Businessworld

We, Homo sapiens, arenavigating our 21st century existence with Neolithic genes. We need to enrich our understanding of who we are – genetics, anthropology, palaeontology, neuropsychology, and social psychology- to realise this better.Our genes lag behind our real world environment. The progress of evolution has long periods of relative dormancy and constancy, disrupted by short periods of swifttransformation. Human existence has had two such significant transitions -from hunter-gatherer Stone Age society tosettled agricultural civilisation and the relatively recent shift to an urban, industrial society. We are seeing the third –a transition to an information age -where existence will be seamlessly physical and virtual at the same time. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Humans emerged as hunter-gatherers about 250,000 years ago, living in clans. Some 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, agriculture started and transformed society. Then 500 years, global commerce began to grow and, in turn, fuelled industrialisation some 200 years ago. Our shift to a settled, prosperous, urban and generally safe society has been very recent.In terms of time, the information age has barely even beeped on the radar of human existence. The conditions of life have changed radically since the Stone Age, but we arestill ‘hardwired’ hunter-gatherers. We carry constructive social traits,self-destructive tendencies and primeval biases. Our emotions take precedence over our reason. We revel in machismo and are clannish. All of us have a herd instinct and indulge in gossiping. We build natural chains of command and follow assertive frontrunners reflexively. In what ways are we from the Stone Age? Instinctual cooperation- Collaboration, partaking, specialization and sociabilitybegan with affiliation. Our Stone Age ancestors began living in groups of up to 150 people. Virtually all hunter-gatherer tribes shared to survive. Sharing food was the basis for cooperative exchange among hunter gatherers. The animals hunted were big and successful hunts were infrequent. It therefore made good sense to share the kill throughout the clan.Sharing reduced the risk of going hungry because other hunters would reciprocate.The humans who survived and prospered passed on their genes. Cooperation, specialization and skill building require friendliness. Therefore a predisposition to sharing information, exchangingthings and doingmutualfavours is hardwired in us.This Stone Age affability and cooperation are very appropriate to modern living. But, it is because of this that we find it hard to deliver bad news, to quantity each individual’s contribution accurately, or disproportionately reward contributors by culling out the laggards. Moreover, there are several other primitive characteristics we need to be aware of and compensate for. I list the major ones here. Emotion over reason- Alertness was a matter of life and death. Good instinct saved lives. Emotions were and are the first reaction to everything seen or sensed. These instincts got passed genetically. So, when we receive negative feedback, we react emotionally. Emotion beats cold reason. – Typecasting from first impression – Because the Stone Age world was threatening and complex, it was necessary to classify things immediatelyon the most basic data. Genes that survived, were of those who made quick decisions on first impressions. Sitting around to analyseevidential data was not life enhancing. Today, even when it is not so vital to decide instantlywe still give enormous weight to first impressions. As a salesman knows, a winning smile, a firm handshake, and a good opening line can close the sale.We make many poor decisions and omit to weigh the evidence judiciously simply because of emotive short circuits in our processing -Comfort in hierarchy- In hunter-gatherer societies ad hoc hierarchies were led byconfident leaders. Security increased with attachment or deference to a leader. We are wired to follow a pecking order.This explain why every revolutionary attempt destroys hierarchy. But strangely, once the existing official hierarchy is abolished, an equally valid unofficial pecking orders springs up and flourishes. Hierarchy without insight is value destructive. -Risk avoidance. Conformity is still wired in us and following the herd is as popular as ever. One look at fashion, music , sports, celebrity mania and conformist ideology –isms will show us that. Hunter-gatherers tended to take risks only under constraints when they were able to find no safer option.A high degree of security seeking prevents us from embracing risks. Because hunter-gatherers weren’t secure, they generally avoided risk. Now we are often much more secure than the hunter-gatherers, yet we are still loath to take risks, even when these are far from life threatening. This reluctance to take risks is a hangover from the Stone Age. Risk aversion is built into most modern business. We talk about a ‘risk premium,’ where returns must be significantly higher to justify taking an extra risk. Disruptions, innovations, breakthroughs emerge from smaller enterprises who have less to lose. It is ironical that those who are bigger and more profitable are reluctant to take risk. Because we are risk averse, we move only when convinced that the upside greatly exceeds the downside. This is despite evidence that, increasingly, business fortune goes to the brave. In conclusion, we should not be distressed about the implications of evolutionary psychology on the one hand and our modern existence on the other hand. Remember, we are the only species that can formally learn and transmit learning. This means that we can realise that many of our weaknesses are because of genetic bias and, if we are mindful, we can be successful in correcting such biases. Like all species of living things, mankind is also hardwired ,but it is the only that is capable of wilful rewiring. In this lies our salvation. http://www.businessworld.in/…/Neolithic-Genes-In-Modern-Times/14-05-2020- 192118

