Sajith Pai
Writings on VC, Tech & Culture
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Hacking Habits

February 7, 2015 By Sajith Pai in Miscellany No Comments Tags: Design, IDEO, Innova Schools, Online / Digital, Strategy

Allow me to point out four interesting trends

  • Leading VC firms are hiring top-name designers as Partners and Principals in their firms. John Maeda, ex-Dean of RISD was hired by KPCB as Design Partner, Irene Au by Khosla Ventures, Tom Hulme by Google Ventures and recently Jeffrey Veen by True Ventures.
  • Big Business is buying innovative boutique design shops by the bucket. CapitalOne bought Adaptive Path, the legendary valley-based
…
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A Freesheet for New Delhi?

January 4, 2015 By Sajith Pai in News Media No Comments Tags: Free Newspapers / Freesheets, Freesheets, London Evening Standard, Strategy

A colleague who has recently joined us, wrote a mail to our Vice Chairman, sharing his thoughts on how a free-sheet daily could take advantage of the millions of people who travel in New Delhi’s Metro.

I detail the same below, along with my response. In my reply, I also refer to an earlier blog post Free newspapers : Why free translates to profits!

I will continue to update this …

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What I found interesting in Higher Education last week #12

December 26, 2014 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Ashoka University, CornellTech, Higher Education, MBA, Stanford

This is a list of what I found interesting in Higher Education news and happenings.

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Interview with Pramath Sinha, promoter of Ashoka University. Relevant for data points; 1,000 applications, to which they made 250 offers and finally 133 accepted to join the inaugural class. 60% of students are on some kind of scholarship, about 10% have a free ride. Median SATs at 2050,  median CBSE 12th scores …

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Contrasting Susan Wojcicki and Marissa Mayer, and a look at Yahoo’s Strategy

December 25, 2014 By Sajith Pai in Miscellany No Comments Tags: CEOs, Marissa Mayer, Online / Digital, Roger Martin, Strategy, Susan Wojcicki, Yahoo

Last week brought us two well-written articles in the New York Times; the first, a withering look at Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, by Nicholas Carlson and the second, a rather more positive one on Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, by Jonathan Mahler. 

I found the two stories fascinating, and I thought it would be interesting for this blog to take a quick look at the two CEOs …

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Thoughts on Books, Online Book Discovery, and Bookstores

November 30, 2014 By Sajith Pai in Retail No Comments Tags: Amazon, Book Discovery, Books, Bookstores, E-Books, Goodreads, Online Bookstores

“The decline of physical bookshops…affects which books have a chance of breaking out : bestsellers flourish, but midlist books that might have been discovered while browsing a bookstore are worse off, because consumers cannot easily stumble upon them while shopping on the internet.” – The Future of the Book, The Economist Oct 11, ’14

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“Amazon is ideal for finding the book you know you want. But it is …

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What I found interesting in higher education last week #11

September 15, 2014 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Harvard University, Higher Education, IITs, Nalanda University, UGC, Universities, Vocational Education

What I found interesting in the world of higher education last week, with some added thoughts and views. I work for the Times of India Group. All views are personal.

News

The Times of India looks at caste discrimination in premier Indian campuses after the recent suicide of a Dalit student at IIT Bombay.

***

Mint covers Nalanda University’s launch (or relaunch). And even before Nalanda can come on steam …

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What I found interesting in higher education last week #10

September 7, 2014 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Harvard University, Higher Education, IITs, Ivy League, MOOCs, Nalanda University, Northeastern University, Silicon Valley, Steven Pinker, UGC, Universities

What I found interesting in the world of higher education last week, with some added thoughts and views. I work for the Times of India Group. All views are personal.

A Rebuttal to Prof Steven Pinker

Prof Steven Pinker writes a fascinating rebuttal of William Deresiewicz’s searing Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League, apparently the most read article in the history of The New Republic. This …

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What I found interesting in higher education last week #9

September 2, 2014 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Ashoka University, Clayton Christensen, Higher Education, IITs, MOOCs, Online / Digital, Unbundling, Universities

What I found interesting in the world of higher education last week, with some added thoughts and views. I work for the Times of India Group. All views are personal.

Unbundling, weak signals and the rise of Ashoka University

Unbundling in Higher Education, i.e., the impending breakup of key services provided by the university, is a theme that has been covered extensively. The two single best posts on this subject …

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What I found interesting in higher education last week #8

August 25, 2014 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Higher Education, IITs, Indian Administrative Services (IAS), Johns Hopkins University, MOOCs, Online / Digital, Peking University, UGC, Universities

What I found interesting in the world of higher education last week, with some added thoughts and views. I work for the Times of India Group. All views are personal.

The Point is MOOC 

What do I think about MOOCs? What do I think of their impact? How do I think they will evolve?

Enough has been said and written about MOOCs. So for this post to be useful reading, …

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What I found interesting in higher education last week #7

August 18, 2014 By Sajith Pai in Education No Comments Tags: Higher Education, IDEO, IITs, Innova Schools, Minerva Project, MIT, MOOCs, Sharif University, UGC, Universities

A Report on the Future of MIT Education

Last week, a specially-constituted task force released its final report on the future of MIT Education. Only the 4th such report in its 153-year history, the report comes at a crucial juncture, when “higher education is at an inflection point”.

The taskforce does not suggest any radical overhaul.  The tone of the report is to suggest and encourage ‘bold’ experimentation within …

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