Endorsing the Story of Stuff

According to the Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard, this past September, the news of the economic crises dominated the headlines, but at the exact same time, another debt crisis was intensifying, yet was barely noticed.

Earth Overshoot Day, also known as Ecological Debt Day, was on September 23. This is the day in 2008 by which humanity had used all the resources that the planet will generate this year.

As viewers of The Story of Stuff already know, we currently consume 1.4 planets' worth of global resources each year. Since September 23 onward, we have been eating into the natural capital, undermining its ability to produce for the future. We are consuming on credit, and are accumulating ecological debt that we have no way to repay.

The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. The SOS professes to teach you something that will make you laugh, and just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Learn, Unlearn, Relearn

Not so philosophically speaking, the illiterate are not those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

“In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” -- Eric Hoffer

Learning comes in various forms and at various stages: Youngsters simply learn just by carrying out their daily lives; people learn within institutions prior to embarking into the corporate world, which teaches entirely differently.

The readier we are for learning new things in life, the more flexible we become to cope up with challenges of life.

The sole process of learning, unlearning, and relearning gets you closer to the reality, and makes you a better being. This is how you can ride the tide of changes. So, be what you want to be, otherwise you would be what you don’t want to be.

Your Career Is Yours 2.0

With all due respect, let me start this blog as an extension to my last blog, Your Career Is Yours. I guess; a few people have got offended by my last blog. So, this one is purely to elaborate on my previous blog. What I meant by changing the job was not necessarily quitting your current employer and joining a new one. What I implied was that you should periodically change the nature of your work and the environment you work in, because doing so gives you a big learning curve, which is necessary to surmount on in order to grow in your professional life.

A lot of people have criticized me of being too opinionated. I refute them all by saying that I have, and strive for, various perspectives -- and most of the times as many as possible. And, when you have many perspectives, you can gauge the pros and cons in a much better way.

People, by nature, are scared of leaving behind the legacy that they create by working for ages. It's natural to feel scared of leaving behind that legacy for others to enjoy and bank on. But, we must not forget that we also inherit some kind of legacy when we take on something new in life. And, our motive should be to leave behind a better legacy than the one we inherit, and relentlessly keep moving on to make things better. Usually, and mostly, incumbents are scared of loosing their legacies -- and feeling so is very natural.

If we are genuine talents, we should be confident enough to take on different challenges at different organizations (a firm has many organizations, such as, Marketing and Sales, Pre-Sales, Strategy and Planning, Development, Project Management, Operations, just to name a few). But, usually, and unfortunately, at most firms, you don't get opportunities to move around across different organizations, for obvious reasons. In that case, you are unintentionally, indirectly forced to quit the firm and pursue your dream, provided you are seriously looking for enhancing and diversifying your skills.

Thus, as I said, your career is yours. So, it is only you who has to decide what you want to do. If you love your firm more than your career, you will compromise on your learning curve, but, if you love your career more than your firm, you will make all the required efforts to make your career shine. Although the opinion is mine, but the choice is gonna be yours. And, trust me, there is only one rule, and that there is NONE.

Your Career Is Yours

So far in life and with whatever professional experience I have, I can confidently say that a professional should change, close to, six to seven jobs in his/her professional career. Change is always a good thing, as it teaches you a lot. The most obvious positive outcome of change is your enhanced ability of adapting to different environments, as you rise through the rank and file of the organizations you work for.

I strongly deny that one should start and end one’s professional career working for the first organization itself. No matter who preaches that one should work for only one or two organizations during his entire professional career, I just don’t agree – even if it is God himself.

Mostly, people who don’t like changes make silos within the organization to survive and to rise through the rank and file, most of the times, killing professionalism.

So, my earnest advice to all those who are listening to me is that be a genuine performer, and be ready to embrace change. Doing so will put you in command of your professional life, otherwise some dickhead would decide your professional career, which you will certainly don’t like. Be the change you want to see in the world, and, relentlessly, keep reaching out for the helm.

Avenues For The Aging Boomers

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, without an unexpected burst of productivity growth or a significant upsurge in investment per worker, the aging boomers' reduced levels of working and spending will slow the real growth of the US GDP from an average of 3.2 percent a year, since 1965, to about 2.4 percent, over the next three decades.

The report, overall, is a very well analysed one. But, my concerns are that won't there be implications of boomers prolonging their retirements on the growth of members of generation X, who would be in their prime time, then? If yes, then, what would be the degree of such implications on the generation X, as well as on the US economy? Are there any other malleable alternatives, because simply making boomers drag for a couple of more years would not solve much of the problems the America is witnessing today, or is going to witness tomorrow?

What I, personally, think of is that the US government should chalk out a national plan to retire boomers on time, AND to put them to better use, by using them in partnering with the millennials for some sorts of national entrepreneurial programs -- or programs devised to solve the bigger problems of the America than those meant to just provide a means of earning bread and butter for the should-already-have-retired boomers.

As boomers have seen the three completely different America, their life-long experiences will give the millennials, who have been, since childhood, fed on a staple diet of laptops, cellphones, iPods and PS3, a sense of urgency in shaping the future of the America. In general, on a lighter note, it's more fun working with grandpas than working with pas. Moreover, the energy of the millennials and the cautious experience of the boomers would be a great combination, so the partnership would be worth watching. Above all, doing so will not only keep the boomers employed and well grooved to the national interests, but also give the millennials, who are, in general, poor at skills, as proved by all the recent statistics drawn on them, the hightened senses of contributing to the national economy. The government might not need to focus on building houses for old people, rather it should focus on building "new houses" under the "supervision" of old people.

For evolving the aforesaid partnership, with the support and guidance of the government, the government can have various ways and means of implementing the same, depending on the feasibility and needs of the nation. This will help the boomers, the generation X, and the millennials. In turn, this will help the world.

The Civil War Is Over

With the election of Mr. Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency of the US, the American Civil War truly comes to an end, after the much long struggle of 147 years. This is definitely good news for the rest of the world, too, as Mr. Obama is solace to the world, in every sense.

The world has been a victim of of-late Presidents of the US, especially the war-mongering Presidents. The hopeful eye of the world is now all set on the person -- who has been taken care of by God himself -- Mr. Barack Hussein Obama.

Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and North Korea, just to name a few, are all awaiting their futures that Mr. Obama is going to “pronounce” in the near future. May God give Mr. Obama the wisdom to chalk out the win-win solutions to all the problems that are much-awaited to be solved with extreme prudence.

The world needs peace, and prosperity. And, I see that peace in the serene aura of Mr. Obama. His talks give us all a strong hope. And, along with the nation of immigrants, we all are praying that he rise to the challenges, with his chin up to the sky. Good luck Mr. Obama. May God continue resting His special eye on you.

Democratization of Knowledge

I was just wondering how the world has evolved the way we learn today, or the way we should be learning today, in comparison to the way we learned in the past, say, since as early as a decade back. A decade back, only privileged ones had access to “esoteric” knowledge or information, and that’s too at the cost of hundreds of grand in college fees.

In today’s world, just any Tom, Dick, or for that matter even Harry can KNOW about anything, using the Internet, thus, leading to the democratization of knowledge. So, now, it’s imperative for all of us to NOT just know of things, but to really UNDERSTAND things, because if we don’t do so, we will land up being just fools, since the information is now freely available at the click of a mouse.

Moreover, the so-called great professors at big campuses need to impart real education in terms of real values. They just cannot afford to give very mundane definitions of big jargons, and be considered “big guns.” This is more prevalent in India -- because I know it by experience.

So, the gist of this is that any fool can know; the point is to understand.

Competing With Everyone From Everywhere For Everything

Globalization is about competing with everyone from everywhere for everything. And by that it means that your competition will change and you will be competing "with everyone" -- not just your traditional competitors – including, new companies from countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and just about everywhere.

The second point is that competition will come "from everywhere." Your competitors will no longer look a lot like you. It may be a small company in Indonesia. It may be a large company in China. It may be a big-sized company in India. So, competition will be coming from everywhere and competing for everything.

The third point is that competition will be "for everything," it means competing for resources, for people, for customers, for distribution systems, and for supply chains.

