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Penguin Books Ltd - Subroto Bagchi

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158 pages

English

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Some of the most innovative and entrepreneurial minds of our times, in conversation with management guru and bestselling author Subroto Bagchi For the immensely popular column Zen Garden which he published in Forbes India for over three years, bestselling business author Subroto Bagchi spoke to some very interesting people. Many, though not all, of the visitors to Zen Garden were, like Subroto himself, high-performance entrepreneurs. But the one thing that was common to every guest was that they were pathmakers rather than choosing to follow the well-trodden path, they had charted new paths that others could tread on. This book features the very best conversations from Zen Garden , including those with the Dalai Lama, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Nandan Nilekani, Aamir Khan, Dr Devi Shetty, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Ekta Kapoor, social entrepreneur Harish Hande, Sanjeev Bikhchandani of Naukri.com, Deep Kalra of MakeMyTrip.com, Caf Coffee Day s V.G. Siddhartha, Vikram Bakshi (the man who brought McDonald s to India) and India s top winemaker, Rajeev Samant. In their own words, these game changers reveal what it was that made them think differently, what gave them the courage to step off the beaten track, and how they sustained their vision in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Zen Garden is a book that every young Indian should read.

Informations

Publié par	Penguin Books Ltd
Date de parution	01 décembre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9789351185741
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Subroto Bagchi

