The power to cause societal pain, at least to some segments of society, is intrinsic to the nature of technological innovation.
Startups in India need low-cost debt for working capital, which is impossible to get.
Ajit Balakrishnan recalls some lessons from the last time people talked of 'convergence' -- the mid-1990s.
Ajit Balakrishnan on understanding the anti-cash chorus.
A minor fix in tax laws can make start-ups bloom, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
A minor fix in tax laws can make start-ups bloom, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
As the new ecommerce paradigm works its way through multiple sectors of the economy it is likely to encounter legal challenges, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
A more rigorous training in core skills is required to boost the engineering talent in the country, instead of a varnish of 'soft skills', says Ajit Balakrishnan.
A new book may help companies in getting corporate social responsibility right, notes Ajit Balakrishnan.
Students' flagging interest in the written word is because of a generational digital divide, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
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If we can come up with ways of sharing property rights on the internet, why not do something similar in urban spaces, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
A new generation of scholars -- this time, sociologists and anthropologists, who hitherto have been busy with researching social practices of primitive tribes and social structures like India's caste system -- are starting to cast their eyes on the financial sector.
The international investors who are investing, merging and shaping India's new ecommerce start-ups are betting that if China can produce an Alibaba with an expected market value of $ 170+ billion market value when it does its IPO, India should produce at least one or two with a $5bn+ market value, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
Why, centuries after the French Revolution promised an end to feudalism, do political dynasties persist -- even in democracies, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
Whether history will remember Edward Snowden as a traitor to his country or as a champion for free speech and less intrusive government is hard to tell, but the issues he has brought into focus need deep thought, writes Ajit Balakrishnan
Is the internet just a fun thing to do like TV and radio?
Regulating the internet only as a medium is somewhat similar to regulating electricity only as a driver of the TV industry
Silicon Valley is at the heart of the transformation of the global economy -- which has both winners and losers, writes Ajit Balakrishnan.
Now, the world over, policymakers are dusting off their copies of Keynes' classic, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, and figuring out whether there are any answers there to our own challenges of growing our economies.
The polytechnic graduate is on the front line of our war to establish a vibrant manufacturing sector in India, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
Facebook owns WhatsApp and Microsoft owns Skype, the two services that are at the centre of the current "net neutrality battle".
The Information Technology Act needs another tweak to allow a different kind of information intermediary to flourish, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
India needs to build an economic system that will provide adequate capital to budding entrepreneurs, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
May be the strong United States growth will lead the world back to a period of growth and help us all put this painful recrimination behind us.
And if you have started wondering why such innovations come only from American companies, Ajit Balakrishnan offers the answer.
It is only gradually dawning on us that some of the information we have trustingly shared with commercial service providers can be used against us when we apply for a job or when we apply to admission to a college, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
Ajit Balakrishnan rewinds to a decade when mobile phones were unheard of and when an IIM degree had a different purpose and value.
Across the world, middle class families are dealing with the consequences of competition to get into high-quality institutions.
India will have to deal with the question of whether broadband service providers are 'common carriers', like highways.
Some 800 million or more Indians gaze at their mobile phones all day. Whoever can crack what's news on the mobile phone for them and their families, for a nominal payment of Rs 10 a month, is a winner, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
Neither pharma nor IT would have become the stars of the economy without the active but largely invisible hand of the Indian State, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
The step forward in marketing could be a move to bypass the media and towards owning it directly, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
How did Greece, the country of Archimedes and Socrates and Plato and Pythagoras, come to such dire straits, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
Retirement blues can sometimes result in actions that are dysfunctional, notes Ajit Balakrishnan.
Ambassador T P Sreenivasan salutes India Abroad, the leading Indian-American newspaper for half a century, which ceased publication on March 30.
The American university, once the envy of the world, is in crisis, notes Ajit Balakrishnan in his latest column.
Successful parents are increasingly faced with continuing to support children in their 20s or 30s.
In leading companies in Information Age industries, the word "manager" is taking on a pejorative meaning -- something like "zamindar" -- a man who lived off other people's work and did no work himself, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
'Make in India' could suffer the same fate as did privatisation and the command economy, says Ajit Balakrishnan.
Steve Case's book is filled with insightful scenes that describe how the modern online industry was put together, notes Ajit Balakrishnan.
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