It is expected to spring up a wealth of competition because companies from low-cost countries are moving from being outsourcing vehicles for the traditional Western multi-nationals, to becoming companies in their own right that are growing and growing rapidly. So you see companies like Tata Steel and Mahindra that are starting to take roles on the global stage, with their own brands and their own products. They should not be ignored.

Globalization is not just affecting the Western companies, the traditional multi-nationals, but also providing impetus to the new emerging companies that are starting to become large and that are challenging those multi-nationals, and there are big lessons to be learnt both for emerging companies and, more importantly, for the multi-nationals.

Adobe’s Change to the Computing Landscape

The cloud computing model is central to building web software. But there needs to be a balance between local client computing and cloud computing. The best applications will have an architecture that leverages both -- they're not totally in the cloud and not totally on the client.

Adobe’s AIR, in particular, is designed for that hybrid model. You can take advantage of the local computing environment in a way that is functional across different Operating Systems. You can do local processing, even when you are offline. But you can also take advantage of services in the cloud and even integrate the best data from multiple sources across the cloud into one application. The blended model of cloud and client is one that takes the best advantage of the computing landscape.

One could say, "Hey, it's all going to be cloud computing," but that is ignoring all the processing power that we have in front of us on our computers, or, you can say, "Hey, it's really still about the desktop," but that's ignoring the revolution of the Internet and all of the services available in the cloud.

You want a solution that helps you balance across both. That's hopefully the architecture the world is building.

The Success Story of China

China’s growth rate has been superb. Its success story can be summarized as:

1) Its export of electronic goods stands at USD 180 billion a year.

2) One-third of all the shoes exported to the world are made in China.

3) It makes 75 percent of the world’s toys.

4) Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is at USD 70 billion a year.

5) Shanghai alone has nearly 4000 skyscrapers (just for comparison, more than all of India’s, and more than those of Los Angeles and Chicago combined).

6) It has built around 60000 kilometers of expressways and will soon outstrip the total length of the US highway network.

7) Per Capita Income has risen to over USD 6000, although not very high a figure, but ten-times of what it was in 1978.

8) The number of its people living in absolute poverty has dropped from 425 million, two decades ago, to 26 million, as of today.

9) Its population is almost totally literate.

10) The life expectancy of its people is reaching the level of that of developed countries.

11) This year, it is expected to overtake Germany to become the world’s third largest economy, leaving it behind the US and Japan only.

Overall, China is on the go. But, just to caution you for not over inferring the figures, ‘Made in China’ means ‘Made by America or Europe in China.’ A very high share of the benefits goes abroad, to the foreign companies that have set up factories in China.

Cost Saving Trends of and for Airlines

High fuel prices are causing heartburn in aviation circles. Therefore, here are some of the ways airlines are and can employ to tame high fuel costs:

1) Fly higher, you burn less fuel. Particularly, at congested airports, avoid holding at lower altitudes. That is also the reason why planes have winglets on them. Winglets reduce drag and help the plane climb up, saving fuel up to 3 percent to 4 percent per flight.

2) Avoid level flying with gear down and full flaps. Doing so could actually reduce fuel consumption by 300 Kg per engine. Not doing so increases the charge, using up more fuel.

3) Cruise while descending.

4) Use light leather for seats instead of heavy cloth.

5) Switch off the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) – which is used for the lights and the AC - when on the ground and use the Ground Power Unit (GPU). An APU consumes 200 liters of fuel an hour. Whereas, a GPU, as it runs on diesel, saves money.

6) Reduce magazines and newspapers, flush lavatories during delays, change cutlery to plastic.Start APU just before engine shutdown.

7) Wash the plane more often; dust and moisture slow it down.

8) Stop taking excess fuel unless required. Modern jets burn 3 percent to 4 percent of the weight of additional fuel carried per hour of flight.

9) Decrease loading of water on the plane.

10) Encourage single-engine taxi after landing.

11) Use proprietary flight planning software that suggests the flight path, so that the plane can be aligned with the wind, thereby reducing friction.

12) Go in for more fuel-efficient planes that are aerodynamically well designed, like the A-380 and the Dreamliner.

13) Hedge in fuel. For example, Southwest Airlines has stolen a march over its competitors by hedging fuel till 2012 at USD 51 a barrel. According to the International Herald Tribune, “The hedges have helped Southwest Airlines profitable, producing gains of $455 million in 2004, $892 million in 2005, $675 million in 2006 and $439 million for the first nine months of 2007, as oil prices nearly doubled.”

Mark Twain On India

Here are some excerpts from Mark Twain’s travelogue, Following the Equator:

"This is indeed India; the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence… The country of a thousand nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods. It is the cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition… The one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, for wise and fool, for rich and poor, for bond and free. The one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined… Its marvels are its own; the patents cannot be infringed; imitations are not possible."

Energy Security

Coal is easily the cheapest option for energy. However, coal-based power produces massive greenhouse gases, and for this reason it may not be a good option in future decades. Moreover, coal is going to be exhausted, eventually.

Alternatively, it is possible that breakthroughs in solar technologies could make energy-generation cheaper and economically more viable. Solar energy is also available everywhere and is renewable. Moreover, it has none of the toxic. Recent advances in solar thermal technology show a lot of promise. Yet, nobody knows whether the technology is scalable, can work in cloudy countries, or can overcome maintenance issues.

As it seems, the most promising alternative source of energy is nuclear power, although nobody knows for sure, since the future is full of uncertainties.

Opponents of nuclear power for energy say that nuclear power will never account for more than a fraction of power needs, and will be the most expensive form of power.

The economic viability of nuclear power is far from proven. A detailed MIT analysis in 2003 suggested that nuclear power was distinctly more expensive than power based on coal or natural gases.

Since then, the prices of fossil fuels have sharply increased. And, meanwhile, the nuclear power industry argues that economies of scale can substantially reduce the cost of nuclear power. Nuclear power plants have high upfront costs, but have low running costs. If they are built without cost or time overruns, nuclear power could be competitive with natural gases even at today’s prices.

For example, France, which gets three-quarters of its electricity from nuclear power, has shown that once production is standardized and plants are built on time, nuclear power is competitive.

Fourth generation nuclear power plants are now on the drawing board, and could further improve the economics of nuclear power.

We need to keep all the options open, aim for a mix of energy sources, and try to be at the leading edge of all technologies, so as to hedge the future.

Economics of the Rupee

If exports go up, or foreign investors bring in foreign currencies into the country to invest in the stock exchange, the demand for the rupee goes up, and the external value of the rupee appreciates. Conversely, if the trade balance deteriorates, our demand for foreign exchange goes up, and the rupee depreciates.

At times, the government – precisely, the Reserve Bank of India - also influences the value of the rupee by buying or selling foreign exchange to affect the demand for the rupee. For example, the sale of foreign exchange by the RBI will result in a fall in the supply of the rupee.

When Foreign Institutional Investors pour money into the economy, a huge inflow of foreign money increases the demand for the rupee, causing the rupee to appreciate. However, this phenomenon might hurt Indian Exporters, because their products become more expensive on foreign markets.

But, when the situation is exactly the opposite, say, when the Indian-share market is bearish, Foreign Institutional Investors pull out of the Indian-share market, reversing the inflow of foreign exchange.

Most of the times, adverse trade balance, along with the outflow of foreign exchange due to the actions of the Foreign Institutional Investors, increases supply of the rupee on the foreign exchange market, resulting a fall in the external value of the rupee.

Like all other prices, the exchange rate too plays an important role in correcting demand or supply imbalances. For example, the lower the value of the rupee, the easier it is for Indian exporters to sell their goods abroad. Moreover, the higher volume of exports will help restrict the fall in the value of the rupee.

As our import bill is not very large as a proportion of GDP, so the rupee when appreciates does not help much in countering the inflation. Thus, a fall in the rupee value of our basket of imported goods can only have a small impact on the rate of inflation in the near future.

How Can You Smoke More?

Smoking is undoubtedly extremely injurious to health – it’s the main cause for lung cancer, lung diseases, and heart and arteries diseases. So, if you love your longevity, you should quit right now.