In economic terms the Covid-19 pandemic has been a crisis like none other in world history. At present the subject of globalisation appears almost irrelevant. The barricades are up everywhere and anything beyond national boundaries seems to be out of scope. Battling the pandemic seems to be the only focal point. But at some stage, the economic costs will have to be weighed in the balance. The Presidential election in America as well as the ‘post Corona’ recovery in China, Western Europe and the United States will put globalisation, back on the radar. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] It is quite evident that the rise of China and India remains the dominant event in this time even in the context of this crisis. The transformation of these two countries consisting of almost 40% of humanity – more than two and a half times the population of all of today’s so called ‘developed countries’ – is likely to prove an even more significant phenomenon for the long-term future of humanity. Also, India and China have the most to lose if globalisation becomes a casualty. To my mind, the significance of globalisation remains as important as ever before. International economic integration is facilitating change in the world. This is true, not only in economic terms but also in how we tackle the bigger challenges such as climate change, fundamentalism, species extinction, financial instability and inequality. Globalisation means economic integration across national frontiers. It is a process by which the economic agents in any given part of the world are affected by events elsewhere in the world. Integration leads to markets operating across political boundaries and beyond nationality. In the economic sense, there are no foreigners. It is a process that has been on since the start of civilisation. In modern times, the movement of industrial goods, commodities and capital was overtaken by tradability of services boosted by offshoring thanks to the rise of information technology. India was a big beneficiary of this process. Economic liberalisation has pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and spread opportunities more widely than ever before. When economic liberalisation started in India in 1991, exchange controls were seen as things of the past and privatisation started in right earnest. We seemed party to the ‘Washington Consensus’ with an emphasis on sound monetary and fiscal policy and embracing of market forces towards economic development. Globally, the creation of the World Trade Organisation – WTO, in January 1995 was a point of inception. After the Uruguay Round, the world saw the futility of inward-looking trade policy, the harm of insular economics and the distributive rewards of trade liberalisation. India, like many other developing countries, did play a greater role in the Uruguay round. In my entire career of more than two decades, I have worked in the private sector and with global corporations managing global brands and businesses. I have learned, by experience, that an integrated world economy, founded on market relationships is beneficial for all. Socialism is a nonstarter without value creation. Communism failed and ended abruptly in the erstwhile Soviet Union. Liberal democracy is the best way -if not the only way- to run society along with an advanced economy. When we buy a brand we make a choice. When we cast a vote we make a choice. A capitalist economy runs on the open market basis is about making choices. That is the most beneficial system for the largest majority of the world’s people. The market is a very sophisticated, self-tuning and self-governing institution. Markets are above governments. Of course, governments can senselessly damage free-market economics. But, those states that understand that their long-run interest lies in a global cooperative economic order do well. Imperialism ended and Communism failed. Fascist military nationalism drew the world into a global war and destroyed Europe’s pre-eminence in the world. The only thing that survived and thrived is liberal, democratic, the market operated free economies. Yet, the threats to globalisation are real. The COVID-19 aftermath may give it finality. The earliest criticism of market-driven globalisation was that it subordinates interest of national economies, undermines democracy and leads to the surrender of sovereign power to powerful multinational corporations. Since the end of imperialism and the conclusion of World War II, almost all advanced economies in the world – with the exception of China – have become liberal democracies. They have free media, elections, rights and responsibilities monitored by institutions. Across the world, lifestyles have improved and become better in terms of evident measures. In fact, globalisation should have allowed us to fight global challenges together. If instead, a crisis like a pandemic succeeds in halting the movement towards global integration, we will see our progress get reversed, prosperity falling and a corrupt control strengthening over means of value creation. Our real challenge as one world is not to halt global economic integration but to celebrate it and strengthen it and make it work for those people that it has not been able to reach before. In their book ‘Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty’ Turkish-American economist Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and British political scientist James A. Robinson of the University of Chicago make the case that it is politics which decides the prosperity and success of nations. It is the nature of institutions we create that eventually determine our progress. The world cannot be better as divided earth with hostile states ignoring the welfare of us all. Our global issue will not forever be a pandemic or war or economic loss or gain. Our global issue is self-interested politics dominating free-market economics. We must not let that happen. http://www.businessworld.in/article/Why-Globalisation-Matters/22-04-2020-189971/

The coronavirus pandemic is changing our world in fundamental ways. These changes are even more defining than those witnessed after World War II between 1939–45, the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 or the financial crisis of 2008. This is because each of these occurrences, in fact, accelerated globalisation whereas the coronavirus pandemic will reverse it, perhaps irreparably and permanently. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] This crisis has already ravaged economies, destroyed supply chains and exposed the operational inefficiencies in western societies stemming from a poor penetration of state power. The corporate might of western capitalism seems to be amounting to not much at all. Global capitalism depends on global trade and global movement of men and material. Its most representative icons are global brands. After this pandemic, we may no longer have viable global supply chains. The world’s largest brands have expanded globally because of distributed supply chains and accessible markets. The world has now seen how Western Europe and the United States of America have struggled in taking effective action. It has also been noted that an excessive reliance on China has now made it impossible for them to conduct business in any normal way whilst the pandemic impact lasts. Naturally, it is sovereign governments that are acting now and taking the initiative. National boundaries have been sealed. All human movement has stopped and transportation across borders has ceased. This is unprecedented. This rise of governmental