Experience from the Concert

In my previous post, I mentioned about Vishaka Hari,
a carnatic classical singer. The friend who told me about this concert
and inspired me to go, has written a nice article about his experience
of the concert. I am copy pasting his writing here.
----------As told by him------------------------

It’s 4 days of Vishaka here at 2 venues. Both organizations had arranged a concert and a discourse.

The first was Indiranagar Sangeetha Sabha where Day 1: 7 Nov 2008 (was a
Thyagaraja Vaibhavam rendered in English. Here Vishaka impressed with
her singing – however one felt that the artist was not totally
comfortable talking to an audience in the English language. The verve
displayed in her Tamil discourses was missing. Here, though the
expression was good, it reminded one of school and college days where
students memorize pages and pages of oration essays lovingly penned by
parents using the most pompous complicated words (with the help of
Roget!) – there were several moments when one felt she could not
recollect the next word/sentence and then groped clumsily to find a
substitute to convey the thought. Some sarcasm-laden jokes on the
new-gen/old-gen that cares little for tradition did not fall too well
on the audience’s ears and evoked little more than weak smiles.
Nevertheless the singing was par excellence and in pieces like
Durmagachara and Giripai she brought out the bhava beautifully.



Day2: Indiranagar Sangeetha Sabha – Concert - – B Ananthakrishnan (Violin) – Sudheendra - Sukanya

She got off to a great start with an MSS style shloka followed by a well
executed Saveri varnam. This was followed by a Jaya Jaya Swamin in
Naatai that had some novel sangathis. Innu Daya Baarade in Kalyana
Vasantham – a Lalgudi stable favourite - was next, significantly
different from the way Sudha/Jayashree render it. A brisk Kandajumi and
then Thodi followed for Raju Vedala – here one thought the weight and
grandeur of Thodi was lacking – successfully overshadowed by the bhava
injected into the sangathis. The alapana had some inspired phrases but
overall was not an “AAhhhh – THAT Thodi”! Swagatham Krishna in Mohanam
again racy and then RTP in Kapi. Need to listen to this again before
comments – but remember some parts where the enthusiasm overtook the
grace in rendition causing a noisy result. Theeradha Vilayaatu Pillay
was definitely the jewel of this concert and possibly 2 concerts – sung
with excellent expression and the right mix of bhava and laya and
improvised sangathis. Another piece in Kannada followed in Abhogi –
Baarayya Krishna Barayya was soothing. The last piece was Lalgudi’s
Brindavana Saranga Thillana. Throughout the concert the violinist
impressed both with his support as well as innovative pidis in the
alapanas. Overall this concert was good but not one that would remain
in memory forever. Average age of the audience was 55 and they wahhed
and che-che-choed appropriately, and left the hall awestruck with
several comments overheard about CA GOLD MEDALLIST wearing MADISAAR ;-)

ISS took some time to get their acoustics right with the vocalist’s voice being muffled almost till the 3rd piece


Day 3: Sri Rama Lalitha Kala Mandira – Concert – Charulatha Ramanujam (Violin) – Sudheendra - Sukanya


This concert started with a shlokam again on Mannargudi Rajagopala followed
by Viriboni. A very fast Shobillu followed – a tad noisy. Hamir Kalyani
followed for VenkataShaila Vihara – a good alapana from both singer and
violinist. Maragatha Mani Maya – Arabhi again sung with aplomb. Paraaku
Maadade - Saveri was the main piece for a Purandara Dasa composition.
Here the first signs of the artist’s voice cracking showed and she
evidently had problems reaching the upper sthayi. The violinist
executed a neat but uninspiring alapana. The main piece was again OK –
flashes of great music but mainly forgettable. Brova Bharama in
Bahudari was next – breathtaking speed as if the artist was desperate
to conclude the concert. Her shruti by now was a thing of the past and
was frequently slipping.



Then came the RTP – this was an attempt at a Dwi-raaga pallavi. Mohanam and
Hindolam. Now, the point in multi-raaga pallavis is for artistes to
display expertise in flawlessly traversing the notes of ragas that are
significantly different , blending the turns so that the shifts are
soft and smooth and the character of each individual raga is
maintained. The RTP attempt was far from any of these rules. It was
marked by extreme violations of the basic notes of each raga and the
transition between the ragas was far from smooth – both vocalist and
violinist abruptly stopped a raga and then restarted the next!! There
were apaswaras galore from both(?? Why the violinst one wonders) and
Shruti had quite evidently left the concert in a greater hurry than
Vishaka herself. Definitely something distracting the performer. A
significant portion of the audience was missing by the time the Raga
part of the RTP was concluded. The rest of the RTP was limpid and
lackluster.


Yaman Kalyani – Hari Smarana Mado a Dasar padam was the last piece – Vishaka’s voice had lost its soft appeal by now and the rendering sounded a trifle hard on the ears. By now the race to conclude was obvious and there was no
“Shantham “ so to speak in a raagam like Yaman Kalyani.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Extremely disappointing indeed. There is a compellingly unique reason people
flock to hear Vishaka – iconic in her image – student of none less than
Lalgudi Jayaraman, a dancer of repute, a Gold Medallist Chartered
Accountant who gave up the prospects of a potentially brilliant career
for marriage to Sri Hari – nevertheless gaining fame as the
daughter-in-law of the revered Sri Krishna Premi; a 21st century
Chennai-bred – Mylapore damsel who donned the Madisaar and slid into a
supposedly “old” lifestyle with ease!



For many of the “progressive” Tam-Brahm community this sterling example of
one of their own breed returning to roots is possibly confounding as
well as inspiring – especially compared with their own situations of
sons and daughters in far away lands pursuing dreams that may or may
not include them. The novelty of a woman extolling the scriptures (she
is not the first but definitely the most talked about), comfortable in
Tamil as well as English, a vocalist upholding the Lalgudi baani – many
many reasons to inspire.



However, having listened to Vishaka both live and recorded, as well as having
listened to some of the great exponents of Hari Katha and Upanyasam,
here are some thoughts:

1.Hari katha : Vishaka has a very long way to go in terms of narration –
novelty wears off when it ceases to be fresh – its is 4 years now that
the Thyagaraja Vaibhavam or the Prahlada Charitram or the Sundara
Kandam have consisted of stock fare – from the songs to the jokes! The
danger of mediocre becoming inane is not far. Hari Katha is not easy –
it needs a sweeping knowledge of 100s of incidents and stories that the
narrator has in memory and can naturally command to the front to keep a
performance from becoming tame. A wonderful voice that flashes a few
bhava-laden pieces cannot bring majesty to an overall Hari Katha.
Vishaka is young and learning – she should make sure that complacence
does not become her undoing – lest the same audiences that looks up to
her as Sri Anna’s daughter-in-law, fail to accept her in comparison to
the giant he is!


2. Concerts: It is one thing to pull at the heart-strings of an audience in an
emotionally charged narration, with a perfectly chosen song/shloka in a
apt raga, and quite another to hold one’s own in a full-fledged
Carnatic Concert. The 2 concerts were proof of this. When compared to
the most average well-planned concerts delivered by artists of the day,
the two concerts can only be called pedestrian. A good voice and a
great guru do not a great artiste make – manodharma is what makes a
Carnatic performer stand apart from his or her peers. Vishaka had voice
–problems – this is possibly among the first performances after her
maternity break and her voice failed her more than once – not something
saadhana will not remedy. Her delivery of the pieces as per instruction
were excellent, the sangathis great, some of the
alapana/niraval/kalpana swara interludes showed latent brilliance – but
a few and far between moments do not hold up a concert. She will do
well to plan better and maintain a kalapramana in her concerts and pay
heed to that all important aspect of music - Manodharma.


Vishaka has everything going for her – she has established an image of piety
and sincerity, she has an automatic fan-following thanks to her
father-in-law that will encourage and nurture her talent and support
her every miss, all she needs to leverage is the great training she has
been imparted by her Gurus and give flight to her creativity – the road
is long and tortuous... but unlike many, she is blessed with all the
support she needs for her journey.

Of late interest in Carnatic Classical

I have always been a fan of good music, more so for our traditional Indian music, whether Carnatic or Hindustani. I always cherished MSS, Annamacharya, Thyagaraja's compilations right from my childhood days. I think one of the best ways to beat stress is, listen to good music or if possible, even play some 'good' music. One can play good music from a musical instrument and requires some basic lessons and practice. Then I started looking for some music schools in Bangalore and especially around Bellandur, Sarjapur area. I found http://easternfare.googlepages.com/branches in google. I still need to check out where & how much. While lazing around in the weekends, one fine day I also found that there is another music school somewhere near Marathalli. The poster is put in the musical instrumets shop inside Innovative Multiplex. I forgot the name and did not note the phone number. Will check it out again next time I go to Multiplex (I go there once in 6 months).

Anyway, while things were progressing as I described above, one of my friends told me about Indiranagar Sangeetha Sabha. Though I am very much familiar with Indiranagar Club in Bangalore, I never noticed Purandara Bhavana right behind Indiranagar Club !! Shame on me. Nevermind, I went there on last Friday for a discourse on Thyagaraja in English by Vishaka Hari. I think she is popular among Classical Carnatic music community. Since I never had been to a classical music concert in Bangalore, I did not hear about her. Anyway, I went there with my wife on Friday evening for a 2.5 hour discourse. It was quite interesting with three familiar keerthanas and many un-familiar ones to me. I could atleast understand the context of those familiar keerthans composed by great Thyagaraja. It was a great evening, followed by dinner at Little Italy on Indiranagar 100 ft road.