On the contrary, Mark Twain, a great philosopher, said, “It is easy to quit smoking. I have done it hundreds of times.”

If you are one of his “disciples,” you should continue reading this blog, otherwise go and do something more fruitful.

So, how can you keep smoking and still love your longevity? Well, it depends on what you smoke! There are plethoras of brands on the market. And, you should opt for the least damaging one.

The primary factors you should keep account for in your “slim lady” are: Amount of Tar, Amount of Nicotine, and Amount of Carbon Monoxide – the less these are, the better it is for you.

So, which is, perhaps, the best option on the market? So far, the best I have figured out is Dunhill – that comes in a white pack with 1 mg written right on the front face. A White Dunhill pack contains 1 mg of Tar, 0.1 mg of Nicotine, and 1 mg of Carbon Monoxide. Whereas, Marlboro Lights, which is arguably the world’s most popular slow-killer brand, contains 6 mg of Tar, 0.5 mg of Nicotine, and 7 mg of Carbon Monoxide.

Now, you know what to do! And, by the way, if you get to know something still better, do let me know too!! :-)

How Does Adobe Make Money?

Adobe gives away its innovative technologies, such as, PDF Reader, Flash Player, the Flex development framework, and now AIR, for free. So, how does Adobe make money? For Adobe, the revenue comes from several sources.

One of the revenue sources is from tooling – Adobe builds some of the best tools in the world. The more people build widgets that work on Adobe’s free technologies, the more interest Adobe hopes to drive to its tools: Photoshop, Creative Suite, Dreamweaver, and new tools, such as, Flex Builder.

The second source of revenue is from its server technologies. Adobe makes servers, like LiveCycle, which manages business process workflow, documents production, and reliably shares documents, Flash Media Server, which does streaming of video, and ColdFusion, which is a rapid application development framework.

The third source of revenue is from hosted “freemium services”, which means the services are free to some extent and then you need to pay some premium for using those services thereafter.

The fourth source of future revenue is going to be from its own standalone media player. The media player is also going to be free to end users. The way this generates revenue is: You can either watch free video streams or, if the content providers want to monetize their content, they can associate advertising with Adobe’s media player, and then Adobe shares in the advertising revenue.

Strategically, Adobe feels like the more it can help innovate and move the expressiveness of the Web forward, the better off Adobe is in terms of enabling people to produce that expressive content with its tools and servers.

Energy-frugal Japan

According to The New York Times, Japan is a role model of modern energy efficiency, harnessing its waste heat and gases - that had previously been released into the air or had burned off as waste - to generate much of its own electricity to power generators.

Superior technology and a national spirit of avoiding waste give Japan the world’s most energy-efficient structure. Japan even urged the leaders of the G8 nations to adopt numerical targets as they discuss new ways to curb carbon dioxide emissions. The existing pacts, the original climate treaty from 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, have been called failures by energy and climate experts.

Japan is by many measures the world’s most energy-frugal developed nation. After the energy crises of the 1970s, the country forced itself to conserve with government-mandated energy-efficiency targets and steep taxes on petroleum. Energy experts also credit a national consensus on the need to consume less.

According to the International Energy Agency, based in Paris, Japan consumed half as much energy per dollar worth of economic activity as the European Union did, or as the United States did, and one-eighth as much as China and India did in 2005. While the country is known for green products, like hybrid cars, most of its efficiency gains have been in less eye-catching areas, for example, in manufacturing.

Corporate Japan has managed to keep its overall annual energy consumption unchanged even as the economy doubled in size during the country’s boom years of the 1970s and ’80s.

Japan looks certain to fare better than other countries in the new era of high energy costs.

Trade-offs For Doing Business in the UAE

Undoubtedly, the UAE is a very fast emerging market for businesses. The opportunities for a very high growth are paramount. However, the UAE economy shows some weaknesses, too. Its business freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, and property rights are low, due to certain local government's regulations and policies.

According to the Index of Economic Freedom (IEF) report, which covers 162 countries, the UAE's regulatory environment doesn't seem to be very appealing to people who intend to start, operate, and close a company in the UAE.

Starting a business, in the UAE, takes on average of 62 days, compared to the world's average of 43 days. The minimum capital requirement to launch a business is high. Although, obtaining a business license takes less time than the world's average of 234 days. But, bankruptcy proceedings are lengthy and cumbersome.

The IEF report says foreign investors do not receive the same national treatment that the local investors receive, except for those who set up offices in the free zones. The UAE requires that at least 51 percent of a business must be owned by a UAE national.

In the UAE, goods have to be distributed through an Emirati partner, although "liberalized" items may be brought in without an agent's approval.

While the UAE's two stock markets are open to foreign investments, foreign ownership of listed firms is limited to only 49 percent, while some companies shun foreign ownership.

The government owns all the land in Abu Dhabi. And, Mortgages have been introduced for select Dubai-based, five-star property developments, and are otherwise generally unavailable.

Issues with Outsourcing

There are a lot of issues with outsourcing. You need to take care of all those issues, if you really want to take the full advantage of doing so. You just cannot sit back, saying you have outsourced something to someone, and you need not bother anymore. In fact, when you outsource, you should bother much more, because you are not only outsourcing some parts of your business, but also outsourcing a big chunk of your brand value, which you have made by investing millions of dollars.

The issues of utmost importance that you should be taking care of are:

1) Labor cost in the market where you are outsourcing to. You should keep in mind that this is NOT the most important factor you should be giving the highest priority. It’s just one of the factors.

2) Transportation cost and time involved in transporting the goods from the point of production, in the outsourced market, to the point of your further operations, which can again be anywhere in the world.

3) The inventory that you need to maintain and its associated costs to keep your show running, while your products are getting manufactured in the outsourced market.

4) The cost of hedging risks. In case, say, because of some catastrophes, you fail to procure your goods from the outsourced market; then in that case how you have planned to keep the show running. Sometimes, the cost of hedging is so huge that companies change their entire plans of outsourcing. You just cannot afford to overlook this! If you don’t plan for this, you might be giving your competitors a definite edge, or a big number of your customers, or a big chunk of your own “monopoly.”

5) Manufacturer’s technical capabilities, for making sure that you get your products right in the right way, and practical capabilities, for making sure that the manufacturer can deliver the products in time to the right place. After all, you have a reputation to maintain. Don’t you?

6) You might need to take care of your intellectual properties. By and large, Intellectual Property Rights in low-cost economies are not in good shape. So, chances are that your products might get copied by someone out there, and you lose a future market before even taking a stance. Can you afford losing a market with almost more than half the world’s population? I bet; you just cannot!

7) Above all, you need to seriously consider your procurement on a global basis. The reason is that - say, if you get a 20 percent cost savings in a business that might have a 10 percent or a 15 percent margin - that creates a massive competitive advantage. If you don’t do so, your competitors will surely take advantage of this, giving you a big disadvantage. Can you afford not doing so? I bet; you just cannot.

And, opponents of outsourcing, especially those in the US, must consider the findings of the McKinsey Global Institute that for every dollar the United States sends abroad through outsourcing, it gets about $1.12.

What Does a Telecom Company Need to Get Right?

According to McKinsey, a telecom company needs highly efficient, automated self-services. Telecom companies play a key role in automating the sales and service processes of other sectors. Now they must automate their own. This can be achieved by:

First, Telcos must do a better job of creating a compelling online experience. Too many Web sites or a poorly-designed Web site stumps consumers, who don't understand what information is being sought and find them hard to navigate through. For example, it may be possible to book a repair online, but not to check when the technician is coming, so the customer gives up and picks up the phone.

Secondly, Telcos must also use state-of-the-art sales approaches on their Web sites. Managers who fear that the online channel is a less effective sales tool than a human being who sells to another human being miss the point. Well-performing Web sites are capable of achieving higher sales per interaction than call centers do; it's a matter of execution.

