"The Halo Effect"

In The Halo Effect ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers, Phil Rosenzweig tears into some of the most popular business books of recent years, including the bestsellers In Search of Excellence and Good to Great. Along the way, he argues that many of the pat principles bandied about in the business world are based on misguided thinking and flimsy research.

Rosenzweig ends by listing five things that enlightened managers should know:

1. Good strategies involve risk and no strategy is foolproof.

2 . Execution also is uncertain. What works well for one company may not be effective for another company.

3. Chance plays a greater role in success than managers may want to admit. Bad outcomes don't always mean that managers made mistakes.Likewise, favorable outcomes don't necessarily mean that the managers made brilliant decisions.

4. Finally, Rosenzweig says that "when the die is cast, the best managers act as if chance is irrelevant. Persistence and tenacity are everything."

"No Jerk" rule in Office

Interesting article from Mckinsey quarterly on "No Jerk" rule in firms. Companies are increasingly finding that cost of managing difficult people is very high. Robert Sutton is professor in Stanford university and the article is adapted from his book "The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t". Robert talks about dirty Dozen that Jerks do at workplace.

He talks about the Total economic cost of these jerks and ways and methodologies to measure them.

btw, doesn't this apply to our society as well and there is huge economic cost that society pays for actions of these jerks?

India a future Tiger?

Akash Prakash presents highlights some scenarios and problems with India Growth Story here

Excerpting some interesting part:

On education, only about 65 per cent of males across the country are literate, 10 per cent have passed the 10th grade and about 5 per cent have a graduate degree; the figures are even lower for women (2001 census/CERG Advisory). By 2010 we will have 460 million people between 5 and 24 (source: CERG Advisory) who will need to be educated and trained. How will the government handle this challenge, when it has failed miserably till date? Unless we see reform in the government response to the education challenge and much greater private sector participation and innovation, we will have a crisis. The beginnings of change and private sector participation are visible, but a lot more needs to be done.

The second issue is employment. By 2010, we will have more than 105 million young adults in the age group of 20-24 looking for work (source: CERG Advisory). For our economy to generate employment of that magnitude, we need to improve our growth mix and ensure that people can move off farms and into light manufacturing and basic services. We cannot afford to have another decade of no organised sector job growth. We need to deliver on the required reforms in labour, agriculture and infrastructure. Again, initial signs are positive, but more needs to be done.

Two urgent and high priority reforms need to be done by the government if the country is to do any progress. One in the sector of educational reforms: Government should regulate and ensure the entry of large number of private players into the field who can come in and increase the quality and quantity of education that this country can provide. If suitable action is not taken in this regard, there will be large number of uneducated youths in this country which will lead to widespread unrest and chaos due to the rising inequality. Capitalism and free markets are ruthless in the sense that they make high differentiation between the highly skilled and non-skilled workers. The gradation in this differentiation is so huge that the lowly skilled workers without proper incentive would have to suffer huge downside due to the liberalization regime undertaken by the government so far.

Second most important reform is in the area of labor reform. The trade unions are hitting on their own foot when they try to stall any move by the government towards labour reforms. The manufacturing sector needs huge amount of labor and they would still be able to grow by introducing capital intensive machinery in lieu for labor. Some people have termed India's economic growth as jobless growth, which is precisely the reason why India needs labor reforms wherein there is incentive for the manufacturing sector to trade machinery for labor. Manufacturing sector has nothing to gain by appeasing the labor unions, but the labor unions have much to gain by going along with the demands of manufacturing sector. Government needs to create appropriate skill levels by opening up the education sector and appropriate level of jobs creation incentive for manufacturing sector in order to prevent economic unrest and prevent rising inequality as India moves further towards free markets and capitalism.

"distributed computing economics"

Microsoft Researcher Jim Gray's insights into economics of computing 3 years ago are now bearing fruits in terms of services over web and web 2.0.

Computing is free. Actually, it's not free, but most computing is now so inexpensive that advertising can pay for it.Computing costs hundreds of billions of dollars per year.Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is more than a trillion dollars per year.Megaservices like Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft Live have relatively low operations staff costs. Most applications do not benefit from megaservice economies of scale.outsourcing is seen as a way for smaller services to benefit from megaservice efficiencies.The outsourcing business evolved from service bureaus through timesharing and is now having a renaissance. The premise is that an outsourcing megaservice can offer routine services much more efficiently than an in-house service. Today, companies routinely outsource applications like payroll, insurance, Web presence, and email.So a Web service is an enabling technology to reduce data interchange costs

interesting video from computer museum.

Processing and disk costs are so low now that we might as well just store the data more redundantly, Jim argues in an interview in ACM Queue.

"Why Apple may not win the PC market"

Apple's revenue is at $5.7 billion dollars compared to the entire PC market revenue for last year being at $250 billion dollars, giving apple around 2-3% market share in the PC market. Apple's strength lies in ipods, music and entertainment and it fails to impress the genuine PC geek in spite of its good features and ease of use. Apple's adamant on building the entire PC using its own components goes against it as with this strategy the industry does not work with standard products and does not create the needed momentum to push the products into markets place in spite of being good ones.

Apple's competitors include the reset of the industry consisting of the likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and their muscle power and influence in the market is tremendous and have the ability to push standardization and other software vendors and application developers to their bandwagon. Embracing open standard would a logical thing for apple to do. Apple's business model is more closer to Dell's model of selling through Internet with not very predominant retail presence and apple needs to strengthen its retail presence in a large way in order to be visible to entire range of PC customers. The visibility of apple is restricted to the geeks and the knowledgeable in the industry with no visibility among the not so computer literate person.

It's inability to form alliance with component suppliers and other companies in order to give a broader push to the market is causing apple huge loss in potential revenue space. Also, the strategy of apple to not sell components and operating system separately to OEMs so they can produce apple laptops with windows operating system or dell/HP PCs with Mac OS is resulting in huge loss of potential revenue for the company.

Apples doesn't boast of the efficiency in managing the supply chain like Dell. Dell's core competency lies in its agile and efficient supply chain and apple's manufacturing and assembly units fall short of even the worst of industry standards. All this adds to cost to the customers with they having to pay for the inefficiency in apple's supply chain and not necessarily for the cool products. To replicate Dell's supply chain would require years of hard work and dedication and building of work ethic culture which is not characteristic of apple culture.

Apple's products are priced higher with a premium attached to it compared to competitive products resulting it not attracting the lower end of the pyramid and increasing the market share. Also, at the higher end of pyramid the performance of apple PCs are not ultra superior to those of the competitors for them to be charging the premium.

Apple currently sells only due to the cult like fanatic following that Steve Jobs is able to create for apple products by being different from the market. This drive for being different pushes apple further from its customers, since when customers try to be like Apple, Apple moves away trying to be more different from the rest. Apple products needs to be made for consumption of mainstream population, needs be more accessible, standardized and given the huge marketing push.

Apple continues to do the same mistakes it has been doing for last thirty years and squandering the weath of its share holders. It needs to be more aware of its customers, investors, suppliers and other players in the ecosystem and must not drive itself to madness in urge to be different from the rest.

"Indian Parliament and good governance?"

The government needs to do dig detail into the public issues with thoughtful scrutiny, meaningful dialogue, frank questioning, careful planning and candid probing of the bureaucracy in order they function effectively. Parliament needs to be a role model for integrity, accountability, decency, quality and service attitude so that its prestige, reputation and confidence among citizens is maintained. The bureaucrats benefit from collegial, frank and private discussions with experienced parliamentarians.

The parliament is responsible for effective governance of the country. The parliament is responsible for ensuring that adequate controls are present in the bureaucracy and should appropriate policies on control and seek regular assurance that the system is functioning effectively. Shouldn't good governance be an implicit expectation, much like good character, a set of principles that are simply inherent and understood? Much like the in the corporate world where the management is accountable to the board, the government is accountable to the parliament, with this 'board' being elected by the single share of billion voters of the country, and the parliament is responsible to ensure the effective functioning of the government. Parliament has the right to ask the difficult questions and ensure that the government is functioning effectively in the best interest of the shareholders, aka voters. Effective monitoring on a continuous basis is an essential component of a sound system of control.

