Of robots, women, and poets

Some weeks ago, in this column, I had spoken of how today's information technology (IT) services workforce needs to be radically retrained or face retrenchment. While the thrust of that column was about changing today's process-bound technologists, I had started by harking back to the days when I had first learnt how to programme a computer, and had spoken of a man named Desmond, an Anglo-Indian poet and musician with whom I had been teamed up during that computer-training class. I ended the column by talking about how poets may displace programmers. I have also earlier spoken of the need to back women-led start-ups, arguing that the rate of success of such start-ups is reportedly higher than those led by men, and the fact that women are less likely to be financed creates an arbitrage opportunity for investors who are canny enough to see this opening. To give you an idea of the size of this gap, IBM Corp.'s research has evidently shown that women-led start-ups are likely to be 15% more profitable on average, but are 40% less likely to be funded. Any investor with a half a brain would jump on this opportunity, assuming of course that the other half of their brain could be used to pick the right bets from among the minuscule pool of women-led ventures (less than 8% of start-ups).