Thirdly, companies can, for example, deploy sophisticated interactive sales approaches customized for specific kinds of customers and what they are trying to accomplish. Such tailored pitches achieve high close rates; Amazon, for instance, knows who you are and what you have purchased in the past, and it immediately woos you with personalized merchandising. Well-structured sites can segment customers into low-potential prospects - who are served cheaply online - and good prospects - who are directed to pick up the phone to complete a service or sales transaction that began online. This approach allows call-center employees to work their magic, but more efficiently and effectively. The tremendous flexibility, provided by Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and dynamic HTML, is an invaluable tool for giving each consumer this kind of unique service and sales experience — a "virtual store" designed for every individual. But such a careful tailoring of the online experience requires the marketing and IT functions to work together, closely.

The cost of coordinating a problem across separate functions is therefore high, as is the potential for error - which might be a result of rekeying information, for instance - so a delayed response to the customer is inevitable. Such processes are ripe for improvement, including better automation. Telecom companies that want to tackle their back-office problems successfully should bank on the use of IT as the glue to hold cross-functional processes together.

The Future of Convergence

Think back to the PC revolution. For ten years before the PC came on the scene, we were programming on microprocessors. Microprocessors alone didn't make the PC market. What made the difference was that software was eventually put on top of the hardware, so that people could put applications on it. Suddenly you had the PC revolution.

Now fast-forward 25 years and we're at the same place, except that instead of having only the hardware in your PC box there is also the hardware of your connected devices. Increasingly, people hop from one connected device to another throughout their daily lives — BlackBerry, cell phone, work phone, PC, laptop, music and camera phone, TV, game console. The number of connected devices we use and carry increases every year, and more and more they are as much for our personal lives as for our professional lives. Family rooms are becoming more technically interesting than offices!

What if we did today the same thing that happened 25 years ago — wrap a layer of software, but this time around the hardware of connected devices, so that people could build applications on top of all this!!! The applications of such a platform are limitless, and will be centered as much on the user's quality of life as on business productivity. The enabling technologies and applications here are the next big thing for the convergence market and the IT industry as a whole.

Verizon's iobi platform is all about this. It will enable people to remotely control their content and events on any device; the content here could be calls, voice mails, files, notes, pictures, music, and video. For example, I'd like to know instantly anywhere in the world if my office calls any of my devices and be able to bring the call to where I am. I'd like to contact any individual or group in my business or personal circle at any time, using any device, and with the communication method of my choice. I'd like to have my media available to me at all times on any connected device capable of rendering them. I'd like to be notified of to take my prescription wherever I am. I'd like to have an "off" button to hold all forms of communications. Of course, most applications on such a platform will be created by various different companies —independent software vendors and so forth — which have intimate knowledge of a special vertical segment of life or business. Many of the applications will be as unpredictable as PC spreadsheets were back in the early '80s.

Changes in the ICT Landscape

The whole world is luring Information and Communication Technology (ICT) graduates like never before. The US categorizes ICT graduates as a special category, and so do other major economies, such as, the UK, Ireland, the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, etc. The world needs many more ICT graduates in order to keep technology-led shows running smoothly.

Moreover, all the above mentioned economies have special provisions to retain ICT professionals. Amongst them, the US, the UK, and the European Union are desperately looking out for ICT professionals.

The reason for their desperateness is simple. A majority of people in these economies don’t “fall” for complex technological studies. They rather go for non-technological fields of study. You can get the feel of this in the statements of George Bush and Bill Gates, when they hopelessly advised US students to hone their Mathematics and Science skills, otherwise Asians would be taking their jobs away.

As these economies have enough money to invest in latest-and-complex Information and Communication Technologies, they don’t have enough man-power to build and operate the ICT infrastructure.

On the other hand, the third-world countries have a lot many ICT professionals, but they don’t have enough money to afford high-end ICT infrastructure. One of the fallouts of this situation is that these third-world countries are losing their highly skilled man-power to rich economies, moving them backward by ages.

Thankfully, the situation is improving in India and China though very slowly. India now allows up to 74 percent Foreign Direct Investment in its ICT. That’s how Vodafone has gotten into India, recently.

We are lazy. Still, I hope that we are going to witness some more positive changes in our country, soon.

Correlation Between Fun and Change

In general, we are, at most of the times, skeptical about changes – and doing so is just our natural reflex. We all look and seek for certainties in our lives, forgetting that life in itself is uncertain. But, we are what we are – paltry human beings.

I have keenly and amusingly observed people who play safe and crave for certainties. I do so whenever I feel like getting entertained for free! :-) And to no surprise, these kinds of people, generally, don’t make big in their lives. For God’s sake, why do people take their lives so seriously that they simply don’t have fun? Yes, fun is again a relative term. It means different things to different people. Quite often, I have heard people “covering” their mundane lives by manipulating the definition of fun, so that they don’t sound like bores. Whatever their reasons are, people should have fun to be productive enough and to keep going.

Again, in general, if you love fun, you must also be loving changes. That’s how you enjoy yourself by doing different things differently and amusingly. Thus, you are embracing changes and are being creative at the same time. This attitude gives you a definite edge in life. You win more, whereas not-so-fun-loving lose more.

How Big Is the Web?

Sometime back, I was just wondering – how big was the Web? I did some “R&D” to come up with the conclusion that there are two flavors of the Web:
1) The Surface Web – the size of which is estimated to be 167 Terabytes (TB). The Surface Web is something which is easily searched by various search engines, such as, Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc.
2) The Deep Web – the size of which is estimated by the University of California at Berkeley to be 91000 Terabytes (TB). And, typical search engines just cannot peruse through these data.

So, if anybody is looking to kill the hegemony of Google over the Web, the Deep Web is the opportunity. Good luck.

Can You Buy Happiness?

Yes, you can "buy" happiness! But, as it may seem counter-intuitive, you need to give away a portion of your money for free to "buy" happiness. People get happiness by spending money on someone else. According to a new research, conducted by Harvard Business School’s Professor Michael Norton and his two colleagues from the University of British Columbia, Elizabeth Dunn and Lara Aknin, giving other people even as little as $5 can lead to increased well-being for the giver.

Norton and colleagues found these results to hold in three different studies: a nationally representative survey, a field study of windfall spending, and an exploration in which participants were randomly assigned to spend money on others rather than on themselves.

The research says that one of the most puzzling paradoxes in social science is that though people spend so much of their time trying to make more money, having more money doesn't seem to make them that much happier. The issue was not that money couldn't buy happiness, but that people simply weren't spending money in the right way to make themselves happier.

The relative percentage rather than the absolute amount of their money that people spend on others matters to make the people happy. In other words, people need not be wealthy and donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to charity to experience the benefits of pro-social spending; small changes — a few dollars reallocated from oneself to another — can make a difference.

Although people believe that having money leads to happiness, the research suggests that this is only the case if, at least, some of that money is given to others.

Spreading Horizon through Islamic Banking

According to Reuters, not only China, but also the Gulf States are spying profitable opportunities among the hundreds of millions of Muslims who live just a hop across the Red Sea.

Africa's economies are growing fast, thanks in large part to the commodities boom. Although many people on the continent do not have a bank account, the banking systems in some countries are growing increasingly sophisticated. Bankers from the Gulf hope that the middle class, particularly in the Muslim north, will turn to Islamic finance and that firms will raise money through Islamic bonds, known as sukuk. Moody's, the credit-rating agency, reckons that although Islamic finance was worth a puny $18 billion at the end of last year, its potential is close to $235 billion - about half what it estimates as the GDP of Africa's Muslim population.

So far, forays from the Gulf into Africa have been limited to a few countries. Sudan - where only Sharia-compliant finance is allowed in the north - dominates, holding over half of Africa's Islamic-banking assets. A number of Gulf banks, familiar with the country's language and oil resources, have joined forces with Sudanese investors to open Islamic banks.

Last year the first sukuk from Africa was issued by a Sudanese cement firm. Reportedly, the government also tapped the market in January by selling bonds to Gulf investors to sidestep American economic sanctions over the massacres in Darfur. The same year, the Kenyan authorities licensed two Islamic banks, Gulf African Bank and First Community Bank, both backed by Gulf investment.

Western banks are also dipping their toes in. In Kenya, Barclays was the first to offer an Islamic bank account appropriately named La Riba, meaning "no interest". South Africa's ABSA opened an Islamic banking division in 2006.

