A drop in the ocean

"Nikhil is a sanskrit term meaning 'complete' and hence the name of this blog...

....it has nothing to do with my self-perception...nobody can be complete..and definitely not me..."

I wrote this text exactly 2 years ago as the first few words on this blog. And the next two years were quite action-packed - Summers, MastishK, Prerana, Ethics Committee, Placements, KPMG, Travelogues .... this blog revolved around all this. I have meanwhile changed a lot - my lifestyle, beliefs, language ... and I have added a lot many friends along the way - Good friends? No. Great friends.

Looking back, one realizes how much education and companionship can change the course of one's life. While MBA taught me how to think big - it was friends who helped me cement the belief. It was like curing a cement plaster - the end result has been that my growth path has changed. When I started this blog, I had a plan to start-up an enterprize immediately after my MBA - however small it might be. Today, the idea is quite different, I have realized that the force of the impact is as important as the direction. It is important to start at a scale large enough so as to create at least an impulse if not a wave; just a blip, which gets ignored, makes little sense. Then again, whatever you do should justify your education and intellect; it should be something that brings about a difference in the world.

I got a chance to visit and understand operations of a few software companies. The first impression I got was that most Indian cos are doing backoffice and maintenance related work. While the volume of this work might be huge, it doesn't create as great a value. Brand India is still known for low cost and 'just ok' quality - should we be calling this a good brand value in the market.

Instead, if we have innovative products , we will have brands. Innovations sell for their content not cost, they can fetch high premium. Even an innovation that aims to bring down cost, sells because it adds value, not because it is cheap. [I should clarify that not all that Indian Cos do is maintenance/ backoffice - there is some innovative work as well going on.]

So, from there came a realization that unless I have an innovative idea - its better to continue in a job. From a pragmatic point of view - a job saves a lot of hassle of organizational set-up as it provides you with a readymade infrastructure. Secondly, working for an established organization gives you a chance to contribute to small innovations in the way the world works. In a small set-up you might end up just re-inventing the wheel.

So, if you don't have an innovation that has potential to bring about a change, don't start-up; wait for that innovation. At the same time, if you have an idea that is radical and disruptive, you should immediately jump out of a job and start on your own. Intrapreneurship involves even more hassles of cutting through organizational red-tape; and hence in my opinion is a wastage of time and effort.

In essence, till you have just a bit to contribute, organisations offer you a useful platform to project the same. But if you have something big, the same platform becomes a bureaucratic red-tape.

... anyway, today marks the second anniversary of this blog - and it is great to know that this blog has a small but regular readership. As I had said in my first post, writing is a hobby and a passion and so is this blog now. Keep visiting this space ...