Thinking of Mumbai friends

I teach MBA students from India, often from Mumbai, on a regular basis when they come to Switzerland for week-long study trips. We talk about corporate management in times of crises. We look at companies hit by natural disasters and man-made ones. I tell them "No matter where you work, who you work for, at some point in your management career there will be a crisis and you will have to deal with it."

I'm very much hoping none of these students from IIPM have been directly touched by the bombs that exploded yesterday on several trains in Mumbai, the country's financial capital.

Watching the death toll count last night, I reflected on why journalists report, and why the public is drawn to, bad news. There is a bright side, if not to the events, to our ability to learn from them.