Computer Party

My friend from AP wanted to start a regional political party after he got inspired by so many regional parties. Then I asked him, what is your party name, janda, agenda etc? He said, his party name is 'Computer Party' his flag is a laptop computer and his agenda is the following.
* Free laptop computer to all government school children
* Free computer to all households
* Automated self service applications to all citizens
* Free email id to all voters
* Free web site space to all voters
* Free internet connection

He then continued, if he is elected he will achieve a great progress by making everything transparent using computers, spreading information, creating self services (so that nobody else is involved from government) etc. I thought this is very interesting but not possible practically. I ruled him out saying you are not a politician, but a techie. But I could not refuse his offer and thought he could ofcourse become a good politician, when he said, 'Friend !! You will own the company that provides internet services for a subscription, you will own the hardware shop, you will be the ISP, you will sell anti virus - and dont forget my share !!'

IIM Fee hike and corporate side effects

From the day I heard the news that I got offer to join PGSEM course, class of 2008 I started to think whether to accept this or not. One of the prime reasons is ofcourse the course fee. The entire course for 2.5 years costs about 7.5L. The regular PGP course offered by IIM Bangalore costs 8L for 2 years. The rising input costs, Srikrishna commissions' recommendation to hike salaries has mandated IIMs and IITs to raise the fees. The popular comment you hear anywhere to justify the fee hike by premier educational institutes of India is after completion of course, the average salaries offered are so high that students can afford to pay these fees. This fee hike definitely has a great impact on students who are fresh out of college joining the program. On the flipside there are many students who are sponsored from their companies for higher studies. The current allocation from corporates for these programs must accommodate the higher fees. One could say "no big deal, the corporates have lot of money and funds for higher education are not so much", but look at it, atleast IT companies will be thinking twice with raising dollar and shrinking margins from US projects. More-over this fee hike requires almost more than doubling the current allocation in the budgets. Assuming most of the companies finish their budget exercises before March, the academic year 2008-2009 definitely would not have got any higher allocation. Since the fee hikes (actuals) were announced in the last two months. anyway, the bottom line is, someone in my company who could do PGSEM program sponsored by my company last year could not do this year without investing remaining 50% of the course fee from his/her pocket !!! :-( :-( :-(

State Bank of India Recruitment Drive and Computerization

SBI has announced to recruit 20,000 clerical staff across India (here is the link http://www.statebankofindia.com/viewdetail.jsp?lang=0&id=0,15,110&dcd=1554&did=12095387224165EDAEEBEA6E967765193AECF3857CAE9). Well, this may not be the news. The news is, the entire application process is made online except for the part where you need to pay the application fee. This exception is alright, because not everyone might have access to online payment facilities in India. The application process is very very simple. Just go to any SBI Branch that is Computerised and centrally networked, (SBI calls such branches as CBS branches) and pay the application fee (which is Rs. 250) and get a journal number from them. This number has to be updated in the application while filling it online. The minimum qualification required to apply is 12th plus communication skills plus basic computer knowledge. So, this makes a lot of sense to automate the application process and make it online. Not everyone might have access to online payment facilities but almost every mandal (taluk) or a small town has atleast one cyber cafe and internet is widely available.

I would say this is a welcome step from such a large public sector enterprise and I see more such initiatives from other big public enterprises such as Indian Railways or State owned RTCs or UPSC or respective state Public Service Commissions. Such a process ensures no application is lost in post, no application is delayed, no application went un-noticed. More-over it saves paper, reduces cutting trees, saves planet earth.

Movies delivered at home

Since the days I returned from US in 2002, I always wanted NetFlix type of service in India. I missed the quality DVDs not just movies but also other interesting programs available on DVDs. The poor quality of discs in neighborhood rental stores and high city traffic to watch a good movie made me look for alternatives. 'Cinema' at Koramangala is one such store in Bangalore and Hyderabad offering wide variety of titles for rent with best quality discs, but they dont have a door delivery service. The neighborhood stores slowly started door delivery service, but they lacked a website catalogue to choose from titles and ofcourse the quality of discs is not always the best.

Now after 5 years, www.seventymm.com is the first such site to offer DVD rentals over the web. They have good collection of titles and to start with a fairly priced plans. Recently Reliance promoted www.bigflicks.com has entered into this business. So far I have seen these two companies offering DVDs delivered to home in India and thought of comparing their plans here.

Seventymm claims service in 6 cities, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Chandigarh and Hyderabad and around 15,000 titles in 14 languages. Their basic plan gives you 1 movie at a time and you could watch upto 6 movies in a month. You need to return the disc within 3 nights and 4 days. This plan costs you a basic membership fee of Rs. 250 and a registration fee of Rs. 199. You need to pay a refundable security deposit of Rs. 349. Per month it costs you Rs. 798 for 6 movies. Rs. 133 per movie. Hrm...

Bigflicks delivers movies worldwide over broadband and in India by door delivery. Being a Reliance company, they have office in Ahmedabad and also offer services in 9 other cities (Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Indore, Kolkatta, Mumbai, Pune). Their basic plan of 1 disc at a time requires a refundable deposit of Rs 400, a monthly subscription of Rs. 250 and no registration fee. Currently none of the plans in Bigflicks have registration fee. While rental period for Old titles is not limited, new titles have to be returned within 48 hours. Bigflicks also claims over 15,000 titles in 15 languages. In total per month it comes to Rs. 750 for one disc plan and no major difference than seventymm.

And for the real movie buffs, Bigflicks lets you take a maximum of 3 discs at a time with no upper limit on total number of movies per month. This plan costs you Rs. 5000 per annum and a security deposit of Rs. 1000. Where as in Seventymm, one can rent a maximum of 2 discs at a time with no limit on the number of titles you can rent in a month. Their annual plan costs you Rs. 5490 per annum with no security deposit. Their one time registration fee of Rs. 199 is to be paid. This turns out to be Rs. 5689 per annum again not so much of difference from Bigflicks. The advantage here is one can keep the disc for unlimited number of days. Assuming a new title can also be kept.

Ofcourse what needs to be seen to compare these two services further is on the following parameters....

1. The availability of titles
- Once you place the request, what is the number of days you need to wait for that title
- This parameter can further be for old titles and new titles
- The title itself in their catalogue
- When delivered, the contents of the case has same movie as you requested

2. Turnaround time of your requests for pick up and delivery
- Lets say you place a request to pick up the disc, how many hours or days they take to pick up the disc.
- If the disc is available at the time of placing request, when does it get delivered

3. Transparency in Billing
- Are you charged as promised?
- are there any hidden charges like late payment fees or service charges

4. Quality of titles
- Condition of discs
- You get a good movie watching experience without any missing parts due to scratches on discs
- Sub-titles in the language you need
- For higher customer satisfaction - original discs with supplement information like making of the movie etc.

May be the blog viewers can comment their experience with any of these services. I am still not a subscriber to any of these services.

CPI and CPI(M)

Whenever I read some news related to elections and politics I just wonder what is the difference between these two left parties. One is Communist Party of India (www.cpiindia.org) and the other is Communist Party of India (Marxist) (cpim.org).

To my understanding CPI(M) is quite influential in politics and is currently heading three state governments. It has been un-interruptedly in power in West Bengal since 1977, in Kerala and in Tripura. On broad level both the parties are leftists in nature and has influence from Soviet. CPI being the oldest was born in 1925 in India and CPI(M) was born in 1964. Popular known leaders from CPI(M) are Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury, EMS Nambudripad, HS Surjeet, Sukomal Sen and BV Raghavulu. And in CPI, the national secretery is AB Pradhan, and more known names are Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy, D. Raja and Gurudas Dasgupta. I have not explored further at a micro level what seperates CPI from CPI(M).

Tata-Ford deal

Tata Motors has paid 2.3 billion USD for two luxury brands that Ford acquired in one in 1989 (Jaguar) and other in the year 2000 (Land Rover from BMW). Ford has paid much more than what Tatas have paid now to acquire these two brands. From Ford's point of view, I think it is straight forward why did they want to sell these two luxury brands. Ford has been struggling to manage these two brands in domestic as well as overseas markets and there are not enough profits generated from these brands. But, it will be interesting to hear the story from Tata's side. Without looking into the books looks like Tatas did smart shopping considering the fact that they paid almost half of what Ford paid to acquire these two brands. It is not new for Tatas to manage global acquisition more so a British one. It is also not new for them to manage post acquisitions. Ford labor unions preferred the proposal from Tatas post takeover. As Tatas have already mentioned, they are going to leave Land Rover and Jaguar as independent entities. I think it is in the best interests of Tatas to keep them independent for sometime (for about 2 to 3 years). This gives enough time for Tatas to get sufficient learning opportunities to understand and manage these brands. They could then start experimenting with leveraging on Supply Chain capabilities, like getting steel from Tata-Corus (I am just guessing that they supply steel for cars), then on the collaborative design process, co-innovation, managing luxury brands and then look at synergies from India interms of domestic sales or auto components or Indian management in productivity. Tatas have already started introducing a good amount of features in their Dicor series of Safari vehicles. Its a good start and they are on this challenging journey ahead.

Prasnottara ratna malika

One of Adi Sanakara's works is Prasnottara Ratna Malika which is meant to elevate the seeker, by providing answers to doubts that may arise in the mind of the devotees. I am just listing few that constantly come in my mind..

