Quarter 6 - Week 8

When I first selected the courses, and when they were finally allotted to me, I was quite thrilled to see that I was going to be graded on the project work, and that there wasn't any end terms for most of this quarter's electives. If only I knew that every submission that I'd ever have to make in every class, would be due this week... I think I may have chosen at least one course differently.

Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation

We had a guest lecture on the first session by a VC who's travelled quite extensively. Having worked for a couple of big-name companies, he decided to go his own way and start a venture fund. Debunking a few myths about Venture Capital, he went on to tell us what we need to look for, what we need to bring to the table and more importantly, when NOT to approach a VC. He specially brought an interesting perspective when he said that you don't NEED venture capital to start a business, you only need it if capital is a major requirement in scaling the business up. When you look at the whole set of people who're running around for VC funding, you automatically get sucked into the theory that you need VC funding to start off. What he suggested was start off with bootstrapping, and only when you realize the need of funds for scaling up, should you approach a VC. You'll atleast be in a more stable position then.

The next session was about a case study on FabIndia. In a nutshell, the problem was that the company has been around for quite long, and it gets a new CEO/caretaker, and how he planned to take it to newer heights. So this session mainly dealt with the fact that taking an organization from its early stages to its more progressive stages takes on different attributes, and the way the organization makes the transitions is crucial to its future.

Social Entrepreneurship

The first session this week was based on a phenomenally huge reading, a note on a particular government-led initiative in Andhra Pradesh. It was a classic case, no one I knew was able to get across the first two pages, and yet they apparently knew exactly what it was all about. Turns out, the crux of it was that the government tried to help set up mechanisms for financial elevation of the poor, through more than just the disbursement of loans by trying to setup the entire CBO approach. We almost immediately landed into the debate of whether it might have just been easier to dish out loans and leave it at that. It's interesting to note that the prof's style of teaching has eased off a little bit. He actually ASKED us, what did you think of the happenings. Of course, half the students immediately presented a view of the case, and then the prof said that the article must have been quite biased, because we were all agreeing with what happened in the case. Everyone waited with bated breath, as they expected him to realize they hadn't read the write-up, and must have therefore not realized what he wrote... imagine our stroke of luck, when he actually said that he too in a way agreed with the way things had been run, but that there were a lot of things that needed change. Phew! Close call!

The next session was on a touchy subject, and the prof actually approached it quite gingerly. It was about people's movements. In essence, he stayed off any rallying calls, but talked about the kind of environments that can lead to these type of movements. It's actually pleasantly suprising to see the subtle change in his mode of teaching, as he is now soliciting what our thoughts are on the matter. There was a potential match that almost happened between a student and him, and he did take the student head-on, but the typical forcefulness had now been replaced more with a sharp questioning attitude. It's almost like the prof is now analysing if the students have gotten a feel of what he's talking about, and he's trying to see how we think. Even if he's not really doing it, I can't help but marvel at how different this mode of teaching is, compared to what most of us went through in engineering.

B2B Market Management

Both sessions were on Tata Steel and it's transformation and re-invigoration post 1992. As a summary, Tata Steel was more of a bureaucratic organization that had to make a transition into an low-cost efficient org, just because the market in India had opened to big,bad, global players who were extremely efficient. The readings mainly focused on the various steps undertaken during this period, even almost till a couple of years ago. The prof in fact isn't just a case-evangelist here... he actually spent a lot of time writing about this experience and almost had a ring-side view of what was happening in the halls of Tata Steel. The whole story of how Customer Value Management, and Retail Value Management came about was reconstructed and we understood why the decisions were taken in their form. A whole bunch of B2B jargon, but it's all stuff that we understood... it's pretty cool when you understand what someone means by integrative marketing, or consultative pricing, or multiple 2*2 matrices. Yes, we know big words.

International Business Negotiation Skills

While I was expecting that most people would have something to say about the recently concluded Carrera Task Force negotiation exercise, our prof deftly avoided it and got us to make our presentations for the day. Most of the students have already had their personal interactions with him, a half-hour session which we are to be apparently grateful for. It turns out that his time is extremely valuable to come by, and a pure half-hour to be spent in a 1:1 session where he literally picks apart your life to pore into your character attributes sounds like a very interesting experience. I can't wait to see if this man with his solid years of experience and insight might pull some magic out of my head that I didn't know. I'm half expecting "You are such an engineer. Why are you here?"

