Ability to Influence Drives Agenda

Burrp- Differentiation thro' User Reviews- Vishal Anand

2012-02-11T13:22:00.000+05:30

In this Video, i chat with Vishal Anand, the Head/Director of Burrp about Burrp's business and his own journey.

Burrp is a leading local search service provider with 1.5 million users like me who depend on it for their decisions on where to go, where to eat and which TV channel to watch etc... Their key competitive differentiation is in the volume and high quality of user reviews they have. They are present in 12 cities and have feet on the ground on each of these cities and are looking to expand, of course.

Vishal talks about the model, how it works, how they are different and what the future holds. He also talks about his personal journey- he has spent ~15 years in the US in Seattle, and has worked with Real Networks- remember them- the Real Player? and Infospace.

Vishal is based in Mumbai

Rakesh Godhwani-Creating a 800 Cr Endowment Fund for IIMB

2012-02-04T22:14:00.002+05:30

I have a very exciting conversation with Rakesh Godhwani, CEO IIM Bangalore Alumni and Fundraising office.

Rakesh has infused an entirely new life and passion into the Alumni activities of IIM Bangalore which has taken off . Here, in this video, he talks about his audacious goal of raising 800 Crores over the next 10 years for IIM Bangalore's Endowment Fund and some of the stuff he has planned.

He also talks about the stories and his inspiration for writing his newly released book Plunnge which is available on http://bit.ly/plunngeonflipkart which promises to be fascinating reading.

Finally, this conversation is also about Rakesh's personal journey. He graduated from IIMB, worked with corporate high-paying technology jobs and then followed his passion to create and build something new and live a dream.

All in all, a fascinating story. You can reach Rakesh on his email

SanjeevGadre-Indian Entrepreneurs ignore Marketing

2012-02-04T21:40:00.000+05:30

I catch up for a quick chat with Sanjeev Gadre to discuss his experiences in advising small entrepreneurs on marketing.

Sanjeev comes with a great pedigree. With bluechip academic credentials ( IIT/IIM), he has most recently been the Global head of marketing at Adobe for the Print and Publishing business- he left this role to evangelise marketing to Startups. He is currently a fractional CMO ... and does a bunch of speaking to help startups with their marketing.

Sanjeev thinks Indian entrepreneurs tend to ignore marketing or at best look at the function as an afterthought. Listen to the video for more. You can look up Sanjeev at his linkedin profile @ http://linkd.in/AgqpDE

Nithyanand-DAFFCO-Building One of India's Largest Furniture Plants

2012-01-28T22:58:00.001+05:30

In this video- i chat with Nithyanand, the Head and Director of Dark Forest Furniture Company, a leader in the Cafe Coffee Day Group, and discuss his efforts to create one of the largest furniture plants in India.

Coffee Day group is already strongly backward integrated, with the Coffee for the chain being sourced from the group's own plantations, they are the largest producers of Arabica coffee in Asia .

For Cafe Coffee Day, furniture costs are ~ 30% of the Capex in a typical Cafe, hence there is significant savings to be made by backward integration. They are able to save 30-50% of the cost as compared to furniture they used to import from China/ Malaysia, and of course, they are able to customise their production to suit their specific requirements.

But the idea is to think bigger than just supplying to Coffee Day. They have significant timber assets already owing to their plantations, and they have also acquired significant forest land at Guyana and made scale investments into the furniture factory in Chikmaglur, near Bangalore in India. They intend to to move beyond into the retail space, and more ambitious plans are afoot, where they plan to compete with the global majors...

This is also about Nithyanand's journey- he used to lead Way2Wealth, a financial services company in the group, and found his passion in design and furniture.

From GUI to NUI- Harish Vaidyanathan, Evangelist @Microsoft

2012-01-21T01:10:00.001+05:30

In this video, I chat with Harish Vaidyanathan, Director, Technical Evangelism @ Microsoft. Harish talks about the focus on Experience that Microsoft is working on, and talks about the key platforms- the mobile, the tablet , the desktop and the surface and the Kinect platforms and the cool stuff Microsoft is developing.

From Mango to Metro (win 8), from Pixelsense Surface 2.0 to Kinect- this is your insight into what Microsoft is thinking and doing...

InMobi- A Global Innovation Coming out of India- AmitGupta-Cofounder

2012-01-17T12:06:00.000+05:30

You have perhaps heard of InMobi, a Company that is a poster-child for Indian innovation on the global stage, that is well on its way to become a global giant in the mobile advertising. InMobi has recently been given a turbo boost of $200 Million by Softbank- in this video, i chat with Amit Gupta, co-founder of InMobi.

Amit spearheads InMobi's growth efforts by focusing on strategic alliances as well as managing publisher relationships. He has also played a key role in developing the company's business strategies and entry into various geographies.

Prior to InMobi, Amit founded Analyticsworks, a company focused on business intelligence and which he brought to profitability before starting InMobi.

Amit has also worked in a Bay area startup, Andale, where he successfully contributed in developing the business strategies and processes of the startup. He worked directly with the CEO to help initiate new areas of revenues for the company. Amit also gained deep insight about how to leverage technology to enable business during his early professional years.

Amit completed his undergraduate studies from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT). Amit loves explaining any complicated topic to a novice by articulating relevant real life examples.

The growing usage of mobile phones in the developing markets inspired Amit to co-found InMobi. Amit aspires for InMobi to be one of the globally successful internet product companies emerging out of India.

Putting Design at the Heart of Business- RohitSinghal,CEO,Sourcebits

2012-01-09T09:28:00.001+05:30

In this fascinating conversation, I caught up with Dr.Rohit (yes, he is a qualified medical doctor, with an MD in Radiology), CEO, Sourcebits -he describes how he put design at the heart of his business and created a very successful company that has +350 apps in appstores and millions of downloads.

Rohit is the founder and CEO of Sourcebits, Inc, started in April 2006 in a garage on a shoestring budget. Five years later, Sourcebits has revenues running into multi-million dollars ,+ 300 employees and offices in Bangalore's Electronic City as well as the United States. Sourcebits has created +350 applications including Robokill, Knocking Live, Night Stand and Skyfire (a mobile browser for Android, iPhone and iPad). Rohit holds an MBBS in Medicine from Rohtak Medical College and an MD in Radiology.

Sourcebits was recently funded to the tune of 10 MM by Sequoia Capital and IDG.

Wait, you havent seen anything yet - Vaithee-Indiaplaza-CEO on Ecommerce in India

2012-01-07T22:59:00.001+05:30

In this video, I catch up with Vaitheeswaran, the CEO of Indiaplaza, the leading e-commerce company in India. Vaithee describes Indiaplaza's business model and also shares his predictions for the future of e-commerce in india, which is, needless to say, very bright.

Indiaplaza is India's first e-commerce company, started in 1999, and offering different products for sale on their website.(www.Indiaplaza.com) They are the pioneers in the online shopping space in India and were formerly known as Fabmart.com and later Fabmall.com,

Indiaplaza offers nearly 8 million products online including books, CD-ROMs, cameras, mobile phones, apparel, jewelry, flowers, chocolates, watches, and food items, and has nearly 1.5 million customers worldwide.

Mastercard's Chayan Hazra- Mobile payments in India will explode!

2012-01-07T21:15:00.001+05:30

I speak to Chayan Hazra, Vice President, Mastercard @ MobileIndia2012 @ Bangalore and get his insights on the status of mobile payments industry in india.

He is responsible MasterCard initiatives for Mobile, UID, Remittance, Processing & Transit in South Asia.

He believes this industry will explode due to three factors, the most interesting of which is the government itself...see the video for more...

Sunder, Infosys- Influencer Marketing, THE cornerstone of B2B marketing- and how to get it right

2012-01-07T21:06:00.000+05:30

I speak here to an old friend and colleague from Infosys, Sunder Sarangan, who has spearheaded a very successful influencer relations program @ Infosys marketing and here he gives his insights on what makes for a good influencer program and how it relates to business, sales and the other parts of marketing.

The Indian Telecom Market-Anuraj Gambhir Telecom Guru

2012-01-07T10:05:00.001+05:30

I chat with Anuraj about the indian telecom market in this conversation.

Anuraj Gambhir has worked in the mobile telecommunications industry for over two decades across several parts of the mobile value web and devices ecosystem on four continents - Australasia, North America, Europe & Asia. He has worked from hands-on technical roles to senior executive management positions and is regarded by many as an industry visionary. Companies he has worked for include: NASA/JPL, SingTel Optus, Logica/Aethos, T-Mobile, Orange, GSM Association, Sharp, Siemens, BenQ mobile, Spice Corp & currently as Director -- Strategy & Innovation with Ericsson, based in India. He has spearheaded several innovations in the advanced as well as grassroot level mobile domain in mature and emerging markets.

Customer Engagement via Mobile- Capillary Technologies

2012-01-06T23:22:00.001+05:30

My chat with Aneesh Reddy, the co-founder and CEO of Capillary Technologies

Capillary is one of the faster growing technology product companies in the custoer engagement solution space, and the largest Retail CRM provider in the country. Established in 2008, Capillary provides next generation customer engagement solutions to retailers and consumer facing businesses.

Capillary currently caters to more than 100 major brands worldwide, reaching over 10 million consumers across 6000+ stores in 500 cities with increased numbers in the offing. The talent pool of 150+ professionals from noted companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo, dunnhumby, Fair Isaac and best management and engineering institutes in India including IITs and IIMs.

Incubated in IIT Kharagpur, Capillary also focuses on high quality data capture, actionable analytics, instant cross-sell solutions, and instant gratification to generate a far higher ROI on customer engagement for retailers – all delivered through its patent pending cloud + mobile + social platform.

Within a short span of 3 years, Capillary has successfully established a strong presence in the Middle East, United Kingdom, South Africa and Singapore. Capillary’s international operations are run under its subsidiary companies – Capillary Solutions FZ-LLC (Dubai), Capillary Technologies Ltd (UK) and Capillary Technologies SG PTE. LTD. (Singapore).

Capillary is the winner of NASSCOM Emerge 50 – League of Ten 2011, TiE Entrepreneurial Excellence Award 2011 and TechSparks 2011. Capillary was the India Winner of the QPrize 2009, a global business plan contest conducted by Qualcomm Inc., and is a portfolio company of Qualcomm Ventures, with offices in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Dubai and London.

Krishnan Ramaswami- Stanford PhD- Bringing the 3D Experience to Mobile P...

2011-12-30T01:17:00.001+05:30

Krishnan Ramaswami has created an App CardzCreator that has been downloaded 2.4 million times on Android and Java Appstores (and he has done all this without being present on the Apple store which he is releasing in a few weeks). He is a PhD in Robotics from Stanford University and has a Masters in Engineering before that from Indian Institute of Science (IISC)- he is the Founder Entrepreneur and the CTO of 3DSoc, www.3dsoc.com , a company funded by IDGVentures.

3D Solid Compression (3DSoC) develops 3D products for the mobile space. Powered by VIS, the world’s most concise 3D representation, their platform and applications enable easy consumption and sharing of 3D content on mobile phones..

SmsGyan-Deepak&Abhinav.m4v

2011-12-24T09:45:00.000+05:30

Ever sent an SMS to 55-444 for a search query? or used SMSgyan?

Meet Deepak Ravindran and Abhinav Sree, founders of SMSGyan- who have serviced 250 Million queries since their start, have an active userbase of 10 Million, and do 0.5 Million queries daily. And they were in college until 2009.

Sounds fascinating? I catch up with them and they describe their product and how they got here from Kasargode near Mangalore. If you want to try their product out, SMS any query to 55-444 on any network, or check them out on smsgyan

SanjayPurohit- Infosys.m4v

2011-12-23T00:27:00.000+05:30

In this video I catch up with Sanjay Purohit, SVP @ Infosys who has recently taken charge of the Products, Platforms and Solutions portfolio at Infosys, which is targeted with being a third of the overall revenue in the next 5 years.

Before this Sanjay used to earlier be the Head of Strategy and Planning at Infosys- here we talk about his vision for the technology future and what are the key trends he sees, as well as his personal journey so far. You can also check out an Economic Times article on Sanjay and his portfolio at this link Sanjay Purohit InfosysEdge on Economic Times

Anshuman-Mygola-$1Bn Travel opportunity.m4v

2011-12-19T22:50:00.001+05:30

My conversation with Anshuman Bapna, who has identified a $ 1 Billion opportunity in the huge travel industry that he is bringing to life through his startup- Mygola (www.mygola.com)

Anshuman co-founded and sold RightHalf.com while in undergrad at IIT Bombay. After his MBA at Stanford, Anshuman spent two years in Google's Strategic Partnerships team negotiating Adsense deals with large travel partners.

Mygola are a travel planning service that lets people reach human guides to do all the online research for your trip. They answer questions about flights and hotels, and also find out esoteric travel information. They have built special technology that mines the unstructured travel information is scattered around the web. They use special tools built on top of the web to find the most relevant and freshest answer to questions.

You can check them out at Mygola.com

RAJEEV SURI (infosys) on CNBC Young Turks Program.MPG

2011-12-15T22:03:00.000+05:30

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/rajeevsuri
twitter: #rajeevsuri

I work currently as the Entrepreneur-CEO ofa Café Coffee Day group company.

The Media platform I have created is beingimplemented at Café Coffee Day as new revenue stream. It has gone live in acouple of cafes and is currently being rolled out across 500 cafes in thenation. I have created the concept, the hardware, the content and I run the media business (http://bit.ly/vHDZ3d).

With an MBA from IIM Bangalore, I bring tothe table my +15 years as a P&L owner with globally respected brands,including the Consumer (Colgate Palmolive), Technology (Infosys) and Retail(Coffee Day) , where I held leadership/P&L roles.

I was showcased as aYoung Turk on CNBC (http://bit.ly/RajeevoncnbcTV).

80% of the net will be videoYoubroadband-CEO Chakravarthy.m4v

2011-12-08T22:45:00.000+05:30

A very interesting chat with EVS Chakravarthy, the CEO & MD of Youbroadband.in, a high-speed broadband services provider operating in 12 cities in India and servicing 350,000 households.

He speaks about how he believes high-speed broadband will change the customer experience and drive Video, which, he predicts will form 80% of the net in the future. He also talks about how he did the management buyout of the company from British Gas.

Set up in 2001 by British Gas as Iqara Broadband, YOU Broadband & Cable India Limited became a Citigroup Venture Capital International (CVCI) owned company in 2006.
YOU Broadband is a category 'A' ISP and India's first ISO accredited broadband service provider. YOU offers high speed Internet, voice and video services through cable modem platform to residential, SME and corporate customers in 12 cities. YOU is expanding its presence in other cities across the country.

TheNextDecade for Indian Media- MediaGuru-SUKU.m4v

2011-11-20T23:33:00.001+05:30

Suku is a doyen of Indian media- with extensive experience on all sides of the media industry . He jointly runs AIDEM media, which has extensive properties in the Indian Media Industry.

Here, he talks about what the coming decade means for Indian Media- what are the key trends, and what will that mean. He describes how India is one of the few nations in the Billion dollar club this year, and talks how digital will have to make peace with TV, which will continue to be the dominant media channel for Indians.

He also describes how india will continue to be a huge source of growth for the media industry due to various factors.A great video to watch to get a quick snapshot of the Indian media industry from a Guru.

Trailblazing a new business- Microventuring-KarthikReddy.m4v

2011-11-20T23:11:00.001+05:30

Karthik is trailblazing a new business model through his Blume Ventures -he is enabling Micro Venturing, and he has already funded a dozen companies to varying extents - $100K (50 Lakhs) to $250K (1.25Cr)

Most capital providers work on larger size funding requirements- so what's Karthik's vision, and how has he structured it so he will be successful?

He talks about the viewpoint, explains a couple of ventures he has funded and describes how everything about his business is different- an extremely fascinating and innovative conversation- a great listen.

Mirjam-The SocialEntrepreneurship Awards & the Schwab Foundation.m4v

2011-11-18T00:35:00.002+05:30

I caught up with Mirjam Schöning at the WEF India summit at Mumbai this week. Mirjam heads the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and has been involved in this space for 11 years.
Mirjam was here as a part of the 2011 Indian Social Entrepreneurship Award which was awarded to Neelam Chibber of Industree, Bangalore
Mirjam talks about whats happening in India on Social Entrepreneurship, how that compares to the world. She opines that the entire Social Entrepreneurship movement has evolved over time- one of the Entrepreneurs told her after a recent WEF China summit "I did not have to explain the term social Entrepreneurship even once at the event".
She also talks about her passion for Social Entrepreneurship and why she left her Bain Consulting job to do this.

Does an MBA degree kill Entrepreneurship? Reuben Abraham, Professor @ IS...

2011-11-18T00:06:00.001+05:30

In this provocative conversation, Reuben Abraham, Professor, ISB Hyderabad and I chat on the sidelines of the recently concluded WEF India summit at Mumbai. We talk about the MBA mindset in the student and in B Schools- and conclude that the B-school does indeed kill Entrepreneurial aspirations

Piyush Tewari- Social Entrepreneur.m4v

2011-11-17T23:24:00.001+05:30

India loses 18 people every hour to road accidents- the highest number of road accidents in the world. This is the biggest killer in the 25-40 age group, the most productive age and costs the economy 2.7% of its GDP.

Piyush Tewari through Save Life has chosen to change this- and he has given up his promising corporate career to the cause.

After losing a 16 yr old cousin to a road accident, Piyush set up SaveLife, a social entrepreneurship organisation dedicated to providing assistance to Roadside victims in the "golden hour" after the accident

Hear how his implementations have gone in Thane and Delhi and what he is doing

Ramesh CFO Lupin Pharma on Corporate Reporting

2011-11-17T11:05:00.000+05:30

Ramesh is the CFO or Lupin Pharma, and here he talks about his approach to corporate reporting.