What is more beneficial than anything else?
Righteousness.

What is the most desirable for human beings?
Life dedicated to one's and other's welfare.

Who is the foe?
It is but idleness.

What is unintelligence?
Not repeating what is learnt.

What is transient like the water on lotus leaf?
Youth, wealth and life.

What is priceless?
That which is given at the right moment.

What pains like a shaft till death?
The sin committed in secrecy.

By whom is this world concquered?
By the person who has truthfulness and endurance.

What is chartiy?
Expecting no return.

What is to be earned by people?
Knowledge, wealth, strength, fame, merit.

Which is the destroyer of all good qualities?
Greed.

X-Engineering (or Cross engineering)

BPR (Business Process Reengineering), the quite popular buzz word in early 90s focused on automation and transformation of an organization from operating a business in traditional ways to modern ways with the help of IT systems. Now that most of the organizations have done that job, the future is to look at innovating these business processes that are already mature with IT. X-Engineering (pronounced as Cross Engineering) aims at one such method.

Cross Engineering looks at business process improvements across the organizations involving their customers, vendors, business partners and any other mutually interested third party with an IT system. This process takes advantage of the fact that these participants have matured IT systems and can exchange information in understandable formats.

I believe cross engineering paves a big way for integrating loosely coupled systems. Which actually means, the recent buzz word - SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). Already major application software vendors are moving in this direction and cross engineering has a good potential to support SOA.

Disappointing day

Today is quite a disappointing day for me. I am disappointed on myself. On one side I dream of creating an organization, be an entrepreneur, be somebody, do something different, challenge status quo, challenge ex-bosses, complain the old-system to create a new one, beat few successful people's success blah blah blah. But I realized today that I lack the right attitude more than anything else. The way one of our guys went an extra mile to speak to a prospect and get some business where he was not even remotely connected to such a task made me feel humiliated on myself, while appreciating his efforts.

I dont know where my life is heading and what am I going to do !! I just wish I do the right things.

Self belief

There are three stages in achieving victory. (1) Knowing what to do (2) Knowing how to do it (3) Doing it - without which, of course, the knowledge of 'What' and 'How' is useless. Each of the stages hinges on self-belief: belief that you can master the subject or the sport, belief that you can apply that mastery in real-life situations, belief that you will succeed in execution. More, all three stages are informed by the belief that you can continuously improve, forever raising your game or your management performance.

Picked this from the article: http://www.thinkingmanagers.com/management/learning-organisation.php

Jack - straight from the gut

Currently reading that book. Few lines I liked...

• When your boss asks you something (I am talking about a smart boss), he already has an answer. He is just looking for a confirmation.
• Business is not quite similar to engineering where it is a list of procedures and mathematical calculations. Business is to feel, smell and then make intuitive decisions sometimes. Its not necessarily one single big idea - it is a collection of ideas and making them work.
  

T20 (Twenty Twenty)

My usual prelog to any thoughts and then the thoughts...

Cricket - the game most watched in India, a bat and ball game with an objective to score maximum runs. The team with most runs wins. It is about runs. When I was a kid, I remember very well - a 5 day test match used to take 7 days because it included a two day rest in between. One day after first two days and another day of rest after next two days of play. In 1939, there was a longest test match between South Africa and England that lasted for 11 days (Ofcourse due to rain and the play that followed till the result). Each over used to be 10 balls, later it was reduced to 8 and then to 6. There were not many TV sets in India at that time. Times have changed, technology has improved, satellites were sent to receive live transmission from anywhere across the world and beam them over to India. Indian matches are scheduled to be played over the weekends to attract maximum crowd. Corporates started sponsoring matches and players. Money started to pour. Cricket boards become cash rich. Market potential is unveiled.

Now, how could the boards or TV channels or companies make more money? By making more people pay for it. But again how? By making more people watch it. So... shorten the play time. Give the audience the entertainment they want. A full game of cricket could be watched in the same time span that a family block buster takes. Watch it on any day weekday or a weekend. Watch it after your work hours. The highlights take just 15 minutes. You could watch them too, incase you missed the match.

And to make the game little bit more interesting than usual game they have re-written few rules. For example, a ball following no-ball is a free hit. Incase of a tie, winner is decided by the maximum number of times the bowlers hit the wickets. Hello...!! Is not the game of cricket about making more runs?

Epilogue
Anyway, the point is, this game has become an entertainer than a skill game. A player would not like this form of cricket. I would not like it so much to myself. And unfortunately due to the time constraints and the money, I am worried that this will be the only way cricket might be played in future and the next generation have to watch the same.

60 years and still young

That's the most striking sentence that one would observe on independence day of India. What does this mean to me as an Indian? Till I was in the school, I was singing the National Anthem. That has always been inspiring me. There were two three occasions where I spoke about independent India during my school days in the assembly of students. Ofcourse, it required some preparation and courage to speak. I was not so much of an independent thinker then. Now, may be I dont depend so much to think. So, I started to think. First thing, Independence means, the right to live. As long as you are in the country the government ensures that you could have a good night sleep and dream. This thought inturn is in sync with what 'Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak' said 'Independence is my birth right'. Next, the fundamental rights that constitution confers on every citizen of India, living in Indian democracy. They include individual rights common to most liberal democracies, such as equality before the law, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of association and peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, and the right to constitutional remedies for the protection of civil rights such as habeas corpus. And if you were to enjoy these fundamental rights, you also need to be aware of your fundamental duties. Such as to abide by constitution, to uphold and protect sovereignty, unity and integrity of India, to defend the country, to promote harmony, to value and preserve rich heritage of our country, to protect and improve natural environment, to safeguard public property, to strive towards excellence so that the nation rises higher levels of achievement, to participate in such a nation building process. Now that I am aware of my fundamental rights and duties, I started to think how many Indians could honestly say they live by them?

Few incidents I could recollect - most common ones.

- destroying public property such as government buses, trains, offices

- poaching of rare animals & national birds

- cutting trees, encroachment of forest land, lakes

- women and child abuse

What is the guarantee that you are not going to be a victim in sometime? If you want to enjoy the fundamental right, you must responsibly discharge your fundamental duty as well. Otherwise, there is no meaning to life and hence no meaning to 'Independence'.

Why suddenly...?

Did you not hear this expression when somebody said, I am resigning? Especially, from your boss when you told him you are quitting. The typical response is 'Why?', 'I am shocked to hear this', 'I never expected, that "you" would do this', etc etc. BULL SHIT!!

If I were a team leader, I exactly know who is reporting to me, what is the work being carried out, what are individual aspirations, what is the value addition to each team member and how each person is peforming. Even if a small disconnect between individual's expectation from the organization and his/her aspiration ignites the negative thinking. I fully support the theory that people quit not from the organization, but from their immediate boss.

And to enlighten the poor boss's soul, the chicken starts to think at the first negative sign and many things keep adding up. Finally the individual either encounters a spike that completely demotivates him/her or reaches a saturation state accumulating all the encounters in the past (like illogical appraisal talks etc). This process could take anytime from 6 months to one year. And then the employee announces his decision to be free from the boss (not from the organization). So my dear bosses, when somebody says I want to resign, please dont pretend to put a shocking expression on your face. You better be aware of whats happening in your team and atleast verify where the 'disconnect' is. Mere talking does not help, act.

Leader and Manager

I have been thinking about this for a while and asked my sister whats the difference. She told me Leader is the one who leads and Manager is the one who manages. Hmm... thats a trivial answer, but not clear enough. Infact, when I started writing this, I gave the title as 'Leader vs Manager'. I wanted to distinguish the roles that each one play. Later I realized, these two roles do not really compete with each other, but sometimes are best performed complementing each. Based on the situation one of the qualities come out from the same individual (not induhvidual). The reason I started writing about this topic was, simple organization behaviour. I believe work atmosphere should never create 'challenging confusions' among work force.

Let us look at a typical team structure in a Bangalore based software services company. A team of size 30, has one line manager, has 4 or 5 project leaders (or team leaders) reporting to him/her and the remaining (24) is a mix of senior and relatively junior set of developers. In such a set up, a project leader (or team leader) is the one who is closest to the work force. He/she knows about business intricacies and execution. Seldom is the manager aware of them.

In this kind of setup, the ideal role for manager is to do 'measure and control' and interfere less in the daily operations of execution. May be the manager could look at measuring the productivity or 'observing' the quality process or motivating the work force or providing a safe and inspiring work environment, matching their professional and personal goals, etc. It is upto the project lead to ensure that deadlines are met, team members are skilled to perform the tasks, there is a great degree of inter and intra team co-operation, quality processes are 'followed', ensure transparent reporting of activities for better visibility etc. If the project is adequately staffed and project leader is able to manage the execution and still has time, there is no harm in sharing few responsibilities of line manager. BUT I would expect its a great disaster if manager tries to micro manage the project leader's functions. It hurts the confidence of team members and the project leader.

I conclude with the fact that a leader is more result oriented person with a team to produce results and a manager need to steer the energy in right direction. A manager has got 4 to 5 engines and he/she needs to make them function with synergie to make the vehicle move in right direction. But a steering could never try to become an engine.

One liners...

I am currently reading 'High Performance Entrepreneur' and came across this sentence. I thought I dont always have to write minimum of hundred words to make up a post. So, here it goes.

