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1/ There are timeless business truths like "take care of customers well".

There are also transient or contextual truths like "it is easy to make money in X" and this "truth" becomes untrue by being too widely believed.

Then there is another category of business truth.
2/ The third category of business truth is the "what ought to be" - you imagine a new state of the world and you drive your actions towards achieving that goal.

In the present moment, the new state may look like a distant dream. Yet that dream becomes our companion and lover.
3/ Only words like love, passion, soul can capture the essence of this. Those are not words you find in a business presentation or an MBA curriculum. It cannot be taught, any more than romantic love can be taught.

It is commitment to that love that drives our greatest efforts.
4/ The person in thrall to that idea seems exactly as crazy as the person deeply in love. Your friends will roll their eyes.

Yet the idea won't leave you. It is the constant companion and a delightful tormenter.

A lifetime of pursuit is the price that love commands.
5/ I was hesitant to post this thread because I am almost afraid there would be a business school course on "How to develop a conviction and fall in love with an idea" - that would be how passion goes to die.

We seem hard-wired to seek formulas for success or happiness.
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Sridhar Vembu
@svembu
1/ I hugely respect East Asia's achievement in lifting people from poverty. There is a lot to learn from the experience of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and later China.

In this thread, I will outline what I respectfully disagree about the East Asian model (respectfully stressed!)
2/ I will use Japan as my example because it is the quintessential East Asian success story. South Korea, Taiwan and later China were all influenced heavily by Japan's development experience.

I have been a student of Japanese industry/society for 25 years, starting in 1995.
3/ As post world war 2 Japan became an export powerhouse, Japanese industry acquired sophisticated technological capabilities. To this day, there are many critical industries (smart phone camera sensors would be one example) where Japanese companies rule the world.
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Sridhar Vembu
@svembu
1/ Just because I drive a car and have driven it for a long time does not give me any particular insight on how to build one. Building requires a conscious process of learning and mastery and takes years, decades.

This is a fundamental difference that economists often ignore.
2/ Just because India consumes hundreds of millions of smart phones does not by itself create the know-how on how to build the phones or the networks.

At best, it is a *signal* that demand exists but that signal does not magically transform into know-how and capability.
3/ Flawed economic doctrine is why India has not acquired the know-how after decades of reform and during that period America has *lost* the know-how in many key industries.

That doctrine can be summarised as "Eating causes food to be produced" or "consumption drives GDP".
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Sridhar Vembu
@svembu
1/ One hard problem we face in life is our natural tendency to look for "silver bullets" or "magic cures" - a formula or approach that would deliver instant success.

We look at overnight success stories and try to figure out the formula, the secret code.

There isn't one.
2/ This search for the magic cure manifests itself in numerous ways that are subtle and hard to detect.

Charlatans actively promote magic cures. Many smart people fall for it.

How do we defend ourselves from it? Distance and perspective.
3/ We have to gain distance from something in order to achieve a perspective over it.

That's the idea of detachment. Detachment serves to slow down our natural impulse to get over-excited about a magic cure.

We train our minds to think other thoughts rather than be obsessive.
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