Articles Posted

April 12, 2020
“I believe in life long learning and I hope these stories may assist towards that goal.”

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Support Net Neutrality

July 12, 2017
Support Net Neutrality
Internet neutrality is a big deal. It enables you, or anyone else, to complete at a true level playing field with large corporations. Support Net neutrality Early last year Mark Zuckerberg had pushed to break net neutrality in India. It failed! Read here more about Facebook’s biggest setback in the Guardian. Now the FCC has a plan to destroy net neutrality in the USA. It’s up to us to stop it.

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India's GDP accelerates to 7.4% in Q2 FY16

December 5, 2015
India's GDP accelerates to 7.4% in Q2 FY16
The optimism regarding passage of Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill in the ongoing winter session of the Parliament has increased, after top leaders from ruling and major Opposition Party met on Friday evening for negotiations. Q2 – FY: 2016 real GDP number improves on deflationary trends The economic growth for Q2 – FY: 2016 came in better than Q1 and was broadly in line with expectations. The Gross Value added (GVA) (basic price) clocked 7.

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Assocham sets up European headquarters in Amsterdam

December 2, 2015
Assocham sets up European headquarters in Amsterdam
The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (known as Assocham India) has officially opened its first Dutch branch in Amsterdam. According to Vikas Chaturvedi, the founder of Assocham Netherlands, the launch of Assocham’s European base in Amsterdam “will give a substantial boost in business between India and Europe. This will further enhance the role of the Netherlands…

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Modi must implement structural change to minimize corruption

July 14, 2015
by Trusted Sources Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke too soon when he claimed in May that there was “not one scandal” in his government “even after a year”, compared with his predecessor’s record when “every day was a new bad day”. As my colleague Amitabh Dubey writes from New Delhi: Corruption allegations have swamped Modi’s government shortly after that. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje were accused of secretly aiding Lalit Modi, a controversial businessman and founder of the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket franchise, who has moved to London to avoid questioning over alleged financial irregularities.

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What makes people successful

August 31, 2014
I can fully recommend you watch this Ted video talk

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Brilliant Out of the Box Thinking

July 30, 2014
Admittedly, your HSE or the Public Works Department may not approve but you have to give it to this guy, he thought about how to solve his problem and he did where many others would have failed.

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To quit or not to quit as a director

April 14, 2014
To quit or not to quit as a director
My company driver had collected me from the airport. It was a hot sunny afternoon and the air conditioner of the Toyota was blowing softly. I was on my way to my office and we were driving along the busy Airport Road. Suddenly my driver felt the need for some commentary as if pretending he was a tourist guide. “On the right you can see the jail which houses our Managing Director” he informed me with somewhat of a smile on his face.

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Algorithms and our world picture

November 11, 2013
Algorithms and our world picture
I have scraped data and created algorithms for our family travel website. It was therefore with more than an average interest that I listened to William Uricchio of MIT talk at THINK 2013 about algorithms and their effect on social conversion. Uricchio started with explaining that the media has seen a tremendous change in the last few years – a few companies own 80 percent of the media while on the other hand, there has also been a decentralisation as a result of the internet.

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Multicultural managers can make a huge difference

August 8, 2013
“Many multinational companies have hidden, unrecognised multicultural gems within their ranks. To find these and get the most from their unique skills means taking the time and trouble to carefully develop and deploy multicultural managers in critical positions.” Read more by my former INSEAD professor of Strategic Management, Yves Doz.

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Microsoft: How can we help you?

February 8, 2013
Microsoft: How can we help you?
How can we help you? A friend of mine called this morning to say that, despite the spamassassin I had installed, he had received almost 2000 spam messages and whether I could help. Not certain how one could receive suddenly so much spam I was somewhat bewildered and took an eager look. The spam turned out to be legitimate system messages of servers stating that the user-id was wrong, did not accept mail from unknown sources etc.

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2013 World Economic Forum Report on Global Risks

January 20, 2013
2013 World Economic Forum Report on Global Risks
For those of us dealing with risk management, and who doesn’t these days, here is a link to the 2013 World Economic Forum Report on Global Risks. This year’s findings show that the world is more at risk as persistent economic weakness saps our ability to tackle environmental challenges. The report highlights severe income disparity followed by unsustainable government debt (chronic fiscal imbalances) as the top two most prevalent global risks.

