To do, or not to do ??

All those who talk of a 'work life balance' back home need to come to Europe and see things for themselves. Seriously !!

Anyhow, this here is an interesting article on this topic. Basically, now you've got research to confirm what everyone already knew... you can either get a decent life, or you give it up to climb the ladder a wee bit faster than the others.

Read More

15 people are MIG pilots

Now, most of my music is fairly old school classic rock and roll, a little metal, a little random stuff. An interesting thing is, on almost every time I go to a song/page on YouTube, I find other old-school people spewing venom at a bloke called Justin Bieber.

Having never heard of the guy, I had to look him up on Google. Turns out, he's a kiddie-pop chap. Each one to his tastes.

But coming back to the point, these online battles are hilarious. Especially the comments for those idiots who clicked on the dislike button on one of the rock classics...

A few samples (from 4 consecutive Led Zep songs):
* I need 20 bullets
* 20 people havent gotten the led out yet
* 25 people have been bitten by a black dog
* 5 people are now going to the stairway to hell

And my favourite, on a Top Gun theme: 15 people are MIG pilots !!!

Read More

Second Term - it's over

Back after a bit of a hiatus...
Had been busy with the exams and final presentations and whatnot.
First, the presentations. We had a bunch of presentations to make this time around. Economics, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Strategy, and Operations...phew !! The class is getting really good at this stuff now. There were a good number of presentations that really rocked ! Well, that's one aspect of being an MBA that the class seems to have nailed, ha ha.

Now for the exams. The second term is supposed to be the toughest in terms of the workload. Easy to see why, seeing that there are seven subjects to cover. And all of them except for Cost Accounting and Finance had a groupwork element. Some people were pretty burnt out after the presentations, and by the time the exams came around, they couldn't care less.

The thing with groupwork is, it can make your life, well, interesting, to say the least in the run-up to the presentation week! Even if you have a great group. Which I did.
So what's the problem? Time-management. Everybody has dual commitments, to the new group and the old group. Both groups want to meet right after class, and then get out ASAP. And it's not just you, it's each person in the group, juggling timetables. Something the planning department should give some serious thought, I'd say.

Now for the good news. It's all downhill from here. Terms 3, 4 and 5 are all much easier !!

Read More

Looking back all the time

Both, the economics and Financial Management professors have remarked, as have dozens of op-ed columnists, that most financial/economic solutions target the last crisis, and lay the seeds for the next one.

I was wondering, aren't most MBAs also looking back, when the career-changers pick their new careers? Most would simply choose whatever is currently 'sexy'.

Anyone looking for jobs in Private Equity or Hedge Funds today ought to know that the crazy days are just about over. Not exactly mundane and normal, but not wild either. Sure, the average hedgie would still make a pile of money, but one would need to be a lot smarter to make as much money as in the heyday. Ditto for PE. Ditto for consulting. Ditto for whatever the fad !!

Picking your next job with an eye on the past isn't a really smart idea. Nonetheless, that is precisely what many of us will do.

Read More

Music maketh the mood, or is it the other way around?

Today, there I was, in an Irish pub, a pint of bitter in hand, watching Man. Utd. a goal ahead against Fulham.
Neither of the two entirely unexpected, neither me in an Irish pub, nor Man. Utd. a goal ahead of Fulham. Everything ho-hum.

Suddenly, Fulham equalized. The game came to life, as did I, and as did the music. Now, either the faceless, nameless DJ at the classic rock radio station that was playing was a Fulham fan, or it was just me, a little mellower after a second mug, because all of a sudden, Led Zep, Kiss, Live, AC/DC (and Bon Jovi too) all played, back to back. Uptempo !!

The second equalizer, in the 89'th minute, and the unmistakable 'Whiskey in the Jar' comes on at the same time. Surely not just a coincidence, eh?
Four minutes of extra time later, the Man. Utd. players walked out a little unhappy, already trailing Chelsea. I walked out a content man !!
A long run later in the evening, a perfect ending to the August break...

PS: I don't hate Man. Utd. anymore. Not since a certain showboating Portuguese left Manchester for Madrid. But I still love to see the fan-boys pissed off !!

Read More

Age: just a state of mind, or something like it...