"Do not try to solve all the problems you face, some problems do not need to be solved and in those situations try to change the rules of game".

For example, if you are running a business where its no more profitable and has negative margins and with no proven business model, it does not make sense to pump in more money. Just forget it and start a new life. Or you picked up a stock without your own research and later realized its a dead investment, just get out of it even for a loss. Atleast you are free of the space it is occupying in your mind.

Saving Earth and filling pockets

Shai Agassi calls it quits to commit himself to alternate energy, environmental policies and other issues. Norway aims be zero emission country by 2050 and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases by 30% before 2020. Carbon trading business is reaching close to a billion dollar per annum and its growing.

ICICI Bank announced a Rs. 100 crore fund on April 26, to support innovation and development of green business in India, focusing on energy-efficient and environment-friendly ventures. Well, needless to say the interests on saving earth from greenhouse emissions are growing. This concern has been there for a while. So, whats new now? Let me explain what motivates countries like India and China in this program.

Before I proceed, let me introduce to one buzz word, carbon trading.

• Under Kyoto protocol, developed countries agreed that if their industries can’t reduce carbon emissions in their own countries, they will pay others like India (a signatory to the Protocol) to do it for them and help them meet their promised reduction quotas in the interest of worldwide reduction of greenhouse gases.

• The “currency” for this trade is called Carbon Emission Reduction (CER). One unit of CER is one tonne equivalent of carbon dioxide emission.

• UN Framework Convention on Climate Change registers the project, allowing the company to offer CERs produced by the project to a prospective buyer.

Now that we know the currency for carbon trading, lets look at who is gaining this currency in India.

Vadodara-based Gujarat Fluorochemicals Ltd (GFL), and Gurgaon-based SRF are likely to see their bottomlines grow more by selling carbon credits, a waste product, than their main business, refrigerants.

SRF made Rs 149 crore from the transfer of Certified Emission Receipts (CERs, also called carbon credits).

So far, GFL has received around Rs 350 crore (including advances) toward sale of carbon credits. They claim a potential of upto Rs 400 crore per annum if they are able to sell all of 6 million CERs.

It was the first Indian company to get registered for a CDM project in March 2005 for 3 million CERs. With 114 CDM-registered projects, India is currently the world leader.

Meanwhile, SRF which got registered for its 3.83 million CERs in December the same year, has taken the lead in actual trading accounting for 39 per cent of market share in the country.

Coffee day is expensive

Coffee day has revised its pricelist since last month. One of my alltime favourite 'Cappuccino' that was priced Rs. 30 now costs Rs. 45. Its a 50% jump straight. I think its either planning an IPO (to show good balance sheet) or the costs have gone up really high. If we say, costs have gone up high, milk did not really go up so much in the past one year. Fuel prices have come down, the number of people visiting coffee day did not go down, the staff remained same, rentals would have been agreed upon before and one could expect a rise of about 10% max in a year. Salaries would have gone up by 15% more. Total expenses would not have rised more than 15 to 20% considering the above facts. And finally coffee prices. Weighted average prices of coffee in the last three years did not change much. I understand there are fluctuations, but as I said overall in a year not much of change (google on coffee prices). But a straight 50% rise is a surprising move. I would be consuming less coffee there.

Are you over-achiever?

Picked up this from smbconsultinginc.com.

10 Dynamic traits of over-achiever

Are you a successful over-achiever? Considerable research has been done about the characteristics that typify the successful business owner. Most experts who have studied the subject tend to agree that the most important single factor is an overpowering need to achieve. In other words, a person's attitude seems to be the main determinant of success in business, more so than education, intelligence, physical attributes, or having a pleasing personality. The key characteristics that have been found to be part of the makeup of all successful over-achievers are:

1. Powerful need to achieve -- which should not be confused with a mere need to exercise power or be liked or admired; the way in which different entrepreneurs "keep score" in assessing their level of achievement varies, and may range from accumulating great wealth to creating a better mouse trap;

2. Perseverance -- the characteristic trait of following through on commitments and not abandoning objectives when difficulties are encountered;

3. Positive mental attitude -- the self-confidence in one's abilities that allows a person to remain optimistic in new, unfamiliar and unexpectedly difficult situations;

4. Objectivity -- an ability to accurately assess the risks associated with a particular course of action, including a realistic understanding of one's own capabilities and limitations. This includes being willing and able to abandon an ill-advised project without having ones' ego get in the way.

5. Foresight -- the ability to anticipate developments and be proactive, rather than constantly having to react to problems after they arise;

6. Well-developed personal relations skills -- being cheerful and cooperative and able to easily get along with people, but often without being close to employees and associates;

7. Strong communication skills -- the ability to communicate well in written form and in making effective oral presentations, either one-on-one or before groups;

8. Resourcefulness -- an ability to solve one-of-a-kind problems in unique or creative ways, including the ability to handle problems for which you might not have had previous training or experience to call upon;

9. Technical knowledge -- broad and well-rounded technical knowledge and understanding, especially with regard to the nuts-and-bolts physical processes of producing goods and services

10. A respectful attitude towards money -- a tendency not to look upon it as an end in itself, but to view it as a means of making things happen and accomplishing business goals, or as a type of objective feedback from the outside world, which lets the entrepreneur know if is on the right track with the business.

So, there you have it...10 successful business traits. If you see yourself in this list, then we will be seeing you at the top!

Be your own life coach

I was reading this nice article in RD March edition by Keith Ferrazzi, CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight and author of Never Eat Alone. He emphasizes on the following four aspects that sound quite logical.

Focus: Identify your needs first. Form a focus. Many times it is not easy for us to answer this simple question 'What do I want to do?'. But its not that difficult too. Its a matter of focus. Dont let others define your success. Once you know what you want, just follow the next three steps.

Diagnose: You need to identify what is the behaviour that stops you from moving forward in achieving these goals. Identifying weakness is as important as knowing strengths. The good behaviour and the bad one work in opposite directions to prevent moving forward. For example, I was raised in an environment where I was told to respect elders, do not question them and give them what they want. Unfortunately I observed that I carry the same with me in my professional life where I seldom question my manager in the fear of sounding too argumentative and also in fear of making my boss feel uncomfortable with me. But when I found such a problem with me, I consulted my friends and got an advice that I need to handle the conversation in a professional way. Put all the information in black and white and let him know what I want, instead of work towards what he wants me to be.

Share: Help others to let them help you. Let others know what you have in mind. Be open to receive feedback. If somebody is giving you a 'gift' saying your behaviour is not good or certain aspect of you is not good and few more people share same feeling, certainly there is some change needed in you. A good behaviour is always respected and makes you feel good. Someone would not bother to give their opinion on your behaviour if you are going to contradict everytime you receive some feedback. Perhaps the best people who would know your weakness are your friends, colleagues, or your spouse. If you receive some negative feedback, seek clarifications if you dont understand. Ask more like 'Could that person give more examples', or 'What exactly do you mean by that?', 'What came to your mind when I was doing this?'. You could work it out by forming a group of trusted advisors to you and let them know that you give importance to their advice. 

Milestones: You cant manage what you cant measure. Once you got the focus, you need to see if you are going in the right direction. Periodic checks always help. It is possible that the contents of checkpoint change. For example if your focus is weight management, check everyweek changes in the weight. Once you got the weight into control, perhaps next checkpoint would be to see if the waist is reducing.

Guru - the movie

Watched this movie two weeks ago. I thought of writing this blog because of one reason - many people told me that its an inspiring movie and gives some boost to start a business. I am not sure if this movie is such a booster. So I want to focus on two aspects in the movie in that direction and I welcome your comments.

First one: Starting Business - As Mani Ratnam portrayed in the movie, 'the passion todo business' makes the 'hero' to make 'life turning' decisions. It makes him think, makes him not to think, makes him goto extremes, makes him take the power into hand when required: I mean... the essential leadership qualities are displayed. These qualities come from the 'passion'. The true passion to be someone, to do things differently, to dream and then to follow that dream. Well, the point here I am trying to make is... its the passion that makes the difference, not some movie or someone's life story.

Second one: Sustaining the business in ethical way. In other words doing the business in true spirit and with ethics. Zero means zero. However tough it may be... how many years it may be. This is one thing I wish everybody takes from this movie. And the director has nicely put it in the role of chief editor 'The Independence' newspaper. In my opinion its a real tough job to stand for what you believe in life and carry on with it. If such an ethical business is practised we would not hear any Harshad Mehta or Enron stories.

Technorati tags: Movie review

What does companies like Infosys do?

Thats a good question. A friend asked me. What is the difference between a product company and services company (in other words, a services department in a product company and services company). How could companies like Infosys deliver so much so fast for so less. I gave the following answer. They have processes so much established that a newbie becomes productive in less than three months, where as it takes upto 6 months to be productive in a product company. Definitely he did not buy the idea of process. Of course, then I started thinking and started writing this blog.

Priorities

Define who are the customers. In a product company the customers could mostly be either internal or sales force. Sales force would (perhaps) promise heaven and earth to customer and sometimes customer is willing to wait (till end of the year or till the current contract comes to expiry). Revenues would be realized as per the contract and may not be so much dependent on 'all' promised deliverables. But in a pure offshore services company majority of the projects are handled in Time & Material way. Which means one could bill only to the amount of 'actual work'. This means a clear visibie signs of functionality to customer. Customer would not pay unless things are moving. Situations like this forces offshore companies to really deliver something with time. But product companies which get the pressure only towards the deadline do not see any motivation to deliver.

