Saturday, October 2, 2010
HBR : How chocolate idea can save the world. Sustainable Business model
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/09/how_chocolate_can_save_the_world.html
Also check the passing reference to 80:20 Pareto principle. Statistics in motion.
Also check the passing reference to 80:20 Pareto principle. Statistics in motion.
Increasing FDI limits in India
The Indian economy has reached the orbit of high rate of economic growth. It is being widely acclaimed as an emerging global economic power. The rate of growth recorded during the period 1950-51 to 2009-10 clearly indicates a tendency of steady upward trend.
India adopted a socialist-inspired approach for most of its independent history, with strict government control over private sector participation, foreign trade, and foreign direct investment. However, since the early nineties, India has gradually opened up its markets through economic reforms by reducing government controls on foreign investment.
Following the global financial and economic turmoil in 2008, last year was a year of stability and significant restoration of confidence in global markets. This transition was facilitated by policy initiatives both in the form of unprecedented monetary policy action and strong fiscal support. Indian economy's strong GDP figures of 7.4 percent in FY2010 show its resilience in the aftermath of the financial shock that the world experienced. Now, India's chief aim is to return to 9 percent growth figures and Indian government should promote business confidence and facilitate increased investments.
Foreign investments in the form of Foreign Direct investments (FDI) and Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) have supported the Indian growth story to a great extent. FDI played an instrumental role in channelizing capital flows towards the productive areas of our economy. FDI in India has contributed effectively to the overall growth of the economy in the recent times. FDI inflow has an impact on India's transfer of new technology and innovative ideas; bringing in managerial expertise; improving infrastructure, thus makes a competitive business environment.
In 2009, India attracted $36.6 billion of FDI inflows, equivalent to 2.7 per cent of its gross domestic product. The cumulative amount of FDI equity inflows from August 1991 to April 2010 stood at US$ 134,642 million, according to the data released by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). India is evolving as one of the 'most favored destination' for FDI in Asia and the Pacific. It has displaced the US as the second-most favored destination for FDI in the world after China according to an AT Kearney FDI Confidence Index.
India has been ranked at the third place in global foreign direct investments in 2009 and will continue to remain among the top five attractive destinations for international investors during 2010-11, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in a report on world investment prospects titled, 'World Investment Prospects Survey 2009-2011' released in July 2009.
India is a preferred destination for foreign direct investments (FDI); India has strengths in information technology and other important areas such as auto components, apparels, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, jewellery and so on. Although India has always held promise for global investors, but its rigid FDI policies were significant hindrances in this context. However, as a result of a series of ambitious and positive economic reforms aimed at deregulating the economy and stimulating foreign investment, India has positioned (projected) itself as one of the front-runners in the Asia Pacific Region.
In India, 100 percent FDI is permitted through the automatic route in Hotels & Tourism, Trading companies (Exports, Bulk Imports, Cash and Carry wholesale trading), power, Drugs & Pharmaceuticals, Business Processing Outsourcing, Shipping, Deep Sea Fishing, Oil Exploration, Power, Housing and Real Estate Development, Highways, Bridges and Ports; up to 74 percent is permitted in Private Banking and Telecom services, 26 percent in Insurance sector. FDI in multi-brand retail is restricted to 51 percent and 100 percent in cash & carry segment of wholesale retail.
The Budget 2010 intends to simplify and introduce user-friendly regulations and guidelines for FDI but these are mostly at the central government level. However, actual implementation of projects will take place at the state level. Bureaucratic hassles, mainly at the state level, are obstacles to the realization of FDI. Some of the major issues related to project implementation such as land acquisition, land use change, power connection, building plan approval are at the state level. This division of political responsibility creates a delay in implementation. Therefore, a concerted effort is required for better co-ordination between the central and state governments on this issue. An institutional mechanism may be set up for getting clearances of FDI projects from both central and state governments within a stipulated time.
Another way of attracting FDI is by following the Chinese special economic zone (SEZ) model. This is large with state of the art infrastructure facilities and proper infrastructure connectivity to the market. To attract FDI, SEZs in India should be designed like the ones in China with proper infrastructure and connectivity to domestic and external markets. If necessary, the private sector should be encouraged to set up private airports and ports to service the SEZs through automatic routes and 100 percent FDI equity. Since it's hard to connect different kinds of transportation infrastructure in India, SEZs should be established in the coastal regions like in China to make transportation easier.
While foreign equity participation has increased in most sectors, there are still sectors where there is huge potential for FDI inflows. Further increases in FDI ceilings in sectors such as telecom, civil aviation, power generation, food retailing, insurance, banking, investing companies and the real estate sector will be required to achieve this potential. FDI in Retail Sector is necessary and would ensure achieving of efficiencies in the supply chain process in the domestic market, that would benefit all the stakeholders i.e., government, farmers and consumers.
