In its latest issue, Business Week published an interesting article on the Ramanujan School of Mathematics, a preparatory academy that trains low-income students in the art of test taking: “Every April, some 230,000 Indian youths sharpen their pencils and sit for the intensely competitive entrance exam to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) -- the seven prestigious schools that train India's top-notch engineers and entrepreneurs,” Business Week reports.  “After the grueling six-hour test, only 5,000 students are offered a place in the IITs. Most come from middle-class backgrounds and prepare for the exams through private coaching. But in the past few years, a small group of desperately poor, talented students have made it into the IITs, thanks to the Ramanujan School of Mathematics.”

 

A great deal apparently. Throughout history we've seen that simple misunderstandings of words, or individual phrases out of context have had major effects from the absurd (JFK infamously calling himself a jelly doughnut), to the controversial (see David Howard's 1999 gaffe) to the history-altering (the thirteen words that helped end John Kerry's presidential run). Different interpretations of a simple phrase can make a huge difference, as I've been reminded of in my recent research on small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) and the impact they have on the economic, social and environmental well-being of their nations.