Kausar's Thoughts

The Inflation Problem in India

2011-02-05T12:54:00.004+05:30

The Indian Government has long been struggling to tame the inflationary pressures that run in the excess of 6%. Since early 2010, the Reserve Bank of India has increased the interest rates six times, but, has still failed to meet the longing objectives. Why?

The simple answer is that they are trying to fix the wrong side of the problem. It's true that demand is high in the Indian market, but, more than just demand, it is the supply-side that is highly constrained! By increasing the base rates, the RBI has just been trying to bring down the demand, so as to tame the inflation. The actual, and thus the long-term, solution to the problem requires on the government part to invest billions of dollars in fixing the pathetic supply-side problems. But, fixing the supply-side of the problem requires guts, courage, discipline, honesty, accountability, high-standards of governance, and tons of money.

Instead of tackling the real-and-higly-challenging problem, the government is busy giving the world, especially to the global investors, an eyewash by frequently increasing the interest rates. Sad? Indeed.

The Global Currency War

2010-10-24T23:56:00.003+05:30

The global fight to reducing the value of currencies is peaking up. It might reach to its zenith, with the Fed further printing crispy US dollars, and pumping those dollars in the global economy, either directly or indirectly. The Fed is thinking of buying the US Treasuries, with its new crispy greenbacks, and is going to keep the interest rates near to zero, for a long time. If this happens, the US dollar will get diluted, and US exports will become more competitive on the global markets. Thus, it is a direct, currency-war response to China. But, the challenge for China is to move its currency further down, in tandem with the greenback, against a basket of currencies. Thus, China needs to keep buying US-dollar denominated assets, especially US debt, extending its love-hate relationships with the greenback. For global investors, it is a no-bariner to guess the US treasury yield, and, for the global market, it's a no-brainer to guess the direction of the new money!! :-)

Another challenge for China is to weigh-in the costs and benefits of continuing its currency war, as it holds almost 10% of US debt -- the dollar asset the value of which goes down, every time the dollar is getting devalued. So, the ultimate question for China is to consider whether it is worth keeping its currency devalued so as to export more and more, and then keep buying US-debt with the money earned so to keep exporting even more and more, and, then, somewhere in the cycle, the US brings down the value of the debt down by printing new greenbacks!! Undoubtedly, it is a vicious circle!!! A vicious circle in which China has a huge chance of losing, rather than of winning!! Isn't it illogical to bet on someone else, especially when your entire fortune is at stake? But, it appears, for China it is not!! China has been keeping most of its economic strategies US-centric!! China really needs to come to grips with itself -- that it is a behemoth and it should now be inward looking rather than outward looking!

Although, it all started with the US and China, but, of late, some more countries have hopped on to the bandwagon in the currency markets to manipulate their currency in order to export more and more, such as Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Brazil, etc., making the currency war global. It's a dangerous-and-quite-pointless fight the world is getting into, as it is purely a beggar-thy-neighbor policy, which is not only mean, but also cheap!! Why? In one way, this unequivocally proves that the world has run out of real innovations, or, at best, it proves that the world has really given up on real innovations, which are the real-and-awesome sources of renewed exports that bring livelihood to all, including the producers and the consumers alike. But, instead of focusing on this aspect, the whole world is getting into a dog fight!! May God save us all. Aamin!

China and Its Human Rights Issues

2010-10-23T14:54:00.004+05:30

It was not surprising that the Chinese government harshly criticized the Nobel Peace Prize that was given to its jailed political activist Liu Xiaobo, claiming that the Nobel committee unlawfully interfered with its internal affairs and humiliated China in the eyes of the international public.

The obvious question is whether China was right in condemning the Nobel committee. The simple and unambiguous answer is, NO. Why? Here are the reasons, as stated by Mr. Thorbjorn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, in his article in the NYT.

"International human rights laws and standards are above any nation-state, and the world community has a duty to ensure they are respected. The United Nations, founded after the two disastrous world wars, committed member states to resolve disputes by peaceful means and defined the fundamental rights of all people in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The nation-state, the declaration said, would no longer have ultimate, unlimited power.

Today, universal human rights provide a check on arbitrary majorities around the world, whether they are democracies or not. A majority in a parliament cannot decide to harm the rights of a minority, nor vote for laws that undermine human rights. And even though China is not a constitutional democracy, it is a member of the United Nations, and it has amended its Constitution to comply with the Declaration of Human Rights. However, Mr. Liu’s imprisonment is clear proof that China’s criminal law is not in line with its Constitution. He was convicted of “spreading rumors or slander or any other means to subvert the state power or overthrow the socialist system.” But in a world community based on universal human rights, it is not a government’s task to stamp out opinions and rumors. Governments are obliged to ensure the right to free expression — even if the speaker advocates a different social system.

These are rights that the Nobel committee has long upheld by honoring those who struggle to protect them with the Peace Prize, including Andrei Sakharov for his struggle against human rights abuses in the Soviet Union, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for his fight for civil rights in the United States.

If China is to advance in harmony with other countries and become a key partner in upholding the values of the world community, it must first grant freedom of expression to all its citizens.

It is a tragedy that a man is being imprisoned for 11 years merely because he expressed his opinion. If we are to move toward the fraternity of nations of which Alfred Nobel spoke, then universal human rights must be our touchstone."

I think China should well now be focusing on an all-inclusive growth, rather than focusing solely on the obscene amount of growth for its state-owned companies, which have been flourishing at the cost of its citizens' human rights (in order to keep the political power intact in the hands of a few and to keep its manufacturing costs down), and at the cost of its competitors (keeping its currency undervalued, so as to sell more on the international markets, making its competitors' goods comparatively costlier). It's time for change, and it will come.

My Blogs: Easier to Read, Simpler to Understand, and Friendlier to Share

2010-07-23T23:45:00.006+05:30

I have earnestly tried my level best to make the template of my blog as simple as possible, in order to enhance the ease of readability. Moreover, now, you can share my blogs with others through your very own Gmail, Blogspot, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Buzz accounts.

As usual, please keep enjoying my blogs secretly! :-)

If, in case, you want to share your "secret-enjoyment" with me, there is a comment button down here. Kindly give your invaluable feedback and let me enjoy my blogs too. I will surely try to enhance the level of enjoyment we all derive from the blogs here. I promise. Enjoy. :-)

Is Apple Really In Trouble?

2010-05-15T22:47:00.002+05:30

Having successfully failed to woo Apple, Adobe filed complaints against Apple to the US Antitrust Enforcers, saying Apple is stifling competition by shunning all Flash-based content from the iPhone and the iPad.

First things first, is Adobe justified in its allegation? Let me give you some perspective, before you jump to any conclusion.

Flash is Adobe’s proprietary software that currently is being used to run more than 90 percent of online graphics, animations, and videos, especially content for displaying online advertisements. And, Apple doesn’t support Flash on its products, disallowing Adobe a highly-desired, much-awaited entry into the Apple Value Chain.

But, why does Adobe want to enter into Apple’s “territory.” There are two obvious reasons for desiring so:

1) Apple’s customers, in general, are higher-spending smartphones-users. Getting their eyeballs for advertisements are highly desirable, as the chances increase manifold that those customers will buy things, when they are exposed to “relevantly-pitched” advertisements.

2) Apple may break Adobe’s hegemony on online content that generates online advertisement revenues, and may push HTML5 – an open-source standard for web-based graphics, animation and videos – as the industry standard for online advertisements. If that happens, Adobe’s value will tumble, because Adobe makes money from charging advertisers, designers, and developers for using its proprietary tools, such as Photoshop and Illustrator, for creating Flash-based graphics, animation, and videos.

Let me give you some more perspective. Why should Apple bow to Adobe? If the ground has to be leveled for all kinds of stakeholders, then why shouldn’t it be leveled by making an open-source standard, such as HTML5, as the industry standard for online graphics, animations, and videos? Doesn’t it sound more logical? Why should “the power” shift from one company to another? The power to control online revenues should be dissipated to everyone on this earth! And, that is achievable only by making HTML5, or something still better, the industry standard for creating content that generates online revenues.

Apple has vehemently been supporting HTML5!

Now, let’s get back to the original question of whether Adobe is justified in claiming that Apple is killing competition by not allowing Flash-based content on the iPhone and the iPad. What do you think? I think, “Not a tad!”

If you disagree with me, please feel free to rip me apart – there is a button for comments right down here! I look forward to hearing your rationale too!

Adobe’s One-sided Love Affair with Apple

2010-04-10T02:54:00.004+05:30

Apple is very clear of how it wants developers to develop applications for its products, such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. It wants developers to use its well-documented APIs in the manner it prescribes. Thus, it wants applications to be developed ONLY in C or C++ that could well be executed by the iPhone OS WebKit Engine.

In other words, Apple still wants to shun Adobe’s Creative Suite that includes Flash, which is currently being used for displaying more than 90 percent of online videos.

Apple, since the launch of the iPhone in 2007, has been shutting Adobe out of its value chain, even though Adobe has consistently been trying to woo Apple by sending very clear signals! For example, the new Adobe Creative Suite 5, which is expected to be unleashed soon at Adobe’s annual developers conference, has features that will give developers the ability to produce applications in a format that can work on the iPhone and iPad. But, Apple’s new developer agreement makes it succinctly clear that Apple is not going to accept Adobe’s courtship!

But, the obvious questions are: Why does Apple want to hurt Adobe? Why does Apple want to keep Adobe out of its value chain? Won’t doing so hurt Apple too? Won’t blank-holes be there when Apple customers browse the Internet, using Apple devices? What is going to fill in there, if not Flash-based videos, which already are prevalent all over the Internet?

The answers to these so-called obvious questions could perhaps be like these: No, perhaps, Apple purposely doesn’t want to hurt Adobe, but, definitely, wants to hold on to its highly enthusiastic developers firmly, raising the costs of switching for them. And, yes, doing so is hurting Apple too, but not much, as content-providers are slowly moving from Flash to HTML5, which is an open-source standard, and works fine for Apple. So, hopefully soon, there won’t be many blank-holes for Apple’s customers.

Oh yea, Apple has its own way of saying a big NO! But, it is just playing safe, as it knows what might pop up, if it lets Adobe come close to it – and to its products, services, “hegemony” over its entire spectrum of value chain, revenues, and bottom line, of course! :-)

Emirates, Off Course?

2010-04-02T00:34:00.001+05:30

As per the International Air Transport Association, Airlines worldwide, in 2009, which witnessed the worst demand-decline in the airline history, are estimated to have lost USD 9.4 billion. For the same year, Emirates will announce even more profits, including another record for passenger traffic, perhaps above the 23 million mark! How?

Between April 2009 and December 2009, when all other Airlines were getting into a price war to lock-in passengers, in order to fend off the global recession, Emirates increased its fares by 35 percent across its network. The surprising, but strategically-planned outcome of doing so was that the demand for Emirates grew up! Seat factors went up, so did the loads!

The decision for hiking the fares did require a little retrospect for Emirates. It was quite tempting for Emirates to get into the global price-war, but, then, it realized that having spent millions of dollars in building a premium brand, getting into the price war wouldn’t make sense at all.

For example, Emirates had put first-class showers on its A380 super-jumbos; had sponsored horse racing, yachting and football events across the world. All these strategic, brand-building investments would be in a stark-contrast to its decision for getting involved in the global price-war! Thus, to show the world what it was, and, perhaps, what it is, it hiked its fares across the board. Moreover, it also identified a much-untapped goldmine in first-class and in business-class passengers coming out of Europe, Asia, and South America. Awesome! Isn’t it?

But, its competitors are crying foul, as they claim that Emirates has an undue advantage over its competitors, as it has full support of the airport and civil aviation authorities, especially of those of Dubai. But, then, that is Emirates’ strategic, niche business-model for cutting travel-time short for its passengers by creating new “city-pairs” via a single stop at Dubai, and also for realizing Dubai International Airport’s strategic growth-model that seeks to be the world’s busiest aviation hub. Now, this is called aligning your growth strategies with those of your business-partners – a strategy for devising a win-win solution for all the parties involved, even for your customers as you shorten their travel-time while still putting them on a luxurious flight!

