don’t believe me, but just go watch any sci-fi or other American movie in theaters here and count the number of Burqa clad women in the theater. Some (often from the West), who perceive themselves as liberated ones do not seem to be realizing that there could be something wrong (not everything) in their ways too, which other cultures maybe doing rightly. Cultures and beliefs always everywhere keep evolving at different paces in different places depending on the ideas which can be called the zeitgeist at that place and time. Often these ideas are technological and hence driven currently by the technologically more advanced nations/civilizations of West, but these ideas could also be spiritual or based on other beliefs or experiences of the communities.

The above discussion could be considered valid for many other countries and cultures too; so it probably would make more sense now to focus on the aspects which are unique for Qatar. Without doubt, the range of opportunities (as an outcome of diversity of the economy and size of market) is increasing slowly in terms of pace (though not acceleration which depends on investment) in Qatar relative to places like Dubai. This often gets reflected as decreased incentive to nurture innovation and inflow of entrepreneurial migrants with ideas and capacity to compete in most countries. But Qatar seems to be opening up steadily without creating destructive waves to achieve its national vision for 2030 – which was drafted by the youngest sovereign and the current Emir himself when he was the Crown Prince. In fact, his authorship of the Qatar National Vision 2030 [1]document clearly conveys that the leadership and institutions of the country are fully committed to realize that vision.

In the past two decades, Qatar’s leadership – through its continuous efforts – has ensured that the natural endowment it has doesn’t turn into a resource curse, as has been the case in some of the African countries. Qatar’s investments – made with long term horizons in mind – in areas like education and research have now started showing promise. The leadership has also been making sincere efforts to build and maintain trust of subsequent generations of citizens in the institutions being created, which seems to be working well – something which can’t be said for the millennials in most other countries where youth and teenagers just can’t relate to the institutions there. Youth of Qatar feels that they are getting a fair shot and that's what you need in a country to make its citizen's to believe in and work towards building a strong future.

It is normal for some youth will be interested in fast cars or other such materialistic pleasures. In fact that is the case everywhere in the world – i.e. in both rich and poor countries. And while some may say that higher levels of faith in religion is a harmful thing, Islam – more so if not just as much as other religions – makes its believers to prize austere ways of life, having compassion and value the fulfilling pursuits like those of knowledge and spirituality. The western ideas of extreme materialism and consumerism are not approved by the devout Muslims. Ethos of Islam value experiences, knowledge and greater common good much more than the things one can buy. Qatar is rated as one of the most peaceful countries [2]in the world and the compassionate faith of people is definitely one of the big reasons for that.

All this leads me to a simple hypothesis:- Qatar and its citizens have a unique opportunity to change the world in ways which other countries can’t. Citizens of Qatar don’t have to worry about the basic necessities of life and/or even some luxuries. Such a situation, combined with the peaceful and conducive environment to aspire along with the examples/ role models set by the Qatar’s leadership, is a perfect hotbed for the youth to become ambitious and do things that can both change the world and change world’s perception of this dot on the globe.

When people’s faith prizes austerity and they don’t have to worry about basic necessities, the human instinct to find a purpose for the life would lead to development of passion and excellence in different areas among such people. Given the interconnectedness of today’s world, it is fair to say that many will get attracted to working towards tackling the great challenges our world faces today. So is the human nature, everywhere.

Qatar’s leadership is already a role model for the people here through their pioneering and ambitious initiatives in areas like research, education, sports, culture, and their efforts at geopolitical level on different fronts and initiatives like Educate A Child[3] or Silatech [4] to show their commitment to global and regional causes.

Some may claim that a lot more can be done or should be done – which as per the newspapers here is also in the pipeline. Everywhere, regardless of what earlier generations think off or say, some youngsters make bad choices, a large number make safe but pragmatically good choices and some gamble it all on the good choices they make. Add to this the Qatar’s nurturing environment as explained above, and it won’t be too much to hope that Qatar and its people will rise up to opportunity they have and make their contributions to the history at different levels and in different places or fields.

