History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

With everything happening around AI, it feels like we’ve seen versions of this story before. Technologies change, industries get disrupted, and businesses that once seemed permanent disappear.

The latest episode of Intermission by The Ken is on TCS, and one thing stood out to me. In the 1960s, India had only a few dozen computers, and even that was enough for unions to protest, fearing they would take away jobs. TCS was started around the same time, and over the next few decades, it and the rest of the IT industry went on to employ millions of Indians. Now the same industry is dealing with a new version of that fear, with AI starting to do some of the work that people used to do.

I didn’t know this story, and I think most people don’t either. It’s the kind of detail that gets lost with time. Businesses, like people, come and go. Which is all the more reason to document them well. How they were built, the decisions that worked and didn’t, the mistakes, the people, the culture, and all the little stories that would otherwise disappear.

We spend a lot of time documenting history through countries, wars, politics, and famous people. Maybe we need to do a much better job of documenting the history of businesses too. There’s probably a lot for future entrepreneurs to learn from them🙂

Watch the episode.

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