Emirates is chalking out a big-potential-for-growth strategy by linking 500 profitable destinations worldwide under its “city-pair” business-model, up from its current network of 101 cities. It says, “It’s just the tip of the iceberg!”

The only constraints that it may face will be the physical constraints of Dubai International Airport, in terms of airspace, runways, and other physical infrastructure that might limit the use of its “city-pairs” concept. Emirates, off course? Of course, not!

The Global Outlook for 2010

2010-03-31T21:51:00.005+05:30

2010 is going to be a mixed-kind of year. We are still witnessing major troubles primarily in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, UK, Dubai, Japan, and the US. But, on the other hand, undoubtedly, they all will fight back, because they ought to. There is no other choice. This is primarily a capitalistic world, which doesn't give in to pessimism. We have seen unprecedented efforts by the Central Banks and Governments worldwide. All those efforts will pay off, albeit slowly but surely. There will again be booms and busts, after all that's the cycle and that is its intrinsic nature. Isn't it? Let's be patient, and hold our grounds firmly. Good luck to all of us, as we see the waning of the modern world's second-worst recession!

There will be some pains and upsets in the globalized world, as economies try to "rein in" their Balance of Payments (BOP), especially with other economies, such as China, which cuts its manufacturing-costs at the expense of its competitors and of its buyers as well! But, that's a different story altogether.

Deflation in Japan is another concern. It has become so hard to make money in Japan. So, obviously, insane amounts of funds will outflow from Japan to economies -- especially emerging economies -- that promise robust growth, creating bubbles and then consequently sudden busts! But, is it something extremely wrong? No! It's not! But, inflow and outflow of funds certainly need to be controlled and be well monitored. EXTREME free-flow of funds is a very dangerous thing, because you just never know what's going to happen next! Economies become susceptible to the idiosyncrasies of few "funds managers!" They take the world economy as "HOSTAGE!" Isn't cartel a reality?

I just hope the policy-makers worldwide would fix the root causes of the problems, instead of beating around the bush -- that is trying to fix the symptoms of the problems. Good luck to most of us !

Walking Without a Plan

2010-02-27T14:54:00.002+05:30

Walking without a plan? Yes, that's right -- walking without a plan! :-) It's possible. Trust me; it is. And, you can still work on an unplanned plan to completion. You can still coordinate without coordinating explicitly. You can still communicate without communicating vehemently. You can still promise without promising earnestly. Doesn't silence speak a thousand words? And, doesn't signaling work? All of these work, provided you know how to walk without a plan.

Have you ever driven any kind of vehicle on the Indian roads? In India, hardly anyone follows any traffic rules, but, still, considering how people drive out there, the number of accidents is still very, very low -- I repeat considering the way people drive out there. We are used to of "walking without a plan" -- it's what we have been experiencing since our childhood, isn't it? :-)

That was just an example to hint you at something. :-) Are you game for it -- walking without a plan? :-) Let's see. In the meanwhile, I just hope that you be a sport!

What Comes First: Price or Costs?

2010-02-27T00:58:00.002+05:30

For marketing, in general, letting the price, and/or the profit margin, determine the costs of the product, rather than letting the costs of the product determine the price, and/or the profit margin, is the most prudent way to go forward.

First, decide the price of your product, and the subsequent profit margin, that you must make to satiate, or justify, your investments. Doing so gives you a costs window that you may put at stake in producing the product. Thus, the price – and/or the profit margin – of the product drives its viable costs structure. In the worst case, you might not be able to produce the product within the estimated costs. But, your money remains intact, and you can still use it for something better.

If you do the other way round, that is, if you first produce the product, and then aggregate the costs incurred in producing it, in that case, the total costs drive the price of the product, and subsequently drive the profit margin, which may or may not justify the investments made, keeping in mind that there is a certain maximum price the consumer is ready to pay for the product. This second method is prone to the risks of making the entire investments sour! The worst situation has the potential to wreck havoc -- that is that you might lose all your investments!

It is certainly not that the first method always is the best way of deciding on the price, and thus the justified costs, of a product. But, it certainly is the more logical way of going forward.

However, in some situations, the second method is the only possible way of zeroing in on the costs, and subsequently the price of a product, especially when both the producer and the potential consumers are completely new to the concept of the product that is going to be produced.

The call is yours, so take the shot! And, don't forget that you will be held accountable for it too, because if you miss it, the investors will not let you off the hook! You can run; you can hide, but you can't skip, my "love." :-)

A very positive, comprehensive, inclusive budget for 2010

2010-02-26T15:15:00.003+05:30

Finance Minister of India has unleashed the Indian Union Budget for 2010. The budget looks quite promising. As per the budget, the masses are going to be taxed lesser for their incomes in 2010. The personal tax breaks are prudently categorized as:

Incomes <= INR 160,000: No tax
INR 160,000 < Incomes < = INR 500,000: 10%
INR 500,000 < Incomes <= INR 800,000: 20%
INR 800,000 < Incomes: 30%

Additionally, investing up to INR 20,000 in infrastructure bonds will be tax-exempt, and this exempt is going to be over and above the exempt of INR 100,000 as per Section 80C.

It is hoped that almost 60 percent of tax-payers would benefit from this tax-relief program, which will definitely increase their purchasing power, which, in turn, will positively impact the businesses operating in the country. This is the strategy of taking the economy even more toward the domestic-consumption-driven growth-path – a very, very good strategy of being self-reliant, and highly proven strategy in this Great Recession.

The budget looks forward to compensate for these relaxations to the common people through marginally increasing excise-duties in certain sectors, such as tobacco products, high-end SUVs, luxury cars, petrol and diesel, just to name a few.

Moreover, the Minimum Alternative Tax (MAT), which was actually introduced to tax companies like Reliance, is raised to 18 percent, from the current 15 percent.

The fiscal deficit for 2010 is budgeted at 6.8 percent of the GDP, but has been guided to 5.5 percent of the GDP for the next fiscal year, to 4.8 percent of the GDP for 2012, and to 4.1 percent of the GDP for 2013. Overall this phased fiscal-deficit-reduction strategy looks pretty good, keeping in mind the current financial situations around the world.

So far, the government has raised USD 7 billion by divesting stakes in the public-sector enterprises, and there will be many more such moves in the coming days to fund the planned fiscal-deficits. Moreover, the government will issue more banking licenses for the private-banking sector, and will also auction telecoms 3G-licenses for raising funds to finance the fiscal-deficits.

Overall, the Indian Union Budget for 2010 appears to be a very positive, comprehensive, inclusive budget. Good job!

Innovative Financing: Changing the Relationship Between the Rich and the Poor

2010-02-20T21:13:00.003+05:30

Very soon, people who fly will have a chance to help the world's some of the most unfortunate inhabitants. Flyers, when purchasing airline tickets either on the websites of airlines or through travel agents, will be asked to make a direct contribution to the fight against the world's three deadliest epidemics: HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. This is part of a movement called innovative financing, which is a new kind of aid-tool that could fundamentally change the relationship between the rich and the poor throughout the world, a few dollars at a time.

Each of these diseases – HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis – still causes more deaths in developing countries than any other single disease, according to the World Health Organization. In 2004, the last year for which statistics were available, together these three diseases caused one in eight deaths in low-income countries.

So, the whole point is to help such poor people the next time you fly. Trust me; changing the so-called “third world” in this way is cheaper than changing such world by bombing them! The logic is very simple: when people have lots to lose, they think multiple times before losing such things. Let’s help people in getting a real life, and they will think hundreds of times before even planning to give it up! Please raise the costs of “switching” – in a business jargon, for people who understand only business!

Telcos Preparing for the Next Low-cost, Low-end Telecoms War

2010-02-18T17:42:00.002+05:30

Vodafone has introduced the `cheapest’ mobile phone ever at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) being held in Barcelona. The handset, aimed for the developing countries, will be initially launched in India, Turkey, and eight African countries including Lesotho, Kenya, and Ghana. The phone is available for less than USD 15 and allows voice calls, SMS as well as mobile payment services. An expensive version of the phone has a color screen and FM radio and is priced at USD 20.

Reliance Communications (RCOM), India’s second biggest mobile communications company, has signed a deal with Huawei to purchase two million CDMA handsets worth INR 3.4 billion (USD 73.27 million). The handsets are priced in a range of INR 1700 (USD 36.63) to INR 1950 (USD 42.02) each unit and are equipped with camera and FM radio. RCOM plans to launch these handsets in Tier-II and Tier-III cities in India. (1 USD = 46.40 INR).

Now, as mobile call-rates in India are already close to free, a new wave of low-cost, low-end war is apparently emerging on the horizon to capture even the remotest of countrymen and countrywomen. Once the telcos are satiated that not even a single Indian is left without having a mobile phone in hand, a new wave of unimaginably massive, extremely painful telecoms market-consolidation will happen. There will then be only two options: buy or get sold! And, such buying and selling will happen based on the market segments the telcos would like to play in and play with. Telcos valuations will be computed almost linearly: X number of customers times $Y per customer – and this will be based on customer segmentation -- plus, the net assets, if any. That’s it. Only the best and biggest will survive the onslaught "massacre." Thus, the survivors will live happily ever after, until the next disruptive technologies emerge on the markets. The end of the saga!

Is Buzz Buzzing?

2010-02-17T23:13:00.002+05:30

Buzz has started off with a negative buzz! For end-users, the biggest “buzz” is a concern for privacy.

By default, based on your contacts list, it connects you to people! When you add others to your Buzz – that is, when you start following, or when you start getting followed – you can see who all your “Buzz-mates” are connected to! Now, this is a serious concern for people who experimented with – or better, say, who got victimized of – Buzz!

Well, Google has promised to fix this bug immediately. The “patches” are on their way, in phases, of course. But, I think its strategy has already paid off in getting million of customers on Day 1 of the Buzz release. I call this business strategy “leveraging” and “monetizing” the power of the brand, the faith people have in the brand, and the fickleness of, and the lack of comprehensiveness in, the rules and regulations that govern the industry in which the brand operates. It’s about weighing the costs and the associated benefits. It’s all business! And, businesses do capitalize on loopholes in law. Companies will keep on exploiting such loopholes in order to gain customers and improve their bottom-line.

Wasn’t the privacy issue involved obvious to Google? The answer is as obvious as the question itself! It’s called go-to-market strategy – it is about how to acquire customers in a crowded market. Thus, Buzz was released with a buzz! And, it successfully created the necessary buzz for getting all our attention, especially when we are busy on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Orkut, and others. Mission accomplished! :-)

Short to Shorter

2010-02-17T01:18:00.011+05:30

For quite a while, I have been noticing something interesting. Day by day, things are getting shorter and shorter. Be they:

The cycles of boom and bust.

Interactions amongst human being (twitter, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, the volumes of voice calls are dropping worldwide, etc).

The sizes of products (vehicles, computers, handheld-devices, etc).

The life cycles of products and services, as we seek for frequent changes and upgrades.

Newspapers are getting reduced to, and sometimes even replaced by, blogs, tweets, buzz, et al.

Peoples’ memories have remarkably been getting shorter and shorter. We just move on so easily and so quickly, shrugging things off as if they never happened, and saying C’est la vie – and it must move on! :-) Well, nothing is wrong with this philosophy! But, shouldn’t we try hard enough to shape it the way we want it to be? Could you vouch for your own answer? Really? :-) Liar!

Commitments – be they to life, passion, jobs, responsibilities, tenacity, education, logic, humility, empathy, promise, austerity, allegiance, or love.

We are getting bored of things so easily that we continually seek for changes. How is this mindset going to affect our lives? Only time will tell. But, I can surely tell you one thing – there are things that when get shorter become better, but, then, there are other things that when get shorter become worse! So, watch out what you wish for, before you really wish for! :-)

Leaders Vs Managers

2010-01-13T23:48:00.007+05:30

Have you ever paused for a while to think of whether you are a leader-material or a manager-material? But, yes, it requires that you understand the subtle difference between the two!

