Russian predicts end of US

To add to all the exisiting chaos, a Russian professor, a former KGB analyst, predicted the end of US. He predicted the disintegration of US similar to the division of the erstwhile Soviet Union.
He predicted the division of into 4 different countries with Alaska going to Russia and Hawaii to China/Japan

Ok, let's assume that US did disintegrate into multiple countries, but I really don't understand the rationality behind this "scholar's" logic.For example , he predicts that the southern states(would-be Texan republic) would be under Mexican influence or control. Now, how could the southern states, with Texas , Georgia and Florida go under Mexico. That's utterly ridiculous. The singlemost important point he might have to reconsider is that the southern states aren't the Balkan nations, Georgia or Azerbaijan to have nothing and be in an impoverished condition that Mexico could take control of. The US isnt the Soviet Union to have sucked up all the resources from these states into Washington or NewYork.
And was there any instance in history where an economically dependant country exerted influence on the host country and possibly took control of it. Did Bulgaria or Romania take control of Ukrain..hell no !!
And there are more.. just Read it here - End of US prediction
And just for the sake of the stats, check this GDP of US states

Look at the division of US, it looks to me like the division that news channels make during elections for the sake of projections and opinion-poll, hope he didn't pick up on CNN :)

Baby Sitting the Economy by Paul Krugman

I guess would-be and wannabe MBAs could learn some valuable lessons from 2008's Nobel Prize in Economics winner, Paul Krugman.

Go ahead, read the following article, I bet you wouldn't be awed if you haven't heard of economics

Baby-Sitting the Economy

More about him and his articles on his site at MIT
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/

to all MIT Sloan aspirants... bad news!! Krugman is moving to Princeton

Great Example of Customer Service !!

Have to check this out... a bit funny and awesome. This is a classic example of the adage - Customer is God



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Problem with Twitter

Disclaimer : This post reverberates only my opinions and doesn't refer to or mean anything offensive to Twitter or the people cited below.

I believe Twitter has been astoundingly successful, and it marked the coming of social networking x.0 (I frankly don't know what the version is, and I rather not mess with that).
It exactly does what it is says - What're you doing? 140 characters of your status - that's all is required to let your friends/family/fans/followers know.

It certainly has attracted a lot of biggies into the game (read : timOreilly, sethgodin, d2h guykawasaki etc.), and lets people keep themselves updated on what these guys are upto. But I guess, it didn't take care of a few things here. Take my case, I have very few friends(or in Twitterminology - followers) and I started following timoreilly on Twitter. As soons as I started following him, my page was exploded with posts from Tim that I lost the posts from my friends in the rubble. Imagine if I had subscribed to all the guys I have cited as examples. Phew !!

The updates from Tim very so frequent and so many that I didn't opt for the device setup. And embarrasingly, I removed the updates on my email that I got from Twitter, which is the sole purpose of registering on Twitter. Finally I had to unfollow Tim (No , I mean not even a bit of, offence meant to Tim. Period. He's a great guy, and has lots of things going on. I or anyone can't blame him for anything!!)


What I meant to say is, Twitter does gives you the privilege to follow influential people and get a piece of their ideas/style/philosophy without interfering their privacy and that's awesome. Probably that's why you don't see most of these guys on Facebook,Orkut, or other Social Apps where you get friend requests, wall posts, birthday reminders, photos, videos blah..blah..blah. But with so many posts coming from these guys, I feel the purpose of Twitter is losing somewhere.
I do want to follow these guys and at the same time, dont want to lose updates from my friends and I dont want a rush of updates. After all, who needs a Tweet every minute that's not personally important.
The only way that could be handled is to have the ability to group people you follow under categories like Friends, Colleagues, Influential people, Marketers etc. so that you can check what you need the most at the hour

Can something be done about this.
Twitter, are you listening ?

PS: I love the updates from Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. Succinct, to-the-point and every tweet's worth reading

Thy name Seth

Last week, I was contemplating over the list of famous or not-so-famous(if you'd like to say so after I give the names) people I admire and coincidentally, I observer that there were three Seths in the list - Seth Godin, Seth Macfarlane and Seth Rogen.

Just an small intro about each of these guys, if you don't know

1.Seth Godin - marketing guru. Great guy, you have to read his blogs or his books. It's on my fav list if you want instant access. He simply shows what exactly "out-of-the-box" means. Not just talk, but in action

2. Seth Macfarlane - See it to believe it. If you ever watched the comedy "Family Guy", you should know him. He is the creator and writer for the show and the way he manages all three charcaters - Peter, Stewie and Bryan is amazing.

3. Seth Rogen - The lesser famous guy of the three, perhaps. But if you are a hollywood fanatic, you would know him. His acting/writing skills are awesome. Watch Knocked Up(in the leading role) or Superbad(he is the f***ing writer ,a supporting actor and the exec producer) or the latest Zack and Mirni make a porno to know what I'm saying.

Hats off , guys !!

Bottleneck CEOs

I was reading about some(successful and failed) start-ups when this phrase hit me. Bottleneck CEOs - CEOs who become the bottleneck and stifle the growth of a company when it has a greater scope to make a mark in the industry and go beyond. And this is especially true in the case of start-ups. There are companies whose growth is hampered because the founder-CEOs wouldn't , and couldn't, let someone else take the role and responsibility of a few critical areas in the company even when they themselves cannot do it. They want to do it themselves, even though they have to re-invent the wheel to learn the whole process.

For example, these founder(s) CEOs wouldn't let a professional(say, an MBA) take care of the finances or a new area of business or a new product. We can't completely argue against it as the founder(s) have a greater sense of ownership and responisiblity towards the company than any employee. But, if ones wishes for the good of the company, one has to let go. If he is the person who took the path less-travelled, then he has to do that again and again.

Take the example of Google, Larry Page and Sergei Brin let Eric Schmidt be the CEO and take the company ahead - this has been argued that Eric really doesn't have a say but is just the spokesperson. Now whatever be the case, Eric Schmidt has been entrusted to run the company while Page&Brin are taking care of the technology to take Google ahead, and the triumvirate has been astoudingly successful.

Why can't all founder(s) let go of a few things when it is absolutely required to?
Agreed that you are the owner, but you wouldn't know how high it can fly until you let go. Don't just be a founder, be a leader too.