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The Tata Motors factory at Singur in West Bengal remained shut for the second day Saturday, raising doubts over the company being able to meet its October deadline to roll out the world’s cheapest car, the Rs.100,000/$2,500 Nano.

“Our workers are not attending work today,” Tata Motors said in a statement here, as Trinamool Congress members continued their protests for the seventh day, wanting 400 acres of land at the site, some 40 km from here, to be returned to farmers.

“There has been no improvement in the ground situation so far. Hence, the conditions are still not conducive for resuming work,” a spokesperson for Tata Motors said in the statement. “We continue to assess the situation closely.”

Tata group officials in Mumbai said a decision on whether or not to re-locate the project could be taken as early as next week, after chairman Ratan Tata returns from Singapore.

Several other states in India as well as the government in neighbouring Sri Lanka have offered to host the car factory because of its international prestige and the reputation that the country’s largest private sector group enjoys.

Saturday also saw the state government ordering a heavy deployment of police at the site after some 600 engineers and executives, including from South Korea, Japan and Singapore, of Tata Motors were not allowed to come out of the factory for more than three hours Thursday evening.

The plant is presently employing about 800 people.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee said the agitation would continue till farmers get back their land, allegedly taken for the project and related works forcibly. The party says 400 acres out of 997.11 acres fell under that category.

“We have a one point agenda - that the 400 acres will have to be returned to unwilling farmers. Unless the government accepts our demand, we will continue our agitation,” she said.

The Communists-ruled West Bengal government, which had invited the Tata group to set up the small-car project, has ruled out any state intervention in removing the protestors and has requested them to resolve matters through dialogue.

Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata had last week warned that constant unrest at the project may force him to pull out of the state despite having made an investment of Rs.15 billion ($375 million).

The developments also led to India’s top industrialists rallying behind the Tata group, and issuing a warning that the pullout of the car project would hit the country’s image as an attractive investment destination.

“If the House of Tatas, known for its values and care for the society, can face such resistance, the much needed fresh wave of industrialisation in the country could suffer,” said Sunil Mittal, chairman of Bharti Enterprises.

Trouble at Singur began some months ago when the government acquired nearly 1,000 acres of farmland for the Tata project and ancillary units, but some farmers, collectively owning 400 acres, found the compensation inadequate.

The agitation that started on behalf of the dissatisfied farmers also resulted in clashes with the police and some deaths, forcing Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to call for peaceful negotiations to end the standoff.

The central government ruled out any intervention in the matter. “There is no role for the central government. This is for the state government to decide,” Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal said Friday.

“We should not damage the investors’ confidence in the country. We should not be unjust to people,” Sibal said soon after a meeting of the Union cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

After the publication of one of my recent articles (BusinessWeek, 8/14/08 ), I received many passionate e-mails from parents and educators thanking me for writing the piece and sharing their beliefs in the importance of instilling the entrepreneurial spirit in young people.

Why I realize we cannot all be entrepreneurial in the sense that we can’t all start our own companies, I believe we can all be entrepreneurial in terms of how we approach our own careers. This column will include a few suggestions for demonstrating the entrepreneurial spirit that we can all implement:

– Love what you do

Years of hard work (which generally precedes success) don’t seem so hard if you are doing what you love. My friend and mentor, Dr. Paul Hersey, upon receiving an honorary doctorate, shared one of his secrets for success with graduating students. He beamed at the hundreds of young people in the audience and said: “Looking back on my career, I don’t feel like I have ever worked a day in my life. If you really love what you are doing, it all seems like fun!” Finding what you love to do may take some effort, but it is worth it.

– Be curious

One of the greatest entrepreneurs I have ever known is Mr. G.M. Rao. He is the founder of GMR Infrastructure, which is now a large infrastructure company in India. When I asked his colleagues what Mr. Rao was doing right, they all marveled at his constant curiosity. One commented that “he travels through life, constantly observing. He makes notes on all kinds of potential opportunities, which most people might not even notice. He doesn’t just observe — he acts! He immediately follows up with messages to staff that say, ‘please check this out.’ While many of his observations do not turn into business opportunities, some do. This is one of the reasons that he is so successful.”

