So it's time for a study of technology, disco, vampirism and Michael Jackson as these things impinged on the Indian pop scene in the mid-80s. I offer the following as documentation, courtesy of YouTuuuuuuube.
Today's Motley Fool Post of the Day comes from the brilliant charter member who goes under the monicker Watching The Herd. Let me quote my favorite part:
Anyone working in most of the Fortune 500 companies in America knows how corporate decisions really get made. Someone has an idea, someone makes an assumption about the revenue or "units" that idea will produce and a bogus attempt to formulate a business case to "quantify" the numbers previously assumed is made. The process is much like the process used in a freshman chemistry lab to produce data that proves PV = nRT when your real lab data didn't add up. The only difference is that in modern business, no one really "knows" the end formula being proven, they just think they do. After pencil whipping the business case, word comes down from the mountain to the minions and the project is approved. The minions then spend an inordinate amount of time using poorly defined strategies to meet what are often unachievable goals.
The process normally ends with maybe one of ten attempts producing something of value. Of course, the executives and bean counters are watching all the dollars spent on the projects and many of the hard, quantifiable dollars involve the actual technical work. When the project is late because of poor business requirements or it fails because of poor market research, the executives home in on the poor returns and begin trying to find cheaper ways to do the technical work.
Given the success rate of most product development efforts, exactly what is preventing the management, marketing and finance work supporting it from being outsourced as well? The typical 5 to 10 percent success rate in product development typically isn't due to absolute technical failures. Products typically don't fail because they didn't "work" as designed, they fail because no one wanted the product the firm's executives decided to make. Given that track record, how could off-shore, outsourced executives in these fields do any worse? With fewer lavishly compensated executives, maybe the firm could focus on customers more effectively using in-house talent rather than saving enough money through off-shoring to cover the costs of back-dated options and earnings restatements and defense attorneys.
Brilliant. Read the rest, which can be found here.
Shout out to our Chinese compadres: today is the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, and the start of Mid-Autumn Festival. Confusingly, this is also sometimes called the 'August Moon Festival' (since August is the 8th month, see? We only think it's October because the lunar and Gregorian calendars are out of synch ... personally, I think we should all just go to Unix time, which is now 1160138417-ish). It's also called 'Autumn Moon Festival,' or just 'Moon Festival.'
This is a very old holiday. Though some have tried to assign its origin to events in relatively-recent history (e.g., the rebellion of Shu Yuan Zhang, who plotted to overthrow the Yuan Dynasty in the 14th century), others acknowledge that -- like US Thanksgiving -- whatever the politico-social dressing (or oyster stuffing, cranberry or, for that matter, Lotus-seed paste), it's really your basic, dawn-of-time, harvest moon festival. We're talking dances to the moon by flocks of exquisitely-dressed women, Moon poetry readings, lots of good stuff to eat (including the famous Moon Cakes), and if you happen to live in or near San Francisco's Chinatown, where Mid-Autumn festival is the best-attended fete of the year (even beating New Year), a great deal of street activity.
Good moon cakes, which are filled with Lotus-seed paste, egg yolks and other fillings, glazed with beaten egg, and stamped on top with pretty designs, characters, and pictures of the Jade Rabbit of the Moon (who's pounding ingredients for the Pill of Immortality in his mortar at the behest of Chang-O, the Moon goddess, who's ashamed because she stole the original Pill from her husband, Hou Yi, who later became the Sun god, but they worked it out and now he visits her on the 15th night of each lunar month, which is why the moon shines so brightly on that night -- it's all the energy liberated from mixing yin and yang ... you get all that?) are delicious. Despite the preponderance of recipes available online, very few people make their own or buy fresh, nowadays -- more's the pity. Instead, you get them in overpriced tins, like fruitcake at Xmas. Still good, but somewhat lacking in the soul department.
Last week, Africa Information and Technology Events and Conferences (AITEC) held a two-day meet in Nairobi, to assess Kenya's potential to play in the emerging business process outsourcing market, expected to reach $145 billion, worldwide, by 2008. According to Okuttah Mark of the East African Standard, who attended the conference, entrepreneurs and investors concur that Kenya -- with its prevailing low wages, high unemployment, and relatively well-educated and English-speaking urban population is in many ways an ideal location for BPO data-entry and customer-contact centers.
Mark quotes Nick Nesbitt, of Kencall, a contact center startup, who notes that Kenyans generally speak English with a distinct British accent, making for rapid training and good acceptance by UK, Western European and North American callers.
Inhibiting the infant industry: lack of present investment, high telecommunications costs, and lack of infrastructure. Peres Were, of Cascade Global Kenya, a BPO consultancy, suggests that companies pool resources and share expense of infrastructure buildouts -- a practice he suggests can lower the cost-per-seat to as little as $1,500 to equip a contact center worker. During the conference, Were called on the Kenya Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information to set aside space in current Export Processing Zones (EPZs) and commit to installing IP and telecom infrastructure sufficient to incubate BPO outsourcing businesses.
Meanwhile, investors take note: the Kenyan government has already put in place a system of liberal tax and duty breaks for companies doing business in the EPZs, including a ten year corporate income tax exemption, parallel withholding exemption, and exemption from import duty, stamp duty and VAT.