action is in direct contradiction to the free business and globalisation imperative. We need government to manage the environment of business not be in business itself. But the crisis will motivate it to do the latter. So, here onwards, China is the economy to watch because that is the region that will determine whether globalisation is sustainable. Western Europe and the United States seem to have bailed out of the global economic network and shuttered down. Economic isolation seems the natural consequence and it is only to be expected. There is a galloping sense of vulnerability. Myopic pragmatism may win over optimistic farsightedness. Profitability will suffer. Restrictive domestic boundaries and impositions on business operations will mean less incentive to build global brands. Smaller national market opportunities will mean poorer innovations. Depressed economic activity will also mean a reduction in the productive capacity of the global economy. Therefore, globally orchestrated supply chains may simply become unviable besides being unfashionable. Global brands and global marketing are forces for integration whereas the potential rise of economic nationalism will be in opposition to such international integration. Immigration may be seen with hostility. The biggest risk is our consequential inability to look at global issues in global terms, e.g. – climate change, poverty, hunger, resource depletion etc. It is a cruel irony that a global crisis that is mortally threatening, potentially for each one of the 7 .8 billion people on the planet should result in drawing us apart under national flags rather than bring us together as threatened life forms on a small blue planet. There is a political and economic shock that is leading to a rejection of the concept of ‘one planet for businesses’. Economic liberalism is far more than being about economics. It has been an anchor for democracy and global diplomacy. Throughout history ‘collectivism’ and dogmatic politics have been pounding weak liberalism. Be it Communism, Nationalism, Fascism or Socialism. Nationalism in the European sense emerged as it supported a modern state and economy. It derives its sense of self from a unified culture and language. A nation is a social construct before being a legal, political, geographical or sovereign entity. Language additionally creates a unity of significance. Nationalism increases the authority of the state. A nation state is to power what a corporation is to profit. Nationalism taps into the human need for belongingness and seeking an object for devotion. This will now increase manifold as the world deals with the existential crisis and then with its trauma. In a more insular and parochially protectionist world, nationalism will become the default creed. The state will be a pseudo – commercial enterprise. The locus of commercial control will be wherever political power rests. The biggest job to be done in the world ‘after coronavirus‘ is not to build walls or impede global integration but to make globalisation work for more people than ever before. If we fail in doing this we will let the virus win. http://www.businessworld.in/…/Will-Globalization-Die-From-Covid-19…-/10-04- 2020-188874

If you were to google “How to prevent coronavirus infection?” washing hands will come up as the number one recommendation. Washing of hands to prevent infections is something most parents drill into their children from a young age. But did you know that till the mid-nineteenth century doctors went in blood-stained clothes from one surgery to another without ever washing hands? Ignaz Phillip Semmelweiss is the man who first discovered, understood and declared this truth. He was born in Hungary in 1818 and worked as a physician in Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire. He discovered via acute observation that the ward where midwives were responsible for deliveries had a much lower rate of infection and hence mortality amongst new mothers. The case for doctors- who also did autopsies –was quite the opposite. He therefore correctly, empirically, concluded that most likely because of the fact that doctors did not wash hands between autopsies and deliveries, they were carrying germs and causing infections. He developed the antisepsis method of washing hands with a solution of chlorinated lime (calcium hypochlorite) and it immediately led to a decline in the infection rate. However, as the belief that diseases were spread by ‘miasma’ or ‘bad humour’ or ‘vapours’ was deeply ingrained in Europe from the dark ages and Dr. Semmelweis failed to convince the doctors at his hospital, especially his boss. The more they resisted his ideas, the more forceful his defence of them until he was forced to resign. He went back to his native Budapest and though he became the Head of Obstetrics in a hospital there with similar results in reducing fatalities and despite his publishing “The Cause, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbirth Fever” in 1861, he failed to convince the medical fraternity in Europe and eventually died, in 1864, a broken man with deep psychological issues. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] If only he had managed to get support, by being able to persuade the other doctors about his ground-breaking discovery, imagine the number of lives it would have saved. Handwashing, which we know today is the best protection against catching infections such as coronavirus would have been popularised much earlier. There is a lesson in this for business managers and leaders who would like to bring about any big change. Successful change management requires that you are able to persuade others to listen to your ideas. It is not about the power of your idea or discovery but how others receive it that does the job. In his book “Give and Take” author Adam Grant a Professor at the Wharton School writes that people have three attitudes to reciprocity: The Givers like to give more than they get. They are not keeping score, but help out others with no intention of receiving any assistance back. The Matchers like to balance getting and giving exactly, practising quid pro quo. The Takers like to get more than they give. They feel the world is a zero-sum game, for them to win means others must lose. Takers like to believe it is only a matter of marshalling the facts, talking authoritatively and dominating through “powerful communication”. Givers use “powerless communication” where one expresses plenty of doubt and seeks advice from others leads to prestige and is much successful. He gives the example of Don Lane an Account Executive at Arnold Worldwide the advertising agency for Volkswagen came up with the famous line “Drive it. You’ll get it.” “He presented a sample radio script to show how it would work. Then he said to the creative director,” I