Law of 150- Dunbar's Number

We all know that man is social animal where we all makes social connections for building our personal and professional networks for accomplishing our goals.

In this regard, do you ever figured it out how many social relations can we make perfectly i.e. genuine connections ?...

Any guess.....

150
this is number that our brain(Neocortex) can handle and remember.

It is scientifically proven by famous professor named Robin Dunbar. He is British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist and presently working in Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford. In this research in 1992 based on the understanding of human behavior and published a research paper named  " Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates".
In this paper he clearly explains the constrains of human brain and group size and etc. This law of 150 also explained in the book "Tipping point" by Malcolm Gladwell.

The Dunbar's Number or law of 150 tells that:

• Human brain can properly maintains social connections up to 150, it can remember more than that but the impact 150 is more and highly sensitive to this 150 connections.
• This number indicates that a individual genuine social relationship.

Dunbar has written. “Putting it another way, it’s the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.”

Examples:-
W.L.Gore & Associates Inc., strictly incorporates this principle in their company and they design their plants such that it fit for 150 employees only.

One of religious group know as the Hutterites can find in European nations and this group of believe in the rule of 150  and they strongly believe that 150 number is the maximum number that the community lives together and they believe that adding one number  more to the community that they can change their believes and other cultural aspects.    

Uniqueness of W.L.Gore & Associates Inc.

W.L  Gore & Associates Inc, is an American company specializing in manufacturing of products associated with polymer polytetrafluoroethylene(PTFE) and it's headquarters situated at Newark, Delaware, USA.

Quick snapshot about the company:-

• Founders: Bill and Vieve Gore
• Founding year: 1958.
• Gore is one of the 200 largest privately held U.S. companies.
• For the 16th consecutive year, Gore earned a position on FORTUNE's annual list of the U.S. "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2013. 
• Gore ranked 21st overall. Gore is now one of only a few companies to appear on all of the U.S. "100 Best Companies to Work For" lists since Robert Levering and Milton Moskowitz initiated the ranking in 1984. 

Gore company has been granted more than 2000 patents worldwide in various fields.  

How W.L.Gore & Associates is different from others:

1. Organizational Structure:- Gore company has a flat organizational structure  i.e, no hierarchy in the company  they termed as flat lattice organization and all the employees are designated as "Associates" and some of the top management people are termed as "Sponsors", who are their to advice and motivate employees 
2. Organizational Culture:- Gore company has team based, motivational and inspirational culture. As it encourages it's employees to come out with innovative ideas and freedom for expression.

A company like W.L.Gore & Associates Inc, exists in this present day world is miraculous and its purely the management team success. In other words i can say that the management team is striving hard to preserve this management and company philosophy for decades together.  

Preserving this type of company philosophy and organizational culture in present day virtual world is herculean task, but still they follow because their employees believe in their organization culture and system.

In the book Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, he clearly explains about the working of the Gore company.

Link to the company website is http://www.gore.com/en_xx/index.html 

Power of few from the book "The Tipping point"

Recently i read the book "The Tipping point"by Malcolm Gladwell, in this book  he clearly explains how little things can make a big difference.

In this book, he clearly describes how the few things in our lives change a lot and he explains about the connections between the people and impact of them in our every day lives.

In this book  he explains the Law of Few and stickiness factor

• Connectors:- Those are the people with large number of connections with people. 
• Mavens:- They are data banks, where this people has a lot of knowledge.
• Salesman:- They are people they can persuade others towards their choice.

In the stickiness factor he explains the reasons for the success of the TV shows( Sesame Street and Blue Clue's) in USA, in which understanding the audience is essential and delivery, but  understanding audience need is very difficult task.

In later part of the book he explains about the Law of One hundred and fifty and the power of context.
The Law of 150 says that the people can make good relationships between 150 people, beyond this the group can  divert from the main course this may lead to misunderstanding among the people.

The book goes very smoothly and has a good finishing.

I personally feel it is a good book for better understanding of our psychology, perceptions and external environment.

Venkat......

What does India Export?

We all know that we import oil from gulf countries;watches from Switzerland but what does India export?
.
.
.
As far as my knowledge i think India exports talent(people) to all the developed countries, you name any company Indians are present.

In Indian context IIT's and IIM's play crucial role in developing, nurturing this young talent there by creating engines of future growth.

Indian's IIT'S and IIM's are the major powerhouses of talent generation, where it is considered as the toughest to get entry to the this prestigious institutes.
Some of the alumnus of IIT and Indians who showcased exemplary talent are listed below:-

1. Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
2. Sabeer Bhatia, founder of Hotmail.com
3. Vikram Pandit, ex-CEO of Citigroup.
4. Vinod Dham, regarded as Father of Pentium Chip 

Like this there are many more examples where Indians are proving their talent.