Some of the keenest African customers for Islamic products are in countries where Muslims are a small minority; to them it provides a way of affirming their cultural heritage.

Islamic finance in Africa is a niche market, and probably will remain so. Islamic scholars are few and far between; few countries' laws are suitable for Islamic banking; the margins tend to be thinner than in the conventional Western model.

Some countries, such as Nigeria, with almost 70 million Muslims and a booming banking sector should be fertile ground.

Lack of standardized documentation and practices has been repeatedly highlighted by the Islamic finance industry as one of the key constraints on the rapidly growing sector. Islamic law is open to interpretation, which leads to differences in banking practices depending on the financial institution's advisers.

The Bahrain-based International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM) hopes its Master Agreement for Treasury Placement, which is in the final stages of gaining approval by Islamic scholars, will become a standard document.

"Each bank takes its own different decisions. What we are trying to do is put together a document which is a benchmark document that the industry can use," IIFM Chief Executive Ijlal Alvi told a conference on the future of Islamic finance.

Assets invested according to Islamic guidelines have been growing at roughly 20 percent a year worldwide, reaching $900 billion in 2007, and are set to $2 trillion by 2010, according to accountants at Ernst & Young.

By far, the most common Islamic financial transaction is commodity murabaha, which involves a bank buying a commodity for a client, and the client paying the bank back the cost of the commodity plus a bank charge or "profit rate" at a later date. The contract helps banks manage liquidity, and can be used by the client to secure cash by selling the commodity off, effectively buying money from the bank for the cost of the profit rate.

Islam bans interest, and stipulates that deals must be based on tangible assets - money cannot be made from money alone.

Commodity murabaha deals have come under criticism in recent years on fears that it is just a paper trail to circumvent Islamic law, with no real prospect of a physical commodity changing hands. Others say the practice of clients effectively "buying" money for the cost of the profit rate by selling the commodity off is simply interest by another name. IIFM's new contract does not tackle these issues, but bankers say they are working on an alternative to commodity murabaha.

What is Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR)?

When you move from desktop application development to web application development, you gain a lot in terms of distribution, working across operating systems, and ease of updating applications. But you lose things, such as, access to the local file system, drag and drop features, the ability to notify the user if something changes.

So, Adobe thought: How could it get those desktop features to Web apps?

AIR is basically about enabling web apps so that they have the “power” of the desktop application. In today’s IT enabled world, the trend is toward hosted applications, software as a service, that are built with web technologies. AIR helps your web apps to look beyond the boundary of a browser.

Adobe is just following its suite, as it has solved the cross-printer problem with Postscript, has solved the cross- word-processing-program problem with Portable Document Format (PDF), and has solved the problem of multimedia and video incompatibility across the Web with Flash. So, the obvious next frontier is solving the problem of cross-operating-system application runtime. In some ways, it's the toughest of all the problems that Adobe has cracked so far.

As people are relying more and more on web technologies for getting information, doing business transactions, expressing themselves creatively. The digital revolution that's happening now is with web technologies. So, by all means, for Adobe, this problem is worth pondering on.

Web apps have a lot of benefits from an IT perspective. They are easier to monitor because you just update them on the server and everyone gets the updated version. We don't have to worry about having a particular configuration on the desktop. You can have Mac, Windows, Linux, whatever you like, and your web applications will work. Moreover, web apps are easier to develop. You can have web developers creating these applications in conjunction with traditional IT architecture on the server side.

But, while web developers gained a lot when they went to the Web, they also lost the ability to access “personal” or “confidential” information while they are on the road. For example, companies have directories for everyone who works there. You can usually look up information on those directories while you are inside the organization’s firewall, but while you are traveling, either you don't have a network connection or you have to connect through a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to get that information. Now, this problem could be solved using AIR. AIR helps you to “integrate” your web apps with your mobile devices, and also gives your web apps the power of traditional desktop apps.

Hats off to Adobe!! Good work.

The World’s Solidarity with the US Banks

The world is extending its support to the two of the troubled banks of the US, Citigroup Inc., and Merrill Lynch & Co.

Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), which manages the Gulf Arab state's vast oil-generated assets, invested about USD $800 million in the initial public offering of the US credit card firm, Visa Corp. KIA had at least USD $213 billion of assets under management on March 31, 2007, according to the latest published figure. KIA might consider increasing its stake in the two US banks, Merrill Lynch & Co, and Citigroup Inc, after it already invested USD $5 billion in the two banks' capital raising efforts in January, 2008. Moreover, State-run Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) agreed in November, 2007 to buy USD $7.5 billion of stock in Citigroup.

Citigroup said it was privately raising USD $12.5 billion - the capital infusion of nearly USD $7 billion from Singapore Investment Corp, USD $3 billion from the Kuwait Investment Authority, and an undisclosed amount from Saudi Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, Citigroup’s largest individual shareholder.

Merrill Lynch & Co said it received a USD $6.6 billion investment from Kuwait, the Korean Investment Corp, and Japan's Mizuho Financial Group Inc. It also said it would boost its capital by raising USD $6.2 billion in a private placement with Singapore's Temasek Holdings and Davis Selected Advisors.

Trend-setting Engineering at Adobe

On February 25, 2008, Adobe Systems launched version 1.0 of the Adobe Integrated Runtime, or "AIR," which allows software programmers to use web-development tools to create desktop software applications that run on all the major operating systems: Windows, Mac, and -- coming soon -- Linux.

For Adobe, AIR is a big bet. It is Adobe's "fourth platform," positioning it as the next link in the chain that includes PostScript, Acrobat's PDF (Portable Document Format), and Flash. The first three created disruptive paradigm shifts in their respective fields -- typesetting and document printing, electronic document interchange and web interactivity -- and all have generated significant revenues for Adobe.

On March 5, 2008, Microsoft, the software giant, released a beta (test) version of the next generation of its Silverlight technology. The first version of Silverlight was aimed at combating Adobe's success in establishing Flash as a popular method of delivering video over the web. The most recent release of Silverlight, version 2, is targeted at Flash's ability to create what Adobe terms "rich Internet applications" -- web-based software programs that provide many of the features associated with traditional desktop software.

While Microsoft's Silverlight competes with Adobe's Flash, Microsoft doesn't have a technology that directly compares to Adobe's AIR.

Thus, the contest between Microsoft and Adobe over the next generation of software development tools is, to some extent, based on differing views of the future of computing. For Microsoft, the future lies in what it terms "software plus services" -- that is, using traditional desktop software (like the company's popular Office franchise) to connect to the web to access online services. Adobe believes the future rests on cross-platform software that allows developers to use web-based tools to build applications that run inside a web browser or, with AIR, can be installed as full-featured desktop software programs. (The grass is always greener on the other side - just joking!!)

As per my understanding of the situation, the differing views of Microsoft and Adobe on the future of computing landscape can be consolidated, in layman terms, as that the entire landscape of computing is going to get amalgamated big time. Players, including software developers and end users, on client sites – standalone PCs, laptops, and handheld mobile devices – are going to leverage the potential of server-site computing. Similarly, the vice versa holds true – players on server sites need to leverage the potential of client-site computing. Thus, both MS and Adobe are perfectly right in their visions of the future of computing. There are no differing views – both of them are starting off their journeys from so-called two opposite ends to the other end of the same spectrum.

For example, the recently released the Adobe Media Player, built with AIR, can both access online video subscriptions and organize locally-stored Flash video files. In the works is an AIR version of Buzzword, a word processor with many of the basic text formatting features found in Microsoft Word and similar programs. A number of other companies including eBay, AOL and Salesforce.com have deployed AIR applications. Adobe hopes many more will follow.

Ten Factors in Managing Global Talent

As per a recent McKinsey’s survey, there are ten important factors to consider, when it comes to managing global talent and increasing profit per employee. The ten facets, in decreasing order of importance, are:

1) Ensuring global consistency in management processes.
2) Achieving cultural diversity in global setting.
3) Developing and managing global leaders.
4) Translating human-resources information into action.
5) Relocating work to locations with good supply of talent.
6) Shaping the corporate HR agenda for managing good talent.
7) Creating internal talent pools.
8) Managing overseas assignments.
9) Sourcing and recruiting global talents.
10) Responding to changes in global talent market.

