“I believe in life long learning and I hope these stories may assist towards that goal.”

Eclectic thoughts

March 7, 2012

In the old days it was common for an anchor man to be referred to as ‘Our man in..‘. It became even more common with Graham Greene’s 1958 novel “Our man in Havana”. Longman’s dictionary also refers to the term as “a man who is the representative of a country or organization in a particular place.” I am trained as a zoologist (BSc) in Sydney, a Financial Controller (Masters) in Amsterdam, and an Information Security auditor (CISA) in cyberspace.

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Move to the role of a large scale integrator

September 16, 2011

Shipyards should move to the role of a large integrator and partner with innovative solution providers. Imitation and low pricing won’t last long and is based on volume. Innovation is what adds real value. In this forever faster changing global world we can achieve this through continuous search for excellence. Short production series, customisation as a general principle, and global competition force shipyards to permanently search for innovative solutions with regard to design and production technologies.

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The Lokpal bill

July 11, 2011

The OECD is advocating to fight corruption. See this link for more. Also the people of India are sick of corruption. Anna Hazare’s Jantar Mantar fast, which got overwhelming public support, has not gone in vain. The latest government version of the proposed Lokpal Bill is certainly an improvement over the anaemic bill drafted by the law ministry in December 2010, but the government is still not ready to go the whole hog.

Who said the world is flat?

June 15, 2011

As a former zoologist it is only natural that I back Galileo. The world is not flat. Alright, people travel in greater numbers, communication has become much cheaper and pervaisive, distances are more and more virtual and data more readily available and therefore often more transparent. An Indian software engineer can easily take over the work of his American collegue sitting in Bangalore. It is flawed to consider this argument as the world being flat when it comes to management.

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Vietnam

March 22, 2011

Bon Apetite in Vietnam My thigh muscles were aching for days afterwards. I had been crawling for some 100 metres through the Viet Kong tunnels at Củ Chi, north of Saigon. These escape routes from the American soldiers during the Vietnam war had been a bit widened and heightened for the tourists. Even though I still had to come across the first tall or fat Vietnamese, it was difficult to comprehend any human being able to manoeuvre himself through these.

Leadership in the 21st Century

December 22, 2010

Pff isn’t it annoying if you cannot find a particular article or email? I just searched all over the place for a reference to the YouTube clip I had watched yesterday but to no avail. At least until eventually I stumbled upon the story. To my delight it was even a better version as this one showed the graphs. The talk had been on the emerging economies and whether they will overtake the western world.

Not outsourcing to increase own skill sets?

December 21, 2010

South of Negombo, Sri Lanka. I found myself walking in the rain along a totally unknown path along a small river which I hoped, and half expected, would lead me to the beach. The rain had been a bit of a light drizzle when I first set off but slowly it gathered the look and feel of a monsoon shower. Even my umbrella started to feel inadequate to deal with the steady moisture descending from the grey clouds above.

WikiLeaks, a superb case study

December 10, 2010

Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. There is no other word to describe how the world is scrambling to deal with the WikiLeaks information and in particular with its founder Julian Assange. There is no cohesive response as everybody is shooting from the hip, often totally ignorant about the legal issues at stake. The latter is even unclear to the legal community due to the novelty and the international character of the case. No surprise therefore that legal human rights heavy weight lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC is going to defend Mr Assange.

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Creating strategic alliances and partnerships

December 7, 2010

I just boarded the flight to Goa and thought about the comments of Prof Yves Doz with his typical French accent: “try and note the most important lessons learned otherwise you will look back at this seminar as interesting and a place where you had fun but you cannot remember much about it“. How true. We carry so much tacit knowledge but are often unable to link it to a particular point in time.

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Hans Rosling: Asia's Rise -- How and When

July 23, 2010

Hans Rosling So often during my talks I have referred to India not as an emerging economy but as a re-emerging economy. Hans Rosling does an excellent job at the recent Ted conference in Mysore graphing global economic growth since 1858 and he predicts the exact date that India and China will outstrip the US: July 27, 2048, just after my 88th birthday…

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Adding value in a low value market

July 23, 2010

If one can borrow, why build or buy? More than ever, in today’s climate where cash is king and credit is tight, alliances are a smarter, swifter, more reactive and economical way to pursue strategic opportunities and gain competitive advantages. These words of wisdom from INSEAD applied to the ING bank where I worked (increase the throughput in Change Management by means of outsourcing). It also applies to the shipbuilding industry, my current field of endeavour.

