A large part of Zafar Anjum's book, The Resurgence of Satyam: The Global IT Giant, is dedicated to dissecting and reconstructing the modus operandi of the fraud

The truth shall prevail?

Business Standard

What is a social enterprise? With multiple forms of incorporation, complex objectives and firms claiming to be or perceived as social enterprises, we have used the Sankara philosophy of Neti Neti (not this, not that) to describe a social enterprise. In Aravind Eyecare, we found the answer &mdash; Idam Ittham (this is it).

Ways of seeing

Social enterprises are the flavour of the season. We are now not only talking about newer enterprises, but also getting back to the older, iconic institutions and checking out whether they fit into the new nomenclature. Earlier, they used to be called non-profits or charitable institutions. Clearly, times have changed. The book on Sankara Nethralaya is written with passion and admiration.

Passion, compassion and oversight

Rashmi Bansal is at it again. After three blockbuster books, here&rsquo;s a fourth one, co-authored with Deepak Gandhi. In a way, it is like the Harry Potter series &mdash; starting with an accidental discovery of a winning formula and then following it up with books based on a similar concept. In her first book, Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, she talked about 25 entrepreneurs who had a degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. She followed it up with 25 who did not have the coveted MBA, and then she moved on to profiling social entrepreneurs. The latest book is about Dharavi, the biggest slum in Asia. As usual, the book explores what Ms Bansal has excelled in finding: success stories of entrepreneurs narrated over and over again, in much the same way that an inspirational speaker explains the essence of life through multiple narratives.

Brand-building on Dharavi

The erstwhile Hyderabad State ruled by the Nizams and its accession to the Indian Union are a fascinating part of the making of this nation. At one end were the nationalists represented by the Congress and other players in the freedom struggle, including the Hindu Mahasabha, advocating the integration of Hyderabad with the Indian Union.

Bureaucrat on the burning deck

Innovators usually make bad businessmen. They get so enamoured with the product that they may ignore the ecosystem. A product that works wonderfully in sterile lab conditions has to be transposed to the rough and tumble of everyday life; unless the inventor can simulate the innovation in the open, it will be a difficult business proposition. This is a stereotypical view about innovations. So, are good businessmen usually bad innovators? Not necessarily. They could be great innovators, introducing new products and moving the frontiers of the business.

Successful innovations and business failures

Rama Bijapurkar usually offers a perspective in the mundane. She has traversed the world of marketing, research, consulting and boardrooms, making her perspective richer and rounded. She has taught students at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, who are unmerciful, irreverent and questioning &mdash; adding much to the perspective. Bijapurkar can link the frequency with which her yoga instructor appears at her house and his use of motorbike versus a local train to his business model; she can provide insights into his changing practices in the light of recession. Her uniqueness lies in making these not-so-obvious linkages to present a customer to a product-centric corporation. Her first book, We Are Like That Only, opened up the Indian consumer in a way that had not been done in the past. This book takes forward the journey of understanding the customer better.

Customer at the centre reader in a corner

Champions are the ones that have survived the test of time, continued to score and outperformed market perceptions. They select themselves. Nobody questions why they are on the list. If the sieve is fine, the finest pass through the filter. Once we get these 23 corporations, we see what is common among them &mdash; that they survived so long and did so well. And retrofit an explanation of excellence. This is what Peters and Waterman did, and Jim Collins too.

How to fix a champion

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, (IIMA) celebrated a somewhat low-key golden jubilee in December 2011. Three books on the making of the institution came out during the year. The first, Nurturing Institutional Excellence, was a collection of essays written by past and present faculty members and, given that it was written by a diverse set of people with differing styles and perspectives, it provided an anecdotal look at the institute. This was followed by a book written by T T Ram Mohan, Brick by Red Brick, which examined the history of IIMA, but largely from the lens of the first full-time director, Ravi Matthai.

M S Sriram