Forget the Timers. Fix the Ground.
Top-down restrictions often teach kids how to outsmart the rules rather than manage themselves. Here is why an indirect approach works when direct prohibition fails.
NR
N S Ramnath
Senior Editor | Founding Fuel
All Articles
1622 results
The Water Opportunity Is Real. Building a Good Business Is Harder
Eight listed Indian companies show why a growing market doesn't guarantee durable value—and how some are finding ways around the difficult economics of water infrastructure.
BK
Bharti Krishnan
Founder | Finetrain
The Battle for the Tata Inheritance
The struggle inside Tata Trusts is exposing a question that goes far beyond personalities: can an unusual compact between philanthropy, ownership and corporate power survive the loss of the steward who held it together?
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director | Founding Fuel
One state, several images
The Indian state does not feel the same to everyone. Those everyday encounters shape trust—and reveal what national averages can hide.
AB
Arjo Basu
Systems thinker & technologist | Entrepreneur
The Focal Firm Fallacy: When Customer Centricity Becomes Customer Suffocation
The most customer-centric companies know when to listen, when to engage—and when to get out of the way.
SV
S. Ramakrishna (Rama) Velamuri
Strategic Growth & Innovation Expert | Visiting Professor
What Sits Upstream of the KPI
Every KPI carries a strategic hypothesis. The real work of governance is to preserve that reasoning and create a trusted path for evidence to travel back.
DM
AB
Debleena Majumdar & Arjo Basu
Be Unreasonable
How photographer Amit Verma turned a series of unconventional and “unreasonable” bets into a distinctive body of work—and a reputation to match.
CA
Charles Assisi
Co-founder and Director | Founding Fuel
Who Was India's Healthcare Built For?
India has spent eight decades bringing healthcare within reach. But roads, trust, gender and the freedom to be sick still determine who can actually use it.
NA
Nandita Abraham
Founding Dean | BITS Design School, Mumbai
The Real Question Behind a Tata Sons Listing
The debate is not simply about an IPO. It is about whether patient capital, stewardship and social purpose depend upon privacy, or can be protected through a different institutional architecture.
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director | Founding Fuel
Who Builds the Next Bhabha Movement?
Can India build a new compact between the state, science, industry and entrepreneurs?
SR
S. Raghotham
Journalist and strategic analyst
Tools and the Shape of Us
How to stop wasting time on tools without going deaf to what is changing
KA
Kavi Arasu
Works at the intersection of people, systems, and organisational change
Making Geopolitics a Business Capability
Indian companies are more alert to geopolitics. The task now is to turn that awareness into capability: map dependencies, protect what matters, adapt the enterprise, and find competitive advantage in fragmentation.
GR
G Venkat Raman
Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences | Indian Institute of Management, Indore
India looks stable. But trust is becoming conditional
A generation of Indians appears to be shifting from inherited faith in institutions to a running audit of their performance. That change could outlast any government—and reshape the risks facing anyone making long-term bets on the country.
AB
Arjo Basu
Systems thinker & technologist | Entrepreneur
The Brief for a Country
Three basic needs. Sixty years of policy choices. A country still living with the trade-offs. How India designed for food, livelihoods and shelter—and who those choices left out.
NA
Nandita Abraham
Founding Dean | BITS Design School, Mumbai
Can you buy the future without learning from it?
When incumbents buy, partner or outsource the capabilities demanded by each new disruption, they may solve today’s problem. The harder question is whether the parent company itself is still learning.
IG
Indrajit Gupta
Co-founder and Director | Founding Fuel
The Case for Knowing Things You Don’t Need to Know
The things we learn outside our fields may sharpen how we see the world. But perhaps they matter most when we stop asking what they are useful for
KA
Kavi Arasu
Works at the intersection of people, systems, and organisational change
The Ramayana and The Many Languages of Truth
Myth, Legend, History, Fact. Exploring the truths the Ramayana reveals about history, faith and ourselves
VB
Vijay Bhat
Founder-Director | Roots & Wings Consulting Services
The Race to Reinvent Nuclear Power
A Danish startup wants to take a faster road to thorium and manufacture nuclear reactors by the thousands. Its audacious bet raises a question for India: what happens if the nuclear world changes before Homi Bhabha’s long-term vision is complete?
SR
S. Raghotham
Journalist and strategic analyst
The Healing Kitchen
Many try to fix health with separate diets or willpower. A better way is to design the kitchen itself, so the easiest choice is also the healthy one—for everyone in the family.
HS
Hiteshi Dhami Shah
Clinical Nutritionist
Why We Need Good Friction in the Age of AI
AI can make us better at knowing, deciding and executing. The leadership challenge is knowing which struggles to remove—and which ones we need to preserve.
VN
Varun Nagaraj
Dean and Professor of Information Management and Analytics | S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), Mumbai
How Rogue AI Agents Could Blindside India
India is moving quickly to put autonomous AI systems to work. But is its capacity to govern them keeping pace?
AD
Anindya Dutta
Founder | Two Roads and author
Built to Last in an Age of Continuous Change
AI is making information and analysis abundant. The harder strategic question is knowing what must change—and what must endure
DM
AB
Debleena Majumdar & Arjo Basu
Embracing the Mess
AI can master discrete tasks. But judgment, relationships and responsibility are messy—and that may be exactly where humans matter most
NR
N S Ramnath
Senior Editor | Founding Fuel
The Business of Wastewater Is Changing
The biggest competitive advantage in India's wastewater industry may no longer be better treatment technology. It may be the ability to finance, own and operate long-term water infrastructure.
BK
Bharti Krishnan
Founder | Finetrain
What Happened to Just Being Stupid?
The young professionals who don't want AI to think for them
IB
Ipsita Bandyopadhyay
Head of Research and Strategy | Quipper Research
The Story That Refuses to Die
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is more than another adaptation of Homer's epic. It is an invitation to rediscover why one ancient story continues to illuminate the human condition nearly three thousand years after it was first told.
UN
Uma Narain
Former Founding Dean | School of Liberal Arts, NMIMS University
The Institution in the Machine—AI’s Escape from its Sandbox
The OpenAI incident is less about rogue machines than about a deeper shift: AI is becoming part of the cognitive architecture of modern institutions
SP
Satish Pradhan
Independent Consultant
Why Garfield Sobers Still Defines Cricketing Greatness
The six sixes made Sir Garfield Sobers famous. They barely explain why those who watched, played with and knew him still speak of him with such awe.
AD
Anindya Dutta
Founder | Two Roads and author
What My Body Was Trying to Tell Me
A conversation with a sports medicine doctor—and an unexpected health scare—changed the way I think about exercise, ageing and what it means to stay strong
CA
Charles Assisi
Co-founder and Director | Founding Fuel
How the Iran War Is Reshaping the Global Economy
The conflict is no longer just a military confrontation. It is rapidly becoming a struggle over the global energy system, maritime trade and geoeconomic power—with the Gulf caught in the middle
VK
Vivek Y. Kelkar
Researcher, Analyst & Columnist on Geo-economics, Geopolitics and Sustainability