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Failure is not the exclusive domain of startups. Even the biggest of companies can deliver a dud despite thorough planning and solid execution. While there is no magic formula to guarantee success, one method comes pretty close to it - premortem . Created by Gary Klein while studying decision-making in the US armed forces, this technique is one even Economics Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman agrees with . Read on to find out how you can use it to make sure you leave no stone unturned to make your product a success. A premortem is a thought experiment for your team. It gets done in a single meeting in which you assume your product has failed and then figure out what contributed to it. Below are five things to keep in mind when conducting a premortem. The five Ws of a premortem When Do this exercise before the launch of the product ( or company, service, initiative ) but after a couple of planning rounds. It is important that you do not start the process too early or too late. Start to

Jack Ma, the wealthiest man in China spoke with Charlie Rose early this year at the Davos World Economic Forum about his journey founding Alibaba, a Chinese E-Commerce website that today handles more traffic than Ebay and Amazon combined. Last year, Alibaba raised the largest Initial Public Offering on the New York Stock Exchange, at the tune of $25 Billion, valuing the company at approximately $200 Billion and Jack Ma’s net worth at $20+ Billion. In his interview (video above), he gave a few interesting tips on his success: 1. Make it a daily habit. In order to learn English, a teenage Jack Ma with limited resources decided to go to the Shangri-La Hotel every morning and pick up Western tourists to give them free tours of his home town HangZhou, in return for English lessons and some practise. He did this every morning for 9 years, rain or snow. 2. Do not give up. Rejection is something Jack Ma is extremely familiar with and it does not seem to faze him one bit. He faile

1.   Dean's Blue Hole Image Credit: Wikipedia Where: Long Island, Bahamas Located in a bay near Clarence Town on the Bahamas’ Long Island, Dean’s Blue Hole is 650 feet deep and is the dreaded challenge of every professional deep-sea diver. Legend has it that the hole was dug by the devil that drags people in it and kills them.  2.   Kennecott Copper Mine Image Credit: Wikipedia Where: Salt Lake City, Utah Also known as the Bingham Canyon Mine, the mine was named a National Historic Landmark in 1966. It is a huge 2.5 mile-wide pit located in the Oquirrh Mountains outside Salt Lake City, and is currently owned by the Rio Tinto Group, an international mining and exploration company headquartered in the United Kingdom. 3.   Chand Baori Image Credit: Wikipedia Where: Abhaneri, Rajasthan Located opposite Harshat Mata temple in Rajasthan, India, Chand Baori ( baori means a steepwell) extends approximately 100 ft into the ground making it one of the deepest

sounds like an April Fool’s joke, but from what we can tell, the Chinese government is completely serious about their latest  high speed rail  project. According to multiple news outlets, China plans to build an 8,000+ mile railroad (sounds plausible) connecting China, Russia, Canada, and the U.S. that includes a 125 mile undersea tunnel spanning the Bering Strait! The plan was announced in China’s state-run newspaper, the  Beijing Times , and apparently Russia is already on-board with the plan. While it would be nice to travel from China to America in two days without setting foot in a single airport, engineers around the globe are skeptical. According to the report, which cites a single expert at the  Chinese Academy of Engineering , Chinese officials “are considering a route that would start in the country’s northeast, thread through eastern Siberia and cross the Bering Strait via a 125-mile long underwater tunnel into Alaska.” This sounds fine, until you realize the

HE should not surprise anyone that a book by Khushwant Singh is called  The Company of Women . The title is apt, as this is a rollicking sexual romp through a whole company of women by the chief character, Mohan Kumar. You could ask why, at 84, an author who can write a scholarly history of the Sikhs, and knows so much about natural history, and writes so elegantly and with such ease, should limit himself to this kind of novel. The answer appears to be that this is what he enjoys. In the author's note, Singh admits what Mohan Kumar does is something he'd have liked to have done, and says the title could just as well have been "Fantasies of an Octogenarian". Of course, there's much more to Mohan Kumar than just sex. The words "Havana cigar" and "Mercedes" on the first page itself indicate how well this son of a railway official has done in life. He won a scholarship to Princeton. Never truly at home in the US, his love and loyalty to h

