The what & why of Business - East vis-a-vis West

Alexander & the Gymnosophists of India

In my last post titled Business Sutra for the Future of Work, where I announced this series, I forewarned you that I'll henceforth try to blend my Indian heritage with the western learnings in my quest to understand how things are evolving with respect to social in particular & what needs to be the strategies. Thusly, you might find stuff that you are not familiar with. Though I'll try and give some 101 as & when required, I think it is good if we understand the difference in Indian & Western beliefs (& thus behaviors). In this post I introduce you to the differences between the two thoughts - Western & Eastern.

I grew up reading & listening to the various stories from across the world. But my Indian upbringing did have a bigger impact on my beliefs. And I did read more of the Indian Mythologies than most of my friends & relatives who were introduced to them, but were made to read more of the western stories thanks to our education system. If you are convent educated (yes, we have lots of them in India), am sure you are aware of numerous Biblical stories. More than Indian stories (well, I know you are aware of Ramayana & Mahabharata, but most probably not the rest).

The western thought is predominantly influenced by the Greek & Roman mythologies and the tales from the two testaments of the Bible. And then there are Nordic & Celtic influences too and a lot many more. And if you look at them all, they all say that you have one life to live and that you need to achieve / enjoy what you can in this one life. The judgement will be at apocalypse/Armageddon/2012 AD/whatever.

The Indian thought on the other hand is shaped by the belief in rebirth, that there are infinite lives to live. And you are constantly being judged and bear the consequences, either in this life or the future lives - Karma.

So the Western people have this one life as the denominator of whatever they do in their one life and the Indians have infinite lives as the denominator of whatever they do in this one life. Which means, to the Western people, they are the sum total of their achievements in this one life. To the Indians, whatever they do amounts to nil, zero.

Eh?

So do I mean to say we Indians are not driven because we are not fired with the ambition to achieve everything in this one life?

No, absolutely not. What it means is that for us, the purpose of life is introspection. Figuring it out. Because we believe we have infinite lives to do it all.

Westerners do business to do it, achieve. They concentrate on the how. Indians do business to figure it out, find the meaning. They concentrate on the why.

If all this went over the top, may be I can get Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik to explain this to you better with a story.



So what does this difference in belief translate into, as behaviors? Let me take Dr. Pattanaik's help again and show you this slide from his TED India talk:

So while I leave you to mull over this, I will be back with another post. Hope I could set the stage for us to proceed further? Please leave your comments here or email me @ naasat.in.