Who “Ate” the American Pie of Productivity?

The US imports about 12 million barrels of oil a day, and at USD $130 a barrel -- no one knows where the price is going to stabilize at; it could go higher or lower – the US oil-import bill stands at about 4 percent of the US GDP, almost USD $600 billion. And for the US, this oil-import bill has got doubled over the last year. Previously, oil-import bill was of 2 percent of the GDP and now it has gone up to 4 percent of the GDP.

And, as the US productivity is up on the average, around two years of the GDP, this rise in the oil prices would COST the US a whole year's productivity gain!!

Managing Innovation

Here, I present you the core thoughts of Prof Gary Hamel on the way innovation is going to be managed in the future.

The traditional hierarchically based 20th-century model is not effective at organizing the thinking-intensive work of self-directed people who need to make subjective judgments based upon their own special knowledge.

The winners will be those that enable their thinking-intensive employees to create more profits by putting their collective mind power to better use. The real challenge is making profits off those talented people. That’s where the big opportunity is. The leading companies today are combining talent, technology, and organizational design to generate much higher profits per employee than was possible in the past. So the trick becomes, “How do I hire talent that I can profit from?”

In terms of managing creative-thinking people, you have to separate the work of managing from the notion of managers as a distinct and privileged class of employees. Highly talented people don’t need, and are unlikely to put up with, an overtly hierarchical management model. Increasingly, the work of management won’t be done by managers. It will be pushed out to the periphery. It will be embedded in systems. I think we’re on the verge of a post-managerial society. Your notion that you mobilize human labor, through a hierarchy of overseers, bureaucrats, and administrators, is going to look extraordinarily antiquated a decade or two from now.

The outlines of the 21st-century management model are already clear. Decision-making will be more peer-based; the tools of creativity will be widely distributed in organizations. Ideas will compete on an equal footing. Strategies will be built from the bottom up. Power will be a function of competence rather than of position.

In terms of the future of management, we’re at the beginning of what will be a fairly long journey. You can see some of the pieces starting to come together, but we’re not there yet. It often takes a crisis to change an organization because in most companies the authority to set strategy and direction is highly concentrated at the top. As a consequence, a relatively small group of people at the top can hold the organization’s capacity to change hostage to their own personal willingness to adapt and to change.

How to Improve Energy Productivity?

Economies can improve energy productivity in two ways:

1) They can generate a given level of energy-related benefits with fewer inputs by using energy less intensively (with smaller appliances, for example), using energy in a more technically efficient way (car engines that use less fuel, say), or changing the mix of fuel they use (for instance, by switching from wood-burning stoves to electric ranges powered by coal-generated electricity).

2) They can increase output more rapidly than demand for energy by changing the composition of economic activity. Energy productivity rises, for example, when growth shifts from more to less energy-intensive sectors—from steel, say, to services, or to higher value-added activities within services.

Unfortunately, the gain of 1 percent a year in energy productivity over the past decade has been outstripped by global energy demand, which has risen by 1.6 percent a year. In the near future, that demand is likely to grow even faster—by 2.2 percent a year.

Ford Doesn’t Believe in the “Commodity” Bandwagon

According to John Quelch, Senior Associate Dean at Harvard Business School, Ford has finally woken up to what Toyota knew a long time ago: The power of a single global brand.

Over 20 years ago, Harvard professor Theodore Levitt praised Japanese manufacturers for their focus on "what every consumer in the world is seeking: world-class modernity at affordable prices." Since, then, Toyota, Nissan, and Honda have been selling standard products under a single brand umbrella.

For decades, Ford adapted its manufacturing platforms, features, and model names from one country to another. The results: added manufacturing and supply chain costs that strained consumers' willingness to pay; a balkanized bureaucracy in which regional managers exaggerate the need for local adaptations to defend their turf; and a deteriorating market share, financial performance, and stock price.

Ford was once one of the 10 most valuable brands in the world. They're no longer on that list, but Toyota now is. How did Toyota — and the other nine companies — do it? There are five characteristics that all top global brands have in common:

1. The same positioning worldwide. This provides a combination of functional product quality and innovation with emotional appeal. Think Coca-Cola and Disney.

2. A focus on a single product category. Think Nokia and Intel.

3. The company name is the brand name. All marketing dollars are concentrated on that one brand. Think GE and IBM.

4. Access to the global village. Consuming the brand equals membership in a global club. Think IBM's "solutions for a small planet."

5. Social responsibility. Consumers expect global brands to lead on corporate social responsibility, leveraging their technology to solve the world's problems. Think Nestlé and clean water.

Ford has a proud history. But, Low volume management distractions, including Jaguar, Land Rover, and Volvo will be sold off; they're now meaningless. US-based models like Mercury will be discontinued.

Thus, John Quelch asks - can Ford recover?

My reply is YES. Ford, by all means, can resurrect, provided it aims at doing so, whole heartedly. It's not necessary that if some Japanese companies have been "commoditizing" cars for the world, Ford should also be joining the bandwagon for no good reasons. Ford believes in catering to the differentiated needs and wants of its customers. And, there is nothing wrong in catering to those needs and wants. Ford just has to take care of its manufacturing and supply chain costs, and its bureaucracy. The results: a better market share, a better financial performance, and a highly respectful stock price will automatically fall in place. It's high time Ford should prove to the world what Ford is!

Mobile Virtual Network Operators

As per the Gulf News, Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) have dramatically changed the telecom landscape in many countries. The MVNO business model has enabled a variety of companies to expand into mobile telecommunications.

By the definition, MVNOs are "virtual" operators, that is, they don't own a mobile network, but, instead, buy capacity from an existing Mobile Network Operator (MNO) on a wholesale basis, then package and sell it under their own brands. The MVNO, typically, becomes the largest single customer of its partner MNO.

Further, by focusing and specializing on serving a particular segment of the market extremely well, MVNOs are actually important strategic partners of MNOs, especially in a maturing market, which requires a multi-segmented market approach, in which different segments are targeted with a customized proposition.

There are currently no MVNOs in the UAE. MVNOs are a natural part of mobile market evolution, and have already been introduced in Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Australia.

Therefore, it's fair to expect that MVNOs will also arrive in the UAE at some point, but this requires a decision from the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the UAE.

The limited number of ISPs in the UAE no doubt has an impact on the internet penetration, as more competition, typically, drives affordability, as well as ensures that more players are involved in educating the market. However, the UAE government is becoming more and more advanced in its use of the internet.

In my view, culture is likely to play a much bigger role in the growth of e-commerce. In the Middle East, the human contact and interaction, while doing business, is more visible and important than is in the other parts of the world.

Therefore, I believe there's a longer adoption cycle in the Middle East, and in the UAE, specifically, for adopting e-commerce than, for example, it is in Europe.

The UAE should benefit from the presence of expats from countries where e-commerce has achieved a significant mass.

Reasons For the "Fire" to the Oil

What are the main reasons for the current “fire” to the Oil? I know of the three most important reasons:

1) Nagging concerns about stagnating output in Russia and other producers that are outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

2) Oil prices are driven upwards because of the weakening dollar which prompted investors to use oil as a hedge against the falling currency, creating a vicious cycle.

3) American consumers are actually sitting on a record amount of cash, although that's exactly the problem. They're just holding it, not spending or investing it. The amount of readily available consumer cash jumped as much as 18 percent in the past year to hit a record level of almost $8.5 trillion. This cash balance includes saving deposits, institutional money markets, time deposits of less than $100,000, and retail money market funds.

The Common Sense of Marketing

I was reading through the blogs of Seth Godin, and there I encountered some Marketing tips, which he asks to proliferate. I have edited, removed, and added to his list. You can feel free to adapt the list, provided you give courtesy to him.

