Kjetil Selvik on Iranian Definition of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is the heart of capitalism and in this sense entrepreneurs can be defined as economic agents who care about their interests. The majority of them can be classified under “greedy business men who have bright ideas for economic activity”.

In 1979 Iranian revolution fruited in an Islamic republic which apart from everything else had many strong beliefs about economy. In Islamic view of economy greed and looking for ones own interests are not acceptable. “Unfair Transactions” are forbidden in various parts of Quran and “those who charge high prices” are presented on par with murderers and deniers of Allah.

As a result in the 80s many Entrepreneurs were expelled from the country. Their Factories closed and their bank acounts and their bank acounts and wealth seized by the order of law. Iran as a country run under the rule of Islam has a centrally planned economy. Many prices are fixed by law and the one who increases the price faces a severe penalty.

Having said all that, one might think life is very hard for Iranian Entrepreneurs. But he/she will probably be surprised at how Iranian Entrepreneurs actually changed the meaning of Entrepreneur and Capitalists into a mild and lovable archetype.

If you want to know more about this you can read this article (The Rise and Newfound Legitimacy of Iran’s Industrial Bourgeoisie) by Kjetil Selvik. The picture that Kjetil illustrates of Iranian business environment is very close to reality. His paper is without a doubt one of the best papers and certainly an essential reading on Iranian Economy.

Harvard Maps Iranian Blogsphere

A while ago, I stumbled upon a fascinating project on Berkman’s center for cyber law at Harvard. Using automatic content analysis they have compiled a map of Iranian blogsphere. There is a glimpse of what the visualised 3D map looks like at it looks great. See for yourselves:

As you can see seven Categories (networks of blogs) are identifiable on the map and the relative position of these shows how these networks relate to one another. for example “reformist politics” is neighboring “Secular/expatriate” and, as you might expect, religious youth” is close to “Twelvers” and “concervative politics”. The two red dots in the low-center are former-president Khatami and now-president Ahmadinejad. The position of these two are especially interesting in the map. Again as expected politicians tend to stay away from the noise and stick somewhere in the middle.

What would be interesting to see is though if Harvard repeated this study in time periods and then studied the trend that Iranian bloggers follow. An Iranian-blogger life-cycle of the mind if you will. I suspect it will reveal a movement from the twelver network to secular/expatriot. Ofcourse all of these networks have some dedicated and non-moving Citizens who would not change parties but a certain number (mostly youth I suspect)  will eventually read some article about evolution and new scientific discoveries and turn into seculars. I have no Idea about the speed in which this movement might happen and I also have no guess about other directions that the blogs from other networks might move in the blogsphere. Hope John Kelly and Bruce Etling continue their work on Iranian bloggers. You can download their worthy paper here.

Our President…

Driving habbits in Tehran

Wikitravel writes this about Tehran:

“The traffic in Tehran is very dangerous and should be considered some of the worlds worst.”

In other places around the world, when you cross a street and a car comes towards you; the driver slows down unless he is drunk or mentally retarded or really wants to kill you. In Tehran you would really die sooner if you keep that assumption. Here, drivers will continue driving until they here a very big bang. I remember a German friend saying this about Tehran:

“Some people fall off cliffs, some people bungee jump and some people cross the streets in Tehran!”

For some reasons, I believe this behavior is more serious than a trivial ignorance rooted, for example, in culture or other vague things. For one thing you don’t see this behavior everywhere in Iran. I have traveled to almost every city in this country. Particularly, in Southern Islands in the gulf people drive very responsibly. Other cities are almost the same except for Isfahan where drivers are worse than Tehraners.

Of course Traffic is to blame. Both Tehran and Isfahan have very heavy traffic but it’s not the only reason. For one thing many other cities around the world have heavy traffic but they don’t drive like this. Then what causes this hostility? The driver perfectly knows that he will scare the pedestrian so why does he (or she) do it? I have only one answer.

This is how I see it: the driver values his own comfort and time -not pushing the brake pedal- more than the comfort of the Pedestrian. Let me take it to the extreme: He even does not care about a possible crash. The cost of crash is not that high where there is no good police and no good judiciary system. You can always pay someone off here.

That explanation does not completely cover it. It lacks the motivation! Why should a human want to hurt a human? I am very cynical and think they enjoy it.I think Humans start hurting each other for fun when there are no cheaper means of amusement.

Tehran does not have much entertainment. There are few parks (with modesty police arresting boyfriends and girlfriends), few cinemas (showing only Iranian movies) and no bars, no clubs, no amusement parks and not much else. and as I said before there is no good police and no good judiciary system, etc. So everyone goes on horsing around in the streets.

Be careful Crossing streets here.