 More on the way...

Technorati tags: Business, Technology, Outsourcing

K@W: Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Just came across this article and found quite interesting.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1623&CFID=2567255&CFTOKEN=90452463

Following are the takeaways for me.

• Entrepreneurs not only take risk, but also manage it well.
• There are no special qualities they posses. Its the drive and passion to take on makes them one.
• Check out how much you got to lose if you start something on your own. Its better to have as low liabilities as possible.
• Follow the KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid principle. No fancy GUI without value addition.

How to be a good manager.

Or atleast I try to write how to be a manager or on the second thought i think it is just enough to write how to be a human being. Let me write some of my observations that would tell budding managers on how not to behave.

1. Privileged Person: Being a manager does not mean that you belong to a privileged lot of human beings. Only from 8 to 5 at work somebody is a Manager. After that he/she is just 'somebody'. You cant take extra luggage on plane without paying extra, you cant upgrade to business class without being a frequent flyer, you cant just do things which you are not allowed to or can not do!!

2. I am GOD: PLEASE for GOD's sake, leave the notion that a manager is God. A manager is after all a human being (atleast should try to live like a human being, if the manager is appointed from the Homosapien species). A manager does not necessarily have to have the knowledge of everything in the world. Other people in the society know about it. One does have to say that Operas come from France and Italians make Champagne. One does not have to say, I do not work for money. One does not have to break all speed limits (one does not get lucky always). One does not start to speak a foreign language without learning it.

3. Manager Attitude: First of all by virtue of your name and location where you sit, everybody around you at workplace knows that you are a manager. This is enough to kill opponent's energy by 50%. You still do not have to kill the rest by wearing 'Manager Attitude' hat and moving around. Stop doing that. Stop telling people that your laptop was used by somebody next to Board member and now it is possessed with super powers. Stop compelling people that they need to invent super duper figures and presentations in two shakes of a lamb tail because somebody next to board member asked. Stop telling people that you are flying on a work day and you can send emails while flying. Stop telling people in meetings that you are attending the meeting not to understand the contents but to tell at the end that you are a manager and you just want to grace the meeting with your presence.

4. Accept Ground Realities: Everybody who is employed at work place are productive in their own way. Infact a manager is the one who is not as productive as the employee. There are ways how a manager could be productive. you could contact me to find that out. But a manager should never become a hindrance to productivity. One must not carry the tag that says I am the manager, I work the most, I produce the most!! This is a wrong notion. As I said earlier a manager by himself does not produce anything. Its like Government. A government organization can not survive if there are no people paying taxes or no people at all. Without a team a team manager is nothing. One has to realize that. A manager has to respect the team members and also people outside his team. Who knows, may be one day the manager has to work for the team member.

5. Move with Makeup: This is one thing I always suggest wannabe managers to be aware of. If you think you are moving with a make up, remove that make up. Everybody around you knows how a damn fool you are with the make up. Everybody around you knows everything. you are the one who is ignorant.

6. Managers make mistakes: Its alright. Nobody is perfect. If you are a manager, if you commit a mistake there is no problem in admitting it. nobody takes you off your position. You dont get dis-respected suddenly. So, dare to commit mistakes and dare to admit them.

Standard Disclaimer: All characters & information posted are purely my personal opinions and any resemblance to dead or alive is purely coincidental.

MTR Ready to Eat

When MTR Foods introduced their ready to eat stuff, there was an interview with the CEO of the Company. He shared one vision "MTR wants to be McDonalds of South India". In my opinion they are heading towards the right direction.

I happened to buy 6 of their ready to eat packs on Sunday, tasking one by one. So far I finished Tamarind Rice, Sambar Rice and Vegetable Pulao. Ofcourse, in the past I also tasted their Pongal, Tomato Rice, Masala Rice. Of all these, the best so far is Veg Pulao. I liked it for two reasons - 1. Less oil than other products in the same category, 2. Less spicy. Next best is Samar Rice, again for two reasons one being less oily and second being the taste (though a bit spicy). Then comes Pongal that does not make you miss the authentic taste. My next choice is Tomato Rice. Though a bit oily, the taste is quite good. Masala Rice takes next position with similar taste as Veg Pulao but more spicy. Tamarind Rice comes last because of heavy oil. If you are a staunch MTR customer, chances are that you would like this because MTR managed to preserve the taste.

By the way, for bachelors in Bangalore I feel this makes a quite nice meal after a hard days work and no time left. All you need to do is keep the pack in boiling water for 5 minutes and your favourite hot dish is ready. Except Veg Pulao, all of them are in the range of 18 to 22 Rs. And if you are really hungry two packs are recommended.

Successful Innovation

I am currently reading this book and picked up few lines that I thought I must remember & recollect often.

Capturing the thoughts... (How to capture creative ideas)

• Org wide competetions - People put their minds to work not because of the prize money, but because of the opportunity to gain public recognition for their thinking.
• Association of language and creativity - The choice of words provde an intellectual and emotional context for the way in which subordinates and colleagues relate to and make sense of their work.
  
• Avoide bullets during presentation - instead use story telling. Story telling has always been an important part of the culture of 3M. For example, story about a scientist who, while singing in the choir, wished he had bookmarks that wouldn't fall out of the hymnal - and later createed Post-It Notes. Bullets are typically generic and cant give critical relationships in a logical way.
  
• Reduce work based stress, one of the great inhibitors of creativity.
  

What are the attributes of a software company?

One of my friends told me, "Check out my startup's website"! I was quite amazed, then started thinking. How easy it is these days to start a website and it does not cost so much if its a no frills site (I mean no large data, no database connection etc). I asked him, what does your startup do? He said, they offer unique customer experience, they are into training, they are into product development etc. He mentioned that at the moment he is the only one and looking for freshers because they are less expensive. This made me think on the above subject. How much the traditional business has been changing.... one could ask what are the attributes of a company - the answer is readily available. What are the attributes of a manufacturing company? One could answer without hesitation. But, what are the attributes of a software company? To make it worse, how much thin line of difference exists between ITES and IT Services Company. I tried searching for this answer over the web and found one article that is quite interesting. I will not copy paste entire thing.. but here is what the author feels are important attributes of a software company.

• Requirements Management
• Change and Configuration Management
• Effective communication among development teams
• Appropriate defined processes
• Reviews

If you observe most of them align with SEI CMM assessment requirements. This would then showcase the capability of a software organization. A software company begins with a commitment to learn and employ the fundamental principles that govern the development and management process of software.

For further details, Roger Pressman's book on Software Engineering is highly recommended.

Making sense out of non-sense

The other day Rajeev asked me 'What is this blog thing all about?'. In his blog he wrote a blog on blog. If you read his post, one of the main concerns is that, does blogging have a purpose? In my opinion so far there is not a single tool or site that actually makes use of blogging platforms. So far blogging is really seen as a platform for individual's opinions. (To make it a point, read my previous sentence - it says my opinion). So far what is the commercial value of blogging? Why did google buy Blogspot? Why does Microsoft provide a tool to publish blogs? Why is every F500 company is trying to have a blog for their own? Why many technology companies have their 'Official' blogs? Is the information published over a blog just an opinion? (One of my friends says Opinions are like ass holes - everybody is entitled to have one.)

Anyway... to a common avid blogger or a net savvy user its not un-usual that the above questions pop up in the mind. I think (again in my opinion), there is a business opportunity here. Or...let me not even go to the extent of talking about business opportunity. Let me put it as taking some value out of blogging. First thing I noticed is all blogging sites and platforms provide a way to tag the posts with labels. Which is quite good. This makes blog search quite easy. It becomes easier to categorize given blogs into these topics. So, the next step is to apply little bit of analytics to these categories to figure out trends. For example, Coca Cola has launched 'Chai Coke' a new flavor of coke that smells like Ice Tea in 4 metros of India. Now coke wants an instant feedback on the product to proceed further on this product. My idea is that Coke should promote blogging on this product to individuals and apply our little analytics tool on the blog sites to search for labels such as Colas, Cool Drinks, Spirits, Cocktails etc and search for the word Chai Coke and see the number of positive or negative words in these posts. This could give an idea on success factor of the new product.

Netscape and Google - Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

Google requires a competency that Netscape never needed: database management. Google isn't just a collection of software tools, it's a specialized database. Without the data, the tools are useless; without the software, the data is unmanageable. Software licensing and control over APIs--the lever of power in the previous era--is irrelevant because the software never need be distributed but only performed, and also because without the ability to collect and manage the data, the software is of little use. In fact, the value of the software is proportional to the scale and dynamism of the data it helps to manage.

Another example demonstrating Web 2.0 principles - BitTorrent: a key Web 2.0 principle the service automatically gets better the more people use it.

The central principle behind the success of the giants born in the Web 1.0 era who have survived to lead the Web 2.0 era appears to be this, that they have embraced the power of the web to harness collective intelligence:
The lesson: Network effects from user contributions are the key to market dominance in the Web 2.0 era.

As noted above, one of the defining characteristics of internet era software is that it is delivered as a service, not as a product. This fact leads to a number of fundamental changes in the business model of such a company:
1. Operations must become a core competency
2. Users must be treated as co-developers - It's no accident that services such as Gmail, Google Maps, Flickr, del.icio.us, and the like may be expected to bear a "Beta" logo for years at a time.

