"Western weapons give certainty. But it's only the element of surprise that gives victory." Pranam Every few months, I sit through another panel where a consultant with a crisp accent and a crisper deck tells a room full of Indian business families that they need to "professionalise." That they can't scale. That they don't innovate. That they're inefficient because the son sits next to the father, because decisions get made over chai instead of in a boardroom, because there's no five-year strategy document with a MBB watermark on it. I've spent about TWO DECADES, inside these businesses to know this isn't true. It's not that Indian family businesses (FMBs) are unorganised or unprofessional. It's that they are organised around a completely different operating system — one built for a different terrain, a different history, and a different kind of endurance. The Vietnam Lesson In the 1960s and 70s, Vietnam fought a war against a ...