know it is against the rules, but I want to give you a sense of what I am talking about. What do you think of this line? “Drive it. You’ll get it”. The creative director got it! Successful change management requires collaboration and the skills required for successful collaboration are simple. Collaboration requires an understanding of the shared goal, of who will do what, respect for each other, encouraging contribution from all, making sure that mistakes are used for learning and not pulling down the person committing them and most importantly keeping the team goal above the individual goal. It is usually the efforts of a team of people that leads to a successful breakthrough. While one person may be the face of the team, make no mistake without the team it is rare for success to be achieved. Take the recent Pune based start-up My Lab becoming the first company to develop an indigenous COVID-19 testing kit. While virologist Minal Dakhave Bhosale, Mylab’s research and development chief is the face of this achievement and is being credited for this by the media, she herself has said “It was an emergency, so I took this on as a challenge. I have to serve my nation,”…..adding that her team of 10 worked “very hard” to make the project a success. To bring about change one needs to ensure collaboration and use communication to get buy-in for your ideas. http://www.businessworld.in/…/Collaboration-And-Communication…-/04-04-2020- 188274

The coronavirus pandemic has done deep and extensive economic, social, and political damage. Restoring confidence, reviving economic activity, rebuilding institutions and resuscitating social life will be tasks of previously unknown weight and scope. The global pandemic is changing us in fundamental, corrosive and possibly irreversible ways. Worldwide an unavoidable regimen of lockdowns enforced by ‘emergency like’ powers is inevitably going to lead to a massive setback to the economy, our social fabric, and our political system. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] There is a demand shock, eventual breakdown of global supply chains and a depressed outlook. ‘Jaan hai toh Jahaan hai’ as our Prime Minister correctly put it, is what everyone thinks but the anxiety is ravaging the mood everywhere. Will we never be the same again? Can it not be a case of reculer pour mieux sauter ? May we aspire for a better tomorrow? A quick look at the situation report will give us a prognosis. The economy has already taken the biggest sudden hit ever. Hundreds of thousands of people have no job to do. Casual and daily wage workers are locked out of a living. As the full force of the impact will be felt in months and years to come inequalities in wealth, opportunity, and access to health care will become even more conspicuous. Everyday life is impacted in unprecedented ways, be it closing of educational institutions, everyone working from home, social distancing and fear of contagion. We have been reduced to only sharing things online. Emotional fatigue is making the matters brittle. Our political system, polarised as it already was, is under stress. Only the government can act. Political formations have little role for now. The policy making function is in a state of suspended animation. The borders are effectively closed. This will paralyze the work of Parliament and the Judiciary. The biggest question is “If and not when” things will limp back to normalcy. But, where demand and economic measures are concerned the question is “when and not if ” the full blow will be felt. At the local level, quarantine measures have stopped everything beyond the confines of a nuclear family. Speculation is rife. News media, hardly known for original content before the crisis, may have been dealt a final, fatal blow by the coronavirus. Originality is a casualty. Advertising will shrink across the board. But these precautionary measures are not in question. We are all in it together and see the need for these steps. Lifting preventive measures, to revive the economy but potentially at the expense of human lives, will be a big moral impasse. If –hypothetically speaking – the coronavirus proves to be a continuing part of life and at some stage, a section of society decides to carry on with life whilst factoring in the possible risk and loss, we may bewilderingly find ourselves in the bizarre situation of demanding that the government drastically curtail all routine freedoms. The virus should not destroy our social fabric even as it kills many amongst us. Soon there will be two types of people – coronavirus immune and corona virus susceptible. At present, people who have already recovered from a Covid infection will test negative, if tested. It is currently assumed that people who have recovered from the infection might have immunity to it. If we can identify the immune population then these will be our frontline warriors. Post quarantine, the hospitals, schools, essential services etc. need them. We must create space for civil society action via grassroots, non-governmental ,flat, organizations. Where are the massive trillion dollar corporations in this fight ? Where are the numerous billionaires ? Where are the leading brands ? Society will register this presence or absence as the case may be. The crisis has hurled us into the future. A digital life with a much higher priority to fundamental issues of health, family and social priorities will emerge. Direct cash payments and free food grants will provide a lifeline to hundreds of millions of Indians. Distance and virtual learning will become hugely accessible and lead to more accessible higher education. Many Indians will ask if they actually need to go back to office. Massive adoption of telecommuting will ease traffic congestion, urban pollution and ease real estate Universal grant of minimum income as a standard where society values people for being human will fuse with minimum guarantee of employment and other welfare measures. Will we emerge more permanently distanced than ever before? Will the world see a breakdown of people meeting people casually in public spaces? Will I good naturedly say “bless you “when someone sneezes next to me on a plane? Will we restore the world we have lost with its frenzied pace, continuous travel and traffic , and its obsession with material growth and profits? What if as one globe, we continue to get more insular; if we continue in lockdowns, for say a year or two years? If everyone erodes in confidence, trust and ability what remains of human civilisation? Think hard and then ,even as we all comply dutifully with lockdown in our mortal interest and that of our society , forget not we do this to restore the good of life and living as it existed before; not to forget it and become a different, untrusting, selfish, depressed world. Survive to Thrive..