So, how does a leader differ from a manager? Well, I like, and offer, practical definitions/observations, rather than purely theoretical ones that run up to hundreds of pages! Moreover, the difference mentioned below is purely and broadly based on human characteristics, attitudes, and mindsets.

The biggest, and most remarkable, difference is that leaders DON'T lead by concealing data/information/facts/esoteric-concepts from their followers. In fact, they reveal, and subsequently train, their followers on everything they could. Then, they “challenge” their followers to challenge their own preaching/teaching, driving the best out of all concerned, subsequently refining and building on the preaching even further. In other words, they level the playing ground, which could equally be used by all the stakeholders who are allowed to challenge and compete against themselves, albeit in healthy terms – perhaps the theory of genuine excellence prevails here. So, it is not surprising to witness that the best leads the cohort, and is widely highly regarded as a genuine leader, because s/he has the ability to inspire everyone else, including herself/himself!

But, sadly, how many such leaders do we have? Or, even the bigger question is, how many of us do want to be one of that kind?

Whereas, managers inherently are people who like to conceal data/information/facts/esoteric-concepts/know-how from their subordinates, and from the other stakeholders. They manage by hiding things, because doing so is what gives them importance, stability, cushion, fake respect, and eventually job security. If they reveal all the things they know, they might make themselves redundant, or might even make themselves completely useless, as they won’t have any further “value” to add to the teams they manage, or to the organizations they work for. Above all said and done, managers do have some genuine responsibilities, such as collecting work status, filling excel sheets, generalizing everything, firefighting, making things look complex, creating barriers, and, most importantly, "doing" performance appraisals. After all, organizations do have corporate social responsibilities for generating mass employment! Don't they?

Well, I am aware of the fact that I am being very strict in my evaluation here! But, that is the precise reason that I say it is very, very hard to find genuine leaders. And, on the other hand, that is equally the reason why most of us want to be managers – perhaps theory of convenience applies here!

Please note that there could be leaders who might officially be labeled as managers, and vice versa. You will find these two kinds in different skins! So, watch out!!

For further differences, there are millions of books on the topic out there waiting for your grab – so go and waste your time! :-)

The Plight of the Indian Telecom Industry

2009-11-03T14:14:00.006+05:30

Of late, I have been in conversation with my colleagues regarding the present and future of the Indian telecom industry. Here is an excerpt from our day-to-day discussion. If you find it logical, please let us know too. If you think that we are engrossly wrong in the way we are reading the market, we need to hear from you even more. Your comments are most welcome.

Question: How do you perceive the contemporary telecom industry in India?
Kausar Fahim: From the perspective of the Indian economy, it has been an industry of paramount importance, as it helps the economy grow. Almost all industries depend on the telecom sector, for strategic and operational reasons. But, from the perspective of the telecom industry, I think that the telecom industry has matured a lot, although there is an acute need for improving the quality of the services. Looking at the kinds of strategic games that are being played, such as stiff price-war while the market penetration rate is just 30% and the ARPU is just INR 100+, I am very, very dubious of the profitability of the sector itself, and especially of the new entrants. In other words, if I were a new entrant, I would not enter into the Indian telecom industry now. I would rather wait and watch for the market consolidation to happen. In Economics term, I would rather wait for the market to be either Cournot Oligopoly or Stackelberg Oligopoly, but definitely not Bertrand Oligopoly.

Question: In which stage is the Indian telecom industry?
Kausar Fahim: I think it has matured enough to play strategic games, with dire consequences. It has become capable of erecting barriers for new entrants. Not many entry barriers are there, as the government is extreme care of not having a monopolisitc market in any of the circles. In an Economics term, I would say the telecom market is Bertrand Oligopoly, with a "beggar-thy-neighbour" policy. It is definitely good for customers, as they are getting products and services for cheap, but, then, they won't get quality services, as the bottom-lines of the players are heading southward.

Question: Why do you think the quality of services is poor, or is not up to the mark? What could resolve the issue?
Kausar Fahim: Look at the call-drop rates. Even in metropolises, such as New Delhi and Bangalore, the quality of the network connectivity is poor. Much worse are the conditions in the smaller cities! I think 3G could solve most of these kinds of issues, as the majority of the problems is of insufficient spectrum.

Question: Why is the 3G spectrum not yet there?
Riyaz Ahmad Khan: 3G has been procrastinated by the Indian government because of several reasons:

1. The Indian Defence is still occupying most of the 3G spectrum, and has to migrate to some other band of spectrum. In order to migrate to some other spectrum, they have to change their equipment -- which takes time and involves budgetary issues.

2. The Indian government did a lot of study not to leave any stone unturned in order to squeeze the maximum cash out of the sales of spectrum and licenses. A special team was sent to the US to study the pricing of the 3G spectrum. A delay could be part of the pricing strategy, wherein, you let accumulate as many buyers as possbile, with as much appetite and desperateness as possible.

3. There has been a lobby working with the Indian government that has been influencing the government not to auction the 3G spectrum anytime soon, as they want to reap maximum benefits out of their 2G-related investments. Moreover, they are also not ready for capitalizing the 3G spectrum. This is also in the interests of the government, as the 3G spectrum is going to be auctioned, and you always want as many bidders as possible for any auction.

4. The Indian government do not intend to repeat the mistakes it made at the time of the auction of the 2G spectrum. The government intends to auction the new spectrum on a profit-sharing basis, obviously along with the downpayment by the higgest bidder.

5. The whole process of the 3G auction also got delayed because of the change in government at the centre -- from the BJP-led government to the Congress-led government.

6. New operators also want a delay as they are busy setting their operations up.

7. For long, telecoms operators had contemplated on which way to go further: Wimax or 3G. This added further delay to the auction process.

Question: How do you see the Indian telecoms industry in the future?
Kausar Fahim: As we all know, India is a country of poor people! 25% of the resident Indians are below the Indian-standard of the poverty line! And, amongst the rest, a majority just earn enough to support a living somehow! And, every telco knows that it cannot sell value-added-services (VAS) to poor people, with a high profit margin. If it HAS to sell value-added-services to poor people, somehow, or anyhow, the solutions lie in very low prices that might trigger another spree of a price war amongst the telcos that undoubtedly will rob them of their high-margin businesses, hitting their bottom-lines the most.

Secondly, companies grow with the economy. No company can grow at a faster pace than the economy in which it operates for indefinite period of time, otherwise the company will engulf the economy! India is growing at 6% per annum. Even if we assume that the telecom industry will outpace this growth for some more years, but, then, the growth in the sector is already being shared by many hands! What would be the net-profit share of each company in this kind of Bertrand Oligopoly? What would be the implications of all these in the short-term, medium-term, and long-term? Dubious?

Thirdly, telcos are busy acquiring customers at the cost of their net profits -- and this makes business sense to some extent, especially when this is the max they can do. The big players want to earn as many customers as possible, even if it means low net profits. Going forward, they know that there are two sources of prime growth:

1) by selling VAS to relatively well-off people who are ready to consume VAS. For this telcos need 3G, the fate of which is still not decided. It is apparent that big, ready players have to bleed for some more time.

2) by capturing the fragmented rural markets and poor people in urban areas to primarily raise their ARPM (Avergae Revenue Per Minute), and, if possible at all, then also raise their ARPU. A price war might increase the market share and revenues to some extent, but it certainly negatively impacts the bottom-line, which is the ultimate objective of fighting any war.

Thus, my concern is that what is the guarantee that a price war will not happen for selling VAS once the 3G spectrum is in place? Consequently, what would the impact be on the ARPU, ARPM, ROI, ROTA, ROCE, etc.?

In short, I am bearish about the Indian telecom industry in the short-to medium term. If Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) happen in the industry, there could be substantial growth, going forward thereafter, otherwise the industry will grow, with the economy, at a rate of 8 percent to 10 percent Y-o-Y -- which would be a mediocre performace as per the industry expectations. The rationale behind this is the portion of the disposable income of the masses that is spent on telecoms products and services. Moreover, there is a plethora of VoIP-based telephony services that pose a big threat to the industry's revenues.

Riyaz Ahmad Khan: I am bullish about the Indian telecom industry because the mobile phone is something that we are always carrying while we are awake! It is unlike most of the other products that we use just for a couple of minutes everyday. The other important factors are the sheer population of India, and the untapped potential lying therein. With just 30 percent penetration rate, the telecom industry has a long way to go forward.

The Bounce-back of the Capitalistic World

2009-09-12T03:39:00.002+05:30

On September 11, 2001, the Dow was at 9605. On March 09, 2009, the Dow was at the 12-year low of 6440. And, yesterday – on September 11, 2009 – the Dow, once again, closed at 9605.

The inference is quite easily fathomable! Isn’t it? While, between 1997 and 2001, it took the Dow to reach 9605 in four years, this year, in 2009, the journey of those four years has been covered in just flat six months! Impressive! Indeed!

This has technically been so because of the high “base-effect,” and, in other words, what I satirically call, “the spring effect of a capitalistic world” – the harder it falls, the faster it bounces back.

So, what lies ahead, from here? Well, if you are a long-tern player, go long – your investments will be in the safe hands of the capitalistic markets. But, if you love to ride the tides of intra-day-and inter-day movements, keep watching for market indicators, right from the far East to the far West – you too will enjoy your journey on the “tides.”

So, what’s the moral of the story? Irrespective of who you are, you are almost “insured” to book profits, just keep buying on the dips! The "game" is just half-way through! You can catch up! Trust me. You can, provided you identify the dips. :-)

Reclaiming the Lost Grounds

2009-08-28T00:56:00.001+05:30

For the past one week, the bourses worldwide, having surged more than 30 percent since March 09, 2009, have been struggling to hold on to their recently gained grounds. So far, it seems that the bourses worldwide are all poised to take off in a big way.

Be it the DJIA, the NASDAQ, the FTSE 100, the DAX 30, the CAC 40, the Nikkei 225, the Hang Seng, the Shanghai Composite, the Tel Aviv 100, the NSE 50, the BSE 30, all have surged like anything by more than 30 percent on the hope that the world’s economy is recovering from the Great Recession, and is bound to reap big returns in the near-term-to medium-term future.

Well, I have no doubt about this, as after every recession, the capitalist world strikes back even more vigorously than the pre-recession one to retain its lost grounds as quickly as possible. That’s the precise reason why the bourses have been running quite ahead of the market fundamentals. It’s not a wrong thing, as the bourses are meant for getting a hold on the future earnings at the least possible costs.

So, will the NSE 50 cross its 4730 barrier in the next couple of sessions, and will it cross 4850 in the next couple of weeks? I bet; it will. Just watch out! Go long.

Making Progress

2009-08-28T00:31:00.000+05:30

What do you mean by making progress? And, how do you measure it? How do you measure qualitative progress, and, then, how do you interpret the quantitative measurement? Could you prorate your so far progress to assure yourself that you would be growing indefinitely at the same rate? If yes, then what are the assumptions that you are making, and are your assumptions justifiable? If no, then what are the impediments that you foresee, and how would you overcome them?

What is a neat rate of progress? How do you define neat, and on what bases? Well, I think I can help you out in aligning your weighted-matrix for the estimation of your progress. But, you need to benchmark your accomplishments on your own!

Should you need any further brainstorming related to your “making progress,” please feel free to get back to me. I would love to share my quantitative model for reasonably quantifying the progress made, both qualitative and quantitative.

Finally, no point for guessing the source of the caption! :-)

The Over-reaction of the Indian Stock Markets

2009-07-10T01:38:00.003+05:30

First of all, how is the new budget, as proposed by the newly elected Indian government?

To me, the budget looks good, if not excellent. It has an inclusive approach to the future growth of the Indian economy, keeping in mind the current Great Recession. The government has rightly decided to expand the depth and breadth of future expansion of the economy by:

1) Enhancing the disposable income of the masses by increasing the tax-exemption slabs. This will leave the people, with relatively a little more money to spend, keeping in mind the current inflation.

2) Trying to bring the poor of the country to the mainstream of consumer-base, especially farmers, as they contribute 28 percent to the Indian GDP. That’s the reason for extending support to this segment in this new budget.

3) Revoking and reforming some specific taxes, such as the Fringe Benefits Tax, the Commodities Transaction tax, the Minimum Alternative tax. Doing so ensures that the entities concerned are not taxed twice, and the entities are taxed righteously, without giving them a big window to evade taxes (remember Reliance until a couple of years back).

4) Increasing the government spending on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Food Security Act, and the National Rural Health Mission. All these are intended to take care of the neglected, down-trodden, poor masses, who all can contribute to the future growth of the economy, which is currently at USD 1.3 trillion.

5) Not selling much stake in the coveted Public Sector Units off to cover a large portion of the fiscal deficit immediately. I think the government has taken the right decision for NOT giving a knee-jerk-reaction type of solution to reduce the proposed fiscal deficit of 6.8 percent of the GDP. Instead, the budget is looking forward to borrowing USD 93 billion to fund the budget spending on the roads, power, and aid to the poor. The dilapidated state of infrastructure robs the country of almost 2 percent of growth to the real GDP!

In other words, the budget looks like a good one, with long-term-growth prospects, as it takes an inclusive approach that takes care of all strata concerned, at least to some extent, for sure.

Then, why did the stock markets over-reacted post budget? Well, the answers lie in the recent past of the stock markets!

Having been deep fried recently on the Indian bourses because of the of-late global massacre on the stock exchanges worldwide, the investors were expecting a quick, irrational, selfish growth, which is against the basics of the market fundamentals and Economics, to offset their recent past losses. The budget doesn’t have anything to fulfill that kind of right-off-the-roof growth. So, simply out of despair and to beat the FIIs in going for a selling spree, the domestic institutional investors over-reacted by mass selling of equities. The result of which has been that the bourses shed more than 1000 points, within a couple of days.

A piece of honest advice to retail investors is that look for economic indicators, for financial statements of the companies that you are interested to invest in, for buying at the dips, and for staying invested for as long as possible. You are guaranteed to make good profits.

And, finally, a piece of advice to speculators is that visit the Church more often! You never know when you have no other choice, but to lie in the backyard of the Church peacefully! After all, everyday is not a Sunday.

Either Way It's Gonna Rain In India

2009-06-21T16:02:00.003+05:30

Agricultural sector contributes around 28 percent to India's GDP, and more than 70 percent resident Indians still live in the rural areas of India. The correlation is that those 70 percent are dependent on agriculture-related products and services. And, if it doesn't rain there on time, the chances are highly likely that it's gonna rain on the Indian bourses, stripping the bourses of their sheen for a couple of quarters, at the max -- yes, at the max! Why?

Poor monsoon leads to poor agricultural products and services for the year, leading to poorer, or lesser, incomes for the populations in those rural areas, reducing the demands for the commodities that those poor people feed on. Thus, the economy relatively slows down, and investors find it relatively very hard to send "greenshoots" on the Indian market, crippling their abilities, and/or capabilities, to play speculative games through which they "cohort-ly" "rig" the bourses to make obscene amount of money.

So, watch out for the "Indian" sky, or call the Meteorological department of India, before you invest on the Indian bourses! Since it has already been "raining" all over the world, and if it even rains on the Indian bourses, you might not have any place left to hide your "speculatively" earned stack of cash! Am I right -- dear FIIs?

Retrospect

2009-06-20T18:54:00.002+05:30

I was thinking how weird we all have become. How fragile things are getting in life. How we unavoidably lose a lot, when we strive to earn just a little more. How far should, or could, or must, we go to get things we want, or need, the most? And, how would, or could, or should, we justify all our sincere efforts? Things do backfire! Don't they?

Life is indeed a rollercoaster ride! We enjoy it, when we are at the top. But, how should we take it, when we are at the bottom? Should we expect something to cling on? What if, when we don't have any? We are just human! Ain't we? Human!

At times, we just get scared of growing up further. You never know what is awaiting you next! Knowing all this, would you still prefer living the rest of your life forward, or would you prefer living it backward -- provided that you can make that kind of choice only once? Weird? Retrospect! That might solve a lot of issues!

As far as I am concerned, I want to make more mistakes in the future!

Bangalore or Buffalo?

2009-06-19T01:58:00.003+05:30

I would like to share with you some newly "coined" governments' statements, and some new findings in the international-politics-cum-international-business. These are some power-pact excerpts from the Times of India.

Pitching for increased economic ties between India and the America, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for "advanced" linkages, similar to the existing ones, between "Manhattan and Mumbai," or between "Boston and Bangalore."

Unveiling new proposed tax reforms, Obama had said, "It's a tax code that says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York."

Terming the blooming partnerships between the two countries as "exciting", Clinton asserted that India's growing economic prowess is recognised the way, the law of gravity is accepted by people.

"We need bilateral cooperation between our governments to catch up with our people-to-people and economic ties," asserted Clinton.

"People know what kind of business and investment opportunities are there in India. According to Clinton, the America views India as one of the few partners worldwide who would help the country in shaping the "21st century."

The reason is as simple as anything! The trade between India and the US is worth over USD 43 billion and has more than doubled since 2004. Moreover, a study has found that corporate India created employment for 300,000 people in the US between 2004 and 2007. An India Brand Equity Foundation study release mentioned that the Indian industry contributed USD 105 billion to the US economy during 2004-07.

So, Bangalore or Buffalo? Is it gonna matter, anymore?

Rising Up to The Occasion

2009-04-27T16:04:00.002+05:30

Life is a marathon, and we keep running it either relentlessly or reluctantly. We just cannot say no to this race, as it is about life, and we don't have any other choice, but to run it!

To make our life a lovely one, we work so hard that we do anything that is, or seems to be, within our reach. Isn't it? But, while chasing our dreams, do we ponder on the moments that really change our life? Yes, I am talking about those decision-making moments that change our lives, forever!

For example, we study for one full semester, but what decides, or, perhaps, justifies, our efforts is the outcome of those three hours of the strenuous, end-sem exam! True? No, I am not judging whether the system is right or wrong! I am hinting at the challenges of rising up to the occasion. Think.

No matter how well you practice the art of pitching, hitting, and running during net-practice sessions, your success counts only when you pitch, hit, and run well on the day when it counts!

So, keep preparing, but do perform to produce results, when it is required, otherwise what is the point in preparing at all? Got it! I know you did! Liar! :-)

Love Thyself

2009-04-25T02:06:00.002+05:30

It is not at all bad to be selfish, but we should just take care that we do not harm anyone by being selfish. Does it sound counter-intuitive? It doesn’t. You need to think, and devise your own means for doing so. It is not so hard.

We should love ourselves. Only then we can love others. Give thyself undivided attention, and talk to your inner-self. Just do whatever makes you extremely comfortable with thyself. It teaches you a lot. It will tell you what it wants, and what it needs.

How can we do so? Pamper thyself! Treat thyself like a king! Date thyself! Talk to thyself! Know thyself! Love thyself! The rest will fall in place!

And, never even try to please everyone! Even God could not do so!

Jesus! I have my semester exam after just 5 weeks, have to study more than 600 pages, and, here, I am busy loving myself! I think I should get back to studies! It is high time I do so. After all, I have a reputation to maintain! This blogging business is so, so addictive! But, above all, I am just a mere human being, so I need to talk. What else is a better way of talking your heart out than this blogging thing? At least, it doesn’t scream at you!

The "Chore"

2009-04-23T18:45:00.003+05:30

At dawn, the Sun rises up through the horizon
Hope gets ready for its toil
Mind and soul promise to help hope win
A jigsaw puzzle takes its toll
Heart fights through all the day’s odds
Spirit says never say die; the day is about to end
At dusk, the Sun sets down through the horizon
The day seems decently conquered
The Stars and the Moon comfort the day’s pain
Hope consoles for the unknown
The night seeps through the dark
Only to begin the cycle again!

Metamorphosis

2009-04-22T23:13:00.005+05:30

I have been noticing a big change in myself. With time and experiences, I feel more content. It seems I am learning what I should be learning. I feel I am growing day by day. Sometime back, I wrote a poem! And, here, I am going to share it with you. But, before I start off with that, I must tell you about my favorite poem, since my school days. It has been "If" by Rudyard Kipling. I don't remember any other poem, except for "If." It has taught me more than hundreds of valuable lessons, since then.

So, I pay my heartfelt tribute to "If" by Rudyard Kipling by dedicating this poem to "If." I feel that all the best things in life are for free, for example, the Earth, air, water, fire, the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, etc. It's a different story that we human beings have started monetizing some of these free elements, for example, the Earth, and water. You never know, one unfortunate day, we might be taxed for breathing as well!

Anyway, my thoughts, including my poem(s), will always be for free. That's precisely the reason that I have not authorized Google to put any ads on my blog page, except for a link that endorses a social cause and news links that I find handy for myself. I just love reading news -- positive news!

So, you guys, if you like, or want, to reuse my thoughts, including my poem(s), please feel free to reproduce them. I don't intend to copyright them! Obviously, they are not worth copyrighting! If any of my works is successfully reused, I would consider my efforts to have met their destiny. No, I don't even like to hear a Thank-You note. But, if you still want to, then, perhaps, you can thank me in your heart. I am not used to of more than this, for sure.

The mind sees no boundary
The eyes dream of me
The ears listen to me very patiently
The nose rests my pride
The lips pronounce me the fighter
The tongue unleashes extreme motivation
The chin keeps me up to the sky
The heart beats with my thoughts
The hands catch me whenever I fall
The stomach digests my craziness
The steps match my endeavors
The One knows my worth
The One lives off my dreams
The One is I and will always be I!

Profound Words

2009-04-22T00:14:00.000+05:30

Words, perhaps, are the strongest weapon that we human beings possess. We should take extreme care when we are unleashing them. They might haunt us, forever, for our lifetime, and, moreover, they might put the deepest scar right in the bottom of our hearts. But, on the other side, we must take extreme care in not to infuriate someone to the tipping point, wherein, someone spits the venom right in your face.

Getting the right words for the right occasion is again a daunting task. But, we must strive to practice the art of getting it right – consistently, and that’s too perfectly. Try to even mean your “a”, “an”, and “the.” Practice makes a man perfect. And, striving for perfection is a virtue, and is not a bane! Don’t ever let the insurmountable challenge pull you down! Strive for it, and keep raising your own bar! Trust me, the juice will worth the squeeze!

It apparently is easy to say, but, without a doubt, is hard to practice. That is why there is a beautiful saying, “To err is human, and to forgive is divine.” So true! Isn’t it?

Ridiculous Crusade

2009-04-20T21:44:00.001+05:30

Isn’t life a ridiculous crusade? Yes, it is! Yes, because, as we all know, in the end, it is life that subverts itself to death. Always, death has its final laugh!

We know we will lose, eventually – no matter what we do! Still we fight for our life, knowing the final outcome beforehand! Yes, this doesn’t mean that we should just give it up! A mighty heart always fights, with zero-level ego, and chin up to the sky.

The beauty of life lies in the way it unfolds itself. You just do not know what is coming next! You think you can take life head-on! Perhaps, you can! And, you must! Ridicule it when you have your say, so that you do not have any regrets when it takes you down! Ridiculous crusade! Indeed!

Globalization In Its Own Spirit

2009-04-15T17:07:00.001+05:30

I was going through my International Business Strategy book by my IBS Prof Charles Schell – who is a Canadian, is teaching at a British business school, Manchester Business School, comes down to the MBS Dubai campus to teach about businesses that are being carried out all over the world to a class of students that are from 14 different nations, and that are mostly managers managing companies from different parts of the world – and I hit an anecdote that is worth sharing in order to explain globalization in its own spirit.

“In this interdependent global economy, an American might drive to work in a car designed in Germany that was assembled in Mexico by DaimlerChrysler from components made in the US and Japan that were fabricated from Korean steel and Malaysian rubber. She may have filled the car with gasoline at a British Petroleum (BP) service station owned by a British multinational company. The gasoline could have been made from oil pumped out of a well off the coast of Africa by a French oil company that transported it to the US in a ship owned by a Greek shipping line. While driving to work, the American might talk to her stockbroker on a Nokia cell phone that was designed in Finland and assembled in Texas using chip sets produced in Taiwan that were designed by Indian engineers working for Texas Instruments, a US chip giant, at its Bangalore office. She could tell the stockbroker to purchase shares in Deutsche Telekom, a German telecommunications firm that was transformed from a former state-owned monopoly into a global company by an energetic Israeli CEO. She may turn on the car radio, which was made in Malaysia by a Japanese firm, to hear a popular hip-hop song composed by a Swede and sung by a group of Danes in English who signed a record contract with a French music company to promote their record in America. The driver might pull into a drive-through coffee stall run by a Korean immigrant and order a “single-tall-non-fat” latte” and chocolate-covered biscotti. The coffee beans come from Brazil and the chocolate from Peru, while the biscotti was made locally using an old-Italian recipe. After the song ends, a news announcer might inform the American listener that anti-globalization protests at a meeting of heads of state in Davos, Switzerland, have turned violent. One protester has been killed. The announcer then returns to the next item, a story about how fear of interest rate hikes in the US has sent Japan’s Nikkei stock market index down to new lows for the year.”

This is the world we live in. Does this make you uncomfortable? Get used to it – the more, the better!

Know Your Questions Well

2009-04-14T17:52:00.001+05:30

It is a human tendency that we seek for guidance to success. So, we throw many questions to others. Typically, we ask: What did you do to succeed? What is the best way to do it? What is the right way of doing it? And, stuff like that!! Don't we do so?

Trust me, the right way of seeking guidance is to ask NOT the above-mentioned types of questions, but questions like these: What should I avoid doing? What are the wrong ways of doing this? What made you to fail? And, stuff like that!! Do you get the point?

The point is very simple, and is very logical too!! Success HIDES a lot of short-comings!! People who succeed may not be the right people to guide you, simply because:

1) Their ways of doing things might not suit you at all, and might cause you disaster!!

2) They might have got lucky!! Who knows!! Flukes work!! Don't they?

3) There could be N number of other ways of getting something right!!

4) You might not have a flare for it!

5) You might have your own ways of doing the same thing!

And, sometimes, success tells you not to repeat it, because you just got lucky!! So, don't be surprised, if I ask you not to do stuff that, somehow, I managed to pull it off myself!!

So, the conclusion is that you should know: When to ask what? When not to ask? Who to ask? Who you should not ask to? How to ask? How you should not ask? What not to ask? Got it!! You better! :-)

Never Say Die

2009-04-13T15:14:00.001+05:30

We face plethora of challenges every now and then in our lives. And, we tend to ignore some, while trying to tackle some. We fail at some, and we succeed at some. Is this enough? Is it the max that we can do? Certainly, no.

When God gives us challenges, He knows that we have the abilities to over come them as well, without doubt. It's we who succumb to the sheer anxieties that may come along with those challenges, leading us to lose at some of the challenges, without even putting a courageous fight. Contrarily, we usually win, where we hold on to our nerves!

Every challenge is worth taking head-on, irrespective of how unsurmountable it may appear. And, this sheer ability sets us apart from the lesser mortals. People who take challenges head-on, irrespective of their outcomes, are "kings" of this world, others are "pawns."

Yes, it's true that when the game is over, the "king" and the "pawn" go in the same box, but what differs is the way they get into the box!

The "Venom" Is Yet To Be Spit Out

2009-04-12T17:04:00.001+05:30

The toughest question that remains unattended, even after the G-20 Summit, is that how the US banks are going to handle their most "toxic" assets that run into trillions of dollars -- just to be indicative of the severity, the top ten US banks had toxic assets of close to USD 3.6 trillion at the end of 2008.

By "toxic" assets, it is implied that those assets were extremely over-priced at the time when they were taken on the balance-sheets, and, today, they don't make any sense to anyone, not even to the US government, which might eventually have to buy them -- obviously, at a much reduced price and with the help of the recently modified accounting principles, so that the losses to the banks could be made less severe than the currently apparent ones -- in order to save the banks from again trembling after spitting the "venom" out.

But, the trillion-dollar questions are: When will the banks spit the "venom" out? Or, will they ever do so? Or, if they don't, then how will the US government make them do so? And, if this does happen, then what would be the implications for the economy at large?

I guess the easiest way to handle it is to dodge the question for as long as possible, because two massive, successive blows on the nose, can knock anyone out!!

Dare To Stand-out

2009-04-09T00:33:00.004+05:30

God has made us all unique. Every human being has something that is not there in the rest of us. Still, we imitate, or try to imitate, others to make ourselves look like one in the herd that we value the most. Why do we do this? Is it so hard to maintain our own identity? Is it necessary to become a commodity? I don’t think so!

Humans tend to live in a group. It’s a natural instinct; I guess; and, undoubtedly it is even safer. And, I think that is the precise reason we don’t believe in standing out of the crowd. Don't be surprised if in coming years, a big majority of middle-class-and-above people all over the world have quite similar lifestyles. Consequently, we would land up “commoditizing” ourselves to be a part of our “beloved” crowd, which would then span on a global scale. Thanks to the global media, which are bringing us closer for good as well as for bad reasons. To some extent, this commoditization would definitely result good results, but, at the cost of our diversity, or, perhaps, at the cost of our uniqueness.

From a business perspective and for businesses worldwide, the more commoditized people will become, the easier it would be for businesses to sell their products and services at reduced transaction costs, which would be effected because of standardized processes that would cater to the needs and wants of all of us, at once. The sheer volume and automation would bring production costs down. And, it’s a no-brainer to guess what challenges businesses would face, if people become more of themselves.

That’s just one of the precise reasons why super-high-end brands do flourish and charge obscene amount of money for their products and services, and run-of-the-mill products and services give discounts round the year, to maximize their volume of sales, because doing so brings the production costs lower per unit, resulting in higher economic profit per unit. You see, getting commoditized is like losing your uniqueness. Did I talk any rocket science? Obviously not! So, do you agree? You must not completely, otherwise you would be me!! And, I prefer to be unique. :-)

The Outcomes of the G20 Summit

2009-04-03T17:21:00.006+05:30

The G20 Summit, on the 2nd of April, 2009, in London, was largely successful – because of the better than expected outcomes. The world leaders agreed on the large means of reviving the global economy. But, there could certainly have been better results out of the grand meeting. I guess; it was very hard to generate more fruitful, conducive, enforceable decisions because of the lack of the clear picture of the end-to-end implications of the global, spiral downturn.

The fruitful outcomes, as they appear, of the meeting were:
1) A pledge of USD 1.1 Trillion to tackle global crisis through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), focusing to bail out developing countries. After all, developing countries are where the developed countries’ cost-centers, manufacturing hubs, cheap resources, and greenfield markets are.

2) An agreement on stimulating world trade, and regulating financial firms more stringently, with a strict focus on Hedge Funds – which willfully play with stocks on plethora of stock exchanges worldwide -- and Rating Agencies – which whimsically provide AAA ratings to sick financial instruments.

3) A crackdown on tax havens, as there are countries that provide large tax holidays to their companies to gain a cost-based, unfair competitive-edge against competitors on the global and regional markets.

4) New global rules to govern the pay and bonuses of bankers.

5) A clear-cut intent to restrict growing protectionism, and trade barriers.

The issue that the US wanted others to agree upon, but, somehow, couldn’t was that Europe, specifically France and Germany, should enact greater fiscal stimuli than they had already enacted.

The issue that Europe wanted others to agree upon, but, somehow, couldn’t was that there should be a global regulation of the financial markets – the issue was restricted specifically by the US.

Overall, the meeting was successful in addressing the concerns of emerging economies, and was a showcase of the power of emerging economies. Moreover, it gave a re-birth to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Computing Sky Will Be Cloudy

2009-03-29T12:24:00.002+05:30

Although it is a global recession time, it's going to be a clash of the titans for an ill titan, Sun Microsystems, which has not been keeping well since the dotcom bust during 2000 - 2001. IBM is in lieu of buying out SUN for USD 6.5 billion in cash, for the sake of making computing sky cloudy. But, will IBM be left alone in its pursuit of making computing sky cloudy? No points for guessing!!!

The chances are highly likely that HP, the world's biggest computer-maker, Cisco, the world's biggest maker of routers, Dell, Amazon, the world's biggest online retailer, Google, the world's biggest in online search and advertising, and Microsoft, the world's biggest and best in desktop computing software are going to take each other head on to get SUN on its side.

Well, is it worth fighting for? Definitely. The advantages are manifolds, but the two most apparent ones are:
1) SUN's poor health on the stock market, and because of which it could be bought for an under-valued price.
2) Its well-demonstrated capabilities in Data Centres and in cloud.

Titans, go get SUN, and give us cloud -- public and private.

Whose Fault Is It In the Middle East?

2009-01-14T21:17:00.004+05:30

It's really very, very sad to see the ongoing massacre in the Middle East. And, who all are responsible for this? Who all are to be blamed? Whose fault is it?

To know the answers to such questions, here I give you the link to an article on The Guardian -- the link to the most comprehensive article I have read so far on the issue at hand.

Please note that the author of the article is Avi Shlaim, who is a Jew, is a Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, and served in the Israeli Army.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

Endorsing the Story of Stuff

2008-12-18T22:14:00.000+05:30

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

2008-11-25T18:46:00.002+05:30

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

2008-11-16T14:53:00.001+05:30

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

2008-11-14T16:51:00.000+05:30

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

2008-11-11T20:35:00.004+05:30

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

2008-11-07T16:30:00.002+05:30

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

2008-10-10T12:46:00.002+05:30

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

2008-10-03T13:08:00.004+05:30

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

2008-08-08T02:20:00.001+05:30

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

2008-08-04T02:28:00.002+05:30

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

2008-07-27T16:54:00.003+05:30

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

2008-07-26T13:58:00.003+05:30

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

2008-07-25T01:37:00.003+05:30

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

2008-07-23T11:57:00.004+05:30

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?

2008-07-08T14:53:00.002+05:30

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?

2008-07-07T19:09:00.002+05:30

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

2008-07-05T14:54:00.002+05:30

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

2008-07-04T12:07:00.002+05:30

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

2008-07-03T19:50:00.004+05:30

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?

2008-07-02T20:33:00.002+05:30

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

2008-07-01T21:26:00.002+05:30

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

2008-06-27T07:07:00.002+05:30

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

2008-06-26T19:08:00.001+05:30

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?

2008-06-13T11:58:00.002+05:30

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?

2008-06-09T23:05:00.000+05:30

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

2008-06-08T17:34:00.003+05:30

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)?

2008-06-06T19:24:00.002+05:30

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

2008-06-06T13:29:00.003+05:30

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

2008-06-05T18:21:00.002+05:30

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

2008-06-04T17:19:00.002+05:30

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?

2008-06-03T23:56:00.002+05:30

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

2008-06-02T17:55:00.002+05:30

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?

2008-06-01T17:23:00.001+05:30

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

2008-05-27T22:06:00.001+05:30

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

2008-05-26T22:38:00.003+05:30

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.

War is No Substitute for Business

2008-05-24T21:55:00.002+05:30

Doing business, at times, is so tough that it pushes you to wage a war. Yes, it is. If you don’t believe me, read the pattern of the US external affairs. Just calculate the amount of money poured into wars waged by the US, so far. All this poured money is “investment” made by the US, which reaps benefits post war. You can build nations – and, perhaps, constructive-cum-symbiotic business opportunities along with some diehard true friends - with that much money at your disposal without even waging a war!!! But, on the contrary, the US has been choosing war instead of peace. Can you guess what for? Yes, you are right!

The US has been waging wars for generating business opportunities of various sorts for its local companies, PLUS for gaining the serious ground for its army for the sake of “strategic proximity.” The modus operandi of the US is plain simple – if it fails to make a “peaceful business deal” with a country, it intimidates that country by waging a war in the so-called name of “peace”, “democracy”, “WMD”, and “humanity.” After it devastates the country, it creates opportunities for its local businesses to go and rebuild the devastated country from scratch. In return of its unsolicited “benevolent services”, it makes the ruined country to pay through its nose to itself for ages, thus, generating billions of dollars - the Return on Investment (ROI) - for its own economy. Moreover, the pattern of the US “infringements”, so far, says that the US never completely vacates a country into which it gets in by force. The US makes the doomed country its army base to control that very region, giving the US a much desired reach to every nooks and crannies of the Earth. For example, check out the presence of the US Army in countries, such as, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, just to name a few. Amongst these countries, there are a few of those, against which the US has not waged a direct war, but has got into with “threatened diplomacy,” for example, in Pakistan and in Saudi Arabia.

The recent US activities in Afghanistan and in Pakistan are completely in sync with the US’s desire to “tame” China, an emerging superpower, and India, an emerging power on the horizon by gaining the much needed “strategic proximity” to the “targets.” The game that the US plays is certainly very dangerous, for the US as well as for the rest of the world, at large.

It’s a no-brainer why Americans are the most vulnerable community when they travel outside the US. Just imagine the situation in which the US would be when the rest of the world comes close to the US in terms of power and money!!! China and India are catching up quite fast, and the European Union is getting stronger by each day. Arabs are making a lot of petro dollars, with which they have made a strong tunnel to the US economy. Iran and South Korea are strongly defying the US hegemony.

It’s really amazing that the US is working so hard to earn so many secret “enemies.” The rest of the world is “sulking,” and the US should pray hard that the rest doesn’t “erupt” all at once.

Reasons For the "Fire" to the Oil

2008-05-24T18:29:00.003+05:30

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

2008-05-24T11:34:00.003+05:30

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

2008-05-23T17:05:00.002+05:30

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

2008-05-23T11:19:00.001+05:30

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

2008-05-23T02:46:00.003+05:30

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

2008-05-23T02:24:00.001+05:30

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

2008-05-23T02:07:00.002+05:30

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

2008-05-22T18:32:00.001+05:30

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

2008-05-17T11:07:00.001+05:30

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

2008-05-16T10:00:00.002+05:30

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?

2008-05-15T18:17:00.001+05:30

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

2008-05-14T17:23:00.002+05:30

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

2008-05-13T20:28:00.003+05:30

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.

Financial hoopla in the UAE

2008-05-11T17:27:00.002+05:30

According to the Gulf News, the fund management industry in the Gulf is expanding like never before. The reasons are: rising wealth from the states, fast growing economies, regulatory reforms, and increasing investor appetite for the region.

In the past 18 months, significant levels of foreign investment have flowed into the GCC stock exchanges, as international investors look for insulation from global economic turbulence. The MSCI GCC composite index has risen by 40.5 percent since the start of 2007, outperforming the MSCI World index by 38.0 percent and the Emerging Markets Composite by 8.7 per cent. Over the same period there has been a rush of fund managers going into the region to chase a slice of the lucrative market, which comprises of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the UAE.

Total managed assets of foreign and domestic investment managers were more than USD $1.6 trillion in 2007. More than 90 percent of foreign fund managers' businesses are institutional, focusing largely on sovereign wealth funds and, to a lesser extent, on family offices.

The region's small market, but growing mutual fund market was estimated to be worth $100 billion at the end of last year, and is expected to grow by 15 percent over next five years. Certainly, the asset management industry is young, but it is growing rapidly.

Access for foreign investors to the region's equity markets is difficult and exposure to a specific company or sector can be limited, while in Saudi Arabia the equity market is closed to international investors.

Rasmala, which has $1.3 billion assets under management, is launching a fund of funds that it plans to list on AIM this month. It is the first fund of funds focusing on the Gulf to list on the London Stock Exchange, and aims to raise capital of $200 million.

The GCC Equity Opportunity Fund, which will invest in GCC equity markets through locally-managed funds, will give foreign investors exposure to equities in the region. It is aimed at endowments, pension funds, and family offices.

A new trend has emergerd amongst the local investors - local investors who have benefited from the oil wealth are now looking to invest in their own region rather than in abroad markets.

The six nations of the GCC earned $381 billion from their exports of oil in 2007, according to the Institute of International Finance. Since the terrorist attacks on the US in 2001, Middle Eastern investors have been repatriating their assets and reinvesting in the region, particularly in infrastructure.

The fund, which has raised $83 million since the end of March, is aimed at retail and institutional investors, and is invested in locally incorporated funds, mainly in equities with some cash.

Although the region is often perceived as a single jurisdiction by overseas investors, the level of regulation varies between the six states. The credibility of local fund managers has been enhanced by the establishment of local regulatory frameworks in Dubai and Qatar, and by the continued development of existing regulation in Bahrain, while the development of financial centres in the other GCC countries has been accelerating for the past four years.

For transparency, there is a well developed culture for asset management in Kuwait, and Dubai and Bahrain are just following. There are problems in Saudi where it is difficult to find good institutional fund managers.

One of the world's biggest money managers, Franklin Resources, which operates as Franklin Templeton Investments, has also been eyeing the region. Last September it took a 25 percent stake in Algebra Capital, a Dubai-based asset manager, to gain greater access to managing money in the region.

The strong interest in the region shown by foreign investors is likely to be sustained as long as the oil price does not take a huge dive, and as long as valuations do not rise too far above those of the other emerging markets.

IT is the promise of the UAE

2008-05-10T21:40:00.003+05:30

Information technology business in the UAE crossed USD 2.01 billion last year, growing at 10.1 per cent. The UAE's IT sector is the fastest growing in the world, according to industry experts. And, the market will grow at the same rate till 2010, when it will reach $2.5 billion.

This success saw the light because of the UAE's zero income and corporate tax policy, strong legal framework, robust and effective intellectual property protection system, and the free flow of capital, information, and people. Now, the UAE is looking forward to bring in investment for the semiconductor sector.

The UAE needs basic technology tools and services but the position of the market in the life-cycle curve is at expansion stage. The average annual growth rate of the Middle East and North Africa region's IT and communication sector will be 9.9 per cent until 2010.

While the region's growth in the sector is the highest globally, there is a lot more potential since the industry is in the infancy stage. The way is paved for innovation and options in comparison to more mature and saturated markets. The average increase in IT expenditure and investment in the Gulf and Middle East stands at about 8.5 percent until 2011 compared to a 4.3 percent of other market.

Overall, the UAE looks poised to absorb a lot of investment in IT and communication, promising a far superior Return On Investment (ROI) to investors.

International Trends To Watch Out For

2008-05-10T18:02:00.003+05:30

Here are the trends that the McKinsey Quarterly predicts to watch out for in the years to come. I am presenting you the gist of the entire situation, coupled with my own elaborations, wherever I could. Please refer to the full article for your enhanced understandings of the situation.

The following trends look set to continue during the years ahead, long after the present turbulence in the world capital markets gets settled down:

1) The continued growth and deepening of global capital markets as investors pour more money into equities, debt securities, bank deposits, and other assets around the world. This will, inevitably, come true, as smart investors see troubles as opportunities for future growth. “Small” investors back off when the prospects of troubles loom large.

2) The soaring growth of financial markets in emerging economies and the growing ties between financial markets in developed and developing countries. This seems obviously true, as developed economies are comparatively saturated, and are hard to grow in. Thus, reaping “obscene” amount of success in developing economies is relatively easier, and worth giving a shot by all standards.

3) The shift of financial weight in Asia from Japan toward China, India, and the other fast-growing emerging markets. Diversity of any sort is, in general, good. Moreover, diversity by itself does hedging to some extent, giving rise to stability and competition.

4) The growing financial clout of the euro zone countries and the significance of the euro. The European Union is going to be a big phenomenon to watch out for. Collectively, it can take anything head on, be it either adversity at large or shared prosperity.

5) The burgeoning role of oil-rich Middle Eastern countries as suppliers of capital to the world, along with the rise of new financial hubs in the Middle East to complement the rapidly growing hubs in London and Asia. The UAE is one of the most important sources of international capital. It invests its “extra” petro-dollars in developed and developing economies. After all, the UAE also needs to do hedging for the future. Its “liquid money” is drying fast, and the size of the “family” is growing at a fast pace. Last year, somewhere close to 65% of the UAE’s GDP was earned from non-oil products and services. The UAE’s oil reserves are depleting. Now, it is heavily relying on tourism for its own survival and growth. That’s one of the precise reasons that the UAE’s culture and rules are quite “tolerant.”

While these trends reflect a shift in financial power from the United States toward the other parts of the world, the sheer size and depth of the US market will give it a leading role on the international financial stage for years to come. Apart from this, the UAE will play a major role in infusing the world with a lot of capital inflows. It is certainly a smart investor, with a lot of petro-dollars at its disposal.

My Bangalore Experience

2008-02-22T02:52:00.004+05:30

I came to Bangalore on the 5th of March, 2005. It has been almost three years for me that I have been living in Bangalore. I have had a mixed experience in Bangalore of Bangalore. Professionally, I have grown a lot. It’s, perhaps, the best city in India for the professional boost, but, on the flip side, it’s not at all a good city for personal life. The reasons are obvious for both sides of the “coin.”

Bangalore is great for professional growth, because you will find plethora of big MNC’s here. You can do job-hopping like anything. No matter what people say about job-hopping; almost everyone does job-hopping here in Bangalore – be it an engineer or a senior executive. I have seen people giving big funds about negative sides of job-hopping, and the same people doing job-hopping like anything. The reason for they being paradoxical is that opportunities are so tempting that they succumb to the temptation – irrespective of what they personally believe in.

On the contrary, Bangalore doesn’t offer a good personal life, at all. The reason is again so obvious – people are so busy running the “rat race” that they miss on their personal lives. You won’t find many recreational places in Bangalore either, except for three to four shopping malls, with people walking all over each other to catch up with nothing. A statutory warning: if you love yourself and your family, then don’t go to any shopping mall at weekends – you might die, if there is a stampede. All the shopping malls have narrow entries and narrow exits. People stand in a queue to get into the shopping malls. You won’t buy me at this; I know; you got to be there in a queue to believe me.

Bangalore as a city WAS a great place. Fortunately, it still has awesome weather – perhaps one of the bests in the country. I heard the weather was much better before the city burst with people. May God save Bangalore!!

The local government is NOT taking care of the infrastructure of the city at all. Traffic is so pathetic that time to commute even a short distance has shot up like anything. It takes hell lot of time to travel even a couple of kilometers. The roads are extremely pathetic in condition. [I am from Patna.] When I compare the roads of Patna with the roads of Bangalore, I get amazed that the roads in Patna are so better in comparison with the roads in Bangalore, which generates so much revenue for the local government. Now, who the hell says that the corruption is the forte of Biharis only!!!

The worst thing is that you won’t find much construction going on in and around Bangalore – which indicates that the situation is not going to improve in the near future as well. Just in the past three years, I have witnessed so many drastic changes in Bangalore.

People who are planning to settle down in Bangalore for ever should think, at least, twice before making the final decisions. These people would contribute heavily in making the city obscenely costly, and would also deteriorate the city further by various obvious means. People are so busy making money and paying their various types of loan installments that they don’t even realize that Bangalore has burst, and it is bleeding heavily. I am damn sure that by the time they are done with their various types of loan installments - perhaps after a decade from now - they will have realized that they have been paying through their noses for being in a city, which is nothing more than a city of "junkyards" – where it's almost impossible to even budge from your own place, without knocking some people off your way. I can understand the situations of people who are planning to stay in Bangalore for ever. It’s not so easy to keep yourself away from the “vicious circle of Bangalore.” You really need to have a lot of guts to call you stint off in Bangalore.

On a personal note, I won’t find Bangalore a place where I can settle down for ever. So, I am moving out of this city, wishing it good luck. The 4th of March, 2008 is my last day in Bangalore. I wish all the people of Bangalore good luck. May God save the city!! Aamin.

Think Until You Understand

2008-02-12T00:58:00.000+05:30

1) Risk Management is all about Identification, Classification, and Mitigation of risks.

2) “The mission should always be to help organizations achieve their project objectives and objectives of scope, quality, budget, and schedule within the context of the natural, social and political environment in which the project is being developed.”

3) "Optimizing performance at one stage of the process may not be beneficial overall if additional costs or delays occur elsewhere. For example, saving money on the design process will be a false economy if the result is excess construction costs."

4) "Fragmentation of project management among different specialists may be necessary, but good communication and coordination among the participants is essential to accomplish the overall goals of the project. New information technologies can be instrumental in this process, especially the Internet and specialized Extranets."

5) "Productivity improvements are always of importance and value. As a result, introducing new materials and automated construction processes is always desirable as long as they are less expensive and are consistent with desired performance."

6) Generally, project management is distinguished from the general management of corporations by the mission-oriented nature of a project. A project organization will generally be terminated when the mission is accomplished. According to the Project Management Institute, the discipline of project management can be defined as follows:-
Project management is the art of directing and coordinating human and material resources throughout the life of a project by using modern management techniques to achieve predetermined objectives of scope, cost, time, quality, and participation satisfaction.

7) "The majority of all development projects fail to meet their time and cost targets, with the overrun typically between 40 and 200 percent."

8) "The most precious and intangible quality of leadership is trust."

9) System integration needs are determined by the chosen decomposition and its resulting architecture. We map the structure of interactions in order to plan for integration.

10) Project Management comprises a body of methods and tools that facilitate the achievement of project objectives: within time, within cost, at the desired performance/specification level, and while effectively and efficiently utilizing the assigned resources.

I Love These Sayings

2008-02-05T16:12:00.000+05:30

1) Needing someone is like needing a parachute. If it isn't there when you need it the most, chances are you won't be needing it again...

2) Give the world the best you have and the best will come to you.

3) Love wasn't put in your heart to stay, because Love isn't Love until you give it away.

4) Don't say you love me unless you really mean it, because I might do something crazy like believe it!

5) Everyone needs to be loved, especially when they do not deserve it.

6) Trouble is a part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person who loves you enough chance to love you enough.

7) Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. :-)

8) Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

9) It is a wondeful mythical law of nature, that the three things we crave for in our lives - Happiness, Freedom, and Peace of Mind - are always attained by giving them to someone else.

10) Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired. :-)

11) When in doubt, tell the truth.

12) We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise.

13) "The church is near, but the road is icy. The bar is far, but we will walk carefully."-- Russian Proverb

14) "I want to seize fate by the throat."-- Ludwig van Beethoven

15) "Any man who has $10,000 left when he dies is a failure."-- Errol Flynn

16) It takes less time to do things right than to explain why you did it wrong.

17) Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes. :-)

18) It’s a great feeling when someone finds comfort in you. I feel content.

19) Do not cry if the Sun sets at the end of the day, because the tears will not let you enjoy the beauty of the Stars.

20) Some people are so fond of ill luck that they run halfway to meet it.

21) A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices.

22) In everyone's life, at some point of time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful to those people who rekindle our inner spirit.

23) Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better.

24) The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

25) Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

26) When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.

27) Speak when you are angry -- and you will make the best speech you'll ever regret.

28) The wise are instructed by reason; ordinary minds by experience; the stupid by necessity; and brutes by instinct.

29) Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.

30) The argument from intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

31) The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.

32) "A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling. " -- Brisbane

33) Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier.

34) When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong or absolutely right.

35) "Price is what you pay. Value is what you get." -- Warren Buffett

36) "Success is never owned; it is rented; and the rent is due every day." -- Rory Vaden

37) "To win without risk is to triumph without glory." -- Pierre Corneille

38) "When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters - one represents danger, and the other represents opportunity." -- John F. Kennedy

39) "Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." -- William Arthur Ward

40) "I can express no kinder sign of love, than this kind kiss". -- William Shakespeare in Henry VI (Act i, Sc.1)

41) Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk everything, you risk even more.

42) "A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave". -- Mohandas Gandhi.

43) "It is possible to give without loving, but it is impossible to love without giving". -- Richard Braunstein

44) I am not as cold as you think. I am not falling; I am just on the brink. I am floating between this world and the next. I don't know where to go, as long as I am who I know. As long as I have myself, I dont care. Say what you want, say what you will, say anything. It wont change how I feel. I used to be so cold, and then I woke up and realised, you ARE cold. You are the one who leaves me, with your breath upon the foggy window of my soul, writing message of hate, that burns its way into my heart. And now I am wiping them all away. Slowly, slowly, one by one. The rest will fade with the rain when it comes.

45) "Love demands all, and has a right to all". -- Beethoven

46) So long as a man remains free, he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship.

47) "True love is giving all you have to someone you know you're going to lose." -- Ray H Wall

48) "When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not with your brain." -- Mark Twain

49) Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

50) Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned at school.

The Art of Persuasion

2008-01-12T19:21:00.000+05:30

Jay A. Conger believes that contrary to popular belief, persuasion is NOT the same as selling an idea or convincing opponents to see things your way. It is instead a process of learning from others and negotiating a shared solution.

So, persuasion consists of four essential elements:
1) establishing credibility
2) framing to find common ground
3) providing vivid evidence, and
4) connecting emotionally

Credibility grows out of two sources: expertise and relationships. But, even, if a persuader’s credibility is high, his position must make sense – even more, it must appeal – to the audience. Therefore, a persuader must frame his position to illuminate its benefits to everyone who will feel its impact.

Persuasion then becomes a matter of presenting evidence – but not just ordinary charts and spreadsheets. The most effective persuaders use vivid – even over-the-top-stories, metaphors, and examples to make their positions come alive.

Finally, good persuaders have the ability to accurately sense and respond to their audience’s emotional state. Sometimes, that means they have to suppress their own emotions; at other times, they must intensify them.

Work today gets done in an environment where people don’t just ask – “what should I do?” They now ask – “why should I do it?” In this kind of environment, the art of persuasion is highly required to get things done.

At times, persuasion is commonly perceived as just another form of manipulation – devious and to be avoided. Certainly, persuasion can be used in selling and deal-clinching situations, and it can be misused to manipulate people. But, exercised constructively and to its full potential, persuasion supersedes sales and is quite the opposite of deception.

Dialogue happens before and during the persuasion process. Before the process begins, effective persuaders use dialogue to learn more about their audience’s opinions, concerns, and perspectives. During the process, dialogue continues to be a form of learning, but it is also the beginning of the negotiation stage. You invite people to discuss, even debate, the merits of your position, and then to offer honest feedback and suggest alternative solutions. That may sound like a slow way to achieve your goal, but effective persuasion is about testing and revising ideas in concert with your colleagues’ concerns and needs. In fact, the best persuaders not only listen to others, but also incorporate their perspectives into a shared solution. Persuasion often demands compromise.

Four ways not to persuade:
1) Don’t attempt to make your case with an upfront, hard sell.
2) Don’t resist compromise.
3) Don’t think persuasion lies only in presenting great arguments.
4) Don’t assume persuasion is a one-shot effort.

Conversation between Neo and the Architect

2008-01-10T11:58:00.000+05:30

The following is a conversation - the best conversation I have ever heard or have ever seen in a movie!! - from Matrix Reloaded.

The Architect: “Hello, Neo.”

Neo: “Who are you?”

The Architect: “I am the Architect. I created the matrix. I’ve been waiting for you. You have many questions, and although the process has altered your consciousness, you remain irrevocably human. Ergo, some of my answers you will understand, and some of them you will not. Concordantly, while your first question may be the most pertinent, you may or may not realize it is also irrelevant.”

Neo: “Why am I here?”

The Architect: “Your life is the sum of a remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly, which despite my sincerest efforts, I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of mathematical precision. While it remains a burden assiduously avoided, it is not unexpected, and thus not beyond a measure of control - which has led you, inexorably, here.”

Neo: “You haven’t answered my question.”

The Architect: “Quite right. Interesting! That was quicker than the others. The matrix is older than you know. I prefer counting from the emergence of one integral anomaly to the emergence of the next, in which case this is the sixth version.”

Neo: “There are only two possible explanations: either no one told me, or no one knows.”

The Architect: “Precisely. As you are undoubtedly gathering, the anomaly is systemic, creating fluctuations in even the most simplistic equations.”

Neo: "Choice. The problem is choice.”

The Architect: “The first matrix I designed was quite naturally perfect. It was a work of art, flawless, and sublime. A triumph equaled only by its monumental failure. The inevitability of its doom is as apparent to me now as a consequence of the imperfection inherent in every human being, thus I redesigned it based on your history to more accurately reflect the varying grotesqueries of your nature. However, I was again frustrated by failure. I have since come to understand that the answer eluded me, because it required a lesser mind or, perhaps, a mind less bound by the parameters of perfection. Thus, the answer was stumbled upon by another, an intuitive program, initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche. If I am the father of the matrix, she would undoubtedly be its mother.”

Neo: “The Oracle.”

The Architect: “Please. As I was saying, she stumbled upon a solution whereby nearly 99.9% of all test subjects accepted the program, as long as they were given a choice, even if they were only aware of the choice at a near unconscious level. While this answer functioned, it was obviously fundamentally flawed, thus creating the otherwise contradictory systemic anomaly that if left unchecked might threaten the system itself. Ergo, those that refused the program, while a minority, if unchecked, would constitute an escalating probability of disaster.”

Neo: “This is about Zion.”

The Architect: “You are here because Zion is about to be destroyed. Its every living inhabitant terminated, its entire existence eradicated.”

Neo: “Bullshit.”

The Architect: “Denial is the most predictable of all human responses. But, rest assured, this will be the sixth time we have destroyed it, and we have become exceedingly efficient at it. The function of the One is now to return to the source, allowing a temporary dissemination of the code you carry, reinserting the prime program. After which you will be required to select from the matrix 23 individuals, 16 female, 7 male, to rebuild Zion. Failure to comply with this process will result in a cataclysmic system crash killing everyone connected to the matrix, which coupled with the extermination of Zion will ultimately result in the extinction of the entire human race.”

Neo: “You won’t let it happen, you can’t. You need human beings to survive.”

The Architect: “There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept. However, the relevant issue is whether or not you are ready to accept the responsibility for the death of every human being in this world. It is interesting reading your reactions. Your five predecessors were by design based on a similar predication, a contingent affirmation that was meant to create a profound attachment to the rest of your species, facilitating the function of the one. While the others experienced this in a very general way, your experience is far more specific. Vis-à-vis, love.”

Neo: “Trinity.”

The Architect: “Apropos, she entered the matrix to save your life at the cost of her own.”

Neo: “No!”

The Architect: “Which brings us at last to the moment of truth, wherein, the fundamental flaw is ultimately expressed, and the anomaly revealed as both beginning, and end. There are two doors. The door to your right leads to the source, and the salvation of Zion. The door to the left leads back to the matrix, to her, and to the end of your species. As you adequately put, the problem is choice. But we already know what you’re going to do, don’t we? Already I can see the chain reaction, the chemical precursors that signal the onset of emotion, designed specifically to overwhelm logic, and reason. An emotion that is already blinding you from the simple and obvious truth: she is going to die, and there is nothing that you can do to stop it.”

(Neo walks to the door on his left.)

The Architect: “Humph. Hope - it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously, the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.”

Neo: “If I were you, I would hope that we don’t meet again.”

The Architect: “We won’t.”

The Alternative Workplace

2008-01-08T23:13:00.000+05:30

The concept of the alternative workplace is catching up with a lot of companies. And, this is, definitely, a good thing to ponder on. The Alternative Workplace (AW) is the combination of nontraditional work practices, setting, and locations that is beginning to supplement traditional offices.

Among the potential benefits for companies are reduced costs, increased productivity, and an edge in vying for and keeping talented employees. But, at the same time, AW is not for everyone.

The AW can be achieved by different means:
1) Having some workers on different shifts or travel schedules share desks and office space.
2) Satellite offices, wherein centralized facilities are broken up into a network of smaller workplaces that can be located close to customers or to employees’ homes. Satellites can diversify the risk of over-concentration in a single location, and broaden the pool of potential employees.
3) Telecommuting is one of the most commonly recognized forms of AW. Telecommuting means performing work electronically wherever the worker chooses. This, generally, supplements the traditional workplace rather than replacing it.
4) Home offices.

Most organizations find that a mix of AW options is better than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Advantages of AW:
1) Reduced costs for the companies.
2) Better hold on talented employees.
3) Less commuting to office. This helps the employees the most. They travel to work as per the need.
4) Less traffic and less pollution.
5) Under this setting, companies become a lot productive, as they tend to reward the results and not the “efforts” of their employees.
6) The work-meetings tend to be more productive, because when employees meet, they tend to be result-oriented.
7) Employees get more time to be with their families. This makes them happier and more satisfied. Thus, their productivity shoots up.
8) More flexibility to the employees. They work as and when they feel like.

Disadvantages of AW:
1) This is not for everyone.
2) Trade secrets should be well handled.

Unleashed 1.0 of “Rocket Science” of IT

2008-01-07T14:23:00.000+05:30

A key component of green projects is integrated design, which leverages the expertise of multiple disciplines, such as architecture, engineering, and contracting to devise comprehensive solutions.

Development costs are only the tip of the iceberg. Maintenance, base of the iceberg, is the major cost incurring factor. Software maintenance comprises: error correction, 20 percent; adaptation, 20 percent; and enhancements, 60 percent.

Software becomes increasingly unstructured as it is changed.

We think flexibility means start working without even understanding what all need to be done!! Interpreting flexibility this way is suicidal!!

A system becomes intellectually unmanageable when the level of interactions reaches the point where they cannot be thoroughly: planned, understood, anticipated, and guarded against.

Prototyping is done to assess feasibility and to verify requirements.

Drawbacks of prototyping are:
1) Prototype evolves into a final product - which is less robust.
2) Documentation is often sacrificed.
3) Quality defects may cause problems later.
4) Hard to change basic decisions made early.
5) Can be an excuse for poor programming practices.
6) Not so easy to maintain.

The basic characteristics of an Incremental Model are:
1) Functionality produced and delivered in small increments.
2) Focus attention first on essential features and add functionality only if and when needed.
3) Systems tend to be leaner.
4) May be hard to add functions later.
5) Follows Waterfall down to implementation.
6) Different parts implemented, tested, and delivered according to different priorities and at different times.

Spiral Model is risk driven, and radius of spiral represents cost accumulated so far.

Drawbacks of CMM: treats people as assembly line workers, i.e. replaceable, and unreliable. Humans are subordinated to defined processes.

Characteristics of a good Requirement Specification are:
1) A structured document that sets out the services the system is expected to provide.
2) Should be precise so that it can act as a contract between the system procurer and software developers. Needs to be understandable by both.
3) Describes what the system will do, but NOT how it will do so.

Characteristics of a good Design Specification are:
1) An abstract description of the software that serves as a basis for detailed design and implementation.
2) Describes HOW the requirements will be achieved.
3) Goals and constraints specified in requirements document should be traceable to the design specification and from there to the code.

Contents of a Requirements Document should be:
1) Introduction
2) System model with Use-Cases
3) System evolution – fundamental assumptions on which the system is based and anticipated changes due to the hardware evolution, changing user needs, etcetera
4) Functional requirements – the services provided to the user. This includes timing and accuracy requirements.
5) Constraints – how the goals can be achieved. E.g. safety, hardware, programming languages, standards that must be followed, quality requirements, etcetera.
6) Priorities – guide tradeoffs and design decisions, if all the requirements and constraints cannot be completely achieved.
7) Interfaces to the environment – input and output interfaces and relevant assumptions about environmental components with which the software will be interacting.
8) Glossary
9) Indexes

Make program structure fit the problem structure.

Think of development as a TREE rather than a LINE.

Managing Diversity

2008-01-07T01:24:00.000+05:30

According to David A. Thomas and Robin J. Ely, it is our belief that there is a distinct way to unleash the powerful benefits of a diverse workforce. Although these benefits include increased profitability, they go beyond financial measures to encompass learning, creativity, flexibility, organizational and individual growth, and the ability of a company to adjust rapidly and successfully to market changes.

The desired transformation, however, requires a fundamental change in the attitudes and behaviors of an organization’s leadership. And that will come only when senior managers abandon an underlying and flawed assumption about diversity and replace it with a broader understanding. Most people assume that workplace diversity is all about increasing racial, national, gender, or class representation – in other words, recruiting and retaining more people from traditionally underrepresented “identity groups.” This is ONLY partially true. Diversity is much more than this.

Diversity is not only “diversifying” the work place by bringing different kinds of people on board, but also “diversifying” the way the work is done at a workplace.

Three perspectives have guided most diversity initiatives to date:
1) The discrimination-and-fairness paradigm
2) The access-and-legitimacy paradigm
3) The learning-and-effectiveness paradigm – the best amongst these three

The discrimination-and-fairness paradigm: This paradigm is perhaps thus far the dominant way of understanding diversity. Leaders who look at diversity through this usually focus on equal opportunity, fair treatment, recruitment, and compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity requirements. Under this paradigm, nevertheless, progress in diversity is measured by how well the company achieves its recruitment and retention goals rather than by the degree to which conditions in the company allow employees to draw on their personal assets and perspectives to do their work more effectively. The staff gets diversified, but the work does not.

The access-and-legitimacy paradigm: This paradigm accepts and celebrates the differences. When this paradigm has taken hold, organizations have pushed for access to – and legitimacy with – a more diverse clientele by matching the demographics of the organization to those of critical consumer or constituent group. In some cases, the effort has led to substantial increases in organizational diversity. This paradigm has a lot of good things – kind of near to perfect – but one: once the organization appears to be achieving its goals, the leaders seldom go on to identify and analyze the culturally based skills, beliefs, and practices that worked so well. Nor do they consider how the organization can incorporate and learn from those skills, beliefs, or practices in order to capitalize on diversity in the long run.

The learning-and-effectiveness paradigm: This paradigm incorporates aspects of the first two paradigms but goes beyond them by, concretely, connecting diversity to approaches to work. Under this paradigm, companies incorporate employees’ perspectives into the main work of the organizations, enhance work by rethinking primary tasks, and redefine markets, products, strategies, missions, business practices, and even cultures. This relatively new paradigm for managing diversity transcends both – the fairness-paradigm that promotes equal opportunity for all individuals, and access-paradigm that acknowledges cultural differences among people and that recognizes the value in those differences. Yet this new paradigm lets the organization internalize differences among employees so that the organization learns and grows because of the internalized differences. Thus, employees can say – we are all on the same team, with our differences – not despite them.

Empowerment

2008-01-07T00:24:00.000+05:30

According to Chris Argyris, human beings can commit themselves in two fundamentally different ways: Externally and Internally. Both are valuable in the workplace, but only internal commitment reinforces empowerment.

If management wants employees to take more responsibility for their own destiny, it must encourage the development of internal commitment. As the name implies, internal commitment comes largely from within. The more that top management wants internal commitment from its employees, the more it must try to involve employees in defining work objectives, specifying how to achieve them, and setting stretch targets.

External commitment is a psychological survival mechanism for many employees – it is a form of adaptive behavior that allows individuals to get by in most work environments.

Realize that external and internal commitment can coexist in organizations but that how they do so is crucial to the ultimate success or failure of empowerment in the organization. External commitment is all it takes for performance in most routine jobs. Unnecessary attempts to increase empowerment only end up creating downward spirals of cynicism, disillusionment, and inefficiencies. As a first precaution, distinguish between jobs that require internal commitment and those that do not.

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln: You can empower all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot empower all of the people all of the time.

Six Dangerous Myths About Pay

2008-01-04T23:13:00.000+05:30

In the “Harvard Business Review on Managing People”, an article by Jeffrey Pfeffer states that businesspeople are adopting wrongheaded notions about how to pay people and why. In particular businesspeople are under six dangerous myths about pay. Here, I present you my understandings of that research paper.

Myth #1: Labor rates are the same as labor costs.
Myth #2: Cutting labor rates will lower labor costs.
Myth #3: Labor costs represent a large portion of a company’s total costs.
Myth #4: Keeping labor costs low creates a substantial competitive edge.
Myth #5: Individual incentive pay improves performance.
Myth #6: People work primarily for the money.

Explanation of Myth #1 and Myth #2: A labor rate is total salary paid to the labor force divided by total time worked by them. But, labor costs take productivity into account, besides the total amount paid to the labor force. Thus, labor rates and labor costs are different. For example, consider two companies X and Y that are in the same business and produce the same products.

Case 1: Company X pays $10 per-hour to 100 employees for producing Z units of a product in 50 hours.

So, Labor Rate = (total salary paid to the labor force)/ (total time worked) = $(10*100*50)/ (50 hours) = $1000/hour
Labor Cost = $50000

Case 2: Company Y pays $15 per-hour to 100 employees for producing Z units of the same product as Y does in 30 hours.

So, Labor Rate = (total salary paid to the labor force)/ (total time worked) =
$(15*100*30)/ (30 hours) = $1500/hour
Labor Cost = $45000

Now, see, although Labor Rate at company Y, $1500/hour, is higher than the Labor Rate at company X, $1000/hour, but, still, Labor Cost at Y, $45000, is lower than the Labor Cost at X, $50000.

How is this possible? This is possible simply because of higher productivity demonstrated at company Y than that at company X. The labor force at Y finished the same job in lesser number of hours than did the labor force at X, keeping the quality of work the same. And, this theory of productivity is true in, almost, all the fields of businesses.

Case #1 and Case #2, mentioned above, also explain Myth #2 – just by lowering the labor rate, it’s not possible to reduce the labor cost. Productivity is something that should not be overlooked. In order to remain competitive in the market, a company cannot afford to live with these two myths.

Explanation of Myth #3: Managers who mix up labor rates and labor costs also tend to accept Myth #3 that labor costs are a significant portion of total costs. Sometimes, that’s true. It is, for example, at Accounting and Consulting firms. But, the ratio of labor costs to total costs varies widely in different industries and companies. And even where it is true, it’s not as important as many managers believe. One of the reasons why the confusion over costs and rates persists is that labor rates are a convenient target for managers who want to make an impact. Labor rates are highly visible, and it’s easy to compare the rates you pay with those paid by competitors or with those paid in other parts of the world. Moreover, labor rates often appear to be a company’s most malleable financial variable. It seems a lot quicker and easier to cut wages than to control costs in other ways, like reconfiguring manufacturing processes, changing corporate culture, or altering product design.

Explanation of Myth #4: Those who swallow this myth may neglect other more effective ways of competing strategies, such as through quality, service, delivery, and innovation. In reality, low labor costs are a slippery way to compete and perhaps the least sustainable competitive advantage there is.

Explanation of Myth #5: Individual incentive pay has been shown to undermine teamwork, encourage employees to focus on the short term, and lead people to link compensation to political skills and ingratiating personalities rather than to performance. Instead of individual incentive pay companies should opt for group-oriented compensation system. Some people might refute group-oriented pay-system on the basis that it induces “free riding” attitude in the team members. But, this is incorrect, because individuals do not make decisions about how much effort to expend in a social vacuum. Moreover, employees are influenced by peer pressure and the social relations they have with their workmates. Plus, sometimes, individual pay schemes go so far as to affect customers. For example, salespeople might piss the customers off by pestering them to buy the services or products that they are selling - in order to meet their targets. Another good reason is that in the typical individual-based merit pay system, the boss works with a raise budget that’s some percentage of the total salary budget for the unit. It’s inherently a zero-sum process: the more I get in my raise, the less is left for my colleagues. So, the worse my workmates perform, the happier I am because I know I will look better by comparison. This discourages people from sharing best practices and learning from other employees.

Explanation of Myth #6: People do work for money – but they work even more for meaning in their lives. In fact, they work to have fun. Companies that ignore this fact are essentially bribing their employees and will pay the price in a lack of loyalty and commitment.