The practice has grown significantly in the last couple of decades, to the point that FDI has generated quite a bit of opposition from groups such as labor unions. These organizations have expressed concern that investing at such a level in another country eliminates jobs. The GoI should discuss the FDI investments in various sectors with the stakeholders and convey the benefits of allowing FDI to the people. Political will is the need of the hour; lack of which otherwise would stall the reform process.
Most of these sectors need to be opened up further with independent regulatory systems to control market distortions and allow fair competition. Though the budget recognizes the importance of ownership and control issues for FDI, no concrete steps have been announced or proposed.
The investment climate can be improved through increasing foreign and private ownership in different sectors, simplifying rules and regulations and developing independent regulatory bodies. But India can only succeed in actually creating a conducive business environment and getting more investment both from private and foreign investors if it focuses on providing quality physical infrastructure.
Private sector participation, both domestic and foreign, needs to be encouraged to enable infrastructure development. Though an emphasis on infrastructure development in the 2010-11 Budget would certainly help in achieving more FDI realization, we also need to work on other important issues related to labor laws, centre-state coordination, better SEZ schemes and proper institutional mechanisms to attract more FDI in future.
FDI, which is vital to India's growth, has lacked a proper policy document and has been administered primarily through a series of press notes over many years. According to the critics, the 177 existing press notes have created new areas of ambiguity while trying to resolve the existing ones. Doing away with the press notes approach will go a long way in making India's FDI policy transparent and friendly to investors.
India is becoming increasingly attractive to foreign investors. The reforms proposed in this year's Budget will simplify regulations and guidelines for FDI and make them more user-friendly, paving the way for a better investment climate and sustainable growth. But in India there is huge gap between proposals for reforms, and their implementation. Bipartisan cooperation will help to ensure that reforms are implemented, allowing India to attract FDI and progress toward double digit growth.
Government of India accepts the key role of FDI in economic development not only as an addition to domestic capital but also as an important source of technology and global best practices. The Government of India has put in place a liberal and transparent FDI policy.
FDI has become an integral part of national development strategies for almost all the nations globally. Its global popularity and positive output in augmenting of domestic capital, productivity and employment; has made it an indispensable tool for stimulating economic growth for countries.
Gopidalai Muralidhar Rao
MMS (2010-2012)
SIMSREE
TOI and WallStreet Journal
WSJ.com - The End of Management http://on.wsj.com/cJAAvq
Execution Is The Key To Innovation - The Times of India http://t.co/G8SbP74
Courtesy: Kartik Ramaswamy
Execution Is The Key To Innovation - The Times of India http://t.co/G8SbP74
Courtesy: Kartik Ramaswamy
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Mckinsey: The innovating Rivalry
Mckinsey appreciating the TCS and Tata Innovation Lab
https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Innovation/Using_rivalry_to_spur_innovation_2599
https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Innovation/Using_rivalry_to_spur_innovation_2599
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
HBR: Forget Your Elevator Pitch — What's Your Dumbwaiter Pitch?
http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/04/forget_your_elevator_pitch_wha.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
So you've got an elevator pitch — a short, pithy description of why your business is special, exciting, and unique. Yawn. Today, elevator pitches are the economic equivalent of speeches at a beauty pageant: predictable, often vapid, always bland.
Here's a suggestion. Try a Dumbwaiter Pitch instead. It's an exercise I often do with startups, giant corporations, social entrepreneurs, and investors. Its goal? To strip an organization right down to its bones, and see how compelling it really is.
What's the one-word description of your business? That's right: just one word. The most common answer is: hmming, hawing, and silence. The second most common answer is an imaginary benefit. The third most common answer is a raw product — just another mass-produced, meaningless commodity. All three answers reveal a business with whose foundation, its economic concept, is confused, muddled, and perhaps even nonexistent.
Let's go through a few examples.
What's the Dumbwaiter Pitch for a soft drink company? "Happiness" is Coke's latest answer. Of course, the link between soft drinks and happiness is tenuous at best, and probably totally nonexistent in reality. Let's get real: the Dumbwaiter Pitch for a soft-drinks company isn't "happiness." It's just "sugar-water." And in a world where the costs of obesity on the one hand and poor nutrition on the other are ever more apparent, that's a weak, uncompelling proposition.
What's the Dumbwaiter Pitch for Vertu — the Nokia subsidiary that makes luxury mobile phones? "Luxe" doesn't work — it takes more than merely ostrich leather to make high-end tech, as Apple's groundbreaking software so vividly keeps demonstrating. Blinged-out versions of a $50 phone that sell for 100x the price? The only Dumbwaiter Pitch for that set of economics is "consumption." And that highlights the problem with the very foundation of the business, its economic concept. In a world where consumption must rebalance sharply, Vertu's concept has reached its expiry date.
What's Foursquare's Dumbwaiter Pitch? If it's "gaming," there are plenty of more involving games, more powerful substitutes around. If it's "connection," who's connecting? There's a long way, it seems, to go before real connections are made. The Dumbwaiter Pitch highlights the need for Foursquare, while cool, to get serious about next-gen economics.