Anyway, dumbness and midnight madness aside, all the groups made their respective presentations on what are the do's and dont's about negotiations with different cultures around the world. Throughout everyone's presentations, the prof. would add in his own insights on those particular cultures to help add to our learning. Shortly after we all presented, we had a guest lecture from one of the heads of a manufacturing JV setup that was based out of Bangalore. Since one of the two partners firms in this JV was Japanese, the head of this org was quite well-versed in the nuances of negotiation with the Japs. It's too bad he spent more time telling us about the intricate details of his company, rather than his insights into negotiations with the Japanese. Finally, when only 25% of the time was left, he reached where we should have actually been at the very beginning of the session, and we atleast got a few key points about how things happen practically in negotiations.

Not too much hullabaloo this week, but I'm looking forward to the following holiday week... Thanks to Diwali, I get to have less explosions happening within my head, and hear more outside. Now to somehow convince my project teams why we should postpone working on our projects till next week, and enjoy these holidays as they are...

Quarter 6 - Week 7

A take home midterm is not really the best of both worlds, if anything it makes your week a living hell. This insight is the reason that we all come here, week after week, hoping that some week will be different. This week was a lot more easier in terms of class load, so that got a few of us hopping for joy. As expected, it was shortlived, but more on that later.

If I seem incoherent, it's because I've just slept for four hours daily in the last week. Trust me, I've been doing a lot more deleting than I've been typing today! So I'm going to just let nature take its own course, and scare you into deciding that given most of the problems here, if you'd want to play in it.

Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation

This week we dealt with how we attract the right stakeholders, and more importantly, how do we bootstrap. Since the second was more interesting, I'm going to spend more time talking about this. Bootstrapping is the form by which people get their business started, without much upfront investments, and more importantly keep their overheads low. In an example we went through, we saw the case of a person who wanted to start a business, but the finance required for the interprise was far more than he would want to afford. And so he goes on a spree, where he picks one other entrepreneur after another, and then pitches his idea to them. If it sells, great, he's probably got another person in it with him, and so he reduces the actual cost that he was about the spend. The beauty of this is that most of these serial entrepreneurs rarely put their own money!

Getting the right stakeholders was also quite similar, but the focus of that was on how you pick relationships that allow for mutual benefit. This too had a similar scheme of sharing the profits, due to which the stakeholders really saw that added advantage for them, if they chose to continue.

Social Entrepreneurship

We had two guest speakers this week, one was the creator of a vast chain of Self Help Groups in Southern India, and the other was an activist who helped execute the RTI Act. There's a lot of difference that you see in these two people, and there's a small chance that you actually find something similar between the two speakers. What's REALLY interesting is that both these guys had major opportunities to work in more affluent surroundings, and thanks to this there's a lot of change happening in cities. This shows the direction, determination and calling that some people readily seem to draw on, when everyone else is busy figuring out how to avoid listening to such problems.

While these speakers are really famous, I don't feel they'd be very comfortable with knowing that, they're being talked about so much. But that's just an assumption I've made, and it looks like this might indeed mean something for the future.

B2B Market Management

I dont know how this really happened, but irrespective of the extra time I found to study, I could only follow on the first case, and the second one went out the window. There was some general gyaan that the course involved, and the prof. used the case to better instill in it our mind. Will read the case, so that I can better explain to someone else.

International Business Negotiation Skills

The past six weeks of what to do in a negotiation, and what not to do, all went out the window within 10 minutes of the Carrera case study. A few of us began yelling, there was no decorum or a sense of calmess. We spent close to five hours on something that should have just taken 3. Finally, we came to a conclusion, now we only have to explain how and why we came up with such a solution.

This week, if you've gathered by now, was a combination of sleepless nights and hallucinations. While the classes were just about ordinary (except for the guest lectures), there was lesser insight that that compared otherwise, but it was enough to understand more about the ventures involved. Now to wait till morning, to realize what the heck I wrote.

Quarter 6 - Week 6

A couple of weeks back, our ENVC prof was flailing his hands that "you students didn't prepare as much as I did for the case, I should probably give myself all the marks and make you redo this subject!". Well, not really, but he did give us a piece of his mind. We had the B2B quiz, so we just wring our hands helplessly, as we claim that work and study takes away all our time, leaving nothing for case analysis. This time the B2B prof got it. He got bitten by the ENVC midterm! It's a different matter that nobody had the courage to tell him that "We didnt prepare for the very important case, because of our very important score that was riding on your quiz AND the other midterm". Anyway, we heard one more of the "You guys missed out on a very important case, now hang onto the coat tails, and try to atleast catch the gist of what I'm discussing with your more diligent friends here", while he was adoringly looking at those one/two people who had feebly raised their hands when he asked who had read the case. Must have been their most difficult class, considering the learning of 75 people and their future depended on the questions and points these two raised. The sheer heaviness of the responsibility is overwhelming! Or must have been for them.

Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation

First session of the week was about how a couple of guys who were in HBS, wanted to start an enterprise in the dry-cleaning sector, and as to how they were exploring their options. These two smart guys went about doing the relevant analysis, and even took up jobs in dry cleaning establishments to gain some experience. These guys didn't mention that they were Harvard grads on their resumes, this shows the extent of resume checks that the US drycleaning companies do. Anyway, at the end of it, they were trying to figure out which of two drycleaning stores to purchase. Now, our job was to find out what they should do. Here's where our experience kicks in. Apparently, all the analysing teams said that dry cleaning was not a viable business to get into, and a couple of them reluctantly still chose one of the stores to buy. It seems, our batch (the PGSEM) were the only ones who really thought about the viability of the business. The other batches the prof handles didnt question this at all, and just went after the choice. So, all the PGSEM students, irrespective of whether they did the case or not, patted themselves on the back for the one feather they seemed to have in their caps, called experience. Turns out that the industry is a place where the labour was a huge chunk, taking up to 30-35% of the revenue, and the profits were only 10%. Immigrants therefore get into this, because not only do they make the 10% profit, they also are the labour! So they walk away with 40-45% profit, which is a fairly decent means of livelihood. Of course, there was a lot more takeaway on why the two should not have done the entire Mahabharat of exploration when easier methods of learning about the industry were available, but you cant help admiring the fact that these two chose to try such different stuff, when the rest of their class was probably getting into more profitable lines of business.

The next session was our midterm, and it was a case based exam. We were supposed to analyse the actions of a particular team and suggest alternative approaches. A lot of soaking in the day before, and then spot analysis the day after. Irrespective of the kind of marks you get, you just feel so cool and proud that you've made some decisions for somebody who is somewhere else. Consultants must be feeling good all the time, I think.

Social Entrepreneurship

We're still on reforms here, and the advantage of having the Right To Information. The first session was about how one of the persons known to the professor, once came across some information in the newspaper about how the Delhi Jal Board in association with the World Bank was trying to reform the water supply in the city. This person using the rights accorded to citizens, went to get more details on this. What he found pretty much got him all wired and upset. Turns out that the World Bank was trying to help us get more efficient water supply, and that we were capable of it, but didnt have suitable infrastructure. So they were outsourcing it to contractors, and the method of selection was apparently dubious. So this person goes up in arms, and gets a lot of people's support to avoid unnecessary expenditure. Their main argument was that the government spends much more on the water supply each year, and it would be unnecessary to take a loan from the World Bank for the purpose and give away the contract to an international firm, however experienced they may be. Additionally, the results in the other countries where this was done have not been good, and it would be careless to just go ahead and repeat this mistake. And so, a query was started, and relevant actions taken to find out what we could do on our own. And hence the story of one citizen's watch, on his government's action.

The second session was headed by a guest lecturer, who spoke to us about his experiences with tribal villages in Karnataka. We had been previously instructed to look him up on the internet, to see what he'd done, I should have understood why. He comes into class, and says he will have an interactive session, where we'd ask questions and then he'd give answers and take the class further along his experiences. Suffice to say that there were enough questions to keep him occupied, and for us to learn. But his experiences and outlook were quite different from the other lectures we've seen. You see, he was a lot more understanding of the government. His view was that, many times the government itself is not aware of many issues. They take an action without fully understanding the implications of it, and so one of our efforts should be towards educating the representatives of the constituencies about the problems faced. They have no way of knowing otherwise! They're sufficiently caught up with other things. He spoke about how he got started in the social field, and his experiences so far. What was most interesting was that he also spoke about how he worked with the traditions and beliefs of the tribals. Apparently, they would give some booze and food to their spirits and the spirits would tell them what to do. For e.g., one time they were about to start agriculture in the lands allotted. Just as he was about to start, the tribals told him that we should first take the opinion of the spirits. A lot of song and dance later, they told him that the spirits forbade them from planting seeds saying that it would only rain for three days, and after that nothing for the rest of the season. So dont waste money.

