Monday, February 10, 2014

Links

I happen to have an opportunity to listen to Dr. Harish Hande when he was delivering second Girish Sant Memorial lecture at IIT Bombay on 18th September, 2013 (flyer here). I have read earlier watched his interview with editor of Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta, in Walk the talk. Many of the things which he talked about in the lecture were similar to what he talked in the interview. Still, it was very interesting. Particularly his emphasis on looking at the problem holistically and providing solutions which solve the problem and not part of problem. Fundamatics, alumni magazine of IITB, has a feature/conversation (!!) on Harish Hande in present issue. Can be found here

New Yorker has a feature on Amazon and its effect on Publishing industry and books (here). One thing which stood out in the feature was this (Doeren was in the business of selling books over internet and this conversation took place when he saw Amazon's stall in BookExpo America in 1995) :

Doeren considered this, then asked, “What’s your business model?”
Bezos said that Amazon intended to sell books as a way of gathering data on affluent, educated
shoppers. The books would be priced close to cost, in order to increase sales volume. After
collecting data on millions of customers, Amazon could figure out how to sell everything else dirt
cheap on the Internet. (Amazon says that its original business plan “contemplated only books.”)

I think this is very much plausible. 

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