“A breath of fresh air” was what I experienced as I spoke to the CEO of a new, young, innovative emerging company in the IT sector recently. It seemed like the innovation, the new idea and the feeling of being the firsts in any segment can keep energies at a high for a long time to come. Is innovation an ability to see change as an opportunity or is it the ability to seize the opportunity to change? My opinion is that it depends on whether the innovative idea is driven by the availability of unused technology untouched by others or whether the idea has stemmed from the need of the hour in the market. An idea needs to be nurtured, brainstormed and created but then the story just about begins there. Thomas Edison once said “genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration”. When the perspiration begins, one sees the idea all around; it becomes top of the mind stuff. The observing, learning about the market, zooming in on the gaping gaps becomes one’s daily activity, all in good time. Yes, TIME is important, time and freedom to think and explore, for the idea to turn to reality, for the idea to turn into innovation. I guess there is innovation when one sees the change as an opportunity to a “new change” and tirelessly works towards it. No wonder the CEO had only one thing to say to me “Innovate Innovate Innovate”!!

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Fortune magazine is out with its annual list of the world’s most admired companies.The survey was conducted across 4,100 executives,directors,and analysts.Little wonder it is that Apple tops the list.Google is at second place, although the gap between the top 2 is considerable.

In a world under the impact of the global recession, trust and integrity took on the role of being durable assets with a financial payoff. Toyota did manage to be in the Top 10. At number 7, it is the most admired foreign company in the list. You may wonder why? The survey was completed in the fall and winter-before Toyota hit the nadir in January 2010. My bet is Toyota won’t find a place in the All Star list next year.

Another interesting facet of the list is the increasing presence of Internet retail and services firms which have tripled, with Amazon(No. 5) and eBay(No.40) joining the list this year. This shows another aspect of trust:how comfortable consumers have become with the internet.

As Warren Buffet told Fortune:” You can’t do it in a day or week or month. You do it one grain of sand at a time.And you can destroy it fast,but you build it slowly”. Wise words from the Oracle of Omaha.

So, here’s my question. Which are the Indian companies that you admire the most? And why?

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The aforementioned title appears in one of the essays from Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book ” What The Dog Saw”. In the essay, Gladwell expertly takes us through the problem using the example of Sports.
Which set me musing on some of the recent happenings at Prayag with respect to hiring new employees.

Now, Prayag has been looking to hire a few Business Analysts since the past couple of months. As is the norm at the company, all prospective employees have to first clear a written test, and only then do they have a chance to go through the round of interviews. Incredibly,almost all of the people who had come to write the test in the first two months, failed to clear the first hurdle. It didn’t matter if the said person was a fresher or had a few years of corporate experience behind him/her- they universally flunked the test.

Which set some of us thinking whether the questions in the written test were too tough to handle. Consequently, some of us set aside some time, and took parts of the test thinking that we were prospective employees who were keep to get hired at the company. To compound matters, the employees who took the test did indeed clear it without much trouble. So, what did it say about the people who had flunked it in the recent past? May be they didn’t have the aptitude for it, may be they weren’t smart enough, or in case of employees who had lost touch with these kinds of examinations, may be they just didn’t spend enough time doing their home work.

At times, organizations face such bizarre situations, where you have a job to offer, but there aren’t any prospects who fit the bill. The organization is then faced with two options. One is to select the best from those who turn up. Prayag chose to take the second option- of waiting for the prospects who fit the bill, and who could very likely fit into the culture and work ethic at the company.

The new year has finally thrown up some worthy candidates. All it remains to be seen is for these new hires to turn their potential into reality.Welcome aboard.

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I read an interesting article the other day, that blamed Steve Ballmer for many of Microsoft’s problems today.  Ten years ago, Microsoft was the giant of the tech world, eating other tech companies for breakfast.  While it is still a force to be reckoned with, many other companies seem to be seeing more success than MS.  Google still rules in search, in spite of Microsoft’s financial muscle behind Bing,  and is great with apps; Apple still leads in design. MS is still licking its wounds on the disaster that is Vista.

But what interested me was the hypothesis that it takes a tech person to lead a tech company. Certainly, Bill Gates is the ultimate software geek, who understood technology to the hilt.  The iconic Steve Jobs understands tech design wonderfully – every Apple product is to drool over.  Google is largely run by engineers too. But does this mean that a non-tech person cannot run a tech company?  I think he/she can, especially at a certain stage of the company’s growth, when it needs business smarts to expand. 

Any other points of view?

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There is no doubt for now that India is the only low -cost scale player available for the present until the likes of China shape up.  Within India itself, we are all familar with the tiering of cities – you have your Tier 1’s such as the metros where expansion has more or less saturated owing to rising costs. With this, Tier 2 cities are rising in favour - Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Trivandrum, Jaipur etc. A variety of factors need to be considered before a company decides to setup an office – costs (real estate, living expenses etc which determine salary costs), availability of talent, presence of educational institutions, state government attitude and willingness to support business and softer aspects such as weather, culture and so on.

For a company exploring an alternate destination, low cost centers also provide a de-risking route with lower rates of attrition. Cognizant has a huge presence in Coimbatore and last heard other IT companies were purchasing land there too. Coimbatore has at least 3 government engineering colleges and many more private ones and hence is a good hunting ground for talent.  It is well connected too. Many BPo companies already have a presence in Tier 2 cities.

This is definitely a smart strategy and we will see more such instances on the IT services side.

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This post is inspired by the recent short break that I enjoyed at a Jungle Lodges resort. This entity is a very successful partnership between a private entity and the government. The resorts are staffed by customer-friendly people – probably the effect of the private company’s involvement. What does the ‘public’ part of the venture bring – unbeatable locales that are out of reach for most companies.

This is one of several examples of successes – bridges and highways are others.

In India, Education could be one space where this may prove to be successful – given the scope for improvement in government-run school and college education – aspiring parents may be willing to pay more than the subsidised fee of today, if they are assured that the presence of a well-run corporate will yield in better results for their ward.

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