Ideas to Ponder: "Expiration Dates for Charities?"

NGOs are defined by the World Bank as "private organizations that pursue activities to relieve suffering, promote the interests of the poor, protect the environment, provide basic social services, or undertake community development".

But isn't this definition too Utopian? 

To answer that question, lets see some figures:

On The Road Again: Amazing pics!

These are some of the most amazing pics that I have ever seen. Photographer is my close friend, Bharat Chintapalli (Second year student IIM-L). My favorite pic is Two's up! Decide yours...

Debate: Online versus Offline behaviour

It has been a very long debate. People have different responses to the question: "Why our online behavior is different (if any) from the offline behavior?" And now people have already started responding on "How to deal with the errant offline behavior?" I recently came across a post by Justine Larbalestier, where he talks about his way of dealing with such people. In his post he says:

Ideas to Ponder: The Walk from "no" to "yes"

In today's post, I have covered learnings from Willian Ury on how to negotiate in tough situations. William Ury, author of well renowned book -"Getting to Yes," offers an elegant, simple (but not easy) way to create agreement in even the most difficult situations -- from family conflict to, perhaps, the Middle East in a TED talk. Watch the video:

CATCH-22: IF HE GETS SMARTER, EXECUTE HIM?

Recently I came across a journal named ETC! There was one very interesting story in it based on catch-22 phenomenon. Here it goes...

By: ROBERT WANDERER

THE SUPREME COURT decided in 2002 that it’s unconstitutional to execute a murderer who is retarded. The ruling was in the case of Daryl Atkins of Virginia, who scored 59 on an IQ test in 1998. That state put the cutoff for retardation at 70.

Man's Search For Meaning

Man's Search For Meaning

by Victor Frankel

1. No man can tell another what his purpose for being is. Each must find out for himself, and accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. 

2. "He who has a "why" to live can bear with almost any how."É. Nietzsche 

3. Anything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. 

Ideas to Ponder: "When Mistakes are Good..."

One thing as human beings we all have potential to do, and that (as you might have guessed it) is the potential to make mistakes! We commit mistakes no matter how precautionary we are, and to our surprise many times we commit these mistake because of the over precaution we took! I did try to address this topic in my earlier posts, but not to the extent to which I will be addressing here. 

|"It took me a long time to understand that, as human beings, we are bound to commit mistakes (this is something which is expected from us!)."

There are several related questions to committing mistakes, some of them are before committing them, few of them during and most of them after committing the mistakes. Lets deal each one of them one by one...

Questions before committing mistakes:

The relation between punishments and mistakes has very intriguing for most of us. Different degrees of mistakes happens in case of rewards and punishment. For example, When you attach a reward then the objectives becomes -'To achieve more' (no matter what the consequences be), and mistakes happen on the way so be the excellence.


And, when you attach punishment, opposite happens most of the time. 

Ideas to Ponder: "Digital Entrepreneurship in India"

Few days back, I came across an article published in YourStory.in  (it's a website which focuses on entrepreneurial success stories). The title of the article was - "Is India ready for Digital Entrepreneurs?".  

Read the article here.

The author himself being an digital entrepreneur argues that, 

"Unless people and culture change, innovating would be like making a comb for a bald person. But yes, there is a hope. The hope that the emerging digital revolution might just be able to create and expose the variety in today’s society."

Most Tempting Annual Report Ever Seen!

I recently came across a company named Temptation Foods Ltd. (TFL), its a major player and one of the largest organized sector enterprises in the Indian food processing Industry (that's what the company says!). But when one of my colleague at MDI (my B-school) showed me the annual shareholder's report of the company for the financial year 2008-09; I was shocked and could not stop laughing at it! Take a look yourself:

Click here.

My objective here is not to express any derogatory remarks on the company par se, but to pay attention to the absurdness of making such a document which talks more about the beauty of a woman then about the company!

Ideas to Ponder: Need to Re-look at World Corruption Perceptions Index!

_{Since 1995, Transparency International has published an annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ordering the countries of the world according to "the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians". The organization defines corruption as "the abuse of entrusted power for private gain".}

_{Transparency International's 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index is the world's most credible measure of of domestic, public sector corruption. The CPI is an aggregate indicator that combines different sources of information about corruption, making it possible to compare countries.}

_{Method CPI calculation}

_{The CPI 2010 is calculated using data from 13 different surveys or assessments produced by the following 10 independent organisations:}