April 2025
- Pavan Soni
- Apr 29
- 3 min read
In this edition of Inflexion Point, we look at how creativity is linked to mental illness, the genius of Ramanujan, a case of bounded empathy, Australianization of the Indian cricket team, and how Trump's tariff gambit could help the Indian innovation scene.
Several of the creative geniuses are known to have suffered from severe mental disorders. One of the most celebrated being John Nash, who was ailing with schizophrenia, a combination of paranoia and hallucination, much emphatically depicted in the movie, A Beautiful Mind. What's common between people who are highly creative and those with mental disorders? One factor is low latent inhibitions. Their filtering mechanisms are rather weak, allowing unrelated streams to get in and irrelevant behaviors to escape their consciousness. In a way, higher levels of IQ do not impact creativity as much as one's level of latent inhibitions. Watch the video for more. (Source: YouTube).
On 26 April 1920, the great Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan died, at age 32. This self-taught student of maths came up with thousands of elegant and surprising results, often without proof. He was fond of saying that his equations had been bestowed on him by the gods. More than 100 years later, mathematicians are still trying to catch up to Ramanujan’s divine genius, as his visions appear again and again in disparate corners of the world of mathematics. There's a whole cottage industry making sense of his work, more prominently on the infinite series. His secret lies in grit and spirituality. (Source: Quanta Magazine).
It’s often said that too much humility is pride. In a similar vein, too much empathy could well be vanity. We all understand the importance of empathy in the business and professional spheres, but could there be a downside to empathy? Can it lead to emotional exhaustion? While it is important to know your emotional state and that of others, you must avoid situations where, in an attempt to make others happy, you end up being miserable. And it’s not all that uncommon. Empathy should be bounded between what is technically feasible and also business-wise viable. Read more on how to practice it. (Source: Hindustan Times Mint).
From a time when millions of Indians would switch off their televisions, if not take extreme measures, at Tendulkar’s dismissal, we have come a long way. The excellence and hopes embedded in individuals are proliferated through the teams via routines, best practices, training, rigorous analytics and broader scrutiny. All this was witnessed in the recently concluded Champions Trophy where star power was checked and team routines shined. There are some insights on offer for the corporate world. (Source: The Wire).
Trump's steep tariffs have sent the global stock markets in a tailspin, with businesses rushing to get their goods into the American borders and world leaders discovering new ways to appease the White House. But all of this could mean a boost for India's innovation landscape. Here's how. Firstly, with the homecoming of working executives and students to India, better be termed as ‘Brain Gain’, we now have greater access to deep and diverse expertise. Secondly, akin to how the post-war American sanctions metered to Japan and Germany catalysed their domestic competitiveness, in India we can strive to make our products better and services more aspirational. (Source: Financial Express).
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