Ankur Sharma

I usually don't read a book just because everyone else is reading it - it makes me thinks conventionally, corrupts my thought process into more of a mass one, not the kind I usually love to live with. But if I can take the liberty of paraphrasing Steven Levy from " In The Plex ", with his new book, Walter Isaacson made me chase everyone elses' tail lights, and for the first time, I am kind of proud at being conventional. From today, I am going to start reading Steve Jobs in Hardcover, which has gotten shipped at a 50% pre-release discount, from Indiaplaza (Yes, Flipkart ; they pipped you this time!), a couple of days back.  Now if you please excuse me, I have to go to get some carrot juice for Mr. Jobs! It's Halloween after all!

To build a new system, you don't compete with the old one. You build a new system and make the old system obsolete - Buckminster Fuller Too often, we end up spending too much time staring at the old system, trying to improvise it for the new world, that we lose the race even before we start running it.

is not gold. However, its better to dig and figure out that it isn't gold than not to dig at all. I know life is too short to do all the mistakes by yourself to learn from them. But then, at times you just can't rely on someone to do a mistake for you to learn.   You got to pay your own dues, to avail the services of genie called Mr. Experience.

There comes a time in the life, when you realize that your value system is different from that of your parents'. Guess, then it is the time to start all over again!

just because you know (or you think, you know) that someone can clean it after you. Instead do it right the first time. And if you can't do that, just get rid of that responsibility doyen which doesn't allow you to think without being corrupt, biased, irrational. That's the least you can do to push the humanity to be a part of thought based approach of work as against factory based approach of work.

I don't even need to speak how Apple changed Music Industry using iTunes. Most importantly, they tapped the long tail of songs which were almost impossible to sell for the Brand labels and impossible to buy for music affectionados. They end up contributing to roughly 10%-15% of the iTunes music sales now. To understand in more detail as to long tail has contributed to iTunes Marketplace , check out Ryan Hupfer 's graph.    In India, a similar effort in now being forged by Sony Mix , the new music channel by Multi Screen Media Pvt. Ltd. (a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment ). In their "About Us" they explain their product positioning as "Moving into the gap created by erstwhile music channels rechristened as ‘youth channels’ and other music channels dishing out non-music content as interstitial programming, we are confident that viewers shall enjoy MIX as a channel that remains true to the music genre." A good stab at MTVs and Ch

Could be a thorn of a question, especially if not asked. Better still put a positive spin, and ask as Business Insider says , "Am I replacing someone or is this a new position?"

 He has landed on the playing field of life. The only question is: Will he Play? More often than not, he spends his life either being busy digging the place where he stands, to skew the level field or staring at the wrong question: Will he Win/Lose?

Last Friday (1st October, 2011); I had an opportunity to talk at Christ University , with the First Year Marketing Student. I did a small presentation, explaining students what I do, explaining them what is Digital Media, what are its sacred pillars (according to me - clearly arguable) and how it can work for them in India. But it became interesting after that. It was students who made it a worth while session. They were intrigued, involved, and their quality of questions they asked blew me away! They made me realized that it's not the IIMs but the institutes like Christ, where management education is being re-invented. The seminar's excerpt is also featured at Christ University's Marketing Club Mouthpiece Here is the presentation. Let me know your thoughts and how can I make it better. Digital media and you View more presentations from Ankur Sharma

It takes a toll on you. All of a sudden, it makes you believe that death is imminent. It is close by. And you better live with the philosophy Steve Jobs made famous with his commencement speech , "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" Just in case you are not following my blog, the two people who I wrote about, were Steve Jobs and Jagjit Singh . They couldn't be more different from each other. But from the time I have been thinking about writing this note, all I could see was similarities. They both were geniuses in their own field and transformed the way people saw their respective industries. Mirza Ghalib once said, "When your creations are started being used by tawayafs and fakirs " - 19th century version of common man - "then you are destined to be immortal". Steve Jobs did that to Personal Computers and Jagjit Singh to Ghazals.

My father has been a lasting influence on how I and my siblings think, what we do and aspire. He isn't one of those expressive ones who would cuddle and would take us to play. That was Mummy's job. His way of showing love was talking about the studies, giving pat on the back when we did good and of course bashing up when we didn't raise up to the bar. But there was one thing which bind him and me, even till today. Ghazals My Father had a childlike fanaticism about them (he is kinda grown up now). In 1970s , when buying music system in India wasn't as easy as buying groceries and wasn't as cheap as Rs. 4000;  he got it assembled, just to make sure that he gets to listen Ghazals on "just the right music system". He sat through all night in the recording shops, to get the live recordings of Ghazals on the  cassette tape and spent lavish sum of his salary (by those standards) to get those tapes. I grew up listening those Ghazals and understanding

Last month, when I wrote a post about Steve Jobs , his famous Stanford Commencement Speech and Karma; little did I realize that I am going to write another post about him so soon, and not for all the right reasons. He is no more and his passing away has made even the President of United States comment about how Jobs was "bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it". Surely he was. He first changed the way people publish content, by working with Adobe. People only talk about their conflict, in the light of iPad not using Flash. Rarely do they talk about what they both together did to publishing industry. I believe his second biggest contribution was to change the way people see music. Sony had already started this revolution, but it was Jobs and Ive and iPod, who drove it from inflection point. Now there is nothing else which has not already been written about him, post his death. But having said that, there is one thing which