MBA in Australia

End of the MBA and Future Plans (last post)

2007-05-21T09:59:00.000+09:30

Two years past by and I have finished my MBA. I thought this is a good time to share my experience and my future plans.

The main goal of doing the MBA was to learn a set of new skills; take some time to understand myself and create a vision of what I need to do in the future. Moving to Australia from Bombay was a chance to also create a better lifestyle for my family.

Now that I have finished the MBA I can say that most of the goals were achieved and I am happy I took this decision. The MBA did bring about a more strategic understanding of the business world, increased knowledge & skill sets and a sense of what needs to be done to create success.

More importantly, over the last two years I realised that I can combine my interest in finance (in ADP), the social aspect of making a difference (in Deeshaa); Business development and entrepreneurship (in BPODigest.com) and environmental activities in the current job (in DFC) into creating a career in the field of "sustainability and business" which dove tails perfectly into my values, beliefs, philosophies and future plans.

If you want to understand what I mean by "sustainability and business" check this link - http://worldisgreen.com/about-worldisgreencom/

This realization in 2006 then directed me to explore my ideas and now I am well into a journey to work in this area. ( www.worldisgreen.com)

One of the great learnings was to establish myself in the university, in the community, making new friends, the workplace, understand a new culture and a new country. This learning will stay with me forever and will make a difference on how I view life now and in the future.

The best part was the multi-cultural experience of living in Australia. I had the opportunity to meet, interact and enjoy with people from various parts of the world. It is a unique experience that is available in only a few countries of the world.

Another interesting experience was to meet Indians from various parts of the country and the world and South Asians from Pakistan and Sri Lanka. There is so much in common.

Where am I going from here?

After finishing off my application for a permanent residency here in July, I plan to explore job and consulting opportunities in Australia. If a really good opportunity comes up then I may look beyond Australia. A visit to India is due around September of this year.

As this quote from Marcel Proust says, "The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" .

I have developed new eyes.

Thanks to all who have followed this blog or have passed through it. The blog has served me well and I hope you have enjoyed it. Today is the end of this blog.

Looking forward to a exciting new life. Keep in touch!

You can connect to me on Linked In or e-mail/chat at anantula [AT] gmail [DOT] com, on Yahoo/MSN/Skype (ID - suhit_a) or if you are interested follow my new blog - World is Green (RSS Feed; Email Subscription).

Cheers,
Suhit

The Sustainable MBA

2006-12-05T13:32:00.000+10:30

Karen Losee at GreenBiz.com writes about "The Sustainable MBA".

She says that the climate change and sustainability issues facing us will require new leaders.

The future calls for leaders that can develop and lead profitable,
competitive businesses that are sustainable, both in a social and environmental
way. Where will these future leaders come from?

Traditionally, the business schools teach that "there is no higher purpose than to make money". This is true for most of the MBAs.

There are signs that this is changing. She cites a recent Net Impact survey among MBA schools in 110 schools.

81% believed businesses should work toward the betterment of society
89% said managers should take into account social and environmental impacts when making business decisions
78% agreed that corporate social responsibility should be integrated into core curricula in MBA programs.”

This is a great change in thinking, but is not true everywhere.

In my MBA in Australia, there are very few people I have met who think in those terms. Business people generally do not talk about anything but money.

The UniSA MBA curriculum is struggling to teach the traditional MBA topics well, and are nowhere near talking about 'corporate social responsibility' or 'sustainability'.

For somebody like me who was interested in these topics it was very hard to pick topics that were near to this topic. I picked one elective from another Uni on "Enviornmental and Resource Economics" which has provided me a grounding in economics and the environment and a second elective designed as a small research topic on using Environmental Accounting principles in office buildings concentrating on Computers.

However, I believe that the tools taught in the traditional MBAs are still relevant. It just needs a different orientation and direction.

One book which I am reading now which combines the business world and sustainability is "Capitalism at the Crossroads" from Stuart Hart.

The first chapter of the book is titled "From Obligation to Opportunity". This is the theme which people need to understand.

For a country like Australia however, it is tough. There is a growing understanding of the environmental issues here but then it is dismissed because "we are too small and insignificant" to make a difference. In terms of poverty and other issues - Australia it too far away from these problems.

Firstly, you do not see poverty in the cities or elsewhere. Australians do not relate to poverty well. And poverty in other countries, this is more connected with aid and charity.

To be able to see that it can be a opportunity may be a leap too big conceptually.

Atleast in Australia, Green MBA may be possible but a Sustainable MBA is a tough ask.

[sustainability]

Low Rent Living

2006-08-31T10:05:00.000+09:30

Moving into a new country and a new city one of the first decisions that you need to make is renting a house. This rant is my experience with dealing with Indian students only!

When I moved into Adelaide almost 18 months back I started living with a couple of Indian students. In the next two months I met many people, saw their houses and at the end decided to rent a subsidized university accomodation in an 'Ok' suburb.

My wife was happy with my decision and after a year, we moved a leg up into a slightly bigger house but still a low rent subsidized housing but now in a better suburb (whatever that means).

Our campus was located in the city to enable part-timers to come from work to school. Some of the students decided to stay near to the City (the CBD) which would enable them to access the university easily and use the Uni provided transport.

This meant paying higher rent every week for 100 weeks.

My simple calculation was that, house rent was a fixed expense. And due to the lease contracts you are stuck with them for atleast a year. This meant that the rent should be the least you can possible manage. Just this decision will save me more than $6000 compared to some of my friends in the 2 years. This is including the move to the new house.

As a student that's a decent sized money, enough to pay three courses or financed our Car, our melbourne and brisbane trip and still save!

In this year we have been meeting many couples who have settled down here. They have started to look for houses to buy. Interestingly the most important decision forpeople who are working for atleast 2 years (in Australia from overseas) is to buy a home, take a mortgage and pay it for 20 years.

Not that owning a home is a bad thing, especially now with the housing market tanking in Australia, it could be a good buy too. However, is this better than low-rent living.

Low-rent living provides options to save, have flexibility, not get stuck with a job you don't like, start a business with the money you saved, invest in stock markets and just plain peace of mind.

Next year when I finish my education, we will not buy a house. We rather start a business!

This rant of mine has been inspired by this post on low-rent living on the Chief Happiness Officer blog.

Australia: A Small Business Country

2006-05-29T11:14:00.000+09:30

I have been in Australia for more than a year now. Adelaide in that sense is more of a small country town than a big city. It is a problem to find a job here while studying for most of the MBA students.

Some of the students have graduated a couple of months back. It remains to be seen what and when they get a job.

One problem seems to be the fact that Australia is a small business country.

==========
At June 2004 the number of active businesses on the Australian Bureau
of Statistics Business Register (ABSBR) was 3,015,318. Of the total
number of businesses, 837,078 (28%) were employing, with 2,178,240
(72%) non-employing.

The majority of employing businesses, 754,504 (90%) had between 0 and
19 employees. There were 77,656 (9%) businesses with 20 to 199
employees and 4,918 (1%) businesses with 200+ employees.
==========

This is from the ABS through Google Answers.

A large number of businesses were small business who did not provide employment, next lot were small businesses which provided employment and the next lot just about 5,000 companies had employees more than 200.

This seems to be the critical problem for employment for MBAs in the country. Generally, MBAs are sought by large companies as they can afford them. A small business cannot afford to have an MBA and even if it does the expectations are way higher than a large business.

This can help in understanding why it may be tough to get a job after the MBA.

This is just one aspect of the situation. As a recently elected student representative to the Board of IGSB, I have decided to take up the issue of career services to the MBA students as my priority. This school lacks the basic of services and they have slowly come to grips with it as more and more international students are joining the school and demanding it.

However, I have not yet seen any great strategy to solve this issue.

Scott's Conviction

2006-04-27T09:38:00.000+09:30

Scott McNealy steps down as CEO of Sun.

In an interview with The Register he gives a piece of his mind. His passion about his business and commitment to the Network is the Computer stuff is known. He talks about why he think the WalStreet is wrong to suggest that he lays off 15,000 his employees. With being in the red for longtime, Scott and now Jonathan are showing their belief in people and vision. Kudos to them,

The best ofcourse is this,

Look, I've thought long and hard about this stuff and my business, and I don't care what anybody says. We're right. And that's how I live my life.

Sophisticated Simplicity

2006-03-04T16:25:00.000+10:30

If you have been following Apple, (which I do), then you would have known that Apple invited the press to show off some fun products. Withough disclosing before the event what these “fun” products where Apple increased the buzz it generally generates. However, after the event it kind of hit it back. Why?

Apple released a iPod boom-box and the Mac-mini not improved and positioned as the “living room PC”.

However, the mac fanatics and the media were more worried about the lack of effect then what was really shown.

But Micheal Greeson, President of the Diffusion Group, wrote what I think is one of the most balanced report on the latest releases from Apple.

He acknowledges the fact that the event did not live upto the hype and blames it on Apple saying, “Such is the danger of being an industry innovator”. This is so true. Apple is getting ready to face the problems of success.

6-button remote control

What interested me in the article is what Greesman calls “sophisticated simplicity”. The ability of Apple to design sophiticated products like Mac computers, iPod and in this case the Mac mini and its six-button remote.

Why does Greesman think is important?

Apple’s remote control is yet another example of the company’s emphasis on designing elegant, easy-to-use solutions. Yes, it’s just a remote control. But it’s the remote control’s banality that makes it such a powerful expression of deeply Apple believes in this vision, what I call the “sophisticated simplicity” strategy. If one looks closely into the remote control, you can almost make out images of Apple’s future…

The Mac Mini remote control only has six buttons and looks similar to an iPod but without the viewing screen. Let me repeat that just in case you missed it the first time: the remote control has only six buttons and it looks similar to an iPod. Unlike other MCPC vendors and the CE community in general, Apple seems to think that six buttons and a killer graphical interface are enough to enable consumers to easily access and control their digital media.

Avoid adding buttons to a remote control even though we can? Brilliant!

As Ockham’s Razor (also known as the principle of parsimony) reminds us, given a choice between two equally valid explanations, the simpler of the two is preferred. This principle applies equally well to architecture and product design, although it may seem foreign to most CE designers. For example, I recently purchased a multi-room/multi-zone AV receiver from a upscale CE manufacturer, a complicated beast with a remote control that looks like the pilot’s panel of a 737. I’ve had the system for more than two months and I’m still learning how to execute the basic multi-device commands. Does it have to be so difficult to use? Not at all, but many CE vendors fail to grasp the importance of an elegant user interface.

This goes back to Apple’s elegant design of the Mac OS, the Newton, the ‘Books. Its part of the Apple design philosophy which is sometimes coigned terms like “zen-like design” due to its simplistic brilliance.

I was reading the other day about Josn Kauffman’s Personal MBA. In that he lists 42 books which should make your reading list for a personal MBA. The list of books are impressive.

He lists two books which are connected to this discussion. One of them is “The Substance of Style by Virginia Postrel”.

His introduction:

Ever wonder why people are willing to pay $6.00 for a designer toilet brush when the plain old $1.99 special accomplishes the same goal? Why Apple’s iPod is so popular? Why some people are slaves to the fashion industry? It has to do with aesthetics: all things being equal, people will consistently choose products and services that please their individual sense of style.

Businesses all over the world are beginning to pay attention to design for a simple reason: good design has real economic value. In The Substance of Style, Postrel argues that aesthetic value is becoming an increasingly important differentiator in a world where product function and quality are consistently high.

This is exactly what is needed to succeed in the business. I agree, marketing is important, strategy is important but design is becoming very important. Sometimes as important or more important than the other parts of the equation.

However, the traditional MBA schools do not even get this. For example: my MBA at UniSA does not talk about design nor have any course remote connected to aesthetics.

To give you an example, compare this HTML version of the Personal MBA to the ChangeThis version. And then think about it.

Past and Present

2006-02-23T07:46:00.000+10:30

Past and Present
Originally uploaded by thegreenguy.

Study makes you smarter? Or does it?

2006-02-21T19:41:00.000+10:30

21-02-06_1943.jpg
Originally uploaded by thegreenguy.

This is an ad for the Unibooks store in Adelaide for buying books. Australians have a funny way of putting things (mainly laughing at themselves) but this is really funny.

JOB OPENING: BOP Consortium and The Solae Company

2006-01-27T08:53:00.000+10:30

If any of you are interested in the following job, please contact me at anantula AT gmail DOT com.

Many of you know of the Base of the Pyramid (BOP) concept, thanks to its popularization in books by Stuart Hart and C.K.Prahalad. The Base of the Pyramid Learning Lab, led by Stuart Hart at Cornell University's Business School, is now working with DuPont's food division, Solae, to set up a BOP protocol project, with the initial pilot project based in Hyderabad. The project is looking to hire four dedicated interns to work on the pilot project, reporting to Solae's director of global accounts. This is a PAID position, with the significant upside that you will get to work on a one-of-a-kind BOP project with a global team. The job will include a significant training component with the Cornell/Solae team. Here is a brief description of the position:

The Solae Company has initiated a project to develop sustainable businesses in India that serve the needs of poor individuals and communities that comprise the “base of the economic pyramid” (BoP). For the first phase of this project, Solae seeks four interns to become members of a Solae BoP Protocol Team. The Team will include members from and be guided by a US-based group of leading BoP business professionals and academics affiliated with Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management who have directed the development of a BoP Protocol™. The BoP Protocol™ is a roadmap for engaging poor communities in co-developing business ideas that meet local needs and generate value for the company.

In terms of background, we are looking for someone with a serious interest in catalyzing economic development in India through sustainable private enterprise. Ideally, you will will have expertise in one of the following areas: business and social entrepreneurship; social work; development nutrition. Knowledge of Telugu is a plus, though not a requirement.

If you are interested or need more information regarding this position, please send me your resume asap at nebuer AT gmail dot com. Feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested.

The End of an Era - Drucker Dies

2005-11-24T13:29:00.000+10:30

If there is one person I can claim to have read, followed and learnt from is Peter Drucker. He is thinker extraordinaire.

Sadly, Dr. Drucker died on Nov 11th 2005 at the ripe old age of 95. I feel a sense of sadness as I have been his fan for a long time now. I feel as if a dear one has died.

Drucker is hailed by many as the "father of management". the Economist recently wrote that he is " one management thinker every educated person should read".

Of the 40 odd books he wrote I own atleast 18 of them. I am a big fan of Peter. Whatever I have learnt about management, my princilples, the thinking patterns, the big picture ideas have come from him. If not for him, I would not be what I am.

For me. Drucker is the one person everybody should read. Not only has written widely, he has a big heart and a continous view on the long-term, history and big picture stuff. Above all Drucker shows the "direction", he is the "compass", he talks a lot about "effectiveness" and it is upto us to find the tools to get that done.

Doing my MBA I miss reading him. I am surprised that my Uni does not suggest his books at all. Very strange. The MBA is full of tools and stuff. Somehow learning tools would make a smarter decision maker.

Drucker shows the way - the path to take. Tools will help us get there faster, better, easier etc.

If you have not read him, please do read him. I re-read him every time I come across a problem and find new ideas. He will be missed.

Accounting Course

2005-11-16T15:47:00.000+10:30

The accounting course is going fine. We are done with the financial accounting part of it where we were taught the various rations. However, I am dissapointed till now with the course. The Prof did not get into how to use the actual analysis on a company but rather gave some spreadsheets etc which we can get anywhere on the Net.

Now he has moved into Management Accounting which is all about costing and how to generate internal reports for startegy etc.

I am working on a group project to analyse a company called Boral Ltd. from a shareholder's perspective. This is first project in the course where I do not have a clue on where I am going.

Ratan Tata's Interview

2005-11-03T22:37:00.000+10:30

If there is one Corporate head that I absolutely respect in India it is Rata Tata, the Chairman of the TATA group in India.

A recent McKinsey Interview with him tells us more about him.

Some excerpts:

companies that are not good corporate citizens—that don't hold to standards and that allow the environment and the community to suffer—are really criminals in today's world

What I feel most proud of is that we have been able to grow without compromising any of the values or ethical standards that we consider important. And I am not harping on this hypocritically. It was a major decision to uphold these values and ethics in an environment that is deteriorating around you. If we had compromised them, we could have done much better, grown much faster, and perhaps been regarded as much more successful in the pure business sense. But we would have lost the one differentiation that this group has against others in the country. We would have been just another venal business house.

I have been involved with South Africa for perhaps seven or eight years. There was such an enormous disparity between rich and poor, and I always felt that this large poor community had been exploited over the years. So I met [Thabo] Mbeki before he became president—this was in [Nelson] Mandela's time—and I said we really wanted to do something in South Africa to give to the country rather than take away from it.

We have been a very measured, very cautious group, which has looked at the market, decided what was safe, and then moved in. We need instead to lead and not just follow. We have to take more risks and gain predominance in that manner. Targeting the larger part of the income pyramid is an important part of what Tata will be doing.

Leisure and Productivity

2005-10-19T10:13:00.000+09:30

Ross Gittins in the Sydney Morning Herald asks the right question in relation to Australia.

She asks "Is the route to riches justified if people are being lost along the way".

In a country like Australia, which has grown its GDP Per capita consistently over the last 3 decades and ranks 11th in the world where does the goal of higher productivity end.

Ross points to the fact that increased productivity is important as it results in the increase in overall incomes. However, "Trouble is, doing so puts means ahead of ends. It focuses on the income, forgetting why we want it. It makes us the servants of factories and offices, rather than their masters.".

She points out that this,

"…robs us of our humanity, taking away our leisure and making us more like robots. Humans don't just need leisure time, they need time off work at the same time as their spouse and while their children aren't at school. That's why weekends were invented, particularly Sundays.

Humans are obsessed by their families - by their mum and their dad, by their spouse and their kids, not to mention their siblings."

Ross points out to the fact that "income" by itself is the wrong measure. What is the goal of being rich? Is it happiness?

The Economist asked a similar question sometime back: "Why don't rising incomes make everybody happier?"

The Economist points to the work of Richard Layard, an economics professor at the London School of Economics. He comes out with some non-intuitive findings. [Happiness: Has Social Science a Clue: Lecture 1, Lecture 2, Lecture 3]

One of the paradoxes is: an individual who becomes richer becomes happier; but when society as a whole grows richer, nobody seems any more content. Professor Layard explains by what he calls "habituation": "people adjust quickly to changes in living standards. So although improvements make them happier for a while, the effect fades rapidly. For instance, 30 years ago central heating was considered a luxury; today it is viewed as essential."

The Economist article goes on to provide results from two surveys of harvard students where

asked whether they would prefer (a) $50,000 a year while others got half that or (b) $100,000 a year while others got twice as much. A majority chose (a). They were happy with less, as long as they were better off than others.

The same Harvard students were also asked to choose between (c) two weeks' holiday, while others have only one week and (d) four weeks' holiday while others get eight. This time a clear majority preferred (d). In other words, people's rivalry over income does not extend to leisure. The result of this, suggests Lord Layard, is that developed societies may tend to work too hard in order to consume more material goods, and so consume too little leisure.

Leisure then is an indicator of progress. For example: The sustainability indicator, The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) which puts into monetary terms the value of household and volunteer work, resource depletion, pollution and leisure time is a better indicator of progress. It "for example, subtracts destructive costs and adds in social and economic benefits ignored by the Gross Domestic Product"

According to the GPI:

VII. Changes in Leisure Time
As a nation increases in wealth, people should have increasing latitude to choose between more work and more free time for family or other activities. In recent years, however, the opposite has occurred. The GDP ignores this loss of free time, but the GPI treats leisure as most Americans do — as something of value. When leisure time increases, the GPI goes up; when Americans have less of it, the GPI goes down.

This is so right. If the case was that if a poor country like India or what even the Australians many, many years back (50 yrs to 100 yrs) back used to work for more number hours with lesser pay and lesser leisure time.

One of the advatantages of a developed country is the "quality time" that can be available to a person. The last 6 months that I have spent in Australia has clearly provided me an opportunity to appreciate that.

I get paid by-the-hour which is anathema in India. It provides me the opportunity to work in the prescribed hours, earn enough income to manage my expenses and at the same time spend the rest of time on studies, family, friends and my personal interests.

This would not have been possible with the work-culture, wages and time available in India. And this is one of the differences of living in a developed country.