Last term, one of the more interesting exercises the class did was in O.B. We were on the eye-roll inducing, but easy, stuff, like 'what do you want out of life', 'long term goals' and how these things evolve with time. The professor then asked us to chart out the amount of time, as a percentage, we'd like to spend on 4-5 aspects (the usual suspects, personal, professional, family, social etc.), and do this in chunks of 5 or 10 years, from now, till the time we'd like to live.

Then we were to compare it with the people around us.

The class was quite for about 5 minutes, and then it became a fish-market. On a side note, methinks the only reason I enjoyed O.B. was that every second OB class was bound to end up in a fish-market !!

The most interesting thing was the huge difference in our thinking. Not in our allocation of time. No, if you knew the other person, you could make a fair guess of his/her allocation. What really stood out was how long we wanted to live !!

I was ready to call it a day at 60, another at 65, but most Europeans went on till 80 or 85 !! We weren't asked to influence each other's points of view, just understand them. Oh boy, did this take some understanding, ha ha.

Read More

Net Neutrality Neutered ?

In all this hullabaloo over the Google-Verizon proposal,there are a lot of grey areas...
One good point stands out. No company can pay an ISP to prioritize it's traffic at the expense of a rival.
That, I think, pretty much retains the core idea of Net Neutrality.

Then why is there a reluctance on one's part to say it's cool?
Why is there a nagging suspicion that this proposal will do us no good?
Why is there so much skepticism around the deal?
There are reasons good enough to justify this ...

For one, the bargaining power rests with the ISPs when it comes to dealing with the smaller content providers. No good can come of it.
These smaller content providers will be able to cut deals with some ISPs, not with all.
Now, imagine one ISP has a deal with one of the bandwidth-hogs, and you get high-speed access to it at home. Now you travel to another place, and the ISP there doesn't allow high-speed access to this service, since it doesn't have a deal with the content provider. So you can access a website at full service levels with one ISP in one place, but not with another ISP in another place. What total rot!! The very essence of today's evolution is that the internet is the same wherever you go.

You can kiss the idea of a 'cloud' goodbye if this happens.

Tech. enthusiasts aside, the marketing departments won't be too happy with this development. They're targeting their customers and spending money on advertising on the right website, with all the segmentation, profiling etc. Now, some ISP comes along and blocks access to the website. A good proportion of the advertising expense would just go down the drain. Not good !!

Even if an ISP doesn't block access altogether to these bandwidth-hogs, if they just provide access to the content but at much lower (public) speeds, that's just not good enough. It'll still be a retrograde step.

Read More

Value addition, or Filtering?

Unanswered questions always come around, don't they? About two years ago, when I was midway through the thoroughly unpleasant task of applying to B-schools, I wasn't really sure whether B-schools really add value to students, or they simply select a bunch high-fliers, hand them an MBA, and let the world know that these guys are the works.

A full term has gone by here at IE, right in the thick of the action, and I'm not quite sure of the answer, yet.

Maybe the first term was largely introductory in nature. But I don't think there was SO much to be learnt. Economics was great, and Information Systems was an eye-opener, and that's about it. Other than that, lets see...
* I've learnt not to be unduly impressed the next time I see a consultant presenting something with a two-by-two matrix.
* I've learnt that even smart MBAs ask the dumbest of questions.
* That many of us MBAs (and their professors) can't resist cliches (I might jump out of the window the next time I see an "iceberg" slide in a presentation).
* That if inclined to do so, you can make a bell-curve or an S-curve for just about anything.
* That people can give fancy names to the most basic, common-sense ideas and get published (ABC's window of XYZ), so-and-so's 5 forces, 4 Ps of marketing, 3 Ds of whatever....

But it's not all cynical. Many of the people around are genuinely interesting blokes. Quite a few of them talk sense. Most of them are equally at home in at least 3-4 countries. They have some really 'different' interests. And not everyone is out to join M/B/B or GS. A fair number of professors do actually try make the class relevant and interesting. So yes, you can emerge from the year at IE as a newer, improved version. But it's upto you !!

Read More

Putting your money where your mouth is

Saw an article in the day's FT, on Flattr. Boy, I like the idea of this thing...


The basic concept is really simple, you can reward the creators of content that you like, by crediting any amount to them. As little as 1 cent, as much as your pocket (rather, your mood) allows.