– Find your own market niche

In the same way that successful entrepreneurs provide innovative solutions to market opportunities, you can work to develop a special competency that differentiates you from everyone else. Be creative. Look for market needs that everyone else may not have considered. Anyone can do what everyone else is doing. Great entrepreneurs provide products and services that are better or different than what everyone else is doing. You can also do this at your present job: What should be done that isn’t?

– Become a world expert

As intimidating as this sounds, achieving serious “world-class” expertise may not be as daunting as you might believe. If you pick a reasonably narrow area of specialization, focus on it, and learn as much as you can, you will start to accumulate serious knowledge within a few years. While you can never become the world authority on everything, you can definitely become a world authority on one thing.

– Learn from the best

As you ponder your career options, ask yourself: “Who do I want to be like in 10 years?” or “Who are the world’s experts in fields that are related to my desired area of expertise?” Try to learn from these people’s lives. You may be surprised. Some may even go out of their way to help you.

– Do your homework

While the role models you look up to may be willing to help you, respect the fact that they are very busy people. Their time is valuable. For example, if they have written books on a topic, read the books before you ask them questions. If they are executives in your own company, study their history — read their bios — and learn from their co-workers before you ask them to invest their very limited time in helping you.

– Build your own brand

Peter Drucker once told me that companies should be able to “put their mission statement on a T-shirt.” The same can be true for individuals. For example, my own mission is to be the world authority in helping successful leaders achieve positive, lasting change in behavior. Your customers (or employers) will respect you more if you do not pretend to know everything about everything but instead have a unique brand. My friends, David Ulrich and Norm Smallwood have discussed how this same process can be applied to corporate managers who develop their own brands as leaders (BusinessWeek.com, 10/2/07).

– Pay the price

It is possible that you may just get lucky and become incredibly successful without having to work very hard. Don’t count on it. The successful entrepreneurs — and the successful people — who I know work very hard. The “luck” that they experience is often impacted by the years of effort that have prepared them to take advantage of fortuitous opportunities.

I hope these ideas are useful for you or young people you are striving to help. Readers: Please send in any thoughts or share your experiences that show how professionals — at all levels — can demonstrate the entrepreneurial spirit.

It may still be good to be king, but increasingly the job is coming with fewer perks. In its third annual study of fringe benefits for chief executives, compensation research firm Equilar found that the median values of seven of the nine major CEO perquisites that it tracks — from personal aircraft use to country club memberships — were down or remained flat from 2006 to 2007. The prevalence of such swanky extras fell too, with most categories showing lower rates of occurrence this year.

The decline is an expected result of Securities & Exchange Commission rules that went into effect last year. The new rules stipulate that companies disclose perks that cost more than $10,000, far lower than the previous $50,000 threshold. With a brighter spotlight on lavish extras that could prove embarrassing to a company, more boards have been ending or reducing CEO benefits. “For many shareholders, the presence of excessive perquisites has become an acid test on governance,” says David Wise, a senior consultant in the compensation practice at management consulting firm Hay Group.

In addition, more disclosure may explain some of the increases that remain, such as the prevalence of corporate housing benefits, says Equilar research manager Alexander Cwirko-Godycki, which may not have been disclosed separately in the past. Some companies, especially after the SEC sent letters to companies last fall asking for more detail on compensation decisions, are choosing to disclose more than what’s required. Others may be disclosing more because, due to the timing of their fiscal calendar, this was the first year they were required to file under the new regulations.