Parliament is the right forum to discuss and approve the correct growth and development strategy for the country. The parliament must ensure that the country has the best strategy while competing with other countries in order to pursue the single minded objective, that is to maximize the wealth of the nation. Parliament must ensure that right controls are in place to respond to serious issues relating to infrastructure, education, health and sanitation for the citizens and the right environment be provided for the flourishing of businesses for creation of wealth. Parliament should, at least annually conduct review of the effectiveness of bureaucracy and should report to the citizens that they have done so.

This should cover all controls, including financial, operational, compliance and law and order. Parliament needs to have a strategic vision and must ensure that right culture is promoted, effective communication and commitment is shown by the government. The responsibility of prevention of corruption lies with both the government and the parliament. Parliament with oversight must create proper tone, create and maintain a culture of honesty and high ethics and must establish effective controls to prevent corruption and fraud. Suffice to say that if you don\'t keep the citizens happy at the end of the day you don\'t have government. Regular attendance to the parliamentarians to all sessions of the parliament should be made mandatory, a requirement which needs to be etched into Constitution or parliamentary procedures. Good governance, effective functioning of the parliament and the development of the country are linked. Countries with effective parliament fetch premium for external foreign investments into the country further accentuating growth.

This should cover all controls, including financial, operational, compliance and law and order. Parliament needs to have a strategic vision and must ensure that right culture is promoted, effective communication and commitment is shown by the government. The responsibility of prevention of corruption lies with both the government and the parliament. Parliament with oversight must create proper tone, create and maintain a culture of honesty and high ethics and must establish effective controls to prevent corruption and fraud. Suffice to say that if you don't keep the citizens happy at the end of the day you don't have government. Regular attendance to the parliamentarians to all sessions of the parliament should be made mandatory, a requirement which needs to be etched into Constitution or parliamentary procedures. Good governance, effective functioning of the parliament and the development of the country are linked. Countries with effective parliament fetch premium for external foreign investments into the country further accentuating growth.

"Men are from mars and Women are from Venus"

latest report on behaviour on internet suggests that men pursue many Internet activities more intensively than women, and that men are still first out-of-the-block in trying the latest technologies.

Compared with women, online men are more likely to check the weather, get news, get do-it-yourself information, check for sports information, get political information, get financial information, do job-related research, download software, listen to music, rate a product/person/service through an online reputation system, download music files, use a web-cam, take a class.

Compared with men, online women are more likely to use e-mail, get maps and directions, look for health and medical information, use web sites to get support for health or personal problems, get religious information.

More than men, women are enthusiastic online communicators, and they use e-mail in a more robust way. Women are more likely than men to use e-mail to write to friends and family about a variety of topics like sharing news and worries, planning events, forwarding jokes and funny stories. Women are more likely to feel satisfied with the role e-mail plays in their lives, especially when it comes to nurturing their relationships. And women include a wider range of topics and activities in their personal e-mails. Men use e-mail more than women to communicate with various kinds of organizations.

More online men than women perform online transactions. Men and women are equally likely to use the Internet to buy products and take part in online banking, but men are more likely to use the Internet to pay bills, participate in auctions, trade stocks and bonds, and pay for digital content. Men are more avid consumers than women of online information. Men look for information on a wider variety of topics and issues than women do. Men are more likely than women to use the Internet as a destination for recreation. Men are more likely to: gather material for their hobbies, read online for pleasure, take informal classes, participate in sports fantasy leagues, download music and videos, remix files, and listen to radio.

How will marketing agencies use this information to their benefit in online advertizing? What will google do differently in their search engine in order to incorporate these finding? Behaviour related changes in marketers would be interested in such data in major way.