Zen Garden
Conversations with Pathmakers
Contents
About the Author
By the Same Author
Dedication
Introduction
Determination
Introduction
Rajeev Samant
Nari Manepally and Paul Chowdhury
Cherie Blair
Ramesh Ramanathan
Nandan Nilekani
Vision
Introduction
Harish Hande
Jimmy Wales
Bill Drayton
Sanjna Kapoor
Bindu Hari
Courage
Introduction
N.S. Narendra
G.R. Gopinath
Jagdish Khattar
Gopal Srinivasan
Rajeev Mecheri
Displacement
Introduction
V.G. Siddhartha
Bijay Sharma
Vikram Bakshi
Sudhir Dhingra
C.K. Ranganathan
Love and Competence
Introduction
Sanghamitra Jena
Rana Kapoor
Patu Keswani
Anita Shah
Badri Seshadri
Innovation
Introduction
Aman Nath and Francis Wacziarg
Deep Kalra
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
Sanjeev Bikhchandani and Hitesh Oberoi
Ram Shriram
Sudhir Sethi
New Paths, New Economy
Introduction
Ritesh Sidhwani
Ekta Kapoor
Nandita Lakshmanan
Jagi Panda
Shombit Sengupta
Sujata Keshavan
The Power of Two
Introduction
Lalana Zaveri and Manish Sharma
Shibanee and Kamal Sagar
Arjun Kalyanpur and Sunita Maheshwari
Compassionate Leadership
Introduction
Dr Devi Shetty
Dr Sharan Patil
Dr Gullapalli N. Rao
Pain
Introduction
Anu Aga
Aamir Khan
Shashikant Shetty
Altruism
Introduction
Dalai Lama
Jaggi Vasudev
Wisdom
Introduction
Pranav Parikh
Dinesh Himatsingka
Suresh Neotia
Kris Gopalakrishnan
Follow Penguin
Copyright
PORTFOLIO
ZEN GARDEN
Subroto Bagchi is co-founder and chairman of Mindtree Ltd, a global IT solutions company. He is India s bestselling author of business books, with titles like The High-Performance Entrepreneur, Go Kiss the World, The Professional and The Professional Companion to his credit. He has also written a business book for young adults, MBA at 16. His books have been translated into Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Korean and Chinese.
Subroto lives in Bangalore with his writer-wife, Susmita. They have two daughters, Neha and Niti.
He can be reached at www.mindtree.com/subrotobagchi .
Also by the Author
The Professional Companion: How to Make the Best of Your Workplace Skills
MBA at 16
The Professional: Defining the New Standard of Excellence at Work
The High-Performance Entrepreneur: Golden Rules for Success in Today s World
Go Kiss the World: Life Lessons for the Young Professional
To Shrutee
Introduction
Zen in the Garden
T here are two kinds of people in this world: those who are pathmakers and those who are path dependent. We need both kinds for very different reasons. People who are path dependent make great followers-show them the path and they will walk it diligently. And then there are a few amongst us who are pathmakers-they chart new paths so that others may tread on them.
All my life, I have been fascinated with pathmakers and their ways. They have a unique way of looking at the world and at themselves, a very strong will to change things. Whenever I have come in contact with such people, I have made it a point to pause, listen and learn something valuable from them before they move on. I see them come from many walks of life: teachers, doctors, government servants, spiritual leaders, scientists, politicians and countless others. But I also see pathmakers in another group of interesting people: entrepreneurs. No two entrepreneurs are the same; no two acts of their journeys are alike. As they walk the path they ve charted for themselves, what becomes most visible to the world outside is success and failure-two simple words that mask the trials and tribulations of the journey and keep the wisdom born out of that journey away from the onlooker.
My rare opportunity to talk to a group of pathmakers in a systematic manner arrived when Forbes India editors Indrajit Gupta (IG) and Charles Assissi asked me if I would pen a column for them. Instead of spewing my own thoughts issue after issue, I suggested that I engage an entrepreneur pathmaker in conversation every fortnight. I proposed to the editorial team that I would invite an eclectic set of people: sometimes well-known and celebrated, and sometimes those who are away from the popular gaze, for an interesting conversation.
This is how a widely followed and much-loved column appeared as Zen Garden and ran for a long time. During the course of its run, I came to meet many unusual individuals and learn from them. I held forth their story and, at times, nuggets of wisdom, for thousands of readers. Fortnight after fortnight, I researched some very intriguing, intense and occasionally reclusive people and finally got to sit across from some of them and listen. A visit to the Zen Garden was by invitation only. Individually, those who came by left unique insights and treasured lessons for my readers and me. But over time, I also saw a pattern of sorts emerge. Collectively, they held forth a set of qualities that were clearly the essentials of pathmaking.
This is when I spoke to Udayan Mitra at Penguin Portfolio to suggest that we come out with a collection of the Zen Garden interviews. He was fascinated with the idea and we were lucky that Mr Raghav Bahl, founder of Network18 and himself a Penguin author, was extremely supportive of the idea. At this stage, Udayan suggested that I work with Shrutkeerti Khurana, a bright young woman with a background in business, writing and editing, to help me curate the interviews.
What the curating process entailed was a series of meetings between Shrutee and me and sometimes Udayan. Together, we were able to look at a set of qualities that stood out for pathmaking. Along the way, twelve distinct, defining qualities presented themselves. These then became the order through which the Zen Garden narratives were arranged for you.
For every quality, we chose a few individuals who best exemplified it. Even as you start listening in to the conversations in the ensuing twelve sections, questions may arise in your mind. Are these twelve qualities the most definitive characteristics of pathmakers? When we look at someone as the embodiment of a certain quality, could he/she not have been as representative of another? Why this and why not that? How did we choose to present them under the categories of courage, or innovation, or wisdom? Someone may even wonder if this book is a scientific exposition on the subject of pathmaking, or ask if this collection is scholastic enough, validated through one or the other method?
My suggestion for you is to just go with the flow. See what s in store for you. In the process, you may find things even I did not. The exactitude is unimportant so long as the vastness touches you.
The guests in this collection have been presented in the twelve clusters that I spoke about. Each cluster is preceded by a short narrative on the theme by me. These narratives will help you see what I see. But eventually, you must see through your own eyes and listen to your heart.
Before you turn the page, I ask for your accommodation on one very important aspect: that while we all have our frailties, we will meet our guests with an open mind; they are up close and it is a wonderful opportunity for us to just be with them.
The best way to enjoy the conversations would be for you to eavesdrop and be there with my guest and me. And who knows? What may strike you as significant may have completely missed me.
I have always believed that the power to receive is more important than the power to give. May you have the power.
DETERMINATION
Introduction
W henever I see people who have made a big difference through their work, I see two intertwined threads: determination and purpose. They believe they are doing useful work, and they persevere with a sense of purpose.
These great people are not always dazzling individuals with an invincible idea or an infinite capacity to make a big difference. But they stay with the problem for longer. Determination is a very interesting concept. If we are determined, it gives us focus. The capacity to stay focused is also the power to remain undistracted. Along the way, we all tend to get distracted sometimes. The biggest distraction, of course, is the temptation to give up, to concede. Just as everything appears bleak and desolate, the terrain barren and unfriendly, something waits to sprout magically-changing the entire landscape. That is what we see in the life and work of Rajeev Samant. He wanted to grow potatoes and mango trees on a land that was not yielding what he wanted. But he stayed determined to create something valuable on that land and look what he got! He grew grapes instead and, today, he is India s top winemaker.
Then there is the story of Narayan Manepally and his friend Paul Chowdhury-the men behind Geist beer. The two friends reunited after long and successful years in the high-tech industry to build a microbrewery. The licence was denied to them and, yet, they found a way to circumvent the hurdles: they created the ingredients for the beer in India, took these to Belgium, converted them into beer and imported the beverage back home. A licence to manufacture could be denied, but the right to import couldn t be restricted. Even as the cost went up sharply, they created a brand in the process which found takers.
When I interviewed the two friends, I was fascinated with the story of Paul s parents. Paul is half Bengali and half German. His father landed up in Germany to work in a manufacturing plant. He arrived there with nothing in hand and no place to stay. His German supervisor offered him the outhouse and, while staying there, he fell in love with the man s daughter. But he couldn t marry her-he needed to return to India. If she wanted to marry him, he said to her, she had to come to India. He left on that note. But she was one determined lady. She asked her father for permission. Her father handcrafted a wooden chest for her as a gift with a rather om