The Australian's and other developed country citizens should and most of them do value their leisure time. Now only if I could convince them and make a similar case for Environmental management.

The MBA Menace

2005-10-13T12:16:00.000+09:30

There has been a lot being written on MBAs in general and particularly the US style of MBAs. I have touched about it before: here and here.

Check this.

I couldn't get too mad at the MBAs, though. They didn't create the system. Had the blogger been back in the Navy, where putting out fires is serious business, he'd surely have pressed more. But he was at Wharton now, where perception is reality, return on investment is all that counts, and the only fires worth putting out are the sparks inside ourselves

The entire article shows how much the MBA is all about money making and nothing else. Sometimes I wonder if I am in the right field at all, with my assertions that as an MBA I want to make a difference to the world and all. Is this course tell you anything that can help change the world?

Henry Mintzberg attacks the MBA again. He calls it the MBA Menace.

Sure, you've taken courses called "management" and "strategy." But these were about looking in from the outside. The truth is, no one can become a manager in a classroom. Management is not a profession, nor is it science. It is a practice that depends mostly on craft and significantly on art. Craft is learned by experience. Art can, of course, be admired in a classroom--think of all the visionaries you read about in cases. But voyeurism is not management, either, nor does it develop creativity.

I hope you learn. The world desperately needs dedicated leaders. Not heroes on some kind of fast track, but decent human beings who engage themselves and others substantially. That could be you--if you can get past your MBA.

There, that's it.

I have started to wonder if the Australian MBA is better than the US ones. My school does not use Case Studies much. Some of them use it, but it is not a case study approach. 80% of the students are part-time students who are working and studying at the same time. Somehow that seems to be a good combination.

Australian's do not put a lot of emphasis on rankings as much as Americans do and even Indians do. So most of the MBA schools are doing well and people go to the one nearest to them.

And frankly Australians do not believe that the MBA can make a huge difference to their career nor get them stratospheric salaries. They kind of follow the idea that it is good in the long term - some knowledge, some connections and a degree to brag about which can open some doors. Of course, the money comes with it I guess.

Due to the nature of the Australian MBA I am getting more freedom to find myself and the stuff that I want to do. There is no specific emphasis on ROI or Finance or technology. In a way it is helping me find myself.

Career Interviews

2005-10-12T16:32:00.000+09:30

I was reading Robbie's MIT MBA blog and he had a brilliant idea.

Robbie is doing his MBA from the SDM in MIT.

What is the SDM?

The System Design and Management (SDM) program was created at MIT to educate future technical leaders in architecting, engineering, and designing complex products and systems and to give them the leadership and management skills necessary to do that successfully across organizations.

Robbie has 10 yrs of experience hence he is suited for this course. Where can he go from here? He says:

my career path is leading me to be a CIO, CTO, VP of Engineering, or CEO/Founder. But how do I pick the one I want to do? The CIO role is typically quite different than CTO or VP of Engineering.

He faces a fundamental problem which is true at any level. What exactly does a particular job consist of?

Even with all the classes I attend and the speakers I listen to, I get very little information on the specifics of what it is like being in a particular position at a company.

When I decided upon "business model innovation" as my career choice sometime back I had trouble understanding what exactly that the job would be in terms of a day-to-day profile.

I found this great blogger who calls himself "yes". He wants to remain anonymous but provides some valuable understanding into his job. He is a technical guy with a PhD who is into "business development".

He starts off with a post on What to do with your Phd?

You spent some years in Lab (because I know nothing outside of Biology Ph.D.'s, No idea what the rest of you do).

Now what?

He then goes on to provide a list of options for the job possibilities including Business Development, Marketing and Sales.

His blog provides me a good understanding of what it means to commercialize technologies and various nitty gritties like the legal stuff, tech transfers from Universities etc.

Now coming back to Robbie, he comes with a brilliant solution:

So to help me decide what position I'm best suited for, I'm doing several "career interviews." I'm cold-emailing various executives around the Cambridge area and asking for an hour of their time to talk about their job and career. I'll ask a variety of questions about their role, the skills and commitment required, how they obtained the position, among others. One of the last questions I'll ask is if they have any recommendations for additional people I should contact. This also will be a good networking opportunity.

I think I need to do this. There is a good number of tech firms in Adelaide. It has a Tech park and the MSTC Commercialization course which means that a lot of people in the "innovation game" will be attending it.

My Marketing Professor, David Corkindale, provided me the avenue to jump into this field. As I was working on a Marketing Individual project he provided me the idea to do a project on business models for tech firms which conviced me that this is the career I need to pursue.

I can use this help in finding the right people to talk to. Will update you soon on my "Career Interviews". Thanks Robbie.

Henry Mintzberg on MBAs

2005-10-12T16:04:00.000+09:30

From Robbie's MIT Musings

# Can't create a manager in a classroom
# MBA programs don't create managers
# Management is the intersection of craft, art and science
# Don't close MBA schools, just recognize them for what they are. They are teaching analytical skills to future analysts.
# If you want to be a manager, get in an industry and be promoted to a manager. Then join a educational program that lets you enhance those skills
# MBA programs should be part-time so they don't cut students off from their experience
# Should earn managerial stripes, not get it because you have an MBA
# You are being trained well on business functions, but NOT on being a leader of tomorrow
# Cases are not a way to learn management (several digs at Harvard's style of teaching)
# Students should build the learning around their experience
# Management isn't like engineering or medicine Â there is no such thing as a natural surgeon, but there are natural leaders, i.e., some leaders have never taken a single leadership course
# The problem with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat
# MBA is so hyped up
# Only 5 of 19 Harvard superstars from 1990 were still "successful" in 2003
# He has a pretty dire perception and outlook on American business
# After Enron, schools added a course on ethics next to the 12 on shareholder value
# Shareholder value is not a value
# Softkills are blended in all courses, you don't need specific classes on it
# The biggest problem in leadership today is selection
# We almost never consult the people who have been managed by the candidates we evaluate

themba

The Business Model of Business Schools

2005-10-12T15:15:00.000+09:30

Starling Hunter, on his blog "The Business of America is Business" (a curious name) talks about the change required by the B-Schools in America.

Quoting from the Los Angeles Daily, it sites that there is decline in the student participation for MBA programs across America. (I would say it is increasing in India, China and other Asian countries and even Australia, although I do not have concrete numbers backing it). One of the ways that American schools are solving the present problem is recruit students from overseas like Taiwan, India and China.

The article suggests a few solutions:

Instead of adding accounting and marketing courses, USC is attempting to tap creativity. The school is focusing on strategies to help students manage innovation. To do that, Gupta is advocating that students work in groups and understand how businesses interact with their environment.

However, there is a deeper problem. Hunter connects the problem to "functional division" of the b-school.

Attracting foreign MBA students from the world's developing economies is certainly one option, but only a stop gap measure, a way to keep the money coming in while the strategies are overhauled. If US schools want to keep US students interested in the MBA and thus be educators of the world, not the outside world, then they'll need to overhaul not only curriculum but also pedagogy. Chief among the needed changes is the division of labor among business school faculty along functional lines.

Anyone who has read much about modern organization theory knows that while functional organization is very effective in certain sectors of the economy, it does carry with it the hazard of the functional silo problem. This is especially the case in business schools where faculty often have very deep functional expertise in just one area of management studies, many time without anywhere as much practical experience in said area. When you put several dozen such experts together, the task of achieving cross-functional coordination and providing students with a cross-functional perspective on organizations is very difficult indeed. What you get instead is graduates who are, as a rule, smart as whip, but who have no view of firms as a whole. It is precisely this kind of graduate to whom many businesses have said "no thanks" in increasing numbers, preferring instead to uncover and train management talent on their own

.In the increasing trend towards systems thinking, strategy, innovation and business model innovation there is greater need for "various kinds of knowledge in one head".

The business schools expect that once students attend 10 different courses on various subjects they will be able to connect them in their mind and become multi-disciplinary. However, this does not happen. The main reason is that when we do a particular course there is no way a Professor connects that to other disciplines and ideas.

The width is missing in the b-schools. And the only way to Innovate is to have a wide variety of ideas in one head and make the lollapalooza effect come about. This is what Charlie Munger, Vice-Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway called "the latticework of mental models" (PDF).

Sadly, the b-schools do not understand that.

b-school

Game Theory

2005-10-11T13:46:00.000+09:30

Atanu Dey, my ex-boss, mentor and a dear friend introduced me to the concept of Game theory and its importance in everyday life and business. He once told me that "if you understand the concepts in Game Theory you will start seeing them everywhere in life".

I did try to understand Game Theory but it was of no success. (Many of you may have heard of John Nash, who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 for his work on non-cooperative games and the Nash Equilibrium).

A good introduction to the subject is from Econ Lib by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff who define Game Theory "as the science of strategy".

A large part of the MBA courses talk about strategy. About how finance, marketing, technology, innovation and other aspects of business relate to strategy. Sadly my University and many others do not have a basic course on Game theory.

I have found a course in the Economics dept. of the University of Adelaide which has a course without the mathematics called "Strategic Thinking for Decision Making" which is an introduction to managers about the uses of game theory in business.

I will know more about this tool and field next year once I take the course however, I would suggest every student to do a basic course to better able to start using this tool in the future.

Incidently, this years Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to two people who spent their life understand co-operation and conflict from a game theoritic point of view.

What is a College Ranking?

2005-10-11T13:02:00.000+09:30

The MBA students all over the world are used to checking the rankings of the various business schools in order to get into the best ones depending on their circumstances.

The Mises Economics Blog is questioning the validity of these rankings.

How can you rank heterogenous, dissimilar institutions? Each instructor has their own subjective evaluation of a student, course work is different at each institution, resources available to students are different, student-body diversity/dynamic is different, how can these be aggregated?

It also links to some good articles and analysis on the value of a university and the correctness of these rankings.

A great article by Malcolm Gladwell called the " the social logic of ivy league admissions" in the New Yorker magazine is linked to. This is a must read.

Its conclusion:

Success depends on Individual ability like drive, energy, goal setting, hard-work
Harvard, Yale and other Ivy league institutions are more like 'modelling agencies' where they take the best of the lot of make them a little better
Harvard is like a luxury brand and selects its students on the basis of maintaining that brand rather than any academic or other merits

Another story in the WSJ on why Haravrd is still in the press even though it is not so relevant in terms of its academic output as before. The short answer : the harvard-educated journalists

Managing Information

2005-10-09T18:31:00.000+09:30

A friend of mine who is currently doing his MBA back in India wanted to know how I manage my "information flow" especially news and how to save time doing it.

The following is what I wrote to him. One thing to note is that there are several other attributes to the ones I mentioned that I would do. How would you manage your stuff?

The response starts below:

What you has asked me about is "efficiency"?

How do you get the most information in the least possible way?

Much more important than that is "effectiveness" which is what I will dwell on first and the go to efficiency.

It is very important for somebody to realise that whatever is published is not the truth. Especially with political news. This could be true for management stuff. In the case of financial stuff it can be mingled.

For example: The stock market moved a couple of hundred points. The financial press informs us with stuff like "due to the FII activity the stock market has moved" or "due to the fall in the NASDAY the tech stocks in India has fallen".

It is always important to understand that facts, information, analysis, opinion are different things. you need to understand the difference and be conscious about it while you are reading anything. Sometimes we can take analysis or opinion as facts.

The different types of information is important but more important is that we "trust the sources" from which we get the information. Especially in terms of opinion.

Let me give you a good recent example of what I mean. I am not sure but if you have heard about the recent Sun-Google press meet. There they have stepped forward to form a pact in which Sun will distribute the Google toolbar with their Java software. Google promised something vaguely of helping distribute Sun's Open Office.

Now see what the Times of India and the Indian Express reported.

[http://www.cbronline.com/blog.asp?show=cbr/2005/10/inaccuracies_ab.html ]

According to the Times of India, "Google has announced a strategic merger with giant Sun Microsystems, in a deal that is expected to create another dent in arch-competitor Microsoft's monopoly over the Internet."

Many of you will have spotted two pretty significant problems with this sentence. Firstly, Sun and Google announced an alliance, not a merger. Second, Microsoft does not have a "monopoly over the Internet". No-one does. Microsoft may have the lion's share of the browser market, but that's not the same as having a monopoly over the Internet. Besides, the Sun-Google collaboration is not so much about changing the dynamics of the browser market as it is about changing the dynamics of the desktop applications market.

The Indian Express fared slightly better, but they too seem to have witnessed a completely different press conference to the rest of the world. According to the paper, "Google Inc took a big step toward challenging Microsoft Corp's dominance in computer word-processing and spreadsheets with the announcement today that it would distribute Java technology from Sun Microsystems Inc." Wrong again - Sun will distribute the Google Toolbar when people download Java from Sun. So far, Google has not said it will be distributing Java. They are exploring other ways to collaborate, they say, but there is no firm news yet.

See the blatant mistakes these esteemed newspapers from India have made. They could not report a simple alliance. They could have just copied from the press release of Sun.

For my part, I believe a lot in Blogs. First I try to find the best blog sources that I can trust on various topics. Then I follow then. If they take me to a specific newspaper or magazine I follow it.

Google or Yahoo groups is a good source to follow as it is community based. I like Slashdot or Whirlpool.net.au in Australia for broabband information.

I also search news.google.com for any specific topic that I want to follow and the read many sources on one big issue to understand the various viewpoints.

it is important that you find sources that you can trust. This may take a while but it is worth the effort.

The next part is "efficiency". This is what your question was all about.

I use Bloglines.com as my preferred service for reading news and other stuff. I am not sure if you have heard but this thing called RSS or Really Simple Syndication makes it a breeze to folloe various sources like newspapers, magazines, Google or yahoo groups, blogs and even news searches through PubSub.

It makes it easier to follow various stuff.

To get an idea of the stuff I read I would suggest checking out my Bloglines subcriptions
http://www.bloglines.com/public/SuhitAnantula

Also, I follow the NyTimes etc but again mostly through articles suggested in blogs.

One last bit of people I follow are some "analysts" like Bon Cringley or Maunboussin etc.

Love for High-Tech

2005-10-06T14:07:00.000+09:30

I have been thinking of lately a lot on High-tech.

I have been in love for technology for many years now. I did try my hand at doing an engineering degree from the premier schools in India, the famed IITs, however failed to get it. Statistically it is just tough!

Anyways, I then did not want to go for a lesser engineering college (hubris or plain simple teenage wisdom stopped me). I shifted from science and maths to business and commerce in my undergrads coming out with a Bachelors of Commerce (hons). The one thing I learned was business is interesting, but you can only learn from working not from studying atleast not what I was taught and the way I was taught in my undergrad.

And now after 6 yrs of working I am doing my MBA and can genuinely say that I am learning something. Six months into the MBA program made me realize how much stuff that I need to understand and it has opened up new nodes in my brain which did not exist but the best thing which is happening to me is the connection of the various nodes. This is happening at such a rapid pace that I just cannot fathom.

Sometimes I just get up with just 4 hrs of sleep and start working on my lovely iBook G4. The love for the Mac does play a role, but there is a bigger reason. I just cannot wait to understand the world better.

As I went about this exercises I started to see what electives that I need to take. This made me think about myself. What is that I want to do? Where do I want to go?

Peter Drucker in his "The Effective Executive" suggested that the best way to contribute is to understand your strengths. The way to understand is to find patterns in what you do over years and see where you have been doing good, doing bad, you are happy, comes naturally, etc.

For me two things stood out.

My love for working in start-ups
My love for high-tech
The worldisgreen concept.

I worked in a MNC and then with a start-up and it just seems that I want to be in the start-up world. In fact it is clear as I do my MBA where my interests lie.

MBA for a large part deals with "managing wealth". I want to deal with "creating wealth". That is what start-ups all about.

My reading is predicated with slashdot, emergic.org, blogs on technology, the info wars, google stuff, software, etc. I have been consistently interested in the tech stuff and one thing is sure I have always been able to understand technology and related to geeks.

I think that is a skill that I find in myself and think it is a unique advantage.

The think with geeks is that they love their technology and always would love to talk about it. However, not every geek is good at markets and business. My role as I see it slowly is to fill that gap or what you can call commercializing innovations.

I have been trying to get this together and I see that the best job for me is in "business development" in high-tech stuff.

The more I started to understand this the better it seemed. Technology is changing the world. There is greater than ever need for technology to reach the masses. The only way technology can be reached is when it "the technical domain" makes value for the "social domain".

The gap is something which can be clearly filled by what can be called "business model innovation". The value of a technology is only which can be realised by the society. It is useless if the social aspect is not realized. The greatest idea in the lab is useless compared to a insignificant idea in the use of average people. That is what innovation all about. And the vehicle for that is "business model innovation".

I now see a clear way I can be part of high-tech without being a techie and still contribute as much the techies who develop a particular technology or product. In fact, a business model innovation is more like a " social innovation". Drucker has argued that innovation is in the technological, economic and social realms. And all the three types of innovation is important for making change happen.

A large part of innovation is concentrated on the "technological aspect". The social concept sometimes comes in marketing (Moore stuff) but it is far more important. The "business model" encompasses the "social and economic aspect" and hence the place where future innovation battles going to take place.

This fits in very well with my love for "green stuff". The bottom of the pyramid or rural development is one part of the green stuff for me. Green here would signify prosperity and growth. This is where I see that much change can be made. Deeshaa Ventures provided me a chance to work on that aspect.

The other Green stuff is "environmental" stuff. The ones which we are generally familiar with and associate with green. This is my job currently. I am an "Environmental Project Officer" working in the Govt. of South Australia to implement their Greening program in one of the agencies.

The unique thing is this - all of the above aspect; high-tech (IT, bio-tech, nanotech), BoP, Green technology have much in common. They all are dependent on "innovation".

Innovation in the sense of technology, economic and social. Depending on the situation one more than the other. Take the "bottom of the pyramid" ideas. It is a technological and a greatly economic innovation to make products and services available to the 4 billion people living in poverty or just above it in the world.

The same goes for "Green Technologies". The need for commercializing the Toyota Prius or the solar car, organic food. Or social innovation in terms of "stopping the use of plastic bags".

Somehow in all these I have had a chance to work in or relate to it.

My goal now is to concentrate on learning the stuff in the MBA and in the future related to "business model innovation".

What Do MBAs Learn?

2005-09-21T04:19:00.000+09:30

This is a question which a lot of us want to answer before we do an
MBA, while doin an MBA and also after we have completed an MBA.

However, it is very useful for somebody who wants to take the decision
to do an MBA.

I found this question answered for all of $11.5 on Google Answers
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=564094

The links in the answer are worth checking for someone who seriously
wants to understand the question.

Another interesting answer.

Positive Quotes about MBA

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=324352

Some information on Canadian MBA programs
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=265782

About MBA Types
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=324905

Finishing Touch

2005-09-18T13:46:00.000+09:30

The difference between "professionals" and "amateurs" is the Finishing touch.

I used to go a "training school" for hairdressers when I first came to Adelaide. It was for obvious reasons. Saving money. Then I started last week (after I got my job here) to go a professional hairdresser and the difference is simple.

The training school ones where decent ones. Some of them were good, they had the natural ability, knew the styles of cutting the hair, talked to you some time (small talk) and tried to do it at a fair pace. However, the major difference was how the professional took that extra time to show me my hair in the mirror, ask me more than a couple of times if I was satisfied, used the hair blower to set the hair and made some minor changes to the 'locks' to make it look good.

All these small changes and extra last effort - what you can call the 'finishing touch' made all the difference between the professional and the 'amateur'.

I see the same thing in the MBA classroom while submitting assignments. Some of the experienced guys go with that extra oomph. Colours, binding, graphs, stats and great proof-reading and presentation.

Just that last effort, that finishing touch made all the difference between them and mine.

I learnt a lesson the hard way and the best way to compete was to "be great at finishing".

M&A and Strategy

2005-09-16T13:31:00.000+09:30

There has been these huge mergers and acquisitions going on in the last week in the world of tech.

Today, the rumour is that MS is buying AOL.

As usual I get my info from SlashDot. The best thing about Slashdot is the comments, they are insighful, information and funny!

Like the one below:

Oracle buys Siebel.
eBay buys Skype.