This man got quite pissed. Here he's fighting for the people, against the government, for the lands and then some spirit tells them not to plant. Still he went along with what they said, and it turns out that it did rain for three days, and they didnt plant while all other regions and farmers planted, and then there was no more rain! So now he doesn't know what to say. These are his experiences! Yet, they do follow a Value Belief Study, where they try to understand the roots of the traditions. Maybe there was some inherent value to it, which was being blindly copied over the years. Doing it this way, they are able to find out which are the good traditions that yield positive results for the people, and the bad ones. They then focus on stopping the bad ones, and encourage the good traditions. It's a very interesting take on how to bring about change in tribal culture by keeping the good, and moving with the times. Apparently, they also now school all the children there and they have a 100% pass record. These children are also instrumental with challenging the beliefs. It was more a matter of "Why are we doing it?" rather than "We should not do this!". The basic outlook and attitude is very instrumental in bringing about change.

B2B Market Management

The two cases for this week had a lot to do with customer satisfaction, and knowing what to do further. The first case was about how Infy and one of their customers were preparing for Infy to move up the value chain. So we focussed on the kind of changes that were required for this to happen. While we mainly focussed on cross-cultural issues, there was also some discussion on how this also affects the work culture and environment in the host company. There's a steadily growing insecurity about the work security there, if all the work comes down to India! Hence, we looked into how this could be addressed, by also focussing on local hiring within the host country, and discussing how to make the sale of why Infy should be given the contract as against the other competitors. The main takeaway from this seemed to be that India is now looking for greater value delivery, and it is no longer the best thing to compete on the cost arbitrage ("Our company in India, cheap resource!") because it will remind the hosts about the possible loss of jobs at their end. Instead, we must focus on how moving this work to India actually reduces the Total Cost of Ownership, and hence it increases revenues for the company and benefits it more, thereby providing more benefit to both Infy and the host. Hence, it is a win-win, and not a win-lose situation. Yet, there is still a lot of worry on how things might turn out in future.

The second session, I wish I could tell you what I learnt. But I hadn't read the case, and neither had the remaining 95% of the class. So while the remaining 5% paid attention, the rest of us tried to keep up valiantly (or slept), trying to focus on what was happening. It's not difficult to sleep when someone's discussing something you dont understand, I can tell you that much. And therefore, I implore you, when you do a case study discussion, you better be prepared with the case, or you are going to waste a LOT of time. And you wont get the ever-so-important "Ahaah!" feeling when enlightenment is supposed to dawn at the end. You have been warned.

International Business Negotiation Skills

I like this prof, but this week was really dull. It started off well, as he gave us some pointers based on our performance in the negotiations. I dont think I've mentioned this, but we had recorded a negotiation exercise for each team, and the professor was going to analyse it. We were also supposed to get some hands-on out of it. It was quite interesting to see, and his points were well taken, but this part only lasted for about a half hour. It was all downhill from there. Of course, a few nuggets here and there, but for the most part, it felt unnecessary. After we had seen clips of everyone's videos (which frankly can get very boring after you see the first two/three), there was a video on body language, but it was not as good and effective as it could have been.

The second half, we had a guest speaker who spoke to us about how Yoga can help us with emotional control. The prof had told him that we were trying to understand it from the perspective of Negotiation Skills, but I dont think this guy really got what the prof meant. So we sat through 1.5 hours of a yoga educational speech. It was new to some of us, no doubt, but I dont know... I'd rather have gotten some info on Negotiations here. If I wanted a yoga speech, I'd attend some other time, some other place which was meant purely for that. Still, not too many complaints, I did understand how it's very important for your body and mind to be in sync, so that you're always at the peak of your energy and you're in charge of your energy. Fascinating topic, guess I just expected different.

The next week has the usual spate of assignments. We also have a take-home midterm (a first for me! It's like a license to copy, just that it's a dare from the prof about let's see what I can copy). The paper is based on our observations in class, and our understanding of the study material. So it's going to be an interesting experience. Also, we're planning to make a trip to watch a social enterprise in action, this is relevant for our project, so I'm really looking forward to this. Sometimes I cant help wonder, if I put a quarter of this energy in my engineering studies, maybe I'd be far more capable. There's something very different and compulsive about the teaching and environment at the IIMB, the pressure's a lot, but you look forward to class every day.

Quarter 6 - Week 5

You know what's special about this week? It's one of those truly simple weeks where you only had to attend classes, and submit only one assignment. These weeks are rare, so we enjoy it when it comes. We do have a storm brewing for the next week - midterms and all, but hey, that's a week away. Since I have nothing specific to describe this weekend, let's talk about this blog.

