fundamental finance

We have the Lehman brothers vanishing with bankruptcy ,and now recently the NRI (Non resident indian) DRAMA / SCENE killing his entire family and then himself. I seriously don't pity both, both met their greed. The first thought struck my mind when i read the Karthik's (NRI) news on the headline is, was our education system not strong enough to teach that dumb head to be patient with hard times, that he could not even sustain the mere thought of starting back again from scratch. being a graduate from IIT chennai and a MBA, what the hell was that education use of, which could not even teach him sustenance. Well this is just one perspective of how far our education systems our, where lacs of students every year go through those age old theory books, absolutely in a conventional manner, and presume all that they have learnt will reflect the same in the real world.

I also had some discussions with my friends ,about Lehman going bankrupt, of course needless to say that Lehman had the best financial graduates, MBA's, PHD's deployed to manage it. And still it failed. THEN Where did it go wrong.
1. Is it our conventional crapy education system,
2. may be the wrong people(MBA's, PHD's) hired ,
3. or is it the GREED that these people bring along.

I personally concluded it to this basic fundamental observed, Kill your desire and fulfill the need (utility). and when it comes to spending money, this is exactly where it boils down, when you spend money make sure you are buying utility when its a need, and when its a DESIRE, think a million times.

Its pretty simple, i need a cell phone to call, i dont need a IPhone, unless that Iphone is going to give me more business with my calls :) because Nobody gives the dam which cellphone you are calling from. So stick to the fundamental. Another reason why Warren Buffet still lives in a modest apartment, because he understands this.

Creativity

A very close friend / brother of mine, has decided to take some drawing lessons from me, i am obliged. Though i think am a little good with creativity mostly imagination. And yes after almost 10 years , i took up the drawing pencil and crayons, and it was fun. Now my job here is to train the kid learn some good art.

Well i have never been into instructional teaching, I have an observation that there are two types of mind, purely mathematical (who memorize or process mathematically) and the other imaginary (who memorize and process/calculate with media like sound , images / pictures). I am little of second category and my student of the first.

My student is a very fast learner, picks up easily, but the point is he is trying to learn to sketch technically and that's exactly against creativity. This makes me remember when my class mates used to shiver at Engineering Graphics. Because the learning was technical than imagination.

Technical learning has a limitation, you have factors / parameters and you try to put things in place with these. where as when one starts imagining there are no boundaries and sky is the limit. Possibly why companies and organizations today have Creative Directors in hierarchy.

And another great observation, there are no coaching classes for creativity. Because the whole world is trying to confine everything into metrics. something that can be measured easily. or a process laid out to achieve an output. creativity comes absolutely out of imagination and there are no quantifiable parameters to it. So no body can measure it , nor lay a process around it to get a desired output.

And this gives a reason why Marketing , Product Design , Graphics , Animations , Music are the highest paid jobs on Earth, and the good part is you don't have to go to any school and college for this, for there are none. Note Engineers / doctors / MBA's not mentioned. unless you are creative. And the far bigger advantage with creativity is anticipation.

Well my job now is to get my student imagining, and yes its a big challenge.

SHIP and then DEBUG

After SELL-ABLE versions defined, minimal development done, SHIP the dam product, GET it OUT, you Egoist Techie, Dont think, Oh God we have not added that feature, we have to implement that new technology, JUST SHIP , SHIP , SHIP, Shipping gets you cash flows, and some embarrassment with Bugs, its ok, handle the customer, fix it after you have the cash flows. Believe me this is FUN.

This is exactly against Software Engineering practices and 90% of the engineers must have read Roger Pressmen , all that sounds great when you are in great company processes laid out, that's when you have all the time on earth, Approvals / Design / Development / QAT. Unlearn and Leave it those Techies.