---

[1] http://www.gsdp.gov.qa/portal/page/portal/gsdp_en/qatar_national_vision/qnv_2030_document/QNV2030_English_v2.pdf

[2] http://www.visionofhumanity.org/#page/indexes/global-peace-index/2013/QAT/OVER

[3] http://www.educateachild.org.qa/what-is-eac

[4] http://www.silatech.com/home/about-us

Pi - probability function to find a number in Pi's decimal expansion

Yesterday night I was watching a TV series, "Person of Interest" and there was this small wonderful speech about "pi" the irrational number in it.

This made me do a Google search to find some place where i can look-up my phone number in the decimals of pi and i reached this website http://www.angio.net/pi/piquery which allows us to do such a search in the first 200 million digits of pi. As such I was disappointed that I couldn't find my phone number of my wife's number. Anyway, after playing around with this application, i realized that numbers of length upto 8 digits can be found more or less in this app but finding a 9 digit number is rare and the we could just forget the 10 digit numbers. This made me think of a question (i am sure mathematicians must have wondered about this question many times before) that is it possible to build/determine a probability distribution function which can tell us that probability of finding X (some number with m digits) in the first N digits of pi is p(X). 

I definitely have no idea about how to approach this problem. But would love to know whether such a function can exist, and if it exists then how or can it be determined (even in some limited form, let's say for the first billion digits of pi, etc), and if answer to that too is yes then what is that probability function? Would love to see any leads for this interesting nerdy problem :)

Separating Assessments and Teaching/Content Delivery in Education Sector

In this century, role of education in an individual/child's life is set to change in revolutionary ways, both in terms of skills required and the way ideas and skills are taught/ imparted. While most of this revolution would probably focus on innovations in the way content is created and delivered/ taught, there is enough scope for innovation in how this skill training part gets connected with the job market.

This connection is either missing or not strong enough and that is evident now also with the advent of online course offerings increasing at an exponential pace. These courses democratize education in the sense of providing every connected individual with an access to content/ courses. But there is no certainty that the person who passed a particular course or got distinction actually knows that content well and can use that knowledge in praxis. This is because it can’t be ensured that no one is cheating and it is an honor code based certification assuming that students are not breaking the code.

In case of India (and probably in other developing countries too where number of colleges have increased exponentially in past 1-2 decades) there is another problem. Because of wide-spread malpractices among the student and teacher communities e.g. plagiarism, copying in exams, etc, it is near impossible to ascertain whether graduates of such colleges actually know (all or even parts of) what they claim in their resumes or transcripts. Only option is either to try the candidate and see if she can perform as per the expectations, or if the true caliber of such a candidate could be ascertained through personal networks of the employer. In both of these situations, we see a trust deficit problem hampering the market (for jobs) from functioning well.

Top ranked or elite universities solve this problem through the signaling effect they create in the resume of their students/alumni. For this purpose they have to maintain a reputation in terms selecting great candidates, train them well and then test them with rigor. As doing all these things together comes along with a lot of conflict of interests, only few universities have been able to do it all well and can uphold their reputation. This is also why these universities enjoy the credibility they enjoy today.

On the whole, there is a great amount of trust deficit in the market for skills and knowledge. A huge number of educational institutions' lack the ability to create a signalling effect for their graduates in the labor market through reliable assessments. We feel this gap could be filled significantly if some reliable third party/ies can measure and certify the skill levels of individuals in a transparent and competitive manner.

Such an authority would test the students and certify the scores. These tests would be standardized tests but not generic ones like mathematics, general knowledge, etc. These tests would be for specific topics, skills e.g. regression, content analysis, non-parametric methods, which are equivalents of college/grad-school level courses. A credible authority conducting such tests would theoretically be able to provide everyone an access to trustworthy certifications verifying their knowledge/skill levels on a particular topic within a broad discipline. In addition, same organization or others could also provide experiential/peer learning opportunities for the learners by coordinating study groups, but the primary objective of the organization would be to conduct various types of assessments of skills, competencies and knowledge expertise.

Women on my mind

International Women's Day (March 8th) is here again this year and the regular question which arises as always is whether it is just tokenism only, or symbolism has some importance too. My personal take is that symbolism is very important because it not just makes us ask the difficult questions about how pathetic record we have on the women's issues, but also because it ritualizes something very important. And, looking at how religions work, one can say it confidently that rituals slowly form habits, like touching your head with the book if it falls or you just accidentally touched it with your feet. So, it is definitely a good thing if we get into the habit of asking ourselves some difficult questions on the women's issues. It is probably just a drop where a flood is required to "level the field", but it is well worth it.