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Selecting software for a greenfield

June 27, 2010

Centos Published in Dare magazine, August 2010 I am writing this using Open Office on a laptop with Ubuntu as it’s operating system, the Open Source equivalent from Oracle of Word and Windows respectively. My exposure to Open Source dates back to the 1990s. At that time I was a Director Finance & IT of Odyssey Tours, the famous travel company. Frustrated with continuous maintenance problems with Windows I was looking for ways to reduce this.

Leaders in India

October 17, 2009

Leaders in India was the name of the business forum conference I attended in Mumbai last week. With some humility I could not help but think that most of us did not really qualify that title. Then again, the only criteria was that you had to be a CEO. In my humble opinion there were too many foreign speakers/panellists in the conference. There are so many excellent Leaders in India that I failed to understand why they had to be flown in from abroad.

Is the U.S. Killing Its Innovation Machine?

October 7, 2009

This article in the HBR is an interesting one. In my opinion it is a matter of time before a country like India will shorten the gap with the West. Already major reforms are initiated in the education sector to make it more application driven. That, coupled with poor infrastructure, is the main reason why it’s lagging behind. (IT) Industries without (much) infrastructural demand are doing very well. What is killing innovation?

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Gooooood Morning India!

February 12, 2008

As that is what I will be able to yell as of April 2008. I am delighted to announce that I have accepted the offer of a Dutch company to become their CFO for their newly to set up Indian operation near Manipal, Karnataka. Packers have been called and the family will be moving on March 13. Take note of our new Indian address!

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High Level Meet at the European Parliament

November 19, 2007

I was invited to the Symposium on Ethics in Business Corporate Culture & Spirituality 2007, held at the Hotel Sheraton and the European Parliament in Brussels on 2nd and 3rd December 2007. This symposium was organized by the International Association for Human Values (IAHV) in cooperation with the Europe-India Chamber of Commerce of which I am a member. The aim of the symposium was to provide an opportunity for leaders in society to discuss evolving leadership styles that lend themselves to an ethically responsible corporate community.

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Happy Diwali

November 9, 2007

We wish you all a very happy Diwali and look forward to catch up soon again. The first venue where we will be speaking will be the pre-Trade Mission meeting hosted by the EVD in the Hague. This mission is organised by the Chambers of Commerce of the five largest cities in the Netherlands. After that there is the high level meeting of the Europe India Chamber of Commerce at the European Parliament on December 4.

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India Symposium, Amsterdam

September 21, 2007

Take this chance to register for a unique investment event bringing together Indian & Dutch Investment professionals. Even if you are not investing but an opinion leader in this field do not forget what this conference might add to your views. We are gathering both Indian as well as Dutch executives together to exchange their opinions and opportunities in order to create more value to all of us. Date: October 3, 2007 Location: beurs van Berlage, Amsterdam Please register on time (see attachments) and go to http://www.

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Economic and Political Dimension of the EU-India Strategic Partnership

August 27, 2007

Kamal Nath Last week I attended the high level meeting organized by the Europe-India Chamber of Commerce. Held at the European Parliament in Brussels, it was an interesting conference. The thing that struck me most was the high calibre speeches made by the representatives of the Government of India. Kamal Nath, India’s minister of commerce and industry, compared India with Europe where many states with different languages strive to provide a single economic entity.

Diversity & Inclusion

August 26, 2007

On April 18 I did join the very interesting Diversity & Inclusion seminar courtesy the ABN-AMRO bank and the Free University (VU). Chaired by Charles Groenhuijsen, the presentation by Prof. Yvonne Benschop (Nijmegen Uni) was particularly interesting. Also noteworthy was Francoise Companjen’s (VU Uni) reference to Richard Florida ‘s findings that “people in technology businesses are drawn to places known for diversity of thought and open-mindedness, and that our measures potentially get at a broader concept of diversity and inclusiveness.

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