Monday 18 January 2010

STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH: Is it the mantra?

Yesterday afternoon my daughter Nimisha came home for a short vacation from her technology institute at New Delhi, where she is finishing her BTech (Manufacturing Engineering). She is also an IIM’s hopeful and this winter she also took the much hyped online CAT. She was one of the spared without an scratch kind after the great pandemonium associated with the online CAT. But all the galata was worth it in the sense that was like a free awareness raising mega media event to many countrymen who are neither offline nor online!.

Since the book titled “STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH” was written by an IIM-A graduate and also presented to me by my daughter I decided to go through it. I also felt a little obliged to read it because I am also a so called “Alumni”  of the IIM-A institute after having done a residential course on management development.

STAY HUNGRY STAY FOOLISH is basically a nonfiction book by a former IIM-Ahmadabad student, Rashmi Bansal. She lives in Mumbai where she works as an media entrepreneur and journalist. In this book she studies 25 IIM Ahmedabad graduates, who chose to become entrepreneurs and hit the rough roads instead of more conventional and comfortable option of high-paying corporate jobs which comes as perk of being an IIM graduate. These 25 inspiring graduates are quite diverse in age, in their outlook and the industries they ventured but all have one thing in common and that is they believed in the “POWER OF THIER DREAMS”, selected their own path and started their own venture to wrote their own fortunes.

This book will help young talent from our colleges to believe in their dreams and and inspire them to see beyond good placements and 5 figure salaries.

I felt that its is a welcome read for young generation which has been forced to think vertically leaving little scope for creativity or as de Bono’s would put it “Lateral Thinking”. If your young son or daughter is travelling far and has spare time on the way, this book will not be boring companion to him. In this book there are some interesting case studies which is also a standard teaching method of IIM-A and Harvard business school.

Overall it is an well written, short and simple travelling companion English book. It’s more or less interview kind of book. However, it doesn’t require one to be a Management student to be able to imbibe the message the author is trying to sell. I found that the language was not very sophisticated at places but that’s what the language of today’s IIM’s and IIT’s!

I can recommend this paperback which has an affordable price of 125/- to all those who are starting out on their career path to read it at their leisure during travel.

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