But when we understand that why these people left India?......

Is a billion dollar question......

but i think the external forces may forced them to leave this nation and many more.....


venkat....

India's Ranking in Global Competitiveness Index 2012-2013

Recently i read a report "The Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013", which is published by World Economic Forum in which it gives details about the impact of competitiveness on the economic factors and  factors relating to level of productivity .

What is Competitiveness?

"Competitiveness is a set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country."

(Source:The Global competitiveness report 2012-2013)

The report has identified twelve factors under which the global competitiveness index is based upon and the report clearly explains how these factors influence the economic condition of the country.

The factors are:-

1. Institutions
2. Infrastructure
3. Macroeconomic environment
4. Health and primary education
5. Higher education and training
6. Goods market efficiency
7. Labour market efficiency
8. Financial market efficiency
9. Technological readiness
10. Market size
11. Business sophistication.
12. Innovation.

When we take Indian context, the facts are given below:-

• India ranks 59th out of 144 countries.
• India is in last position with respect to BRICS countries.
• India is behind Thailand, Indonesia, Republic of Korea, China, Japan in Asian Countries.

Some of the findings that they have reported with respect to Indian context is:

• India lacks in basic infrastructure and in technological aspects.
• No proper transport system and energy infrastructure.
• Indian is in 101th rank in health care and in education.
• India is in 99th position in Macroeconomic environment and 106th in politics.
• India has a well sophisticated financial markets and regulations.

My understandings from this report is:-

• India has to develop infrastructure in both transport and in energy this can be done by PPP model.
• India has to improve quality of the education and should totally revamp it's existing model and this can be achieved by utilizing present day technology.
• India has to improve in health care.

Link for the Global competitiveness report 2012-2013

venkat.....

Learning from the book "The Game Changer" by A.G.Lafley and Ram Charan

Recently i completed studying an interesting book named "The Game Changer: How every leader can drive everyday innovation" by A.G.Lafley and Ram Charan.

About authors:
A.G.Lafley: CEO of P&G(Procter and Gamble)
Ram Charan: A well known author and business consultant.

About the book:
It was a good book to be read by every MBA student, which explains how Innovation important to a organization to sustain in the market. The book also explains about how innovation is key in companies like Lego, DuPont, Toyota, GE and Honeywell.

The book reveals the penetration of innovation in P&G work culture and also it tells how it impacted the company.

A.G.Lafley is instrumental in bringing innovation into the company and transformed P&G, a world class leader in FMCG sector.

Takeaways from the book:

• Importance of innovation to the company
• Work culture of companies like:- P&G, DuPont, Honeywell and GE
• Business models of the companies.
• Strategy formulation and execution.
• Thinking out of the box.
• Leadership attributes.
• Managing people.

At end the book a chapter is dedicated for the  leadership qualities of Jeff R. Immelt, CEO of GE.

Note: I strongly recommend this book to your personal library....

Hansei(Self reflection)- A tool for self improvement

We all know that Toyota is know for it's quality products and we also aware of TPS(Toyota Production System), an unique production methods keeping quality as a motive and to deliver at-most value to the customer.

In TPS, we are all aware of 5s and lean technique which made a TPS a powerful tool for a manufacturing industry.One important thing which we didn't know about its powerful tool is:

Hansei, a Japanese word which means Self Reflection.

Toyota always looks for continuous improvements in its products, in this regard Toyota  learns from its past .

Toyota strictly follows this Hansei, by which they understand 

• why a product failed?
• How it failed?
• Reasons for failure.
• Expected and real outcomes of taking that project.
• What would be the possible steps to be taken to overcome this type of failure in future projects.

One example to showcase that Toyota learnt from incidents(Hansei in practice):-

Toyopet Crown, a 1950's Sedan had been a hit in  Japan, so Toyota was eager to grab an opportunity in the United States and shipped off the Toyopet Crown  to United States and debuted in California in 1956 but it failed to impress Americans and ultimately Crown was a flop and it was a major blow to Toyota.

From this incident, Toyota did not return for 8 year and during this period Toyota learnt:-

• About American customers.
• Customers lifestyle, culture.
• They also understood unmet demands for the cars. 

After a gap of 8 years, Toyota launched Corona in 1965, which boosted the sales and showcased their ability in automobile industry in USA. 

So in everyone's life we should learn from our past and should analyze 

• why it happened? 
• how it happened? 
• what made to happen this event and in future 
• what precautions to be taken for overcoming this?