The good news is the same as the bad news – Covid-19 transmission is dictated by human behaviour. Our species is facing a threat to its survival based on how you or I wash our hands or use disinfectant. Our survival depends on our collective and individual behaviours. So, how do we change how people behave? This is the most important question of our lifetime. The way we behave isn’t just dictated by what we are told, but how we are told it. Prime Minister Modi gave a masterful address to the nation. It was personal, emphatic and plainly put. It elicited a response like never seen before since our freedom struggle. Yet, it was a day. And the day has passed. We need to change behaviours not only enforce them. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] Epidemics are a time when as a species, we come face to face with our relationship with mortality, relationships, society and way of life. It all goes through an upheaval. We see a man being the best he can. We also see a man at his worst. The role of behavioural response is crucial in tackling the coronavirus catastrophe. Governments across the world are cognizant that, after an initial high, the willingness to comply with containment measures becomes progressively lesser. ‘Compliance fatigue’, anxiety and plain ‘I care a damn’ hopelessness may set in. Like any mass campaign – what is key is when this peaking of positive response actually happens. Thanks to social media and huge mass media support, basic awareness has built up very rapidly. But is it enough to change behaviours? It brings us to the question of what, in fact, fetches the right behavioural response? It is an appeal to self-interest and the reward of social approval. Concern about social disapproval makes even the selfish, or self-absorbed, among us behave in a more desirable way. Public health authorities showcase right practices and spread information about the evidence supporting their adoption. However, a dash of design creativity in the messaging can move the needle on compliant behaviours. Government, corporations, civil society, families and all other units of civilisation will have to take the psychology of messaging much more seriously. Unfortunately, advertising and marketing have predominantly been about getting commercial results, selling and winning mind and market share. Hence “behavioural economics” won a Nobel but ‘behaviourally oriented communication’ has hardly got any attention. But that was the story till now, and the world may never be the same again. Behavioural science involves a developing refinement of hypothesis via the continuous recording of empirical evidence. At its definitional essence, it is the observation of regularities in how people behave. Therefore, it targets how context changes behaviour. It does so structurally, not relying on humanity or good citizenship in the individual but rather making the response reflexive, by design. The basic logic framed is in the form of: ‘When X is the context and Y is the message then Z is the response.’ Let’s take the case of handwashing or wearing masks. In periods of long spells of isolation, people may auto-adjust the effectiveness of what they deem to be a hassle. Some people won’t do it. Most will not do it properly. Others will give up doing it when their hope begins to crumble or when their fear begins to subside. Yet, there are ways to mitigate this. For example, messaging from friends, family, institutions, alarms and captcha style interrupts. The evidence suggests that these coaxing, cajoling or coercing steps will make the necessary responses materialise. Increased hand washing, changing how we cough and sneeze, self-isolation, avoiding travel, social distancing—these are obligations on us as individuals to protect ourselves and our fellow citizens. This messaging for “individually –collective” actions is a problem area. Firstly, millions of people have to be reached. Then they have to learn the right things – individually. Next, they have to collectively esteem those right behaviours. Finally, as a collective, they have to enforce it upon deviant or non-compliant individuals. Some of us behave selflessly and some selfishly. The majority will override self-interest and contribute to the common good, provided others pitch-in too. That is why it takes enormous stature or powerful context (often both) to make successful social outcomes happen. Three things stand out. First, co-operation is more likely if people communicate to each other why the specific behaviour is best for all. Second, people are more willing to make sacrifices for group benefit the more they identify with the group. Third, sensible punishment is needed for those who don’t co-operate. As a contagion spreads, infecting thousands, and forcing thousands more into quarantine, the world -and life as we know it – changes. With disrupted daily life, closed schools, packed hospitals, and absent social gatherings, sporting events, concerts, conferences, festivals and travel plans; life and society, as we know it, gets put on indefinite hold… In 1947, when he was 34, Albert Camus, the Algerian-born French writer provided astonishingly detailed and penetrating observations in his novel ‘The Plague.’ Camus showed how easy it is to mistake an epidemic for an annoyance. He also wrote that in times of pestilence we learn that there is more to admire in men than to despise As a marketer and communications professional, I can only pray that it’s true. http://www.businessworld.in/…/Changing-Behaviours-In-Times-Of-An-Existential- Crisis/23-03-2020-186968

In 1985, I was a young boy of eleven and a student of the fifth grade at Morse Public School, Cambridge Massachusetts. My father was a Mason Fellow at Harvard University pursuing his mid-career Masters in Public Policy and Administration at the Kennedy School of Government. In one of the programs regularly organised for spouses and families of Mason Fellows, I have gifted a set of Transformers. They were then, as today, a very famous and successful robotic toy line and eponymous TV animated series. Accompanying the gifts, with a very Harvard touch, was a short illustrated note on real (not fantasy!) robots. For me, this incident sparked a lifelong interest concerning the encounter of man and machine. I ended up doing electronics engineering before ending up in management. I remain intrigued with man’s destiny apropos machines. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] As I write this, the world is in the grips of an alarmist frenzy about the Novel Coronavirus. The panic stems from mankind’s collective recognition of its mortality. Our ignorance of what tomorrow may bring feeds our panic. However, to my mind, Artificial Intelligence and advancement of robotics will have a far greater effect on the human species, in positive and negative ways. Sir Peter Medawar wrote an essay entitled ‘What is Human about Man Is His Technology’ in which he claimed that we humans, became ‘integrated psychologically with the instruments that serve us’ This was a ‘human-first’ view where technical advancement was seen as merely an instrumentality. Back then, man had the confidence that it was he who created technical advancement. Today, we live in a world where it is way above and beyond such instrumentality. Now, technology sets the pace and we are all –as individuals and societies- struggling to keep up. Alan Mathison Turing wrote a paper in 1950 ‘Computer Machinery and Intelligence‘ where he estimated that by the year 2000, artificial intelligence would cease to be “artificial”! His benchmark test was one where a person would not be able to tell if they were having a conversation with a human or machine. It was called the Turing test. Famously mankind crossed this Rubicon in 2012 when Vladimir Veselov of the Reading University created a simulation software called Eugene corresponding to a 13-year-old’s persona. Yet, the bigger challenge is a future world where the robotic and human will be inseparable. Where the robot may be part human and the human will definitely be part robotic. The future of robotics is exponentially ahead of our collective intelligence and imagination. We still look at robots as tools – mechanical, computational or sensory. But, pay heed to what professor Erik Brynjolfsson, one of the world’s foremost AI experts has said about robotic evolution. In his studied view, once the robot gets to a baseline level of learning it has the ability to evolve and learn to do what humans do – incredibly faster – and then can further move on to learning about what humans cannot do! Judgement, emotion, tact, ethics, spirited collaboration are all deemed to be beyond machines. However, now the question is whether they are even required? The machine will be learning way ahead of us. A world of mega technology and micro technology is already emerging where we are all – as humans – structurally bound. There is so much commercial incentive that we have no choice in the matter. There is an element of sociological design at play. Whether talking to an IVR system, dealing with an ATM, doing auto check out at a store or printing our own boarding cards and luggage tags – in a myriad number of ways – we are being slowly and steadily being taught dealing with a machine interface. This is the first induction into a robotic, impersonal world. We follow the machine’s instructions even as we think the machine is doing what we want. Our world is broken into transactional encounters and our very being is fragmented into Apps. Our identity and most of our activities are miniaturised into the small handphone that we all carry. The Czech dramatist Karl Capek Introduce the word ‘Robot’ into English. In a play written in 1922, he had imagined a RUR – ‘ Rossum’s Universal Robot’. In Czech, Robota means drudgery (as in mindless, repetitive, serf-like existence). In the play, his robots are produced as living machines but without souls. Their stated purpose is “to rid humanity from worry and be liberated from the degradation of labour “ Interestingly, the drama peaks when due to the intervention from “the humanity league “, the robots are granted, souls. They eventually overthrow mankind and create their own utopian, liberated Eden. It thrills and spooks me at the same time how close the drama is to the emerging reality in many ways. One begins to grasp the true implications when one can sum up the power of invasive, available and transactional technologies on the one hand with the hugely profitable network of the technology mega corporations namely Apple, alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook on the other. Now every breath we take can be recorded into a data pool along with every step we take. Every act we commit or failed to commit may be recorded, analysed, personalised, remarketed and monetised. This seems inescapable because the very future of capitalism is beyond individuals and corporations and has acquired a self-sustaining life of its own. This phenomenon was explained as a geometric concept of the Rhizome by the French thinkers Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze in their book ‘ A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia ‘ published in 1980 In Greek mythology, Prometheus was punished by Zeus for stealing fire and using it to infuse life into clay objects. Today’s commercially motivated Prometheus fears no Zeus! In this case, his eventual punishment of servitude may come from his own creations! Machine – calculator – computer – supercomputer – robot and cyborg. What next? Lord and Master? http://www.businessworld.in/…/Prometheus-without-A-Zeus…/12-03-2020-186046

Yes, America is the world’s only true imperial power in the world. It is an empire like none before. There are definitional distinctions that make it unique and acceptable. Three occurrences of significance happened the last 10 days – President Trump came to India, the Taliban signed an agreement with the Americans in Qatar and the coronavirus situation is now effectively, a pandemic. I was in London all this while and each one of these stories found exposure in the local media. The concurrent and contextual reportage was to me, one more sign that it is America on which we must keep both our eyes fixed. The planetary network of American influence is inescapable. And why would we look to escape in any case? No people on earth are better placed to benefit from a partnership with the United States of America than us Indians. Hence, aesthetics aside, this public adoration of the American President and the First Lady was a job “well done!” [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] The two filters that I would like to apply on India –US engagement are economic and the cultural. It is private corporations, brands and economic institutions that are the most significant players here. Six months after the collapse of the Soviet Union, thirty-four of America’s most respected foreign policy strategists met at Stanford University. The deliberations were on a new philosophy for the post -Cold War world. They concluded with a need for ‘ a new organizing principle for thinking about the world and how to act in it’. No one was focused on earlier doctrines of deterrents and containment. The world had to be embraced and collaborated with, transparently and with a win-win mindset. America has stood for a ‘liberalism of abundance’. Individual liberty, political pluralism, free enterprise – these have been the ingredients in the recipe for the American style politico-economic combo meal. America does not prescribe a utopia or any “blueprint for society”. It only appeals to one’s self-interest. This American Empire has emerged as a social model – de facto – assuming the ‘one American world’ shape now. America’s co-option or control of the others relies on cultural content, control on universal content, internet& information and capital. The USA is itself witnessing an irreversible juxtaposition, mingling or fusion of all races, cultures and even religions. America is creating a vast multicultural salad bowl tossing and turning identity, race and differences. The United States is the most racially mixed area of the world. Being American is vastly different from being German French and Japanese. The American world is not a government or state enterprise. It is a private commercial project, where only the successful thrive. It is competitive enough for it to be preferred