In 2001, India had 4 million cell phone subscribers. Ten years later, that number had exploded to more than 750 million. Over just a decade, the mobile phone was transformed from a rare and unwieldy instrument to a palm-sized, affordable staple, taken for granted by poor fishermen in Kerala and affluent entrepreneurs in Mumbai alike. The Great Indian Phone Book investigates the social revolution ignited by what may be the most significant communications device in history, one which has disrupted more people and relationships than the printing press, wristwatch, automobile, or railways, though it has qualities of all four. In this fast-paced study, Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey explore the whole ecosystem of the cheap mobile phone. Blending journalistic immediacy with years of field-research experience in India, they portray the capitalists and bureaucrats who control the cellular infrastructure and wrestle over bandwidth rights, the marketers and technicians who bring mobile phones to the masses, and the often poor, village-bound users who adapt these addictive and sometimes troublesome devices to their daily lives. Examining the challenges cell phones pose to a hierarchy-bound country, the authors argue that in India, where caste and gender restrictions have defined power for generations, the disruptive potential of mobile phones is even greater than elsewhere. The Great Indian Phone Book is a rigorously researched, multidimensional tale of what can happen when a powerful and readily available technology is placed in the hands of a large, still predominantly poor population.

With the rise of low-cost smartphones and cheap data plans, millions of Indians are now discovering the internet for the first time, and the implications are as vast as the country itself.

In The Mobile Revolution senior executives of the world's leading mobile vendors, operators, service providers, software giants, chip kings, media and entertainment conglomerates, publishers, music moguls and brand marketers reveal their secrets and strategies. Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Qualcomm, Vodafone, Microsoft, Intel, Yahoo, New York Times, EMI, CNN, ABC, Disney, Warner Music and Universal are just a few of the names that feature. As a result, the book abounds with inside stories of great industry successes (and equally great flops!) as the narrative shifts constantly between the major cities of several continents - from Helsinki and Stockholm, London and Frankfurt, Tokyo and Seoul, Beijing and Singapore, New York City and Los Angeles, to Bangalore and Moscow. The Mobile Revolution is about the making of mobile markets and services worldwide, with a firm emphasis on innovation. Not just another account of technology innovation, it examines the rise of mobile services in the context of maturing and emerging mobile markets.

Harness the Power of Social Networking to Promote Innovation and Drive Growth A treasure trove of strategic and tactical insights for the business leader Provides relevant experience from a host of powerful case studies and compelling business scenarios Secrets for avoiding costly mistakes that can cripple a social networking initiative Millions of people use social networking sites, and companies are increasingly turning to social networking to build relationships with customers. But companies routinely miss the best opportunities to create value and promote innovation–by using social networking to build thriving communities of employees, partners, and customers. Business leaders and strategists can drive immense value from social networking “inside the firewall.” Drawing on her unsurpassed experience deploying innovative social networking systems within IBM® and for customers, Maria Azua demonstrates how to establish social networking communities, and then leverage those communities to drive extraordinary levels of innovation. Azua offers specific techniques for promoting mass collaboration in the enterprise and strategies to monetize social networking to generate new business opportunities. Whatever your industry, you’ll learn how to choose and implement the right social networking solutions for your unique challenges...how to avoid false starts and wasted time...and how to evaluate and make the most of today’s most promising social technologies–from wikis and blogs to knowledge clouds.

This book examines how the BJP became the world’s largest political party. It goes beyond the usual narrative of the party’s Hindutva politics to explain how, under Narendra Modi, the party reshaped the Indian polity using its own brand of social engineering. According to the findings of this book, this reconstruction was cleverly powered by new caste coalitions, the claim of a new welfare state that focused on marginalised social groups and the making of a women-voter base. Based on data from three unique indices—the Mehta–Singh Social Index, which studies the caste composition of Indian political parties; the Narad Index, which calculates communication patterns across topics and audiences; and PollNiti, which connects and tallies hundreds of political and economic datasets—The New BJP is full of startling insights into the way both the party and the country function. Previously untapped historical records, exclusive interviews with party leaders and comprehensive reportage from across India provide a fresh understanding of the BJP’s growth areas, including the Northeast and south India. A lucid and objective study of the BJP and India today, this book will be useful to researchers, journalists, students, activists and general public alike. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka).