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Very quickly the trip is coming to an end. I wanted to end my blog the way I started, with an observation about entrepreneurship. I hope we learned a lot about India, about each other, about using technology, but most importantly, the experience was about entrepreneurship. To quote one of my favorite authors:

    Your greatness lies in imagination. The ability to imagine is the largest part of what you call intelligence.
    You think the ability to imagine is merely a useful step on the way to solving a problem or making
    something happen. But imagining is what makes it happen.

Michael Crighton, Sphere

Strive for greatness. Let your imagination run wild. Your business skills will catch up! Have great and useful lives!

The trip is quickly coming to end. Unbelievably, as this trip has been in the planning stages for nearly 2 years. One of the favorite questions of the students is, "How does this trip compare to last year's trip to Asia?" To me, that is like comparing children, can you love one child more than another? NO. This year has been dramatically different: the addition of a new professor for us (Siva, a huge plus), the addition of the weather as an element, the addition of food and health as a killer, and the addition of personal issues like how will I personally respond to beggars.

Not to take away from you 06'ers reading this blog, but 07 India wins! We did more, conquered more, put up with more, were better sports, got along better, had more fun, and learned more!

Today, we completed the gambit of transport! We have traveled by planes, trains, buses, cars, tu-kus, and boats. Every mode known to man has been utilized in getting us from place to place.....

We arrived in Mumbai today, a city that seems far cleaner and nicer than Delhi. I know our perspective of Delhi was warped by the location of the first hotel, in a bad part of town. But, still Mumbai seems better. We started our visit with some tourism, including the Hanging Gardens, an area for families with an incredible view of the city and the ocean. In my book, it ranked prettier than the Taj and really lifted my overall view of India.

It is too easy to see the poverty of India and stop there. But the country has so much to offer, from both a business and tourist standpoint. There is no doubt that the interesting story of the 21st century will be the competition between China and India. Which model will win? I suspect that as services become more important, India will win. As discussed earlier, India and China have bet on different models, and though I would give China the early edge, I do think that as the world becomes more and more service oriented, India will become the largest economy in the world.

My first impressions of India were negative, perhaps a function of our itinerary. Now, I see it as the great place it truly is. It is beautiful with great people, following an economic paradigm destined for global greatness.

Today, we visited Reliance, a local cell phone conglomerate. Not only did they treat us greatly (offering an antithesis to Infosys, but they are an Indian company making billions from Indians. One of the things that struck me about many of the companies (both large and small) that we visited was that they were making money from Americans, especially stupid Americans. Reliance is an Indian firm proving that their market can created billions by serving Indians.

Bangalore is great, my favorite of the places we have visited, somewhere I could live easily.

We have heard a term many times on this trip, one that I felt the need to respond to. Instead of calling business starters entrepreneurs, many Indians refer to business starters as "promoters." I love the term. It truly captures the essence of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is about creativity, financing, execution, and promoting! The word captures the multi-faceted world of entrepreneurship perfectly. Self-starters must at every level be self-promoters! It captures the self-belief (not ego), the self-starting, and the self-promoting that an entrepreneur must have. Yet again, the English use the perfect word!

Two important and revealing visits today! We started at the Indian Institute of Management, the Harvard of India. Again, great job Siva for arranging appointments! Dr. Gandhi, a female, has run an entrepreneurship center there for decades, largely focusing on women and their initiatives. She was inspirational, especially when discussing funding for the super poor, called micro-financing.

Two points that need my commentary. One, women are the driving entrepreneurial force in India. Men tend to drink their money away, she said. Second, The BPO firms that we visited, all of the Indian miracle, account for far less then .5% of the economy. Hardly worth mentioning. Versus the Chinese manufacturing miracle that accounts for 50% of GDP. A huge difference! Which sector will grow fastest? Chinese imports will grow as fast as the US economy, not much greater. Wal-mart and Target are already selling 90% Chinese goods. However, there is huge room for growth in Indians servicing Americans and American firms.

Which system is better served to solve their citizens problems? I am a huge believer in economic freedom and democracy. But, India is having trouble solving some of the issues that China seems to have solved. Could it be that Democracy is a poor way to stop defecating on the streets?

In the afternoon, we visited a Infosys. I know we met with underlings there, people who's jobs depended on spouting the company line. However, do they really believe that India has a better infrastructure than Canada? I doubt the lady presenting to us had been to Canada, but she sure was insistent. And, her claim that India competitiveness NEVER rested on a cost differential was challenging. NEVER? Seems like she drank the Koolaid.....