Along with the question of symbolism, some other issues related to womankind also come to our mind. These include, why we discriminate women (or more generically, discriminate any marginalized group), idea of equality as an ideal, role of nature or nurture in it, moral dimensions of these issues, etc. I am neither a woman nor someone who has given considerable amount of thought, energy and time to understand women’s issues. So I am just putting up my thoughts on three important aspects of women’s issues in general i.e. equality, nature v/s nurture, evolution. This is not a thorough and informed analysis of these aspects too; it is just my personal and CURRENT opinion on these issues. And yes, sorry for the regular digressions - I am just not capable of staying focused on anything.

Equality: The issue of equality is important because it comes up first in any conversation on this topic. This happens because of the existence of exploitative discrimination of women which exists almost everywhere in the world and more so in the poor families and regions with the exception of Middle East.

To say that it is a human tendency to discriminate is not a wrong statement if we were still the competing with the neanderthals. But with the complex society and science we have developed, it feels wrong to say that we haven't yet become open-minded enough to not stereotype or recognize the wrongs done by our ancestors. It is the fear of unknown or different which is typically at the root of any type of discrimination, and though everyone (I hope so) knows that knowing the unknown or open-mindedness (or curiosity) towards new and different ideas, people and everything else is the way to overcome fear and hence (hopefully) remove discrimination or exploitation. Tragedy in this case is that almost all of males live with females in our homes but most know nothing about these issues, because our cultures never let us think that women’s issues are worth that much attention.

In general Gender Equality as an issue has at the least two sides to it, first of this is the equal opportunity side (exactly speaking, the lack of it). This is definitely a highly pervasive issue of our times and has been so historically too. It is a known fact that at best women get evaluated on their performance while men get evaluated on their potential. Add the societal constraints, nurturing and expectations, and a female's dream of achieving something would mostly remain a dream only. Even the women, who do become successful, are often manlier than the men around them. Britishers described Rani Laxmi Bai as the only man they fought in what they call as the 1857 mutiny. Similar things have been said about Indira Gandhi, Golda Meyer, Margaret Thatcher and many of top female icons of current time e.g. Mayavati, Indira Nooyi, etc. So it is always a men's game and in order to win it, women have to beat men at their own game just like any other winner would have done.

It is assumed that flexi hours, telecommuting and maternity-issues, can't go along with serious business. Never will we discuss the issue of properly valuing the taking care of family as a contribution, instead of treating it like a zero-wage thankless job.

Second aspect is the silly argument similar to one put across by the reservation opposing upper caste folks, is why women get reserved seats in Metro or in colleges, jobs and politics i.e. why can't women compete with men as equals if they want to be treated equally? While reserved seats in Metro or a ladies first announcement is just a courtesy, reservation in jobs or politics is a simple means (though not the best) to move in the direction of achieving a somewhat equitable distribution of the opportunities between the two genders given the history of exploitation we have. The real change will start from homes only, when women actually become equally important decision makers in their homes regardless of whether live in cities or villages, or whichever class/caste they belong too.

Obviously there is a moral dimension of all this also, but then the liberal morals and conservative morals are so different that in a country of faith like India, we better keep that topic for a much detailed discussion some other time. Broadly I would just say that the differences between the two sexes are real and can be complementary too, so respecting the differences and making the best out of them should be our guiding or moral principle.

Speaking of differences, there is one very important one which appeals to men’s real (animal) nature i.e. women’s sexuality, and many get accused of using it to their advantage. No doubt some women take advantage of their appearance or sexuality, but then same women are also vulnerable when someone starts using force or vilify them in their communities. Irony is, men can be nasty enough to use the system to their advantage or use their physical power to coerce women, or be praised for their ruthless execution of tasks to achieve their goals or even attracting women (a big goal for them). Use of their charm by women is definitely a much more passive and humane way to achieve their objectives. Therefore, I am all in for women using their smile to make their way. Vidya Balan in Dirty Picture or Cleopatra are good icons on this front, and why forget the Mataharis of the world.

Nature v/s nurture: Are men and women genetically wired to be so different the way they are or it is more epigenetic reasons or nurturing which builds all these differences? As I see things, it is certainly a combination of both nature and nurture. There is no doubt that males are physically stronger in terms of athletic things or fighting, but women also have some advantages which show in their longer average life-spans and their ability to endure and survive labor pains or their monthly issues. It is near impossible to defend if one claims that men are more compassionate. At the same time nurture, which has created so many constraints on women- often in terms of their own mindset too, that it could possibly be blamed for all the issues in this gender debate. As more and more women are entering the workforce, the nurture or to say culture forces them to balance their family responsibilities and careers but just spending more hours working both in office and at home.

Whether masculinity as we know it, is an acquired trait or inherited one is a debatable question when you find that only the likes of India Gandhi making it big in our Men's world. But rather than worrying about its origins, I would like to focus on systemic changes which decrease the importance of masculinity in progressing as a civilization. Changing the "Nurture" at a systemic level makes sense because that's all we can do, and we have enough evidence to say that nurture can overcome the barriers of nature.

As per my limited understanding of nature, evolution and everything else, the phenomenon of Path-dependence is a very important one. Putting it in this context, just like we say that “Rome wasn't build in a day”, so will be the case of women finally getting their rightful place and power. We have such a long evolutionary and then our social history of exploiting women that we can't get rid of it a short time frame. Most probably this process will take a few generations before we as a civilization reach anywhere close to the utopia of gender equality in terms of opportunities and no exploitation. Good news is that these changes are under progress everywhere though at different paces. In rural areas we have many women empowerment programs trying to do some good though TVs might be more effective. Without these also, we had (rare) women resort to taking charge of the family when the husband has been incapacitated by hard-luck or bad habits. Urban females are definitely doing relatively better as their opinions do matter in their homes in varying degrees though not as much as would be their fair share for their contribution or consequences to them.

The changes required could be mandated through laws or social norms but the hard reality is that those ideas won't derive any legitimacy and hence acceptance among the majority unless it becomes an evolutionary inevitability for our society as a whole. We are now somewhat of a democratic society because of the commitment of our country Founding fathers towards the ideal of democracy. This indicates that today's lawmakers and reformers can certainly provide the guiding direction if we want a world where our daughters get their rightful place. But the difference between authors of our constitution and our lawmakers is that while the former had both luxury and courage to be bold on social issues, the later have both too much of populist pressures and a total lack of courage to be bold on social issues. This is assuming that lawmakers too believe in equality of opportunity for both the genders, which is not true of at least a significant number of them, if not majority. On most fronts e.g. technology, this translates into policies lagging behind the reality whereas ideally it should be otherwise if we want to really realize the future we want and not reach some alternate future by accident as it has been almost always throughout the history.

Evolutionary case: Having mentioned the word evolution above, it seems right that we discuss this aspect. As per my layman like understanding, males dominate because most of the struggles of survival in our evolutionary and social history favored physical strength a lot. At the same time factors contributing to stability were always underplayed because of the perception of equating physical strength and its derivatives as bold and praiseworthy. Childcare is definitely not valued as much as it should be and maybe that would be the case till the world population keeps on growing. Achieving economic growth from having more people does have some correlation with lack of women's empowerment because it forces us to price childcare responsibilities as low as possible. Same holds true of other intangibles women typically provide for too.

Anyway, the point I want make by bringing in evolution is that we as a society are becoming much more feminine at an accelerating pace. Everywhere we are seeing working systems of law and order, and democratic institutions come-up, and economy is being driven more and more by knowledge, not the control of resources. More knowledge means not just increasing complexity but also increasingly co-operative ventures and systems. All these things reduce the importance of physical strength and I am quite sure that if not earlier, by the end of this century we will have machines for doing everything which requires physical strength or anything mundane or repetitive. Medical sciences would have progressed to the level where use of artificial wombs would be the norm and 80 might as well be called as the middle age (this might be a a slight exaggeration but I guess you are getting my point). Nature of work in the future would be very different and humans will have only creative things to do only for their livelihoods. It means if a waiter can't charm and keep her/his customers engaged every time better than a machine, they wouldn't be needed. Entertainment (sports, restaurant and other experience based offerings included) and research would probably the only broad professions left for humans. This also means that the nature of work as we know from our industrial age experience will change drastically. Work would become much more sporadic in nature for a large fraction of the population. Rule of law would too become much more pervasive, in fact evidence is abundant that violence is reducing in all forms almost everywhere on the planet and rule of law is gaining more acceptance and legitimacy.