{Note: It was hard to select a title for this post. I always find an alibi not to talk about Iran. It’s hard to stay honest on this subject and live to see the sunshine tomorrow. But the truth has a different wish of itself…}

New Cat: Miss Gilberth

There are four cats in the faculty of management that I know of. This one is my favorite.

She usually comes to me when I call her and is always very friendly – a very rare phenomena with cats- . I wanted to name a cat after a management guru ever since I’ve read a book about “artificial intelligence” where every example was about a cat named “Minsky” which refers to “Marvin Minsky” who is one of the founding fathers of Artificial Intelligence. It was very cool because the examples in the book would go like:

Minsky is a cat; therefore Minsky has four legs.

The logic would go like this:

If Cat(Minsky)=true Then put Legs(Minsky)=4

I don’t know about you but I find that amusing. Yes! that’s how geeky I am sometimes.

I really wanted to name it “Mintzberg” but -and accidentally not that I touched anything- found out it was not a “He”. Plus, Henry Mintzberg teaches at McGill and I’m applying to McGill and things could get very very ugly.

So, I had only two options left. Mary Parker Follett and Lillian Gilbreth. I am very fond of Follet. I have a complete set of her works in my library and actually feel some sympathy for her since she was never appreciated when she was alive. Her Ideas are 16 generations ahead of her time (now we are in generation eight.)

I decided to name her Mary Follet but for some reason she didn’t look like a Mary. I don’t know about you but I hear Mary; I go for Jesus. If Mr. Jesus hears I named a black cat the same as her mother he is going to be pissed and he is friendlier with God than I am. I even though of naming it God but it would create much confusion.

So, Say hello to “Lillian Moller Gilbert II”.

The Parallel Ahmadinejad

I’ve spent a substantial fruitless amount of time trying to understand why Ahmadinejad says things that he says, up until now! Recently, he said:

“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country (USA). […] In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.” [Yahoo][NY Times][CNN]

Many thought he said that to gloss over the fact that homosexuals are executed in Iran. Many are wrong. I know why he says things like that. Read these quotes from him before I make my argument:

• We thank God that our enemies are idiots. (6 February 2006) [Source]

• The world is rapidly getting ‘Ahmadinejadized,’ if I’m allowed to make a joke. (20 November 2006 (Source(s): [Source 1], [Source 2])

• I went to a couple of real state agencies in my neighborhood and checked. Home prices have not risen at all where I live(About 6 months ago when home prices nearly doubled in Tehran.).

And, of course, my favorite:

• “I’ve been informed of a 16 year old Iranian girl who has created nuclear energy in her home with the tools she bought off the market.” I talked to her teacher. She is now a nuclear scientist. (Link to Video on youtube)

Why do you think that happens?

I have been convinced there is only one possible way to explain it. It’s called the “Parallel Universe Theory of Ahmadinejad“. The guy lives in a totally different world. I know it’s hard to believe but this seems to be the only sound explanation and scientific method says when there is only one possible explanation to a phenomena then there is only one possible explanation.

When you imagine him living in a parallel universe, his words start making sense. He says there are no homosexuals in Iran because in the parallel-Iran there are no homosexuals. Members of his cabinet and all the people around him( what a pity Wikiquote has no page on those guys) live in the same universe. Anyway, the parallel universe that he lives in has the following attributes:

1. has no homosexuals.
2. no inflation or price increase either.
3. no homosexuals “parallel” U.S.A
4. Homosexuality is a taboo in “parallel” Earth.
5. Homosexuals are not people.

How do they switch universes is unknown. Well, if there were more quantum physicists.

[Background: As I am writing this the Iranian government news is on and it's quoting Fox news to say Ahmadinejad's Speech in Columbia university was an absolute success. I am convinced that I ,too, am living in a parallel universe. Strange one too. ]

Gaming the Gas Shortage

There are a lot going on in the country. Gas stations are set in fire. Chain retail stores are being rubbed some worth of 6 million dollars. I try to forget that and search for new ways of gaming. Actually I am looking very desperately for an efficient software to manage my e-books collection yet no luck. This I found on the side. you can actually use your web cam to burst some bubbles. I am not really proud of what I’m doing here. Actually it’s very humiliating that the second largest oil reserve in the world is facing a gas shortage. what the hell, whatch some bubble bursting.

Google gives you about six million of games like this so I guess it’s been going on for a while. The concept is very innovative and makes me think that something like minority report isn’t really that far off. What’s the use though in Iran. A government can, very effectively, make a rich country poor.

P.S. I’ll update you guys on my life and who I am and all the other things so stay tuned. I don’t monitor web site traffic so I’ll Assume there are a lot of you guys. even millions. it’s good to be optimistic.