Here, he talks about his viewpoint - he quantifies the qualitative aspects of business when he does reporting- and he goes on to describe how he does it- through a couple of examples

The TATA Way-Anant Nadkarni.m4v

2011-11-08T11:10:00.001+05:30

The way i was welcomed by the Security guard at TATA Motors made me stay at the TATA group for over 30 years" Says Anant Nadkarni, Anant Nadkarni, Vice President, Group Corporate Sustainability at Tata Group

In this fascinating conversation, he discusses how Tata's approach to business is different, and why TATA is such a force for good.

In his role in facilitating a council of managing directors of almost 45 major Tata Group Orgs, he evangelises the TATA way and, as a part of this talk, articulates why doing good is not dichotomous from doing business.

He gets into the Neeti, Nyaya and the Neeyat elements of how the TATA group works.

Do Board Directors understand their Companies? Charles Tilly-CEO

2011-11-08T11:07:00.001+05:30

In 30% of Companies, Directors dont understand their business- a shocking study by BlackSunPLC reveals.
In this conversation with Charles Tilly, CEO, Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), I discuss why this is and what can be done to mitigate it- Charles explains what can be done through examples and anecdotes...

Coffeeday Interactive touch tables- Rajeev Suri-Vision.wmv

2011-11-08T11:04:00.000+05:30

TonyManwaring-CEO-TomorrowsCompany.m4v

2011-11-08T11:01:00.001+05:30

Indian Companies have an instinctive view on sustainability already- and hence there is a wonderful link between Tomorrows Company and India, says Tony Manwaring, CEO, Tomorrows Company, who is launching the UK's leading think tank, Tomorrows Company in India

Luisa ForceforGoodPioneers Tomorrows Company

2011-11-08T10:53:00.001+05:30

Luisa is setting up the ForceForGoodPioneers Forum for Tomorrows Company- which is a very interesting way to get experts and the youth involved inSustainability, leveraging experts in Sustainability and the social platforms- hear her discuss the example of Lend-Lease and their Elephant and Castle redevelopment story as an example...

Pat@TomorrowsCompany-Global talent, Reporting & Inclusive Development.m4v

2011-11-07T21:45:00.000+05:30

Pat Cleverly is with Tomorrows Company, a London based ThinkTank and is responsible for initiatives- here she talks about the 3 initiatives Tomorrows Company has brought out on Talent, Integrated Reporting and Inclusive Growth
She identifies the key findings and the best practices and practitioners in each of the three.

BijuSreedharan- Education in the US.m4v

2011-10-14T11:04:00.003+05:30

BobbyBose,Entrepreneur & CEO EzeTap

2011-10-12T15:54:00.001+05:30

Entrepreneurship after 10+ years @ Corporates- Conversation with Anand

2011-09-28T09:25:00.001+05:30

I am Anna Hazare- V2.0

2011-09-26T17:45:00.004+05:30

Ever since the last month’s frenzy over Anna and his fast, things may have changed, at least in the short run, even if its very little- a real-estate developer friend tells me that when he deals with urban planning authorities now-a-days, he senses that the sense of “entitlement” over bribes is lesser (though the bribes still need to be paid!).

But there is also a real danger that nothing much happens and we might be looking back a while from now and see this as a minor hiccup in India’s steady progress towards the top (?) in our ranking ,currently 83^rd ,of the world’s most corrupt nations…

Implementing the Lokpal bill seems to be the one point agenda- and whilst focus is great, the question is, Is that enough? I think voices wiser than mine have weighed in on the overall merits of the bill, and don’t want to weigh-in on that, but there seems to be a rising consensus that Lokpal at the street level, will only impact months, if not years after implementation. And it will be dependent on people that staff it, even if they are accountable- the latin phrase “Quis custodiet ipsos custodies” springs to mind.

And yet, crowd power did force everyone in authority to listen to and accept what Anna and his cohort asked for. So to me, the key question is, what more can we do whilst the iron is hot, whilst the society will be listened to, and action will be taken, which might lead to a more sustainable path towards a corruption free India?

So what can be done? What else can we ask for? I think one direction to focus on, is to have a strident call to action for Transparency in specific areas that are very high touch to citizens.

I can hear you go- hey, what’s new here? We have been pushing for transparency forever, haven’t we? Yes, we have, and a huge success of one of these measures, which we perhaps owe all the exposure of the scams- CWG, 2G etc to, the RTI (the Right to Information) act was introduced in 2005 by Dr.Manmohan Singh – Isnt it ironic, that its his government that is bearing the brunt of RTI’s disclosure requirements?

But what I mean is, transparency, in the age of technology and the internet is like RTI on steroids- many people can process and make sense of vast quantities of information and bring that to public attention via 140 characters. If we are able to unleash this transparency on those specific issues that have “high everyday common man touch”, which impacts each of us everyday, we are on a MagLev/Bullet Train heading towards the promised corruption-free land. I have 3 examples to quote from the first world:

1- Education and The School League tables in the UK-When Britain decided to force their school education system to make public certain information- statistics how many students passed what grades, and at what levels, it created an entirely new industry on the internet of secondary data and reporting, and today, schools in the uk are entirely focused on their league rankings which determine which parents and students seek them out- an exemplar of how transparency in school performance has improved it
2- Policing and the Crime Graphs in cities- multiple cities are following this, but the key example I have to point out is what happened in the uk in February, when the government decided to make crime statistics public, and the website crashed because of the sheer volume of traffic.
3- Making accounts and spending at every level public – which means anyone can access howmuch a Panchayat/Ward, Taluk, District, Municipality, State etc has spent the last year, or historically- public scrutiny, coupled with aggressive media would keep the corporators, MLAs and MPs honest. Of course this sounds great but it is complex and requires some understanding of accountancy, and even with that, will be difficult to decipher with countless tables and numbers- but nevertheless, there are tools that can be employed (example, comparative between previous and current year’s spends on particular heads, comparative between different wards etc)

The key idea is if we are able to increase transparency in those areas that are high-touch to the aam admi, and accelerate the spread of that through the internet and mobile technologies, and open it upto other entrepreneurs who can make profitable businesses out of this data (e.g, homes for sale in low-crime neighbourhoods) would create a sustainable ecosystem where the demand for this data from everyday public would help create more need for transparency, and keep people honest. Amen to that!

Sathish Bhatt- US Polo's success in India

2011-07-01T09:28:00.000+05:30

The Indian Retail Market- Sathish Bhatt, Retail Guru

2011-06-19T23:26:00.000+05:30

Baba Ramdev, Anna Hazare, Anti-Corruption Drive- what gives?

2011-06-09T14:11:00.002+05:30

We live in interesting times- Baba Ramdev, is on a hunger-fast against corruption and black money. Anna Hazare, with his bluechip Gandhian credentials, is leading the other flank- with his ability to attract the urban middle class across the nation. Amidst all this, there has been huge energy created around the issue – with demonstrations, fasts, prayers, protests in most cities across India. In the recent elections, Tamil Nadu saw a total rout of the ruling party, DMK, who were in the eye of the 2G storm.

However, Indians, and I dare say, most emerging market populations, have lived in an environment where this has been a part of everyday life for a very long time. So, the question is, why this spontaneous outburst of energy across the nation now, and, perhaps more relevant, what will emerge from all of this?

To understand this, we should perhaps examine this a bit. I am sure all of us have had some kind of a brush with “bribes”. When I was a child, and some electrical connection went wrong at our home, which happened frequently, I remember our calls to the “government lineman” who would land up reasonably promptly, fix the issue, and accept a token amount as a tip (Rs 10) for “chai-pani”. As I graduated from college, this system had evolved- a very pot-bellied policeman who came to verify my residence for passport issuance expected the “token” amount to be much larger, and it was no longer a “tip”, it was a “wage”, if you want it done, pay up. As time progressed, the wage has become a “demand”, and has gotten into really large sums of money.

So what used to be a small tip for a service, tolerated even if it was frowned upon, became a larger wage, and has crossed the line into extortionate territory- with the numbers now boggling the mind. That has started to rankle enormously. Also, Corruption is seen to be blocking the way of the promised “good life” which all of India wants, and wants very badly- witness the national shame of a shoddy job on Commonwealth Games by Kalmadi. Both of these perceptions have led to a smouldering anger, which has been fanned to flames by the likes of Annasaheb and the Good Guruji.

The issue is now so centre-stage that politicians of every hue and colour have jumped into the fray. Which means something will happen- Kalmadi can expect to cool his heels in jail for a while, with Kanimozhi and Raja keeping him company. The government will come out with some action / legislation, or it will face annihilation in the next elections- and corruption will, one hopes, be pushed back to “more tolerable” levels.

However, what remains to be seen is if we can get to a “low corruption” society, like it is in the first world. Unfortunately, in a scarcity led economy, where there will always be more demand than supply for anything good, the urge to “tip” for convenience/ or privilege will always be there, and hence the temptation to take the tip. Our big hope lies in reducing this scarcity, and becoming as prosperous as the first world is, and hopefully, with +8% growth, we are headed there soon.

MallikarjunDas-COO,Madison-Talks about Media Accountability

2011-06-08T17:49:00.001+05:30

MallikarjunDas- Media Guru- on how Touch devices can revolutionise marke...

2011-06-08T17:48:00.001+05:30

MallikarjunDas-COO,MadisonMedia on the Fragmentation of Indian Media

2011-06-05T08:07:00.002+05:30

When is Selling Important, if at all?

2011-01-18T12:16:00.003+05:30

This post sets out to explore the hypothesis- “selling skills are always important to a business in a competitive industry”- the question is- is it?

The reason this question is important is because sales and marketing are always expensive efforts, and hit the p&l strongly, and reduce margins. And if there is an option to minimise that effort, that option ought to be examined real hard, because it means better business margins.

Owing to a tech product i am building , I found myself in Taiwan recently, working through hardware suppliers, and got into a quaint situation- yes there is a language problem-very difficult to do business there if you don’t speak and understand Mandarin, but, on top of the language problem, i found little display of selling/consultative skills, and very little flexibility in terms- so basically, i was confronted multiple times with- these are my terms, take it or leave it- large order or small...and this was despite having someone fluent in English and Mandarin with me to discuss terms.

This set me thinking- obviously, Taiwan is a very successful nation when it comes to this particular market- most electronic components are made in Taiwan, and its home to the largest manufacturers of anything you care to name- memory, chips, motherboards, lcds, etc etc... So how did they become so successful without the selling/customer interface front end that i had assumed was a necessity of doing business?

The answer- in this particular instance- selling is absolutely NOT important. Why? To answer this, i would try and answer the critical question- how is my business configured- or put differently, how do i make money in my business?

Let me put this idea a different way. I am sure all of you have gone shopping for veggies in a market sometime ... Has the owner of Stall A ever tried to sell you the benefits of one vegetable over the other? Say carrots over potatoes? Just imagine the conversation- “potatoes are brilliant because they give you all the carbs you need blah blah“- and that results in a 1 kg purchase- in the meanwhile, the stall opposite has sold 4 kilos of potato, 6 kilos of carrots and 10 kilos of tomatoes and laughed away with 20X profits. Clearly we can see stall A going out of business very soon, right?

So the insight is- If i am in a low margin, high volume business, or work with buyers know what they want, and configure it properly, i can make the business work with little or zero sales effort.

You would be surprised at how many situations this applies to in businesses. Research indicates that 4 out of 5 consumer purchases happen because the buyer finds the seller, which, if you think about it, is counter intuitive, considering the effort any business puts into sales and marketing.

A quick and easy way to get out of the need to sell is to position yourself right- and i mean both conceptual positioning as well as the location. This is the logic that leads people/shops that sell the same things to group together- a marketplace for something- the veggie market with lots of stalls, or, for instance Tottenham Court Road for electronics in London, or Mumbai’s wholesale market, the Masjid Bunder, whose 40 shops were responsible for 10% of my revenue (from 10,000 shops) as the Sales Head in Mumbai- I am sure you can think of multiple examples...

But a caveat- this works for products or services that have a reasonably established demand. If your business is in a new product or service, and there is a need to create demand , i am afraid you don’t have an alternative but to look for sales and marketing help...

Why has the Obama Brand Eroded so fast, and by so much? And what can we learn?

2010-10-25T12:39:00.002+05:30

Barack Obama became the President in a landslide victory. He had history on his side, being the first African American to make it to the most powerful role in the world. To top it all, he had found an entirely new way of engaging with the community, leveraging technology, web20, and in the process creating a lot of records- in the way his campaign was funded, in the way he created and engaged a huge grassroots movement , in the way he brought an entire generation to voting booths etc

And Yet!

On November 2^nd the Democrats are expected to be roundly routed. Despite 8 years of Bush, the Republican base has never been as energised as now, with the Tea Party movement adding to the energy and the zeal, and in the process giving all of us a lot of media moments... His own popularity has dipped – he is now more unpopular than he is popular. (48.4% disapprove vs 42.3% approve) All this in a very short time- talk about short honeymoons...

So what on earth happened? He has not committed any gaffes, he has not had his character besmirched in a big way – let’s not forget, Clinton survived Lewinsky, he has not done anything that was not done by his predecessors – the 1930s deep recession, where Roosevelt held onto power, for instance, saw a lot more expansion in government. And, it is not as if the democrats have crumbled as a party- to my mind, the wave of “lobbying power a’la Jack Abramoff” delivered much bigger blows to the republican establishment.

So what went wrong?

To my mind, he committed a cardinal error. Prevailing thinking in today’s first world- not just the United States, which is dominated by the “middle class”, is focused on career growth and wealth/asset accumulation over their career spans. Yes, the recession has put a big dent on their plans currently, but it has not changed their focus- wealth accumulation.

And they see Obama as standing in their way! His advocated big Government is seen as a barrier to individual wealth creation, both in terms of conventional American wisdom of “free-market” thinking, and in terms of obvious wastages and inefficiencies that are very visible in routing any spending through governmental budgets, let alone the mega bucks that Obama put through the Big Bailout and the Healthcare Bill. The Telegraph has a good article that explores this if you want to read more.

And that sentiment has been exploited by Republicans, through the Tea Party movement. Unlike establishment Republicans, who could not speak out against Obama because of their very own Bush excesses, the so called Tea Party fringe, which is, make no mistake, absolutely Republican, have no such baggage to carry. From Sarah Palin to Rand Paul to Christine ODonnell, they are screaming out loud and clear, and have actually succeeded in bringing enormous energy into what was seen as a spent Republican party in 2009.

So what? I guess the rule that suggests itself is “Don’t bet against prevailing wisdom”. I know that is unpalatable for folks that are inherently higher risk takers, and I clearly am. So, let me modify that. Don’t bet all you have against prevailing wisdom, because there is a very high possibility that you will lose, no matter how much you have going for you currently. Make small incremental bets, and if you are convinced that prevailing wisdom changing, then start to make bigger bets. The caution is- be absolutely sure that the prevailing wisdom is no longer “prevailing”.

Ah yes, Obama has himself to blame, more than anyone else!

The Conundrum facing Blackberry

2010-08-03T12:32:00.002+05:30

Interesting post by Mark Evans, suggesting how Blackberry could counter increased competition from Apple and Google.

I have a slightly different point of view. I would suggest that if they took the social openness path, they would risk alienating the core markets they serve.

The enterprise space values security and the locked down, closed system that the blackberry provides- they are not that much in favour of openness and of social network integration. This may also be because they are not sure of the security, reputational and the productivity ramifications of this openness. As long as enterprise behaviour is driven by this stance, and it currently clearly is, blackberry's interests would be best served by servicing the core markets which are their source of revenue and profitability, rather than go after an entirely different market that may or may not accept their new offers.

Yes, they can do more things as well. Blackberry currently battles increased government activism owing to its opacity- UAE has banned their devices, Saudi Arabia is following on its footsteps, and India has threatened a ban- the key reason being the Governments' ability to monitor terror networks. They should actively be working to ensure that they are able to continue to fulfil their core customer markets well, whilst continuing to meet higher regulatory compliance needs from increasingly strident governments- which will require significant changes in technology and policy. That is perhaps the more immediate challenge they face.

Over the longer run, as the enterprise space becomes more open (trends are clearly pointing towards that), they should start to worry about how to manage the issues that are being expressed in this post, which are clearly highly relevant, but not just yet!

in reference to:

"Should the Blackberry Go Social?"
- Should the Blackberry Go Social? | Social Media Today (view on Google Sidewiki)

Flagship Programs: Creating Better Outcomes from Your Big-Ticket Events

2010-08-02T15:33:00.003+05:30

The world is more exciting again. After brutal cutbacks, most organisations are back to kinder economic climes, and are doing more investing. Good news for marketing folks, who have been biding their time the past 24 months...

But the world is also a different place today. Yes the recession is over, but it doesn’t seem like it. The relentless quest for ROI and value only got more demanding. Yes there is money, but the need to justify spending doing the same old things is getting to be difficult.

The question you as the b2b marketer face is- Do you want to do things differently, acknowledging the new reality we are in, or do you want to go back to the way things were in 2006-2007, knowing perhaps that it will not be the best thing for your company, and knowing that the next recession will again mean that events will be the first to go from the budget?

Going back to the way things were in 2006-07 is not really a possibility, is it? Unless you are able to present a different strategy that meets more stringent ROI criteria, you are likely to be forced into an event execution mode, and lose that opportunity to create something new, something that will ensure that events will create significantly more leverage for your p&l.

