Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
Indian Rupee gets its symbol
The Indian Rupee now will have a symbol like the Dollar ($) or the Euro (€) or the Pound (£). The Cabinet today finalized the design for the Rupee. The symbol, with a blend of the Devanagri ‘Ra’ and Roman ‘R’, was approved by the Union Cabinet to distinguish the Indian currency from the rest, such as the rupee or the rupiah of Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
The symbol would be included in Unicode Standard and major scripts of the world so as to ensure that it is easily displayed and printed in the electronic and print media. Unicode is an international standard that allows text data to be interchanged globally without conflict.
The symbol is designed by Bombay IIT post-graduate D. Udaya Kumar. Mr. Kumar's winning entry was chosen from 3,000 designs received for the currency symbol competition. He will get an award of Rs. 2.5 lakh from the Finance Ministry.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
BP Set to Test New Fix For Leaking Well
The latest update on the BP oil spill, picked it from the Wall street Journal. Click here to read the complete article
Monday, May 31, 2010
Central Statistical Organization releases GDP Growth Rate
The Indian economy grew by 8.6 per cent during the quarter ended March 31 while the gross domestic product for entire 2009-10 rose at a rate of 7.4 per cent, according to official data released on Monday. The economy registered a 6.1 per cent growth in the first quarter, 7.9 per cent in the second quarter, but dropped to a modest 6 per cent in the third quarter, as per data released by the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) here.
The growth rate was mainly on account of higher performance in mining and quarrying, which grew by 14 per cent and manufacturing by 16.3 per cent. Among other high growth sectors during the quarter were hotels and transport services, which grew by 12.4 per cent, while financial services including insurance, grew by 7.9 per cent.
Economy grew an expected 8.6 per cent in the March quarter from a year earlier, driven by robust manufacturing sector on the back of government and consumer spending.
The manufacturing sector grew 16.3 per cent in January-March from a year earlier, while farm output rose an annual 0.7 per cent, government data showed on Monday. For the full year to March, the economy expanded 7.4 per cent, above a government forecast of 7.2 per cent. This has been the fastest growth in the last six months in the quarter through March 2010
Manufacturing output grew 16.3 per cent on year in the quarter as consumers bought more cars and other goods, while farm output grew an annual 0.7 per cent helped by a good winter harvest.The government expects the economy to grow 8.5 per cent in the current fiscal year that started on April 1 on the prospects of a better farm output and a global recovery.The farm sector, which forms nearly 17 per cent of the economy but is dependent on monsoon rains, is expected to do well in 2011 as the weather office has predicted a normal monsoon for the country.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Too Much Exposure causes Fatigue...
IPL 3 is on and it has swept the entire country in cricket fever .. or has it ? Well I am a ardent follower of cricket but I think that too much of cricket is somehow decreasing my interest in watching the game on television. I call this overexposure, I think the same logic can be applied to the shows like American Idol , Indian Idol and the string of other reality shows..... after a period of time nobody cares !!!
Owing to the same reasons companies keep changing their advertisements and try to come up with innovative campaigns .. Vodafone's Zoozoo is a perfect example. The first time they were introduced they were a rage .. but now their uniqueness is gone and they are like any other ads.
The take from this as I see, keep innovating and avoid overexposure ..this will ensure that the customers are not getting used to or being apathetic
Monday, February 15, 2010
On the field or in the boardroom, the vision for winning is the same
A nice read from the WSJ
Source : WSJ.com - BY CATHERINE BOLGAR
2. Resources
Namely money. When Real Madrid paid €45 million to bring David Beckham from Manchester United in 2003, the figure was scandalously huge. At the end of his four-year contract, Real Madrid estimated Beckham-related merchandising profits at €560 million during the same period. The team has used the megamoney strategy to snap up other high-profile players — dubbed “galacticos” — including, last June, Kaka, for €65 million, and Cristiano Ronaldo, for a record €96 million.
“To get the best, you need that kind of money floating around,” Dr. Westerbeek says. To win big in gambling, you need either long odds or big bets. Real Madrid bet big, and so far the returns have been pouring in.
But money isn’t enough. Superstars don’t go to losing teams. For them to attain new heights of success, they need to join the right environment, with the right supporting cast, the right coaches to bring out excellence. “The analogy is true in business,” Dr. Westerbeek says. “If you’re the best in your business, you’re very unlikely to move just for the money.” While that rule might not apply to a corporate acquisition, in which shareholder value is the ultimate deciding factor, it is certainly valid for the top echelons of business talent — the company seeking a new chief executive, for example.
3. Team spirit
In the business world, it’s called a corporate culture. Team spirit is an extension of the strategic vision — when all the members understand and are committed to that vision.
The legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson is renowned for his team-building skills, says Rory Miller, program director for the MBA in football industries at the University of Liverpool Management School in the U.K. Sir Alex has made Manchester United one of the top teams in the English Premier League since its founding in 1992, with 11 championships. A man who cultivated players into some of the sport’s biggest names, he also manages to direct some understandably big egos.
“The best teams stand out because they are teams, because the individual members have been so truly integrated that the team functions with a single spirit,” writes Sir Alex in his autobiography, “Managing My Life.” “There is a constant flow of mutual support among the players, enabling them to feed off strengths and compensate for weaknesses.”
Newcomers must be prepared to adapt to the existing culture, says Dr. Miller. “There are plenty of examples of high-value international transfers that have failed.”
In the business world, the lesson is not just for the chief executive officer brought in from outside, but for any corporate acquisition. A company may have an ingrained culture, but if it’s bought by a bigger firm or even a near-equal rival, its members will suffer if they don’t learn to adapt to the new reality.
4. Don’t get starstruck
A dream team isn’t necessarily a winning team. Between 2004 and 2006, Real Madrid went through a three-year dry spell despite big spending on galacticos, notes Chris Brady, dean of BPP Business School in London and author of “The 90-Minute Manager: Lessons From the Sharp End of Management.” The stars brought in plenty of merchandising revenue, but no silverware, he says. “From the money side, it was good, but from the football side it wasn’t.”
Eventually, a new manager, Fabio Capello, replaced some of the stars with team-oriented players. “Once they started winning, they had both revenue streams — the merchandising as well as the ticket sales,” Dr. Brady says. “Individual performance isn’t what you’re paying for. You want individuals to enhance the team performance.”
Likewise, a business risks overpaying for a high-profile acquisition that ends up not contributing to the bottom line. For talent-driven industries, such as investment banking, the analogy is even sharper. Dr. Brady has seen companies hire top salesmen, only to see the individual’s results soar while overall sales slump. One role of the star, he notes, should be to mentor the younger players.
5. Talent assessment
The flip side of spending on stars is to discover them before they shine. That can mean scouting, especially in not-so-obvious places. “The catchment area, where you have to look for talent, is much wider than it used to be,” says Andy Adcroft, senior lecturer in corporate strategy at the University of Surrey School of Management in Guildford, U.K. “The benefit is teams have much wider access to resources. Scouts used to drive around to watch local teams. Now they fly around the world.”
Teams also nurture new talent from the very beginning, with academies and youth leagues. Finding talent can mean finding the right person who is in the wrong environment, says Dr. Brady of BPP. “You need managers who can spot talented individuals who may not be doing that well in the organization they are in, but you know that in our culture they’ll blossom. You get high value at a lower price.”
The business equivalent of good scouting would be looking for investment opportunities everywhere, including new industries and emerging countries that may not have previously been on the radar screen. For nurturing, it can mean working with innovation clusters around universities to help start-ups that can eventually provide a crop of acquisition targets. And for finding the diamond in the rough, managers can look at business lines that other companies want to dispose of, which their business could turn profitable.
6. Long horizon
Over the history of the Barclays Premier League, two teams have been able to sustain success: Manchester United and Arsenal. They also have the longest-serving managers, Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, respectively, who have been given the time and space to build their clubs over the long term, says Dr. Adcroft of the University of Surrey. Both took over when their teams were somewhat troubled and have evolved from their early firefighter roles into the very souls of their teams.
“If you look at clubs that have spent a lot on player acquisitions and have not been successful, like Newcastle, there’s lots of turnover in management,” he says. “Without that manager, in essence a CEO, you have players bought and sold at an alarming rate. It’s hard to sustain any kind of success on the pitch with that.”
Even Sir Alex and Mr. Wenger have had difficult moments when their futures have been called into doubt. What sets them apart, Dr. Adcroft says, is the long view. They have a solid structure in place and are able to take advantage of it. They can envision from events that are just happening what the results will be, and they can turn things to their favor.
Companies face short-term shareholder demands for quarterly results; teams face fans’ demands for victories at each game. The urge is to make fast decisions, adapt quickly. But there’s a difference between being nimble and being haphazard. The business lesson, he says, is that any company that is changing its business, its vision or its strategy is going to find itself unmoored. The winners, he says, always have a plan.
Source : WSJ.com - BY CATHERINE BOLGAR
Chelsea pays €21 million ($31 million) for midfielder Yuri Zhirkov from CSKA Moscow. Manchester City shells out €29 million to get forward Emmanuel Adebaor from Arsenal. Aston Villa pays €14 million to lure midfielder Stewart Downing from Middlesbrough.