Beefed-Up Security at Dell

Still, the study, which examines perks for CEOs of the 95 largest public companies by revenue, did show two increases that ran counter to the overall trend. Tax payments on perks and benefits — extra cash to make up for taxes assessed for the imputed income of fringe benefits for CEOs — actually rose in value this year by 43.6%, from a median of $23,951 in 2006 to $34,396 in 2007. (These payments are separate from the tax “gross-ups,” as they’re often called, that some CEOs receive for their severance packages.) “That’s surprising,” says Cwirko-Godycki, especially given how much attention has been paid to this issue. “Perks have always been a controversial issue; paying the taxes on top of the perks has been even more so.”

Meanwhile, the median value of personal and home security benefits for CEOs also increased by 14.4%, from $25,609 to $29,291. But Cwirko-Godycki is quick to point out that the value would have actually fallen this year had it not been for one significant outlier: Michael Dell, who received $1,034,750 in security benefits. (The amount was similar to what Dell earned as chairman the year before, but he was included in Equilar’s study only after returning as CEO in early 2007.) In a statement to BusinessWeek, a spokesman for Round Rock (Tex.)-based Dell (NasdaqGS:DELL - News) says the company does not consider the security payments a perk, but a business-related expense mandated by the board. The company also says the amount of security Michael Dell receives is determined with consideration that he is a recognizable industry leader and public figure worldwide.

Most perks, however, declined in value or prevalence. The median value of club memberships dropped most significantly, falling 64% from $11,070 in 2006 to $3,996 in 2007. Financial planning fees were down 9.2%, from $17,156 to $15,575. And personal use of aircraft, the perk that most “seems to get under shareholders’ skin,” says Hay Group’s Wise, also fell. In 2007, the median outlay for CEOs flying on corporate jets was $109,743, down 9.8% from $121,676 in 2006.

Each night during a recent sales trip to Rio de Janeiro, Black & Veatch Senior Vice-President Michael Perry would review the day’s progress over dinner with several junior staffers accompanying him. After watching Perry in action, they had plenty of questions: Why had he worked toward a compromise when the Brazilian client clearly wasn’t going to budge? How was he accounting for the different cultural perspectives of the British, Japanese, and South Korean businessmen who were potential partners in the deal?

Perry and colleagues returned to Black & Veatch’s Kansas City (Mo.) headquarters with strong progress to report on the $1 billion energy project. But the 59-year-old executive had done something that will probably prove even more valuable for the company in coming years, after his retirement: He instilled some of his specialized negotiating skills in his would-be successors.

Knowledge handoffs like this are becoming more common at companies, motivated by the concern that droves of retiring baby boomers will mean huge losses in irreplaceable intellectual capital. “When people leave organizations today, they are potentially taking with them knowledge that’s critical to the future of the business,” says David DeLong, a business consultant and author of Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce. Whether it’s a key client relationship, mastery of an outdated computer language, or simply knowledge about where certain files are saved on a company server, every business has stored up bits of information and knowhow that isn’t written in a manual or recorded in a training video.

Intangible Info

Many companies are rolling out initiatives aimed at capturing mission-critical knowledge before it walks out the door, and making it stick with younger generations of workers.

At the start of this year, Perry and several other senior leaders and key technical workers at Black & Veatch entered a phased-retirement program designed to reduce their workload, give them some time to reinvest their knowledge in the company, and give them some free time to begin adjusting to retired life. Some days, Perry’s knowledge-transfer activities involve updating an 80-page training manual to include changes that have been made in recent years. But much of his time goes into what he calls “informal mentoring” of around 30 to 40 employees who will need to know some his more intangible skills once he’s gone — like negotiating with a hard-bargaining Brazilian. “I have never been creative enough to figure out how to write that stuff down,” says Perry.

Some of the inspiration for the Black & Veatch initiative came last year, when HR leaders from the company participated in a research working group on “multigenerational knowledge transfer,” organized by management researcher the Conference Board. Meeting periodically over a nine-month period, representatives from Black & Veatch, American Express (NYSE:AXP - News), Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG - News), and six other companies compared notes on the best ways to facilitate a knowledge handoff from one generation of workers to the next.

