companies should not mind asking for subsidies be IT or NON IT as most of the developed nation (first world) do give it to their agriculture sector and other industry as and when required

apart from that there have been recently lot of buzz on US recession but scenario in 2001 was because of US corporate spendings and this time around its drop in consumers and sub prime mortgage loans and for this US banks are only responsible as I feel that some or most of the parameters were ignored while loaning out sum to an individual in race of getting major market share

For indian IT firms now would be to set global footprints and make their presence apart from US to some other nation in asia pacific,south america and europe which would also help them out in hedging their funds

The western mindset (aka also colonial clone/chumpcha) is blog - respond - new blog - new response - blog respond - new blog - new response - and if that is the case, does this not resemble the familiar pattern of a production line mentality?

Besides the soft power issues what the best in Japanese mindset brings is the ability to see any mistake and turn it into gold. The west however punishes mistakes and what is India BTW but a country whose institutions mirror the discipline of the British Empire, which are the people who helped give the world the education to admire life in the industrial age. Sweeping statement yes, but you can find it on Google - No. Is there are a new way to learn how to see life and the nature of emergent work or complex systems or systems thinking - Yes.

How do we as thinkers get the blog out of the industrial age? Want to follow a Japanese mindset, then think about agile development, think about continuous improvement, think about flow. These are concepts geared to the creation of the information age. But what about COMPLEX HEDGING STRATEGIES?

The Japanese Model if you want to call it that, takes one stand, follows it all the way and improves on that strand, then it goes back into the system and repeats the process over and over and over, until the net effect is a change to the overall system - a bit like the surprise one gets with compound interest when the time comes to see what emerged at the end of that rainbow.

So if I took the words COMPLEX HEDGING STRATEGIES as one of my chosen strands, then in no time I can use the real power of Google, that of extending my thinking so it changes the way I think and use media. Instead of raising alarm at the practice of complex hedging strategies , that I have no power to control, I seek to find out more - and what do I find that surprises me - that farmers already have this expertise in abundance, so that means that a person who runs an Indian IT shop can break out the bubble of linear thinking and talk to farmers who well versed in these derivatives where commodity is their chief business.

I don’t want to take up any more space here, but there are words of value I read last night in Brian Tracy’s book “Something for Nothing” where he says:

“You are always free to choose. The only thing in the world which you have complete control is your thinking. Only you can choose and decide what thoughts to think and dwell upon. Your entire life today, in every respect, is the sum total of the choices and decisions you have made up until now. Since you can make the choices and decisions that affect your life, you are completely responsible for everything you are and everything you become”

Here is a Western thinker who possesses a wise mind and it also reinforces what sits behind the “Japanese Model” - successful Japanese people let their people think, less so let them enjoy the soft power of obesity - so in the end of the day, our nationality does not dictate the quality of our thoughts, WE DO through trial and error, through life as a practice, through new paradigms, it is our thinking that makes the world of difference.

In the general scheme of things, the Japanese have simply adapted more towards the information age than have other nationalities, but we all make mistakes - but how does an economist measure things in terms of learning from mistakes and connecting economics with life, after all the word eco means “our home” not “our work”.

If mistakes are not a valid economic criteria then try another Westerner with wisdom, Henry Mintzberg and his review of how Honda made strategic decisions compared to the Boston Consulting Group. Find that yourself, I came here to think, what anyone else says or does is their own business.

M.

That’s simply not true… dude, visit Japan, or at least do a google search before dragging stuff out of the air

The difference with the Japanese IMHO is their cultural response, the response to the defeat in World War II found its expression in the world of enterprise, Japan military is restricted by Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, but it’s understanding and application of soft power is what I feel is worth studying, it is what explains to me how a person who sought to continuously improve a weaving machine, led to the creation of an automobile giant who is still continuously improving.

Today thanks to the Japanese I am conscious of muda in what it is one grain of sand in a sea of personal development that I must find, and even this thought I am exploring here is muda if it does not move me personally towards a greater purpose. I can define our purpose or have this purpose defined for me, but there is a subtly in thinking that has to be learned the hard way. I have not come here with a megaphone, I have come here with humility.

Where I think economics is a treasure is that it demonstrates that there are no easy answers, there maybe simple ways but it requires of us, a willingness which is contradictory to the way we relate to modern media. There is no sound-bite or twitter in learning, once one knows what they are doing and where they are going, only a few maintain and sustain a rigorous and effective pathway.

I never thought about dipping into the discipline of economics until this year and sites like this are certainly going to educate me, but already I can see the thinking which mirrors the very conspicuous consumption that companies like Google avoid and a sea of information that are not blogs but well written books.

I have one on my desk right now called “Uncertainty & Expectations in Economics” edited by C.F. Carter and J.L.Ford - does it answer the economic problems of the world? No. But it is written as a series of essays to honour G.L.S. Shackle, and why do I find Shackle interesting - because intuitively I recognize that Shackle has something that I can learn, which is not a part of my formal thinking.