Ballmer: (to Bill via bad cell phone connection) Billy-boy, what are we going to do? They're getting more press than us this week.
Gates: Eh? Oh hell! (AOL) ( as he spills his coffee on his lap and hangs up)
Ballmer: Well, ok if you say so.

This is so funny.

I do not see how Oracle can become better buying something like itself, which is what Siebel is.

Ebay and Skype. I cannot fathom what you can get out of those synergy except that the founders and VCs make a lot of money and Ebay is moving into an unknown field.

And AOL and MS is frankly I don't know what you can do other than having better numbers.

Imagine AOL starts and wins the first war of ISP in US, and then buys Time Warner for cheap (inflated bubble share price) and changes its name to AOL Time Warner and then to AOL and now AOLMSN. Sucks!

This comment has more info on Synergy:

And let's recap the failures of Time Warner with AOL. Time Warner corporate failed to get Time Warner Cable to carry AOL as its premiere ISP, which was the #1 reason why AOL pursued the merger in the first place. Time Warner corporate failed to take any initiative to getting Time Warner Cable to make a deal with TiVo for set-top DVRs even though through AOL, Time Warner held a large stake in TiVo. Time Warner failed to leverage AOL's WinAmp property combined with the Warner Music Group interests...not to mention failing to envision an actual online music store like iTunes and instead relied upon nobody's favorite company Real to make MusicNet a success that it never became. I could list much more, but I'll end it with settling with Microsoft for less than $1 billion the antitrust case that AOL easily would've won the $10 billion they were demanding (and had that figure trebbled) had they committed to fight for the eventual ruling and a good 5 years of appeals.

I can never understand how this kind of stuff can be taught in MBA schools! Impossible.

Update:

This bit is even more amusing.

MSN and AOL team up? Yeah - there's a marriage made in heaven.
How'd you like to be the poor stiff in Bangalore sorting out the crap that's
certain to result?

Caller: Hi. I have MSN and my AOL account doesn't work.
In fact nothing works.
Banglaore Tech: And sir did you turn the computer on
sir?
Caller: Oh. right.
Bangalore Tech: Very good sir. Now kindly go
fuck yourself sir. Thank you for calling MSN/AOL tech support, you knuckle
dragging imperialist asswipe sir.

Writing, Learning, Studying, Working and Living

2005-09-16T09:52:00.000+09:30

I have not been writing on this blog for sometime now. This is for a couple of reasons.

One, I have been terribly busy. Two, I thought about if I am adding value by writing this blog to anyone, including myself.

I will be finishing my term this week and done with "Leadership Dynamics" and "Creative and Accountable Marketing".

In Leadership, the most important learning for me has been that it is all about yourself. It is how oneself can become a better person and become a better leader.

I have read a wonderful book called "Synchronicity" by Joseph Jaworski. One of the best books on personal leadership.

I found this amazing quote in the book which sums up the entire idea. It is

The Way to Do is To Be - Lao Tsu

It is such a profound statement. I cannot tell you how much it made a difference. "Being" is "Doing". In a way it is not the tools that you learn, the ideas that you have, the position that you are in. It is all about "What you are as a person" and that will influence the people around you, the ennvironment etc.

However, everything starts with "Being".

I realized that 'learning' is all about what you can do and not what you can be taught. It is minimal any teacher can teach you. I have come to the MBA here and doing it in a way to enrich myself. I am using the course, the course facilitator, the facilities, the environment, the peer network to create the environment for me to study and learn, about myself and about the world.

This is what is making the difference.

For Marketing, the University and the course is concentrated on "fast moving consumer goods" or the stuff you get in your supermarket. I am not interested to do that hence, I have decided to do a General MBA with no specialization and fill up my electives with some subjects which will be important in the long run. More about that later.

In terms of working, I got a job now. At last. I am working as an "Environmental Project Officer" in the Dept. of Families and Communities in the Govt. of South Australia in implementing the "Greening" program. My job is to create and implement an action plan to conserve energy, water and waste to start with. In a way going with my weblog - www.worldisgreen.com

I will be writing now more regularly for a couple of reasons.

One, I missed writing the blog. Two, like the comments the previous post there have been others who mailed me about missing the blog! That is a big motivation to know that there are people who value what you write.

Look forward to more posts.

Teaching Entrepreneurship

2005-09-07T23:40:00.000+09:30

I have decided that since Entrepreneurship is an essential activity of every business (atleast the successful ones) Entrepreneurship is something I should do.

I will write more about it later. Check out the teaching of Entre timeline at HBS.

Yes, I know I have not been writing for sometime now....will write about that later.

Podcasting

2005-06-29T18:47:00.000+09:30

Podcasting started as a rage some months back (its less than a year) and is becoming a rage and coming mainstream fast.

Think about it. From blogs we have moved so fast to get audio content into people's computers and iPods (that's where the name has come from).

The great thing is Apple has realised that this is something which they should capture and have released their latest version of iTunes, the 4.9 version which has podcast listening built it. As from Apple, it has made it easier to search, find, subscribe and add your podcast. Wow!

The entire podcasting ecosystem has been created. They now have 3000+ podcasts and new ones have started getting added.

You can check out PodFinder from Adam Curry where he introduces to new podcasts. Radio Channels have started podcasting from ABC News, CBC News and many others. Then you have ameaturs like The Graduates. You have GM on Cars and the Gilmore gang.

I think this is an amazing new medium. It does require lots of bandwidth, more HDD space and lots of new time unless you have a iPod where you can carry it along on those bus rides or exercise times.

Are the marketing guys looking at this new medium?

Sidenote :

I am moving furniture to my new home tomorrow. I need to a pooja (traditional Indian ceremony) before I get the furniture in. Something like housewarming.

Sadly, I will be the only person attending it. Anyways, will blog about it and post some pictures. It sure sounds exciting.

I also ordered for my ADSL2 Internet connection. Adam Internet in Adelaide provides speeds upto 22 mbps (that's right guys, MBPS). Most of them get 10 mbps - 15 mbps. Its still good.

So waiting for it come in and then I can do a lot more things with my iBook. Ya, if I can earn the cash to upgrade its RAM from a measly 256 MB to 789 MB.

What is Profit?

2005-06-29T12:30:00.000+09:30

I have been having these MBA style discussions with one my peers, Sarah. Sarah is bright young lady from Qatar. You can see the spark in her eyes when you talk about Qatar and what you can do to make things better in Qatar.

We discuss a lot of politics, religion and other stuff which are not suitable for this weblog however we do once in a while discuss our course too!

In working through the Introduction to strategy in our course (CMP) we have been constantly coming back to two topics - Competitors and Profit.

One of the problems that I see with the way we are taught is that there is a heavy emphasis on Competitors in most strategy models and ideas.

In the world that we live in it is surely the case that we cannot implement any strategy without dealing with competitors. I think that is a given. However, due to the over-emphasis on this particular idea a lot of the students only talk about Competitors as strategy.

From my point of view Strategy is about creating the future of your organization. It is about implementing the vision/mission. It is about realising the dreams that the organization has created itself for.

In the course of doing this we do encounted a lot of competitors and other players in the society. These players could be enhancing or disturbing your vision. This is when you learn to start dealing with them.

For example, the famed Porter's five forces model talks about how various market players will decrease the profits of an org. Porter also misses to add other factors like marketing & advertising. The biggest factor he misses is government. In a lot of cases all around the world the Government shapes the structure of the market.

This could be in terms of regulation (alcohol etc) or licensing (telecom, radio) or tariffs (import and export tariffs) or trade support (subsidies, anti-dumping policies) to shape the structure of the market.

Another important insight which he missed was that the various players in a market are not always going to decrease an org. profits. They can enhance them too. This is what Nalebuff and Brandengerger prove in their book Co-Opetition or what they call Value Net.

As I was discussing these various ideas I started to think about how and why strategy can be used in not-for-profits?

But, why have some org. labelled themselves not-for-profits?

Is it because of the obvious reason that being profitable is not connected to making a difference to the society. Do you have to be unprofitable to make a difference to the society? I cannot understand that.

For me I believe that business is a force for good. Not all businesses. But definately some of them are good. But why did profit come in the way?

What is a business?

Individual businesses are established in order to perform economic activities. With some exceptions (such as cooperatives, non-profit organizations and generally, institutions of government), businesses exist to produce profit. In other words, the owners and operators of a business have as one of their main objectives the receipt or generation of a financial return in exchange for expending time, effort and capital.

What is a non-profit organization?

A non-profit organization (often called "non-profit org" or simply "non-profit" or "not-for-profit") is an organization whose primary objective is something other than the generation of profit.

Wikipedia defines profit as :

Profit is defined as the residual value gained from business operations.

Profitability refers to the amount of profit received relative to the amount invested, often measured by a rate of profit or rate of return on investment.
Economists and accountants measure profit in slightly different ways, profit will only be the same when all the factors of production have been credited their full opportunity cost.

Economists usually define profits as revenues less the opportunity costs of labor, capital, and materials. Furthermore, profits are divided into two types:

Normal profits are the salaries paid to executives in exchange for their entrepreneurial skills.
Economic profits are what remain after normal profits are subtracted. It is the economic profit that economists see as the incentive for firms to enter or leave a market.

In the accounting sense of the term, net profit (before tax) is the residual after deduction of all money costs such as; wages, rent, fuel, raw materials, interest on loans and depreciation.

What we have see is the traditional definition. All organizations can be classified into what can be called a black-white classification. Org. whose goal is to make a profit and Org. whose goal is not profits.

Getting the entire world (we are a societies of organizations now) into just two categories is not only silly it is downright stupid.

What is or better what should be the goal of a business?

Drucker provides us the definition :

Three roles of Management

Drucker teaches us three roles of management. The first role is to accomplish the function that is specific to each organization; in other words, to contribute to society through its business. If it is a newspaper company, it is to publish the best paper. If it is a greengrocery store, it is to supply the best vegetables. It is only a monastery deep in the mountains that does not have to contribute to society directly. It is only a gangster connection that does not have any intention to contribute to society. All other organizations must contribute to society, because they are allowed to exist, occupy, and hire the most valuable in society.

The second role is to make work productive and people achieving. Man as a social existence seeks to exert his ability fully, to fulfill his potential, and contribute to society. Especially from now on, we will enter an age when people will leave an organization that cannot make work productive, and satisfy them in achieving through their strengths.

The third role is not to give any negative impact on society, and to contribute society in solving its problems. This is so-called the social responsibilities of the organization.

If this is true, then what is profit and why has it become the main cause of an existence for a business.

Drucker says profit is, first and foremost, a cost for today and tomorrow. Fortunately, it fulfills the role as a measurement to know how the organization functions well. According to Drucker, it is dubious that a desire called profit motivation exists. It is only an assumption of classical economics that could not explain the cause of economic activities.

In psychology, there are materialistic, sexual and other desires, but no profit desire. Running a business for profit motivation would end up as running a business for greed. Moreover the word profit motivation causes needless misunderstanding and antipathy against business activities. Sadly, even though a top executive himself is not working for the purpose of moneymaking, he uses the word without giving it much thought.

There you go : "It is only an assumption of classical economics that could not explain the cause of economic activities." This is the main reason profit has been understood wrongly. It has been ingrained in the minds of executives around the world that we have forgotten to ask the definition itself.

It is important for us to know the reason for the existence of profit so that we then design our organizations and implement our strategies without the burden to "maximize a firm's profits" as expounded by the classical economists.

Reflecting on CMP

2005-06-23T14:38:00.000+09:30

One of the ideas that I have seen and the patterns that I have observed in both CMP and Leadership Dynamics is the rejection of one-size-fits-all and the embracing of situational ideas.

In Strategy, the various schools are made into a single process and each style used for a specific situation.

In a similar fashion, in Leadership Dynamics, the first Reading is about using different leadership styles at different times depending on the situation.

The hint which I need to understand here is that there is a need to understand the various techniques and tools and develop and the knowledge and wisdom necessary to use them at the right time. That is the crucial challenge.

The University can only provide us with guidance, with structure and direction, it can provide an environment and resources to study, it can and will provide ideas and authors relevant to the course and it can teach what can be taught. In fact it will concentrate mostly on what can be taught in a university (atleast one in the present form of organization).

What is left for students is to understand various ideas, learn tools and techniques, develop some skills but always swing back to experience, reflection and writing as the way to develop understanding. Through time and thought we can develop Wisdom.

This in a way is the understanding of the Uni in the bigger scheme of things for a student.

The discussion with bryan has provided some similar conclusions about marketing. The University can concentrate and provide some quantitative skills which can be easily taught (comparitively) however, it is upto the student to understand the needs and select the electives which he can mostly learn in a Uni and others which he can learn himself and in the job.

An Examples of Disguise as Marketing

2005-06-22T15:56:00.000+09:30

In Disguise as Marketing I have been debating about how a company needs to put up a disguise as its customers which will help it to provide better services.

In a stimulating discussion on SlashDot on Google vs Yahoo apart from some great stuff on innovation and innovative practices I noticed this. (emphasis mine)

And don't forget the customer satisfaction angle. I suspect that what really turns the crank of people at Google is that they can come up with projects that will eventually be used by thousands, potentially millions, of people worldwide. They're thinking like customers, and in fact they are customers themselves... and Google's audience is so large in general that I suspect it means that there will always be a group of customers who can identify and enjoy a given skunk works project. And then the audience gets bigger... it's a bit self-perpetuating.

Google is in a special case here where its employees are its customers too but the main point is that there are people in the company who are thinking like customers and figuring out what these people would require. This could be a niche area to start with but in a course of time they will be can develop a large following.

Top Marketing Blogs for 2005

2005-06-16T17:07:00.000+09:30

Marketing Sherpa has announced the Top Marketing Blogs of 2005.

Seth Godin wins the best individual blog. I think that is absolutely on the dot. Seth is the best in the business.

Adrants.com gets a special mentions (which basically means the next best blog). I never read that. Need to check that out.

Ducktapemarketing has been good for small business owners. However, I used to follow that before, but have stopped following it for now.

Small Business trends gets a special mention. Great going Anita.

Best group blog goes for Marketing Vox. I check this once in a while.

Check out the rest of the blogs at the site.

As I am now moving onto my next term, I will be taking "Creative and Accountable Marketing" and "leadership dynamics" as my two courses for thr term.

I am planning to update my Bloglines Folder on Marketing before that. Also, I am zeroing onto taking "marketing" as my specialization. And it seems that UniSA is famous for its marketing courses.

However, I find it strange that they do not have all the Seth Godin books???

Disguise as Marketing

2005-06-16T12:12:00.000+09:30

Rupert Murdoch in one of the most amazing speeches a newspaperman can say about his industry. A acknowledgement of how the industry is changing and getting transformed due to the disruptive force of the Internet.

He said :

We may never become true digital natives, but we can and we must begin to assimilate to their culture and way of thinking.

In the movie, Never been Kissed, Drew Barrymore plays the role of a 25 yr old copy writer in the Chicago-Sun times who is given a opportunity to do her first story as a reporter by being a undercover high school student.

In one of the literature classes, the teacher is talking about shakespeare. He lectures on the specific statement by Shakespeare of "All the world's a stage and we are only actors in it".

The teacher in the movie interprets that as actors our disguises play a large part. And here the story becomes interesting as to how if we are in a different disguise we start doing different things. he says we get a new sense of freedom and start to do new things which we never thought possible.

Like a high school student who would wear his football costume and then start pushing people, pressing other guys bums and generally kick-ass.

The point was that it is normal, since he was in a specific football disguise.

Now, this goes back to the words of Rupert Murdoch that "we, the digital migrants need to understand the digital natives if we have any chance to succeed with the disruptive force of the internet".

All of us in the running of organizations, be it businesses, not-for-profits, those in the govt. everybody needs to start putting up their disguises and understand their customers. the best way for that would be to spend time with them, be like them, think like them and act like them.

Going back to the movie, never been kissed, Drew barrymore tries very hard to be accepted by the "popular kids". You can see the change in her - the dressing changes, the walk changes, the talk changes, the places she goes to changes...what she is trying to do is be like them.

How many of us in the marketing world do that?

Do we try to be like our "popular customers" or do we just try to understand them. And can understanding come without experiencing?

Towards strategic flexibility

2005-06-08T20:43:00.000+09:30

Trever Cook links to the Association Blog which writes about Strategic flexibility.

“strategic planning, an approach grounded in the command-and-control management model, fails to produce the requisite creativity and dynamism necessary for associations to succeed strategically in the years ahead.”  The point here, I think, is not that strategy is bad or unnecessary, rather that just doing a strategy and faithfully implementing it free of any meaningful interaction with the world is absurd. So:  “in successful companies, tactics drive strategy as much or more than strategy drives tactics. These companies do something and learn from it. It changes their thinking ... Sometimes, the very first tactic you execute changes your plan.  Amen! If you want to get from A to Z, first you must do A. And once you do, guess what -- B changes. You realize B isn't what you thought B was. Or you realize you can skip ahead to D. Or you realize that A didn't work out and you need to start from scratch. Or you realize you didn't really want to get to Z in the first place.”
In reality, of course, great strategists have always adapted quickly to a changing environment and have used their strategic capabilities to quickly assess and respond to opportunities and threats as they arise. The challenge is not to faithfully implement some dusty document, but to be so deeply immersed in the ‘action’, while also seeing that action from a broader perspective, that you can make the strategy a lived reality. We could call this approach to strategy ‘action informed by thought’ rather than ‘action for the sake of doing something’.
But back to command and control:  Old-school association strategic plans lock organizations into mindsets that are outdated before the laserprinter is done spitting them out. They stifle innovation and create a "pass-the-buck" mentality among staff, who are rewarded for following the rules rather than introducing innovation -- and who can easily blame the plan (and by extension, the association's leaders/members) when ideas that sounded good eight months ago in a boardroom fail miserably in the field.  Every one of us has the capacity to be a strategist. In fact, the capacity to set goals and to think backwards and forwards through time and to conceptualise (think in generalities) – all the skills we associate with strategy and planning – are some of the essential differences between ourselves and other species.
Too often strategies have failed, and got a bad reputation with employees, because they are designed and used as a means of control – the modern version of Taylorism. Instead, we should see ‘strategic thinking’ as a way of making employees more creative, innovative and productive by engaging them fully in the strategy process as a way of life (‘thinking about what we do’) not as a dusty manual.

Thing Big Act Small

2005-06-08T20:12:00.000+09:30

Another book from Good to Great style of research. Good to Great is a different kind of book. Rather than having some theories in mind and finding data which fit that jim Collins takes a very different view of strategy and companies.

He went about searching about companies in America which live up to a specific list of data parameters and he found out the "good to great" companies.

Jack Covert from 800-CEO reviews a new book called "Think Big Act Small" by Jason Jennings where he goes about searching 100000 companies in America with the specific data parameter of "increased revenue and profits by ten percent or more for ten consecutive years".

What Jennings' and his research team did was to look at 100,000 American companies and found nine companies that have increased revenue and profits by ten percent or more for ten consecutive years. The nine companies range from retailers like Petco and Cabela's, manufactures like Medline Industries, service companies like Sonic Drive-In, private education companies like Strayer and industrial giants like Koch Industries. Rounding out the nine are SAS, the software company, O'Reilly Automotive and DOT Foods.  What do all these companies have in common? You guessed it: they all "Think big and act small."
 In the book, each chapter focuses on a company and how that company handles one of the ten "Building Blocks." The building blocks are:
 1. Down to earth 2. Keep your hands dirty 3. Make short term goals and long term horizons 4. Let go 5. Have everyone think and act like an owner 6. Invent new businesses 7. Create win-win solutions 8. Choose your competition 9. Build communities 10. Grow future leaders.

The book is loaded with insight and easily applicable ideas for anybody interested in improving themselves and their company. I especially like the conclusion:

"We live in interesting times. Complexity causes people to yearn for simple, profound ideas that can be readily related to diverse situations. People gravitate to confidence, decisiveness, and clear, powerful messages, searching for the ultimate metaphysical reference point. So we end as we begin, with this message: to guild an organization with balanced focus, camaraderie, and the ability to prosper over the long term...think big, act small."

Systems Mapping of Yuan, Again

2005-06-01T18:57:00.000+09:30

In the past I wrote about my course - CMP - where the first part of the course concentrated on this model of thinking called "systems thinking".

