Shodh Yatra is a book which clearly justifies its title. There are a lot of things which can be learned merely through observation and are helpful in becoming self-aware. It is an engaging book which will leave the reader thinking, What happens next? This piece was written during a course offered at IIM-AhmedabadShodh Yatra, where the author went to trek in Leh. Shodh means research. This work voices out the observations made during the trek while keeping one focus on nature and another on self.

'Shodh Yatra' is a book which clearly justifies its title. There are a lot of things which can be learned merely through observation and are helpful in becoming self-aware. It is an engaging book which will leave the reader thinking, 'What happens next?' This piece was written during a course offered at IIM-Ahmedabad-'Shodh Yatra', where the author went to trek in Leh. Shodh means 'research'. This work voices out the observations made during the trek while keeping one focus on nature and another on self.

This book explores the process of grassroots innovation in the context of the Global South. It explains why these bottom-up solutions developed by common people are generated due to a lack of available or affordable technology to meet their needs and how they are included in the mainstream imagination of the economy by studying these innovations in India. It analyses the grassroots innovation process from idea generation to its implementation. Detailing both theoretical and practical dimensions of grassroots innovation, the book provides a holistic understanding of the phenomenon by tracing its history in the pre-independence discourse on development to the present-day policies for institutionalizing these innovations in the mainstream. It will provide the readers with a bottom-up commentary on innovation and development in the context of the Global South in general and India in particular. It adopts a qualitative research design with a wide range of data collected through interviews, participant observations, and field notes. The book contains seven chapters to describe the discourse, policy perspectives, and current practice of grassroots innovations in general. The interdisciplinary, timely book provides thoughtful analysis for scholars and upper-level students in the fields of technology and innovation management, development studies, and public management.

Is Shah Rukh Khan an effective actor? Is Naresh Trehan an effective doctor? Was A.P.J. Abdul Kalam an effective nation builder? Are you an effective person? In this book, bestselling author T.V. Rao studies and analyses effective doctors, actors, civil servants, social workers, educationists, nation builders and entrepreneurs. Some of them seem to go beyond the tenets of effectiveness and shine out as what the author calls Very Effective People and Super Effective People. His diverse examples and cases range from A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Devi Shetty, Anil Gupta to Kangana Ranaut, Sachin Tendulkar, Anupam Kher—to ordinary people whose lives are no less effective. Hugely readable, with self-assessment tools at the end of each chapter, Effective People will propel you to leap forward and discover the best in you.

The idea that small loans can help poor families build businesses and exit poverty has blossomed into a global movement. The concept has captured the public imagination, drawn in billions of dollars, reached millions of customers, and garnered a Nobel Prize. Radical in its suggestion that the poor are creditworthy and conservative in its insistence on individual accountability, the idea has expanded beyond credit into savings, insurance, and money transfers, earning the name microfinance. But is it the boon so many think it is? Readers of David Roodman's openbook blog will immediately recognize his thorough, straightforward, and trenchant analysis. Due Diligence, written entirely in public with input from readers, probes the truth about microfinance to guide governments, foundations, investors, and private citizens who support financial services for poor people. In particular, it explains the need to deemphasize microcredit in favor of other financial services for the poor.

What is it like to travel with others for adventure, lust and god? This delightful travelogue, in which Srinath Perur embarks upon ten conducted tours, is full of rich experiences: hanging on to a camel in the Thar Desert, joining thousands on a pilgrimage in Maharashtra, crossing living root bridges near Cherrapunji, rediscovering music while on the trail of Kabir, and a lot more. As much about people as it is about places, the book is also a reflection of the nature of popular travel today, which is marked by the packaging of experiences, the formation of tourist economies and compulsive picture-taking. How this influences tourists comes across vividly: in their creation of a mini India on a bus as they race through treasured sights in Europe; in their perfunctory devotion as they hop from temple to temple in Tamil Nadu; and in their ‘enjoying’ with sex workers far away from home. Ironic, and often comic, If It’s Monday It Must Be Madurai is an idiosyncratic portrait of India and her people.

Expertise is an intriguing construct. Though it is highly desired, it is commonly characterized by exclusivity or being something esoteric making it both seemingly difficult to acquire and understand. This opaqueness surrounding the nature of expertise in organizational contexts is coupled with greater demands for specialized work and employees' increased reliance on communication technologies to complete tasks - trends that further complicate the evaluation of workers' knowledge and abilities. This volume draws upon original works, from scholars of diverse backgrounds, to explore how recent changes in the structure of organizational life have altered the nature of expertise. Specifically, this book aims to challenge the perspective that organizational expertise exists to be recognized and utilized, and offers an alternative lens that views expertise as emergent and constituted in communication among organizing actors. Examining the intersection of communication and expertise, within and across different contexts of organizing, offers new insights into the discursive, material, and structural influences that contribute to an understanding of expertise. This book offers a comprehensive view of organizational expertise by presenting theoretical frameworks for the study of expertise, providing reviews of how the study of expertise has evolved, applying perspectives on expertise to different domains of organizational practice, and presenting new directions for the study of the intersection of expertise, communication, and organizing. The result is a treatment that considers expertise in diverse forms and across a variety of contexts of organizing, and in doing so provides valuable content to researchers from multiple disciplinary backgrounds.