Among the various things that get me fuming and fretting is the casual manner in which books are arranged in bookstores and libraries. You know what I'm talking about - those oh-so-innocent mistakes in categorization, the inability to check up inventory and, the general feeling of being ill-at-ease when using these services. Yes, that's the same feeling that returned with a vengeance when looking at BigBooks.

Cut to random anecdote.

During my student days when we were doing lab-work, we had a teacher whose daily drill was "a student is known by how clean he/she keeps her workspace". This, to me, was a small variation of the one my dad has - "the cleanliness habits of a family is known by how clean and organized the kitchen table is".

Cut to present day rant.

Why are the above to ditties relevant ? When you visit a bookstore, all you want to do is search for the books you want and hope that they will be under the appropriate categories. Once you've built up your stash you queue up in front of the cash counter, plonk down the cash and waltz out of the door (err... if you are at the Kolkata Book Fair, you'd either have to lug your sorry behind through a gate that is open just enough for anyone wearing skinny jeans to slip through or, you get pushed by the "maashimaas" into the wide open space in front of the stall). When you go to a library you figure out the way books are organized and then look them up. In both these cases the single most important aspect is the ability to look up what you want and, then obtain it. This is precisely where BigBooks fails completely miserably. Let me put it in some context - I used Flipkart when their search results were unpredictable and, the resultset displayed after the query was abominable. However, it didn't take them long to start fixing large parts of it (they got an important thing right though - they kept the site very sparse and simple in those initial days) . I didn't have to listen to "yeah we know that the search is a bit broken, why don't you send a list of books and we'd add it to your queue".

In my world of consuming online services that's fail. I hope that BigBooks revisits this part. If searching and building up a queue is difficult then using the service is difficult. A service that is difficult to use would have some uphill climb in customer acquisition even if it is backed up by a superb telephone-based networking and support.

Sarah Lacy's new book is an interesting read. Coming out at the end of a 40 week road pound talking with entrepreneurs in different 'emerging' countries, "the book began as a study in one thing: greed-based entrepreneurship in places emerging out of chaos and giving rise to enormous greenfield opportunities the Western world no longer has."

That's an interesting premise to base it upon given that US markets would be more inclined to read about how the US economy would re-invent itself as the centre point of business and, the focal point of innovation. Innovation forms a large context, a permanent backdrop to the book. However, innovation, and more importantly, the drive to innovate, finds resonance and acceptance in the somewhat less talked about and (sometimes) less glamorous places - Israel, China, Brazil, Rwanda and India. And yet it unabashedly states that there "are even more countries rising up that this book didn’t explore—like Russia, Mexico, Turkey, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. As more of these economies achieve stability and seek to follow in China and India’s footsteps, they’re increasingly turning to other emerging markets for help, not the West."

The book provides its own summary later towards the end - "We used to assume that sophisticated Silicon Valley venture capitalists would be the dominant investors as high-growth entrepreneurship spread to the world, but just a decade or so in, that’s not the case, even in our own country. In a world where technology has made talent and money this fungible, the incumbent advantage is almost gone." And, the recurring theme amongst the entrepreneurs in this chaotic world order seems to be that "The more disenfranchised a person is, the more incentive he or she has to upend the established order. The American dream is the very idea that having nothing allows you to take enough risk that you can achieve anything."

"“Entrepreneur” is a fashionable mantle nearly everyone wraps themselves in these days, but this is what a conversation with a great entrepreneur is like. It’s not about technology or features or acronyms—it’s a way of thinking and problem solving, coupled with the internal compass to believe in the idea and the confidence and determination to carry it out."

Sarah makes it a point to hammer home some known truths like "Indeed, the more big, publicly traded tech companies have talked about innovation, the more they’ve just bought it rather than invented it." and, "While companies talk about buying innovation, they have a shoddy track record of incorporating and investing in what they buy."

Amongst the observations of the economies I found the one on India to be veering a bit towards predictable lines. However, the quote “Great companies often fail when they take their success for granted. And so, too, can great societies.” fits in so shockingly that it might actually be something that needs to be absorbed and understood in all its ghastly explanation. Add to it the fact that “Indian entrepreneurship at its core is creative but not disciplined.” and you have a situation that is perhaps to aptly described by Edward Luce - “India finds itself higher up the ladder than one would expect it to be. It is just that most of its people are still sitting at the bottom,”

"Just as a hot meal, clean water, or a U.S. dollar can take on a meaning the rich can’t understand in a poor neighborhood, so too can basic technologies that connect people to one another." - that and the fact that entrepreneurship, irrespective of the fact that it is indeed driven by greed, is fuelled by the need to change what is provides a different way of looking at the businesses (eg. redbus.in etc) that emerges in order to provide a different experience. The subtext of the book is about "How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos". That's precisely what it is. A fairly rapid if not a free fall insight into various businesses. Written in the form of an easy-observation-narrative pieces the book is quick read but has enough points to ensure that there is a need to revisit and re-read.