Beyond that, I focus on what it is I do and yes I do fear the narcissism of modern media, but I trust a good grounding in economics will keep me away from it and untouched by its ignorance. Of course the book I have talks about ignorance but ignorance as a economist see’s it. I don’t have interest in what others think I think, I want to think about how I think and in so doing escape mediocrity, which is not worth me personally reflecting on, because that would be muda.

M.

“but it is was Fujio Choi who saw a cultural need to accommodate to global sensibilities, because he knew that Ohno’s approach would not be tolerated.”

Correct on both counts. Multinationals are far less influenced by currency speculation when selecting manufacturing locations across the globe and far more by simple business fundamentals, such as the quality of the workforce, infrastructure, government assistance or hindrance, political climate, transportation network and so on.

You are also right about the sordid truth behind the eventual Americanization of the Japanese companies. In the seventies and eighties, we saw in America a rising tide of anti-Japan sentiments. Lawmakers were calling for increased tariffs. A business leader as respected as Lee Iacocca declared America a colony because it exported raw materials and imported finished goods - in the form of cars. A popular bumper sticker read - “Hungry? Eat your Japanese car.” The Japanese decided to preempt a fatal backlash to their business by increasing local content of their cars, and that is why Toyota and Datsun (renamed Nissan later) set up plants in the US. So it was not a currency driven decision at all. I am sure that the non-UAW, non-Detroit, low wages in places such as Smyrna, Tennessee made the offshoring to the US that much sweeter for the Japanese.

If there is anything to be learned from the Japanese model, it is that free economy does not tolerate any tampering, and the dangerous exercise called planned economy is not found only within communism. Japan, too, had a quasi-planned economy in which certain national priorities, chiefly export, took precedence over a truly market-driven, consumer-driven economy. I remember visiting Japan a few times in the eighties, and I saw $500 dresses and suits on sale in the finer department stores in Ginza and hardly any Japanese on the street wearing them. Heck, most middle-class Japanese could barely afford cars, while saturating the world with cars they made for a living. That, I knew even as a non-economist, was not a very happy situation.

On the other hand, this is not a plea for unbridled capitalism, but simply a word of caution to India - plan very carefully, and plan lightly, because most plans will eventually poison the economy.

Taichi Ohno the inventor of the Toyota Production System exhibited a Japanese attitude to work, but it is was Fujio Choi who saw a cultural need to accommodate to global sensibilities, because he knew that Ohno’s approach would not be tolerated.

Where any kind of thinking snowballs into a powerful force and keeps building momentum, it accrues from a rare set of circumstances that have more to do with learning from mistakes rather than learning from models.

This blog does capture the adaptive qualities required to make the right entrepreneurial moves but what is a model other than the language of the automotive mindset.

The article here talks about engaging a global mindset and the Toyota mindset may not be nationalistic but it is deeply cultural, the philosophical base of which is a way of being and not model. I have no idea what a global mindset is but I am sure it is branching out to pick value from a multitude of disciplines and deliver that value to meet real demand.

Currency speculation and entrepreneurial mindset are two different thing, one plays with the value that the other creates, otherwise all the leading billionaires in the world would all be economists.

Having said that I am here to learn how “global mindset” economists see the world and learn from them but I have not come here to create supply and demand diagrams or force myself through the mechanical torture that students of economists often are put through.

The thinking of great economists contains much intelligence, if I can reach the practicality of it, for instance what business model exists to explain Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” other than replacing models with metaphors.

M.

India 820$ Pakistan 770$

But if you see the overall ranking.. we have fallen way below pakistan

So, instead of pegging the rupee to yuan, we should instead help our manufacturing by liberalization, relaxation of rules, simplification and reduction of taxes, better capital access, greater labor reforms, more infrastructual investment and for the short term some subsidies. It is far more costly to maintain an artificially weak rupee than to provide a few billion dollar reforms and subsidies.

We have a long way to go before we think that 1 billion strong society runs short of labor. We will never have short of labor, we will only have short of quality labor. So, moving simple stuff abroad will no way solve it. For now, having the complex stuff abroad and doing the simple stuff at home suits really India’s strengths and must be continued.

@Rohit:
The idea of pegging the Rupee to the Yuan is indeed fascinating. Even though I didn’t mean it in that sense. In any case, the Yuan is pegged to the dollar. Now that the EU has overtaken US as the biggest importer from China, Sarkozy has just asked the Chinese for a more realistic exchange rate. The Rupee-Yuan conversion is and will remain a pipe dream. What the RBI needs to do is ensure that the Indian exporters don’t suffer because Yuan-Dollar exchange rates and thus they will have to peg the Rupee to the Yuan, in an indirect way.

@Floridian:
Thanks. Lower wages are the result of a stronger rupee. Maybe the US or the EU could be an alternative. Mind you, this is not true today but may be in the near future, this would be the way to go to offset a strong rupee and high wages.

@Neil: Even I would love to know those answers. Anyone?