With so much more value given to the human life and creative abilities than to the material stuff we own, childcare and other family responsibilities will both get distributed well among genders and valued rightfully. Given the pace we are moving towards such a society where physical strength will become almost irrelevant, I don't see men as a group being able to adapt fast enough. At the same time, women both because of their inherited traits and exploitative nurturing effect of our cultures so far have adapted to, or are normally stereotyped as more compassionate, cooperating, disciplined and sincere towards work and able to manage complexities better or balance work, family and other interests much better than men. All these traits are a huge competitive and hence evolutionary advantage which men in general have not adapted as of yet. For the advocates of attributing females being subservient to nature or genes, this is more scary scenario for then it is for the nurture advocates as it means men would take centuries to adapt (even with the availability of medical/genetic engineering options for doing so) to the new environment. Add to this the charm of a women’s smile and men certainly don’t stand much chance.

To put it simply, in future women would be the dominant decision makers. If we accept the above mentioned future is as a realistic or a highly likely scenario then we will also have to accept that nations which make lives better and fairer for women would prosper and be competitive in the future we have envisaged. So it is in the real interest of nations of take care of their women if they want a good future and the nations which don’t realize or act soon will have to pay later.

I am not quite hopeful about India doing anywhere close to enough on this front even when we are so much behind the other big and important countries. But still there are some elements of hope e.g. women in Computer Science is not an uncommon sight in India, maybe because on one hand we like the fact that it is not manual labor while on the other hand our society doesn’t think that women are by nature not good at math and sciences. This translates into saying that creative thinking is not an exclusively male domain in our view. Probably this is something which would play to our advantage, but only if we are able welcome the rise of women in all other senses too. Spreading this message is important, because the case I want to make is that sooner we accept this better it would be for us as a nation, for it is an evolutionary inevitability or the destiny.

Interesting Readings: 22-2-2012

Let's start light: Interesting Bookcase designs :)

http://www.furniturefashion.com/2012/02/19/once-upon-a-shelf-10-stunning-bookcase-designs.html?fb_comment_id=fbc_10150586831544001_21442944_10150587462329001#f3a708815c

New Ideas in Online Retail of Apparels - technology & customization

http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2012/02/technology-and-fashion

Article on rise in power of money in american elections, especially after the Citizen's United verdict of Supreme court #PAC or political action committees

http://www.alternet.org/economy/154172/how_a_filthy_rich_196_people_will_buy_our_election/?page=entire

Efforts to make a really free and democratic internet. Also, shows how internet's current (business) structure of doing things through ISPs has made it easy to control

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-shadow-web

Al Gore's manifesto for sustainable capitalism

http://www.generationim.com/media/pdf-wsj-manifesto-sustainable-capitalism-14-12-11.pdf

Good and detailed analysis of Obama as President

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/obama-explained/8874/?single_page=true

Good article for some ideas on the right balance between incremental and disruptive innovation

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/11/balancing-disruptive-innovation-and-incremental-progress-in-medicine/248563/

Clayton Christensen on how new financial tools destroy innovation

http://www.ascendcfo.com/pdfFiles/HBR-How%20Financial%20Tools%20Destroy%20Your%20Capacity%20to%20Do%20New%20Things.pdf

Impact of famous blogs on papers published in economics. Super star effect

http://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations/the-impact-of-economic-blogs-part-i-dissemination-aka-check-out-these-cool-graphs?cid=EXT_TWBN_D_EXT

Umair Haque on what should we do in life. Though written in reference to Davos WEF. 10 things

http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/01/ten_things_youre_not_allowed_t.html

Interesting ideas on how to redefine education in developing countries

http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/redefining_education_in_the_developing_world?utm_source=Enews12_02_09&utm_medium=email&utm_content=1&utm_campaign=Epstein_Yuthas

Paul Romer's speech - IMF. On economic crisis

http://www.imf.org/external/np/seminars/eng/2011/res/pdf/PMRpresentation.pdf

Umair Haque's valentine's day post on love - generically on relationships - slightly philosophical

http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2012/02/why_love_matters_more_and_less.html