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The Republic of Technology

November 4, 2012
The Republic of Technology
At THiNK 2012 being held in Goa this weekend, Sherry Turkle spoke on the social network: why are robots are becoming human and men machines. As a psychologist, over the years she became more concerned with the change to a virtual reality in that we become social robots. I agree as one only has to see this happening at dinners and parties where often our friends are staring at their mobile rather than engaging in a more real social activity.

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Modern Druids

November 3, 2012
Modern Druids
Steven Cowley, CEO of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and professor at Imperial College, spoke at THiNK 2012 about his area of expertise: fusion energy. This is a topic of immense economic interest as its success will have paramount repercussions. Cowley commenced his talk with the statement that there is a direct relationship between wealth and energy consumption. Unfortunately, most of the world is not getting its share.

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Profit and Prejudice

November 3, 2012
Profit and Prejudice
Heavy industry minister Praful Patel, Rajan Mittal of Bharti Airtel fame, and Sajjan Jindal of JSW, spoke at the THiNK 2012 in Goa. Praful Patel joked that credibility of politicians is at an all time high referring to the many scams being uncovered. He admitted that business and politics have to coexist. I could not feel a touch of irony as the Comptroller and Auditor General has accused him of doubtful investment decisions when expanding the Air India fleet.

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Big History

November 3, 2012
Big History
David Christian raised the interesting question at THiNK 2012 that many parents will have: what problems and issues will our children be faced with? He started to elaborate that the Russian economy prior to Brezhnev would have collapsed if people would have stopped drinking vodka as its economy depended for 40% on this. An interesting thought but not surprising really as in the USA and even in India it was not sustainable not to sell spirits.

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The Green Thing

October 6, 2012
The following story has been published multiple times without me or anyone else for that matter being able to trace the source. It is a good story which struck a chord with me. Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment. The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days”.

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SpotMe™ at the Strategic Growth Forum™ India

September 16, 2012
SpotMe™ at the Strategic Growth Forum™ India
It was an event for CEOs and by invitation only. That is more often said than done but EY, as in Ernst & Young, were true to their slogan *‘Quality in Everything We Do’*and had send me a polite invite to attend their Strategic Growth Forum India 2012 without irritating follow up phone calls. It was a very well organised three day action packed event.

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Window 8? Think again!

June 5, 2012
Planning to buy a computer with a Windows 8 sticker, think again! Microsoft has said that Windows 8 will ship with a so-called UEFI Secure Boot, a replacement of the old BIOS. This will hurt Linux distributions that don’t have the resources to sign everything to meet Microsoft’s unilaterally imposed security regime. Microsoft use this requirement to make it extremely difficult for users to install alternative operating systems. Mathew Garrett of Redhat has said that they will pay Verisign: “The $99 goes to Verisign, not Microsoft – once paid you can sign as many binaries as you want, but it’s cheaper than any realistic alternative would have been.

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KLM off-target

March 28, 2012
KLM off-target
The plane is cruising at some 560 miles per hour somewhere over Pakistan. I am flying back to India after a meeting at head office in the Netherlands. I wonder if there are any drones around and subconsciously look outside as if I would be able to spot one in the dark. It amuses me that the military call Unmanned Aerial Vehicles drones as male honey bees don’t sting. The MQ-1 Predator drone, used a lot in Pakistan, flies at a medium altitude of 30,000ft, something I am doing right now.

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Eclectic thoughts

March 7, 2012
Eclectic thoughts
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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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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Leadership in the 21st Century

December 22, 2010
Leadership in the 21st Century
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.

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Adding value in a low value market

July 23, 2010
Adding value in a low value market
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
Selecting software for a greenfield
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.

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Leaders in India

October 17, 2009
Leaders in India
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.

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Is the U.S. Killing Its Innovation Machine?

October 7, 2009
Is the U.S. Killing Its Innovation Machine?
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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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
Economic and Political Dimension of the EU-India Strategic Partnership
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.

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Indian Management - Towards Cultural Congruence

June 5, 2006
Doing business in India: A Dutch perspective is the paper I presented at the Eurasian Management Education & Training Conference held at the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam (June 13, 2006). Humility forces me to admit that that my fellow speaker, Dr Bert Twaalfhoven and entrepreneur pur sang, presented a much more interesting glimpse of his colourful business career.

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