In order to get to understand the concepts better I had created a "map of the yuan peg" showing the direction of change and the effect it was having on many factors.

However, the map created using MS Word was not satisfactory.

I found this wonderful application today called the "CMAP Tools". This provides an easy way to create a concept map and it can be used as well of systems thinking. The tools helps you create easy to understand maps easily.

Click here for a larger version of the map.

I am sure that this map makes better sense than before. Do let me know your thoughts on this.

General Updates

2005-05-30T13:48:00.000+09:30

I have not been writing for a while. I have been busy with a lot of things lately.

The first update is that my course is going fine and we have decided and started working on our group and individual projects.

For the group project, we have taken "Alcoholic Beverages in Australia". We need to conduct an environmental analysis, understand the players and predict no, forecast the future of the industry in India. I am part of a 6 member team.

For my individual project, I am taking the topic "The Internet and The Newspaper" and trying to understand the changes taking place in the media and how the Internet has changed everything.

On the personal front, I have been trying to find a decent one bedroom place for myself since my wife is joining me in July. Its been hard.

There is a lot of competition for housing in Adelaide. Adelaide is generally considered the "retiring capital" of Australia however since there has been a lot more young professionals coming to Adelaide now and the large intake of foreign students in the universities here the demand has exceeded supply.

In a way you can increase the population of the city faster than you can build houses!

Since I am unemployed still (that's another story) I have not been qualifying for any of the houses here. Considering that I have provided my bank statements and student visa etc for convincing that I can pay.

Luckily I have had an opportunity to get a studio apartment from the University Student Housing program. If that is finalized I have a decent place to live by the time my wife joins me.

However, I need to furnish the entire place. So that's a big headache.

In terms of costs, this will cost me $70 per week. One of the cheapest you can find. The general cost of a 1 bed room is $120 per week and increases to $150-$175 as you move closer to the "main city" or CBD.

Yes, another good news. My iBook G4 is back after 6 weeks of repair with a new HDD and Logic board. I need to install and OS and it should be screaming!

The Masters of Business Imagination

2005-05-25T19:35:00.000+09:30

The Innovation weblog points me to a manifesto by Jim Carroll enshrined, The 'Masters of Business Imagination' Manifesto.

Jim says :

Complacency in a time of rapid, disruptive change can be a death sentence – not only for organizations, but for the careers and skills of those who work there! It's time to abandon the thinking that has had you anchored firmly to the past – and to shift your focus to the future, with enthusiasm, motivation and imagination.

You can do this by abandoning any pretence that the skills of yesterday will be important tomorrow. Figuratively and literally, it is time to move beyond the thinking that has led us to a world of MBA's – Masters of Business Administration – and focus upon the critical skill that will take you into tomorrow.

The world doesn't need more administrators. It needs more MBI's – Masters of Business Imagination!

The elements of an MBI

see things differently
spur creativity in other people
focus on opportunity, not threat
refuses to accept the status quo
the ability to bring ideas to life
has the skill to learn and unlearn
refuses to say the word “can't”
accepts challenges with passion and enthusiasm
embraces change rather than shying away from it
listens to people who are different then them
lives for the opportunity to have ideas challenged and debated
instead of saying “it won't work,” asks the question, “how can we make it work?

The MBI Manifesto is a call to action – a call to creativity – and a call for imagination. Pursue the MBI, and you will rediscover a world in which change and challenge is turned in to opportunity and success.

I think Jim is right that the world is changing and we need to change the way we teach our future leaders and ourselves if we have to make a difference. The one thing which a lot of people do not include is that "as we have become a society of organizations" it is important that the skills considered to be useful for a "business guy" should be relevant to anybody. From Educators to doctors to not-for-profit guys and everybody in between.

The Online Apprentice

2005-05-25T12:01:00.000+09:30

Stephen Downes directs me to this :

Donald Trump Looking For New Apprentices Online

Sign of a trend: Trump Univedrsity. "The school consists of online courses, CD-ROMs, consulting services and seminars. The for-profit university doesn't offer degrees or grades. Courses cost $300 and take one to two weeks to complete."

The Future of Textbooks

2005-05-25T11:50:00.000+09:30

The Textbook, one of the great "social innovations" which changed the entire educatioin field. As Drucker says it made possible for ordinary teachers to teach high quality courses to many students which was previously only possible for great teachers.

This is what Clayton Christenson would call a disruptive innovation.

However the rapid change we are experiencing in the world has made the "old textbooks" obselete. That is one of the reasons for the CMP course I have one textbook, one study guide with a set of readings from journals and chapters from various books, 2 major references and 20 other references and 5-8 videos! That's a lot of stuff to read and even borrow from the library.

In a way there is not much a good Prof can do if he wants to provide the required study material to his students. How can he create his own textbook? Or Can he?

Welcome to the future of textbook : SafariU

The O'Rielly newsletter brings to me this great new innovation.

Technology's impact on education shouldn't be limited to state-of-the-artlabs, wireless networks, and dare I say, iPods. Innovations can improveteaching tools as mundane as the college textbook. This is an area thatO'Reilly's been exploring for some time now.

A project called SafariU enables college instructors to assemble textbookschoosing sections and chapters from thousands of books and articles. Thebooks are created online via an easy-to-use web interface, then printedand shipped directly to the instructor or the university's bookstore.

Check out the interview with Jon Preston is Interim Chair of the Department of Information Technology at Clayton College and State University who is using SafariU successfully in his course. Unfortunately this service is only limited to O'Rielly publications which are mostly concentrated on IT and Computer Science.

Markets are conversations

2005-05-24T22:25:00.000+09:30

Taking up from the previous post, I just went and checked out the ClueTrain manifesto, its a book now and found it lot more illuminating then when I first read it.

I remember reading the Cluetrain when it was a manifesto and not a book. Frankly, except that "markets are conversations" and was the only idea which I took from there. Its still the same but the major difference is that now I know the deeper meaning of the manifesto.

The main difference in the in-between years has been "participation". I have been using Yahoo groups, the most famous incarnation of the orginal conversational tools : Usenets. I created some groups and then made one really good one.

I also started participating in the new blog world. The RSS feeds, bloglines, Google News, Blogger and others made a major difference.

When I wanted to buy my Apple iBook for the MBA program the first place I went was to register in various communities on the net and ask the networked consumers. They provided me answers which was far better than Apples Website.

The conversations made all the difference.

It will be interesting to see how my Marketing course will be structured. Is the University focussed on the networked economy. Do they understand it?

If you have still not checked it out....check out the "future of business".

Consumer Generated Marketing

2005-05-24T21:49:00.000+09:30

You have to hand it out to the Profs in business schools to come out with a easy name for touch concepts. A lot of the times an easy name makes it easier to remember and understand the concept.

Jim Heskett writes in the HBS Working Knowledge about the "marketing buzz" generated by consumers on newsgroups, blogs and other conversations on the internet.

However, this could be old news for people who know that "markets are conversations". (The Cluetrain Manifesto)

What Could Bring Globalization Down?

2005-05-24T21:44:00.000+09:30

Niall Ferguson from the Harvard Business School parallels the "present globalization" with the first one ninety years ago and suggests that this could be a "sinking globalization" as the first one.

I am an historian who has long been preoccupied by the similarities between our own time and the pre-1914 period. That the years 1880–1914 were the "first age of globalization" is now quite a widely accepted idea among economic historians. The data on trade, capital flows, and migration certainly bear that out.

I don't say it's impending. I just say it's possible. Like the outbreak of the First World War, a crisis of globalization today is a low-probability worst-case scenario. The key causes of the 1914 crisis were:
The overstretch of the hegemonic empire (Britain).
The escalation of rivalry between great powers (Britain and Germany in
particular, but also Germany and Russia).
The destabilization of the alliance system (unreliability of Austria in
German eyes, of Britain in French eyes).
The existence of a rogue regime sponsoring terror (Serbia).
The rise of a revolutionary organization hostile to global capitalism
(Bolshevism).
To see my point, just change the words in parenthesis to:

(the United States)
(the United States and China)
(unreliability of
the Europeans in American eyes, unreliability of the Americans in Japanese,
South Korean, and Taiwanese eyes)
(Syria, Iran, etc.)
(Al Qaeda)

It would be a very good idea if the United States were to act now to avert the danger of a clash with China over the future of Taiwan. There is a real danger that Taiwan could be what Belgium was in 1914: the small state over which two great powers went to war without either quite meaning to.

Systems Mapping of Yuan

2005-05-21T19:14:00.000+09:30

Systems Mapping of Yuan
Originally uploaded by thegreenguy.

Using Systems Thinking to understand the effect of the yuan peg to the dollar. The data for this diagram has been used from the article in The Economist "What do yuant from us?".

The mental model of "Systems Thinking" is more useful when it can be applied. Hence, this idea of using the mapping technique for the Yuan Peg.

This map is not entirely correct. I have not been able to map reinforcing loops and balancing loops. But I am sure if you read the economist article and look at the diagram it should make sense.

Click on this URL for a larger size, alternatively you can also click on the photo.

Update :(24th May) I have got some people asking for a simpler explanation of the mapping.

The map shows the following.

The American economy buys inexpensive goods from the Chinese which fuels the consumer and mortgage finance markets which in turn is responsible for the fiscal deficit in the US. This is supported by selling the US Treasury bills to other countries. China is the biggest buyer of all.

China maintains a Yuan Peg of 8.28 for the dollar. This is maintained by buying US treasuries. The US believes that the Yuan is artificially supported and it needs to be revalaued. The "shadow yuan" shows this to be true. Now, China needs this peg to support its exports and inflation. Exports will becomes less competitive and inflation will rise with the increase in the Yuan value which may bring about political instability.

The Shadow Yuan

The side-effect is that the Euro is appreciating because of this.

There are other reasons, but I guess you get the idea.

Now, there have been new developments with the US asking China to revalue or it will slap import taxes on its textile exporters. China has added new export taxes on its exporters before the US reacts.

I believe that this could be a short term development till China revalues its currencies. (BTW, there are many ways China can do this. The Economist has more info on this)

The side effect of this export tax is that Walmart is urging its suppliers to move to India where the Walmart supplier base is only $1 billion against a possible $100 billion for China.

I guess I need to change this map. This subject though randomly selected is becoming interesting by the moment.

The Apprentice

2005-05-17T19:33:00.000+09:30

Ok. I may be the last MBA student to have started seeing the Apprentice in its their avatar. I have been following the hit show "The Appretice" in Australia. It is aired every monday on Cnel 9.

Now Apprentice is interesting game for all people involved in organizations especially the MBA types. Donald Trump created a new reality show where he has a unique process of selecting a top candidate to work for him. The candidate needs to go through a gruelling process of interviews and selections to join the show and the work through all the tasks and emerge as the winner at the end of it.

I think there a lot of lessons learned from the show. I did a small Google search and found a plethora of websites devoted to the show. If you want to know more check these out.

The Apprentice on NBC
The Apprentice on Yahoo
The Apprentice Blog

The New Digital Divide

2005-05-16T12:42:00.000+09:30

Seth Godin (my fav. marketing author and thinker) writes about the new digital divide.

The Digital divide is :

The short definition is that the haves would have reliable, fast access to the Net, which would give them employment and learning opportunities that others wouldn't be able to get. This would further divide those with a head start from everyone else.

The New Digital Divide:

I think a new divide has opened up, one that is based far more on choice than on circumstance. Several million people (and the number is growing, daily) have chosen to become the haves of the Internet, and at the same time that their number is growing, so are their skills.

The New Digital Divide
The Digerati	The Left Behind
Uses Firefox	Uses Internet Explorer
Knows who Doc Searls is	Already has a doctor, thanks very much
Uses RSS Reader	RSS?
Has a blog	Reads blogs (sometimes)
Reads BoingBoing (or Slashdot)	Watches the Tonight Show
Bored with Flickr	Flickr?
Gets news from Google	Gets news from Peter Jennings

You need to read the rest of Seth's blogpost to get the idea.

I think he is onto something right now. I am not a "geek" in any sense atleast not a technical guy. But I would like to call myself technologist. I believe in the power of technology to make a difference.

I write blogs, I read SlashDot, I use Firefox, yes uses Flickr (not yet bored), Yes yes RSS and ofcourse News from Google. I do know Doc Searls!

So there could be other factors which you can add.

The important thing is that this could be the new demographic for marketers to understand. The people who can use the new internet tools to spread new ideas wide and fast.

IT Conversations

2005-05-14T19:04:00.000+09:30

I had heard a lot about "IT Conversations" however the download speeds in India did not provide me the chance to download or stream the conversations I wanted to listen.

Now in Australia it is easy! I have spent a whole evening yesterday and the entire afternoon today hearing some great interviews and speeches.

The ones I heard :

Joel on Software, The Software Paradigm Shift (Tim O'Rielly), Ben and Mena Trot (Movable Type), Alex Steffan (worldchanging.com), Janine Benyus (Biomimicry), Steve Wozniak.

Do check them. They are amazing.
(this post has been updated. I used the mail-to-program to publish on the blog however it did not work well)

Subscribing to this blog

2005-05-11T11:17:00.000+09:30

You can also subscribe to my blog through e-mail or RSS/XML Feed.

The e-mail subs will take you to a yahoo group where you can join and recieve a the posts as they are blogged, or a daily digest or just read them on the web.

The RSS feed needs a feed reader. You can check out My Yahoo or Bloglines for this.

Finding your calling

2005-05-11T10:57:00.000+09:30

One of the side-effects of the two years in Adelaide as I planned would be to understand myself better and find my calling.

The HBS Working Knowledge reviews a new book called "Nobodies to Somebodies: How 100 Great Careers Got Their Start" by Peter Han.

In this book Han examines the careers of one hundred achievers from business, government, science, the literary world, the nonprofit sector, and the arts.

Nobodies to Somebodies is written as a narrative and is organized into fourteen lessons within three sections. The first section, "Basics: Finding One's Calling," provides some useful insight from these high achievers on self-assessment and describes the various approaches they used to decide which way to go.

The second section, "Keys: Chasing the Dream," describes tactical career moves and how the achievers dealt with unexpected surprises that might have diverted their paths.

The third section, "End Game: Using A Little Magic," discusses mentoring, work-life balance, and the importance of drive and passion.

Another book which I read called "What Should I do with my life?" by Po Bronson was a fantastic book.

Let Po tell us about his book:

You can make decisions to pad your wallet. You can make decisions to maintain proper appearances. You can make decisions because they're safe or predictable. You can make decisions because it'll keep your parents off your back. You can make decisions simply to delay making harder decisions. I began this book because I was drawn, artistically, to those who've made decisions to serve none of those ends. I was interested in people who resisted those pressures and made a decision simply because it was good, or right, or true to their nature - and were willing to be challenged by the consequences.

As I wrote in the introduction, "Nothing seemed more brave to me than facing up to one's own identity, and filtering out the chatter that tells us to be someone we're not."

I found that it's not what you do that defines you nearly as much as what you overcame to get there that shapes you. This is a journey of infinite variety that we all share.

My hope is that by reading these people's stories, you will find yourself contemplating the decisions you've made in your life.

These are stories of maturation; of gaining understanding through being forced to look at life a different way. In the end, having the benefit of perspective contributed to their satisfaction as much as the new lifestyle.

You can also check out the NPR piece or a chapter excerpt.

This book is wonderful. It made me look at life with a different view. One of the differences that I have found with this book and "Nobodies to Somebodies" is that Nobodies....starts with the assumption of what success is and Po just started a journey to find out how people made brave decisions and then the story of the book followed.

PO is right. He does not provide startegies or anything else in the book but a good narrative set of stories. Peter Han in 'Nobodies...' decides what is success and then finds the people and the carriers to decide what is the strategy.

I found Po's book highly engaging. If you can read his book. And if anybody does read "Nobodies to Somebodies" do let me know what you think about it.

Are you successful or a "success fool"?

2005-05-11T10:46:00.000+09:30

Jagdish Parikh an alumni of HBS writes about what it takes to be a leader :

According to Jagdish Parikh (HBS MBA '54), the gap between what everyone learns about leadership and what they actually experience exposes a fundamental flaw in leadership models today. The qualities that genuine leaders possess—and what makes inspiring leaders so rare—are not innate characteristics. Rather, he believes, they are skills that aspiring leaders can and should actually teach themselves, such as self-knowledge and self-mastery. Self-knowledge and self-mastery can be developed through conscientious practice.

"Unless one knows how to lead oneself, it would be presumptuous to lead others," Parikh said. And, he added, "If you don't know how to lead yourself, someone else will."

To him leading means sharing and facilitating. "Sharing what? And facilitating what? Information, ideas, events, and things. ... Leadership is not a quality, strategy, or tactic, in my opinion. It's a way of life, a way of being."

"In formal education we learn nothing about feelings, but we exist at a feeling level. We cannot change just by wishing. We must discover ourselves. What are you referring to when you say 'I'? What is your organizational chart of yourself? Life is a culmination of experiences, mind, and emotions. Feelings come and go but as individuals we are unchanging."

"Detached involvement is the essence of leadership."

A lot of the ideas seem to come directly from eastern philosophies. Better still read The Buddha.

My Presentation on Systems Thinking

2005-05-10T21:31:00.000+09:30

I mentioned in the CMP course that I presented on Systems Thinking in the class.

Just click the following link to access the presentation.

Systems Thinking.

(Thanks to Robin Good for providing information on this wonderful service for sharing files)

The new growth

2005-05-10T20:37:00.000+09:30

Student acco in adelaide

(This is fun. I have had my first take at mobile blogging. This was one of the photos I took on my mobile phone and posted it to Flickr and to my blog through it.)

Good Karma

2005-05-10T20:16:00.000+09:30

Good Karma
Originally uploaded by thegreenguy.

One of the principles to live your life!

The Search for Sustainability

2005-05-10T20:04:00.000+09:30

My University, The University of South Australia (UniSA) conducts something called the "Working Links" seminars. This as the Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Division of Business at UniSA, Garry Griffin, says is one of UniSA's way to give back to the community.

In this seminars, the top Profs at UniSA present their research in a public seminar. The first one for the year kicked off today.

The search for sustainability: Balancing environmental, economic and social needs

Professor Rob Fowler, presented his ideas on sustainability and what needs to be done in that area. He specifically covered his experience as an advisor of the 'Environmental Protection Agency' for South Australia.

In trying to find common ground, Prof Fowler suggests practical ways the issues can be addressed, looking at three main areas – ‘law and order’, ‘jobs and the environment’, and ‘people power’.

Some excerpts :

“There needs to be more emphasis on law and order. We need to strengthen regulation and how it’s administered, develop smart regulation – looking at using economic instruments, market mechanisms, and voluntary methods industry might adopt – as well as alternatives to conventional regulation that might work better for everyone,” Prof Fowler says.

“When we look at jobs and the environment, the legal and policy framework is inadequate in helping the EPA to do their job. There isn’t enough clear guidance and there’s a need to develop criteria for weighing up economic and environmental values. For example, if you’re going to trade off a wetland for a project that would deliver a whole lot of jobs – in what circumstances are you willing to do that? We need to go to the next level of detail in defining what sustainability means when these sorts of decisions are being made.”

And Prof Fowler also advocates a greater level of public involvement in all levels of the decision making process. “There is a need for more people power, to revamp the Environment Protection Act and the way in which the EPA operates to provide greater community involvement in its decisions. Currently there is a closed loop in
terms of access to information, public participation in decision making and access to appeal to the courts. These are some significant deficiencies in the South Australian system at the moment.”

I discussed the case for India. My point was that India had a different problem from Australia in the sense that we needed to manage our economic development and environmental prorection. Australia and other developed countries were in a much better position to manage the environments. However, there are a large part of the Industry which does not believe in this.

He had a particular mention about the Supreme Court of India which had to step into the administrative role to clean up Delhi, The Ganges and The Taj Mahal. Since he was a lawyer he was more keenly interested I guess.

However, coming to the point of sustainability and environmental protection one major point is the problem of measurement.

How do we measure 'better environment' or worse environment'. In the same way that we can measure profits, inventory turnover, sales per quarter we need better methods to understand and measure this environment.

This is important for many reasons. The other day I was watching a video called "The Corporation". This was an interesting video in many ways. One of the good things about an MBA program is that you get to know new things, see these videos, read the books and have fun.

