In a landmark paper titled The Nature of the Firm published in 1937, then-26 year old economist Ronald Coase addressed the question of why firms exist. “Outside the firm, price movements direct production, which is coordinated through a series of exchange transactions…
I wrote a piece for Mint on how structural policy reforms have a similar effect to technology-driven deflation. The thesis for this article came from a tweetstorm: If your existing asset base achieves 30% output increase, you defer capex, recruitment….
Harsh recently wrote an excellent piece on how India’s economy will grow from the current $2.5 trillion GDP to $12 trillion by 2030. His prediction rests on on two planks: increasing participation of women in the workforce, and technological change….
Has the Indian startup opportunity been wildly over-estimated? Mahesh Murthy’s article on this question has triggered a debate. Mahesh feels the “copy-paste” approach will not work in India — provided that most of India’s highly-valued startups are simply clones of successful US…
In his book Zero to One, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Peter Thiel addresses the distinction between globalization and technology. Globalization constitutes “horizontal progress”, he writes, or “taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere”; and China is the “paradigmatic…
In my op-ed for Mint, I write about the potential applications bitcoin could have specifically for emerging markets like India: India’s banking and financial services industry has incumbents that are inert, sloth-like and highly risk-averse. The banking industry in particular…
In his new book Zero To One, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel writes: At the macro level, the single word for horizontal progress is globalization – taking things that work somewhere and making them work everywhere. China is the…
Energy and clean technology investing has proven to be disastrous for venture capitalists. Capital allocated to clean tech fell to less than half in 2013 from the $3.7 billion invested in 2012, and new clean tech-focused funds were able to…
For several decades, Silicon Valley has had a near-monopoly on innovation. The Valley emerged out of America’s deep commitment to higher education and scientific research, combined with the American will to maintain leadership in defence technology. Through the second half…