. Jawahar Lal Nehru - 16 years 286 days 2. Indira Gandhi - 15 years 91 days 3. Rajiv Gandhi - 5 years 32 days 4. Narasimha Rao - 4 years 11 months 5. Manmohan Singh - 10 years 4 days  In total 57 years these people could not get " Achche din" and pappu wants achche din in 10 months..... We have elected a prime minister not a magician.... ( Must Read )  Why is Narendra Modi making more foreign visits ? - Barack Obama and China supports India's bid for permanent UNSC seat. - $35 billion investment by Japan over a period of 5 years and along with it their expertise in making bullet trains. - Australia is set to sign a Nuclear Power deal with India to supply around 500 tonnes of Uranium to India. - Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Indra Nooyi (Pepsico), Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) discusses possible investments. - Israel inks $5 million deal for Joint Educational Research programme. - $20 billion investment from

A magnitude-7.9 earthquake shook Nepal's capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley on Saturday, the worst quake in the Himalayan nation in over 80 years. The world's strongest earthquakes since 1900: May 22, 1960: A magnitude-9.5 earthquake in southern Chile and ensuing tsunami kill at least 1,716 people. March 28, 1964: A magnitude-9.2 quake in Prince William Sound, Alaska, kills 131 people, including 128 from a tsunami. Dec. 26, 2004: A magnitude-9.1 quake in Indonesia triggers an Indian Ocean tsunami, killing 230,000 people in a dozen countries. March 11, 2011: A magnitude-9.0 quake off the northeast coast of Japan triggers a tsunami, killing more than 18,000 people. Nov. 4, 1952: A magnitude-9.0 quake in Kamchatka in Russia's Far East causes damage but no reported deaths despite setting off 9.1-meter (30-foot) waves in Hawaii. Feb. 27, 2010: A magnitude-8.8 quake shakes Chile, generating a tsunami and killing 524 people. Jan. 31, 1906: A magni

Those long, lazy summer holidays, filled with cricket, Rasna, and 12-hour Shinchan marathons are a thing of the past – a part of school and childhood. In college, holidays mean only one thing -- internship. Once high stipends and big names influenced a student's decision on where to intern. But lately, a noticeable shift in this trend is seen. Students are willing to work for minimum stipends as long as they get to work on interesting brands and have a wider networking exposure, as these are things money cannot buy. The obvious questions: why work for small stipends and unknown brands? Why work at a startup? The answer is simple: What would you rather be: a clerk at work or a contributing member of  a project? If  your answer is the latter, then head for a startup. I have been working at Lowfundwala Productions, a startup that tells startup stories, for quite some time. In this article I will share my eight reasons for interning with a startup.   1) You are trusted and considered

Pretending to be something you’re not. Maybe you’re pretending to be a sports fan to impress your boss, or you’re keeping your mouth shut about something to keep the peace. Maybe you’re pretending that you’re an expert in something that’s really not your cup of tea. But continuously pretending to be something you’re not is not being true to yourself and will keep you feeling empty. Making decisions based only on money. Whether we’re talking about your personal salary or your project’s budget, making decisions  solely  based on money is almost never a good idea. Sure, it’s important to run the numbers, but there are dozens of other factors — including your gut feeling — you’ll want to take into account. Thinking you can change something about the job. Much like a relationship, if you go into a job thinking, “This would be the perfect job, if only…” that’s a red flag. Chances are, unless you’re taking a leadership, C-level position, you aren’t going to be able to change thing

1. They Know Their Audience Great communicators don’t worry about sounding important, showing off their expertise, or boosting their own egos. Instead, they think about what people need to hear, and how they can deliver this message so that people will be able to hear it. This doesn’t mean that leaders tell people what they  want  to hear. Quite the opposite­—they tell people what’s important for them to know, even if it’s bad news. 2. They Are Experts In Body Language Great communicators are constantly tracking people’s reactions to their message. They are quick to pick up on cues like facial expressions and body language because they know this is the only feedback many people will give them. Great communicators use this expertise to tailor their message on the fly and adjust their communication style as needed. 3. They Are Honest The best leaders know that for communication to be effective it has to be real. They can’t have people parsing every word trying to separate fac