Real time monitoring of user behavior to see just which new features are used, and how they are used, thus becomes another required core competency. A web developer at a major online service remarked: "We put up two or three new features on some part of the site every day, and if users don't adopt them, we take them down. If they like them, we roll them out to the entire site."

Mittal wins

As I rightly predicted, Mittal has won. From his words, 'If this deal does not go through, Globalization has no meaning'. I think so too.

Mittal vs Arcelor

Its an interesting game is not it? But its not new to Mittal. Infact its been his most favourite game. The game he played since he has been an entrepreneur. The game he mastered for years. For me personally, I felt Arcelor made a hasty decision when it could not shape up the deal right with Severstal (the russian steel maker). Infact I read one of the reportes wrote a sentence that sounded like this entire take over bid of Mittal is a conspiracy planned with the help of Indian government. It might sound absurd... but then how else could one convince the investor community in European countries?

Now Mittal has got the nice business plan presented to the investors and I have a strong feeling that he is going to win this match too.

Social Networking

These days I see lot of people using Orkut. Then I started wondering how successful this webcommunity is. Coincidentally, I found an article on Social Networking from K@W Newsletter. (Connecting the corporate dots). Its an interesting article, afterall some big heads from Wharton have written it. Well... the amazing thing is, the concepts have been there for quite sometime - except that the new age computing has made them as a bigger commodity. Easy to use, whenver, wherever, more accessible, more interesting.... all in all it has become a fun activity that users would love to do.

I would now like to take another view point on these web communities. Just login to Orkut or MySpace or Friendster. Did you find any ads? Or adsense atleast? (ubiquitous google)
How do they make money? Atleast they are not in charity. This certainly is a food for thought.

Atleast one blog a week

I set a goal for myself to write atleast one sensible blog in a week. I myself did not like the making of telugu movie blog. I shall delete it.

A small story....

Once upon a time in a village a man appeared who announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for Rs. 10. The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys went out in the forest and started catching them. The man bought thousands at 10 and as supply started to diminish and villagers started to stop their effort he announced that now he would buy at 20 rupees. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching moneys again. Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer rate increased to 25 and the supply of monkeys became so that it was an effort to even see a monkey let alone catch it. The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at 50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business his assistant would now buy on behalf of the man. In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at 35 and when the man comes back you can sell it to him for 50. The villagers queued up with all their saving to buy the monkeys. Then they never saw the man nor his assistant, only monkeys everywhere!

What is the similarity between Indian Cricket & Indian Stock Market

These days its like Indian cricket team. I seriously doubt the current windies series. What would you do incase the popularity for cricket is going down especially when windies is hosting the next year's cricket world cup!! One must revive the interest and which is the best way to do it? Get a strong cricket team and make it lose. Thats it. I feel this series would have been mutually agreed at high levels.

Big deal. What the heck this has to do with Indian stock market? Pretty simple huh... how do you attract lot of money? Make it popular... from 6000 to 12000 in just one year, hype it, talk about it, let media take care of advertising for it, create an impression as if its going to cross 20000 points... let the retail investor's hard earned money be pumped in. Now pull your (FII) money back...

Drawing similarities between these two.... look at mass behaviour of people. Its pure flocking nature. And others make money out of it.

**Disclaimer: All my posts are purely of personal opinions. You are most welcome to comment on my posts.

Stock market blues... cont...

Found some interesting statistics...
Today's market correction is the biggest single day fall in absolute terms (Sensex).

Single Day market falls
18-May-2006 = 862 Points ?? Global fall + Commodities fall + Fed Hike + Taxation of FIIs
28-Apr-1992 = 570 Points ?? Harshad Mehta Scam
17-May-2004 = 564 Points ?? NDA losses + Left joins Govt
15-May-2006 = 462 Points ?? Global Fall starts...

In percentage terms...
Oct 8,1990 = 15
Apr 28, 1992 = 12.7
May 17,2004 = 11.1
May 12, 1992 = 9.7
May 18, 2006 = 7
-----------

Munich

Watched the movie Munich last weekend. Liked it. The way Speilberg makes movies !! Truely amazing. He shot the movie as it it was taken during early seventies.

The way Golda Meir potrayed is brilliant. Very inspiring character.

Indian stock market

Tell any stock market savvy person that lefts have joined the government or serial blasts in Bombay or war situation in middle east or new RBI credit policy, immediately he would ask how many points Sensex moved?

Situations like changing governments that do not suppoert liberalization, could be a big thing. Stock market crashed more than 200 points. Trading was stopped for a while.

Well, times have changed my friend. Two years is a considerable time. I agree, looking at the percentages, you might say it is just 7% down. But, when its big, a small percentage of change also effects.

Look at small investors who entered the markets at 12000 levels, hoping for 13000 or worse (rather best) 16000 levels. And if the market goes down 850 points in a single day who is protecting them?

MindTree was born

I could not resist myself from writing this after reading 'The making of MindTree by Subroto Bagchi'. The transcript is available in MindTree Consulting's site. Do you know that the logo of MindTree was painted by K.S.Chetan a 17 year boy who has a form of Celebral palsy that denies him co-ordinated limb movement and affects his speech!

I strongly suggest the budding entrepreneures to read both the documents available on MindTree about Making of The MindTree.

Web Services

I just want to share few new terms I have been hearing oflate related to WebServices.

1. BPEL - Business Process Execution Language Wiki link

2. CDL - Choreography Description Language
The Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL) is an XML-based language that describes peer-to-peer collaborations of parties by defining, from a global viewpoint, their common and complementary observable behavior; where ordered message exchanges result in accomplishing a common business goal.

The Web Services Choreography specification is targeted for composing interoperable, peer-to-peer collaborations between any type of party regardless of the supporting platform or programming model used by the implementation of the hosting environment.

The main difference between 1 and 2 is that CDL ensures ORDERED MESSAGE XCHANGE. And BPEL requires central co-ordination whereas CDL does not (atleast thats the idea).

Well the main advantages with the above BPM techniques are, an Enterprise can service enable its systems and wire them together in a network of SOA systems. Once service enabled, any third party or new internal service integration is a cake walk. No need of middleware integration programmers. You can ask them to develop business logic.

Entrepreneurship again.

Many places you hear about individuals talking about 'Entrepreneurship'. You hear this word from those who are successful, those who are not and also those who are in the process of falling into one of the first two categories.

After reading the stories from Subrato Bagchi on 'Making of Mindtree', it inspired in me and my dear friends on the specifics of 'Entrepreneurship', from 'What' to 'How'. Let me share some information from the discussion.

Every entrepreneur has to first answer these two questions.
1. Why do I want to open an Enterprise?
2. Why would my Enterprise be a success? What are the strengths I have to make it a success?

Now, how to answer these questions?

Are you doing business because you have 10 crores of money to spend? Or is it a unique business idea you have which you would like to see taking shape? If you are not passionate about your business, not committed, can not give your 100% effort and time, lets not talk about this any more. If you are into a startup you have to give up two things. All of your time and all of your money. Only then I feel its possible to shape an individual's imaginations.

More in my next post...

Leadership

Leadership can not be taught in business schools. It is more practiced and learned in organizations. How much of it practically happens? How many leaders are actually grooming their people to become next generation leaders? Look at the growing number of head hunters to find those exceptionally well business leaders and are always behing these highly skilled executives. Look around you, the MNCs are now filled with foreign CEOs who are filling the vaccum of good business leaders.

How many managers in Indian companies are able to groom nexgen biz leaders is a big question for me. Leadership skills can not just be transferred in a 10 session classroom. The leader has to take his team through a consistent set of values he/she believes in and stick to them during all times. Honesty, belief and trust create the right environment for leaders to grow. A leader must dream of the impossible and make it happen with his team. Always keep the team inspiring and let the team dream of high aspirations. I really really wonder how many leaders or people managers actually practice this !!

Outsourcing & Europe

When business outsourcing started in early nineties in USA, Europe was not largely interested in it. Then came the dot com burst, economic recession and those who are still in business wanted to test the outsourcing waters and they wanted to do it real hard.

Globalization and outsourcing has largely affected the lives of many in US and Europe, especially those whose jobs have moved to many miles away. But, large corporations could not do anything else to survive the competetion. They had no other choice than to move those jobs that could be done remotely. Though Europe has joined this model after US, Europe has a different challenge to face. As more and more Eastern Europe countries with struggling economy have joined EU in 2004, the low skilled jobs from France, Germany and Italy were grabbed by citizens of these countries. There is a large difference in the wages among the big brothers of EU and those who joined in 2004. This has caused a real concern on job security for those living in developed nations of EU. The recent political turnout gives clear mandate of this change in people perception. Angela Merkel who has been supporting free market is believed to win the German election has to settle with 'grand coalation' with limited capacity to carry out any economic reforms. Its hard for the politicians to predict or know what exactly people want. Its the basic nature of democracy. Things take time, and the transition period is the most horrible experience for the people. Things are not bound to time and confusion prevails in both the people and leaders.

This is the biggest challenge that EU has to manage now. The people of US and the leaders could successfully manage the transition phase or currently managing it effectively. Bush won again despite of outsourcing topic being used as one of the campain topics. Its a matter of time and consensus between people and leadership that must bring stability in socio economic situation in EU.

Google does it again!!

Google creates online database of mail order catalogues. The vendor can submit the content to google or can potentially make his content retrieved by google. This means the vendor does not need to have an ecommerce site, can continue to do brick and mortar business but in a different way with increased order flow perhaps.