What appeals to me is this -First, the user has total freedom - 'like' whatever you want, pay whatever amount you want. The only restriction is that you register with a minimum of Eur 2, per month. Not much. You'll hardly feel it. Second, for someone who's creating really good content out there, even the 1 cent contributions can add up !! And finally, for those of us who come across something really cool, it's a nice way of showing appreciation. This says you really like it. Not like the stupid Facebook 'Like' button (some of the things that people like.... don't get me started ) !!

I know, the obvious thing, why pay the creator when he/she has knowingly put up the content for free? I don't know!! But the fact is that we aren't always logical. I've often felt so relieved at finding the right figures/analysis while searching for data for reports in the MBA, I wouldn't mind crediting 5-10 cents to the content creator, say 'you're a lifesaver, dude !!'.

Read More

Buy Low, Sell High

Some time towards the end of last term, one item popped up on our calendars- CIA debriefing.
No, our 'intelligent' class has nothing to do with the 'intelligence' agency. We were up for 'Change In Action' (CIA), something that we'll be doing for a week after every term's exams.

The best part of the entire CIA sequence was an oil-trading game we played. Basically, we were all given ten million Euros to spend in an online simulation. We had to invest a million at a time, based on some vague news clips, and at the end of it, we got to see whether our investment made money or tanked.

This was the most fun Demand-Supply example in economics, ever !!
Buy low, sell high !!

Needless to say, it became a race to the top. Everybody made more money than they lost. Not surprising, a friend of mine who was a trader before his MBA made the most!! He wasn't a commodities trader, so he had no undue advantage over the rest of us, but that doesn't matter. The "trader's attitude" did it!!

Read More

Over and Out !!

We're done !! Done with the first term, 5-6 subjects, and a whole lot of fun. The exams were just the way I prefer, quick, short tests, one each day, for five days. No need to learn any formulae, no mugging... just go write down whatever you could retain from class!!

An exam can tell you a lot about what a professor thinks about the class. If he/she treat you like adults, you'll be asked to think, if not, it'll just be rote application of the 3Ps of marketing, formulae for NPV or some such nonsense. Thankfully, none of this stuff happened. Only thinking. Analysis. Much respect!!

PS: Financial Accounting was the exception. Straight out of the book, like in school. But I think that was just out of pity for the class, ha ha.

Read More

Foursquare - $20 M raised in VC funding

Foursquare, the location-based social networking site that we discussed in class in the beginning of the course, has just raised $20 Million in Venture Capital funding from the VC fund Andreessen Horowitz.

Not bad, eh?

Looks like there are good times ahead for the people behind FourSquare!! Marc Adreessen (the Netscape founder) is counting on a rapid growth in the smartphone market to justify his firm's investment in Foursquare. Facebook and Google (Google Latitude) are reportedly working on location-based social networking as well.

PS: This is what I had to say in an analysis on Foursquare's business model.

Read More

Bring it on

Done with the posts/assignments on Tech. !!
For the non-IMBA readers, those were our assignments. They're over and done with, and I'll be back to yakking about everything under this fine Spanish sun ...
These assignments were fun, to the extent that homework can be fun... on to the exams now.

I'll go out on a limb here, and say this now, before giving the exams...
The IE IMBA is hectic, no doubts about that.
Yet, the pre-exam stress is just not there!!

It's not even a patch on the prep-leave mania that I'd seen all around me, and to a lesser degree, experienced, while in college.


This shouldn't be interpreted to mean that I'm not worried because I'm all set to top the exams.
I'm not worried. Stop.
A big difference is the last minute cramming that we did back then. Now, apart from 'Financial Accounting', there's not much last minute work required.

Thank god for small mercies !!

PS: This is a personal observation.
There are a few going totally loco. That's OK. It's expected.

Read More

Tesco - Scoring Points using IT ?

Retailing is a volume game. Shave off a fraction of the cost here, target marketing better there, and it all adds up. Tesco anyone? 'Every little helps', indeed.

In the beginning, Tesco was playing catch-up with M&S. Then, Tesco launched the Clubcard, a loyalty card that entitled customers swiped to earn points at the time of purchase, and could redeem to get discounts later. Sainsbury's dismissed this as just a glorified, electronic version of Tesco's Green shield stamps. They went wrong, big time!

Sainsbury's considered IT as a cost. Nothing more. Tesco went further, used IT as a game-changer, and became the #1 retailer in UK just a year after the launch. Guess who did they oust from the numero-uno position? Sainsburys!