No Lectures, Please

One of the biggest hurdles, most agreed, was getting baby boomers to speak the language of Gen Xers and Gen Yers. According to Diane Piktialis, a Conference Board program leader and co-author of a new report, Bridging the Gaps: How to Transfer Knowledge in Today’s Multigenerational Workforce, baby boomers are used to learning in a classroom environment where they are passive and “you have one instructor or expert who is in control.” Younger workers, on the other hand, “want interactivity. They want things in little chunks, and they want to be in control” of how they learn.

This means that if senior leaders simply lecture their successors about their entire history at the company, the message will probably fall on deaf ears. Instead, says Piktialis, companies should encourage soon-to-be retirees to use digital tools like Wikis, blogs, and instant messaging. An “aha” moment during the research working group came when one participant, a senior manager who mentors multiple younger workers, realized that rather than setting up a formal monthly meeting with each one he should learn how to use instant messaging to check in with them on a more casual basis.

Many companies realize that they are on the verge of losing stores of knowledge but don’t know where to begin efforts to retain it. “Focus on specific business needs,” says Kent Greenes, co-author of the Conference Board report and an independent knowledge-management consultant who has worked with companies like Hess (NYSE:HES - News) and Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC - News). Frequently, Greenes and his team will be called in to gather expertise from about 20 experts in a company and use their responses to help the client achieve one tangible business outcome.

Gaining an Edge

Other approaches target specific business units or roles within the company. A pilot knowledge-transfer program at American Express focuses on senior employees in technology, because it’s easiest to assess what skills needed to be passed on there — according to Jim Rottman, head of the company’s workforce transformation group — and finance, because that’s where the company has some its most important client relationships. An initiative in P&G’s research and development unit targets “connectors,” or senior technical workers with the most relationships and influence within the organization.

Experts agree that, over the coming years, companies that have these programs in place somewhere in their organization will gain a competitive edge. “Leveraging the collective knowhow of organizations is really going to pay for itself now, as we’re approaching complex problems and going into new markets and working globally,” says Greenes. “Wherever it has been difficult to do things, that’s when you’re going to see knowledge management come to the fore.”

Click here for a slide show on 10 knowledge transfer methods that will help senior workers impart their wisdom to the younger generation.

Mobile phone operators may face legislation from the European Commission to crack down on what the EU executive sees as overcharging, but industry said such a step would amount to micro-management.

European Union Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding is concerned that some mobile operators are charging by the minute rather than second for calls made while traveling between EU states, her spokesman said.

“In some cases operators are charging you for a call of one minute two seconds what they can charge you for two minutes. This leads to overcharging on average of 24 percent for calls made and 19 percent for calls received,” the spokesman told a news briefing.

Mobile operators say they should have the fundamental right to determine their own prices in a competitive market as long as they are transparent about billing increments.

“The regulation of billing increments within the Eurotariff or any other roaming tariff would amount to micro-management and would risk further erosion of competitive differentiation in the market,” said David Pringle, spokesman for the GSMA mobile industry lobby.

“Billing increments are a point of differentiation that operators can use to appeal to customers with different preferences,” Pringle said.

In France, Spain, Lithuania and Portugal, operators have to bill by the second, but national legislation is not practical for roamed calls, the Commission spokesman said.

“This is an issue national regulators have recommended the European Commission to address … If you tackle this issue you have to tackle it in EU legislation. This is something the European Commission will consider in the weeks to come,” he added.

The EU has already adopted a law to cap the price of roamed voice calls for three years, with the cap due to be lowered on Saturday and in August next year before the law expires in 2010.

Reding is due to unveil proposals by early October to extend the voice roaming caps for another three years to 2013 and introduce a cap on roamed text messages.

She is also keen on capping the price of using a laptop or mobile phone to surf the Web while traveling in other EU states but it is unclear whether the rest of the Commission will back her.

Any plan for mandatory billing by the second would be included in her proposal. EU states and the European Parliament would have the final say.