Ok, coming to the video, the main concern there was the way the companies were wrong in many ways and the 'corporation' was compared to a psychopath. I guess it needs another post to explain, however I found a piece of that program which is very relevant.

One of the commodity traders in the US had this to say.

He said how do we know what the companies are doing on the environment front. If you have stocks we trade, if you have information on pigs we can trade. In the same way if you can make environment a commodity we can trade on them.

I think that he meant a lot. Measuring the environment, tradable pollution units and other "accountable" measures are need to make a difference to the field of sustainability.

The Topics in CMP - Part I

2005-05-07T16:34:00.000+09:30

The CMP Course as I mentioned before is a thinking course. However, I like to take it down further. This exercise is more for myself than the blog. As I mentioned before the blog helps me in reflecting on the work I am doing rather than just going from one event to another. It helps me to find patterns, to mark priorities and to plan better.

Topic 1 : The Evolution of Management upto World War II

Covers the classical management theories.

Scientific Management from Frederic Taylor
Administrative Management from Henry Fayol
Bereaucratic Management from Max Weber

It then covers the "Human Relations Movement" and Systems and Contingency theories.

This topic provides an overview of history of management thought.

Topic 2 : The Evolution of Management after World War II till 1990

Again here there is a sense of history and trends in various areas.

Organizational Development
Startegy - Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Drucker and MBO, Porter & Mintzberg
Quality - Deming, Juran, Crosby, Feigenbaum, Quality movements
Learning Organization

Topic 3 : The Influences of the Sciences : Part I - Systems Thinking

Reductionism
History of Systems Thinking
Systems Thinking
Cybernetics
Human and Social Systems

Topic 4 : The Influences of the Sciences : Part II - The New Sciences

A large part of this topic is influenced by Margaret Wheatley and her book "Leadership and the New Sciences".

Complexity Science
Quantum Physics
Chaos Theory
Evolutionary Biology
New Organizational Systems and Structures of the Future
Tops Model

Topic 5 : New Perspectives on Management Practices - Part I

Globalization
Technology
Knowledge Management
Learning Organizations

Topic 6 : New Perspectives on Management Practices - Part II

E-Business
Creativity and Innovation
Organizational Design - The Boundaryless Organization
Quality
Governance
Sustainability (Triple Bottom Line and Balanced Score card)

Topics 7 - 10 are on Strategy. This will covered in a later post.

The course looks great if you look at the topics. But considering the number of concepts packed into each topic and the diversity of each it does take lot of time to cover them.

That is one of the problems. The other problem is the relative newness of the topics and the scope of the topice. For example : Understanding the history of management till 1990 is relatively easy and may be a lot of MBA students do know about it. Atleast I did.

But, understanding and ingraining "Systems thinking" is no mean task. I am not sure how you can do it in a short time period. This course also makes a start in Systems Thinking, more like providing us direction, a new path to venture. However, it is upto the student to do his own work and learn and utilize this knowledge in other parts of the MBA and in the future.

For instance, MIT (where System Dynamics was invented by Jay Forrestor) has a half and full semester course on System Dynamics. System Dynamics is a branch which provides the tools to create models. These system models will help in understanding our decisions and will speed-up our understanding of systems thinking.

The next ideas of Complexity, Chaos Theory and Evolutionary Biology are major 'mental models' which if can be ingrained in us it can change our worldview. I can understand the limitation of the course here. You cannot teach these new ideas vis-a-vis management and organization. It is upto us.

An excerpt from the Editorial Review on Amazon.com for the book:

The result is a much clearer work that first explores the implications of quantum physics on organizational practice, then investigates ways that biology and chemistry affect living systems, and finally focuses on chaos theory, the creation of a new order, and the manner that scientific principles affect leadership. "Our old ways of relating to each other don't support us any longer," she writes. "It is up to us to journey forth in search of new practices and new ideas that will enable us to create lives and organizations worthy of human habitation."

Globalization and technology are important concepts which will take time to understand. However, Systems Thinking and other thinking tools will help in making sense of this.

The main aspect of learning for me in this course is to identify the various broad themes and select what to glance at, what to read, what to go deep into.

Institutions for Development

2005-05-07T15:32:00.000+09:30

Reading through Freakonomics I got an idea and posted it onto my WorldisGreen.com blog. However, I wanted to report the inquiry here.

Considering this :

Acemoglu and co-authors challenge the conventional wisdom that democracy causes strong economic performance. They argue that although democracy and income are positively correlated, it is actually that they are both caused by long ago implemented institutions that fostered both democracy and strong economies. If this result holds up, it is really a remarkable finding.

What about this?:

Amartya Sen has always maintained that Freedom of Speech is as important Economic freedom and that ‘developemt’ would encompass both of them. Now, if India as we know is the largest dmocracy in the world. Does the institutions which hold India’s democracy in place may also generate the required economic development and the more interesting one, will China’s institutions for economic development take it towards “democracy".

Freakonomics

2005-05-07T15:16:00.000+09:30

Kenneth Silber reviews the book, Freakonomicc by Steven Levitt, an economist at the University of Chicago. Looks like a very interesting book.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once divided intellectuals into two categories, based on a fragment from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Thus, hedgehogs produce work that reflects a single vision or principle, while foxes explore a scattered array of ideas. In Berlin's telling, Plato, Dante, and Proust were hedgehogs; Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Joyce were foxes.

[BTW, Jim Collins uses a similar approach to understand the leaders in successful companies and leaders in would be successful companies in Buil-to-last. The HedgeHog wins!]

The book, which grew out of a 2003 profile of Levitt by Dubner in the New York Times Magazine, is organized around an eccentric set of questions. One chapter, for instance, is titled "How is the Ku Klux Klan Like a Group of Real-Estate Agents?" The answer is that both groups depend on closely held information. Agents hoard data on market trends, inventories and leads. Klansmen obscure their identities and activities. The Internet has eroded real-estate professionals' information edge. The Klan was thrown into turmoil decades ago by an informant who revealed passwords and other secrets to producers of a Superman radio show, such that kids were soon engaged in mock Klan-busting.

Levitt sparked intense controversy several years ago with a study suggesting that legalized abortion in the 1970s was a major factor in the decline of crime in the 1990s -- since abortions prevented many births that would have resulted in children growing up at high risk of becoming criminals. He maintains this position in Freakonomics, arguing that statistical analysis shows Roe v. Wade led to safer cities. (He acknowledges, though, that this does not settle moral arguments over abortion.)

A chapter titled "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?" provides an analysis of the economic workings of a Chicago crack gang, based on data collected (initially at high personal risk) by a young sociologist named Sudhir Venkatesh. The upshot is that the crack trade, even at its market peak, was lucrative only for those at the top of a selling organization. The gang's foot soldiers made less than minimum wage and faced a 1-in-4 risk of being killed over four years. (In the same time, being a timber cutter, the most dangerous legitimate job in the U.S., carried a 1-in-200 risk.) These drug dealers struggled desperately to reach the gang's upper echelons, but few would make it.

Steven and Stephen (the co-author) also maintains a blog with the same name, which made it to the Blogger "Blog of Note" list. (I guess my readers are coming to this blog from the same list. Feels great to be part of the same list as Freakonomics, unfortunately Blogger (or Google) has been highly lenient in selecting my blog)

Siegel's constant

2005-05-07T14:46:00.000+09:30

I was reading Arnold Kling on his Econ Log. He is one of the economists whose ideas I like. He blogs about Jeremy Siegel who is a Professor at the Wharton Business School.

Prof. Siegel talks about the Stock market and the globalizing world ecpnomy, Some excerpts.

About Siegel :

Wharton Business School Professor Jeremy Siegel is one of the world's most important scholars on stock ownership and investing. His 1994 book "Stocks for the Long Run" became an instant classic. His extensive original research found that over periods of 20 or more years, stocks are not only the best investment for your money, but the safest as well, returning 6.5 -7% after inflation (now popularly called "Siegel's constant") while bonds and other investment vehicles fared considerably less well.

The Interview :

The growth trap is falling into a pattern of just buying companies with what you think are the fastest growing earnings, and ignoring the price. It is so important to realize that when you're paying a higher than usual price, you're already putting up for those higher earnings. In fact, I find that the faster growing companies often give poorer returns for investors; those investors that chase after those fast growing companies actually suffer worse returns than those that buy slower growing companies at reasonable prices.

This surprised me. Even though IBM won, hands-down, on all the growth parameters that Wall Street looks at -- earnings per share growth, market value growth, sales -- it fell behind Standard Oil of New Jersey in terms of return for investor. And the two reasons for that: IBM sold at more than twice the price-earnings ratio of Standard Oil and had less the half the dividend rate. So when you put those two together, over the next 53 years, Standard Oil of New Jersey -- and this is even before the very latest run-up in oil prices, because I ended my first data set in 2003 -- out-performed IBM even though IBM was one of the fastest growing companies in the world.

[If you have been following Warren Buffet or reading his letters to Investors then this would be old news to you]

Absolutely. It surprised me. From 1957, when the S & P was founded, to the present, the best performing company is Philip Morris, which is now the Altria Group. It won hands-down against all the others. The returns were three percent per year more than the next best-performing stock and almost doubled the S & P over the last half century, which is really remarkable when you consider the record.

And a major reason for that performance is that no one wanted to buy it. The price stayed low. First off, there are those who object morally to cigarettes so they don't buy it. And, more importantly, those that said, oh, the government's going to put them out of business; these liability payments -- Philip Morris has already paid over $150 billion! And, as a result, the price fell so low. They were still pumping out cash and the dividend yield got to be extremely high. And, once you had reinvested dividends, the returns on that company just soared above everything else.

[In fact Phillip Morris is one company which also featured in the "Built to Last" list of Jim Collins. It is amazing that this company is in many ways one of the best managed in the US. In fact, ITC Limited in India, a tobacco company, is a similar example. I guess there is something with these cigaratte's?]

The best solution of the aging problem is what I call the 'global solution.' I think that we have to think of ourselves very much like Florida, which is an aging state. In a younger country, we don't talk about an aging crisis in the state of Florida. Their retirees sell their assets in the US to the rest of the US market that absorbs them. They import goods. They're enjoying a good retirement.

In 50 years the United States will be more aged than all of Florida is today, but we will be, existing in a younger world. So, what I see is exactly the same pattern. We will be selling assets into the world market. They will be buying, they will be absorbing, they will be saving, and they will be producing the goods that we will be importing to satisfy our retirement needs. And, I think that is the only way that we could have an ever-increasing retirement period with the shrinkage of workers and the extension of life expectancy.

Certainly India is very young country. The rest of Asia is a very young. Indonesia is very young. And even China -- I know that because of its one-child policy it is aging, but they have a huge supply of surplus labor with state-owned enterprises that they can absorb into the private sector. I expect, and I hope, that this development not only sweeps through Asia, which looks extremely promising, but also Latin America, the Middle East, and even Africa, which has been the so-called basket case. But there are a billion people in Africa -- very young ages -- and they have not yet started their growth.

India and China, by the middle of the century, will together be, in my opinion, more than four times the size of the United States.

[Since I come from India, I see that the energy levels and the sense of optimism of the future and what needs to be done is so high compared to say Australia...atleast that's the experience till now]

Technology is critical for progress. For increases in standard of living, what we call growth, it is so very important; but that doesn't mean that technology stocks are the best stocks to buy. Just like not always the best horse on paper is what you should bet on at the race track. The horse could be over-bet and as a result the odds are way too low. You've got to look at the price, as well. Too many people just look at one, without looking at the other. Technology is an unbelievable force -- the communications and Internet revolution is one of the most exciting things to ever happen. Do I want to go into those stocks? Maybe, maybe not. I want to see what people are paying for them. If everyone else is excited about something, I tend not to want it.

[Very important to understand. Systems Thinking would help in looking at the whole rather than the parts. And of course Buffet has been talking about this for some 30 years now.]

Do check this business school reading list.

CMP - The Course

2005-05-06T16:52:00.000+09:30

I have taken "Comtemporary Management Perspectives" as my first and only course in my first term. In a way I am lucky to take this as my first course.

Before I begin, I want to explain why I am lucky. Since UniSA has intakes every term and there a finite number of core courses taught every term we need to decide and join the ones which are run in the term we join. In that sense I am able to do this because I joined the term 2 starting April.

Ok, now what is CMP? This is a thinking course. Our Professor, Mr. Murray Olliver is a guy with business experience and a academic too. I have joined the Intensive style for this course. This means that my classes are going to be from 9 AM - 4 PM every alternate friday against the regular course which will run from 6 PM - 9 PM every week.

Each course or subject is for 11 weeks. So at the end of it we have appx 30-35 contact hours for each 4.5 credit course.

[To the MBAs reading this, is this normal. What has been your experience in terms of contact hourse?]

This course is all about how to think. Murray says that there has been a lot of complaints about the way the business schools do not teach people how to think and that this course is solve that issue.

I think that "thinking processes" are more important than what you can learn in the school. Knowledge changes, but the ability to understand new knowledge and may be create your knowledge is far more valuable.

The course starts with Systems Thinking. Systems Thinking is all about "the whole" and the "not the parts". The ability to see the interrelationships and inter-dependencies in any system.

On the day of the lecture some designated students need to prepare a response to a question from one of the topics taught. The entire course is broken up into 10 topics and through 10 weeks we finish all the topics.

I decided to take up the "What is Systems Thinking?" question and its applications to organization. I made a small presentation on that to the class. I am finding a way to host my file. I will upload and post the link here to my presentation.

Anyway, this course then goes into understanding Globalization, Strategy etc. I will continue to post as we go on with the course.

As part of the course we need to do a group project and one individual project. These projects will help us think strategically and make use of the ideas and tools we have learnt in the course.

Larry Page Advice to Graduates

2005-05-03T13:26:00.000+09:30

Sometime back it was Warren Buffet, now its Larry Page's turn.

Larry Page, co-founder of Google, recently gave a speech at the University of Michigan his Alma mater. Adam herscher recently graduated from the University and he recoreded the entire speech on his cell phone, which he posted on his webpage and braodcasted on Slashdot. Luckily, some guy made the effort to transcribe the entire speech.

So here are some excerpts :

Your son wants to leave his PhD program in Stanford and hasn't graduated yet, would you let him go off and start a crazy company? Your supposed to nod. So maybe not, I guess its really important for people to take risks.

One is that, doing bigger things is easier than doing smaller things. I know that sounds really strange but it turns out, if you do something really big, you can get other people to help you, and you can get more people to help you. You get more of the kind of resources that you need. So its worth thinking about those big things to get done in the world.

One of the biggest things that surprises me is, there is a lot of money out there and resources for things, and there is very few people out there trying to do them. One of the things that amazes me is that very few people approached me that have good ideas, that have a team of people, even a small one, that have a little bit of traction and a good idea.

If you want to change the world, a good way of doing it is to be in a position of authority, positions of leadership.

I know some of [you] will [be] going to business school. I know what its like in business school and I wanted to give you a plug. I think you don't really need to go to business school. You have a pretty rigorous education, much of this covers rocket science, but it does help us to have interests in business. You basically just need the interest and read a lot of books. I read a whole bookshelf full of business books, and that's basically what I needed.

My advice to you, have confidence, fail often, have a healthy disregard for the impossible. You have a huge opportunity to use engineering, technology and businesses skill to improve the world. You should do things that matter, and you should have fun, because otherwise you wont succeed, and you should travel, and I suggest China, Africa and India there's lots of amazing things there.

The good thing about any Slashdot discussion is that if you do have the time to check the comments you will find some very good ones. Let me show an example which is relevant to this blog.

Pavan Gupta comments :

I couldn't agree with Page more ..

larry page: "I know a lot of you are planning on going to business school, but I don't think you need to go to business schoool"

larry page: "I just read a bookshelf of business books"

From a man worth 7 billion dollars, it sure seems to me like his statement on how to run a business is pretty reputable.

Now, check the following replies :

One,

just because a successful business man says don't bother going to b-school doesn't mean he's right. it depends very much on what he said in context. if by "don't go, i just ready books," page meant "don't go to b-school to gain business knowledge, because it's better to gain experience," then his advice is probably a good one. if the message you took home is that someone became successful without going to b-school and he said don't bother, so b-school is useless, then that's not a very smart interpretation of his message.

i know it's not quite the same thing, but a lottery-winning millionaire simply recommending "don't bother to take jobs, just buy lottery tickets" and listening to it simply because he/she is wealthy is dumb, don't you think?
Second,
I doubt that you'd base most of your other decisions based on one data point. Why do it now?

For every successful dropout there are thousands who are very unsuccessful. Too often we point to these sui generis cases and say "see! I don't have to go to school." The drop-out, under-educated successful type happens, but it's not the norm.

Adelaide Gets a Taste of Free WiFi

2005-05-03T13:03:00.000+09:30

SlashDot reports that Adelaide now has its own Free Wifi network. Wow!

"Adelaide's Citilan network is being relaunched. Sometime in the last two weeks they decided to open it up for free use to anyone in Adelaide's CBD, pending full commercial launch. Get in and find a hotspot while its hot!"

My lovely Apple iBook has sadly had a HDD failure. Its damn new, but I guess these things happen. It is being serviced by an Apple Center and after more than 10 business days they have still not got it ready. Looks like they are waiting for the parts. I guess that's too long a period to wait.

Once I do have it back, I can start accessing this network in the CBD.

Social Venture Competitions

2005-05-02T14:53:00.000+09:30

Mash, from the Zoo Station stable, writes about the Global SOcial Venture Competition.

The 2004-05 edition of the Global Social Venture Competition, a business plan competition for new business ventures that address social or environmental change had its final round at Berkeley yesterday. This competition is co-hosted annually by the London School of Business, Berkeley and Columbia University. The first prize winner, was a team titled 'A World of Good', a venture that plans to sell handicrafts manufactured by artisans from all over the world at fair trade prices. Interestingly as one of the judges mentioned during the prize distribution ceremony, this venture employs a proven business model. Although related or similar models and oganizations exist at micro and macro levels in several parts of the world, this team's successful operational performance over the past year was the key factor that separated it from the other contestants.

Interestingly, at my previous company Deeshaa Ventures we looked at a similar model called ABC. And yesterday as I was browsing the career pages in Adelaide, I found that Oxfam was looking for a CEO for their handicrafts division managing a similar business.

Mash has some interesting observations on the strategy adopted.

Professor Emeritus James G.March, famous for co-authoring many works in organizational theory - most notably with Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon, has written about firms indulging in Exploration (seeking out new markets, strategies or technologies) and Exploitation (exploiting existing technologies or strategies). It is indeed interesting to note that some contemporary business plan competitions do seem to favor 'Exploitation' strategies that showcase executional efficiency as opposed to uncertain but potentially high-impact 'Exploration' ventures.

Green Thinking

2005-05-02T13:23:00.000+09:30

Now how many of us really worry about the environment? After we worry how many of us really make the effort to make a difference to our environment or ecology. Then, how many of us actually go about doing it.

One of the main realizations of my past year has been the need to understand the natural systems and work out ways where we can be in sync with it. I have writing about this and other topics on the development of less developed places like rural India on my other blog : World is Green. This would cover also the "Bottom of the Pyramid" ideas.

This blog has helped me to learn and understand the principles, the effort required and also helped in networking with people involved in similar ventures. One of the people who does in a large scale and helps propagate these ideas is Alex Steffan from WorldChanging.com.

In the past week they touched about the topic of Green Campuses.

The MBA schools in the world are always considered to be the place where future business leaders are made. In this scenario, apart from leadership, ethical standards and the latest management techniques MBAs also need to be taught sustainability, respecting the eco-system and the much need "triple bottomline".

A good number of MBA schools have started sustainability as part of their courses. Some concentrate on the ecology, some on the 'bottom of the pyramids' and some on innovative ventures in the not-for-profit world.

WorldChanging is now reporting that a sizable number of these schools are also making their campuses Green.

Alex asks : How much momentum does this campus greening movement have? This overview takes us back to school:

Rob Gogan, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was startled by what he found while accompanying his son on college-campus tours. Sparkling dorms with wireless Internet in every room? Of course. But guides bragging about geothermal energy and furniture made of conscientiously harvested wood? "Unbelievable," Gogan says. He claims such innovations would not have existed even five years ago. ... 91 percent of people ages 16 to 25 say the environment is important to them, according to a poll by Look-Look Inc., a research and marketing company specializing in youth culture.

He provides other examples of Harvard, Columbia, California and other schools are working towards these goals. The interesting part is where students contribute in using "wind energy" or initiating a green building due to a case study. These kind of action examples are need to make a difference in the real world.

If these students actually learn the gospel of sustainability in their courses and take it back to the business world and actually implement it then we have started a small movement which can make a difference.

As for me, I will continue to learn, write and understand how we can make this world an environmentally friendly place.

The reason for the traffic....

2005-04-30T15:29:00.000+09:30

I have been wondering all this while about the increase in traffic to this blog. I figured out that it could be because of the article I wrote on Oh! My News International.

Now I realise the reason for the traffic. I am on the top of the Blogger "Blogs of Note" list. Now that is the reason for the mad traffic.

I sure don't know how they select the blogs but I am happy to be there!

Warren Buffets' Advice to Students

2005-04-29T19:26:00.000+09:30

Warren Buffet addressing a group of students: (Via Rajesh Jain)

Success and Elective Qualities :

"If there's one thing that you leave here with today, it should be this: And I'll start with a question to get to my point. If you could pick 10% of one person in this room to own or 'go long' for the next 30 years, who would it be? It wouldn't be the person with the highest IQ; it wouldn't be the star athlete; you would look for certain other qualities… And if you had to pick one person to 'short' for the next 30 years, who would it be? Now ask yourself why you have made those selections. If you've considered these questions properly, the person you've gone long is probably someone who is honest, courageous, and dependable; the person you've shorted is probably someone who is egotistical and likes to take the credit. The point is that success is mostly dependent upon elective qualities, not anything with which you are born. You ! can choose to be dependable or not. And it's not easy to change, so choose correctly now. Bertrand Russell once said, 'The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken.' So ask yourself, 'Who do I want to be?' At the
end of this process you should determine that the person you want to buy is yourself. You all are holding winning tickets."

The System :

Consider this: in 1790, the first global census was conducted; there were 290m people in China, 100m in Europe, and 4m in what is now the U.S. Now the U.S. holds 4.5% of the world's population but is responsible for 30% of global GDP. I believe the great American book is yet to be written and will be the one that manages to capture how spectacular this growth has been; again 214 years is just an instant. When we think about such growth, I don't believe the causal factors are the people; it must be the system. The smartest people in Guam are as smart as the smartest people in Iceland are as smart as the smartest people in the U.S. Being born in the U.S. is more important to my success than anything that has happened since.

"Getting on the Right Train"

The most important thing about where you work is that you admire/love it. So it sounds like you liked your experience, and that's great. But we come to my second recommendation, which is to get on the right train; that is, moving in the right direction. There's no course in business school called "Getting on the Right Train", but it's really important. You can be an average passenger but if you get on the right train it will carry you a long way. You want to learn from experience, but you want to learn from other people's experience when you can. Managing your career is like investing - the degree of difficulty does not count. So you can save yourself money and pain by getting on the right train.

Leaving a Legacy

I think an example is the best thing you can leave behind. If what I've done with Berkshire Hathaway - running a unique and independent company in true pursuit of shareholder value - persists and people learn from it to improve the way they invest and run their companies, that would be a fine legacy to leave.

Considering an Acquisition

Well, what do you look for in a girl? Seriously, you look for the logical things - passion, an interest in running the business, honesty.

Change and Technology

I don't know how to spot durable competitive advantage in technology. To get rich, you find businesses with durable competitive advantage and you don't overpay for them. Technology is based on change; and change is really the enemy of the investor. Change is more rapid and unpredictable in technology relative to the broader economy. To me, all technology sectors look like 7-foot hurdles.

What Great Managers Do?

2005-04-29T19:22:00.000+09:30

Rajesh Jain in his TechTalk series writes about Marcus Buckingham's new book.

Rajesh writes :

The March 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review has an article by Buckingham based on the book. Buckingham writes: “Great leaders tap into the needs and fears we all share. Great managers, by contrast, perform their magic by discovering, developing, and celebrating what’s different about each person who works for them.” This is the central premise of the book.

Brand Autopsy has a few excerpts from the HBR article:

Great managers play chess, not checkers

Average managers play checkers, while great managers play chess. The difference? In checkers, all the pieces are uniform and move in the same way; they are interchangeable. You need to plan and coordinate their movements, certainly, but they all move at the same pace, on parallel paths. In chess, each type of piece moves in a different way, and you can’t play if you don’t know how each piece moves. Great managers know and value the unique abilities and even the eccentricities of their employees, and they learn how best to integrate them into a coordinated plan of attack.

Identifying a person’s strengths …

To identify a person’s strengths, first ask, “What was the best day at work you’ve had in the past three months?” Find out what the person was doing and why he enjoyed it so much. Remember: A strength is not merely something you are good at. In fact, it might be something you aren’t good at yet. It might be just a predilection, something you find so intrinsically satisfying that you look forward to doing it again and again and getting better at it over time. This question will prompt your employee to start thinking about his interests and abilities from this perspective.

Great Managers find ways to amplify a person’s style

Great managers don’t try to change a person’s style. They never try to push a knight to move in the same way as a bishop. They know that their employees will differ in how they think, how they build relationships, how altruistic they are, how patient they can be, how much of an expert they need to be, how prepared they need to feel, what drives them, what challenges them, and what their goals are. These differences of trait and talent are like blood types: They cut across the superficial variations of race, sex, and age and capture the essential uniqueness of each individual.

ManyWorlds adds: “To become a great manager, Buckingham says, you need to know three things about each of your person: their strengths, so that you can focus on those while helping them overcome their weaknesses; the triggers that activate those strengths – recognition being the primary recommendation; and how they learn – so you can tailor your management style to fit those who analyze, those who do, and those who watch.”

How true? My turn to understand this will be in the Leadership courses.

Visits to the Blog

2005-04-29T18:04:00.000+09:30

Visits
Originally uploaded by thegreenguy.

After the publication of my article I have been recieving massive number of visitors to this blog.

Check out the picture of the statistics that SiteMeter has been collecting.

In Other News Tiger is here

2005-04-29T15:04:00.000+09:30

I am a big fan of the wonderful Apple Computers and the insanely great Macintosh.

I bought a Apple iBook G4 for my MBA program here. Apple will launch the newly awaited OS X Tiger for the Mac.

I have "Panther" on my laptop. If its worth the money then I will upgrade to Tiger in a few months.

Note : For all the Windoes world users. After the release of the new Mac OS X some years back Apple has decided to name all its OS versions after the big cats.

The Structure of the MBA

2005-04-29T14:27:00.000+09:30

The MBA in UniSA is structured along Terms or Study period.

As a full time student in Australia I have taken up a two year MBA. A Study period (SP) consists of 11 weeks. So in a year we have 4 SPs. There is a week of holidays between the SP and a 4 week break in the summer. Summer in Australia is Dec-Jan. Remember this is the southern hemisphere.

I need to complete 12 courses during the 8 SP I have in two years. This will mean taking alternatively 2 and 1 courses per each SP. Of course this allows me to have time at my hand.

Most of the MBAs in Australia are geared towards the part-time MBAs where a lot of working students come in. Some of the students here have more than 18 years experience and some are would be CEOs. This means that most of the classes or seminars as they call here are in the evening 6-9 PM.

The seminars or classes are once a week during the 11 week period. All the courses have weekly assignments in terms of a answering a question from a topic and presenting it or providing a critical analysis of a colleagues presentation. Some have case studies.

Interestingly UniSA does not totally subscribe to the Harvard style of teaching where you analyse more than 300 case studies in your MBA program. I am not sure if this is totally right. As I go into the program I can find that out.

My first course here is something called "Contemporary Management Perspectives". CMP is a thinking processes course. It provides a introduction to Systems thinking, Strategy and Quality management. It does not go deep into any of it.

Strategy we would learn in the Strategy course and same with Quality if we take up the Quality elective. However, Systems thinking is one course which does not come back again.

And I believe that it is a major "mental model" to have in your tool bag. As of one the authors, Peter checkland; explains it in his book Systems Thinking, Systems Practice; Systems Thinking is a meta-discipline. It is an approach to understanding the world using whatever other disciplines available at our disposal.

I find it very interesting and very relevant. In a way it does provide me a chance to get into this "elegant" science. More on that later.

Coming back to the MBA structure, I have three options.

1) The General Management Program
2) The Wide Elective Program
3) The Specialization
4)The Australian Business Experience.

The General management program consists of all the 12 courses and 2 electives. The elective program is about 8 courses and 1 from the next three and then electives.

The specialisation is 8 courses and the rest of the units in the respective area of specialisation. The specialisation avaiable are Marketing, entrepreneurship, HR, Finance and the Australian Business Experience. Strangely, there is no Strategy.

My discussion with one of students here resulted in the idea that if we have a few students interested in the Strategy specialization then it can put forward to the board for review. Lets see what can be done and it is sometime away.

The Australian business experience provides a kind of internship with an organization in Australia which may get you a job too.

So I have some 3-4 months to decide on which way I can go.

Any suggestions?

Spammers, Lets Fight

2005-04-28T19:33:00.000+09:30

One of the side-effects of a famous weblog/website is the attack of the spammers.

The spam has started and I have decided to delete all the spam comments. Lets see how many I get.

Hit a Hit

2005-04-28T19:25:00.000+09:30

My article on Oh! My News on Australian higher education seems to have got a decent audience. As of now, I have recieved almost 3000 visitors on this blog on the past 3 days due to the article. An amazing response for me by any standards.There was a problem of the posts not being represented at the top of the page and hence I assume that a lot of my visitors/readers have missed my posts. I have now rectified the problem.Thanks for all the visitors. I look forward for your feedback.

Jobs in Australia

2005-04-28T19:19:00.000+09:30

I have moved in with a couple of good friends called Rohan and Grishm. They are Gujaratis from Bombay. I will stay with them till my wife joins me in July in Adelaide.

Now since I am settled in Adelaide the next step in the journey will be to find a job, of course a part-time job. According to the visa regulations here I can work only 20 hrs a week.

There has been a large influx of students in the past semester here and the job market has become highly competitive. The rates are going down, especially on the casual jobs and the market temp and part-time market has excess supply.

Getting a job would make it a easier for me to manage my living expenses and may be save some money too for my next semester fees. I have started sending my resumes to various jobs and consultants.

A lot of students do a variety of jobs like Kitchen Hands, Call Centers, Retail Sales, Supermarket jobs etc. I am looking at a job where I can use some of my previous experience and which is not as bad as a kitchen hand.

I am hoping that I will get some decent job. In case anybody can direct me to a good job please e-mail me : anantula [at] gmail DOT com

Now I am citizen reporter

2005-04-26T18:34:00.000+09:30

My article on Australian Business Education is on the front page of Oh! My News International.

http://english.ohmynews.com/index.asp

If it is not there by the time you check, you can see it at the following link.

http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?menu=A11100&no=222910&rel_no=1&back_url =

Thanks to Todd Cameron, who is the wonderful editor for this newspaper. If you want to check out the coming age of News you need to check out Oh! My News.

FInding a House

2005-04-25T19:33:00.000+09:30

Somebody created this amazing tool using Google Maps and Craigs list.'

This would make my search for a house in Adelaide so much easier.

The Goal of Studying

2005-04-25T17:54:00.000+09:30

What is Studying?

Wilson, the Philippines E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year for 2004 is also a MBA student. (Isn't is amazing?)

Anyways he writes in his blog on Rethinking your goals.

The next time I ask my kid why he is not studying, he will most likely reply its because there is no exam or assigned homework. Maybe I need to remind him that that studying is not for the teacher, the parents or the exams. It is to learn something!

As always he makes a very important point. I realise this now, once I have started doing my MBA.

Doing my MBA was always a decision to learn, to understand, to reflect and to network. The way the MBA course is structured at my Uni,and at most of the Uni's in the developed world, it is geared towards understand and learning on your own. This is where it becomes very different from the MBA courses back home in India or other parts of Asia.

I see that a lot of International students (mainly from Asia) at my Uni are having trouble to cope with the courses. For one, the lectures are just that "lectures". They are on a loosely built curriculum on which the lecturer lectures, conducts discussions, highlights the important points and allows the class to form its own ideas.

The students need to research on their own, find their own books and chapters from the suggested readings. The assignments are not exams at the end of the course. They consist of class room participation, presentations, critiques, and individual and group projects. This is way different from what we studied a long time back in Asia.

However as I start doing my course, start studying and reading and trying to do my assignments I realise that this new way of studying is making me explore, find information, making me independent and empowering me to be responsible for my learning.

It is you who is responsible for your learning, The lecturer is a facilitator, a person who guides you in your quest for learning. The passion for learning in you will make you learn and nothing else.

This new way of studying is exciting for me. I need to find out if I can make it fruitful too!

Its been a week

2005-04-25T14:22:00.000+09:30

Ok. Almost a week since I landed up here.

Adelaide is a nice place. The main city called the CBD or the Central Business Distrcit is small. The majority of the million people live in the suburbs. You can access most of the suburbs in 15-20 minutes.

I staayed at a backpackers for all this while. It was tough. It was more like a hostel. Some 8 (4+4) beds in a room. Common kitchen and bathrooms. People from various places were living there. Mostly they were travellers. From japan, China, Korea, Germany, Auastralians and others.

The Univ is a small 10 min. walk from my place. The main City West Campus where the MBA program is taught is a small campus located in the heart of the CBD, North Terrace. This makes it easier to connect to any part of the city. The infrastructure is modern. The computer pools are for 24 hrs and we good ADSL connections.

I like the library. The books, videos, the study rooms all make me feel that this is the place I want to be. I have been utlising the library facilities from day 2.

My course started on the 22nd. It's called "Contemporary Management Perspectives". Our prof. Murray Oliver is a nice lecturer. Some 17 students in my Intensive batch along with a couple of Indians. Some of the Australians are here with 18 years of experience!

The course mainly deals with Thinking Processes. Systems Thinking. Strategic Thinking and Quality Management.

It is a unique course in a sense. I am now working on Systems Thinking. I read the Fifth Discipline a long time back. Peter Senge from the MIT wrote it many years ago. It was tough top grasp it back then. It still is, but I am not able to understand it much better now.

I made some good friends in this week and hopefully will shift with them till July when my wife will join me.

Adelaide has seen a great influx of students this past one month. Looks like it will be tough getting a job.

That's about it for now. More next time.

In Adelaide

2005-04-19T14:22:00.000+09:30

I reached Adelaide this morning. UniSA sent me a "statesman" to pick up from the airport and put me in a backpackers called 'Shakesphere" where every room is named after novels or events from the literary giants writings.

The University of South Australia is a 10 min walk from the place. The university was efficient and friendly. I got all the basic stuff done like student ID cards, security cards to enter the buildings, enrollment, appointment with the director.

Next on, I made a few Pakistani friends who introduced me to a Indian student in UniSA. Will meet him in the evening and work on the accomodation. Finding a decent accomodation at a cheap rate is the most important thing for me at this point in time.

Living at the "backpackers" with all my 50+ kg luggage is not easy. Booked the backpackers for a week so need to find a new place by then.

Today evening at 3 PM will be my session at UniSA. This is for International students to understand the various requirements of the UniSA programs. This is important to Asian students as the universities back home are very different in the way they teach and test.

About Adelaide

Adelaide is a small city with good infrastructure. Most of the places in the city are easily accesible if you have a car. By the public transport they are still accessible but sometimes tough. This is the feedback from some of the students in the city. Need to know from my own experience.

Kaula Lumpur

2005-04-18T19:05:00.000+09:30

On the way to Adelaide. In transit in Kaula Lumpur. What a wonderful and developed city. Had a great tour of the city with a Sri Lankan tamil.

The Kl tower and Petronas stand out.

I am very impressed. This begs the question as to why India still lags behind. A moderate muslim country with a mixture of muslims, tamils and chinese can achieve something like this they India sure can.

Taking the night flight to Adelaide from KL.

My dear friend, Veer Bothra, has featured this blog as the blog of the day on Blogstreet India. Thanks Veer.

To Australia

2005-04-17T18:09:00.000+09:30

The visa arrived two days back after a long extended delay. UniSA has been kind enough to grant me an extension to make this possible.

I am leaving on the 18th April from Hyderabad to Adelaide. I will be taking the Malaysian Airlines flight to Kaula Lumpur and then after a 14 hrs long gap will fly to Adelaide. At least I get a chance see KL and spend some time there.

The course starts on the 22nd April.

First priorities will be find a decent accomodation till July, when my wife Bindu will join me.

UniSA is arranging the pick-up from the Adelaide airport and also has hopefully booked my temporary accomodation.

Updates will start once I settle down.

PVA Cleared

2005-03-23T23:29:00.000+10:30

The Australian Student Visa is a three step process for Indian Students.

Today I have cleared the Pre-Visa, which in practical terms is as good as the VISA. Wow!

After I pay the first semester fees, I will need to undergo a medical check up and then the visa will be stamped on the passport.

Looks like I will be leaving India on the 6th or 9th of April for Adelaide!

Seeking Alpha: The Finance Blog Resource Page

2005-03-18T14:12:00.000+10:30

Seeking Alpha: "The Finance Blog Resource Page: a list of the best economics, investing, venture capital and personal finance blogs"

Marketing Australian Business Schools

2005-03-17T18:57:00.000+10:30

Brendan O'Keefe writes in the Australian about the rush for EQUIS, the European Quality Improvement System accredit ion by the Australian business schools.

BUSINESS schools keen to bridge the gap between Australia and the northern hemisphere powerhouses have made great advances.

Three schools, Queensland University of Technology's Brisbane Graduate School of Business, the University of Sydney's faculty of economics and business and the Macquarie Graduate School of Management have gained accreditation with EQUIS, the European Quality Improvement System, run by the European Foundation for Management Development.

They join Curtin University of Technology (accredited in 2001), the University of South Australia's division of business and enterprise and the University of Queensland's business school.

Australia counts education of one of the top exports from the country. As this article from the Advertiser from Adelaide shows the impact which the business of education has made to Australia.

Yet there is another semi-visible side to the story and it is one which could be the salvation of South Australia. The nation in general, with SA very much part of it, has become a favoured destination for foreign students. What was a postwar act of enlightenment more than 50 years ago, the Colombo Plan, has today become a giant industry, fast eclipsing manufacturing as secondary and tertiary students come here for Australian qualifications because our degrees and diplomas are recognised as true measures of knowledge.

Also, subjective though it is, it cannot be coincidence that in recent weeks I have come across half a dozen people very gainfully employed here by businesses which are half a world away in distance and time zones. I continue to find it remarkable that a state of 1.5 million, metropolis of one million, is home to three universities and a network of other colleges and campuses.

The Australian business schools attract the majority of the post graduate international students, in fact 70% of all students coming to study a post graduate course study in the business division of the university.

Couple this with the fact that Australia is largely a newer entrant in the world of MBA education and international education. USA and UK lead the pack. Some of the MBA programs in the US are more than 50 years old.

In this scenario Australia needs to change things along with the support of the government. The government is interested because they have pumped billions of dollars into the higher education in Australia and they are interested to recover a large part of the money. The best way to do that and also make the universities sustainable is build a strong international reputation for education.

The three things are :

Easier and simpler joining process

VISA procss

Quality Standards

Job or immigration opportunities in Australia

Australian universities have been very aggressive in marketing and admitting the students in their courses. They created the perfect vehicle for that. IDP Education Australia. This is a not-for-profit institution present in more than 50 countries in the world marketing the Australian universities and its courses.

For example: I am joining the University of South Australia after attending the various seminars conducted by IDP and talking with their student counselors. They are also processing my student VISA free of cost. This is a great service which you cannot get for the USA or the UK.

Also, they conduct once or twice a year a high admission drive (currently scheduled for the month of March all over India) where more than 30 universities visit the important cities all over India where interested students meet the admission officers and receive spot-admissions. In a way they bind you to the university.

This ensures a continuous flow of students to the Australian universities.

