This week, the Bay Area Council Economic Institute released two years worth of thorough research on the economic ties between the Bay Area and India.  We were excited to find out that the report features a short excerpt about Monsoon and Badmash.tv.

The focus is mainly on the entrepreneurs and students from India who have shaped industries like technology and farming in the Bay Area.  A few things I learned:

- Indian-owned farms in California’s Central Valley produce 95% of the state’s peaches (why peaches?).
- There are more foreign students in California from India than anywhere else.
- In 1910, there were a total of 6,000 Indians in the US (imagine how tight that marriage market was)
- In 1990, 23% of Silicon Valley’s engineers were Indian.

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In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues that talent and ambition are much less important than practice.  De acuerdo.

I grew up without an apparent talent for anything:   I was too skinny for sports, too tone deaf for music, had too much ADD for serious study, and was way too awkward for social/political pursuits.

So, I was delighted to see a cohesive argument for the efficacy of practice & dedication.  It’s the only way I’ve become decent at anything in my life - by working my ass off, despite the fact that (in almost every case), I lacked any discernible talent or proficiency for the stuff I loved.  Now, at 32 years old, there are even a few things that I might be ready to call myself an expert at…after a few more years and several hundred hours of practice!

In a simplified version of Gladwell’s model, you are an expert after you put 10,000 hours into something. Then, if your culture and general situation is fortuitous, you have a shot at being one of the best in the world at your pursuit. 

After enjoying the way his arguments applied to my life, I began thinking of how this applies to teams - specifically to global teams.  At Monsoon Company, many of us have been working together for close to a decade, just around the number of hours (and years) that Gladwell believes create true expertise.

In one of his examples, Gladwell takes a look at classical musicians.  Early in their careers, there are clear standouts - people with the immediate & obvious talent I have always lacked.  However, when you track their careers, the successful musicians were almost always the ones who simply practiced more.  Period.  Talented or not, if these musicians  spent 10,000 hours or more dedicated to their craft, they were most likely successful concert musicians, while their counterparts became teachers and went on to other fields.

There are programmers and designers who dedicate themselves to both their craft and their team’s system.  A significant portion of their 10,000 hours are spent this way: meeting, arguing, collaborating, iterating, etc. As a unit.

Those that dedicate to practicing and internalizing team processes routinely leapfrog team members who were far more talented.

Over time, these hours of dedication turn a bunch of solid individuals into an expert team.  Things simply begin to flow.

All too often, business literature puts far more emphasis on ‘fresh perspectives’ and ‘thinking outside of the box’.  And when your team is creatively stagnant or bogged down in process, there is a definite need to prioritize these thing things. 

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ThinkChange India with a great summary on the status of social entrepreneurship in India.

Hey there, Mr. Entrepreneur. Ms. Risk Taker. Mr. Mover and Shaker. You (and me) - with your hot-shot IT consultancy or Web 2.0 startup. Think you know what it’s like to scoff at the status quo? Take them risks? Push that bar?

Next time you start feeling like you’re cool, think on Narayana Murthy.

India is still a baby. A few years ago, you decided that you disagree with Mr. Nehru…communism won’t work for your country. So, you decide to follow the solid desi path: open an IT consultancy in India. Only catch: it’s 1981. The Internet? Right. Good luck finding a desktop computer within 50 miles of that run-down two bedroom apartment in the city.

“We were huddled together in a small room in Bombay,” says Murthy, “in the hope of creating a brighter future for ourselves, for the Indian society, and perhaps, we dreamed, even for the world.”

Idealistic for a tech guy. Remember, I mentioned that a few years earlier, he (like almost everyone at the time) believed in Nehru’s socialist vision for India.

“Remember one thing: All of us believed in central planning; all of us believed in socialism because we were all children of a different generation. We were all mesmerized by the charisma of Nehru. Nehru believed in central planning, Nehru believed in socialism. Nehru believed in the Soviet-influenced model of development. So it was not at all unusual for an idealistic man to be completely bowled over by these principles.”

After a lot of thinking, some life experience, and 24 hours in jail (for talking to a French girl on a train about a few of the ills of Communism), Murthy decided that global trade would be better for his country:

“Entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job creation, (is) the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.” (note: he believes the European version of socialism works well.)

Call it outsourcing, or call it what it actually is…globalization, defined by Murthy:

“…sourcing capital from where it is cheapest, sourcing talent from where it is best available, producing where it is most cost effective and selling where the markets are without being constrained by national boundaries.”

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Manish over at IndiAdRant summarizes a fascinating breakfast conversation between Narayan Murthy (Infosys) & Azim Premji (Wipro). After clicking over to the full interview, I was astounded at the striking similarity between Premji & Don King.

Jokes aside, a great conversation. The best quote comes from Murthy (he didn’t look enough like Don King to include his picture in this post), discussing the Tata-Corus deal.

To me, the confidence shown by Ratan and his people is, indeed, a watershed event in the business history of this country. When somebody writes the business history of India in the 2000s and 2100s, this will be described as a turning point in the history of the mindset of the Indian entrepreneur. That’s what I’m excited about.

Manish’s Summary

Full Interview