But the question is, what is that “new” that can be done? Is it in the choice of event properties? After all, there are rather limited options of where the right target audiences gather – and you can only choose from so many choices. In the tech world, how many choices do you have beyond the Gartner spectrum, the Oracle Open Worlds and Sapphires, all of which are pricey, to say the least. This doesn’t seem to be the next big thing that will rock the boat, and turn you into a rockstar....

What about the way you run events today, In particular, the big ticket events, the ones with price tags of >$100 K? Is there something that can be done there? Let’s explore...

In my observation, the following are true about how big-ticket events are run:

1. Most of these events are executed in an event logistics focus mode, with all the energy and focus going into the building the best stalls, designing the best gimmicks to get leads etc- but perhaps more important, a rather limited focus on business outcomes
2. These big ticket events are “owned” typically by one single p&l which might perhaps only be a small part of the company revenues. Other parts of the business find it difficult to engage in the event and hence the entire company perhaps does not directly benefit.
3. The so called “leads” are, in 80% of the cases, a lost opportunity. When conversations get passed onto sales who typically have a quarterly focus and a niche focus, only those conversations that tick both the boxes get followed through, and the ones that do not fall by the wayside- how many CIOs did your organisation meet in these events that you never bothered to stay in touch with?

Is there a way to solve for these issues and get better outcomes for the company as a whole without spending more money?

I believe there is. I call it the The Flagship Programs View:

I advocate that all large events of strategic significance, which typically account for about 70% of the event budgets, which i categorise as Flagship events, should be managed very differently from the way they are managed now, and the way other smaller events will continue to be managed.

Flagship events are fairly unique as the channel that offers direct access to people that will buy from us at scale, and also offer enormous opportunities to integrate all the other good work that marketing and the rest of the organisation is doing-ensuring message consistency, getting the best references into play through case studies, leveraging other good work such as AR and PR etc.

Think about it this way- a typical tech company could, in a year, “touch” more than 30,000 prospects through the various Flagship events- between the WEF, the world’s CEO forum which introduces you to 5000 folks, SAP’s Sapphires which exposes you to 12000, Oracle Open-world about 10000, Gartner events gets ~5000. One more thing - there is a significant overlap between the folks that go to these events. Consider this- folks with big budgets are rather small in number. They are looking at us in different events, and may be at different stages with reference to their predisposition to engage with us, and, if we are able to identify them and manage their interaction with us across these big ticket events, they will convert faster, and we will be more efficient in our event resource utilisation (money, people and leads).

Flagship events should be managed in a way that maximises benefits to the entire company, and with an emphasis on consistency, at a platform and a message level. The key outcome we are striving to maximise is - we accelerate our prospects’ journey from “who are you” to “i have this thing i am looking for help on” through our multiple direct touch-points these events offer to engage with them.

Is it different? It is. Let’s try and clarify what this view is about and, more important, what it is not.

• It is not about trying to do new events - Immediate approach has to be about collecting the low hanging fruit , By fixing the inefficiencies in the way we approach flagship events because of lack of integration

• It is Not to execute these events better, but to maximize the value to us- so very important that we do not look at it as Event +

• This is not about making a 12 month program out of each flagship event- but about utilizing the mega events and the core smaller events, to tie together an awareness perception reach objective with our propect audience

• It is about defining a larger purpose in the execution of these events and the way we thread them together, and what we do with them

However, the raison-d-etre for this program is our participation in these events - the way business works, they need the instant gratification events provide, and hence organisations will invariably have events and an event budget. The idea is, as you build up your portfolio of big spend events, you integrate them into the flagship program structure and governance.

In the next few posts, let us explore how to go about selecting these events, what to do differently in them, and how to create a program view, spread over a year/18 months, around these activities.

Device? Or App? or AppStore?

2010-05-19T16:53:00.003+05:30

As ever, great insights from Prof Sadagopan, on Palm's potential new makeover under HP...

I echo the sentiment and wish Palm well...and completely agree that the mobile game matters the most looking into the future- as the Prof. argues.

But one additional point- the game is perhaps moving on. It is no longer just the device, or the OS, or the design that are going to matter to success- perhaps more important is the ecosystem, to be more precise, the 3rd party Apps that are going to be available in the ecosystem that will matter.

From that perspective, all the key players, led by the Apple App Store, Blackberry , Android and Nokia's Ovi are putting in enormous efforts into the ecosystem and encouraging 3rd party apps availability on the device.

That is one of the key reasons, that Apple is ahead -look at the plethora of Apps available- and Blackberry /Android are perhaps the fastest playing catchup.

The question is, does HP have what it takes to create this ecosystem? Or, if they adopt another ecosystem, eg Android, how will they tackle being pitched directly with the likes of HTC, Google (Nexus1) and Motorola (Droid)

Very interesting space to watch, indeed...

in reference to:

"HP acquires Palm"
- HP acquires Palm « Professor Sadagopan’s Weblog (view on Google Sidewiki)

Game Change in Indian Politics

2010-05-19T16:27:00.005+05:30

Interesting Analysis by Liz Mathew on how Rahul is consolidating his power inside the Congress party...

My insight- whilst I completely endorse Liz's optimism, I for one, believe that Rahul already has all the power he needs! He is, by design, staying away from formal roles. Let us not forget, his mum is the most powerful person in India today- without needing to have an official position or a portfolio.

I have been an outside observer (I am not connected to any political party) in the recently concluded Tamil Nadu IYC elections and have written about the details behind what is happening in the IYC. For more explicit details about what exactly is the IYC election process, i have 6 blog posts on my blog @ www.thoughtleadership-guru.blogspot.com

I see this movement, started as program "Vistaar" in 2007, as a significant game changer in the medium run- i predict a significant impact as soon as in 2014 Elections!

Why? The single biggest thing this represents is a replacement to the nepotistic/ patronage culture endemic in all politics of India, with a straightforward, if-you-have-won-the-IYC-elections-you-will-get-the-party-ticket-to-contest, a simple, equal opportunity, easy to understand way to make it in Politics.

in reference to:

"Assertive Rahul Gandhi wants to have more seats for youth!"
- Assertive Rahul Gandhi wants to have more seats for youth! : Have You Heard (view on Google Sidewiki)

Wassup China?

2010-03-26T09:59:00.001+05:30

This post is a reaction to Dr.Manmohan Singh, the Indian PM's conversation with Michael Dell- about Dell's considering shifting their $25 B of business from China to India...

First Google, next Dell- another biggie which is considering getting out of China. Makes me wonder, if the China story is losing its sheen?

The China Story, has been the darling of the world's press for a while now, and for good reasons too- they have done more to get people out of poverty, keep the world economy propped up, perhaps more than any other country in the last 2 years.

But, people and the media do tend to slowly lose interest as time passes, however great the story is, and perhaps its time now for China to face more opprobium...

They need to be careful though, because even small stories can now be blown up, particularly in the aftermath of the negative tailwind coming out of bigger stories.

Consider- Rio Tinto's perceived one-sided court case in China, Google's high profile exit, Dell's considered exit, to add to the earlier stories, and the continued pain of the RMB being undervalued making Chinese goods artificially cheaper in the world market and changing budget deficits for the first world- as the rest of the first world struggles to come out of the recession...

Well, the Chinese have not historically shown themselves adept at the art of managing perceptions with the rest of the world- but perhaps this is a good time to get to do that.

Meanwhile, i don't think this is fabulous news for India too- even if we get to bask, as the alternative @ scale to China- I think a dream China would be better for India... because in Economics and Business, wealth generation is rarely a zero sum game, and win-win relationships are based on everyone prospering, and it works better for us if our Neighbours are prosperous.

in reference to:

"Is Dell next to exit China?"
- Is Dell next to exit China? | News | TechRadar UK (view on Google Sidewiki)

Davos and the Recession- What do these mean for India?

2010-03-19T17:23:00.002+05:30

Sandeep Parekh, in an article in the ET, makes a passionate plea for improving competitiveness, reforming education and labour markets in India as the key messages coming out from Davos to India.

Whilst I do not dispute that the above are clearly big ticket agenda items India must act on, my question is- what part of Sandeep’s agenda for India is being inspired by Davos and events of the past two years? To me those are things we need to do, Davos or no Davos, recession or no recession...

When i look at Davos and the post Recession world- and broadly at the events of the past 2 years , i see the following three “tailwinds” that give us in India a cause to cheer:

1- Thanks to the past 2 years, for the first time, India truly cannot be ignored by ANY investor. Let me explain- yes, sure, india has been a hot destination for almost a decade now, but so have commodity markets, so has Emerging Europe, so have particular sectors in the first world, and indeed so has most of the first world economies, including the US. But for the first time, there are very, very few investment options that continue to yield returns, and india surely is near the top, if not on top of that list now. This is indeed different, and will translate to lots of good FDI flowing into India , which it already is. Good news, because, more than anything else, we need money- given that we have cheap talent, and a good agenda.

2- The First world economies continue to be anaemic, being propped up by government spending, which clearly is unsustainable, increases deficits massively, and borrows from their future incomes. All of which translates to less confidence and hence weakening currencies. Look at the $ or the £ vs the Rupee and you will see what i mean. The above, coupled with a massive Indian savings rate (~33%) translates to a big opportunity to acquire IP, Assets, Brands for India Inc. Stronger Indian corporates that have better ability to serve customers, because of better tech/ip etc, means a wealthier india. Good news.

3- Elections 2009 resulted in a strong, stable government that is capable of taking decisions and pushing policy and agenda. All indications are that this will be a government that will sty in power over the next term to- a 10 YEAR window of stability and policy driving. Which is already showing up in Educational reform (foreign universities bill) , in infrastructure etc. Stability is always good news for investment and growth, and we have that solid stable window now. Great news!

Alongside is the great China story. I refuse to believe that a strong China story is to the detriment of India- au contraire, a good China story clearly helps spotlight India’s story given the similarities-we are neighbours, highest growing economies, similar size and scale, in categorisation (emerging economies- though they i think have emerged alreadyJ) etc. And, occasionally, we benefit as well- for instance the Google and Rio Tinto’s experiences in China serve to highlight how different the Chinese system is from that of the rest of the world, and hence increases india’s attractiveness.

Finally, the words of cheer come from Martin Wolf, a long term Chino-phile, who in the recent article in the FT of the UK had wonderful words to say about how well India is coming out of the recession. Way to go, India.

in reference to: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/A-message-from-Davos-to-Delhi/articleshow/5661194.cms?curpg=1 (view on Google Sidewiki)

VI-Rahul’s Transformation of the Indian Youth Congress : Implications for Politics and for India

2010-03-08T12:33:00.000+05:30

This is the concluding post in my series of blogs on the transformation of the Indian Youth Congress. In this post, I speculate on the implications of this transformation on the Congress, on Other political parties, and on Politics in India. To go to the first post and follow this series in sequence, please click here.

Implications for the Congress: There is the addition of significant new blood to the ranks, and in a grass-root level cleansing of the process of politics, which historically has been given to too much of muck, grime and nepotism at this level. However, from an objective of winning mainstream elections, which is the dominant objective of any political party, this transformation may not, in the short run- 3 to 5 years -have too much of an impact.

But the long run outcomes change dramatically- clean systems will bubble up better talent, who are already proven to have contested and won elections, a fundamentally better route to get leadership. Also, since they are being “caught-young” (younger than 35), they are going to be around for a very long time.

This process also makes it clear who enjoys what support. As Rahul mentioned to me, one look at the id-card of any IYC member will tell him instantly how much support the member enjoys and how much of power he brings to bear on an election in that state. Unlike earlier, when a General Secretary of the IYC in a state only meant that you had a powerful patron, but not necessarily much support.

Most elections are won or lost on a 3-5 % swing in votes- having such an extensive party organisation and their extended families will mean that each member will translate to 3-4 votes at least- making this organisation the winning card in most elections- hence Congress will have an edge in every election.

Historically, Indian politics has been based on caste community and regional lines- the fact that no nationally significant party has come to power in the last 42 years in Tamil Nadu is a testimony to this fact. As winds of change blow, and as issues become increasingly national (jobs, security, corruption, governance, economic opportunities, infrastructure etc), a national party with presence at every level in the grassroots has a hugely significant advantage.

For the other parties: I am going to look at two types of parties- the regionally significant ones (eg the DMK/ AIADMK/ BSP /ShivSena etc) and at the nationally significant ones (BJP/ The Communists).

From Terrorism to Jobs, from Economics to Roads and other infrastructure, as issues become more and more national, i see a weakening role of the regional parties, whose agenda for just one region is just incapable of inspiring election wins, and a resurgent congress, based on the youth power ,will be a clear replacement alternative to existing Idealogy.

At a national level, the BJP already can depend on the RSS, which has a national level grass root program. But the RSS is not the BJP, and the RSS agenda is manifestly right-wing Hindu, and is not based on democratic principles of winning elections. Hence, there are likely to be a few issues in how the BJP counters this grass-root congress strategy, but i think they have it in them to make their changes and come upto scratch.

For India, this is a welcome fresh wind blowing – something which will bring more equity and participation, and make the process of governance much more transparent, and resulting in better and more thought through decisions for the society.

In particular, transparency and better politics in India minimises the one difference the world sees between India and China, to China’s benefit. Their “one party authoritianism” does deliver on what they have promised, even if there is a lot of corruption- whereas our opaque, slow, nepotistic and corruption ridden politics has not traditionally delivered. Good news!

Please feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

V-Rahul’s Transformation of the Indian Youth Congress : Keeping the Engagement going..

2010-03-08T12:23:00.002+05:30

This is the fifth in the series of posts about the transformation in the Youth Congress in india. In this post, I blog about what Rahul and team intend to do with the members, once recruited and how they will keep the engagement going , and what actually happens on the ground. To go to the first post and follow this series in sequence, please click here.

Looking forward, once Rahul has approximately 20 Million youth enrolled across all the panchayats, what will he do with them? Currently, the IYC members are mobilised for Dharnas, protests, and an occasional blood-donation camp, but not much else. The key issue is the brand- if these folks start to do their own thing, and that may include unsavoury things like bullying etc, it sullies the brand and the reputation. Hence this is something that they have thought about.

The membership will play a strong mobilising role in the IYC election process, that is intended to be repeated every two years- and by the way, the IYC membership is an annual membership- if you are >35 next year, sorry mate, you are no longer eligible.

Finally, the IYC members will also be deployed on the ground in any mainstream elections/ bye-elections. Council, Panchayat, Assembly and LokSabha...

In addition to the above, they also have annual activity programs which have the following as a part of their key result areas ( KRAs) :

All members are put through a day’s training, which is intend to infuse leadership development, identify social capital development and focus on the brand and the rewards.

The elected leaders, 5 at each Panchayat and 10 in each ward will be responsible for Recruitment of more members, and specific leadership and brand building activities.

They also have a “menu” of 7 activities, including increasing RTI requests, aimed at curbing corruption, increasing enrolment in NREGA, increasing livelihoods of rural populace, blood donation etc- of which they choose their specific activity and ensure that they do a few activities on them, which is also in their KRAs.

Though thought has gone into this process, my sense is that this is still work in progress, in part because the entire organisation is focused on getting thro the transformation process in all the 35 states and union-territories. Watch this space...

The next post is about the implications of this transformation process.

IV-Rahul’s Transformation of the Indian Youth Congress : The Stories

2010-03-08T12:21:00.001+05:30

This is the fourth in the series of posts about the transformation in the Youth Congress in india. In this post, I blog about the actual process of transformation, and what actually happens on the ground. To go to the first post and follow this series in sequence, please click here.

There are plenty of stories that are there as a part of this process- i will try to give a flavour of the kind of emotions that are going on...

· II met Rahul in August at his office at Tuglaq Road, Delhi. As he described this process of transformation, he came across as someone who was incredibly focused, who knew exactly what he wanted. As he articulated the vision behind this program, with the aura of the quiet success it was already accomplishing- he sounded very confident. He has also proven very adept at getting the right kind of advice and more important, listening to that advice and acting on it- very impressive.

I· In my October visit, i met “Sathya” in Krishnagiri, in Tamilnadu. Sathya is a chiropractor operating out of Bangalore. Sathya is a loyal congress activist who is given to wearing loud gold watches. When Rahul was on his krishagiri visit, he personally reached out to Sathya, and removed the watch, put it into Sathya’s pocket, and said- “please don’t wear this anymore”- the Gold watch is now amongst Sathya’s most cherished possessions, and is in his locker. I saw quite a few mobile phone screen savers that were the owner in conversation with, or shaking hands with Rahul- Rahul is clearly the hero here...

How do Assembly Returning Officers get allocated their Assemblies? Simple, there is a “lucky draw” of all the sim-cards that are allocated to each assembly- the mobile number is pre-published- and your Assembly constituency is the Sim-Card you pick.

In Gujarat state, where these elections were held second, after Punjab- the organisation had relegated the task of voter list printing for validation to the field, as a result of which most lists were not printed- and this caused massive pandemonium, including scuffles, and accusations. Based on this experience, all printing was centralised.

I am told that conversations are on with Nandan Nilekani , my ex-boss @ Infosys, about the 2 crore members of the IYC membership being a part of the Unique-IDs he is espousing- after all, this is a very good example of a validated, proof checked database that extends into every Panchayat in the country.

In Madurai, i met Suraj Hegde, the grandson of Devaraj Urs, the erstwhile chief minister of Karnataka, the one whose statue is first when you enter the Vidhana Soudha. Suraj is the PRO of Tamil-nadu, the CEO of the entire process, and was a part of the original project Vistaar and the 1 week workshop that started all of this. For the last 2 years, he has been completely immersed in this, and does 18 hour work days and has loads of fun in the process. Extremely capable and totally in charge, Suraj comes across as someone who can be completely trusted to deliver on the massive responsibility he has to discharge- in-fact i met a lot many very capable people through the process- a master stroke has been utilising the cadre from neighbouring states. Given the sometimes rough weather you tend to run into when it comes to politics and elections, these folks, particularly at the LRO and above are immensely capable, typically have 10 years in the field...

