With an exceptionally nice and simple interface, this IM client is a definite plus. I would love to see how Google develops this new service further. The stakes in the IM domain just got raised !!!
Monthly Archive for August, 2005
The
There is a good collection of books this year, with nearly 800 titles in the business section itself. The discounts being offered are in the range of 40% to 80%. I also picked up three books for myself:
- Survival is not Enough by Seth Godin
- Exodus by Leon Uris
- Circle of Innovation by Tom Peters
Exodus is one book that I have been searching for since a long time, and even though I checked it out during the exhibition last year, I did not have enough dough on me to buy it. However, this time I did not want to miss it for anything. Circle of Innovation is one book that I wanted to keep in my collection, as this is one of my favourite books, ever since I read it in IIT Library. I have been reading a lot of stuff on Seth Godin’s blog site and so picked up his book to understand his thoughts - no better way to do that than to explore his ideas in his widely acclaimed book. Will be posting my reviews on the books soon. Till then, Happy Reading for me :-).
Adobe is the next company to join the blogging world. It is great to see companies embracing the new technology, but the effectiveness of the same is still to be established. Though each and every blogger (including me 
) can write tons about how it could be beneficial, a formal study on enterprise blogging and their value-add to the corporations using it, is eagerly awaited.
Tom Peters writes a lot of interesting stuff on his blog; and as much as I enjoyed his book,
These guys are amazing! Their Quest for Talent is Limitless! Their quest for … AWESOME VALUE ADDED … is Limitless. A McKinsey mentor urged me to pay attention to Annual Reports. “It’s one of the few things,†he said, “that the CEO really puts his Heart & Soul into.†So I’ve always taken him at his word, mostly to my benefit. Now I want to provide a short excerpt from the “Chairman’s Letter†in the Infosys Annual Report 2003. The … extraordinary Narayana Murthy … talks about what Professional Service Firms can be. In short: GAME–CHANGERS!
So here’s the quote from Chairman M: “By making the Global Delivery Model [Infosys’ prime product/promise] both legitimate and mainstream, we have brought the battle to our territory. That is, after all, the purpose of
strategy . We have become the leaders, and incumbents [IBM, Accenture] are followers, forever playing catch-up. However, creating a new ‘business innovation’ is not enough for rules to be changed. Theinnovation must impact clients, competitors, investors, and society. We have seen all this in spades. Clients have embraced the Model and are demanding it in ever greater measure. The acuteness of their circumstances, coupled with the capability and the value of our solution, has made the choice not a choice. Competitors have been dragged, kicking and screaming, to replicate what we do. They face trauma and disruption, but the game has changed forever. Investors have grasped that this is not a passing fancy, but a potential restructuring of the way the world operates and how value will be created in the future.”
I am a strong believer in
Relating it to the current scenario of aggressive
Some of the major factors that lead to innovation, or rather enhance it, are a good strategy, motivation to explore the unknown, ability to think out of the box, and having the requisite systems in place. This might sound too far-fetched initially, but once the process is in motion, you will realize that the resources were all there but unexplored till now.
I cannot understand why there is so much resistance in breaking free from the existing business models and pursuing
Each and every company can become the GE of today. All you need to do is bet on “big teams†rather than betting on “big marketsâ€. A dynamic and innovation-centric team is the main instrument that creates the much sought ‘big markets’ for an organization. Get the right kind of people in your team, people who can keep the big picture in mind, and give them the freedom and the opportunity to experiment and think radically. An ageing business has to go, and the firm that holds on to such business in spite of knowing that the model is a bygone is only digging its own grave.
According to Warren Buffet, “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is usually the reputation of the business that remains intact.†Another proponent of change and innovation, Tom Peters, says that “the difficulties arise from the inherent conflict between the need to control existing operations and the need to create the kind of environment that will permit new ideas to flourish—and old ones to die a timely deathâ€.
Fighting competition in defined markets is a norm for existence; but to sustain a business and excel at it - innovation is the only route and the only option.
It is nice to know that the blogging fever is catching up at a rapid pace. The most recent addition to the growing list of companies indulging themselves in corporate blogging is Hewlett-Packard. I came across this site from Tech Blog (obviously:-)), and one of the SVPs is even podcasting. Check out the HP Enterprise Blogs site.
HP has started looking at blogs as a strategic tool for the enterprise and is even initiating people to interact with the company through blogs. However, the company found itself in a fix when an HP customer posted a mildly negative, but not offensive, comment and HP deleted it. Slashdot reports the story about an HP customer Thomas Hawk, who accepted the company’s invitation to interact with its executives by posting a complaint on the blog of David Gee, who heads up worldwide marketing at HP’s management software group. HP deleted the comment, but after much speculation and brickbats, made the right decision of putting the comment back on the blog. Check out this story on Slashdot.
In another not-so-recent news, Silicon Valley writes that IBM is looking at blogging to boost its revenues and reduce layoffs. The computer giant is launching the largest ever corporate blogging initiative in a bid to encourage any of its 130,000 staff to become online evangelists for the company. The company is hoping to reduce its layoffs by keeping the employees, who can become online evangelists for companies’ products and technologies. This should make an interesting study in itself. For now, let the games begin ;-).
I have finally taken the plunge and shifted my blog to wordpress. My new site URL [http://blog.gagankaul.com] is live now. Though it took a lot of time figuring out how to move my posts, along with the comments from blogger to wordpress, finally everything worked out nicely. Thanks to Andy for the importing tool and Ajay D’Souza for the connections template. So here is a new start on a new platform. Cheers.
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