by others. The cultural export is not something that threatens the’ besieged tribe’. The central theme has always been – ‘The American dream’– social mobility, freedom and creature comforts for all. The other theme has always been the unexplored new frontier – be it the wild west, international markets or outer space! Pax Romana was established after more than a century and a half of civil war, repression, punitive anti-insurgency expeditions, foreign conquests, economic upheaval and social churn. Pax Americana is led by Netflix, Google, Facebook, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Visa, Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing and several others. The American imperialism doesn’t demand more than a trial it is not about the televised appearance of their President. It is about knowing feeling and believing that their president is important like no other person. Every telepathy, deal, the opening of a market or culture legitimises the primacy of America. Governments everywhere are privatising, deregulating, liberalising the exchange of goods and capital. They are fighting and competing for investments. All of this is in a hope to establish a direct connection with the great American Dynamo Televised and internet-driven mass culture is not going away. American brands are successful because they are liked. But pizza, camembert, tequila, nachos, tacos and sushi are American too !! That’s the magic. They embrace and Americanise everything. The Americans seem to be alone in possessing the attitudes and knowledge essential to lead and manage the internationalisation of the world. Models for the 21st century- whether they are economic, cultural or technological – are being worked out almost exclusively in the United States. But cheering crowds at the Motera stadium were not the real deal. Of course, it was a magnificent photo opportunity. But, the real deal is that Americans must create impact beyond the promise of commerce. America must export American values. These include competition between free entities, laws that apply to all, material progress and the possibility of rising beyond one’s rank in the social hierarchy and above all, a transparent democratic political system. That’s the real deal and that’s when Namaste Trump will mean the world to us. http://www.businessworld.in/…/Howdy-Means-Namaste…s…/02-03-2020-185347

The launch of the Sputnik into space by the Soviets in 1956 changed the world of popular culture even more than it changed the world of geopolitics. It made the Americans realise that world dominance would have to be achieved with soft power, not only by winning the armaments race. Today America is the centre of world culture. [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] It has come to occupy this position because it consciously exported American culture as cultural feedstock across the world. Before the period of the World War, Americans had seen culture through European eyes. Importing art and exhibiting European culture was something big businessmen did in a bid to acquire respectability. The aspiration for a good taste made captains of industry such as the Rockefellers, the Carnegies and the Guggenheims donate generously to found museums, galleries and cultural foundations. The promotion of mass culture by private trusts and establishments has been a characteristic of American social life. It is true that Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Mark Twain were some bright stars in literature. There was also a Hudson River school of painting. Intellectual centres in the universities such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton were thriving. America had also made an original contribution to architecture in the form of the skyscraper! But America was not a culturally advanced place. It was seen as provincial backwaters compared to London, Paris or Vienna. In the generation during and right after the First World War, young writers and poets such as Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, John Steinback, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O’Neill and William Faulkner wrote about American society. This was a generation that had an openness to the outside world. When the Nazis overran Europe, many artists, scientists and intellectuals fled to America. These included musicians such as Kurt Weill , Igor Stravinsky, Bela Bartok and Arnold Schoenberg, scientists Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein; social scientists Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer; Architects Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer amongst others In every area of intellectual exertion, America welcomed talent with open arms and without prejudice. This eclectic approach made them profit from the contribution of every source. Due to this diversity of input, its culture began to acquire a universalism that continues to give it enormous strength and advantage to the present day Jazz and its offspring are in many ways the archetype of American universalism. This music became a planetary phenomenal thanks to the power of music radio. The foxtrot and the Charleston, Swing, Blues and Bebop allowed radio to take off. This led to a boom in advertising in the late 1930s. Music was central to the success of big Hollywood movies which helped, in turn, to pave the way for television and with it came the worldwide triumph of audio-visual media. America became the biggest cinema market in the world. With the intensifying of the Cold War, culture became big business and the culture industry became -indirectly -a part of the larger military-industrial complex in terms of American core interest. The recording industry, the motion picture industry, theatre and publishing were not only booming businesses but also recipients of private patronage and federal administration’s subsidies The global diffusion of art and culture from America was supported purposefully by the government and later by private enterprises. The Communication revolution aided its accelerated spread. The power of America was established in every household through television. Every American fad and fashion was spread by cross-fertilisation, juxtaposition and instantaneous circulation via technology. The Americans also realised that cultural expressions are highly context-driven and universal culture may appeal to only a small minority and therefore they ensured that the world also came to America for an experience of high culture. Just as its universities became the leading innovators, in the 1960s New York became the front-ranking world market for arts. In the 1964 Venice Biennale, Pop Art exploded into the world scene and America became the centre of ‘avant-gardism’ America also changes the definition of art and artistic belongingness, not only in popular culture but also in academic and political circles. Before the Second World War, when Europe ruled culture, the truly civilised person was stereotyped as white European. After America opened itself deliberately by the 1960s, any person of any nationality or ethnicity could arrive into the American cultural scene and succeed or be the recipient of what was being exported from there. The ‘barbarian’ was anyone hostile to progress, democracy, market forces, intellectual and social innovation namely anybody rejecting the values of America which were by definition also the values of the “free world” The openness and embracing of the outside world was decisive in aiding the assent of the American elite. It made it more internationalist in outlook and acceptable to all communities. America became the elite centre for the development of a universal global culture. America adopted Porsche, Mercedes, Gucci, Dior and Saville Row just as much as it embraced Chinese food or Brie and Chablis. The market in America supported the most niche cultural expressions – the music of Johnny Cage, the minimalism of Philip Glass, native Indian flute players from the Amazon or European experimental cinema. The classic example of this two-way corridor was the success of the French women’s magazine Elle. Its American edition was very little French-influenced and way more American international in its attitude and content. Conversely, the globalisation of the American modern woman was manifest in the success of the ‘Cosmopolitan’, an all -American magazine which enjoyed worldwide success with numerous foreign editions and millions of copies of sale. Great American publications and publishing houses got foreigners at the helm like the Briton, Harold Evans at Random House and the Indian Sonny Mehta at Knopf. Another British woman, Tina Brown became editor of the ‘New Yorker’ in 1992 and thus the east coast intellectual establishment showcased its porosity. The largest mass culture vehicle of the 20th century was rock music and it became a means of identification and communication between the members of the

However evolution has prepared us very differently for attention. Humans can only attend do one thing at a time if it requires focused attention. If we are multi-tasking, Each task that requires attention is attended to singularly and then managed by switching back and forth to other attention seeking tasks. It is no surprise that multitasking is not a commonly encountered capability. Evolutional programed us in this manner because our cognitive apparatus is simply not fit to deal with a blizzard of stimuli. If deluged and overwhelmed with info-processing how would we have become quickly aware of an approaching threat? Equal attention is simply a mortal risk in that context. Our brain was evolved to save our life from predators, not to appreciate advertising. So, has evolution closed all chances for advertising and brand building? Most certainly not! [siteorigin_widget class=”SiteOrigin_Widget_Image_Widget”][/siteorigin_widget] If at all, it has made us ready for something wonderfully more complex and useful – it’s called “low involvement processing “and it happens unconsciously. The powerful engines of our cerebral processing are engaged subconsciously. These exceptions help us process 24/7 and not have to react to every sound we hear or every visual that we see. From a primitive instinctual perspective,shallow connection heuristics matter a lot more. Feelings are reliable shortcuts for thinking. If your food smells unusual you don’t put it in your mouth! You don’t evaluate the foul-smelling to decode edibility. You don’t process to compare that smell to other foul smells encountered earlier. Hence low conscious processing does not mean blindness to tone ,feel or other sensory perception. To the contrary, it can heighten the sensory appreciation. When consumers do shallow or subconscious processing they are in fact relying on a deeper, richer , complex , more densely associative memory structure than when they’re actively processing rational messages. A significant research on the relationship of attention, learning , processing and memory was done by Fergus Craik & Robert Lockhart “ levels of processing: retrospective commentary on the framework for memory research “. The conclusion of this research was that shallow processing also leads to categorisation of different types of information based on different levels of processing attention and that eventually it has a bearing on short-term and long-term memory. It also has a deeper connection to phonetic, semantic and structural sensibility – sound,text and look respectively. The outcome of subsequent research in this direction now points to evidence that shallow, subconscious, inattentive processing can lead to long-lasting cognitive associations that cause learning. Further, it is clear that such sub conscious processes happen quickly and automatically.  It doesn’t choke your conscious attention or processing bandwidth. Since our world is saturated with brands and brand imagery every encounter is in connected in a web of associations and associative markers. What truly exists in the subconscious mind is not known but it exists for sure because we know that it triggers thoughts, feelings and actions. Another way to think of this phenomenon on is to study the submersion, receding and fogging out of active memory. We can each name a favourite brand say,X and we can describe the role it plays in our lives. We can  personify the brand and detail our emotional responses with reference to this brand .  But , almost never can we play back the chronology of our association. We will not be able to detail when we first learned of the brand and what or who influenced our choice. We wont recall all the advertising we have seen. We can’t explain our learning about the brand has strengthened our preference.  All these are half baked, unclear, vague and unverifiable. So even our actively learned, attentively imbibed learning retreats into a vast subconscious. The longer lasting, better preserved associations are actually in the subconscious mind. Our gut is not dictated to by our rational brain. In fact more often, our gut can override and suppress the rational brain. Finally, brand building is like putting out content in a newspaper. Each column inch is packed with text and imagery competing for attention with every other column inch. So whatever you choose – opinion, sports, business, arts, politics; it is because of self-selection. You will note is for those parts which don’t interest as we are blind we have ‘attentional blindness’. The more enraptured we are paying attention to one thing, the more we blank out on everything else.  Daniel Simons and Chritopher Chabris became world famous because of their “gorilla experiment “. It proved that people can be so focused on tasks as to be blind to almost everything such as even a man in a Gorilla suit working amidst them  (“Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events”) To conclude – if you are avoiding the lure of top-rated, crazily expensive, attentive audience advertising plan bought off a media rate card you may actually be doing a smart thing after all. But ensure that by other means you are diffused and present in the consumer ecosystem. If you are not like a mist, humidity, fragrance , the subconscious mind may or may not fully register your presence. Remember a sizeable part of success is because of the subconscious inattentive audience. Did you pay attention? http://www.businessworld.in/article/The-Fragility-Of-Attention/10-08-2019-174638/