Facebook's ranking algorithms - Edgerank and Graphrank described

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/12/27/edgerank-and-graph-rank-defined/

Great piece on explosion in human population and a sick (though maybe true) argument on how income inequality is just another struggle for survival in the evolutionary sense

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/02/15/human-population-overshoot-what-went-wrong/

Seriously Rapid Source Review- tool to find live-reporting or eye witness sources on Twitter

http://www.nickdiakopoulos.com/2012/01/24/finding-news-sources-in-social-media/

US Foreign Policy, Iran, methods to increase utility of prediction excercises

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/14/the_unknown_unknowns?page=full

Tibetan self-immolations & extreme Chinese security in Aba

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/12/tibets-acts-self-immolation-china

Note on the Reality of Tax-progressivity in USA

http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/02/16/the-facts-about-tax-progressivity

Ideas and quality of debate in US of 1912 on income inequality as an evil and against democracy

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2012/02/income_inequality_the_government_had_better_ideas_for_fixing_it_100_years_ago.single.html

Bashing FED and hailing Ayn Rand atlas shrugged style

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/spitznagel2/English

We humans have two parallel sets of moral-beliefs to help us make the decisions

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328524.500-why-we-have-moral-rules-but-dont-follow-them.html

Interesting finding: Specialized skills force people to vote for welfare state as they have already made a risky investment in acquiring such skills - folks with generic skills go against welfare state. School and education systems provide and shape such input into labor-force and political-economy

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~iversen/PDFfiles/SocialPreferences.pdf

How people become experts in anything - deliberate practice

http://hbr.org/2007/07/the-making-of-an-expert/ar/1

How experts/winners can sustain superior performance

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/02/nature_nurture_know-how_1.html

Mathematical equations which describe most of physics

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328516.600-seven-equations-that-rule-your-world.html?full=true

In future both education and work would become more and more informal, and look like a coffee-shop

http://blog.speculist.com/scenarios/the-coffee-shop-take-over.html

Risks and injustice because memories are fuzzy. Also, how new memories can even be created

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_memory_doctor/2010/06/the_memory_doctor.single.html

On drugs that could enhance or boost memory

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/future_tense/2012/02/memory_enhancement_technology_and_a_future_without_forgetting_.single.html

Learning disability/dyslexia means a person can't focus for long but there is trade-off and it may mean such people can detect abnormalities in confusing patterns faster

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-upside-of-dyslexia.html?src=me&ref=general

How Chinese property ownership concept got started in 1978 in a small village, and then China forever

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/20/145360447/the-secret-document-that-transformed-china?sc=tw&cc=share

Speech by Christina Romer of Berkeley on financial crisis

http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/~cromer/Written%20Version%20of%20Effects%20of%20Fiscal%20Policy.pdf

Great post for data-visualizations freaks

http://www.themillions.com/2012/02/this-chart-is-a-lonely-hunter-the-narrative-eros-of-the-infographic.html

Why privatization of public goods may not be a good idea

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/05/the_privatization_trap/singleton/

Charts shown to US Senate on income inequality in USA

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/02/mind-blowing-charts-senates-income-inequity-hearing

Ideas for good business practices in retail sector

http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2012/02/05/four-cornerstones-of-good-business-practices/?mod=e2tw

Open Government Initiative by White House to put most data in public domain

http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/toolkit

Interesting infographic comparing Africa's size to most of the important countries

http://static02.mediaite.com/geekosystem/uploads/2010/10/true-size-of-africa.jpg

Joseph Nye on Women's role in Future - building up from Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/nye103/English

Article on how conservatives are genetically different from liberals

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/buruma59/English

To find new and interesting books to read

http://bookpickings.tumblr.com/

http://www.ebookreaderbuzz.com/2011/12/5-cool-sites-to-help-you-choose-which.html

Technology progress has been superexponential in last 2 centuries

http://www.santafe.edu/news/item/technology-progress-superexponential

Economist's article on how scientists are trying to understand why the universe is expanding

http://www.economist.com/node/21547760

Fair Profit Company: Making Case for a New Type of Entity for Social Enterprises

Increasingly a lot of dissent has been rising towards Capitalism that the system doesn’t contribute enough to the welfare of society at large. The reason behind this is that businesses are viewed (most often rightly) as the primary cause for social, environmental, and economic problems which different societies are facing. To put it simply, businesses and businessmen are now being widely perceived to be prospering at the expense of society at large.