What's Twitter's Dumbwaiter Pitch? I'd say: "alerts." And that's powerful in a roiling, seething world where risk and volatility are vastly amplified. Information that alerts you to possibilities and opportunities matters more than ever before. You can't get alerts anywhere else: not at Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. Twitter is one of the few companies in the economy with a solid, compelling Dumbwaiter Pitch.
In simplicity lie the seeds of explosively powerful propositions. In complexity, only confusion, incoherence, and uncompetitiveness.
Reductive, simplistic, restrictive? Think again. Nearly every disruptive business, in fact, has a Dumbwaiter Pitch as pure, simple, and powerful as Niagara Falls. Google? Search. Apple? Beauty. Lego? Creativity. Conversely, companies that aren't sharp-eyed enough to see that their real Dumbwaiter Pitches are lame, tired, or just plain evil — well, they usually end up facing extinction. Wall Street's should have been "wealth" but it was really "looting" — pow! Big Pharma's should be "health" but it's really "pricing" — zap! Big Food's should be "nutrition" but it's really "obesity" — bang!
The Dumbwaiter Pitch is so powerful because it cuts through the obfuscation, glad-handing, and double-talk so beloved of boardrooms and beancounters and asks them to get straight to the real point. And, of course, like the sharpest of scalpels, it reveals where there never was any meat on the bones to begin with.
Only businesses with a razor-sharp, laser-focused vision — and a disruptive economic concept — can craft a Dumbwaiter Pitch. Do you have what it takes? What's the one-word description of your business?
-- HBR
Here's a suggestion. Try a Dumbwaiter Pitch instead. It's an exercise I often do with startups, giant corporations, social entrepreneurs, and investors. Its goal? To strip an organization right down to its bones, and see how compelling it really is.
What's the one-word description of your business? That's right: just one word. The most common answer is: hmming, hawing, and silence. The second most common answer is an imaginary benefit. The third most common answer is a raw product — just another mass-produced, meaningless commodity. All three answers reveal a business with whose foundation, its economic concept, is confused, muddled, and perhaps even nonexistent.
Let's go through a few examples.
What's the Dumbwaiter Pitch for a soft drink company? "Happiness" is Coke's latest answer. Of course, the link between soft drinks and happiness is tenuous at best, and probably totally nonexistent in reality. Let's get real: the Dumbwaiter Pitch for a soft-drinks company isn't "happiness." It's just "sugar-water." And in a world where the costs of obesity on the one hand and poor nutrition on the other are ever more apparent, that's a weak, uncompelling proposition.
What's the Dumbwaiter Pitch for Vertu — the Nokia subsidiary that makes luxury mobile phones? "Luxe" doesn't work — it takes more than merely ostrich leather to make high-end tech, as Apple's groundbreaking software so vividly keeps demonstrating. Blinged-out versions of a $50 phone that sell for 100x the price? The only Dumbwaiter Pitch for that set of economics is "consumption." And that highlights the problem with the very foundation of the business, its economic concept. In a world where consumption must rebalance sharply, Vertu's concept has reached its expiry date.
What's Foursquare's Dumbwaiter Pitch? If it's "gaming," there are plenty of more involving games, more powerful substitutes around. If it's "connection," who's connecting? There's a long way, it seems, to go before real connections are made. The Dumbwaiter Pitch highlights the need for Foursquare, while cool, to get serious about next-gen economics.
What's Twitter's Dumbwaiter Pitch? I'd say: "alerts." And that's powerful in a roiling, seething world where risk and volatility are vastly amplified. Information that alerts you to possibilities and opportunities matters more than ever before. You can't get alerts anywhere else: not at Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. Twitter is one of the few companies in the economy with a solid, compelling Dumbwaiter Pitch.
In simplicity lie the seeds of explosively powerful propositions. In complexity, only confusion, incoherence, and uncompetitiveness.
Reductive, simplistic, restrictive? Think again. Nearly every disruptive business, in fact, has a Dumbwaiter Pitch as pure, simple, and powerful as Niagara Falls. Google? Search. Apple? Beauty. Lego? Creativity. Conversely, companies that aren't sharp-eyed enough to see that their real Dumbwaiter Pitches are lame, tired, or just plain evil — well, they usually end up facing extinction. Wall Street's should have been "wealth" but it was really "looting" — pow! Big Pharma's should be "health" but it's really "pricing" — zap! Big Food's should be "nutrition" but it's really "obesity" — bang!
The Dumbwaiter Pitch is so powerful because it cuts through the obfuscation, glad-handing, and double-talk so beloved of boardrooms and beancounters and asks them to get straight to the real point. And, of course, like the sharpest of scalpels, it reveals where there never was any meat on the bones to begin with.
Only businesses with a razor-sharp, laser-focused vision — and a disruptive economic concept — can craft a Dumbwaiter Pitch. Do you have what it takes? What's the one-word description of your business?
-- HBR
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
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