Dreamers and Unicorns 2.0 HT Smartcast Originals

When a kid is asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? Vishwanathan Anand said, "I want to be a world champion." It may have seemed out of reach to many. After all, there was no grandmaster in Chess for India until 18-year-old Vishwanathan "Vishy" Anand took up that challenge. He is a five-time world chess champion. In April 2006, Anand became the fourth player in history to pass the 2800 Elo mark on the FIDE rating list, after Kramnik, Topalov, and Garry Kasparov. He occupied the number one position for 21 months, the sixth-longest period on record. In this episode, I speak to Vishy Anand on his view of the movie The Queen Gambit, on his love for languages (He is fluent in German and Spanish). Anand was the first recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award in 1991–92, India's highest sporting honour. In 2007, he was awarded India's second-highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, making him the first sportsperson to receive the award.

According to KPMG, companies are increasingly integrating innovation efforts with strategy and transformation initiatives. Companies with more mature innovation processes were significantly more likely to have innovation activities integrated or collaborating with their strategy (81 percent vs. 56 percent), corporate development/M&A (48 percent vs. 29 percent), and corporate venture capital (62 percent vs. 30 percent) teams, versus the overall respondent pool. Companies have an opportunity to develop the right strategies and approaches to successfully scale innovation and align imperatives with other groups across the business. 

The legendary professor Clay Christensen was at Harvard Business School when young Scott Anthony took a class that changed his career trajectory. He is a partner at the firm INNOSIGHT that Christensen started. In the recent book ‘Eat, Sleep, Innovate’ the four co-authors document insights about how to build a culture of innovation. Listen to that conversation. 

We live in a reputation economy. Visibility creates opportunities and reputation builds trust. Submitting a resume to a job board, or cold calling randomly, will increasingly become ineffective until it simply doesn't work at all. On the other hand, building an online presence and managing your reputation (like a brand) will become increasing effective and yield strong results.

Brands have to appeal to the head through the financial performance and growth graphs. They appeal to the heart by what the leaders say and do inside the organisation and outside. The brand of the organization is shaped most powerfully by the employees. Influencer marketing is more important for B2B than for B2C. After all, the average purchase size in B2B typically dwarfs that in B2C, and the impact of referrals and word of mouth are more critical to the success of the organization.

Rani Mani heads Employee Advocacy for Adobe worldwide. She manages the Influencers who also amplify the Adobe brand. In this chat, she tells us why organisations need to leverage Influencers. Don't miss it.

Catch Author, Angel Investor and head of HR at Big Basket, TN Hari in conversation with Abhijit Bhaduri, author of the book Dreamers and Unicorns. They discuss how companies and individuals must pivot along with the changing times to avoid irrelevance. That means choosing strategies that support the phase of growth. Home delivery of groceries is a $600 billion business in India and soon to boom into a trillion-dollar marketplace.

Here is the article by Larry Greiner that Hari refers to during the conversation https://hbr.org/1998/05/evolution-and-revolution-as-organizations-grow

Karthika VK is Publisher, Westland Publications Pvt Ltd. She started her career in publishing at Penguin Books India and was Publisher, HarperCollins India between 2006 and 2016 before joining Westland. She has published several of India’s favourite writers including Anita Nair, Amruta Patil, Anuja Chauhan, Aravind Adiga, Manu Joseph, Karthika Nair, Amrita Mahale, Josy Joseph, Manu Pillai, Rana Dasgupta, Meena Kandaswamy, Parmesh Shahani, Nisha Susan and Paul Zacharia. Disclaimer: She has also published several of Abhijit Bhaduri’s books!

PK Gulati is a serial entrepreneur, tech evangelist and start-up mentor, PK Gulati straddles his interests between India, Middle East and Silicon Valley. In this conversation with host Abhijit Bhaduri, PK talks about balancing the polarity between being curious to learn about things you may not have any immediate need to know. Yet while executing an idea you need to have deep focus. 

The most fascinating piece of advice: When you go to a conference, do not hang around with people you know. Listen to PK share his counter-intuitive and disruptive thoughts