Book recommendation

"The Protean Corporation" by Michael S Malone to be published by Random House. I found out about this when I read an opinion piece on the WSJ today. It was a good read :)

Ideas can sometimes resemble an itch that you want to scratch but cannot locate. That is, until an author comes along and pins it for you and you go Ah hah! that is exactly what I am thinking about. This opinion piece did that for me. Below is a excerpt and the link.

This higher level of anarchy will be exciting, but it will also sometimes be very painful. Entire industries will die almost overnight, laying off thousands, while others will just as suddenly appear, hungry for employees. Continuity and predictability will become the rarest of commodities. And if the entrepreneurial personality honors smart failures, by the same token it has little pity for weakness. That fraction of Americans – 10%, 20% – who still dream of the gold watch or the 30-year pin will suffer the most . . . and unless their needs are somehow met as well, they will remain a perpetually open wound in our society.

Scary, exciting, liberating, frustrating, infinitely ambitious and thoroughly amnesic. If you live in a high-tech community like Silicon Valley or Redmond or Austin, you already live in this world. It's hard to imagine more exciting places to be.

I live in Austin and though it is not quite the valley it is a fast changing landscape :) not necessarily for the faint of heart. Link to WSJ article.

Quotable - CK Prahalad

Entrepreneurs should use Price - Profit = Design as their guiding principle rather than the shortage economy paradigm of Cost + Profit = Price. "Challenge and change the price performance equations. If we can satisfy 500 million (poor) customers in India by producing world-class quality, then that can become the biggest export opportunity in the world," Prahalad said.

N. Gopalaswami, India's chief election commissioner, spoke about entrepreneurship in government. "The biggest enterprise in India is maintaining democracy. Our elections, involving 700 million voters, are the single largest event management exercise in the world,"

From the article ->C.K. Prahalad: 'The Poor Deserve World-Class Products and Services'