This process invariably is resulting in upsetting the existing hierarchy of Congress leadership in the state. In Tamil Nadu, there are 5 factions of congress leadership who are all up in arms against their personal fiefdoms being taken away. I know of atleast 3-4 “crisis” trips to delhi by the organisation to keep these factions at bay and ensure that the process is carried out. And make no mistake, this process is immensely threatening to the existing hierarchy, another proof that this is indeed game changing.

I Believe that When Rahul met Vijay, a superstar in Tamilnadu recently, they explored Vijay’s aspiration to get into politics- that being a standard route in Tamilnadu, where MGR, Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha have all had Tollywood backgrounds before their political careers. And Rahul is said to have told Vijay that he is welcome to join the IYC and, if he wins the elections, he is the chief of the iyc in Tamil Nadu. I don’t think Vijay has responded yet...

The above are intended to give a flavour of the people and the emotions that are driving and around this transformation. The next post is about what Rahul intends to do with the 20 Million youth that are enrolled into the IYC

III-Rahul’s Transformation of the Indian Youth Congress : The Process of Transformation

2010-03-08T12:09:00.003+05:30

This is the third in the series of posts about the transformation in the Youth Congress in india. In this post, I blog about the actual process of transformation, and what actually happens on the ground. To go to the first post and follow this series in sequence, please click here.

The process is rolled out at the state level, and the key steps in this process are 1- Membership Drive 2- Member Validation and Consolidation and 3-Conduct Elections .

There is a comprehensive governance organisation that is put in place throughout this process- in Tamil Nadu, for instance, there is an army of 1,600 people working across the state. The people that conduct the process are members from neighbouring states, to remove the risk of the process being influenced by the local leaders- in Tamilnadu, where i saw this process at work, I identified folks from Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. It works- Language does not seem to be a barrier (English doesn’t work J)

The organisation is headed by the Pradesh Returning Officers (PRO) who are the CEOs of the process and take all operational on-the-ground decisions– in Tamil Nadu, the two “CEO’s” of this process were Suraj Hegde (from Karnataka) and Usharani (From Andhra Pradesh). Reporting into them are the LokSabha Returning Officers (LROs) who are reported into by the Assembly Returning Officers (AROs) ,supported by Polling Officers(POs).

The Executive Committee- Led by Rahul, there is an 8 member executive committee that heads project Vistaar which includes Rahul Gandhi, Jitendra Singh, Meenakshi Natarajan, Rajiv Sathe (IYC president), Hibi Eden, Sachin Rao, Kanishka Singh and Anand Adkoli (ex Oracle).

Technology changes the game...

There is a comprehensive technology piece that is wrapping the entire process up- from the moment the forms are taken, they are scanned, data entered, photographs scanned, the supporting documents scanned, before the all important barcode is allocated.

During verifications and nominations, all nomination data is verified against the internet available database before anything is approved. The actual election itself is a Paper ballot, but that’s only because the official Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) were not allowed to be rented to the IYC by the government of india. Election schedules are put up on the net, by the LROs and the AROs who have full flexibility to make these changes. However, the election results are determined thro a rules engine that determines the results. Finally, all declaration of results is done thro the internet- and it is a fully transparent process.

Contrast that to the relatively opaque and an immensely time intensive process that are the mainstream elections of today.

The entire process takes 3- 4 months from start to finish. The culminating part of the process are the elections which are held in a very tightly coordinated 2 week schedule- this is to ensure that the process cannot be gamed by the power elements.

How would you know whether the process is kicking off in your state? Simple, watch 3 things- see if you want to visit www.iyc.in, or better still, if you find Rahul coming into the state and doing socially significant things, you know this process is starting in that state...

The next post is about the emotions and the stories behind the transformation.

II -Rahul’s Transformation of the Indian Youth Congress : Guiding Principles

2010-03-08T12:08:00.003+05:30

This is the second in the series of posts about the transformation in the Youth Congress in india. In this post, I blog about the guiding principles that inspired the transformation. To go to the first post and follow this series in sequence, please click here

In 2007, a group of 30 senior congress leaders got together with Rahul in a week long workshop- the outcome of that workshop was project Vistaar. A comprehensive program, Vistaar, was envisioned to be rolled out in ALL states and Union-Territories to transform the basic structure of the Indian Youth Congress. The Key guiding-principles behind Vistaar were the following:

1. Open Doors: Question- How do you get into the Congress / Youth congress? The answer historically has been- if you want to get in, some “leader” needs to have blessed your entry- or no membership. Under Vistaar, this basic barrier was to be completely broken down- and the floodgates opened- anyone could get in subject to a few basic conditions- that you were between 18 and 35, a proven resident of that panchayat/nagar-panchayat (ward) that you wanted to get in as a part of, are not a member of another party, and do not have a criminal record. In Punjab, where this was implemented first (early 2009), the membership increased from 30,000 to 3.6 Lacs due to this- an impressive 12 fold increase. TamilNadu in the currently ongoing process has received 15.7 Lac applications, of which 14 Lakh were valid bonafide applications- members in EVERY panchayat and nagar-panchayat- all this in a state that has not seen the Congress party Win in the last 42 years. Impressive, right?

2. Elections in and elections out: What is the basic purpose of a political party? To win Elections! This simple fundamental premise was applied to the Youth Congress. Any person that wishes to be an office-bearer has to win an election. Period. No Exceptions. Posts at the panchayat/ ward level are filled thro direct elections, and the elected office bearers – 5 for each panchayat and 10 for each ward (given the higher population in urban) form the electoral college for the other levels of leadership election.

3. You Exist, and I Have Proof that You Do: Applying for membership is very easy, but fulfilling the conditions demands paperwork and the fulfilment of this process is in your being allocated a Barcode. The IYC will go to great lengths to ensure that they have tamper proof data before they will allocate the barcode. Apart from submitting the photo-id based form in person, you also need to submit the proof of your residence in the panchayat , the proof of your age, and if you belong to a reserved category (eg SC/ST), the proof of that. Once verified, a UNIQUE barcode will be assigned to you, and you cannot change the membership details after that-and all these documents are scanned for posterity and for easy access.

4. Its Tech Savvy, Baby: The IYC has committed to a foolproof process across the 35 states and UTs. This means conducting recruitment drives, putting up voter lists, conducting elections in lakhs of panchayats- just in Tamilnadu, where i observed this process , 20,005 elections are being held over a 2 week period. Manual systems cannot and will not be able to keep pace, or be error free- ergo, everything has a very strong technology base- membership databases, scanning of document, the barcode system, membership scheduling, election scheduling, nomination forms, election results etc etc- Tech is an integral part of this process. And you thought that the BJP, thro their Advani web campaign, were the more tech-savvy of the parties?

5. Keep it Fair and Clean: Given the need to keep this process as transparent as possible, Rahul has roped in Foundation for Advanced Management of Elections and ex Chief Election Commissioners such as Lyngdoh and Rao- to audit the elections and keep them fair and transparent. For instance, any recommendations from the FAME observers are immediately acted upon- an instance is that every person who wants to contest an election has to sign a voluntary declaration that they have never been criminally convicted.

6. Align to National Election Organisation: Earlier, the IYC was organised on its own internal structure- the rural organisation was Gram- Taluk- Zilla etc and the urban organisation was Ward-Town-District-etc- under Vistaar, the organisation structure was collapsed and aligned to the way mainstream India is organised- Ward/Panchayat level -> Assembly-> Loksabha-> State level- basically bringing the internal organisation into synch with the way the country is politically organised.

7. Direct Link to Rewards: The entire process of organisation has also been linked to success and outcomes for the individuals- given that “success” to a politician is to get the “ticket” to contest the mainstream elections, IYC office bearers will be given 33% of all tickets to contest official elections at the Assembly and the LokSabha level- this % will actually go upto 100% in the next few years... basically making this the only route to entry into the congress.

8. Expand base to capture the Swing: Fact- most elections are won on swing of 3-7 % of the votes: @ a Lok Sabha level, this translates to less than 100K votes. Just expanding the membership base (in TN they now have 1.4 Million bona-fide IYC members across every panchayat) will translate to this swing in votes- thereby making for a stronger election-winning machine.

Given the above guiding principles, Vistaar set out to create a comprehensive process of transformation and change. The next post talks about the actual process of transformation.

I-Political Game Change in India- Rahul Gandhi’s Transformation of the Indian Youth Congress

2010-03-08T11:38:00.012+05:30

As someone who has returned back to India to participate in the transformation the nation is going through, I am very interested in following all aspects of transformation. As a direct participant in the economic transformation, I am seeing us slowly but surely emerging from below the poverty line, and we are in the process of building scale businesses, many of which are already multi-billion $. I am starting to see the benefits- increased prosperity, better towns and cities with quality infrastructure - the whole nine yards!

The other transformation that I would love to see, is the transformation in politics- an arena most of us folks watch from the sidelines without participating. I would want to see the end to corruption, an end to hooligan politicians, the end to the dominance of money and nepotism, basically a cleaner political ecosystem.

Well, as i write this, there is transformation underway in the Indian Youth Congress, inspired by Rahul Gandhi, and that change is likely to have big implications for Indian politics.

I first came to know of this transformation from Rahul in August- 2009 when I met him in his office in Delhi. I have been following this transformation ever since.

For the purposes of description of these blog posts, I have specifically focused on Tamil Nadu where i have seen the entire process from start to now, as the final stages are unfurling. I went to Salem and Dharmapuri districts in October-2009 during the membership-drive , and in Madurai last weekend, where i attended training and observed the nominations and elections. I have tried to follow this change as it is happening- it first started in Punjab, wended its way through in Gujarat, Pondicherry, Goa, Diu and Daman, in Tripura and is currently underway in 5 other states- Rajasthan, Haryana, UP, Chattisgarh, Jharkand, Kerala to name a few...

Why is this Gamechanging? Rahul has created one simple guiding principle- any holder of a post in the Youth Congress, HAS TO win an election to get there. And once you are a post holder, you are assured of the “official” ticket to contest Assembly or LokSabha elections from that region.

The game change is this- the key “prize” anyone in politics slogs his/her guts out for is to contest the Assembly/ LokSabha elections as the representative of the party- to get the party ticket- they go through years of literal slavery and serving their “mentor-leader” to get this seat. And even then, opacity and arbitrariness rule the way seats are allocated, resulting in years of toil coming to naught! With this system though, if you have proven yourself in the internal elections in the congress, hey presto, the seat is automatically yours. No nepotism, no kow-towing to senior leaders, no slaving for your leader for years in the desperate hope that you will get your ticket some day - basically a completely transparent process to success. The system is the essence of simplicity and clarity.

In the next few posts, i am going to take you through the different aspects of the story. Please feel free to comment and feedback on these:

Guiding Principles
The Process of Transformation
The Stories
Keeping the Engagement Going
The Implications

The next post is about the Guiding Principles that inspired this Transformation.

Pepsi's $20 MM Social Media Campaign- More Hype than Campaign?

2010-02-15T17:11:00.001+05:30

Jonathan argues in this post in the SocialMediaToday blog that Pepsi's $20 MM promotional social media campaign, which they chose lieu of superbowl advertising is perhaps not the best use of their marketing dollars.

I wonder if there is a contrary point here though- this is a world where there is an existing "way of doing things" where systems exist to reinforce existing behavior- example the Rating Points based media money allocation , which explains why social media/ internet & mobile spends get <5% of the advertising budgets in India, despite there being conclusive evidence that newer media have a much more significant impact on buying influence, whilst being cheaper...

In short, if an established leader like Pepsi is willing to stand up and say that they believe newer media are getting more important, as compared to advertising in the super-bowl, and are willing to put their money where their mouth is, that changes behavior across the spectrum- in the ad-agencies, with how smaller brands allocate marketing money etc.

Which basically translates to more money flowing into these newer media- creating better business cases for entrepreneurs and businesses that are delivering these services...

Amen to that!

in reference to: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/174604 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Will the Great Indian Mobile Revolution Wind down?

2009-12-12T00:31:00.001+05:30

Great stats and insights in this note from prof.Sadagopan... with the second largest mobile subscriber base in the planet, and the indian surefootedness in finding a million ways to provide services to customers thro this platform, we are on a fast tracked next dimension growth at the national level... i personally believe that the next "Google" in the mobile world will be from India.

However, a few flies in the ointment... consider

- all the operators now (the last few weeks) are on a bruising price war, which drives down ARPU and directly hits the bottomline- and all are doing it to build subscriber base- can the operators be healthy?

- Voice and SMS account for most of revenue (almost 95%), with VAS being a very small part of the game- how will we encourage GPRS and LBS, services to the 500 mm that will be a huge boost to the economy, with the millions of new business models that will bring

-are the operators mature enough to create a viable ecosystem? any provider of VAS services has to contend with the fact that for every rupee the consumer pays to the operator, a meagre 30 paise winds up with the provider who has to pay off content folks (typically 3rd party- eg bollywood), the aggregators and others, leaving them with a measly 5-10 paise on their TOPLINE.. not very appetising, is it?

i guess hope lies in competition- for instance Vodafone already does a great job of encouraging VAS, and with the entry of DOCOMO, which knows Japan, the most sophisticated market for VAS in the planet, i think there are a few new ways this market will head... eagerly watching this space...

in reference to:

"500 million phone subscribers in India today"
- 500 million phone subscribers in India today « Professor Sadagopan’s Weblog (view on Google Sidewiki)

Stage fright with Social Media?

2009-12-11T23:13:00.001+05:30

Interesting points Morgan makes about overcoming stage fright in starting out on social media.

I would add the following three points that may not have been thought about...

1-the biggest thing about these tools is that they allow for 2 way dialogue- which means, be prepared for all kinds of stuff to be written in response to what you write- including spam- which you can remove, negative comments -which you shouldnt remove... in particular, dont remove negative comments- thats a big turnoff

2- be prepared to be directly active- these tools are not about someone else writing your stuff for you- you have to be much more an author than you perhaps are now...

3-comment/ write on other people's stuff- there is an ecosystem out there, and everyone wants comments, feedback etc- not just you- so oblige a few, and they will perhaps oblige you...also this kind of a thing takes a while to build before folks start commenting...

happy joining the bandwagon...

in reference to:

"Overcoming social media stage-fright"
- Overcoming social media stage-fright - Morgan McLintic on PR (view on Google Sidewiki)

What does it take to get to the board?

2009-10-23T10:02:00.002+05:30

Narayan has an interesting view, on what it would take to get into the board. Whilst Narayan specifically focuses on how the HR function can make it , i thought i would perhaps explore more generically what it takes to get to the board.

in my opinion, the functions that are closest to the money trail, have the natural advantage when it comes to being chosen to leadership roles in the company- typically money trail functions are Revenue generators (Sales or consulting), Revenue fulfillers (delivery/ production) and Finance. which is reflected in the fact that most CEOs are from these functions.

Other functions have had their successes- for instance, typical B2C marketing led companies (eg Colgate Palmolive/ Unilever) have a tendency to be marketing led in leadership- but this is because the marketing function typically owns the p&l - for example a brand manager at the age of 24, get to own the p&l of their brands (i was one) - hence get close to the money trail.

Finally, i hardly think HR has to lose hope- look at the following list of HR people who became global CEOs of F-500 companies :

-Tim Solso of Cummins
-Nigel Travis of Dunkin Donuts.
-Stan Askren, CEO of HON, HNI Corp (office furniture manufacturer in Iowa)
-Lisa Weber, HR Exec who became President of MetLife’s Individual Business unit
-Bill Stevens, the CEO of Motion Industries ($3B division of Genuine Parts)
-John Hofmeister, was EVP of Global HR for Shell Oil before President of Shell Oil (currently retired)
-Howard Stoeckel, CEO of Wawa ($5B convenience store company)
-Joe Frick, CEO, Independence Blue Cross ($10B insurance)
-Colleen Barrett, former President of Southwest Airlines

in reference to-- Talk » Blog Archive » HR and the Board (view on Google Sidewiki)

Mobile Applications- The Next Frontier

2009-10-16T09:23:00.001+05:30

There are plenty of reasons to be cheerful about mobile applications . I for one, am particularly excited about the implications of the emerging trend of integrating information already available on the phone into the application- ref this article from Daniel Terdiman @ Cnet http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10371642-52.html?tag=mncol

My contention is that In nations such as India ,which, alongside China is amongst the worlds largest mobile phone markets, this trend will really be game-changing.

The 2012 Gaming app on the iphone, breaks new frontiers in terms of integrating information already on the phone into the gaming experience- with features like the ability to call 3 contacts for your "lifelines", a la Who Wants to be a Millionaire!

In my opinion, the integration of GPS, the contacts list, the Camera, and other data on the phone alongside the internet is already game changing in terms of where the future value in the mobile device can be unlocked, and gives rise to an entire new "aware" engagement in social situations- something that will explode in societies that are very socially active and mobile focused- and where data and voice access price-points are ridiculously cheap, eg India.

All, in all, a Trend to Watch!

in reference to:

"The future of iPhone games"
- The future of iPhone games | Geek Gestalt - CNET News (view on Google Sidewiki)

How to Brand Yourself Without Alienating Your Company

2009-10-05T23:25:00.001+05:30

Good issue this- how to Brand yourself without Alienating your company.

I would perhaps like to separate two things- 1)your ability to create a profile of yourself on the web (using Linkedin for instance) and 2)your urge to comment or otherwise articulate your opinion (blogging, tweeting and commenting)

Whilst Linkedin and building up your profile, getting recommendations and connecting with a wide variety of people is fine, and is good branding, there is a challenge If you are articulating your opinion.

Apart from the lucky ones who "are" the company, it is rather difficult to get around the conflict between the personal brand and the organisation- this is true regardless of how much of an overlap there is between what you want to opine about and its direct relevance to the company you work for.

So, unless you use a pseudonym (which sort of defeats the purpose ), despite all your protestations about your view being yours only -the brand police will come after you. And larger the organisation, the more the difficulty

Hence, if you work with a large organisation, unless you have prior permission, and trust yourself not to make any boo-boos every time you blog, tweet or comment, i would suggest you prudently abstain, unless of course you want to give your competition an excuse to alert the brand police...

Of course, you always have the option of being your own boss, and opining all you want...

in reference to: How to Brand Yourself Without Alienating Your Company (view on Google Sidewiki)

Has Obama dropped the ball on Social Media?

2009-10-04T12:31:00.001+05:30

I like the central idea of debate in this post, about whether Obama, who is seen as the most written about "success" in leveraging social media, is continuing to leverage it as well in presidency as he did getting to it...

Contrary to what this article articulates, i am not sure if he has entirely dropped the ball- there are many campaigns Obama continues to do on the social media side- there is plenty of action on that front and afterall, as the other comment from Jen points out- he is still #5 on the top social media brands- (http://infegy.com/buzzstudy/social-radar-top-50-social-brands-september-2009/)

My take- the key issues Obama faces (healthcare, bailouts, financial markets, dealing with terrorism) are emotive issues with intense, entrenched and conflicting views- it would be very difficult to see "success" easily-which i define as everyone rallying around one perspective-i,e the magnitude of task is much bigger, social media or not...

that said, i think he can still do a lot more on getting the citizen to contribute to the viewpoint, on the "creation" side, rather than just on the "evangelisation" side where he has clearly seen more success...

in reference to: How Obama Dropped the Ball on His Social Media Strategy (view on Google Sidewiki)

Hardware acquires Services? tech industry shift!

2009-10-04T10:15:00.001+05:30

In the Tech world, the hardware "box" manufacturers , who were thought to be squeezed between the chip makers (Intel) and the software folks (Msft, Oracle, etc) are getting their own back, with EDS (acquired by HP) and Perot (acquired by Dell), the hardware players are clearly moving into the "higher value added" services space... interesting dynamic for the industry...

in reference to: EDS brand is no more « Professor Sadagopan’s Weblog (view on Google Sidewiki)

Why the Community Game cannot only be an Online Game?

2009-07-13T15:32:00.001+05:30

I have already made my penchant for putting community creation and management at the centre of an organisation thro' my blog post about a year ago, so this post is not about that.This post is to articulate the essentialness (if there is such a word) of a hybrid strategy, where you need a combination of both online and offline activities, combined seamlessly to engage and fulfil the community's needs for it to be successful.

I would like to challenge today's contention that the community game today is a very internet/ online focused experience, with the social networks and the social graphs being the presiding deities over this. Broadly, the guiding principles provided by the likes of Facebook, Orkut, Myspace, Meebo, LiveJournal, FriendFeed and Twitter, have created an alternative to the physical world- the virtual world.

And yet....

The physical world matters, perhaps more than we could imagine- almost all my friends on social networks are folks i met offline first, before we linked up, and even today, where i live, who i meet during my day and what i do has more influence over me than any of my immersive experiences on facebook etc.

However, the physical world is a world of limitations, of time, of space, of long traffic congestions to get to the coffee shops etc- and you do need the online "freedom" from constraints.

Hence my contention- that by design, the community's strength has to be based not only on online interactions, but include face to face, physical world interactions seamlessly built in...

An Ode to TED- and why I still continue to be mesmerised, a month after attending the Long Beach event

2009-03-24T14:56:00.001+05:30

Three cheers to my guardian angel, if there is one around somewhere. This agent of mine managed a coup for me when (s)he had me attending events across the globe as a part of my role. My favourites are TED and WEF Davos, and i wanted to articulate my impressions of TED, where i was at their LONG BEACH conference in Feb-2009

A quick attempt at trying to slot TED in the pantheon of events, and in particular, a quick comparison with WEF- Davos. TED to me is an ideas conference, where you are filled with two things- ideas from speakers that boggle the mind, and articulate conversations with very powerful intellects around you - you want to find the MIT types, you will find them here... The WEF, on the other hand is about power and influence, and the persons around you are likely to be folks that have achieved much, and have a huge amount of clout- think prime ministers, CEOs, bank governors etc...

There was another striking fact i found between Davos and TED this year. This year's DAVOS was an extremely pessimistic affair, with a lot of anxious and worried delegates trying to make sense of the doom and gloom in the economy. TED on the other hand, was an relatively more optimistic, and the future mattered more than the recession did. Interesting!

So, let me list the 10 things i found at TED that i personally found to be immensely stimulating, and had me really excited about the possibilities and the stories (to the extent possible i have tried to include their TED speech links, but some i couldn't find) :

Bonnie Bassler, Professor at Princeton, who spoke eloquently about chemical language used by microbes to communicate, and about something called Quorum Sensing, which allowed the microbes to be dormant until they had reached critical mass- implications > think entirely new generation of pathogen inhibitors and drugs, including antibiotics
Evan Williams, the founder of Twitter, which grew tenfold in 2008, who spoke about how celebrities, including NBA stars, and , of course, our very own Barack Obama extensively used Twitter. My moment-0f-truth was when after the 8 minute speech, there were 50 Tweets on his speech- talk about Instant feedback.
Nathan Wolfe, epidemiologist, who rather terrifying speech was about the increased viral chatter and how viruses were jumping species (eg AIDS is a simian virus that has jumped into the human species), and how he is setting up a system that watches these jumps with intention of staving off global pandemics before they can happen. If there is one more reason to turn vegetarian, this is it.
David Merill demoed his new concept called Siftables- which are "intelligent blocks" which can sense each other, sense motion , have a screen and a wireless radio, and are an example of tools that you can reach out and play with and manipulate and learn from- this is a fascinating demo, particularly the part that plays music(@ 4:30 on the video)
Dickson Despommier, professor at Columbia, who spoke passionately about the need to create a Cradle to Cradle ecosystem which was a closed cycle loop, where there was no waste to dispose off, as compared to the current Cradle to Grave ecosystem, which left waste at the end of the ecosystem that needed disposing, and basically ran thro the natural resources and depleted them. Particularly fascinating were his concepts of Vertical farming- i really look forward to the day when all the food we consume will be grown on the walls of our buildings, and there will be no need for farmlands or farming...and we can think reforestation again. Also relevant is the concept of Hydroponics
My absolute personal favourite, and the one that i would recommend you watch for sure- Willie Smits, and his incredibly moving and uplifting tale of how an experiment in reforestation in Indonesia has changed the ecosystem, and a ray of hope. this was an absolute eye opener–and the optimist in me believes we can bring the earth back from the brink, despite all the ravages we have perpetuated on all her species.
Ueli Gegenschatz, the daredevil who spoke about his experiences with wingsuit flying, the closest i think humans have come to flying without contraptions- this uses airfoil technology. Careful though, there is invariably landing trouble J
Barry Schwartz, and his incredible speech on the need for practical wisdom, and why rules and incentives do not even come close to helping define / enforce behaviour and how ethics cannot be compressed and taught in a 1 hr class.
Bill Gates, who spoke about his uplifting work on the foundation side of the fence, and in specific, two areas, stopping Malaria where mosquito nets and DDT can cut deaths by 50%, but how newer resistant strains are coming up and also spoke about the incredible success of the KIPP program in school education - there is an interesting book Work Hard, Be Nice that talks about this program
Finally we got treated to some great music, and my two personal favourites were Naturally7 listen to their "Wall of Sound" all human sounds, no instruments, and Jaime Cullum.

A fairly overwhelming experience, and i am still trying to come to terms with all the ideas that i was exposed to there... TED has its first India event scheduled in November-2009, to be hosted in the Infosys Mysore campus, and if you are interested in registering, you may want to click here, the homepage of TED India, by the way, has me speaking to a fellow Tedster- the 3rd photo from the top.

Lessons from Davos- the Emerging Post-Crisis World...

2009-02-04T08:20:00.001+05:30

"Nothing is going to stop deleveraging; the economy has to reset," Ballmer, Microsoft's CEO said, as part of a joint interview with EMC CEO Joe Tucci on CNET.

I think we should pay particular attention to the words used- "the economy has to reset". My reading of what i saw last week in Switzerland at the WEF-Davos annual meeting corroborates this -what is going to emerge at the end of all of this is not the bounce back of same markets and a global economy, but a completely different looking global landscape- i.e., a RESET, after the continuing meltdown and deep distress.

In Formula1, there is an adage- that winning moves are made in the turns, not on the straights. Now, in this very sharp turn, is perhaps the time to think about what will be the new emerging landscape, and hence start to place bets/ realign focus and make some moves that take you forward.

So peering into the looking glass, what lies ahead? What is the that new global landscape going to look like? It would be impossible to predict the future accurately, however i offer the following points based on what i heard and saw at Davos:

I think we have seen the end of the era for the financial services industry- for the last 25 odd years, this industry has been the dominant hotspot for the brightest talent, offered the most opportunities for growth and prosperity and has generally dictated terms to the rest of the economy. With the current crises of confidence, the reckless abandon with which this industry has forgotten that "risk" existed, and with the "state ownership" of this industry, i think it is going to be very difficult for this industry to claw its way back into the #1 spot again.
A dramatic increase in influence of emerging markets, China in particular. 2009 will be the first year where ALL economic growth in the global economy (whatever is left of it, that is) is driven by emerging markets. As the Western consumer, the engine of global economy deleverages dramatically, new growth is going to be driven totally and completely by emerging economies, and the rest of the world will clamour to be there- accelerating the process of growth. Also, many of these economies, india in particular, have very limited exposure to the contagion, and have significant chunk of their growth being driven by home markets. All this is going to mean that these nations will increasingly play bigger and bigger roles in the global political landscape. In Davos, there was talk of the G2 (China and America) and what that meant for the rest of the world
Tech avatar 3: As the world grapples with monumental problems, there is no sector that has the propensity to help as much as the technology sector- be it in automotive electronics, or clean tech, be it in regulatory compliance or in media, technology industry has perhaps the single biggest role to play in creating discontinuity- so watch out for a tech led surge in markets
A dramatic undervaluing of the "bailout" economies: Much as i understand the need for these, Bailouts made –particularly if they are with borrowed money, are a bad thing- they spend today, and allow the burden of repayment to be shifted to generations to come in the form of increased taxes- not too different a concept from the poor loans that were behind the current credit crisis in the first place. These economies will be paying off their binge spending loans, for years to come...so watch out, those with exposure to the $, £ etc.,

Lastly a small point- i had a very interesting chat with David Aikman, senior director of the WEF, and head of the YGL community. He mentions that unlike previous years, there has been unprecedented clamour to get into content sessions at the event and delegates were very keen to attend sessions-listening rather than speaking. Might i offer that one of the silver linings to this crisis is that it is teaching us a bit of humility, and increasing the value of those things that are valuable, eg Knowledge?

Sustained India Shining- Skills and Human Capital development is THE Lever

2008-11-18T12:14:00.001+05:30

Sitting in Delhi at the India WEF summit, currently listening to our finance minister, P.Chidambaram, who is amongst the most sophisticated speakers i have heard, i am struck by the broad fundamentals that mean that 7+ GDP growth rates in India are definitely certain- 1)fundamentals of India continue to be really strong; 2)India has been mostly unaffected by the rot in asset classes; and finally, 3)the resultant deflationary pressure- reducing price of oil, energy and commodities , reducing input pricing.

However, one point that the minister made really struck- the US in his opinion (that i completely endorse), will continue to be the most dominant economic engine mainly because it is a talent magnet- the best brains of the world want to and will continue to go there. Hence, a provocative question- as the first world continues to implode, and the government's worries about inflation wither away, but growth still continues to be at 7%, is it time for India to shift gears on human capital development, and move into a much more aggressive drive to create deep pools of talent?

India is already an extremely entrepreneurial and capitalist culture. Whilst financial capital is a challenge, i don't think India lacks money. However, what India desperately needs is technology and skills, both of which are directly linked to human capital. Also, given the entrepreneurship and innovation in India, i am pretty sure that the only help the education and skills sector needs is an unfettered environment- Deregulation, no governmental interference and stay out of the way.

Now is the time, in my opinion, to change the paradigm of education in India, to deregulate, to bring innovation and help create skills that create the 10 Million jobs we desperately need.

Nandan’s Book: Imagining India captivates imagination!

2008-11-16T13:05:00.001+05:30

I am at the WEF India summit in Delhi, listening to Nandan talking about his book- of course, Nandan is a brilliant speaker, and it is always a pleasure listening to explore his ideas, but his conversation started to get me thinking- and in particular two of his safety net of 18 ideas that i am trying to do something with ( but i have mentioned the others he spoke about):

Idea 1: the importance of English- India has gone thro multiple convolutions on how it looks at English- our founding fathers liked the notion of hanging onto English because many of them had those backgrounds, from England etc. Later on the southern states, particularly tamil nadu vehemently opposed imposition of Hindi and gave English newer leases of life. Currently the outsourcing revolution ha s put English on a pedestral, making it the language of aspiration. In the 1970, we stopped teaching English in Bengal, Gujarat and UP- and they feel they have lost out- and things are reverting back to English - pressure from the bottom- change. English is a caste solvent, it eliminates caste.

Idea 2: education/ primary education- steadily education has to grow and will grow- because of the subterranean changes that are happening in society, including the aspirations of young people. We have a situation in rural India, where many students go to private schools, with parents paying a significant proportion of their wages to get their children educated, because the public education system is so dysfunctional. Typically, change works in 3 phases, 1 we need to recognise it is a challenge, 2- we put money/resources into it, 3) we tend to then focus on outcomes-the risk is evolution is slower than the pace of change, hence we have to accelerate it.

The way his book is structured is that he divides his 18 ideas into-

Ideas that arrived- are primarily Responsible for 6-8% growth
Ideas that need to be implemented- will sustain the growth rate
Contested ideas- are about accelerating this growth (bigger middle class/ accelerate)
Anticipated ideas- are about identifying the problems of prosperity- managing prosperity

2^nd set of ideas: Ideas that are accepted but yet to be implemented:

Urbanisation
No concept of national market: Services- national markets, products- state level markets- and agriculture produce- only for local markets: thats the reason for different growth rates.

3^rd Set of Ideas: Contested ideas:

Caste/ political system- ones left out of markets are going to use the political system to enter.
Higher education- no foreign university/ nfp/ regulated who they hire, how much they pay, what they teach etc- how do we fix this
Labour- 93% in the unorganised sector- leading to slow growth in the organised sector

4^th Set of ideas: Anticipated ideas- look at what's gone wrong with prosperous nations and try and solve for them:

How technology can be used for transformation=- power, energy, poverty,. Etc
Health (from hunger to heart disease)- anticipate the health issue and go thro the problems of healthcare
Social insurance and entitlements- aging populations/ Medicare/ unfunded liabilities- 40 years from now, if we repeat the same problem- we shouldn't create a burden
Environment- destroy get rich and fix, vs harmony with the environment
Energy- to continue to grow at 8%- we need to fix per-capita income will growth 16 times, but per capita carbon consumption can only grow twice- break the paradigm between income growth and carbon emission

Newer models of Democratising Education

2008-11-16T13:02:00.001+05:30

India has a problem-not enough people are getting the skills that allow them to learn, do more, and be more employable. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that most of the educational world as we know it is structured as a top down process, where the model is that the "teachers" push "learning" to students in traditional contexts, such as the classrooms.

However, , there are two challenges- teaching , even 50 at a time, cannot solve problems that have learning deficits that run into millions of people- so this is not scalable? The second challenge is that not all teachers are created equal, and the best teachers have an ability to get learning across much better than average teachers- so the challenge is that our "rock star" teachers must be able to reach the widest audience, and impart learning.

So how do we go about solving this? I think the answer lies in giving more power to the young, and in democratising education, because they will naturally leverage technology, and are already leading the behaviour change that is being driven by that technology permeation.

I lead an organisation that imparts employability skills, thro the medium of e-learning, to college students and graduates that are looking for a job or have already found one. There is an example that illustrate the point above , which relates to the usage of social networks in their urge to beat the system- we track user behaviour not just in our platforms, but also in the social networks- and their ability to come up with solutions to beat the system are uncanny-we have an entire group that is dedicated to keeping our tabs on how they leverage social networks and other web2.0 mechanisms to spread their understanding of how to beat the assessment systems.

Finally looking outside, there are some examples that have done a brilliant job of trying to solve the problem- one example is the Korean company "Megastudy" that makes rock-stars out of their best tutors, who are monetised on their popularity with the online audience.

7 Things Obama is doing to leverage Web 2.0

2008-10-12T20:08:00.001+05:30

When we look back at this presidential election, I have a sneaking suspicion that we will see web2.0 as having played a big role in the candidates' ability to create buzz, build traction and won significant hearts and minds in the race to the white house.

Enclosed are the few things Barack has done to leverage Web 2.0:

Leveraging social networking to bag funding and votes- the key is around MyBarackObama thro which you can set up your own webpage to raise funds for Barack – nifty gadgets including a thermometer with a level of mercury that depicts how close you are to success- the socialsite allows you to send invitations and also keep track of invites- eg reminders etc- and, of course, there is a payment gateway
Leveraging the YouTube channel which has close to 1600 videos to look at and many are added every week
User Generated Content- eg individuals that have created video tutorials to help the activist community get traction and - example; example2,
phonebanking1on1- a 1on1 tutorial focused on creating activists out of interested people that want to help
Neighbor to neighbor: program to connect community activists thro ip calls, by giving them access to voter lists etc…
Drive to register- leveraging community
Viral videos- eg the obamasong by will.ia.m

This election, I suspect, will teach all of us new tricks to use in our own campaigns.

Strategic Positioning: Obama one up on McCain?

2008-10-12T14:48:00.001+05:30

Allright, I admit it- I am fascinated by the US presidential elections and am devouring all information on what's happening there. That said though, for my craft (marketing), there is plenty of drama and stuff to learn from.

As I was listening to the podcast of the second presidential debate, I was fascinated by something. McCain's campaign positioning, at least after the Republican Convention, has been "why Obama is not the right person for the job". But, this is the interesting part, the more he tries to move the argument to Barack, the more the debate seems to be around him and his VP pick, Sarah Palin. The big challenge with this campaign for McCain is that now, he to move the debate away from him, and into Obama's camp, and he has 25 days to do it, and Barack is gaining daily…

So what are my 3 points?

McCain should have been true to his DNA- a "maverick" view, which John genuinely is, is a very self led, internally focused view- Mavericks generally do not care about what other people do, or think. However, his campaign is focused on going after Barack rather than focusing on himself???
If his game was to go after Barack, he should have done a better job of battening down the hatches in his campaign, with "extreme" picks like Palin, what he has done is to expose his campaign to serious cracks in his argument- you want the focus to be Barack, you don't want anyone to focus on you, right? How many of us doubt that the 70 Million people that watched the VP debate, amongst the most watched in history, came to watch Sarah commit gaffes after the Katie Couric interviews?
Finally, there is a serious amount of negative energy involved in going after someone. This negative energy is offputting, and turn quite a few people off, as well as take the focus of the campaign away from trying to get better, to trying to prove that the other person is worse off. I wouldn't do it.

Why Offense is better than Defense?

2008-10-12T14:23:00.001+05:30

My dinner with Sriram Aylur last night at the Quilon Restaurant , a Michelin starred south Indian restaurant turned out to be very interesting. The conversation steered around his success at Quilon, and we ended up discussing a concept that I found insightful.

The concept is this: by playing offense , eg., going after competition first, you force them to respond, and, when that happens, more often than not, the responses are likely to be tactical "knee jerk". The idea is that as you force them to play the short-term tactical game, you continue to ensure your longer term important pieces continue to move.

This puts a premium on playing offense/ moving first.

Chinese Olympics: Leveraging “Soft Power” to build Brands

2008-09-15T03:10:00.001+05:30

As the Grandest Show of the Planet, the Chinese Olympics drew to a close, i use this post to articulate the extremely effective display of "soft power" in building Brand China.

But first, a small semantic definition- It was Joseph Nye, who coined this term in his book, which contrasts the use of power of attraction vs the carrots and sticks based notion of hard power. In my assessment, China has done the following 3 things:

As I watched Boris Johnson, the mayor of London take the flag in the closing ceremony, I could not but help think that China was at that point in time, very much a part of the global community- as compared to perhaps a sense of "them" vs "us" that seems to permeate some of the other conversations that include the Chinese (global trade talks, the credit crunch, the dollar weakness etc).
In setting the new benchmark for how this event should be run, the rest of the world now has a viable and a valid powerhouse to emulate- if there was ever a coming out party for the Chinese, this was it, and what a grand party it was!
The power of Sport as a unifier is perhaps another "soft power" force that has worked very well for the Chinese. Be it in swimming, or gymnastics or athletics, the sheer beauty of superlative performance leaves us breathless, regardless of the gender or the race of the one delivering this performance. And this event has given many of us beautiful moments to cherish.

I have articulated elsewhere that I am a big believer in the power of attraction as a way to increase brand relevance, and in the aftermath of the Olympics, the Chinese have a great tail-wind to consolidate on the goodwill and the attraction they induced in the rest of the world- will they be able to leverage this to get to the next highs in their prosperity?

“Hot, Flat and Crowded”: Tom Friedman and the art of Setting the Agenda

2008-09-15T02:52:00.001+05:30

Just heard a review from the Scientific American
podcast on Tom Friedman's latest book, " Hot Flat and Crowded". By all accounts, this book looks to full of Tom's incredible ability to help us picture, in vivid colour, his insightful views on the implications of the three global megatrends of Climate Change, the Rise of the Emerging Markets and the Population Explosion- He argues that the country that will take a lead in getting into Green Energy Efficient game will be the next superpower of the planet.

However, this post is not about the book itself, but rather the timing of the launch and the release, and the potential implications. It was launched in End Aug/ Early September, sort of around the time the Republican National convention was going "Drill baby Drill", in their support for offshore drilling. Tom himself has, thro his conversations, positioned his ideas into the policy making and the political implications of this including in commenting on the "madness" of drill-baby-drill policy as well as in appearing on the NBC Meet The Press programme.

In launching this very topical book right in the final run-up to the US presidential elections, Tom has ensured two things:

The insights from this book, in particular, the recommendations for the future are going to be a direct part of the ongoing debates, and perhaps more important, play role in shaping the presidential agenda going into January.
He will sell a lot of these books.

Very Smart, Tom! Way to Go.

Mahatma Gandhi: my Epitome of Marketing Excellence?

2008-08-10T16:14:00.001+05:30

Father of the Indian nation, the creator of Satyagraha (non violence), the inspiration behind Martin Luther King Jr, the man described by Churchill as the "half naked faqir"- multiple are the epithets given to this man, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Mahatma Gandhi. and I am sure I join many more people ( including Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Al Gore, John Lennon, James Lawson) in acknowledging his influence.

However, this post is intended to focus on his marketing genius in creating the cause, the path to the cause, and unifying a nation of extreme poverty and extreme illiteracy to rise in unison and win freedom, non violently, against the greatest colonial power – all this was done without money, without other resources that most causes can command today. The following are some of the underlying principles:

Extreme Simplicity of message (articulation, garb, appearance, lifestyle, diet etc)- in today's age of clutter and the need for the so called unique selling proposition, think about how he had to cut thro and get across to the masses of a largely illiterate and an unconnected India, and one perhaps starts to appreciate how beautifully that message is designed to penetrate and hit straight home.
He was the ultimate Pragmatist- I define pragmatism as the ability to take the prevailing trend and to ride on it to get to your destination (sort of how birds use rising columns of hot air – "Thermals"- to get higher). His support of the British during the World Wars, his acceptance of the need for partition, his timing of the big movements (Non Cooperation, Civil Disobedience, Quit India) , as well as the timing of their cessation all point to this
His brilliant use of evocative symbols- this is perhaps brought to life most through his "Salt Satyagraha" movement- Salt was and is amongst the more reasonably priced of the commodities, owing in part to its abundance. And yet, for someone to take something that was not really the center of Economic or political power, and yet so essential to life and important to the poor of the then india, and turn it into a symbol of liberation and freedom was a brilliant masterstroke, executed with precision.
His leveraging of religion- Pre independence India had deeply divisive forces, and religion, particularly differences between Hinduism and Islam was one of the dominant ones. However, through his lifestyle, embrace of other religions, and through multi-faith prayer meetings, he took the divisive issue of religion and neutered it enough ,though it refused to go away completely, that the masses rose as one for the cause.

Clearly someone to learn from.

Paris Hilton, Barack Obama and John McCain: the fine art of seduction

2008-08-07T18:42:00.001+05:30

Whilst the John McCain ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton & Britney Spears ( I guess they were aiming for Obama to be painted as "inexperienced" and hence unqualified to lead) has been the subject of intense scrutiny- Meet the press last week led with this as a topic, the lady Paris has actually hit back with an amazing repartee- which has, in my eyes, put McCain completely in the defensive- fancy that- A seasoned politician with all the might of the best brains in the business being given an amazing response by a 27 year old who was supposed to undermine Barack by being compared with him. Fantastically amusing and interesting for sure, but I wonder if there is a deeper message here?

I believe Marketing is about "influencing" behaviour change, and hence, I propose that elections and the entire political process is the ultimate form of influence for behaviour change – as a candidate, one needs to take their people from point A (don't know/ don't care about you) to Point B (I like/ will vote for you). Hence I am absolutely fascinated by political processes and hence the presidential campaign.

The point I derive from the above episode, apart from the considerable humour, is this- the entire influence game is about seduction and creating sex appeal, not about logic. The coolest people/ gadgets/ brands are not cool because they have logically convinced us that we need to be associated with them. A sense of mystique needs to be created, and whilst what you say and how you say it is important, even more important is what you don't say!

Must say my respect for Paris Hilton has gone up a few notches!

Creating a Community Led Organisation

2008-07-15T11:46:00.001+05:30

In the emerging WEB 2.0 world, the next thing since sliced bread is the leverage provided by your communities (users/ suppliers/ influencers) etc. The idea is to empower the community to contribute to product ideas/ innovation/ create content (the so called User generated content) etc. But the question is- how does an organization become community led, and how does one create a vibrant community in the first place?

Well, as it happens, there are entirely new models that are emerging out there that are entirely community led –the best examples I can think of are Mozilla and Wikipedia. Think about it- how can you create a community that is so engaged that it does work for you without getting paid? Mozilla is the creator of Firefox, the browser, which today has a marketshare approaching 20%- approx 1 in 5- which is truly amazing, because, unlike IE, Mozilla does not come bundled when you buy your laptop/pc.

So, what are the secrets to building successful communities?

The Cause has to be bigger than just creating commercial success - when you choose a cause to rally your community around, please ensure that the payoff to the community that contributes is beyond business- and has a big feel good factor about it. Mozilla's vision for the world is not a better browser, but a free and an open internet, which of course is enabled by the gateway to the internet, the browser.
The community has to be empowered- you have to delegate decision-making to the community- in other words, it is not enough to just tell the community- please do the work, but we will take all the decisions- in some cases this could be against the decisions in your organization, but so be it
There has to be sound leadership- a concern with large community led initiatives is that there are too many voices that might be pointing in different directions (classical Brownian motion)- hence there is need for clear lines of authority to ensure things happen
The guiding principles have to be very clear about what stays in and what goes out- it is really important to establish what the community will stand for, and more important, what it will not. These guiding principles/ or the constitution if you will, will perhaps be crucial to the community selecting itself, and ensuring that decisions taken are along the guidelines so established (eg Mozilla has taken a conscious call that it will not "sell" any of the browser real estate for commercial consideration, but will be happy to take money off search-engines by inserting those search engines into the functionality)
Define the core, but have plenty of peripheral areas- it is not always possible to take on all the ideas that the community is proposing. But one does not want to miss out on any cool ideas either. One way solve for this is to ensure that there are plenty of "sandboxes" where individuals can create stuff for the others to play around with, which, after a process of due diligence can be brought back into the core. This also increase inclusivity.
Think different about functions such as Marketing and HR-Mozilla wanted to put up an ad in a mainstream newspaper, they went to their community and raised $10-$20 from about 10,000 of their community, which paid for the ad.

Of course, the above is not to say that if all the rules are followed, the organization will become community led- but it is a start.

Recession Busting: Same Sales and Marketing Outcomes at 1/10th the Investment?

2008-07-12T13:23:00.001+05:30

We are talking tough times here- and the intent of this post is to provide ideas to organizations on how to minimize their sales and marketing investments, whilst not letting go of the outcomes.

We are very familiar with the way businesses build out their customer outreach. They tend to invest in standard marketing vehicles (Events, Market research, Media relations, Direct Marketing etc) to build awareness, and once air cover is created, the Direct Sales-force gets after customers and creates revenue streams. In general this is a capital intensive, high investment model- all the above channels cost serious money.

However, this paradigm can be turned upside down in many industries, and increasingly in many geographies. Why? Customers are changing their behaviour and business need to adopt, and if they do, they save a truckload. Consider the following:

3 Reasons why you don't need a massive advertising budget:
- If you have a "cool gadget", all you need to do is to send that gadget to the leading edge tech reviewers (zdnet, cnet, gizmodo etc) who would be delighted to review the gadget and put up the video/audio reviews up on their websites. Witness the phenomenon of the apple IPhone (the 3G variant of which was launched this week). How much of the iphone information is coming to you from APPLE as compared to from some blog or some website or something else?
- Your customers are predominantly searching for you online before they get to you- surely you should be able to leverage that behaviour by going after them in the online space? Target them through Search engine optimization/ through social networks etc?
- Target alternative awareness generators- blogs, viral videos (youtube channel) which are accessible at a fraction of the cost.
Do you really need to have a big direct sales force?
- If your product is mainly provided online, you can create "free trials" - a 30 day free trial of a software package can do wonders to increase adoption and awareness, and what more, you get to observe your customers using the products through analytics- halve your direct salesforce
- Product design should be leveraged – entice customers to try with really simple user interfaces and processes, but once they are engaged, encourage them to get to try more complex features and functions, and increase revenues
- Ensure that you make it very easy for your customers to compliment you and give you feedback (discussion forums etC), so they are selling to other customers
Slash all early stage awareness building events:
- Given people are going online to find out about you, why invest at all in early stage awareness building through events?
- Are those stalls, product demos, and the physical infrastructure that typically support events really required?

Typically, the above three tend to be the biggest drain on your costs, and hence any significant impact on the above are going to clearly flow to the bottom-line.

Customer forums: the need for “physical touch” in an online world

2008-07-12T12:34:00.001+05:30

And yet, people buy from other people, and given that our evolutionary (Darwinian) pace of change much slower than the shift to online- how do we fulfil our need for physical contact? the need to kick the tyres, to get to know who we are buying from, to engage with others who have done the same? This, I would argue is emerging as a bigger reason to invest in a customer forum.

SAP does Sapphire, Oracle does Oracle World, and many organizations that operate in the B2B space tend to get their customers together for a couple of days during the year. There is a lot of organization resources that gets spent (money, management time, ops, etc). What is the value? The value is in creating stronger relationships, and the consequent cross-sell and up-sell opportunities- in short, a revenue accelerator.

Historically, (early 90s), events were perhaps the best means to increase awareness and access the customers that b2b businesses wanted to sell to, and for the customers to find the businesses as well. However, with the advent of the internet, the ferocious change in how businesses and consumers court each other has been breathtaking. Hitherto, a lot of money was being spent in events, and in field sales, the emerging paradigm is to leverage the website and online channels to in the early phases of courtship (google search/ store fronts / free trials etc). This has resulted in a lot of interaction shifting online, and consequently, a significant reduction in person to person contact.

If we extend this notion a bit further, we should be creating a community, which will share, exchange ideas, and create value by interaction- and the physical event is an integral part of that.But beware- the online world is surely creeping up on this physical world too- there is a fundamental need to integrate online capability to create a richer "community experience" even in the events.

Hype and destruction in product launches…

2008-07-06T21:12:00.001+05:30

Remember Zoost? The video platform promoted by the founders of Skype? For all the claims including you-tube killer/ the "will change the way you watch telly" / etc, It has had an underwhelming response (atleast so far) from the marketplace and the community that was supposed to adopt it.

There is a lesson here for us! Excess hype can be bad, period. Thinking through, this seems logical- hype fuels consumer expectations, and the more the expectations, the more difficult that the product will match up. Add to all this the fact that hype cannot be controlled, and you have a situation where expectations could spiral out way beyond anything the product can actually deliver on. There seem to be two particular situations that seem to make for a particularly difficult outcome:

When the hype is being created around a yet-to-be-launched-product. Since the actual product is not in the marketplace yet, the expectations can get very unrealistic, as it comes down to pretty much the imagination of people, and hence the possibility of reality exceeding expectations becomes very remote (For all his marketing savvy, Steve Jobs and the iphone came pretty close to this)
In a "tech savvy" high tech product space, where blogs and other alternate non traditional media hold serious sway because more of them are created by "experts", and more of them are consumed by would be users, the potential for hype is huge- a rumour somewhere can, in no time, become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with a 1000 blogs writing about it in no time.

So, what can you do? Well, as someone who is launching a new product just be extremely careful about what you say or do not say about the product- the adage "under-promise and over deliver" might actually be a great way to go. IF your product is already in the hype territory, you are better off ensuring that you cool it right now- humility can be "cool".

Also, as a consumer/ investor etc, tend to take with more than a pinch of salt anything that is hyped

And how do you recognize the symptoms? If too many people are talking about a product yet to be launched, claims are being made of it being a mainstream product killer/ the miracle cure etc, you know you are in hype territory.

User 927: The new paradigms of influence and their risks

2008-06-17T10:05:00.001+05:30

User 927 is a play premiering in Philadelphia, based on the infamous AOL weblog incident of 2006 – you may remember the 650,000 search weblogs that were inadvertently "released" by AOL and earned notoriety for the assault on privacy.

The play's storyline centres around tracing the mind of the "user 927" through his/her (perhaps a his, given the search terms) search queries over the 3 month period. I followed the conversation a bit- it is positively uncanny how much the search log reveals about the individual… for instance, about user 64,XXX who over a period from march to july, searched for the following- "fat calipers", "getting pregnant", "how to beat morning sickness", "looking good whilst pregnant", "wedding gowns for the pregnant", then the search terms take a different tack-"abortion clinics in place X", "can Christians have abortions" etc- as you can see- you get a clear view of what they are thinking- an individual's search terms, plotted on a timeline, can be used to build out a complete psychological profile .

Think implications search terms can be used for:

For the next level of micro- marketing- which of course means that precision targeting and precision focus is possible, and the benefit is that as a consumer you will not be hit by annoying ads, but will be targeted by messages that are absolutely spot-on not only for your interest, but also in timing. We are getting smarter about getting the individual's Interests right with the advent of social networks, but timing of the message is still a bit of a hit-and-miss.
There is a billion dollar industry around matching partners (personal and professional)- this could be very well used to enhance the quality of that match
Remember the Tom Cruise film Minority report and "precogs"? well, search log analysis and psycho profiling perhaps could be used to target crime-doers before the crime is committed.
Once the net goes mobile (which it already is, by the way!), locational and map based services are also an exciting opportunity to target

That said though, lets not forget about the possibilities that open up on the risk side?

We have Big Brother watching- given the sweeping powers by regulation and state authorities (eg the Patriot act, authoritarian nation states' -china), search terms could be used for illegal surveillance of individuals and unlawful targeting
Also, what goes around comes around- how do we ensure that privacy and security concerns are rightfully being paid heed to?

Haven't we heard this before? With entirely new set of tools that give us more power to profile, we are faced with the choice of that power being wielded both for good and for bad- so how do we regulate so that we maximize the good and minimize the bad?

Of technology, influence and presidential elections: Barack’s edge…

2008-06-04T05:21:00.001+05:30

Did you know that in the volume of funding for his presidential campaign, Barack Obama has out raised Hillary Clinton , (now run this by me again? A nobody senator from Chicago is able to out-fundraise the invincible Clinton machine?) He gets more than $ 1 MM daily thro internet based funding mechanisms, and more important, this is not by accident, but by deliberate design? Well, I was listening to John Edwards speak at an event today and this is what I heard from him…

Interesting- I never thought I would be commenting about the US presidential elections, but hey, why not? All the candidates are needing to move a target audience (the citizens of the US)e from point A (don't care about you/ don't know above you) to point B ( will vote for you)- not that different from a marketing campaign's objective, right?.

The point I want to illustrate though is that Barack has harnessed the power technology to create influence today- and has displayed serious "marketing think"- think about it:

By Design, Barack has avoided those "large ticket donors" which was the traditional way of doing things, and ,hence has retained the independence he needs to voice his views without worriying about hurting any of his big donors
Any individual who has given $25 his campaign, has planted a flag on the ground, indicating that (s)he is a supporter, will vote Barack and will convert other folks to vote Barack- very impressive, given the steady stream of supporters that seem to continue to join his grass roots campaign
An opportunity to sample/ research/ poll/ pass by a large base of voters and get their views before actually articulating them- and hence having a safety valve as well as a bouncing board for his policies
An immense sense of "support" coming from a mass movement, rather than resting on a small group of hi-value donors- a big confidence building measure.

In creating online communities that have supported/ voted/ funded Barack, I have no doubt that the Facebook/Myspace and the deliberate on-line campaigns have played a very relevant role in Barack's upset of the apple cart of folks that were much more incumbent than he was- and we have a lesson to learn from the role technology has played in getting Barack to where he is today… the game of influence has been proven to be completely amenable to technology…

Getting Remembered : Leveraging “Thermals”

2008-05-30T17:18:00.001+05:30

A thermal is a rising column of hot air, that birds use to get higher up in the sky, harnessing nature's processes to get to their destination.

In today's information overload environment, I argue that leveraging hot trends/ activities/ events (societal "thermals") is critical to getting noticed and remembered.

An interesting example- the movie version of "Sex and the City" is being launched this week. Best-buy's electronic repair division- Geek squad, has identified that many men (brothers, boyfriends, office colleagues) are going to be "skewered" into seeing the film despite not being too interested.

So the geeks of Geek Squad have come up with this movie-theatre promotion, running in select movie theatres, to hand out "creative excuses" to get them out of this movie ( also handing out alongside- coupons entitling you to discounts on best-buy games/ gadgets/ etc that go along with that profile)

Interesting- gets noticed, and leverages a "big event" in a very interesting kind of way- our way to mimic how nature's thermals are leveraged.

GTA IV- Leveraging Gaming!

2008-05-13T23:32:00.001+05:30

Last week, I am sure the news would have hit you- the biggest grosser of them all has been Grand Theft Auto IV. This game grossed $310 MM on Day 1 alone and $500 Million in Week 1. This translates to over 6 Million copies of the game sold in the first week of launch (about $ 60 in the US/ £45 in the UK).

To put this into perspective the highest- opening day grossers in the film industry have been ( Spider-Man-3 ($ 60 MM); Pirates of the Caribbean- Dead Man's Chest ($56MM); Starwars- Episode III- Revenge of the Sith ($51MM) data available in this link ). By the way, the second biggest grosser across all entertainment categories was also a Game, Halo3.

So what? Well, Gaming is interactive, extremely involving, has a fanatic fan base, and is massively big, and people are willing to spend big money on this. And if you have been on either of the consoles' online part (millions congregate to play with each other in multiplayer mode such as the Xbox Live) which is very engaged and very communicative ( there are headsets, messenger sets etc that you can communicate with whilst playing), you can clearly see that there are entire communities that are hangin' out together. Not too many other channels have the combination of interest, buying power, energy , community and sheer stickiness… The gaming companies are big into this revenue by the way- buying the game is only part 1, you tend to get a lot of revenue thro upgrades, thro enhancements (physical and virtual) etc

So, what are the options?

The obvious one is to look at delivering messages thro Game based strategies- move over boring old brochures and leaflets, think games/ think interactive ways of delivering messages
The less obvious one is to look at gaming communities as a way to proliferate messages and awareness, particularly for products and services that these folks consume, or have influence power around.
The least obvious one is to see how gaming changes the context of social networking and see how these two trends can be brought together to create influence, which I would suspect will be work in progress for awhile (the Wii is credited with bringing a whole lot of folks into the "gaming" habit, and both Xbox 360 and the PS3 are doing a truckload of recruiting new gamers into the mix, and everyone is going online)
And perhaps I am sticking my neck out, it is not beyond the realms of comprehension for one to consider entire business models built around specific gaming communities…

What this has made me do is to get myself a game console (I got an Xbox 360 a few months ago) ,games , go online, play and absorb. For now, I am focused on building my gaming points and doing a lot of downloading… and yeah, I keep getting massacred in 5 seconds of entering any multiplay game-but I persevere on… and yes, you should try it too…

Building Regional brands… lessons learned from India Everywhere- Davos -06

2008-04-28T20:45:00.001+05:30

As a sequence to my earlier post on Regional brands, this post explores the "how to" of regional brand campaigns, and discusses lessons from the very successful "India Everywhere" campaign, at Davos 06, which I played an intimate role in.

As one of the co-creators of the campaign, I was very closely involved in India Everywhere campaign, which was brought to life at the World Economic Forum, Davos 06. To put into context, Davos 06 campaign around India was perhaps a high point in coordinated efforts to building the "India" brand, and sought to establish India as an equal competitor to China for world attention, resulting in increased energy and interest in India. The campaign was very successful in accomplishing that.

So, what were the things that worked well?

Sponsorship- you are sunk without it- imagine getting 8-10 of the largest companies (some of which may compete with each other) together to contribute a kitty that would be spent as an entity! You really need strong leadership back it- in this campaign's case, the business leadership was behind this, but there is no reason why political leadership cannot be the primary backer
Rally around "big ideas"- a ho-hum list of actions will not galvanize and get the group together- the need is to present a big vision, that everyone will buy into, and a set of "cool ideas" that can be executed to accomplish that vision- extremely important that the ideas come together
Focus on the region's natural strengths- India is known for its food, its costumes and the variety and for its culture- which were the primary elements of the senses, whilst the underlying core of the message was clearly business and economic
Governance/ Council- ideally, the campaign should not have one corporate leading it- the program management should be with an entity that is neutral. In this campaign, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)) picked up the program management slack. That said though, the program team should report into a central council of primary stakeholders (the ones that have contributed to the kitty.
Plan early, and plan well- since there is a lot of communication/ to and fro-ing and back and forth involved in such a campaign, more time needs to be devoted, hence increased lead times
Execution is key- there will be a lot of moving parts in a campaign of this magnitude- these parts have to be knit together in one cohesive whole, and hence program management and strong execution skills become key to accomplishing this.
Ensure that the governance comprises the big guns, and they are engaged- the governance council, the government officials etc were the top guns in the region, which meant that decision making was instantaneous, and best of the resources were brought to bear.

The execution was done through a common "kitty" of resources, contributed to by interested parties (corporate and the government), creating a shared program management structure.

This campaign received very good media coverage and was the talk of Davos-06, and the traction from this campaign resulted in serious benefits to brand "India".

Relevance of country/region brands

2008-04-16T04:30:00.001+05:30

Did you know that Latin America has had the best 5 years since 1492? The economy is performing as never before, never mind the politics- according to the Opening Plenary at the WEF- Cancun.

And yet, Latin America perhaps may not command the same excitement or mindshare as compared to <say> a China, not withstanding the occasional references to the BRICs (which of course includes Brazil).

Pray why building region/geo/country brand is relevant, one may ask. I think it is relevant because the region would benefit from the "mindshare" of the rest of the world. Whether it be in terms of investment into the region, or global talent considering this as their next opportunity,new technology infusion and general "feel good" in the region – the last one in particular, itself could be a huge galvanizing force-I see this already happening in China and India.

However, what is changing now, that would make regional brands even more relevant, is that going forward, China and india have already changed and are changing the game- when you think of one nation commanding over a billion people, you think huge scale, you think huge markets, and you think huge opportunities. Smaller countries, with their smaller access, have to get together and create larger regional "identities" to compete for the same global mindshare, or they potentially could lose out.

What could be the benefits? I will not list economic benefits because those are perhaps more obvious (taxation, single market, negotiations etc).From a brand perspective, creating a "cool" region/ geo brand is going to give a serious boost up to corporate brands- I know how much easier it has gotten to introduce ourselves and our organization, because of our focus on building the "India" brand, sorta giving ourselves an instant "invitation to join" in any conversation.

Marketing is dead, long live Marketing!

2008-03-24T12:28:00.001+05:30

This post is intended to provoke a view of where marketing will be 10 years from now. I argue that the focus will shift to an emphasis on product (marketing knowledge applied to creating sexy products) as compared to the current emphasis on communication vehicles (marketing knowledge applied to media, advertising, etc) – hence marketing as we know it, is dead.

Why? As you read this, the consumer is under a barrage from a set of forces that are going to change the way they behave, forever… those forces are

As consumers- we are deluged in information- tv, newspapers (free, paid), internet, email, texts, social networks, blogs, books, etc. This overdose has serious strategic implications for accessing consumers. They are actually switching off- think about the last time you looked at advertising and did not look "through" it? Extrapolating this trend, cost of access to consumers using unsolicited "media" will steadily escalate, reaching "unsustainable" levels in the very near future- so goodbye TV, newspaper, hoardings/ billboards etc as advertising channels…
Already, reluctant consumers are very unwilling to recommend to their friends, for fear of "spamming" them, unless they are specifically asked, or know for sure that their friends are looking out – what happens to our reliance on peer recommendations, "Word of mouth" ?
Most products/ services in mainstream categories perform their job reasonably well- resulting in declining interest to switch products/ services- how are you going to get them to try your new product/service out? Think about the last time you changed your bank? And the last time you changed your internet service provider? ( for the record I have been with the same bank and the same ISP for the last 6 years- and the switch only happened because we moved cities)
Viral marketing will live, but the virus vectors (the mavens that will propagate the product/the trend) will be from your own network, not a "hero figure" on television- your cues for what you will do will come from others in your network, not from watching someone do something on TV. My use of "Dopplr" & "bookshelf"- both are facebook apps- are clearly driven by my savvy friends who are using these apps.
Mainstream and "good" will translate to boring, and hence will have severely limited chances of being tried. How many new "GOOD" email apps have you tried in the last 3 months?

A marketing world that is dominated by Advertising, PR, Direct marketing, Word of mouth, etc is clearly going to be irrelevant in the world where the consumer shuts off, will not recommend to friends, will show lesser and lesser switching behavior and is not interested in just good.

So what does marketing do? Pack bags up and take an early retirement? Tempting though the idea is, I would say not yet- played right, Marketing could perhaps end up being the key role in the center of the organization (yes, I do mean the CEO )…

The answer is, perhaps, surprisingly simple- In my view, the solution perhaps lies in a shifting emphasis- the trick lies in ensuring that your product talks to the consumer, rather than getting someone else to talk about the product. Think more about how you embed "viral", "edgy" and "cool" into the product itself, rather than think about viral in the advertising/ PR/ direct marketing of the product. Technically, the key shift is to dramatically increase focus on g marketing into product development, rather than emphasis on marketing in propagating information about the product. I have two examples to illustrate:

Think Gandhi and Ahimsa (non violence) and the particular notion of Satyagraha -the product was beautiful- non-violence as a way to protest- it stood out, spread virally, made people sit up and listen, and attracted attention of the whole world as a result, and of course, brought India its independence.
In India, in the rather crowded field of "baby delivery" specialists, which is currently dominated by Gynecologists with "reputation", and large hospitals with a "medical expertise" cache, one unique facility stands out. This is Cradle, a 5star baby delivery specialist center. Through their unique product and facility design (which I must say is a marketing delight), they have succeeded in being cool and viral, and have been very successful as a result.
Internationally, there are a few examples, but perhaps the best one is Apple- think about their products, their "sexy" design, the fanaticism with which their user base embraces apple and rejects everything else- you will see how the emphasis on marketing in product design clearly takes out the need to focus on marketing the product to the consumer.

Marketing innovation- who has the edge?

2008-01-23T19:29:00.001+05:30

I am listening to a technology panel at Davos right now, which has a group of large incumbent players (Verizon etc) and HTC, from China.

One insight that struck me was- how big businesses that have a vested interest in their businesses are all about trying to "incrementally" innovate on their existing businesses, whereas newer organizations (HTC), are willing to be much more open, because they do not have any existing interests they need to protect. This was particularly true in the way the biggies were trying to penetrate the so called "emerging" markets…

Extending that logic to marketing, I am wondering if having "established" marketing programs perhaps might be a liability? Wouldn't it be an idea (albeit a much unappealing one to my ilk) to start marketing plans on a zero base every 2 years ? I mean genuinely zero base, not a set of platitudes for continuing with existing programs. It would push people to ask and answer important questions on whether the business case for investment is there, and if it is, how best can it be leveraged.

Business would love it- because it gives all a chance to look marketing investment with ever-fresh eyes, doesn't allow spends and investments to ossify, and more importantly, forces the marketing group to continuously reassess portfolio allocation to channels- for instance, I believe that we will be spending magnitudes more on online channels of influence (web based/ 2.0 stuff) going forward…

Differentiation in a Web 2.0 world…

2008-01-01T19:26:00.001+05:30

The good news is, the web 2.0 world and the consequent democratization of content and channels has given everyone a voice. Has allowed anyone to set up their own newspaper (blog), tv channel (youtube) and radio channel (itunes podcasts).

But, a direct and a consequent problem is the huge increase in noise in the market place. You want to find an agency or an expert, go and search on linkedin, and look at the 100000 results and wonder how you are actually going to shortlist? And differentiation? In an age where the hottest music track of this week is something that the cat brought in the next, forget it…

So what can you do? Not sure if you can actually do too much -yeah sure, all the platitudes about being focused, thinking customer centric, being very good at it, etc are of important, but, are they enough? What would make you standout?

A thought provoking set of ideas was articulated by Seth Godin, at the TED conference in Monterrey, CA (http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/28). In talking of sliced bread and purple cows, he articulates the notion of being remarkable (in every sense of the term)…Happy viewing…

Innovation blowback- innovation from emerging markets’ that could come back to haunt...

2008-01-01T19:12:00.001+05:30

I was in India for the WEF India economic summit, and was hit by the incredible amount of innovation the consumer space is seeing.

Walking down a street in Bangalore, i saw at-least 5 new retail formats, everything from speciality niche offerings to mainstream "catch alls". One example, for instance, is a healthcare outfit called "Cradle". Think of a 5 star birth care hospital, replete with leather sofas, exclusive care, beautiful facilities etc? Well, that's Cradle for you. (http://www.boloji.com/wfs3/wfs322.htm )Very focused, it only caters to birth and delivery (and is trying to expand into neo-nates and paediatrics)

Well, in the intensely competitive marketspace that's India today, I expect to see a plethora of new innovative formats, all of which will have a chance to succeed as a business, given the huge size of the market, and consequently the numerous niches that can be supported. Arguably, some, if not many of these formats will be applicable elsewhere as well (in developed as well as emerging markets). It will be fascinating to see how these innovations pan out in India, and as time progresses, how they come out of india. Watch this space...

Viral marketing vs Traditional Marketing- is the Facebook model destined to rule?

2007-10-26T23:34:00.001+05:30

After you have sorted thro the messages, checked out your and your friends' feeds, bitten (vamipres, zombies), poked, superpoked, petted (fluff friends) etc, take a break to ponder on the phenomenon Facebook has become. Here is a social networking applications which, apparently is the second most " in" activity on US college campuses, tied to beer and sex. A website, that with very limited revenues (!) has hit a valuation of 11 figures, whose founder with all the mighty weight of his 23 years of existence is on the negotiating table with Steve Ballmer, the CEO fo Microsoft who is willing to buy a stake on facebook valued at $ 15 Billion.

So, what has this got to do with Viral marketing? Lets get to the same plate first in terms of semantics - when I say viral marketing, I mean the aggressive spread of awareness through recommendations from users, as compared to a top-down advertising led approach- the crux of the issue is- your users are responsible for marketing, rather similar to the way a virus spreads.

I wonder though, does this mean the early "end of days" for the traditional model of Advertising? This model relies on a budget led, planned approach has a specific purpose- expend all your energy on creating awareness- sort of a centralized planning model. But Viral marketing is, ofcourse, entirely different. Being viral, in many senses is about designing for aggressive propogation, but actually have no control over how this propogation happens. The fundamental questions in the approaches are diffent- the first model is about what are my outcomes, (TRP, GRP, awareness percentages etc), whereas, the second model's fundamental question is- How do I design the campaign so the user will recommend this to other users on an infinite propogation loop and trials happen through the user generated propogation.

The benefits of a viral approach seem to be very compelling- the biggest being you don't have big budgets for marketing, and of course, user engagement is, by definition very high- hence very loyal. But there are issues too- look at how rapidly MySpace seems to be falling out of favour- virus propogation is very spiky, and akin to a fad- here today, gone tomorrow…But hey, definitely a potent weapon in your arsenal…

What the Web 2.0 means to the enterprise

2007-10-19T04:06:00.001+05:30

This is part 2 of my ruminations from the Web 2.0 event in SFO today. In an environment where the Web 2.0 buzz seems to float around a 19 something youngster (typically from Stanford, based in the Silicon Valley), I wonder how all of this would affect all those other entities and people that so obviously did not fit into the former category. Specifically, my quest was to find what the Web 2.0 meant to the enterprise…

Here are a few thoughts

It will probably mean an end to the packaged software industry as we know it today. Today's paradigm is too oriented towards organisational process or functions adapting to the way the software is designed, and yet it seems so blatantly obvious that no two organsations are really the same, despite similarities from the outside! Every organization has different work cultures, think and act differently, have different behavior and of course, do things differently. So why should they be asked to mould to one way of working, the best of breed way? Now, you might argue that this is old wisdom, so how will web 2.0 impact it. Well heres the thing, with the advent of web 2.0, u can choose to get a receivables management from App provider A that is spot on for your organisation, a general ledger from App provider B which gets accountant Tim worked up in ecstacy , etc… if you sort of see where I am going, even a single functional group can be serviced by a whole mashup of apps from different app providers . U get the picture… no need for big monolithic black boxes- the age of micro optimization is in.
It will mean creation of a "enterprise workspace" not bound by the limitation of physical devices or space. In an era of "clouds", where your access and work is not locked up in just your machine, your access to information, data and resources and knowledge is only limited to having a browser, and an interface to engage with-why do u need to carry your own laptop, pray? And come to think of it- can we do away with having come to the office everyday?
Finally, and this part is the one I find the most exciting- it will fundamentally change the meaning of the word "collaboration". For far too long has the system worked with a small group of individuals making the rules and decisions for a much larger group, and in the process a huge chunk of intelligence, innovation capability and talent basically goes unharnessed. Now, Web 2.0, with its ability to create online and offline collaboration, can help tap into this collective talent.

Fully played out, we are looking possibly at massive change…

Do no Evil…

2007-10-18T06:25:00.001+05:30

Whilst the web2.0 world is an exciting new paradigm, i am, thro this post, exploring a reputational risk posed to the leading brands.

I was in the web2.0 summit the other day and listened to Mark Zuckerberg (ceo- facebook) on how he saw the social graph evolving, followed by Marissa Meyer (head of search, Google) who spoke about Google's foray into health. Both are companies i really admire, and are leading the charge in an entirely new movement on behaviour on the web- whether it be termed social networking or context aware web or anything inbetween...

However, as I listened to them, i started to wonder about how they epitomised a key challenge, that many other organisations are confronted with- given the huge information that the individual inadvertently or otherwise puts up into these organisation's platforms, the enormous information power held by companies Google and Face-book poses a reputational risk to their brand in terms of how user information could be used for nefarious activities.

They have tried reassure with the "Do no evil" cache- by building a brand of trust and being seen as doing good, they seem to be successful in ensuring that the world continues to adopt their platforms. But huge lacunae remain. Particularly in platforms such as Facebook, which do not have an effective answer to how they are going to avoid their users (particularly the gullible) being targeted ?

A smaller challenge, albeit a plausible one is what is to stop an engaged employee of an organisation with a lot of information from doing more profiling than would qualify under the "do no evil" cache.

My view- this is a land mine, that will need to be tackled- and much more proactively, including things like proactive customer education, defining an industry code and enforcing it, putting together strong processes internally and externally to ensure this would not happen ,and of course, hire lawyers J!.

China- the Masters of Marketing?

2007-09-12T19:11:00.001+05:30

I was at Dalian, China the last week for the World Economic Forum's event there. It is really interesting the way China is portraying herself on the world stage. What China has done and is doing about attracting the world attention is worth observing as a masterful effort in brand and marketing.

Mind you, I am not for a moment arguing that "only spin" is going to do the trick. My personal moment of truth in China happened in Shanghai, (look at the photo I took with my cell phone) when I travelled at the highest speed I have ever done on land (432 kmph, though the photograph reflects 405 kmph, could not hold my camera steady at 432 kmph ) on the Maglev train from Shanghai city to the airport. That said though, the Chinese, I argue, have become adept at packaging very, very attractively what they have…

Think about it-they have a lot of challenges to work with… the lack of English (as compared to their neighbours down south) is a serious impediment, they have a very different business culture, etc., and yet, they have the world's ears, are on top of the charts for direct investment, and for a lot of businesses that are looking to grow.

I put it down to organisation- what I found incredibly interesting about china was, they run their country like a business- a small group of individuals take decisions, and the rest of the country executes… period. Works well for them, and they are reaping the rewards for it.

But the marketing part- the same group of strategists seem to be able to teach a thing or two about marketing. Green is important, ergo, all streetlamps in Dalian are CFL (you know, the green ones, good for the environment!), the roads and taxis work incredibly, the entire city had a scrubbed look (try scrubbing Mumbai!), and of course, the conference center, the hotels, the rooms in a "Tier 2" city were absolutely fantastic. This to me is a hugely marketing centric view, which is resulting in phenomenal success for China.

Disproportionate influence: PR in Britain

2007-09-08T22:26:00.001+05:30

On a long haul flight this week, I was reading The Economist, which had some very insightful articles about Russia and Putin's hold on it. Whilst reading it, something struck me. The British media have a disproportionate influence on the world media… and there is an opportunity for the marketer punch above your weight here…

Think about it. British media, such as the BBC, the Economist and other such august publications are very widely watched all around the world. Because of the respected publications and channels and their reach, I argue that the British media opinion has a disproportionate influence on the world opinion.

So what does this mean? I don't think it is possible to suggest that media / PR influencing in Britain is enough to influence world opinion (well, atleast the English speaking world) , but there possibly is the case to argue that media management in Britain has potential benefits beyond Britain for the global organisation. Afterall, as they say, perception is reality, and managing global perceptions is important.

Zero Budget Marketing

2007-08-30T13:12:00.001+05:30

Zero budget marketing seems to be an oxymoron… and yet, in today's Web 2.0 world, it is more than ever possible…Let us just define what we mean here- this post is about how we create disproportionate impact from limited (or almost zero) budgets, leveraging the power of the newer forms of influence and reach that are made available to us?

Consider the following:

To build awareness, have you considered creating a profile of your company on facebook/ myspace- given that the accountants already consider a company an entity , this notion of looking at your brand as a "personality" is not entirely illogical, , so why shouldn't you consider? Particularly with the ability to customise platforms like facebook, you can pretty much endow your profile with exactly the right characteristics you are looking for. And it costs you nothing (well a little bit of time, perhaps?)
Brand influence is being built disproportionately thro non traditional channels…Did you know that edmunds.com, an automotive website, has more influence on automotive purchase decisions in the US than the combined budgets of the entire US automotive industry?
Have you really leveraged blogs enough? Having a blog is like having your own newspaper (I read that in a blog, interestingly enough)…and just think about the amount of publicity you could get if you had your own newspaper.
Have you thought about podcasts enough? Ever since the phenomenon called i-pod, and more importantly, the community called i-tunes came into being (not too long ago, as recently as 2003, and they have sold 3 Billion songs already), you can get your "podcasts" out to the audience…
You-tube, a Google property, reaches millions, and is probably the best channel to recruit fresh talent, and hey, do you really think you need to pay ad fees? Think again. If you could create a few videos of your workplace that you could publish (all they have to be is cool and trendy), you could start a movement on your own.
Do you really need to have all those events? Events tend to be resource and effort intensive, and take a lot of planning effort and time- rather than doing that, can you substitute a part of the interface ( it is never really possible to substitute completely for face to face), and move that online (eg an event on Second Life, or if you would like things a little simpler, a webinar), it saves you the effort, saves them the trouble of budgeting and planning for travel, and finally, is good for the environment. (compared to the cost of a physical events, you are looking at a fraction (say ¼ ) of the cost
Search engine marketing, a term that basically is about second guessing search engine rules with intent to get your website to be on page 1 of as many searches as you can get to can be not only done on very limited budgets (think £100 and multiples) but can also be sharply focused and be very effective, if you have thought through who you want to attract ,and who you don't.
You have something to sell? Why do you need to invest in bricks (or even in clicks)? In the initial stages, it is relatively simple enough to avail of free website creations/ free blog creations/ free (well nearly free) e-marketplaces to start your own store at zero cost.

What does the Green Agenda mean to Marketing?

2007-08-30T13:10:00.005+05:30

As Martin Wolf from the FT argues, it is reasonably clear that the tide of the scientific argument has turned decisively towards mankind's culpability in creating climate change. What is not clear though, is how we move to reverse this. What this has pointed to is that climate change (and the green agenda) is a subject that is gathering steam, be it in the echelons of the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, or in the coffee table conversations of countless meetings, and has become a serious agenda for business. I argue, through this post, that marketing is well placed to take actions on this front.

Your business has to be on the right side of green. In today's world, particularly in continental Europe, anything from 30-60% (depending on the country) of consumers vote with their feet if they believe your business is not acting sustainably- creating a clear business case for your green credentials. The best way to ensure this is to initiate business programs that aim at being carbon neutral, and tackle other parts of the sustainability argument as well- use of fair-trade commodities, ethics and sustainability audits etc
You may have opportunities to create newer products/servicelines that are able to bring this benefit to bear with your customers. Eg- if you are in retail, it is relatively easy to create products/brands/services that appeal to the green consumer- think Prius, think Fairtrade coffee, think BP's ultimate petrol.
Bring down the "carbon footprint" in marketing activities- eg- can you reduce usage of paper, can you look at your event venues that are "greener", can you bring down travel through your campaigns etc… (in many ways, this stuff actually reduces your costs, hence creating a double benefit)

Thought Leadership- What it is and how can you build it?

2007-08-30T13:10:00.003+05:30

To me, the essence of thought leadership lies in the way the client sees you. Are you positioned as a "guru" to your customers or not? The line of reasoning from the customer's perspective is thus- if these chaps know more than I do about the problem I am faced with, I am more likely to believe that the solution they present to me will indeed sort me out- the "guru" positioning. Thought leadership is about being seen as the Guru.

This rationale works well with highly amorphous products or services (high intangibility) -the more amorphous, the more difficult to quantify the benefits, hence more the need for you to appear as the guru= you require to be seen as the "thought leader". Particular examples are high-expertise, intangible industries- eg business consultants, eg Public Relations consultants…

How do you build it though?

Most arguments at this point emphasise bringing out thought leadership through "thought papers"… i.e., create white papers that present a differentiated point of view on the subject to the audience. I would however argue, this is possibly not the best route to building thought leadership. There are not that many "different" solutions to a problem, after all isn't it all about common sense anyway?

To me building thought leadership is about having an informed and experienced view on most issues that vex customers around the subject, it is not about having a unique view i.e., it is not important to have an alternate take on every thing, but it is important to have a reasonably enlightened view on most things that matter on the subject. Think about how you would look at a Guru- it is not that the guru's solutions are totally different from other solutions out there, but it is that the guru will be the best placed to give you the right solution in the first place, because they know so much about the subject.

Take the example of a strategic consultancy- which wants to be seen as a guru of <say> business transformation- I would argue that it is more important for this consultancy to have an experience based view on all key elements – eg., business transformation through process improvements, through leveraging new technology, through portfolio optimisation, through mergers and acquisitions, through reemphasising competitive advantage, through restructuring, through building alliances etc… rather than have a unique take on any or all of the above.

In short, creating an entire library of white papers on the subject is more important than focusing on that "brilliant" prize winning article alone.

Marketing in the Context of Business

2007-08-30T13:10:00.001+05:30

Rather than looking at what the boundaries of marketing are, the focus of this particular post will be on what do you leverage marketing for. Marketing folks have done enough self-promotion for business to believe that marketing is crucial to business (I agree, in principle), but some are not quite sure what to do with it- where do you use it, when do you need more of it, when can you make do with less?

Marketing is a force multiplier to business- having a great product (service) which can be sold at a reasonable price and still make reasonable margins is probably the most crucial thing for business, and nothing can substitute that, but what is also important is to be able to quickly spread the word to enable the business to capture all that revenue left untapped, and be able to create a "respect" that allows you to command premiums over competition (differentiation)- with the first, you accelerate revenues, and with the second, you improve profits.

Who owns marketing? That is an easy one to answer, and it is not the marketing department. I would argue, depending on which business you are in and what the specific leverage points are, that it is clearly a direct business leadership responsibility. Think of marketing as a way of thinking, and be cognisant of marketing's role in every single business transaction (many of which tend to be outside of the scope of the traditional marketing department)- every sales call, every hr presentation, every results presentation, every governmental interface- so please do not lock responsibility for marketing into a black box left to marketing people.

When do you need marketing? Why don't I focus on the easier question to answer? When don't you need it? A few circumstances, but the following would probably be important:

When you cannot scale up to meet current demand- now what's the point in creating further revenue demand if you cannot fulfil existing demand? But even in this, there are mitigating circumstances- eg in a services business, the crimp on demand is sometimes due to a non availability of employees, and hence the marketing emphasis is on building the employee brand.
When you have an absolute monopoly and are in no particular hurry to rival a certain William H Gates. The monopoly need not only be about governmental regulation (where you have been clever enough to get the government to shut every one else out of the market), it could also be because you have been frightfully clever and have created intellectual property ( patent/ copyright/ r&d led monopoly)
When you are a large business that has been consistently investing in your brand and have created a sufficient base of goodwill, so you can weather a couple of seasons of base-level investment, because you need to cut costs to weather the coming squalls. But don't make a habit of it…

But, please note, the key point is that marketing is a force multiplier- it cannot, make up for weak business fundamentals.

Marketing in a Flat World

2007-08-30T13:09:00.003+05:30

As Tom Friedman puts it, the flattening of the world presents us with entirely new sets of challenges and opportunities- and he goes on to emphasise how nation states and individuals should react. I argue, in this post, that this trend has an interesting set of implications for marketing too…

Setting guiding principles straight- the integration of countries such as China and India into the global economy presents the marketing function with a fundamentally great opportunity to leverage the benefits those markets have to offer. Specifically, 2+ billion very competitive people has a way of filtering the very best of brains/talent to the top, and this talent is available at a very low price point. I argue that marketing is well poised to take advantage.

How? Consider the following:

Marketing innovation blowback- implementing marketing campaigns in emerging markets present challenges that are very local- presence or absence of media channels and resources mean that you have to think different about how you reach and influence. But, what has been built for emerging markets, can arguably be brought back to the home/ mature markets with little customisaiton required.
Leverage emerging markets for cost reduction in your budgets- look at your traditional campaigns- everything from DM, to emails, to database administration etc can be done out of one of these markets, at a fraction of the cost in these economies- what parts of your campaign can you move there? (the answer by the way, is not all!)
Focus on analytics and insight building in emerging economies- did you know that a significant chunk of McKinsey's knowledge management resources reside in emerging markets? Their job is to build and manage those insights for all of Mckinsey to benefit from, not just for those emerging markets.
Leverage those online assets more- with the emergence of a huge technology business, countries such as India have a very sophisticated technology talent pool- which can be leveraged to create newer forms of marketing value creation, with things like website analytics for instance, or with other forms of online outreach and accountability.
Creating more accountability- marketing, it has been argued, does not give a very good account of itself when it comes to results accounting- a part of this has to do with the amorphous nature of what marketing does, but a bigger part is due to the difficult in implementing accounting and measurement processes, which can be very skills intensive- which is where the emerging markets and the leverage they bring come in- put your accountability processes elsewhere…

Marketing: B2B vs B2C

2007-08-30T13:09:00.001+05:30

Marketing to businesses and Marketing to consumers, are two different things really, aren't they? To my mind, there are 3 primary differences between B2B and B2C marketing, keeping in mind these could be sweeping generalisations, and may apply only in some cases. Inherently, the B2C business tends to focus on a large number of customers, and the volume/value of each transaction tends to be small, as compared to the B2B business. This tends to be different the following ways:

The relative simplicity of the message- In a B2C environment, one tries to influence customers in a very cluttered environment (one ad amongst 15 in that break) – hence the need for a simple message which becomes very important. Hence the entire notion of a USP and the statistical analysis and sampling techniques that sharpen how well it is communicated
The size and magnitude of "target audience" the business needs to reach and hence the implications -think about the FMCG business, owing to the fact that it is impossible for this business to physically reach all their customers, so they have figured out the best ways to reach them through other channels- hence advertising- and the specialisation of creating a 15 second or a 30 second ad that will do the job of getting a proportion of the billion customers to buy at the retail store.
The relative complexity of the decision making- in a B2B business, we need to figure out the main decision maker, the influencers, the end users etc… in a B2C business, things tend to be relatively simpler.