You could buy a company for that kind of money.
Actually, acquisitions in football aren’t so different from acquisitions in business. You want to make a move to realize your strategic vision. You are looking for an addition that will complement your portfolio. You are willing to pay the price for the right target. Acquiring talent can mean exactly what it does in football — getting that special person on your team. But it also can be taken in a larger sense, where the talent is in the form of a company or another investment.
“Business professionals can learn from sport at the highest level,” says Hans Westerbeek, professor of sports management at La Trobe University in Melbourne and co-author of “Business Leadership and Lessons from Sport.” He adds that “there’s the focus, the determination, the overriding desire to obtain the 0.001% advantage over your competitor, because the competition is so fierce.”
So what are the rules of the talent-search game?
1. Focus
“First is the focus, the sheer desire to win, and everything else comes second in support of that,” says Dr. Westerbeek. “Wanting to win in a business sense is to be the market leader, to create the highest returns on investment and highest profit margins.” The coach and executive must consider how any acquisition will aid the No. 1 goal of winning.
Everybody wants to win — and nobody likes, or intends, to lose. What separates the winners from everybody else is a strategic vision, a roadmap of how to succeed. The ability to come up with such a vision is also what separates leaders from managers. Managers may be very competent and get things done efficiently. But leaders can bring their teams/corporations to ever-greater achievements.
Leaders have a vision for the game or business that is so innovative or creative that no one else can touch it or believe that such level of performance is possible, says Dr. Westerbeek. “That’s because the others don’t understand what is required in terms of system change to achieve such goals. A leader, a great coach, can change a team from mediocre to one that plays in a style and at a level nobody thought possible.”
You could buy a company for that kind of money.
Actually, acquisitions in football aren’t so different from acquisitions in business. You want to make a move to realize your strategic vision. You are looking for an addition that will complement your portfolio. You are willing to pay the price for the right target. Acquiring talent can mean exactly what it does in football — getting that special person on your team. But it also can be taken in a larger sense, where the talent is in the form of a company or another investment.
“Business professionals can learn from sport at the highest level,” says Hans Westerbeek, professor of sports management at La Trobe University in Melbourne and co-author of “Business Leadership and Lessons from Sport.” He adds that “there’s the focus, the determination, the overriding desire to obtain the 0.001% advantage over your competitor, because the competition is so fierce.”
So what are the rules of the talent-search game?
1. Focus
“First is the focus, the sheer desire to win, and everything else comes second in support of that,” says Dr. Westerbeek. “Wanting to win in a business sense is to be the market leader, to create the highest returns on investment and highest profit margins.” The coach and executive must consider how any acquisition will aid the No. 1 goal of winning.
Everybody wants to win — and nobody likes, or intends, to lose. What separates the winners from everybody else is a strategic vision, a roadmap of how to succeed. The ability to come up with such a vision is also what separates leaders from managers. Managers may be very competent and get things done efficiently. But leaders can bring their teams/corporations to ever-greater achievements.
Leaders have a vision for the game or business that is so innovative or creative that no one else can touch it or believe that such level of performance is possible, says Dr. Westerbeek. “That’s because the others don’t understand what is required in terms of system change to achieve such goals. A leader, a great coach, can change a team from mediocre to one that plays in a style and at a level nobody thought possible.”
2. Resources
Namely money. When Real Madrid paid €45 million to bring David Beckham from Manchester United in 2003, the figure was scandalously huge. At the end of his four-year contract, Real Madrid estimated Beckham-related merchandising profits at €560 million during the same period. The team has used the megamoney strategy to snap up other high-profile players — dubbed “galacticos” — including, last June, Kaka, for €65 million, and Cristiano Ronaldo, for a record €96 million.
“To get the best, you need that kind of money floating around,” Dr. Westerbeek says. To win big in gambling, you need either long odds or big bets. Real Madrid bet big, and so far the returns have been pouring in.
But money isn’t enough. Superstars don’t go to losing teams. For them to attain new heights of success, they need to join the right environment, with the right supporting cast, the right coaches to bring out excellence. “The analogy is true in business,” Dr. Westerbeek says. “If you’re the best in your business, you’re very unlikely to move just for the money.” While that rule might not apply to a corporate acquisition, in which shareholder value is the ultimate deciding factor, it is certainly valid for the top echelons of business talent — the company seeking a new chief executive, for example.
3. Team spirit
In the business world, it’s called a corporate culture. Team spirit is an extension of the strategic vision — when all the members understand and are committed to that vision.
The legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson is renowned for his team-building skills, says Rory Miller, program director for the MBA in football industries at the University of Liverpool Management School in the U.K. Sir Alex has made Manchester United one of the top teams in the English Premier League since its founding in 1992, with 11 championships. A man who cultivated players into some of the sport’s biggest names, he also manages to direct some understandably big egos.
“The best teams stand out because they are teams, because the individual members have been so truly integrated that the team functions with a single spirit,” writes Sir Alex in his autobiography, “Managing My Life.” “There is a constant flow of mutual support among the players, enabling them to feed off strengths and compensate for weaknesses.”
Newcomers must be prepared to adapt to the existing culture, says Dr. Miller. “There are plenty of examples of high-value international transfers that have failed.”
In the business world, the lesson is not just for the chief executive officer brought in from outside, but for any corporate acquisition. A company may have an ingrained culture, but if it’s bought by a bigger firm or even a near-equal rival, its members will suffer if they don’t learn to adapt to the new reality.
4. Don’t get starstruck
A dream team isn’t necessarily a winning team. Between 2004 and 2006, Real Madrid went through a three-year dry spell despite big spending on galacticos, notes Chris Brady, dean of BPP Business School in London and author of “The 90-Minute Manager: Lessons From the Sharp End of Management.” The stars brought in plenty of merchandising revenue, but no silverware, he says. “From the money side, it was good, but from the football side it wasn’t.”
Eventually, a new manager, Fabio Capello, replaced some of the stars with team-oriented players. “Once they started winning, they had both revenue streams — the merchandising as well as the ticket sales,” Dr. Brady says. “Individual performance isn’t what you’re paying for. You want individuals to enhance the team performance.”
Likewise, a business risks overpaying for a high-profile acquisition that ends up not contributing to the bottom line. For talent-driven industries, such as investment banking, the analogy is even sharper. Dr. Brady has seen companies hire top salesmen, only to see the individual’s results soar while overall sales slump. One role of the star, he notes, should be to mentor the younger players.
5. Talent assessment
The flip side of spending on stars is to discover them before they shine. That can mean scouting, especially in not-so-obvious places. “The catchment area, where you have to look for talent, is much wider than it used to be,” says Andy Adcroft, senior lecturer in corporate strategy at the University of Surrey School of Management in Guildford, U.K. “The benefit is teams have much wider access to resources. Scouts used to drive around to watch local teams. Now they fly around the world.”
Teams also nurture new talent from the very beginning, with academies and youth leagues. Finding talent can mean finding the right person who is in the wrong environment, says Dr. Brady of BPP. “You need managers who can spot talented individuals who may not be doing that well in the organization they are in, but you know that in our culture they’ll blossom. You get high value at a lower price.”
The business equivalent of good scouting would be looking for investment opportunities everywhere, including new industries and emerging countries that may not have previously been on the radar screen. For nurturing, it can mean working with innovation clusters around universities to help start-ups that can eventually provide a crop of acquisition targets. And for finding the diamond in the rough, managers can look at business lines that other companies want to dispose of, which their business could turn profitable.
6. Long horizon
Over the history of the Barclays Premier League, two teams have been able to sustain success: Manchester United and Arsenal. They also have the longest-serving managers, Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, respectively, who have been given the time and space to build their clubs over the long term, says Dr. Adcroft of the University of Surrey. Both took over when their teams were somewhat troubled and have evolved from their early firefighter roles into the very souls of their teams.
“If you look at clubs that have spent a lot on player acquisitions and have not been successful, like Newcastle, there’s lots of turnover in management,” he says. “Without that manager, in essence a CEO, you have players bought and sold at an alarming rate. It’s hard to sustain any kind of success on the pitch with that.”
Even Sir Alex and Mr. Wenger have had difficult moments when their futures have been called into doubt. What sets them apart, Dr. Adcroft says, is the long view. They have a solid structure in place and are able to take advantage of it. They can envision from events that are just happening what the results will be, and they can turn things to their favor.
Companies face short-term shareholder demands for quarterly results; teams face fans’ demands for victories at each game. The urge is to make fast decisions, adapt quickly. But there’s a difference between being nimble and being haphazard. The business lesson, he says, is that any company that is changing its business, its vision or its strategy is going to find itself unmoored. The winners, he says, always have a plan.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Have Breakfast… or…Be Breakfast!"
A very good read from WSJ on competition and product life cycle. Click here to read the article.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Cadbury ain't English Anymore
After months of fierce resistance, Cadbury's accepted the 11.5 billion pound ($19.5 billion) takeover from Kraft Foods Inc. The two companies when merged together will form the world largest confectionery company. A Kraft-Cadbury combination will create a portfolio with more than 40 confectionary brands, each with annual sales in excess of $100 million.
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