The process of getting a student visa for Australia is also more transperant than say for the US. The US visa is still based on chance whereas for Australia if you fulfill all the requirements there is a 90% chance of getting the visa. In addition, Australia is also flexible in its rules to allow spouses to accompany the students and also let them work during the study. In fact this is one of the strongest reasons for selecting Australia over US or UK for married students like me.

The next step is convincing those students that Australian universities maintain high quality compared to the US and Europe.

It is in this scenario that EQUIS accredition is beneficial. It says that these universities maintain a certain standard of education. This is important for a far flung student in India or China or Malaysia who is trying to spend a significant amount of money for studying in Australia.

This is exactly the scenario which the India IT & BPO companies faced when they entered the US market. India's reputation for quality was equal to the reputation of Japanese products after WWII. Indians resorted to the ISO:9001 quality standards and the Carnegie Mellon's SEI CMM standards for building a fast quality reputation. Yes, the Microsofts of the world do not subscribe to these standards but new entrants in the industry need the recognition from these standards.

The Australian Universities are following a similar pattern and I am sure it would provide fruitful to them. The Australian govt. does play role through its Australian Qualifications Framework.

Now comes the notion of benefits from a university education. Why does anybody study in a University, more so in a different country? Mainly for benefits in in terms of better jobs, career prospects, salary and in the end a better standard of living.

The best way for a International Australian Graduate to increase his standard of living is to work in Australia. This will guarantee a substantial increase in his standard of living especially for students from less developed Asian nations.

The Australian governments are helping the cause and also solving the labour shortage problem by providing easier VISA regulations or Immigration opportunities. Not every student would want to live and work in Australia and in a similar sense not all interested students would be able to. However, the possibility itself raises many positive signs for selecting Australia as a preferred country for education.

At the end of the day, Marketing plays in important role in selling products and services. The business schools in Australia are proving that they are adept in Marketing.

If you are looking to specialize in your MBA from Australia then do consider Marketing!

Education, jobs and careers

2005-03-17T15:15:00.000+10:30

Edwina Cameron writes in The Age about decisions faced by tertiary students (around 21 yrs of age) to decide on a career.

It started after a holiday. Returning to a sedentary office job from two weeks of traveling around parts of Western Australia was more than I could bear and I quit my public relations position a week later. I want to go to a music festival in Byron Bay, I explained to my boss. After that, I will probably continue traveling up the east coast stopping to work in casual hospitality positions along the way.

My employers couldn't understand my decision, primarily because I couldn't explain it to them. Quitting a promising job to take a road trip up the east coast with your flatmate is hardly considered an optimal career choice, particularly when you have a mortgage to consider.

I am 22 years old and finished my public relations/journalism degree in 2003. From there I went straight into a good public relations job, the job I am now leaving.

I also bought a three-bedroom weather board house with shoddy plumbing and a selection of ramshackle outhouses, the same house I am now renting out.

Deciding what to do after I finished studying was an emotional, challenging and rushed process for me and for many others in my situation. The array of options is simultaneously dazzling and daunting and I ended up jumping into a nine-to-five job without really considering whether this was the right option for me at this stage of my life.

The problem in my case is that I did too much too soon. Buying a house and rushing into a full-time job are both examples of steps in the so-called "right direction", a direction that isn't necessarily right for everyone at my age.

There is pressure placed on tertiary students to make some serious, life-changing decisions in the last months of their degrees and there is considerable encouragement to go straight into a full-time "career job" as soon as a course finishes.

In my opinion, the attitude of my friend's family comes from a fundamentally flawed tenet of our education system that states that the core purpose of learning is to get a job, not to satisfy personal interest.

There is little emphasis in our society on the importance of building on our knowledge through personal experience and discovery by traveling, exploring and making the occasional controversial decision.

Travel is recommended, but only in small, well-organised parcels that don't interfere with the all-important "building a career".

I certainly speak for a minority. Most of the employed graduates I have spoken to are delighted to have entered the workforce and are feeling satisfied and rewarded in their new positions, as well as excited about their futures.

I am also excited about my future, although at this point I'm not sure where that future is going to take me. With the rest of my life to build on my career and fulfill my ambitions, I have decided to take time now to do the things I may not be able to do in a decade.

I am excited about the element of the unknown in my decision and I'm excited that six months from now I could be just about anywhere.

I think she is right in a lot of ways. I faced similar situations in our life in India. I finished my tertiary education and the joined ADP Wilco, a Fortune 500 company, worked for 4 years in their investment banking division.

I had to say that I got bored at the end of six months and continued for a coupe of years. Then I did not know what to do or where to go. Time passed, I got married, worked in the US still thinks did not change.

In a way I thought that I was bound to work, bound because I could not find a rational reason to convince my family why I did not like my well paying job.

A lot of friends are still in the company or in other companies doing similar jobs. The reality is that some are very happy, some think they are happy and the rest know that this is not the right thing but do not know where to go.

One chance to work with Deeshaa Ventures changed everything. I started blogging, started companies, worked with people I respected, learnt to live in one of the toughest cities in the world - Bombay, lost all my money and savings, decided that I should do a MBA.

One of the primary reasons for doing an MBA for me is learn, educate myself but also to give myself the time to find out what I want to do in life. I guess 2 years in Adelaide will involve a lot of self-realization, hopefully!

Aussie Workforce News

2005-03-17T14:37:00.000+10:30

In the past week there has been much news on the Aussie Workforce. The main issue where the skill shortages faced by the Australian Economy which is connected to the continued growth in employment with unemployment being at the 30yr low of 5.1%. Somehow strangely the Australian economy is showing signs of age and is declining.

Contradicting versions of the OECD report show that Aussies are the best paid in the world and also that they are the most taxed of the OECD counrty workers.

Aussies world's 'best paid'

WORKERS in Australia are among the best paid in the world and their standard of living has improved over the past eight years, Peter Costello claimed yesterday, citing research by the OECD.

The Treasurer said the average production worker's income after tax and family benefits was either the highest or the second highest in the world.

Mr Costello's office compared the latest edition of the OECD's report on how wages are taxed with the report it issued in 1996.

The OECD compares eight different family types, according to whether the primary earner is single or married and has children. It focuses on people on average earnings, or earning a third more, or a third less, than average earnings.

In 2004, Australia was highest for four of the family groups, while it was pipped by South Korea for the other four.

More evidence of Australia's slowing economy

An index of leading economic indicators for Australia declined to a four-month low in January, adding to signs that growth is slowing in the Asia-Pacific region’s fifth-largest economy.

The index, a gauge of growth for the next six months, fell 0.3 per cent to 211.1, the lowest since September, Westpac and Melbourne Institute said in a report released in Sydney yesterday. The index tracks nine signs of economic activity, such as share prices and phone installations.

The A$798 billion economy grew 0.1 per cent in the fourth quarter from the previous three months, the slowest pace in four years, as companies’ stockpiles declined and home building fell.

Bullish job figures spur rate fears

The unemployment rate in February held steady at its 30-year low level of 5.1 per cent, while the number of people with jobs increased by 20,000 to 9.9 million people.

The unexpected lift in employment led several economists yesterday to foreshadow another increase in interest rates next month.

Treasurer Peter Costello hailed the result, saying it showed there was still some strength in the economy.

"There is still some oomph there because you are seeing it in relation to the creating of jobs, 20,000 in the month of February," he said.

Mr Costello said it raised to 325,000 the number of jobs created over the past year.

Editorial in the Australian on Taxing workers.

HERE'S a distinction we didn't need. According to the OECD's annual report on the taxing habits of its members, released on Wednesday, "The most significant increases in the personal tax burden are observed in Australia and Iceland". While the income tax take of the 30 OECD countries overall fell during the past eight years, in Australia the average share of income swallowed by tax has increased. Treasurer Peter Costello's claim one of more than 50 tables in the report is misleading because it includes state payroll taxes does not affect the conclusion that Australia is at odds with a global trend. The Howard Government's reputation as one of the highest-taxing outfits in Australia's history – another unsought distinction – is safe.

There are three important reasons why today's Australian workers are overtaxed. They were exhaustively discussed in The Australian's Too Much Tax series last year, and we have been pressing the point ever since. First, our top marginal tax rate cuts in at only 1.3 times the average wage, compared to an OECD average of 3.1 times. Second, bracket creep, the process by which higher wages push workers into higher tax brackets, has delivered a Government that has had the good fortune to preside over a miracle economy a bounty of billions – we'd know exactly how much, except Mr Costello has banned a Freedom of Information request by The Australian that would reveal the relevant tables.

Last, and most important, there is the way our welfare payments and family benefits scale down as those receiving them re-enter the workforce or increase their work participation, resulting in effective marginal tax rates as high as 90 cents in every additional dollar earned.

Michael Costello: It's not clever for a country to rely on luck alone

AFTER nine years of the Howard Government, the Australian economy looks like it is going back to the days when Australia relied for its survival on digging things up, or growing them, and then selling them to foreigners. Once again, we look like a quarry and a farm to the world.

This was brought home to me as I read the response of Industry, Tourism and Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane to a question in parliament on Tuesday: "Of course it is the resources sector that is driving Australia's economy, through a major contribution this year alone of $53 billion. In as little as two years that will rise to $82 billion . . ."

So, just keep digging, keep growing and everything will be just fine. There are at least four problems with this argument.

Peter Costello: Skills crisis a measure of our success

In other words, Australia is not in the grip of some unique skills problem. Australia is in the grip of record low unemployment, the likes of which we haven't seen for 30 years. And when unemployment is low it is hard to find labour.

Australia's present labour shortage is an outcome of sustained economic growth driving Australia's unemployment rate to the lowest level in 30 years.

Costello wants incentives for jobseekers to relocate

TREASURER Peter Costello wants people who cannot find jobs near their home to be offered incentives to relocate to places in need of workers.

Writing in The Australian today, Mr Costello argues that there must be greater encouragement of people to join the workforce.

"If people can't find work in their current location, the incentive structure should be in place to encourage relocation to areas of labour need," he writes.

So there it is for the week. Aussie workforce needs more skilled workers. The economy is slowing is still better and Australia needs to design its taxation system better to encourage workforce participation.

After all this Australians still love their cars better than everybody, except the Americas.

Aussie love of cars beaten only by US

AUSTRALIANS love cars as much as Italians and almost as much as Americans, with a survey showing 90per cent of locals aged over 16 own a vehicle.

The survey of car ownership in 28 nations put Australia just behind the US, which led with 92 per cent, but ahead of other strong car markets such as Germany, Britain and France.

Italians matched Australians on 90 per cent, while New Zealanders were close behind on 89 per cent.

Can Australia get smart in India?

2005-03-15T19:34:00.000+10:30

Trever Cook writes in Online Opinion about the possibilities of increasing Australian economic relations with India and expounds on why it is necessary for Australia to do so.

Without those big mineral resource deposits - particularly coal and iron ore - our per capita standard of living would be more like New Zealand’s. On the other hand, our over-reliance on commodities has been partly responsible for our average incomes falling behind those in many other developed countries in Europe and North America.

Given our strong historical ties and cultural affinities with it, India would seem to offer Australia its best chance yet to move beyond commodity supplier into a genuinely broad-based integration with an emerging economic powerhouse: Something that might finally break the pattern of our economic past.

Currently, China is Australia's No.3 trading partner, No.2 export market and No.3 source of imports. India is our 6th largest merchandise export market and 13th largest trading partner. To keep it all in perspective, Japan's imports from Australia are still worth double that bought annually by China.

India may not exceed the growth rates recorded by China in recent years but India is likely to experience higher growth in the next 20 years while China will struggle to maintain its high growth rates.

India's well-entrenched democratic institutions may also help it assimilate the aspirations of a growing middle-class far more readily than China, which is yet to show that it can make a successful transition from communism. An India Times editorial in February put it neatly: “It is almost certain that India's economic numbers will catch up with China's soon. It is far less certain whether China will ever catch up with our open society.” Finally, India is already a world leader in some knowledge-intensive industries like information technology and its pattern of development will be very different to China’s.

Australian exports to India grew by 62 per cent in 2004 (and over 400 per cent in the past decade), reaching A$5.42 billion. Much of this growth, however, has come from India's demand for raw materials, such as gold, coal, copper, wool, and more recently, fresh fruit and vegetables.

Education, now one of Australia's largest industries, would seem to be our best hope of developing a truly substantial non-commodity export sector. Trade in education services now earns Australia $5 billion annually, more than wool and close to wheat. In addition, Australia is the third-largest supplier of education services to the Indian market, and India is the second-largest market for Australian education. Over 13,000 Indians trained and received education in Australia last year - a 32 per cent increase on 2002. For post-graduate studies, students from India are the biggest group among foreign students in Australia.

As I mentioned before, Australia needs to start looking at India as a good option for growth in the coming years.

Indian Students in Australia

2005-03-15T15:51:00.000+10:30

Times of India reports :

Over the years, Australia has become attractive to students in India as more and more persons want to study abroad, but most do not find entry into US or UK universities because of paucity of seats and also because of stricter entrance rules, including visa rules.

In 2004, 21,000 students flew to Australia. The number of students flying to US and UK in the same year was comparatively lower at about 17,000 and 15,000, respectively.

In 2003, about 18,000 students had enrolled themselves in US universities, 10,000 went to UK and 14,400 students went to Australia. Students going to Australia used to be lower than those going to the US and UK in previous years.

Henry A Ledlie from IDP in Delhi talks about the change in VISA rules :

The policies have eased a little in terms of its processing. But now the process at the Australian Embassy here can take a longer time as it will now be managed electronically. Earlier the visa process used to take about six weeks of time, now it is advisable to start at least 10 weeks before a student leaves for Australia.

The Hindu captures the numbers best :

The recent figures released by IDP Education Australia, a not-for-profit company owned by Australian universities to promote Australian education globally, shows that 12,932 student visas were issued in India in 2004, a 53 per cent increase compared to the previous year.

Of this, the number of visas issued to those pursuing Masters and Doctorates in Australia upto September 2004 was 7,010 compared to 5,126 issued in the same period in 2003. This makes Indian post-graduate student numbers definitely the largest on campus.

Of them 45 per cent opted for I.T related courses followed by 31 per cent for business and 13 per cent for engineering programmes.

The following numbers are the most interesting according to me.

Indians constitute a significant portion even if the enrolment figures for different disciplines are taken into account: 4,519 students opted for Computer Science and I.T courses; all other international students totalled 6,370. The figures for business management and administration were 3,164 (Indian students) and 22,507. For engineering and surveying the figures were 1,347 (Indians) and 4,139 (other international students).

41.5% of all international post graduate students in IT and Computer Science courses in Australia are from India. Some 24.5% study other engineering courses. However, the business programs are different. Only 12.3% of the entire post graduate international student population are from India.

This shows the clear preference for IT courses in India and Indian students. In a sense this is what also made a lot of my family and friends believe that I may not be taking the right step as a large majority of the Indian students study engineering and IT courses.

The international post graduate student population in Australia excluding Indians is is 33,016 and almost 70% of international students (22,507) study business courses in Australia. Whereas 35% of post graduate Indian students opted for business courses in Australia.

This clearly shows that Australia is a favoured destination for business courses for International students except Indians. And though I am an Indian I am joining a business course!

academici

2005-03-12T19:18:00.000+10:30

Social Networking has been going great guns for last couple of years. Millions of people have joined various networks around the world, some for free and some as paying users, for various reasons. Friends networks, business networks, dating networks, finding our spouse in India are the various types of social networking hapenning in the world.

Now a team of academicians in the UK have launched academici - The Virtual Academy. This is aimed at academicians, students and academic related businesses to network.

According to the press release :

Academics often work worlds apart even when in the same location. University websites have not necessarily been designed to facilitate co-operation. Academici has been set up to promote co-operation across disciplines. Klaas Brumann, Head of Countries at Academici, is convinced that the network will help to overcome these so-called “structural holes”. Mr Brumann points out that a key feature of this network, the fact that membership is free, will facilitate networking for people in higher education and scientific research institutes.

Dr Jonathan Grix, co-founder of ‘academici’, believes that such software “can function as a form of intranet for local, national or international societies by linking all members of a given society with one another on an interactive platform, thereby producing an on-line community with the potential to generate social capital between members”. The opportunities for cross-fertilisation between academic disciplines and cross-disciplinary collaboration are unlimited.

The idea of social networking is now entering the rather opague broders of the academic world. It is left to see if the academicians will be open about using this network and sharing their knowledge.

How to Start a Start Up

2005-03-12T19:07:00.000+10:30

Slashdot points me to this essay by Paul Graham.

A good summary is provided by SlashDot.

"Paul Graham has posted a new essay on his website on how to start a startup. According to him 'You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.' How difficult can that be? So go start them startups."

HBS, Hackers and Ethical Issues

2005-03-11T02:19:00.000+10:30

Harvard Business School uses the Apply Yourself website for making it easier for prospective students to apply to the college. In fact I used the website for writing a referral to a colleague for HBS and will be writing another one for Stanford. SlashDot carried a story a couple of days back on how a hacker found a way to know your application status to HBS before the deadline.

The hacker after finding the hack, posted it on Business Week forums. This set off a series of discussion and 119 applicants decided to check their status. What did HBS do? They rejected all the 119 applicants as this was unethical. MIT and others followed soon. Stanford did not decide on rejecting on all the students.

Now, was HBS right in rejecting all the students? I would say that Hravard was right. Even though you could explain that the original hacker was the doing the wrong thing, the 119 who followed did actually use a public hack to know their status knowing that this would be wrong.

Could HBS handle it differently, I think so. However, they would not be wrong in not accepting the students.

I would like to point to this comment on the SlashDot thread where one of the 119 applicants explained what happened.

He says:

People are discussing the posting on the BW forums, with people wondering if the link works or not. People report seeing one of two things:

1. A ding letter, like the one brookbond saw. (Which is what I saw.)
2. A blank screen.

NO ONE SAW AN ADMIT LETTER.

Period, point blank. Anyone who says they did, is lying.

This is interesting that only rejected offers were shown and all the others were blank. The blank responses could be rejections or acceptances. That we will not know now.

I liked the way this guy ended his comment on a positive note. I am sure he would get in one of the other schools. No despair.

Personally, I think the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. HBS has to reject fully 90% of its applicants. It's easy to grandstand and reject people when you can simply fill the class with other, equally talented people. The "hackers", as long as they didn't make the mistake of checking their status at every school they applied to, will probably all get in somewhere else. By the numbers, only 10 to 15 or so would have made it in anyway.

Personally, I'm glad I checked my own status. Do I think I'm unethical? I'm willing to bet 90%+ of the people who actually saw the technique and applied to HBS in Round 2 (the round currently awaiting decisions) tried it. Seeing the ding got me off my duff and got me preparing another app to get another iron in the fire. Sitting until the 30th would have been too late. Am I upset that I'm not going to HBS? Of course. But at least I found out sooner, rather than later. Obviously, since I already had the ding letter, I'm not as crushed as someone who saw a blank screen and thus had hope. But they'll move on. HBS will continue to turn out people we can all admire, like Jeff Skilling, and the world will continue turning. No big deal, unless you're a reporter with a deadline and no story ideas.

And one more thing, this guy is selling FREE the HBS 199 T-shirts. If you want to fund his applications you can buy one!

Visa Break

2005-02-28T22:15:00.000+10:30

Visa Break:

"AT LAST, a piece of good news for foreign students studying in the United States: The State Department has announced that lengthy procedures to obtain security clearances for science and engineering students will become shorter, and the clearances will last longer. According to foreign student organizations, troubles with these clearance procedures were the main cause of unpredictable delays -- sometimes lasting months -- that foreign students encountered while trying to return to this country following trips abroad. In some cases, the requirements forced students to leave in the middle of their courses or prevented professors from returning in the middle of the year."

Higher education

2005-02-27T21:01:00.000+10:30

The Economist Writes :

Higher education is now international in a way it has not been since the heyday of Europe's great medieval universities—and on a vastly greater scale. Numbers studying abroad were statistically negligible only two decades ago, says Andreas Schleicher, of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a Paris-based think-tank. Now growth is soaring: 2m university students—approaching 2% of the world's total of 100m, according to the International Finance Corporation—were studying outside their home country in 2003. Since the late 1990s the higher-education market has been growing by 7% a year. Annual fee income alone is now an estimated $30 billion. Private, profit-seeking institutions are still a minority, but almost all universities are beginning to compete for talent and money. That is breeding independence of government, both financially and psychologically; inexorably, the state's role is shrinking.