So just how did this IT/marketing project give Tesco an edge over Sainsbury, M&S and the others?

Until now, it wasn't possible for retailers to know which goods were being purchased by which customer segment. Sure, they knew how fast goods were sold, the volumes, the individual bills/invoices etc., but it was all anonymous.

Now, Tesco could analyse the purchasing patterns of different categories of individuals. They could identify the stuff that students bought, as against the stuff that working wives bought. What did they do with this information?
* Cut down on TV advertising. They slotted customers into various segments, and then started focused campaigns at these segments.
* Align their promotion strategy specifically to the items that regular customers bought. This ensured that promotions benefited their regular customers more than customers who only shopped at Tesco during a promotion.
* Cut the number of items on which promotions were offered.

This huge amount of data, and all the analysis that offered them a competitive advantage over others was possible only because of some smart thinking (to come up with the idea), and excellent IT (for a robust implementation).
Just as Tesco had copied ideas in the beginning, others tried to copy this idea. However, Tesco's IT expertise in the implementation of the Clubcard idea was superior.

So yes, Tesco had an edge over their competitors because of IT!!

NewsFlash: Early this year, Sainsbury's Nectar loyalty program overtook Tesco's Clubcard. However, Tesco continues to remain the largest UK retailer.

PS: Scoring Points - pun intended, for once !

Read More

Casa del Libro - a not-so-tough choice

Casa del Libro, at the height of the dot-com bubble, had long been established. They were figuring on entering the online market, and had bought the best and fastest (and the most expensive) servers and software. Then came the dot-com bust. Budget cuts. Downsizing. Lowered growth forecasts. And a tough choice.

Do they soldier on with the IT platform already acquired, or do they change course midstream and go in for something cheaper?

The context: They'd acquired top-of-the line systems - multiple Sun servers running a Unix variant, a high-end database, a search engine, firewalls, load-balancing.... Basically, they were prepared to handle a lot of traffic. Inevitably, this high performance came with high development and maintenance costs.

The alternative: They could go in for a cheaper solution, using Microsoft software running on HP servers. This would be much cheaper to develop and maintain at the cost lower performance.

The choice:I'd recommend going for the cheap solution !!
* It would be up and running much earlier.
* It was simpler. I can't stress the importance of the KISS funda enough !!
* Fine. The cheap platform wouldn't have been all that great. It wouldn't support a lot of traffic. But then, this shouldn't really have been a concern. The forecasts were lowered, right? Then why spend a lot of money for traffic that would probably be non-existent?
* There was talk of 'downsizing'. If you have fewer people, then you pick the solution that is easier to maintain.

By the time the website's traffic had grown enough to justify the need for the high-end system, it would've already been out-of-date. It would make more sense to opt for the cheap(er) solution, grow the business while adapting and fine-tuning the processes and business model according to their learning curve. Later, when ready, go for a high-end system. Sometime in the future. Not now.

Fast forward to the present: On a side note, would I recommend the same strategy had they been starting up now? NO. Absolutely not!!
Now, with cloud computing, and solutions like Salesforce.com, they could have actually got the website running 'fast + good + cheap' !!

Read More

ERP - Change is the only constant !

ERP softwares are weird.
Lets say we have some ace ERP consultants, and they're going to foist an ERP solution (it's always a 'solution', never mere software !!) upon some unsuspecting co.

THE GOAL
To provide one single software for all departments within an enterprise, HR, Finance, Marketing, Sales, Manufacturing ... everything !! This should make life easier for all these departments.

OPTION # 1
If the co. decides to adapt the ERP as-is ('out-of-the-box' implementation of the industry's 'best practices', whatever that means), then the software will not really mirror the co.'s functioning. And the so-called 'best-practices' will probably not be what the co. wants.
End Result - the ERP implementation fails in it's goal !!

OPTION # 2
If the co. decides to customize the ERP to reflect their old practices, they end up paying a huge amount of money, spend a lot of time, just to do the same old things on a new software. Wait! Do people do that??
End Result - the ERP implementation fails in it's goal !!

OPTION # 3 (the middle path)
The co. uses specialized front-end systems, retaining their old practices. The ERP functions as a back-office system. The end users are happy, since their specialized systems can mimic actual industry practices better than some cookie-cutter approach suggested by the ERP chaps. And since the ERP is the common backbone/back-office system, the IT systems of all the departments can actually 'talk' to each other.
That's the best option, I hear?

