Way back in 1935, the first office of Leo Burnet kept a bowl of apples in the foyer in a show of Mid-Western hospitality. Nearly seventy years later, apples still adorn Leo Burnet offices the world over. Great ideas work. And know something? Most ideas start with an impossible premise and years later look like so logical ! And most of them are related to enhancing our ability to communicate better.

World without Hotmail & Google ?
Today, we cannot think of a world without e-mails. Yet, this was not so just 7 years ago ! Today, e-mails are a way of life for communicating every emotion, interfacing with every group. And Indian-born entrepreneur Sabeer Bhatia made e-mails possible with his idea of starting Hotmail. (And walked away with a few hundred million US $ for his efforts!)

Stanford drop-out Larry Page and his partner gave the world the Google search engine and made information processing simpler. Not surprising that their 2004 IPO was one of the most hyped in recent years.

Apple & Windows
Apple Computers' Steve Jobs seduced buyers with the good looking, powerful but easy-to-use computer called Macintosh. Moving on later to MP3 players (Ipod). And recently into online music store - iTunes. ( Subsequently copied by every major player in the PC & music industry !) Another example of good ideas?

Windows is the world's leading PC platform and Bill Gates arguably, the world's richest man. And Windows continues to stay in the fray by innovating with newer versions. Keeping up with the times.

Cannes Lions
Roger Hatchuel, the man behind Cannes Lions, started the Advertising Festival in 1954 as a private enterprise (with no connections to any official advertising or media industry bodies). Year after year, for the past 5 decades (not years), Cannes Lions was run as a successful venture, becoming the "annual destination" for the who's who of the advertising world. (Roger recently sold his 'festival' for a fabulous sum to European media giant Emap Communications.)

Indian Advertising & Indian I.T. - A Study in Contrasts
Indian advertising has been earning international accolades for years. And attracting some of the best Indian minds in the business. But 57 years after Indian independence, our home-grown agencies seem to have surrendered to international networks. (Barring a few shining examples like Mumbai head-quartered Madison Communications and Ahmedabad head-quartered Mudra Communications, local agencies have sold out to one international network or the other.)

On a parallel level, take our Information Technology companies. Not ready to merely follow international standards, these companies have set their own scorching pace, implemented their own state-of-the-art quality processes and grown in stature to international recognition.

Perhaps this was what Reliance Chairman Anil Ambani meant in his keynote address at the Mumbai Ad Club Awards - when he asked the august gathering why Indian advertising (unlike Indian I.T.?) did not cut its own path instead of being content to follow international trends.