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.

By and large, doing work in India does not come at the expense of American jobs.

I’ve created a smaller pdf that features the excerpt on Monsoon and Badmash, or you can download the full report for free.

And, here is KQED’s Forum with a short show about the report:

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. 

However, we usually underestimate the beauty of a well-tuned circuit.  When team members can read each other’s minds, when designers already know what their developer’s pet peeves are, and when testing teams can anticipate bugs based on the quirks of the programmer who built a piece of functionality, that team functions like an outlier.

And with a bit of luck, it becomes one of the best in the world.

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.”

A simple concept that eventually lead to Infosys – almost 30 years, more than 70,000 well-paying jobs, 2,000-plus dollar-millionaires, and 20,000-plus rupee millionaires. Oh right, and about taking jobs from Americans (or in this case, Australians):

“A smart journalist in Australia asked me a question at a press conference: ‘You guys are taking all our jobs to India. You should be thrown out.’ I told him that I use an LG refrigerator at home in India. I drink Pepsi and Coke though we have our own Indian drinks. I use a GM car when we have a vibrant automobile industry. I use Cisco routers and a Toshiba tablet PC which are imported. So do you think we should throw all these companies out? I gave him the positive side of all this.”

Thank you, Mr. Murthy.

A few more quotes -

On humility:
“Performance leads to recognition. Recognition brings respect. Respect enhances power. Humility and grace in one’s moments of power enhances (the) dignity of an organization.”

On innovation in India:
“It will happen. Let’s remember that the concept of a free market is still new in India. We are not accustomed to leading from the front. We have just 15 years compared to 200 years elsewhere in terms of an industrial revolution. You need to have a little more patience with India, but it will happen.”

On the sales bias:
“Many of my colleagues have often accused me of a bias towards sales in Infosys. I tell them, unless we can sell well we cannot do anything, such as create jobs, pay good salaries and satisfy investors. Right from the beginning we realized that we have to focus on selling better and better in the marketplace.”

On taking that chance:
“As I think across a wide variety of settings in my life, I am struck by the incredible role played by the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to chance events that is crucial.”

On valuing employees:
“Our assets walk out of the door each evening. We have to make sure that they come back the next morning.”

On contributing to society (he is currently chief ‘mentor’ at Infosys):
“I believe that we have all at some time eaten the fruit from trees that we did not plant. In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, it behooves us in turn to plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of, which will largely benefit generations to come. I believe this is our sacred responsibility, one that I hope you will shoulder in time.”

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