Forget, for a second, the fact that the ERP chaps will make pots of money here, billing for all the integration. Here's the definition of an ERP as per CIO.com : 'ERP’s true ambition.... It attempts to integrate all departments and functions across a company onto a single computer system that can serve all those different departments’ particular needs'

So, is the best form of an ERP implementation the one that actually defeats the very purpose of an ERP implementation? And potentially turns out to be the most expensive for the co. ?

Like I said, ERP softwares are weird.
There's no 'best option' !

Read More

Could Have, Would Have, Should Have !

Consumer is king ?
Not quite. But we're getting there. Dell found out the hard way, way back in 2005. Jeff Jarvis, a journo-turned-blogger had a bad experience with Dell. He contacted Dell for customer service, and well, lets just say the bad experience got worse. So bad, that JJ took to periodic venting of his frustration on his blog, with a catchy 'Dell Hell' theme. Back then, it was a big deal, and it attracted widespread attention. Dell took a beating. Their stock price tanked. They got tonnes of negative publicity, and were finally forced into taking action.

To wit : Where did it all go wrong for Dell?
* Well, for starters, the laptop could've been better, ha ha
* They could've simply replaced his laptop, seeing what a ruckus he was creating (This was Rifai's first reaction as well !!)

OK, smart-alec options aside, the folks at Dell should've been paying more attention to what their disgruntled customers were saying. But that was too much to expect...Dell's policy vis-a-vis blogs/mails - 'Look, don't touch'. Sound advice for husbands partying around in Madrid; not-so-sound advice when it comes to customer service.

Escalation. Round 1. JJ threw another fit. The obvious thing would've been to nip the problem in the bud, and have some mid-level chap contact JJ and show the appropriate amount of concern. Again, Dell flunked.

Escalation. Round 2. The whole issue went through the roof, and was featured everywhere in the media. Finally, Dell noticed. It was at this point that JJ was refunded. An easier option would've been for Dell to co-opt him, offer to bring him on board as a consultant (only for a while) to work on improving their online customer feedback mechanism.
This particular cartoon is from JJ's blog. So he does have a sense of humour about the whole thing !

This would have had three benefits.
First, JJ would've been in a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation. He could've either accepted, and then however reluctantly, acting in fairness, have had to publicly acknowledge the fact that Dell was making some efforts. Or, he could've refused, and lost some credibility and been perceived as someone hell-bent only on armchair criticism, with no inclination to make things better.

Second, JJ, or someone else similarly positioned, could have made a real impact on Dell's sensitivity to customer opinion posted on the net.

Third, Dell would have the pulse of the customer. It's far easier to monitor what your customers are thinking, if they comment/blog about it on your own website. Damage control (step forward, mid-level chappie) is also easier if you know where to do it, and even easier if it's all in one place.

Note:
1. Dell did in fact do this stuff. But way too late for their own good.
2. The term 'Dell Hell' is a geeky inside joke on 'dll hell'. Not that you're expected to know.
3. I find it odd that Wikipedia has no page for Dell Hell !!

Read More

Back to the 3-6-3 rule ??

'Accounting is Sexy, Accounting is Fun !'

... so goes the unofficial motto in our Financial Accountancy class.

Huh?? While we've gone through lots of BS, (not what you'd think. Balance Sheets. On second thought, maybe it really is just BS), I'm yet to see how could a wannabe MBA find accountancy sexy. Unless one thinks of Thandie Newton in Rock N Rolla, ha ha !

Maybe it's better this way. 'Coz when banking and accountancy get too sexy, and too much fun, then we all get into all sorts of trouble. Paul Krugman got this one right over a year ago.

Alas, the 3-6-3 rule is not an option, either.

Read More

Open up to open source !

In a post some time back, I'd written about disliking Windows Vista, and having chickened out of installing Ubuntu. With a weekend at hand, and no intentions of hitting the books, I had to do something....well, Windows got the boot (pun unintentional) !

The whole thing took just 10 minutes, starting to ending. Another 5 minutes to install Skype, a Flash plugin for watching Youtube and other streaming videos, and VLC player, and there I was, all set...
I spent more time thinking about this, than I did on the actual installation. I had a friends laptop running a Youtube demo installation while I was working on mine. That way, I knew that I was on the right track, and which option to select and so on.