The two big trends, of internationalisation and competition, feed each other. The more that universities tailor their offers to foreign students, the more attractive they become. And the more that students hop between countries, the more their choices count rather than the wishes of a particular government.

The No-time Networking Plan

2005-02-25T19:51:00.000+10:30

Keith Ferrazzi in the Inc magz blog :

If you're stressed-out because you can't fit in any time for "networking," my advice to you is the following: Don't. That's right. Don't even try to squeeze in extra time. Instead, focus on meeting people more often during the things you already have to do. This way, you can relax and let that "networking time" come to you.

Before each of your daily activities, just ask yourself, "Could this be an opportunity to meet someone new?" That's what my friend Stever did when he used to work out at the Harvard Business School gym. And he got more clients for his coaching practice there than from anywhere else.

The greatest thing about this little networking plan is that it requires no (extra) time at all. It does, however, require a little bit of guts. And the more guts you have, the more you'll meet success. Try it; it will pay off!

Social and Environmental Technologies Inventors Challenge

2005-02-24T20:11:00.000+10:30

Mitra over at Natural Innovation writes about the SET Challenge.

The SET competition, is a prize for a business plan for a new social or environmental technology. The idea is to bring together innovators with business students to look at how to commercialise technologies.

I think this is a great idea, as many innovations never get off the ground because of the lack of business skills of the inventors.

This is the first year of the prize, with full plans due March 31st 2005.

See www.set-info.com for more info.

Mitra is a volunteer advisor to the competition. If you want to check it out, click here.

If anybody has any ideas which can be submitted here, if it is ok, I would like to hear them out and see if I can contribute anything. The deadline : March 15th 2005.

Any MBAs out there who will be interested in this?

Guest Workers for Australia

2005-02-24T13:11:00.000+10:30

Australia, a country of nations, is always careful about letting people enter the country, be it for a visit, for education or for work and immigration. Australia has a carefully developed immigration program in the last 50 years. One of the main reasons of immigration has been to plug labour shortages.

Now the department of immigration is considering the idea of guest or temporary workers from other countries. They believe that this is a idea worth considering and is the best way to plug the labour shortages.

The Sydney Morning Herald has more on this :

The Government is exploring dumping a century-old ban on the importation of temporary labour to accept foreign "guest workers" to plug Australia's growing labour shortages.

Days after the Prime Minister, John Howard, acknowledged that Australia was "running out of workers", the Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, has revealed she is considering the guest worker option.

Proposals to develop a guest worker category for labour-starved rural industries are already being developed by the influential National Farmers Federation, as part of several measures to overcome shortages.

According to a fierce opponent of the idea, the Australian Workers' Union, the Immigration Department this week began sounding out unions on the issue.

Senator Vanstone said yesterday she was "very interested" in the guest worker idea but it would depend on there being guarantees about their award wages, proper accommodation and repatriation to their home countries.

Several Pacific countries, including Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Nauru, have urged Australia to allow their citizens to work temporarily in Australia to generate incomes for their struggling economies.

Her comments have been hailed by a Mildura-based development group, which is seeking to import about 2000 guest workers from China over the next five years to fill chronic vacancies in the fruit-growing region.

Senator Vanstone's disclosure drew warnings from migration expert Bob Birrell that Australia would be "entering murky waters", given the unsavoury treatment of Kanaka indentured workers from the Pacific islands at the turn of last century, and other countries' experiences with guest workers.

Professor Birrell, the director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research, said the experience of Germany - which had millions of guest workers until the 1970s, then found they did not want to return home - should be remembered by Australia.

The main issue for Australia will be the ability to repatriate the workers back to their home countries and also making sure that the temporary workers are not exploited. The later could be easy for Australia, the former is the main challenge.

Addicted to Google

2005-02-24T02:35:00.000+10:30

How many of you use Google and its associated services in a day or week. Here's mine.

Google the search engine is almost a compulsory daily use. Anywhere between 10-20 searches a day and sometimes more. Gmail is another service. The first site I open after I open Firefox. Then, I use Blogger for blogging. I use Picassa for managing my photos. Today Hello started working behind firewalls and proxy's. I am using Hello now for my Photo Blog. I use Google Desktop for most of my searches on my computer unless it is music or PDFs for which I use Yahoo (X1). I use Google Adsense on my blogs. I use Google Groups and the Usenet through Google Groups.

I am sure those in North America would love the new Google Maps. Froogle is one service I use the least, may be because I am located in India.

Google Images Search, Scholar and other services of Google can be clubbed under Google searches.

The only missing link is the Google Browser, Google IM and the Google Virtual Internet Drive (a Gmail Drive is currently available) along with some Notepad like service and with PIM tools. Complete this and then there will be very few aspects of your online life which is not connected to Google.

Slowly Google is becoming the next Microsoft in terms of its dominance in this connected world.

The MBA Curriculum : Game Theory

2005-02-19T22:51:00.000+10:30

Fast Company in its latest issue covers Game Theory or the lack of Game Theory in Business.

What is Game Theory?

Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff, authors of Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life, [suggested to me by my previous boss, Rajesh Jain, as the best book for new readers on Game Theory] provide the definition which is the most easy to understand. I can say this because for writing this post I searched through a number of definitions including Wikipedia but was not successful in finding a simple definition.

Game theory is the science of strategy. It attempts to determine mathematically and logically the actions that "players" should take to secure the best outcomes for themselves in a wide array of "games." The games it studies range from chess to child rearing and from tennis to takeovers. But the games all share the common feature of interdependence. That is, the outcome for each participant depends upon the choices (strategies) of all.

I have yet to understand Game Theory, but whatever I have seen of it I am convinced that it is one of the compulsory 'mental models' in your tool kit.

Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff on the essence of Game Theory:

Games are fundamentally different from decisions made in a neutral environment. To illustrate the point, think of the difference between the decisions of a lumberjack and those of a general. When the lumberjack decides how to chop wood, he does not expect the wood to fight back; his environment is neutral. But when the general tries to cut down the enemy's army, he must anticipate and overcome resistance to his plans. Like the general, a game player must recognize his interaction with other intelligent and purposive people. His own choice must allow for both conflict and for possibilities for cooperation.

The essence of a game is the interdependence of player strategies. There are two distinct types of strategic interdependence: sequential and simultaneous. In the former the players move in sequence, each aware of the others' previous actions. In the latter the players act at the same time, each ignorant of the others' actions.

Fast Company says that "Game theory is the fun-sounding branch of economics introduced in the 1940s by Hungarian genius John von Neumann and developed in the 1950s by Princeton's John Nash, subject of the 2001 Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind." A lot of people in world were introduced to the idea of Game Theory after the release of the book and movie, A Beautiful Mind, further showing the importance of the medium like popular fiction and entertaining, oscar winning movies.

Over to Fast Company :

Over the years, the status of game theory -- which describes the interactions of self-interested parties such as poker players and deal makers -- soared, and its insights were applied to fields as far-reaching as evolution, auctions, even counterterrorism. Playing along, we here at the CDU decided to find out just how much court time game theory gets in the big game of business. After all, it has been taught to almost every one of the some 2.5 million MBAs and economists in the United States alone. Surely, we thought, it would be a slam dunk to turn up dozens of examples of game theory applied in the real world.

Adopting our usual rigorous methodology, we set the following parameters. To count, an example must:

1. be an actual business situation where somebody used the insights of game theory;
2. have occurred within the past five years; and
3. involve real, live, actual companies -- not governments, nonprofit organizations, or Russell Crowe.

First, we scoured the literature. We selected a relevant portfolio of 40 publications and submitted our queries. We tried again. And again. And we found . . . nothing. There were plenty of mentions of government spectrum auctions, and A Beautiful Mind came up hundreds of times. Not quite what we had in mind.

Perhaps, we thought, the media just doesn't get it. Undaunted, we assembled a panel of 30 respected game theorists around the world, and we sent them a survey asking, "Can you think of any examples of real, live companies that have consciously applied game-theoretical concepts to a real business problem?"

The response was . . . a deafening chorus of head scratching.

"The short answer is, I don't know," said David Levine of UCLA. "Let me think about this," replied MIT's Muhamet Yildiz.

Others on our expert panel, while not offering up any actual, you know, examples, were willing to speculate on why they couldn't. Traditional game theory "prescribes a lot of advice that does not actually seem to work," admitted Paul Bartha of the University of British Columbia. Why not? Maybe because "the sorts of situations that would allow the application of formal methods are so simple that people can understand them without much help," suggested the University of Minnesota's Andy McLennan.

Does that mean game theory is just, um, common sense? "Game theory gives you a nice systematic way to think about strategy, but it's not magic," agreed Hal Varian, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley and coauthor of the bestselling Information Rules (Harvard Business School Press, 1999). Or, as MIT's David McAdams put it, "Game theory is really a frame of mind and, once you have it, you see it everywhere."

Everywhere, perhaps, and nowhere.

In the end, none of our experts had a concrete example. But many offered the same advice: "Ask Preston McAfee" -- an economist at the California Institute of Technology and perhaps the country's foremost working game theorist (he designed that government spectrum auction). He was more encouraging: "There are lots of examples," he emailed, agreeing to an interview.

We reached the professor in his office at Caltech. "So," we asked, "what are all these examples of game theory applied to real life?" There was a silence on the line. "Well," he said, "a lot of companies hired game theorists to prepare for those spectrum auctions." Okay -- but what about nongovernment auction situations? "I don't know of any companies that employ pure game theorists -- but maybe they're keeping it quiet."

Very, very quiet.

This is indeed shocking that there was no example in the business world where Game Theory was used except government auctions in the last five years. It does show a paucity of the use of this branch of Mathematics.

Atanu Dey once told me this about the Prisoner's Dilemma, arguably, one of the most famous "game" in Game theory. I had trouble in understand and relating the prisoner's dilemma (not much improved still) and Atanu suggested that "fundamental concepts take sometime to understand. You need to train yourself to see them in various places. And once that becomes a habit you can see them everywhere, well almost."

I am not sure if the MBA Curriculum's currently use Game Theory or not, one thing is sure I am going to update my mental model with it.

Further Reading :

The book, Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff.

A good Intro article by the same authors in Econ Library.

Good set of links from the Math Forum.

GameTheory.net - A resource for educators and students.

Google India Zeitgeist

2005-02-19T21:54:00.000+10:30

I wrote about the Zeitgeist in January mentioning that it was every marketing person's dream.

The Google has a International Ziegeist for many countries. The countries covered are :

Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom

India was missing. Now the gap has been filled. Kalpana Behra from Google India posts on the Google blog that we now have a Google India Zeitgeist. Great!

Popular Queries for January 2005

1. tsunami

2. indian railways

3. sania mirza

4. trisha

5. aishwarya rai

6. anara gupta

7. ignou

8. bollywood

9. ndtv

10. australian open

It will be interesting to watch this.

Deeshaa Network in The Feature

2005-02-19T19:51:00.000+10:30

Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs, writes a regular column in the Feature. His latest article is about the use of Mobile phone technology for farmers in the developing world.

Interesting part of the article is that Howard has mentioned the Deeshaa Network. Thank you Howard.

Deeshaa Network uses the same Drupal software that the Howard Dean campaign used so effectively as a groupblog and information portal dedicated to "bring about greater participation in the economic development of India by providing a platform to collaborate and cooperate."

In my previous role as the Project Manager in Deeshaa Ventures I had hit upon the idea of using the yahoo groups to start the Deeshaa Network to create a community around the project RISC. This community has grown in the past year to ~300 members with people like Kevin Werbach from The Wharton School as members.

My partner-in-crime in BPODigest.com, India's first Interactive vortal on the outsourcing industry, Ram Dhan, then helped me convert this group into the Deeshaa Network using the Drupal open source technology. Ram Dhan also hosts the network for free!

Its a good motivation to have been mentioned my Howard in the article.

The Goldilocks Economy

2005-02-19T01:46:00.000+10:30

Goldilocks economy (GOHL.dee.lawks i.CON.uh.mee) n. An economy that is not so overheated that it causes inflation, and not so cool that it causes a recession. [Word Spy]

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Australia's Goldilock years will be over if urgent steps are not taken.

Australia will have to get used to years of stunted growth and higher interest rates as the economy hits the limits of its productive capacity, the Reserve Bank governor, Ian Macfarlane, has warned.

Mr Macfarlane's alert foreshadows the end of Australia's dream run as the so-called "Goldilocks economy" - one that is neither too hot nor too cold, economists say.

In a blunt message to the Federal Government, Mr Macfarlane told a parliamentary committee in Sydney yesterday that sweeping reforms were needed to reinvigorate the economy.

He called for tax and policy measures to boost business investment, increase the supply of skilled workers and improve productivity in an attempt to raise the speed limits of future growth.

Mr Macfarlane's agenda included debate on increasing immigration, reforming welfare and scrapping tax breaks that had diverted a huge proportion of investment away from productive businesses into housing.

"GDP is also starting to slow under the constraints imposed by capacity limitations," he said. "I think we will have to get used to seeing GDP growth rates starting with the numbers 2 or 3 rather than 3 or 4 for a time."

These constraints on capacity were impairing growth and putting upward pressure on wages and prices, Mr Macfarlane said. "We are hearing more reports of businesses finding difficulty in hiring suitable labour and having to pay more for material inputs."

If the government does not follow the suggested changes then the fabled Australian stable economy may go for a toss.

Explanation on the FDI

2005-02-15T14:03:00.000+10:30

Foreign Direct Investment acts as an 'attractive' index for comparing emerging countries. It is important in this scenario to understand the meaning and uses of FDI better.

One of the glaring marketing mistakes that India has been consistently making is the calculation of FDI. It is basic knowledge that if need to compare two numbers we also need to compute them using the same principles; Or else we are comparing apples with oranges. Strange as this may sound that is what is happenning in the FDI calculation between India and China. We have been comparing two different numbers between of FDi with India and China. Apart from this, we also need to remove "noise numbers" like round-tripping to get an accurate picture of the FDI inflows into China.

China has been consistently receiving higher FDI than India as per common knowledge. This is a myth. If we look at the definition of FDI as per IMF and compare the computation of FDI by China and India we find that India is not far behind.

Nirumpam Bajpai and Nandidate Dasguta explained this definitional differences between India and China in this May, 2004 article.

India's FDI figures are underestimated because of the exclusion of certain components that are included by other countries, which go by the IMF's definition.

As a rough approximation, we make the necessary adjustments in China's FDI statistics, that is, by excluding data under several heads that China includes in its FDI, but do not strictly fall under the purview of FDI. These heads include: The round-tripping of funds from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao into mainland China; inter-company debt transactions; short and long-term loans; financial leasing; trade credits; grants; bonds; non-cash acquisition of equity (tangible and intangible components such as technology fee, brand name, etc.); investment made by foreign venture capital investors; earnings data of indirectly-held FDI enterprises; control premium; non-competition fee; and imported equipment. Having excluded data under these heads, net FDI inflows into China reduce from roughly $40.7 billion to $20.3 billion in 2000.

Read the entire article to better understand the difference. The Times of India recently reported on similar lines comparing Indian FDI with China using Chinese FDI computation methods.

India is set to attract record foreign direct investment, narrowly defined, of $15 billion this fiscal, at least thrice the annual flows in post-reform years. Our FII flows are close to $10 billion, and with remittances set to cross $20 billion, our total foreign investment flows in 2004-05, defined in Chinese terms, will end up at about $50 billion. This is pretty close to China's $60 billion inflows, whereas till only the other day our FDI flows seemed a fraction of China's.

Apart from this glaring definitional difference there is the problem of round-tripping and counting reivested earnings from foreign companies.

What is Round Tripping?

Round-tripping FDI refers to the domestic capital that has fled the home country and then flows back in the form of foreign direct investment.

A recent paper, Round-Tripping Foreign Direct Investment in the People’s Republic of China: Scale, Causes and Implications, by Geng Xiao estimates that 40% of the FDI into China is due to round tripping.

Foreign Direct Investment in China, an article on tdctrade.com explains the FDI phenomenon in China.

There have always been doubts about China's economic and financial statistics ranging from GDP growth to FDI inflows. With respect to its FDI inflows of USD52.7bn in 2002, some argue that it overstated China's ability to attract foreign investment. There are two major issues. The first is about reinvested earnings by foreign affiliates in China. Some believe they should not be included in FDI calculation.

UNCTAD statistics show that in 2000-2001, foreign affiliates' reinvested earnings accounted for 1/3 of all China's FDI inflows. Foreign affiliates contribute to 23% of China's industrial production, 18% of tax incomes and 48% of total exports, commanding an important presence in China's economy. Although reinvested earnings originate from China, as long as they are invested instead of flowing out of the country, they should be counted as new FDI inflows based on international practice.

Democracies do very well over the long term.

2005-02-15T13:56:00.000+10:30

The India or China debate has been increasing for sometime now. Strangely, in the past week I have read three articles where India rather than China has come under focus. William Pesek Jr. writes in bloomberg, then Tarun Khanna from HBS and now Malcolm Maiden in the Sydney Morning Herald from the Australian perspective.

I see three trends. One, there has been a large influx of FDI into China in the last decade, many times the size of India. Now it is the time for India to receive it. Second, the growth in China is decelerating for various reasons. Third, India is starting to show more openess and stability in the reform process.

All the three articles look at India from the perspective of missing the boat. Lets check out the Australian perspective.

In October 2003, Goldman Sachs economists Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman released research that should have changed forever the way Australia saw India.

Their report, Dreaming with BRICs: The Path to 2050, predicted that within 40 years, the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China - the BRICs - would be larger than the US, Germany, Japan, Britain, France and Italy combined. China would overtake the US as the world's largest economy and India would be third, outpacing all other industrialised nations.

Australia is uniquely positioned to hitch a ride with the two BRICs on its doorstep, as an investor and a supplier of commodities that will fuel their transformation. But while its economic and political relationship with China has flowered, relations with India are growing more hesitantly.

Expanding demand in India for raw materials has helped push two-way trade between the nations from $3 billion to $5.8 billion in the past two years, and Australia is the eighth-biggest direct investor in India, at a rate of more than $1 billion a year. Australian groups including Telstra have outsourced information technology and call-centre work to India's burgeoning service sector, and others including AMP and ANZ have invested directly. Qantas last year resumed direct flights to India that were cancelled in 2001, and groups as large as BHP Billiton and as small as the Unibic biscuit maker are considering investing.

Still, Australia remains a bit player in India's huge domestic economy, which is being attacked much more aggressively by companies from other countries and regions, including South Korea, Singapore and Europe. The Prime Minister, John Howard, raised Australia's profile when he visited India in 2000, bureaucrats say, but three planned trips to Australia by former Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee were cancelled for domestic reasons, most recently the snap election in May last year in which his BJP lost power to a coalition led by the Congress Party.

It is 18 years since an Indian prime minister visited Australia, which India's Finance Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, says is due to domestic considerations - "the mechanics of getting there and back" and "no reflection of a lack of interest". But a well-placed India specialist in Australia's Government says it is "a challenge to engage India's attention", as India's political and economic ambitions are global in scale and aimed mainly at big northern hemisphere economies.

What is also clear, however, is that Australia's attention has been much more squarely focused on China. Two-way trade in goods and services ran to $27.1 billion in 2003-04, more than four times the Australia-India trade flow. China is already Australia's No.3 trading partner, No.2 export market and No.3 source of imports. India is our No.7 merchandise export market and No.13 trading partner, and the infatuation with China is no bilateral aberration. Global foreign investment into India tripled in the first seven months of 2004 and will top $US6 billion ($7.8 billion) in the year, but that is only about a 10th of the amount flowing into China.

The world's biggest and arguably most diverse democracy has other characteristics that should make it a more natural fit with Australia than China - including widespread use of the English language and a well-developed legal system.

But for outsiders, it presents an intricate and often contradictory picture. Great regional variation underlies the annual 6 per cent economic growth rate, for example. Growth is twice the national average along the coast and in the southern states, where software companies and IT outsourcing are booming. Software exports have risen from $US128 million in 1991 to $US12 billion. Growth is much slower in the northern interior states, such as Bihar.