How to Negotiate like an Indian — 7 Rules

Guess who won? Indians have founded more engineering and technology companies in the U.S. during the past decade than immigrants from Britain, China, Taiwan and Japan combined (Source: Where The Engineers Are, Vivek Wadhwa, 2007). Incredible. The entrepreneurial abilities of Indians in general has amazed me for years. Two weeks ago, I saw a screening of the film 2 Million Minutes, a new comparative documentary that examines education in the US, China, and India. Lo and behold, it contained this great little description on one of the greatest skills Indians bring to the table: Negotiation. In India, every transaction — EVERY transaction — is negotiated. As our guide Vishnu explained, “In India, we bargain to the level of the individual vegetable purchase.” Hotmail founder Sabeer Bhatia, a CA transplant from Bangalore, credited the bargaining skills he learned in vegetable markets at home for getting Microsoft to push its acquisition price for his company from $160 million to $400 million.

National Geographic Photo Contest 2011 National Geographic is currently holding its annual photo contest, with the deadline for submissions coming up on November 30. For the past nine weeks, the society has been gathering and presenting galleries of submissions, encouraging readers to vote for them as well. National Geographic was kind enough to let me choose among its entries from 2011 for display here on In Focus. Gathered below are 45 images from the three categories of People, Places, and Nature, with captions written by the individual photographers. [45 photos] Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: Many people pilgrimage to Uluru, but what is seen there often depends on where you've come from. Eruption of the Cordon del Caulle. Beluga whales in the arctic having fun. This is a streetcar in New Orleans traveling back towards The Quarter on St. This image captures almost 6 hours of climbing parties on Rainier going for the summit under starry skies. Russia, polar region of West Siberia, Tazovsky Peninsula.

Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived Additional notes from the author: If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla. Ben's also got a book out which is packed full of awesome. There's an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It's corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life. The drunk history of Tesla is quite awesome, too.