Now, everything on my laptop is free. FREE.
I love it.
Open Source rocks.
May the source be with you ! (mea culpa, that's a really bad one !!)

Oh, did I mention that my 3 year old laptop feels blazing fast now?

Read More

A victim of it's own success ?

Will Facebook end up being the victim of it's own success ? Methinks so.
Sure, there are tonnes of arguments to be made, either way.
For: the TINA factor i.e. Google's ineptitude at Social Networking (Orkut & Buzz).
Against: Privacy, changing habits, blah blah (it's a long list)
In my highly biased opinion, there are two things that will be the deciding factors:


Fact # 1: Facebook Connect is increasingly connecting websites to Facebook.This trend will only accelerate. More and more websites will link to websites. You'll be able to use your Facebook ID on these sites too. Liking or sharing information will be seamless across websites, making Facebook a kind of one-stop-shop for all your needs.
This alone, virtually guarantees a somewhat safe future for Facebook. It's not disappearing anytime soon, that's for sure !

Fact # 2: Facebook started off only for college kids, and now has anybody and everybody on it.
Facebook became so insanely popular with the rest of the world because it was popular with the kids in college, to begin with. They spread the word, as it were. Now, everybody and his Uncle are on Facebook. There's a lot of stuff going on with it. A lot of eyeballs are on Facebook. It's mainstream now !!
This might just turn off the younger lot. They'll come up with something newer, edgier, and much cooler. And if half the world is using a website to socialize, then that website just lost its 'coolness'. So I see more and more youngsters drifting away from Facebook. Where? God know! But, there's bound to be a steady decline.

Will it disappear? No. It'll probably become something that does fairly well, something that a lot of people use, but something that is no longer 'happening'. Staid and boring. It'll become Hotmail !!

Read More

OST : the rise and fall of the wannabe MBA

The beginning of an MBA
when everybody's out to change the world, get filthy stinking rich, "give back", whatever !!
I want it all,
We are the champions,
We will rock you....

Sometime later, when the deliverables start piling up......
Under Pressure !!

Very soon, when the exams are around the corner....
I want to break free

The exam results roll in
Another one bites the dust

PS: There I was, working late into the night on a submission. A "Queen" playlist on.
And since I was thinking of everything under the sun other than the submission at hand, I came across this particular selection (If this were a hollywood flick, this would be the genius seeing patterns in coded messages/symbols)....

Read More

Don't be Evil

Don't be Evil, Google said.
Yet, it streams cookies onto your computer. Knows what you read, what videos you watch, what links you click, what keywords you search for. The works. It even came up with a browser that is great for browsing, yet mysteriously, doesn't provide any real support for blocking ads (that would be real stupid, wouldn't it, if advertising was your bread-and-butter).

But is Google really out to become 'big brother', or is it simply very good at a number of things, and has made the web experience so good for us that we choose to conduct the lion's share of our online activities through Google?

According to Google's data, each dollar spent on advertising leads to two dollars in revenue for the advertiser (directly, through Adwords), and about eight dollars in profit (direct Adwords clicks, plus non-sponsored, i.e. regular search results). Definitely not evil !!!
Note: It might be too good to be true, and it would be interesting to investigate the assumptions made.

Bringing Films and TV onboard
Not so long back, the major studios viewed Youtube as a menace. However, the cliche "If you can't beat 'em, then join 'em" worked, and we got music videos from Sony, UMG, and EMI (3 out of the big 4) on VEVO on Youtube. NBC, Fox and ABC set up HULU (as an alternative to Youtube that they could live with).

Now, the consumers have got better quality content, and the studios are happy about that too. They wouldn't want low-quality videos of their star artists being put up. The advertisers are happier, too. They get to run their ads against slick videos uploaded by the studios, not against some grainy stuff uploaded by a teenager. Google's happy to overcome it's copyright hassles.
Hulu's actually better than Youtube, in this regard, but is currently restricted to USA, and has a fraction of the user-base that Youtube does.
The next step for Google would be to ink deals to provide studio-authorised content. Already started !

In an innovative move, Youtube broadcast IPL games, real-time, and split the ad-revenue with the IPL. Now if this could be extended to the NBA, NFL, the Premier Leage, Champions League.... wuff ! Enough said !!

Innovation, The Labs and their Alumni
Google docs, Google reader, iGoogle, Google Maps, Google groups. Alumni from Google Labs, each of these. I love the innovations that come out of Google Labs. I've often tried them out, out of curiosity.

The cool thing is that many of these are the product of Google's famous 20% time off policy. No, the engineers don't take Friday's off; they just work on whatever brainwave they have. GMail, Google News and AdSense are products of this really cool policy. Reportedly, about 50% of new product launches come from this 20% policy. Boy, I'd have loved to have this flexibility when I used to churn code.

Certainly not evil !!

Read More

Hitting the roof

Today, I had a class that was the best I've attended at IE, as yet. By far, it was the most intellectually stimulating one.

We just went through some basic 'supply and demand' curves, and saw how simple things can be, and yet people get them wrong time and again. The shocking part was that this stuff is so elementary, and yet governments the world over mess it up with their ham-fisted attempts to control markets & prices. And going by the reactions of the others around me, I wasn't the only one shocked !!

We went through two cases of Govt. price controls messing things up in a big way.

We studied how Price Ceilings invariably cause shortages, hurting the very people they're intended to benefit. We took the example of Venezuela, how Hugo Chavez's price ceilings on essential commodities gave the poor people the illusion that it was good for them, whereas it actually left them facing massive shortages.

It reminded me of this WSJ article, which I'd recently read and discussed incredulously with a Venezuelan friend at IE. There is also this video, in which a farmer discusses the exact same points we went through in class, only more specific to his case, how he was driven out of his coffee business. Amazing !!

Read More

Microsoft - A Cloudy future ahead ?

A disclaimer, right off the bat - I'm not a big fan of Microsoft. As an end-user, I use Chrome, not IE, Gmail a lot more than Hotmail, and would love to have Ubuntu on my laptop instead of Vista, but have chickened out.

The Good
Having said that, Microsoft must have done some things right over the years (duh, I could've said that without enrolling in IE Business School). For most of us, the first time we used a PC, we used Windows or DOS. Methinks, the best thing the boys in Redmond did was to simplify everything. I still remember the days when people took classes to learn how to operate computers! Now, everything is so intuitive.
The Bad
There's so much to say here! The highlights:-
* Windows is prone to crashing
* PCs kept getting faster, and Windows kept getting slower
* By the time Vista got around, people were fed up with the bloatware
The Ugly
There have been anti-trust issues. But these don't concern me directly as an end-user. So let's pass.

The arch-enemy - Google
More and more of your day-to-day work is going from your laptop onto the internet. Onto the cloud.
This makes them go head-to-head with Google in
* IE vs Chrome
* Hotmail vs Gmail
* MSN messenger vs Gtalk
* MS Office vs Google docs
* Bing vs Google
* Android vs Windows


The money, today?
Currently, Microsoft is getting the bulk of it's money from 2 blockbusters - the Windows operating systems (XP, Vista, 7) and Microsoft Office (2003, 2007, or the new 2010). From licenses.

The money, tomorrow?
In the near future, it'll be selling a service (a subscription). Microsoft will host these applications on their own servers, and the corporations will pay subscription on some sort of a per-user basis. Microsoft calls this Software + Service. The rest of the world, SaaS (software as a service) or Cloud Computing.
If you can buy milk, why go buy the cow? By the way, it's not just Software, you can get IT infrastructure too, as a service.

The new Office 2010 is already available, for free. It can be used to keep all your work 'online'. The cloud-wars have begun !

My $0.02 on the outlook (ok,bad pun!) for Microsoft
* I think the Microsoft of the future will be heavily reliant on the cloud.
* Google currently has a one-size-fits-all approach. All corporations get the same deal, be it a 10-man startup, or a biggie like Cap-Gemini. Microsoft has a more nuanced approach. They have one offering for the 10-man startup (where Microsoft hosts the apps on its servers), and another one for the big ones (can be hosted on the company's servers, and customised). This will be an initial advantage over Google, as their offerings are already tailored to enterprises scale implementations.
For Google, this is proving to be a bit of a challenge.
* And, I'm sticking my neck out here, but I think they're going to be fairly creative, and might finally shed their image of being 2'nd best in everything. If that's tough to imagine, then check out this amazing video clip - Vision 2019.

Read More