The fiduciary duty of companies to maximize shareholder value only at the expense of everything else (otherwise they could be held legally liable) and the short term outlook followed by the companies are cited as the underlying causes for this loss of legitimacy for the Capitalism as a system. At the same time, governments and civil society organizations also try to solve the problems faced by the society at the expense of business. The trade-off between economic efficiency and welfare of the society at large has been taken as given, and guides the interventions by the government and civil society actors.

Here is a simplified take on what happens:

· Capitalism was the outcome of an attempt to create a system for efficient allocation of capital in the projects/ideas with highest possible returns.

· This lead to race among the investors to increase their returns on capital, which in turn demanded faster returns too. This quest for ever increasing and faster return got institutionalized with the advent of stock markets and VC funds.

· The narrow focus of investors in the return on their capital alone, meant that they and the businesses they had invested in started ignoring the broader influences which determine their success in long-term.

· This resulted in negative externalities for the environment and society, costs of which they were not supposed to pay and hence with economic growth the costs of these externalities have started weighing more day-by-day due to accumulation effects.

· One of the core strength of Capitalism is competition for promoting innovations to keep an economy vibrant. But the excessively myopic pursuit of returns on capital started meaning that companies needed to maintain their competitive advantage

· This in turn leads to big companies trying to make sure that competition dies out by using their money and other advantages to deter the entry of new players in the industry, which means decrease in innovation.

It is established that private ownership and efficient allocation of capital by markets i.e. Capitalism as we know today, is probably the most powerful, flexible, and robust system for growing society’s prosperity. At the same time, we know that the economy is just an aspect/part (probably the most vital one) of the society and the purpose of every society/ civilization is the welfare of its citizens. So economy and its constituents i.e. businesses should also serve that greater cause. But as interests of Capitalism are increasingly getting pitted against the broader interests of our society, Capitalism has to evolve to meet all the objectives of the society. Fortunately, this evolution of the role business in society has been happening albeit slowly over time, but the big push has come from increasingly growing number of social enterprises.

Rise of Social Enterprises

Social enterprises or socially responsible businesses try to solve this problem of negative externalities by internalizing the costs associated with them. This mean, shareholder value maximization is a part of the broader agenda for such enterprises. Their agenda could be to reduce environmental footprint, increase the welfare of the local communities, empowerment or focus on marginalized sections of the society, and in general a longer term outlook for the business ecosystem as a whole in the industry and locality they are working in. This means long term welfare and interests of all stakeholders in the business like consumers, employees, community, suppliers or other stake holders from the value chain has to be kept in mind while making decisions, and not just the interests of investors/shareholders.

Rise of social enterprises will go down as the characteristic transformation of our times in the economic history to be written in future. Governments and other influential bodies supporting this transition in the business is conducted would be hailed as the pioneers. The reckless pursuit of shareholder value maximization in turn got translated into making of GDP and the growth rates as the only criteria for measuring development of societies and countries. Other dimensions of development of society just got ignored, which has given rise to or increased the extent of many of our societal problems. Therefore the renewal or evolution of capitalism as a more inclusive system, would serve as a systemic intervention of bottom-up nature to solve the problems we have in our world today by promoting a nurturing environment for the innovations for this purpose.

Problems

Various structures and models are being tried by social entrepreneurs for achieving a balanced growth along with the welfare of public or fulfillment of other social goals like livelihoods security, health, education, empowerment of marginalized, etc. Some of these efforts have been highly successful but on the whole social enterprise ecosystem is not in the shape it should be to make it possible for new social enterprises/innovations to get into in the market and scale-up fast enough. While there are many dimensions of this ecosystem that require attention and support from the government, we would focus here on three very specific and heavily inter-related aspects.

1. Our current laws don’t provide for an alternative to pursue the society’s interests as a whole through sustainable models or mission driven businesses. Company law doesn’t provide for scope to pursue a second or third bottom-line beyond profits, though some entrepreneurs have tinkered with existing structure of a company to suit the needs of socially responsible business. Many new social enterprises get torn between their social commitment for which the business was started and their fiduciary duty.

2. Philanthropic donations, government programs and aid-money have tried to address the challenges of human development with a mixed record so far, and social enterprises are also a similar attempt which many believe to be having a great potential. For investors and anyone else to be assured that social returns expected on their investment are being reaped, a standardized system of measuring the social impact is not in place. So far people use proxies for the impact which can’t exactly be compared across different projects/ideas because of the differences in the methodology used and things measured. Profits or financial returns on capital are easy to measure and compare. A well developed social enterprise ecosystem would also require an equally good societal impact measurement system to compare different types of impact. Impact measurement methods used by development projects could definitely be of help here. Existence of a reliable standardized impact measurement system would also enable us to differentiate between false propaganda/claims by some corporations v/s the real impact.

3. Lack of reliable impact measurement keeps socially responsible investors suspicious and low on confidence to make investment decisions. This causes a slow investment rate which combined with lack of liquidity of such investments becomes a huge constraint for the social enterprises.

Solutions

In order to solve the problems mentioned in above sections, many jurisdictions have been adopting different methods. Based on the ideas implemented internationally to tackle these problems, we recommend following strategies:

New legal structure: Allowing for new type of entities (let’s say Fair Profit Company or FPC) to be registered in which shareholder primacy gets diluted in favor of public welfare in general, with increased transparency and accountability is definitely going to encourage and support mission driven entrepreneurs. Such a legal structure would allow for shareholder value maximization after ensuring that the social mission of such a FPC doesn’t get compromised.

Here is a representative (and tentative) list of features of such a legal structure:

1. FPCs would give first priority to the explicit commitments to community welfare objectives mentioned in their charter or Memorandum of Association.

2. Cost of negative externalities created due to the business will get accounted into the financial statements of FPC to tackle these externalities by internalizing them.

3. Minimum fraction of ownership to be given to different stakeholders would get mandated e.g. 10% to blue-collar employees, 10% to the suppliers, 10-14% to the communities where FPC markets its offerings and 15% to the communities where the FPC is located.

4. Good corporate governance practices would be enforced with high penalty clauses

5. Explicit commitment to pursue long-term outlook has to be made in the charter and executives would be given flexibility and decision making power to achieve the goals set by shareholders

6. Commitment that fixed fraction of the profit (upto 25% max) will always get distributed as dividends, unless ruled otherwise in the General Body Meeting in that fiscal year

7. These corporations can take in grants with tax benefits to the donors, just as non-profits are allowed to accept grants

8. Foreign investments could easily be made without any restrictions and need of approvals, both in the form equity or debt i.e. easy FDI and ECB allowed through Direct route

9. Extra reporting requirements would be there to both ensure transparency and accountability, and to monitor progress on the social mission of the FPC

10. All tax liabilities for FPCs would be calculated just as it is done for the other companies registered under the Companies Act of India, 1956

11. Cost of measuring social impact can be reduced from the tax liability of an FPC within the permissible limits

12. Heavy penalty for fraudsters not fulfilling the community welfare objectives of FPC or compromising its social mission

13. To increase labor availability for FPCs, deduction in the income tax liability for the employees of FPCs could be provided

14. No license required or significantly eased requirements for getting license to provide goods and services which are highly regulated, including the provision of public goods i.e. power, water, education, health, security, mining, communication, public infrastructure, etc

Impact measurement standards: Setting up a government recognized Standard for impact measurement calculations in the Indian context is a must to be able accept the reports submitted by the FPCs for the purpose of monitoring progress on the social mission of FPCs.

FPC Impact Rating system based on both the absolute impact metrics, peer-rating by other FPCs, NGOs and the community, and/or standardized social audits should be given recognition by the government. Such a rating system would enable everyone to compare the performance of FPCs with each other.

FPC Stock Exchanges: To provide liquidity to the shareholders and FPCs an opportunity to raise capital from public, government should facilitate setting up of new stock exchanges where only FPCs of all sizes can be listed. Spot exchanges or share trading sessions for the trading of shares amongst the community members, employees, suppliers etc. should be organized regularly in the location where FPCs are located. FPC Impact Rating system would serve the purpose of providing the information required by such buyers and sellers for getting into the trade.