I am coming to think of India as the land of paradoxes. Incredible success and wealth next to incredible poverty and suffering. Below, see the incredible campus of Infosys with the poverty at its doors....

Today was a free day with no meetings, Saturday. Some of the Great Lakes students that we met invited any of us to go motorcycle riding with them. Four students went for a tour of town on motorbikes. These students need mental help. Traffic here obeys no laws or reason. But, they survived (I guess I get to keep my job) and claimed to have fun. They joined the rest of us on our city tour. Chennai looks like Mexico City in many ways, yet has the same cultural attractions as Atlanta, namely, not many. Quickly the tour became a shopping trip, resulting in a return to the hotel for me!

The Indian Institute of Management in Madras (Chennai) was our first stop today. IIT is one of the top 5 schools in the world, and it was easy to see why. The professors we met were inspiring, clearly geniuses and at the top of their game. They are aggressively working on technology to improve the lives of rural Indians. They sell, for very little, a complete computer system that can be used for weather reporting, emailing, games, education, video communication, and health measuring to women in remote India. The women rent computer time for pennies to village residents and can turn a profit, while helping the village escape from seclusion and illiteracy. Impressive social entrepreneurship. Government has played no role in their past, but is now giving some funding. Their greatest desire is that the government simply leave them alone. IIT's focus first was on tech, and then on processes and paradigms that provide success. Why give technology if it cannot raise people from poverty? The school looks like a third world compound, with old buildings that look like they could collapse at any moment, but they are producing ideas and students that will solve the world's problems.

They also said that women are the best entrepreneurs because men drink their money away. Erik is visiting a town after the program where the alcoholism rate is 90% among the men. Are women the future of India? In the rural areas, I suspect they are.

After lunch we visited a printing factory. The products were impressive, world class. They had many, many ways of making their document impossible to copy or counterfeit. But, all I could focus on were the OSHA violations. Incredible heat, burning of trash, shoeless workers, underage workers, oppressive noise, long hours and open machines were the standard. An American union boss or government official would shut the place down on sight!

Later in the day, we visited Great Lakes Institute of Management. The students treated us like rock stars and we had an inspirational visit. They had about fifty students in their entrepreneurship club and many of them are joining us Saturday night for a small gathering. These students clearly have the passion and knowledge to succeed.

Thursday. We visited three companies today, a software start-up and two huge BPO firms. First, I want to thank Dr. Nathan for doing such a great job of arranging meetings for us. The company visits have been outstanding, with talks by very interesting, insightful entrepreneurs.

It became clear to me today that India is for real. I have tried to not be so negative in this blog. In Delhi, most of my feelings and impressions were negative, mostly focusing on poverty and homelessness. I wondered, "How is this the country that Thomas Friedman wrote about? (in the "World is Flat") How can this country ever compete with the west?" I simply did not see it. Today, it became clear. There are centers of incredible competence, incredible success, and incredible brilliance in India, but they are islands in a sea of poverty and misery. The businesses we visited clearly are world class enterprises, easily able to compete with any global player. In fact, many advantages exist. The workers gladly do jobs, repetitive yet still mentally challenging, that I doubt many Americans would do. Even in India, these jobs average a 30-50% rate of turnover. The work is intense and demanding. Everyone in the group agreed we could only do it for a day or two before going crazy.

During our visit to First Source, I had my first light bulb moment, that instance when you see something new, perhaps something inspirational. First Source is a business process outsourcing firm, doing things like medical transcription, data processing, form entry, and the like. One of their businesses is taking ads from US newspapers and digitizing them so that they can be put into a database. The ads are designed and printed on paper, without the help of computers. The ads are then scanned and emailed to India, where an operator types the data, slogans, and information from the ads into a database. The database is emailed back to America, where they are incorporated into the online versions of the newspapers. So, a car-for-sale ad is created in the US, processed in Chennai, and then sent back to the US to be included in the online newspaper classified section. How STUPID!!! I was shocked! Its no wonder that US newspapers are going out of business. They deserve it. Not only is their news slanted dramatically to the left, but their business knowledge and competency is completely non-existent. They pay someone to put ads into a database! Instead of creating the ads electronically in the first place, they rely on India. In other words, India is making money from American inefficiency and incompetence. Huge business opportunity: creating software that allows ad firms and newspapers to create their ads electronically in the first place.

