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The Black Swan

March 16th, 2009 | 4 Comments »

I started reading the book The Black Swan yesterday (thanks to a friend who got bored of the book and lent it to me) and I came across this beautiful, beautiful concept – about idea and labour jobs. The two can be classified by citing an example which involves J.K. Rowling and a baker. Surprised? So was I. As we all know, J.K. Rowling had come up with this magical fantasy adventure series of books – Harry Potter (personally, a fan). Coming back to the point, if the book sells one copy or a million copies, the effort required from the author is the same. She had to generate the idea. The idea can be replicated with the help of printing press for mass distribution of books. So, it requires a one-time effort from the author. This type of job is classified as an Idea-generating one.

In contrast, the baker who prepares the cake has to work hard on each and every  cake that he is going to prepare. His effort is required on each and every cake sold by the bakery. This kind of job is a Labour job.

Similarly, USA mostly exports IT labour jobs to India. The important point here is that the idea jobs are scalable – once you have an idea it can be mass distributed or replicated using technology but labour jobs are not scalable. A person would be physically required to do the job. So, this is what gives USA the creative edge as they work on the scalable and thinking parts of the project.

My previous project resembled an IT labour job-project. I never felt that way for my other projects but I did not like my previous project. I always knew the reason for it but I could never explain it as impeccably to people. I could not put words to it. But now I CAN and so, here it is.  THANK YOU Taleb!

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4 Comments on “The Black Swan”

  1. 1 Hetang said at 6:57 am on March 16th, 2009:

    I think what r you saying is correct. Your concept is explainable but it is not digestible because while doing support or coding both required the creativity. its not like, different people can do the same job in same way. Hence every time 100% output is also required, like your cake example. So It job is mixture of the both the concepts. This concept has occurred because of the services provided to the US. If Indian IT company is product based company then this concept won’t work. At the end your view point is understandable. Thanks.

  2. 2 Rushabh said at 7:22 am on March 22nd, 2009:

    I agree with the viewpoint of Taleb.. Feel like kicking my current organisation coz of the intense labour job..

  3. 3 admin said at 1:42 pm on March 26th, 2009:

    @Rushabh: Funny! Lols :D !

  4. 4 Life Mysterious said at 2:01 pm on April 17th, 2009:

    The randomness and the role of uncertainty depicted in The Black Swan are powerful. Liked it.