A 'clever' blog of a 'free' mind
Posts tagged strategy
Technology for business .. or vice versa?
01005 days
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 !
01016 days
by Swapnil
in Strategy thoughts
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 .. !”
01020 days
by Swapnil
in Career thoughts
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,
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Create a “to stop” list
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Focus on short bursts
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Define your daily ass-kicking
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Allow yourself to suck
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Focus on the Three C’s
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Stop caring about things that don’t matter
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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,
Protectionism of economy.. continued
01064 days
I wrote my thoughts yesterday on how the economic protectionism could come back and harm the economy in the long term and I did put a comment on Sramana Mitra’s blog about this to request her comment. She has been kind enough to respond back and point me to one of her earlier blog article on Forbes.com that talks about Perilous Protectionism.
One particular impact she states in her article was about the eventual cost increase if the outsourcing to other countries were to stop. She has also given an example of how Motorola will find it difficult to keep the prices of its cellphones down, if its been forced to operate in the US only region for manufacturing its goods.
I would recommend a read on this article who wants to know more on this topic.
Protectionism – is it good for economy in the long term?
01065 days
I have been having this question in my mind since a very long time and unfortunately could not find anything that would give me right answer.
After reading much about President Obama’s stimulus plans & his policy over outsourcing jobs, things do not look very promising for Indian companies. There is a good news article written on BusinessWeek.com that outlines how his policies would affect Indian IT & outsourcing companies in India. In one of his policies, Obama outlines how he plans to prefer giving jobs to more native americans than immigrants. Sort of protectionism !
I can obviously understand the rationale behind him doing so, i.e, to create more job opportunities for the americans and try to revive the economy. Good enough reason ! On another note, he is not ‘forcing’ the companies to stop doing outsourcing to other countries, he has only stopped them from availing the tax benefits. If the company thinks they get good profit by moving work offshore (at lower labour & operating costs) they might as well continue to do so, but obviously need to pay more tax.
What impact this change in policy will have on US itself? Is it being more protectionist and changing its image of the most open economy in the world? Is it moving towards protectionism?
I have heard cries about how US is playing its foul play and being protectionist over its economy and assets and how they should not do it. In this context, when I think of India, I do not find much difference itself in what India have been doing in past.
Protectionism has been happening in democratic India since a very very long time. May be from the time of its independence from the British rule. The very form of protectionism in India is called “quote & reservations” in education, government jobs & quite a few other areas for few typical casts & religions. The original idea of cast reservations in education & jobs was to give the backward class sectors an opportunity to learn and upbring themselves on par with other (so called advanced) societies in India. However, over the years, this has become misused over and over again and has totally lost its original meaning.
Year on year, the governments in India have been unable to remove, or even reduce the reservations and unfortunately moving towards allocating it to more casts. Considering today’s world, I believe the concept of “reservations” is outdated for for a developing country like India. We need talented individuals to come forward and help build the nation.
What worries me, in long term that, if the countries such as US & those in Europe go further on the way of protectionism and impose policies that would stop (or significant impact on) immigration and inflow of talents from India and other developing countries, where would this talent pool go? The dearth of opportunities for higher education and government jobs in India for talented individuals is making them look for private sector or move out of country for seeking better opportunities and if the developed countries shut their doors, what will happen?