The Common Sense of Marketing:

1) Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
2) Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
3) Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
4) Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market. But, share of market should not be overlooked at any cost.
5) Marketing begins even before the product is created.
6) Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
7) Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
8) Products that are remarkable get talked about.
9) Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills, and your returns policy.
10) You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, who are not fooled, talk about the experience.
11) If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
12) People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
13) What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
14) Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
15) Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade-show booths, junk mails) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, and consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
16) People all over the world and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
17) Good marketers tell a story.
18) People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
19) Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
20) Effective stories match the world’s view of the people you are telling the story to.
21) Choose your customers.
22) A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
23) Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in a conversation-rich world.
24) Marketers are responsible for the side-effects their products cause.
25) Reminding the consumer of a story they know of and trust in is a powerful shortcut.
26) Good marketing guys measure.
27) Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
28) One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.
29) In the Google world, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
30) There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
31) Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end-users have an asset for the future.
32) You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call a Tech Support and you market every time you send a memo.
33) Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.
34) Obviously, knowing what to do is very, very different from actually doing it.
35) You should be marketing even after selling.

Management Innovations 2.0

Here is my personal response to the four issues that have been raised by Gary Hamel. In case, if you don't know what issues I am talking about, please refer to my last blog to know the management issues at hand.

According to me, the deep-seated impediments and their corresponding solutions are:

1) Businesses are, to a large extent, hypocritical about the growth of their employees. They are, by and large, focused on only about earning short-term numbers and meeting short-term deadlines, even if it means, at times, at the expense of the long-term growth of their businesses and their employees. In short, people management is poor at most of the organizations across the world. The solution lies in partnering closely with the academics and with educational institutions for the continual growth of the employees - especially for the senior management people, who generally belong to the old school of thought, and are reluctant to get out of their comfort zones in order to “hog” on the new ideas and to embrace even positive radical changes, if need be.

2) Senior management doesn’t show much confidence in its sub-ordinates. It is not much heedful of ideas generated by the sub-ordinates. Most of the times, senior management takes its sub-ordinates for granted, thinking that they are novice who have not much idea about the business.

3) Senior management doesn’t take time out to educate its people about the business in which they are. Until and unless, people fully understand their businesses, they just can’t innovate. They need to be tuned to think the way they should be in order to be innovative and to be productive at their businesses. And, who else can teach the employees better than the senior management itself?

4) Usually, senior management is out of sync with the world’s demands for talents to do businesses. The today’s world needs Specialist Generalists. Things are getting extremely cross-functional. And, it is just not possible to hit the “obscene” amount of growth by being a specialist of just one thing. People need to think cross-functionally to achieve a big deal out-of-the-box. So, to get in sync with the reality, senior management has to realize this big time. And, to breed Specialist Generalists, it has to keep moving its employees across functions and domains. This might involve sending some of the bright prospects to school, once again, or might involve “bringing” school to the organization, or might even involve creating school at the organization itself. Whichever may be the feasible way, but one of them has to be embraced gracefully.

5) Management has to prove to its employees that their innovative ideas, if implemented, will be rewarded proportionally. And, the reward MUST be high enough to make the juice worth the squeeze.

6) Even not-currently-possible-to-implement ideas should not be shrugged off right away. All those ideas need to be maintained properly so that, if in the future the situations change – which will be, undoubtedly - to become more favorable to the business, they can be picked up for cutting the mustard, anytime.

7) Performance appraisal systems need a big time overhauling. The onus of appraisals should not lie only in a few hands, which could become “dirty” in this greedy world, anytime. Organizations have to shield themselves from this type of catastrophe, because loss of great, honest people can never be compensated, and the damage caused by “dirty” hands can never be completely undone – no matter how hard you try, the world will just not let you forget about the damage. So, what I think the solution to this problem is that we need to make appraisal systems completely transparent and cyclic by 360 degrees. When I say transparent, it means all the people in the organization know about the progress made by the other people in the organization, so that when the bounty is distributed, nobody has any grudges, or gets surprises. This transparent system shields innocent, honest performers from “dirty” hands, if there are any in the organization. Moreover, this type of appraisal system fosters positive competitiveness in the employees. And, who doesn’t want recognition and a pat on her back for all her good work?

8) In the coming days, management doesn’t need to typically manage its employees. The employees are already self-motivated and highly ambitious. Management should trust its recruitment process for a change. If it cannot trust its recruitment process, it should revamp the recruitment process to make it bankable. The main focus of management should be on facilitating the work as smoothly as possible, so that the productivity of the entire organization shoots up. Management should always try to keep enough on its employees’ plates, so that everybody is always charged up with some meaningful work. Over all, the role of management is not going to be of a supervisor, but of a facilitator.

9) The whole essence of management can be summarized in a few adjectives. Organizations just need to be heedful of these adjectives: honest, fair, upfront, respectful, loyal, transparent, caring, supporting, egalitarian, ethical, and innovative. Once these adjectives are very well taken care of, the company’s till will always be ringing loud enough to be heard by the whole world.

Concerns of Management Innovators

Gary Hamel, who is referred to as the world’s leading expert on business strategy by the Fortune Magazine and is called the world’s reigning strategy guru by The Economist, challenges the world to ponder on the below mentioned four issues that management is facing, or going to face acutely in the near future. If you think, you can answer to any, or all, of his questions; you can reply to him on his blog site. Unlike many scholars, however, he has promised to give you the credit for your own ideas!!! You can definitely count on him for his words!!

1. What are the deep-seated impediments, or “design flaws,” that limit the capacity of organizations to adapt (to change without trauma); to innovate (to mobilize the imagination of everyone, every day); and to engage (to create environments that inspire extraordinary contributions).

2. Given these systemic impediments, and the new demands that will confront organizations in the years ahead, what should be the agenda for 21st century management innovators? That is, what are the “moon shot challenges” that must be addressed if we are to create organizations that are truly fit for the future?

3. Can we imagine, even in outline form, some potential solutions to these challenges, and if so, what sorts of experiments might be useful in helping us to test these ideas in real world settings?

4. More generally, what could be done to help accelerate the evolution of management in the years to come, that is, what is it that limits the pace of management innovation and how might these limits be overcome?

Oil Fire

There is no magic solution to the problem of rising oil prices. In the 90s, the OPEC received very strong advice from consuming countries to let the market decide prices of oil, so, since then, that's what is going on.

Today, Oil price has surged to US $135.04 a barrel in after-hours electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer and most influential member of the OPEC, announced a unilateral 300,000 barrel-a-day output increase, on May 16, 2008, in response to a request from the US President George Bush, citing customer demand.

The OPEC has kept production unchanged at its past three meetings in the months of December, February, and March, saying the market is well-supplied.

A Goldman Sachs’ Analyst said in a May 16, 2008 report that "the possibility of US $150 – US $200 per barrel seems increasingly likely over the next six to twenty four months."

Investment banks should stop publishing Oil price forecasts because the market is reacting, and investors are chasing those "projected" gains. The price of oil is, certainly, out of control!!!

Dell Is Ringing Its Till Loud in the UAE

Dell Inc. will be opening a new hub and distribution centre in Jebel Ali, Dubai, on June 16, 2008, to bring its products faster to the UAE region, with hopes to accelerate its ability to deliver products to the growing market of the UAE.

A new retail outlet will also be coming soon to the Festival City, Dubai. The company will also be investing in a call centre for the region, so consumers can have easy access to direct support from the company. The US-based firm is enjoying a 110 percent annual growth in the UAE, with market share at 15.5 percent at the end of the first quarter. Dell's notebooks have seen an annual growth of 208 percent, with current market share at 14.5 percent.

Latin America Is Catching Up With the World

In the last few years economic stability has started to take hold in Central and Latin America, resulting in unprecedented growth in the region's real estate sector. The robust development of capital markets in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Costa Rica has increased liquidity, a clear indicator of positive, economic progress. A long-awaited period of sustained economic growth is finally occurring in much of Latin America.

Things India Should Ponder On

India is currently a $1.2 trillion economy, and is likely to almost double in size in next six years, even if it grows at a modest 7 percent increase in the GDP.

This $2 trillion economy will need 64 million skilled workers. But, currently, we have only one million people that are a mix of skilled and semi-skilled people. How are we going to meet this shortfall? This is really astonishing to know that the second largest populated country in the world, with more than 1.1 billion people, has only one million skilled workers!!! Dudes, please study!!! Save the country!!

