Bala V Balachandran, Founder, Chairman & Dean, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, along with Shailendra Tipparaju, Founder, Colosseum Group, launched their book, Reflections... on living, loving and working in Chennai recently.
The book, published by Fondessan, is an adaptation of life experiences by Balachandran and Tipparaju, who come from humble backgrounds but have found success in their own way by following their dreams. This book aims to empower readers, as it tries to be more of a mirror than a journal.
The authors
A teacher by qualification but an academic entrepreneur by choice, Bala Balachandran is one of the best known names in the Indian and American management education landscape. Prof Bala has been a key player in revamping the management education landscape in India since the early 1990s. He was part of the team that recruited the first set of faculty members for IIM Bangalore in the late 1960s and was conferred the Padmashri in 2001, in recognition of his contribution towards higher education.
Shailendra is a serial entrepreneur who has built several successful businesses over the past two decades. As a patriot, artist, technologist, educator and a mentor – Shailendra’s mission is to showcase the heritage, culture and power of India to the world.
Intelligent enterprise
The book launch included a talk on ‘Seven steps to building an intelligent enterprise’ by Surendra Tipparaju, Principal AI Architect in Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Domain, Microsoft. He presented a step-by-step approach to building an intelligent enterprise based on evidence and learning derived from working with various enterprises across the world at various stages of readiness to adopt AI.
Extracts from the book’s foreword:
“When an 80-something-year-old and a 40-something-year-old put their minds together, time stops and magic is created. Among many of the delightful and futuristic thoughts we were able to incubate, we also hit upon the idea of a book. This book is not your edge-of-the seat thriller or a run of the mill entertainer. In the following pages, you will find thoughts, ideas, moods, emotions, suggestions – if you will. The book is to be read a few pages/thoughts at a time, somewhat like the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, although ours is way more colourful and contains far less narrative. Assimilate the contents of those few pages and ruminate.
“You’ll also be pleasantly surprised at the universal applicability of the ‘isms’ that appear in the following pages. Furthermore, depending on your frame of mind, you will find different perspectives and interpretations too. There is something for everyone. You will be able to identify with much of the material in the book. Its beauty lies in being able to take you back in time to cull out so many memories to which you will surely be able to relate parts of the book.
“Prepare to be transported back in time to relive the experiences of your childhood, arguments with friends, precious moments with loved ones, duels with rivals, exhilarating wins, crippling losses, any memory that your beautiful mind has stored away in the hope that one day, some meaning may be derived from that specific experience. Wisdom and absurdity, experience and naïveté, brain and brawn, emotional maturity and youthful exuberance, values and attitudes, are all beautifully juxtaposed in a stimulating panorama of colour and text presenting a veritable feast for the eyes and ears. After all, we did promise you magic!”