I recently received a book titled How Innovators Connect by techTribe Founder & CEO Rohit Agarwal and journalist Patricia Brown, which is based on interviews with 40 successful entrepreneurs and top hi-tech industry executives.
The best chapter in the book, I felt, was the one on how entrepreneurs can learn from their failures. The advise in this chapter from Desh Deshpande (Sycamore) and Umang Gupta (Keynote) was really inspiring and useful.
Other sections that I liked were the ones featuring Phaneesh Murthy of Quintant/iGate (on how he innovated to differentiate the company's service offerings), Emmet Keefee of iRise (on networking and nurturing relationships), Jerry Kennelly of Riverbed Technology (on the advantages of starting a company during a downcycle) and Joe Kraus of Jotspot (on being a trend-spotter than a trendsetter or how "being too early is the same as being wrong").
Given the huge number of books featuring US-based entrepreneurs (including those of Indian origin), I thought it would have been much better if the authors had chosen more India-based entrepreneurs to interview. The book could also have been edited better; a few sections (esepcially the one on the eBay Developers Program) seemed to be a direct cut-n-paste job from corporate brochures.
More information about the book is here. Kiruba Shankar has a podcast about the book with Rohit Agarwal here.
Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports.
The best chapter in the book, I felt, was the one on how entrepreneurs can learn from their failures. The advise in this chapter from Desh Deshpande (Sycamore) and Umang Gupta (Keynote) was really inspiring and useful.
Other sections that I liked were the ones featuring Phaneesh Murthy of Quintant/iGate (on how he innovated to differentiate the company's service offerings), Emmet Keefee of iRise (on networking and nurturing relationships), Jerry Kennelly of Riverbed Technology (on the advantages of starting a company during a downcycle) and Joe Kraus of Jotspot (on being a trend-spotter than a trendsetter or how "being too early is the same as being wrong").
Given the huge number of books featuring US-based entrepreneurs (including those of Indian origin), I thought it would have been much better if the authors had chosen more India-based entrepreneurs to interview. The book could also have been edited better; a few sections (esepcially the one on the eBay Developers Program) seemed to be a direct cut-n-paste job from corporate brochures.
More information about the book is here. Kiruba Shankar has a podcast about the book with Rohit Agarwal here.
Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports.