Posts tagged strategy
Have breakfast … or … be breakfast!
Feb 12th
BY Y. L. R. MOORTHI
[Management Views from IIMB is an exclusive column written every two weeks by faculty members of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore]
[This very good article was forwarded to me by one of my friends and original article is found on http://www.iimb.ernet.in/node/1820]
Who sells the largest number of cameras in India?
Your guess is likely to be Sony, Canon or Nikon. Answer is none of the above. The winner is Nokia whose main line of business in India is not cameras but cell phones.
Reason being cameras bundled with cellphones are outselling standalone cameras. Now, what prevents the cellphone from replacing the camera outright? Nothing at all. One can only hope the Sonys and Canons are taking note.
Try this. Who is the biggest in music business in India? You think it is HMV Sa-Re-Ga-Ma? Sorry. The answer is Airtel. By selling caller tunes (that play for 30 seconds) Airtel makes more than what music companies make by selling music albums (that run for hours).
Incidentally Airtel is not in music business. It is the mobile service provider with the largest subscriber base in India. That sort of competitor is difficult to detect, even more difficult to beat (by the time you have identified him he has already gone past you). But if you imagine that Nokia and Bharti (Airtel’s parent) are breathing easy you can’t be farther from truth.
"What Apple did to Sony, Sony did to Kodak, explain?" Sony defined its market as audio (music from the walkman). They never expected an IT company like Apple to encroach into their audio domain. Come to think of it, is it really surprising? Apple as a computer maker has both audio and video capabilities. So what made Sony think he won’t compete on pure audio? So also Kodak defined its business as film cameras, Sony defines its businesses as "digital."
In digital camera the two markets perfectly meshed. Kodak was torn between going digital and sacrificing money on camera film or staying with films and getting left behind in digital technology. Left undecided it lost in both. It had to. It did not ask the question "who is my competitor for tomorrow?" The same was true for IBM whose mainframe revenue prevented it from seeing the PC. The same was true of Bill Gates who declared "internet is a fad!" and then turned around to bundle the browser with windows to bury Netscape. The point is not who is today’s competitor. Today’s competitor is obvious. Tomorrow’s is not.
Hiding behind all these wars is a gem of a question – "who is my competitor?"
In 2008, who was the toughest competitor to British Airways in India? Singapore airlines? Better still, Indian airlines? Maybe, but there are better answers. There are competitors that can hurt all these airlines and others not mentioned. The answer is videoconferencing and telepresence services of HP and Cisco. Travel dropped due to recession. Senior IT executives in India and abroad were compelled by their head quarters to use videoconferencing to shrink travel budget
So much so, that the mad scramble for American visas from Indian techies was nowhere in sight in 2008. (India has a quota of something like 65,000 visas to the U.S. They were going a-begging. Blame it on recession!). So far so good. But to think that the airlines will be back in business post recession is something I would not bet on. In short term yes. In long term a resounding no. Remember, if there is one place where Newton’s law of gravity is applicable besides physics it is in electronic hardware. Between 1977 and 1991 the prices of the now dead VCR (parent of Blue-Ray disc player) crashed to one-third of its original level in India. PC’s price dropped from hundreds of thousands of rupees to tens of thousands. If this trend repeats then telepresence prices will also crash. Imagine the fate of airlines then. As it is not many are making money. Then it will surely be RIP!
India has two passions. Films and cricket. The two markets were distinctly different. So were the icons. The cricket gods were Sachin and Sehwag. The filmi gods were the Khans (Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and the other Khans who followed suit). That was, when cricket was fundamentally test cricket or at best 50 over cricket. Then came IPL and the two markets collapsed into one. IPL brought cricket down to 20 overs. Suddenly an IPL match was reduced to the length of a 3 hour movie. Cricket became film’s competitor. On the eve of IPL matches movie halls ran empty. Desperate multiplex owners requisitioned the rights for screening IPL matches at movie halls to hang on to the audience. If IPL were to become the mainstay of cricket, as it is likely to be, films have to sequence their releases so as not clash with IPL matches. As far as the audience is concerned both are what in India are called 3 hour "tamasha" (entertainment). Cricket season might push films out of the market.
Look at the products that vanished from India in the last 20 years.When did you last see a black and white movie? When did you last use a fountain pen? When did you last type on a typewriter? The answer for all the above is "I don’t remember!" For some time there was a mild substitute for the typewriter called electronic typewriter that had limited memory. Then came the computer and mowed them all. Today most technologically challenged guys like me use the computer as an upgraded typewriter. Typewriters per se are nowhere to be seen.
One last illustration. 20 years back what were Indians using to wake them up in the morning? The answer is "alarm clock." The alarm clock was a monster made of mechanical springs. It had to be physically keyed every day to keep it running. It made so much noise by way of alarm, that it woke you up and the rest of the colony. Then came quartz clocks which were sleeker. They were much more gentle though still quaintly called "alarms." What do we use today for waking up in the morning? Cellphone! An entire industry of clocks disappeared without warning thanks to cell phones. Big watch companies like Titan were the losers. You never know in which bush your competitor is hiding!
Future is scary! The boss of an IT company once said something interesting about the animal called competition. He said "Have breakfast …or…. be breakfast"! That sums it up rather neatly.
Success is not something to wait for; it’s something to work for…
Be LEAN .. this year !
Jan 24th
In last few days I have been fortunate enough to participate in the workshop for LEAN service framework. And thus, I am trying to share my experiences and learning on LEAN here.
The LEAN framework originates from the manufacturing system developed by Toyota called Toyota Production System [TPS] that pursues the principle of optimum streamlining throughout the entire system through the thorough elimination of waste and aims to build quality in at the manufacturing process while recognizing the principle of [ongoing] cost reduction. It also includes all the accompanying technology & tools necessary to accomplish those aims. [Reference .. here]
The process that Toyota developed for Just-in-time production was called TPS until 1990. MIT researchers tossed the term LEAN in their 1990 book called “The Machine that Changed the World” to describe the principles of Toyota Production System. Thereafter, of course, the process was known to the world as LEAN Service Framework.
In a nutshell,
LEAN is an integrated system of principles, work practices & processes that empowers the operational users to drive the relentless pursuit of perfect customer value creation.
Although LEAN was innovated and started in the manufacturing industry and especially at Toyota, it, over the years grown out of the manufacturing industry and into other verticals, not to mention the IT/BPO industry.
LEAN underpins 5 principles in the framework as follows,
-
Eliminate Waste – As per the LEAN principles, the waste could be due to the idle time spent by the employees waiting for work, or spending extra hours to exceed customer expectations (without customer asking for it), excessive testing etc., activities and all such activities that do not add add direct value to the customers.
-
Eliminate Variability – This talks more about complexity of the work within the team. LEAN suggests eliminating the variability of work done by the employees so that activities & individual performances are streamlined to carry out typical activities. This also talks about the external work that comes within such as ticket trend, business requirements etc., and suggests to streamline.
-
Eliminate Inflexibility – This suggest more about the resources capacity and the work segmentation and align the efforts and create skill pools so as to better utilize the knowledge, performance & work practices against repetitive / common tasks.
-
Performance Management – LEAN suggests to compute the performance of the individuals as well as the team and making the results publish to the individuals / teams and discuss with them on a regular basis. LEAN recommends that regular performance discussions enhances the team morale, gives them goal to enhance performances etc.,
-
Involvement of workers – LEAN, more than a process is more of a philosophy and change in the thinking of the workforce and suggest to have the workforce participate and understand these principles so they themselves are aware of the waste being created around they can eliminate themselves.
Many IT companies have implemented LEAN successfully. IBM has been doing the LEAN implementation for the customers since last 3+ years. Over the years, being LEAN organization has been a selling point for the IT vendors and equally the customers have been demanding.
The benefits of LEAN include reduce waste, reduction of inventory costs, cross trained employees, reduced cycle time & obsolescence, high quality & reliability and may more.
This, of course was a drop in the ocean of the knowledge of the LEAN framework, even for me. If you are interested in knowing more and reading more, suggesting the following reading
Lean Manufacturing & Lean Software Development
LEAN – The Machine that changed the world !
Bye the way, if you have read the above carefully, the following video might tell you something. Have a look (with audio ON) and let me know what you think ?
Caltex – going extra mile !
Technology for business .. or vice versa?
May 8th
This is the post I recollected from my very very early days of blogging (read year 2003) and was in response to one of the debates we had in our group of office colleagues.
I guess pretty much I said that time about 6 years ago looks rubbish to me now anyways .. however I guess there are still a few valid points 
So here is how I went on my old blog.
Technology for Business
Some Cons against "Technology for Experiment" ….
- Industry is never driven by only "Technology". The needs of the business generates the need for "Technology". So, lets first identify the facts of business, so called " Business Verticals" and divide the tasks for those verticals rather than the "Technology Horizontals".
- The industry is continuously changing, becoming more cautious about the spending and cost/benefit analysis for the organizations.
- The time has gone when the companies use to spend lots n lots of dollars just to change the look n feel of some of their useless sites just for the sake of "New Technology Adoption".
- The expectations of the business from the IT companies have grown up to very high standards because of very competitive market and clear division of the market on the basis of the "Business Verticals".
- Technology is a "Short Living" thing. On an average a technology becomes old within first 3 months of its origin.
- The real challenge lies in "Foresight" predicting the way the IT will go in next say 5-10 years and act accordingly.
- Only "Technology" really lacks in attracting more business now a days. e.g. A "beverage" organization will think twice before implement an XML standard even if you have done some significant work for some "finance sector" client, but on the other hand if we stick to the vertical then its not a big deal to attract more and more clients, at least through something called "Domain Experience".
- The market is globally getting very tough and only the "Survival of the Fittest" is the only thing that is fact.
- Admit the fact that a company can not compete and win a project against another one who is working in a particular domain for say last 5 years. e.g. Company A is technically very very sound. Company B is comparatively not so much but company B is very strong in its (say) Finance domain and working for it since last 5-6 years. Both are bidding for a Finance client…… you are intelligent enough to guess who is the ultimate winner.
- Finally if you feel we are not intelligent enough to judge the battle. Look for the giants like "SAP", "Microsoft", "IBM" are doing to their products. Every giant has a product for a business verticals and virtually admitting that the industry is getting split vertically.
Some Pros for the "Technology" ..
- Technology keeps the industry live.
- Despite of various things it is still a fact that over 100 companies are still alive only because someone like Microsoft or IBM are developing more technologies and relative products.
- Technology keeps your knowledge grow at a fast pace (I have used a word Knowledge and that does not mean Business).
- Finally Its really a fun learning new technologies…..
Might have been an interesting debate really. Do not recollect enough as to what made me write this but looking at this … must have been a fun !
Cheerio
An interesting debate – why do Indians do not produce entrepreneurs !
Apr 27th
In my last article on entrepreneurship I wrote about the lack of entrepreneurship and innovation in India and the root cause in the education system that was adopted over the years.
Today, on the coffee table, we had another quick debate on this and one more topic that came out was the way we Indians think ! One of my colleague referred to an interview given by Infosys Chief Mentor Mr Narayana Murthy,
Indians are really good thinkers .. but not very good doers !
By the way, the word Indian is used in the context of people “living and working” in India. This should rather not be used in the context of Indians living abroad and shining there !
Ok, coming back to the quote I wrote above, I said I could not have agreed more with Mr Murthy and I would stick to my statement here. The reason I think he is right is the fact that when I correlate it with how I (average Indian wannabe great) think and act on the massive amount of ideas I generate .. I really feel the same.
In last few months, I have been having few solid ideas in my mind and I really wanted to build some portals to drive the entrepreneurship within me.
Most notable ideas I had were to to do with Childcare in India and Educational portal across major engineering colleges.
The biggest problem I am having is availability of like minded fellow colleagues who are interested in entrepreneurship. The job I am in currently does now allow me to have these kind of colleagues around and that have the same drive as me to do different things .. 
In case you are wondering what kind of job I do in IT, I am a support consultant and in my job, the only thing that has importance is problem solving and incident management skills .. nothing to do innovation & initiatives ..
Anyways, enough of my own problems and coming back to the original topic of why Indians do not make it into entrepreneurship. The root cause I wrote in my earlier post was about the education system which just enforces you to learn what is in the book and does not encourage innovation nor independent thinking. So effectively, does not encourage you to “DO” things differently. All you end up with is to “Do what is told”.
I do not completely dismiss the thinking & doing of Indian IT companies and the very fact that India has become a giant IT outsourcing destination as well as world’s back office shows you that we Indians “Do” things fantastically well “when” the path of how to do is already defined.
The lack of core product companies, innovation houses, VC funding in India shows and supports the argument given by Mr Murthy. May be Government needs to think differently here and encourage the entrepreneurship via supporting the start ups etc.
Anyways, as usual the final thinking I would leave on you guys.
Please do leave a comment on my blog if you agree / disagree with my comments.
Cheerio
Tips on “Getting things done .. !”
Apr 23rd
While stumbling across on the Internet I came across a very useful blog post on Zen habits and I thought of mentioning it on my blog as well.
The author mentions really good and practical things to ensure you “get things done” without actually following the GTD matrix !
A quick summary of it is as follows,
-
Create a “to stop” list
-
Focus on short bursts
-
Define your daily ass-kicking
-
Allow yourself to suck
-
Focus on the Three C’s
-
Stop caring about things that don’t matter
-
Make it stupidly simple
I recommend you guys to visit his blog post here and read the full post. Its interesting and worth reading !
Bye the way, for people who love the GTD matrix and like to follow the GTD principles to get things done, here is what I found (from the link in his blog post) as follows,
