a nice article on gold standard

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/goldbug.html

of course need to discount krugman's political attacks..

cant copy everything

Found this example quite interesting.. Thats why a synergy between all aspects of a firm is important..

An example of those dangers is the adoption by the Detroit auto companies some years ago of the "quality circles" used by Japanese auto companies to increase productivity by encouraging their workers to suggest productivity-enhancing innovations. The quality circles failed in Detroit because the auto companies did not realize that what made the quality circles work in Japan was the practice of lifetime employment; our workers were reluctant to suggest productivity improvements because they knew it might well result in a smaller workforce and therefore in layoffs.

Many airlines tried to copy South Western and failed miserably. Its not only low price offering but making sure that operations including management are synchronised with low cost principle.. Ryan Airlines entrepreneur and CEO show a similar approach where he runs a tight ship for upper management too. Post-it notes and highlighters are banned. Executives bring in their own pen. The CEO himself travels Ryanair and doesnt use even the omnipresent blackberry for businessman. The concept and thinking is synchronised to create a concept and core competency. This is the most difficult to be copied since it is created from organizational interactions and an organizational thinking.

Wake Up Sid

Just watched the movie. Unlike all those who accompanied, I really liked the movie. Will rate it somewhere better than average. So lets hear first what is wrong with the movie so as to cover up the bad aspects with what I liked. It is too long. This may be because of pressures from distributor and I guess now multiplexes( need interval breaks for making popcorn money). Or the director dont know how to edit. This could have been made a smaller 1.5 hr movie which would make it small and sweet. So what is good about this? Many things . Havent seen a romantic Hindi movie with different characterizations for a long time. The background music and songs were apt and lovely. Camerawork and Set Designs were good. This is where Karan Johar excels. Though his movies sucks big time with hackeyned plot, wooden face characters and too much of emotion, he makes sure that movie is beautiful. This has also some nice shots of Mumbai and one of my favourite places Nariman Point. So in this movie, Karan Johar outsources the direction and hence story and else I guess to someone else but you can feel his presence in crafting sets and camerawork. Konkana sen is as good as expected. It is always nice to see Hindi heroines who dont have a singleton expression throughout the movie. But what really caught my eye is Ranvir Kapoor. I missed his first movie but let me make a prediction with the possibility of eating my word later, this lad is a new star on the horizon.

Good movie in all...