|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
January
-February
2010
|
"In early-2002, the world witnessed a miracle of entrepreneurial resolve and common sense, far removed from the conventional arena
of ‘entrepreneurship’. Twelve of continental Europe’s most powerful governments came together to create an economic utopia of
sorts, embracing a single currency and paving the way for a notionally level market that serves over 300 million people today. With
the circulation of the first euro notes and coins, the world moved significantly closer to realizing the true virtues of ‘globalization’.
However, beyond its many great merits, its promises of seamless trade and borderless progress, the euro was simply a smart idea.
That was eight years ago. The same period of time that The Smart Manager has been around for.
In these eight years, The Smart Manager has been led by this simple view of management and entrepreneurship—that beyond
its many permutations and combinations, it is essentially a playing field for smart ideas that resist straightjackets, definitions and
shelf-lives. Through every section of the magazine, we have reinforced our endorsement of ‘smartness’ as the guiding principle in
management. And to help managers—both practising and aspiring—adopt this somewhat intangible principle, we have given ‘SMART’
a very tangible grid of interpretation: ‘S’trategy, ‘M’arketing, ‘A’nalysis, ‘R’esources and ‘T’echnology.
That though still does not answer the basic question: “What is smartness?” Over the past eight years, working with the best
entrepreneurial minds in the world, we have realized that this can be a self-defeating question. According to one school of thought,
smartness is a Holy Grail precisely because it cannot be defined. It can come in any shape and hue, inspired by just about anything.
That’s why smart ideas work so well with passion, another indefinable asset in business. Text-book definitions are irrelevant
for both.
Though this sounds like an exciting paradigm, it also presents a quandary. If smartness cannot be defined, how does one aspire to it?
If entrepreneurship is all about unpredictable acts of smartness and passion, how do businesses guard themselves from real perils
like stagnation and recession? How does one learn to be smart?
We believe that much of the answer to these questions still lies in good old textbook thinking and predictive wisdom, which can help
managers and entrepreneurs stay rooted through the excitement of it all. At times like these, when businesses are more complex
than ever, studiousness is as vital as chutzpah. Notwithstanding their glamour quotient, there is more to smart ideas than passion
and instinct.
The eighth anniversary special of The Smart Manager is a celebration of this belief, powered by fifteen of the world’s foremost
names in management research. World-class scholarship and its applications have always been our focal concerns, and eight years
on we are even more committed to them. For our editorial team, that is a smart idea, as your continued readership has proven eight
times over."
|
|
Click Here to read More
|
|
|
|
|
|