I guess that if you were to ask our group what the worst things abut India are, we would vote the poverty, the heat, and the trash. I have already commented on poverty, and vowed not to comment on the heat (damn is it hot! - oops vow broken!), so its time to comment on the trash. Another example of India's broken infrastructure is the trash. Just like with power and water, the Indian government has yet to solve the trash issue. Simply put, it is everywhere. Everywhere. America has not always been a trash free country either. My mom, the great teacher (and dad, the great rock), taught me that America used to be trashy. Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of President LB Johnson, set about a campaign to clean America and to teach us to use the garbage cans. Remember the American Indian with the one tear? e was featured in a US ad campaign designed to help clean up America. We had the infrastructure to make that happen. India still does not. I can understand that, the poor dumping trash anywhere. What I cannot understand is the middle or upper class house dumping their trash over their back wall. In America, we love to bash America for being so environmentally destructive. Sorry, but we are one of the best countries (if not the best) on Earth. The Indian trash that is processed is burned. Granted, we have the wealth to properly process our trash, but India has millions of people that could be paid $100 a year to clean the place up.

We left the hotel very early to head for the airport. To get there, we drove through New Delhi, the center of town and the financial district. It was shocking how much nicer and cleaner this part of town was. Apparently, the hotel, despite being very nice, is in a bad part of town, and our previous destinations had taken us through the not-best-parts of town. So, only as we were leaving did we see the good parts of town. It was very encouraging to the group. Much less poverty, trash, and homelessness was visible. I could see the perceptions and views of the group change in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, we will return to Delhi late in the trip for our sightseeing.

Upon our arrival in Chennai, the new views were reaffirmed. Chennai is very nice, a cleaner, greener, more prosperous city. When we arrived at the hotel, I was shocked to see a summer camp in the hotel pool, certainly something I did not expect to see.

Today, is Tuesday, so it must be the Taj Mahal.  As a long time architecture student, I have studied the Taj for decades.  I must admit it was not one of the buildings I longed to see.  I grew up obsessed with Castle Neuschwienstein in the Black Forest of Germany, the IM Pei pyramid in Paris, anything build by Tommy Jefferson, and the atrium hotels of Atlanta’s John Portman.  I read about how Egypt’s pyramids were built and why the Tower of Pisa still stands.  But, I never studied the Taj.  Knew about it, but never studied it.

On the train and in the bus, we were talking about the Seven Wonders of the World and the various iterations of that list. The questions arose, “Why is the Taj not one of the Seven, and what buildings are part of the lists?”  The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the most famous of the lists, and it includes, as seen below in the drawing by 16th century Dutch artist Maarten van Heenskerck, the pyramids of Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Maussoloos, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. 

The list that most people actually recognize is the Seven Wonders of the Medieval World.  This lists consists of Stonehenge, the Catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, the Great Wall, the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  The Taj Mahal and the Red Fort in Delhi are on the Forgotten Wonders list, or are listed as near wonders.  Why?

In architecture school, we were taught that the Taj suffered from proportion problems.  It is base and top heavy while the middle is too small.  Interestingly, I did not see this from the normal photo spots.  The guides and locals encouraged photos from certain spots, like where the posted group picture was taken.  From these perfect spots, the building does look magnificent, but when you move further or closer, the scale issues become apparent. The aspect that makes the Taj truly amazing is the inlay and decorative elements.  The pictures do no do it justice, as it is hard to see how detailed, precise, and intricate the carvings, screen work, and inlays truly are.  Also, I think part of the issue is racism......

Poverty is an issue that I argue about quite a bit. The question is, “What level of poverty exists in the US?”  I always propose that America has no poverty.  Some people get very upset when I say that, but driving through the city today, I feel even stronger that I am right. Poverty is a relative word, and must be studied by comparing levels in America versus levels in other countries.  Americans are so ethnocentric; believing what is true in America is true elsewhere. I have seen poverty in South Africa, in Brazil, in China, and around the world.  However, I do not believe these countries compare with the poverty in India. Almost 300 million people live on under $1 a day.   That is greater than the population of the entire US.  Driving through the city of Delhi, you see thousands of people simply living by the side of the street, and they have no way to escape their poverty. In America, you can go years avoiding the truly poor, and McDonald’s is always hiring, offering at least some path out of poverty.  The Indian poor truly have no way out of the poverty they endure. I will continue to argue that the American lowest class are equivalent to much of the global middle class.