Are you slowly getting to the point??????? Do you mean, Google is getting slowly into eBay's space?? Or to that matter any other ecommerce site? I think yes. Look at it... Google is finding out the best things that can happen to Internet and combining them in one site i.e. www.google.com.

One of the leadership qualities - Strong belief in winning idea

the scene... employee staff meeting of a software company
the speaker just finished his speech and is open for questions. The speaker holds second highest position in the company.

the question came from one of the employee and related to a new project that is so much talked about in the company. The question was what if the new project fails !, do you have an alternate plan.

And the answer has come in notime. You cant win the war if you are losing it. Obvious !! But the essense is the belief. Belief in the team, in the idea, in the market, in the success rather in making the idea a success. First of all this project would not have been selected if its not a winning idea. And even if its slowly slipping the leader has great ability to bring it back on to the foot and make it a winning.

I salute the leader.

Google !! The ubiquitous name in the byte world.

I dont know how and where to start this. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is making news all over. Every morning I click on Google News button on Google toolbar, I see some news on some innovation that Google does. Though to many net visitors google is just a search engine there are many more applications that this tiny giant is into. Just did a search for Google in Google Search Engine and it fetched 728,000,000 results (in 0.12 seconds). Microsoft scores 733,000,000 and Yahoo scores 413,000,000. That explains the spread of Google.

And look at the diversity of Google's projects. Search Google NASA, Google SUN, Google Microsoft, Google Satellite, Google Outsourcing, Google Productivity, Google Scholar, Google Pictures ... the list continues. Do you think Google is offering various tools and services on its web page that come packaged in a GUI Based operating system (read that as Windows or Mac OS X or ...). You have everything available on the internet. Including 2GB of space today. May be more tomorrow. Why would I buy a demanding piece of hardware and install more demanding piece of software? I would rather buy a thin client with Internet connection (probably a bare minimum laptop with wireless connection) and everything else computed over the web. Do we see some radical changes in near future?

Send in your comments

Making elephants dance - Business Innovation

Following write up talks about innovation that large companies are adapting to succeed in future. This information is taken from BusinessWeek online.

The Knowledge Economy as we know it is being eclipsed by something new -- call it the Creativity Economy. Even as policymakers and pundits wring their hands over the outsourcing of engineering, software writing, accounting, and myriad other high-tech, high-end service jobs -- not to mention the move of manufacturing to Asia -- U.S. companies are evolving to the next level of economic activity.

What is unfolding is the commoditization of knowledge. We have seen global forces undermine autos, electronics, and other manufacturing, but the Knowledge Economy was expected to last forever and play to America's strengths: great universities, terrific labs, smart immigrants, an entrepreneurial business culture.

The U.S. has a lead in this unfolding Creativity Economy -- for the moment. The new forms of innovation driving it forward are based on an intimate understanding of consumer culture -- the ability to determine what people want even before they can articulate it. Working in what is still the largest consumer market in the world gives U.S. companies a huge edge. So does being able to think outside the box -- something Americans still do better than most.

A New DanceFor managers, the biggest challenge may be making the leap from their Six Sigma process skills to new ways of thinking. For corporations, transforming themselves will require new sets of values and organizational principles. Have you heard of design strategy? It's probably the Next Big Thing after Six Sigma. How about consumer-centric innovation? It may be the most powerful way to raise a company's innovation success rate. Do you know what innovation metrics your company needs? Have you heard of CENCOR (calibrate, explore, create, organize, and realize)? It's the post-Six Sigma dogma GE is spreading far and wide among its managers. Are B-schools on top of all this change? Not really, but Stanford University is starting a "D-school" -- a design school where managers can learn the dynamics of innovation. Teaching elephants to dance is never easy, but that's the task ahead if you want your company -- and your career -- to prosper.

There is, in fact, a whole new generation of innovation gurus. They are not the superstars of the '90s, such as Clayton Christensen, who focused on what might be called macro-innovation -- the impact of big, unexpected new technologies on companies. The new gurus focus more on micro-innovation -- teaching companies how to connect with their customers' emotions, linking research and development labs to consumer needs, recalibrating employee incentives to emphasize creativity, constructing maps showing opportunities for innovation.

When creative mojo gets going, it can explode into innovation. An example: the mundane mop. Cleaning used to be done with mops and water. Design Continuum Inc. in West Newton, Mass., researched cleaning for P&G and observed that water tends to slop dirt around, while dry rags pick it up (thanks to electrostatic attraction). Ergo, the Swiffer. In the design-speak of the Creativity Economy, this is paradigm shifting. Design Continuum helped P&G shift the cleaning paradigm. Now the Swiffer may become P&G's newest $1 billion brand.Think out-of-the-box consumer experiences, and you get the idea of paradigm shifting. Old paradigm: corner coffee shops. New paradigm: Starbucks (SBUX ). Old: radio. New: satellite radio. Old: crowded electronics stores. New: Apple Computer (AAPL ) stores. Old: grungy, smelly circuses. New: Cirque du Soleil. Old: any airline. New: JetBlue Airways (JBLU ). Old: Macy's (FD ). New: Target (TGT ). Old: Earth-toned Birkenstock sandals. New: colorful beach "Birkis."

The evolution of the economy toward creativity has been underway for some time. Steve Jobs, of course, has turned Apple into the paragon of the creative corporation. Companies throughout the world are deconstructing Apple's success in design and innovation, and learning the lessons.

Storytelling is very important. Designers have found that placing a potential new product within an emotional story that connects with consumers raises the chances of success. The design of the new line of MINI_motion watches and driving shoes, for example, captures the story of the Mini Cooper's cool urban driving experience. It's about the driver, not the car.

Whats Hot? Is CNOOC's Bid for Unocal a Threat to America? - Knowledge@Wharton

On June 23, CNOOC, the third-largest oil company in China, made an unsolicited $18.5 billon bid for U.S.-based Unocal. The bid has caused concern in the U.S. Congress because CNOOC is a government-owned company attempting to buy a natural resource that is important to national security. But ultimately, some say, there appears to be no sound reason why the U.S. government should move to block the deal, if Unocal shareholders decide it is in their best interests. At the same time, observers note the unresolved ambiguity that exists in the minds of both ordinary Americans and government officials responsible for U.S. foreign policy. Should China be viewed, as it was during the height of the Cold War, as a foe of American interests? Or should it be seen as a trading partner that is embracing free-market principles?

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1240.cfm

Those High-flying Angel Investors: VC Panel Talks Up Creative Financing for Start-ups - Knowledge@Wharton

Those High-flying Angel Investors: VC Panel Talks Up Creative Financing for Start-ups - Knowledge@Wharton

Tune in Tomorrow for the Digital Living Room? - Knowledge@Wharton

Following article gives an insight into Digital Living Room. I want to add a piece of my own to this concept. XBOX or mini Mac..., I just want to install my software that controls home. It controls all electrical appliances, tracks and calculates device wise monthly usage and bills, lets you control your home from your mobile, alerts local police incase of break-in and what not !! You just name it, I will add it.
Tune in Tomorrow for the Digital Living Room? - Knowledge@Wharton

Tag Team: Tracking the Patterns of Supermarket Shoppers - Knowledge@Wharton

Another very good application of RFID in retail industry.

Tag Team: Tracking the Patterns of Supermarket Shoppers - Knowledge@Wharton

Wharton Business Plan Competition: Workshops

Wharton Business Plan Competition: Workshops

Eight Great Business Plans, But Only One Is the Winner ... - Knowledge@Wharton

Check out the winners of Wharton Business Plant contest. And take a guess who won after reading each idea.
Eight Great Business Plans, But Only One Is the Winner ... - Knowledge@Wharton

Giving Employees What They Want: The Returns Are Huge - Knowledge@Wharton

A very good article. This is true in most of the organizations.

Giving Employees What They Want: The Returns Are Huge - Knowledge@Wharton

The Global Impact of Rising Oil Prices - Knowledge@Wharton

The Global Impact of Rising Oil Prices - Knowledge@Wharton

'Computon' - Nexgen way of computing

Economist.com MONITOR

This article is about SPU - Sun Processor Units. Find out how on-demand computing is realized.

Learn, leverage and lead

Following are the excerpts from an article published in www.economictimes.com today.

---------------

LEARN: When you are on a project, spend an hour with the team in learning what the rest are working on, speak to your manager and learn what the project has to do with the company, the customer, the business, the market. Get the big picture. You will immediately know what this project is a trend for, and can plan to learn new skills. If you plan to learn a new tool or software simply because your neighbour got a job in that field, you may not get very far.

LEVERAGE: When you are stuck in a project, you think it is your duty to solve it all by yourself. Wrong! If you have spent sufficient time in building your network of people (not technology!), all you need to do is throw this problem onto a network and wait for solutions to come pouring in. Ignore this free education, and you are shutting yourself in Ekalavya’s forests. But if you can return this by contributing towards solving someone else’s problem, you have won a name for life.

LEAD: The normal career path in any large firm seems to be like this—code for four years, become a senior coder, code some more, become an expert, then a project lead, and finally a project manager. It is almost routine, and you are disappointed when your next cubicle occupant has become an expert in three years, whereas you haven’t. Promotions are a sign of leadership—unless you are already acting like an expert, don’t expect to become one or be granted such a position. Find out opportunities within your project where you can show your style of expertise—which in turn demands that you have learnt quite well about this project and can leverage all resources to lead the team to solve a problem. MBA degrees, skill sets, technologies all matter. However, in the long run, what matters is what you bring to the table—your learning abilities, your leveraging abilities, and your leadership abilities. Technology serves a dual cut—while it unites businesses to customers and revenues, it has isolated the people behind it from each other. If you think your PC, coding, and your cube are the best friends in your world, come on out and take a walk. The world is still full of people who wish to know you, and be known to you.

One Size Fits One: Tailoring Technology to Consumer Needs - Knowledge@Wharton

One Size Fits One: Tailoring Technology to Consumer Needs - Knowledge@Wharton

Catastrophe Modeling: A New Approach to Managing Risk - Knowledge@Wharton

Catastrophe Modeling: A New Approach to Managing Risk - Knowledge@Wharton

Got a Good Strategy? Now Try to Implement It - Knowledge@Wharton

Got a Good Strategy? Now Try to Implement It - Knowledge@Wharton

Blogs, Everyone? Weblogs Are Here to Stay, but Where Are They Headed? - Knowledge@Wharton

Blogs, Everyone? Weblogs Are Here to Stay, but Where Are They Headed? - Knowledge@Wharton

Jeremy Siegel's Latest Book Lays out the Future for Investors - Knowledge@Wharton

Jeremy Siegel's Latest Book Lays out the Future for Investors - Knowledge@Wharton: "should get 4.9% -- Korea, 0.9%; Taiwan, 0.5%; China, 0.4%; Brazil, 0.4%; Mexico, 0.3%; India, 0.3%; Russia, 0.2%; and other emerging countries, 1.9%."

Who Gains, Who Loses, from RFID's Growing Presence in the Marketplace? - Knowledge@Wharton

Who Gains, Who Loses, from RFID's Growing Presence in the Marketplace? - Knowledge@Wharton

Product release strategy

One strategy for quickly penetrating a market, is to produce the core, or stripped down, basic product, adding features to variants of the product to be released shortly thereafter. This release strategy is obviously also beneficial in information systems development, staging core functionality for early releases and adding features over the course of several subsequent releases.

As the world is moving towards service delivery concept, it is possible for the service provider to add features while the users are actually using the service without any interruptions. This is really a cool feature. Read 'Getting Real' from www.37signals.com.

Technology is just enabler

In my view, technology is never an alternatvie. Technology helps Business to run more efficiently.

Internet for example. Internet has changed the face of many companies. Dell, Apple (iTunes), Browser companies, Advertising and what not! I feel a computer that is not connected to network is as dumb as a calculator. That is the kind of impact Internet has made. Internet has changed the way Business is done traditionally. It challenged the most sound distribution systems that ever existed. Companies that realized the potential of Internet made best use of it.

Epica Award Winning Ads for 2004

http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/01043.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/02011.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/03010.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/04020.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/05056.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/05057.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/06037.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/07021.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/08101.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/09034.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/10176.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/11071.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/11132.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/12040.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/14017.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/15096.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/16071.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/18037.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/19044.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/20003.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/21023.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/21124.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/22018.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/23008.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/24043.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/25170.htm
http://www.epica-awards.com/assets/epica/2004/winners/film/flv/26147.htm

METRO Group Achieves 99% RFID Pallet Tag Read Rates

METRO Group, the world's third-largest retailer and an RFID pioneer announced the implementation of RFID readers and tags at METRO Group's largest and busiest distribution center in Germany. With more than 50,000 pallets read to date, METRO has 99% tag read-rates, as well as complete compliance with ETSI radio standards for operation in Europe.
The distribution center is equipped with Intermec IF5 Intelligent RFID readers and RFID tags powered by Intermec. RFID is a complement to the current bar code-based tracking systems. RFID automatic data collection typically does not require line of sight or manual scanning as do most bar code-based systems.

Oracle Details PeopleSoft Product Roadmap

Oracle unveiled the combined Oracle and PeopleSoft product roadmap and support plans in "Project Fusion.” Oracle stated it retained approximately 90 percent of PeopleSoft's development and support team to ensure continuity for PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World products. The "Project Fusion" architecture will leverage Oracle technology.
This estimated release timeline was provided:+ PeopleSoft Enterprise 8.9 will be completed in 2005+ Oracle E-Business Suite 12 (2006)+ PeopleSoft Enterprise 9 (2006)+ JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12 (2006)+ Ongoing JD Edwards World enhancements+ Project Fusion data hubs and transaction bases in 2006+ Initial "Project Fusion" applications available in 2007+ "Project Fusion" applications suite delivery in 2008
Support milestones include:+ Oracle will provide support for the PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and JD Edwards World product lines through at least 2013+ Oracle is extending JD Edwards EnterpriseOne XE and 8.0 support to February 2007+ For PeopleSoft's other products and versions, including JD Edwards World, Oracle has adopted PeopleSoft's current retirement policies+ Oracle will also continue to maintain currently supported hardware platforms, databases and operating systems.
Sid Snitkin, VP, ARC Advisory Group, commented, "Telephone lines and web connections were jammed by over 17,000 people for the recent Oracle event where they announced these plans for the merged company. This is testament to the size of the customer base that could be up for grabs if Peoplesoft and JD Edwards customers lose confidence in the future viability of their investments. Product support and product roadmaps are central to maintaining confidence and Oracle has done an excellent job in laying out a solid plan to address both of these issues."
Mr. Snitkin continued, "Most customers seem to be satisfied for now to continue their journey with Oracle. But the clear challenge is to maintain this confidence boost by delivering on promises and continuing to reinforce the message that the merged company is the way to get to the best destinations. The Oracle train will pass through many stations and there are competitors waiting at each stop with enticing alternatives."

On Demand Business

Following is a briefing on 'On Demand Business Model'. In my view SAP is placed much ahead of this evolution. I feel with NetWeaver as a technology platform, On Demand Business Model can be enabled in a faster way for complex business solutions. And if required, it will not be difficult for SAP to operate some of the business in this model.

Briefing: The On Demand Business Model; Software Vendors Should Tread Carefully!
By Steve Banker, ARC Advisory Group
The On Demand business model has gotten a lot of publicity in the last year - IBM's commercials, SalesForce.com's successful IPO, and probably most significantly, Merrill Lynch's announcement that they would begin tracking software companies with an On Demand business model.
The On Demand business model, as we define it, involves selling a solution based on monthly service charges. One instance of software is hosted centrally by the software vendor, most customers use Internet browsers to access their application.
Merrill Lynch argued that the traditional way of measuring software companies, growth in software license, was becoming increasingly less relevant in this mature industry and that new methods of measuring software vendors were needed. It would, be easy to conclude that the On Demand business model can save best of breed software suppliers.
Be careful! One of the markets ARC is studying is Location-based Business Solutions. These are GPS based solutions that help companies track and manage fleets or people in real time. Where historically trucks would have a GPS enabled "black" box in the cab, now suppliers have created On Demand services based on hosted applications and users in the field with GPS-enabled Nextel cell phones. Two years ago, many companies paid about $50 per month per vehicle. Last year a number of companies were charging about $25 per month per vehicle (or user). And this year some vendors are selling stripped down tracking for as little as $15 per month per node.
In short, instead of the On Demand model providing a stable and predictable long term stream of cash, it is providing, in at least this market, brutal cost competition and customers as fickle as the mobile phone users who switch whenever a new plan offers better savings.
Where does the On Demand model offer some protection for vendors? For vendors who have services where content changes all the time. For example, Vastera’s service is constantly being updated with changing customs regulations; Management Dynamics services continuously changes as ocean freight assessorial charges change. These types of services offer the promise of strong customer retention. Services based on connectivity also offer strong lock-in. So for example, by using Lean Logistics as a TMS solution, you are automatically linked to hundreds of carriers and do not have to manage integrating to carriers on an ongoing basis.

Initial specs for ultimate gaming PC

Processor: AMD AthlonXP 2600+ 2.08 GHz >> The Athlon XP remains far and away one of the best-value solutions you can get.
Mobo: Biostar M7NCD Pro >> Has nForce2 400 chipset. With its dual-channel RAM interface, NVIDIA's nForce2 Ultra 400 is still the performance champion. But not everyone can afford to spring for a new processor, a motherboard and two DIMMs in one fell swoop. nForce2 400 chipset is the next best bet.
RAM: I prefer two 512 MB Kingston DDR 400MHz PC3200 SDRAM.
Cooler: The Coolermaster Aero7 looks very cool indeed and also includes a front or rear mountable dashpot that lets you alter the speed of the fan.
Graphics Card: The ATI Radeon 9600 XT 8X AGP card has 128 MB DDR memory to speed the graphics to the screen as well as a fan to keep it cool while it's doing its thing.
Monitor: I prefer an LCD or a 21" CRT Monitor.
OS: XP ... but depends on your choice.

Courtsey: THG.

The Entrepreneurial Mind: Innovative Entrepreneurial Education Archives

The Entrepreneurial Mind: Innovative Entrepreneurial Education Archives

Where to invest in 2005

An excellent article on how to think smart and invest in 2005.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/04_52/B39140452invest.htm

Building Sustainable Startups in the Developing World

If creating a startup is one hell of a job, then sustaining that business is also a herculian task. Look at this article on how to sustain a startup.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&id=1084&specialId=24

Where the real internet money is made

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_52/b3914442.htm