A low-carbon Economy

As per the McKinsey Quarterly, the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) and similar regulatory mechanisms, the total value of the emission rights in the EU scheme is about €40 billion a year.

Only a fraction of that value is traded now, but it is a growing fraction. Many roles are attractive—buying or selling for speculative purposes, for example, or creating clean-development-mechanism projects that would help companies outside the system reduce emissions at low cost and then profitably selling the emission rights in the market.

In parallel with efforts to optimize the existing infrastructure’s carbon performance, there will be major moves to develop radically more effective low-carbon solutions for new infrastructure. Emissions can usually be reduced at lower cost by building new houses, factories, or cars than by retrofitting existing assets. Indeed, regulation will have to encourage these new low-carbon solutions, for they could only match a predicted doubling of global GDP by 2030 with a significant and simultaneous decrease in greenhouse gas emissions.

The need to decouple emissions from economic growth will reinvent industries. In forestry and bio-energy, for example, a major new value chain seems likely to appear around the large-scale supply of biomass to power plants. Another value chain may build on cellulosic ethanol, which could significantly change the supply patterns of transportation fuels if its cost comes down as quickly as many predict. Power companies and property owners could form new alliances to generate distributed power, provided, for instance, by rooftop solar panels, if regulatory conditions were right.

A recent McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) analysis of the economic sectors most responsible for the end use of energy indicates that overall demand, which has increased by 1.6 percent a year for the past decade, is on track to grow by 2.2 percent annually over the next 15 years. Developing countries such as China account for the largest part of this growth. Curbing demand for energy in the emerging world would mean asking its consumers to reduce their newfound expectations of comfort, convenience, and economic growth—an unacceptable proposition for them.

Is there an escape from the vice grip of finite supplies and surging demand? We believe there is. Both developed and developing economies could use energy more productively by reducing the raw-materials inputs required to produce a given level of energy use, increasing the quantity or quality of the economic output from a given set of energy inputs, or both. These approaches wouldn’t call for reducing the benefits that energy’s end users enjoy.

MGI defines energy productivity as the ratio of value added to energy inputs. Energy prices, business practices, market forces, and government policies all influence energy productivity. Japan leads the world here. Thanks to consistently high energy prices and strict government energy efficiency standards based on the best practices of leading companies. Japanese gas- and coal-fired power plants are 70 percent more energy productive than Russian ones, and Japan’s 2007 standards for room air conditioners are nearly 50 percent stricter than their Chinese counterparts. The Arab Gulf, by contrast, is among the least energy-productive parts of the world as a result of large, sustained energy subsidies, and an energy-intensive growth model. Similarly, US cars are 15 percent less energy efficient than European ones in the same class, partly because European gasoline taxes are roughly seven times higher and partly because US regulatory exemptions have long helped automakers market SUVs as light trucks, which are subject to less stringent fuel-efficiency rules than passenger vehicles.

The Basics of Currency Fluctuations

Exchange Rates reflect the balance of supply and demand for currencies. Two key factors affecting supply and demand are interest rates and the overall strength of the economy. Economic indicators such as GDP, foreign investment, and the trade balance reflect the general health of an economy, and are, therefore, responsible for the underlying shifts in supply and demand for that currency.

The total return on an international investment is based on two factors:
1) The Return on Investment (ROI) in local currency, and
2) Gain or loss because of currency fluctuations.

For example, suppose, you purchase an Indian stock whose price increases 10 percent in one year in terms of INR. If during that same year, the INR increases in value by 5 percent compared to the US dollar, your total return - Net ROI - would be 15 percent that is because of gain of 10 percent from the surge in the stock price plus gain of 5 percent from the currency fluctuations. However, if the INR decreased in value by 5 percent, your total return would be only 5 percent.

When the US dollar declines compared to the other currency, your investment increases in value, because more dollars are then required to purchase the investment. An increase in the US dollar compared to the other currency means your investment decreases in value.

Most countries use a system of managed floating exchange rates. Supply and demand factors set the exchange rates most of the time, as international banks, investors, tourists, consumers, and multinational companies buy and sell foreign currencies and goods. Governments typically only intervene to prevent massive fluctuations in exchange rates.

Demand for a particular currency is determined by many factors, including a country's inflation, interest rates, political and economic outlook, monetary policies, and speculation. The US dollar does not move uniformly against all currencies - it can be rising against one currency, while it is declining against another.

In general, a rising dollar makes it less expensive for Americans to travel abroad, to import foreign goods, and to purchase foreign investments. However, US companies may suffer since cheaper imported goods hurt sales of domestic products. When the dollar is declining, it becomes more expensive for Americans to travel abroad, and to import foreign goods, but US goods become more competitive on international markets.

When considering international investments, consider these tips about currency fluctuations:
1) Foreign bonds are subject to more currency risk than foreign equities.
2) Currency fluctuations tend to be more moderate in parts of the world where political and economic factors are stable and the local currency is strong. Avoid areas where inflation rates are extremely high.
3) Diversifying your investments by country and region can help reduce the overall effects of currency risk.

What Is Engineering?

Engineering is all about “engineering” life. How do you define engineering? I define engineering as the art of maneuvering that leads you to success in anything that you do in life. So, you engineer a situation; you engineer problems; you engineer difficulties; you engineer solutions; you engineer failures so as to succeed thereafter. While engineering, you use all your knowledge that you have acquired so far. Engineering is all about manipulating obstacles, so as to achieve the goals, perhaps, at any cost or at the cost that you can afford. That’s engineering for me. What about you?

I am an engineer by education, by profession, and by choice. I love myself for being an engineer. It gives me immense pleasure in replying to someone who asks me – what do you do for a living? By and large, I reply, with a bit of “tashan”, that I am an engineer. I just love the word engineering. I feel I am a gamer and the world is my amphitheater. I have to show the world how I play the “game.” At times, I play by the rules, and at other times, I make the rules. I write protocols, for others to follow. I just love what I do. I am sure for my entire life I would be engineering – or call it maneuvering, in layman term.

Then there are several fields of engineering. You see, when you have many players, you have to give them their own space to play. :-) They need their own rules to play. Just imagine the world without engineering!!! It would look so ugly. We would go to the ancient times, wherein, we didn’t have any tools. The world will come to a grinding halt without engineering. So, there you agree with me. Right? Thus, engineering makes the world move.

So, next time, if somebody asks you – what do you do? Reply with some “tashan” that you engineer.

Winning

A couple of months back, I finished reading a book called “Winning” by Jack Welch. I found this book very useful and extremely informative. I suggest you to read this. It would be worth the effort and time.

Here is the gist of some important points adapted from that book. I hope to incite enough enthusiasm in you that you “hog” on to it right away. No, I am not publicizing the book for Mr. Welch. I want well-educated co-workers around me. :-)

What leaders do?
1) Leaders relentlessly upgrade their teams, using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach, and build self-confidence.
2) Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, but also live and breathe it.
3) Leaders get into everyone's skin, exuding positive energy and optimism.
4) Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency, and credit.
5) Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions and gut calls.
6) Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure their questions are answered with action.
7) Leaders inspire risk taking and learning by setting the examples.
8) Leaders celebrate.

Shortcomings of the CMM Standards

Carnegie Mellon's CMM and the other standards don't address some sources of waste, such as ineffective allignment between businesses and IT, the unavailability of the right resource at the right time, or architectural complexity. Moreover, CMM treats human resources as commodities - this conceptualization is engrossly wrong, because humans differ from each other and they cannot be solely judged on the quantifiable parameters of inputs and output.

Three big challenges are in focusing on:
1) changing behaviour.
2) broadening the focus from the specifics to general principles.
3) setting up the right incentives.

No transformation can sustain itself without the proper metrics and incentive systems that ensure change. In application development, "function points" measure the level of efforts devoted to a project. A successful lean transformation requires new metrics to identify waste and to set goals for reducing it. A lean transformation is a journey well worth the effort.

Lean, of course, isn't a technology, but rather a methodolgy applied to processes -- originally in manufacturing operations but increasingly within services, including IT.