The whole point of me writing this blog, was so that you guys could get an understanding of what it's like in class. Is the course too easy, is too hard, will you find time.... and most importantly, is it worth it? I've written enough now for you guys to give me some feedback that can help me make it better for you. So, let me know what you think about this blog at the link below:

https://spreadsheets0.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dDN6dEZiVUdSRGVTZExrTkx0Y0wzOWc6MQ#gid=0

Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation

We had a case discussion on both days, quite like the last week, with some dependence on the data at the end of the case. The first case tried to explain how a person might decide about when to sell his venture, if at all, and relies on his basic attitude on how to select people who'll help with partnering with him on the venture. The second case tries to explain the different facets of deciding WHEN to partner with someone for your new venture. Should you do it at the very beginning, somewhere in between or at the very end?

Sort of felt like the class was a little unprepared this week, I am not sure if it was because there was less of pressure this week, or if it's the typical case of the momentum slowing down in between, like taking a short breather. Next week might be better, we have our midterms in ENVC! Just imagine, a whole bunch of students trying to analyse a case and determine if that enterprise is going in the right direction or not!

Social Entrepreneurship

This week, we spoke about electoral reforms. Now, I knew that the prof was a bigshot, but how much of a bigshot wasn't known to me. Turns out he's helped with the ADR, this is the team that actually lobbied hard for the information on previous criminal records to be made public for those people standing in elections. While his last few weeks spoke about how might a person go about helping the poor in society, this week was about what you can do on a different scale, with regard to using the powers bestowed on society to actually help make it better. While it sounds pretty simple in a single sentence, the actual process of getting it done is pretty hard, and it shows on the prof. Through his bitter experiences, he's realized that when you talk about getting something done at the large scale of the government, there's a LOT of retaliation and inertia you face. The way of getting things done is so strongly fixed, that to make it move takes a huge effort.

If my manager was to try and get me to write one more line of code, I know when I might crib... so imagine how much the people in the government must be cribbing. Because for sure, it involves more than one person, a very large number in fact, and it involves them actually having to get off their butts and do some more actual work! It sure isn't as easy as sitting in an AC office and writing code, I'll give them that much. But when you really think about it, they worked to get into that position and we do have every right to correct any inefficiences as it is, ultimately, we the people. It's our job to give the feedback.

B2B Market Management

Ok, I confess! I didn't really read through the cases this week! I mean, I did glance through it, but I didn't actually read it and analyse the numbers. And so, when everyone else is spouting numbers and points to put up on the board, goaded by the professor... I'm just trying to hold on to the coat-tails of all these maniacs in class. Luckily, the basic funda of the class was easy to follow. We were talking about how best we could grow in an environment like the Indian IT industry, where the honeymoon phase is getting over. That is, we've spent enough time in providing simple services, but we're now moving out of the commodity phase and going in for more comprehensive solutions that can help get us to a better place, where the profits are more. And the first session was based on this, the word that we've heard so often is now subtle, in the background. How can we add more value?

The next session was quite interestingly about Microsoft. The big bad wolf of the software world had its fair share of problems. With great power, comes great responsibility, money, and customer dissatisfaction! Apparently, Microsoft was busy coming out with products that gives normal folks like you and I, and huge corporates, enough reason to open our wallet more than once. Now, while they were busy creating more products for us, it turns out that when it cameto service costs, the product managers would add a short buffer to their total costs when selling the product. Then, somebody must have done an MBA and enlightened them about ABC (Activity Based Costing - check Quarter 3!). All of a sudden, there was a way to tie the service costs with each product, and wonder of wonders, the cost associated with service was WAYY too high. So the product managers get worried that they're about to lose their bonuses (for real, this is in the case!) and so they're trying to figure out what to do. And that is how the Microsoft Support Network came into being. It turns out that they initially had call centres, and some very semi-formal methods of service that wasn't standardized. So irrespective of people who are first-time users, major experts or corporates, they all had to stand in the same queue to get problems fixed. So this support network soon found out that they could have online forums, and simple tips put out online, and ALSO have the call centre. Of course they found a way to make money off of that too! You could now get priority customer care for a fee. Yep, that's the summary of the conclusion... for more understanding of why and how such decisions are made, pay the money, and join the course! I've got assignments to do now!

Just to remind you in case you forgot, I'd really find your feedback useful. Here's the link again: https://spreadsheets0.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dDN6dEZiVUdSRGVTZExrTkx0Y0wzOWc6MQ#gid=0

Quarter 6 - Week 4

Immediately after an overloaded week of classes, when you get a half-week of classes, you feel so... free. While there was a lot of energy around the campus thanks to our ongoing business fest (IIMB Vista 2010), the calm moods within the classes of PGSEM seemed to point to one thing... "Finally, I can spend some time with my family/friends on a Friday night!". It's possible that due to the half-day off on Thursday (anyone wonder why Sep 30, 2010 was so much reason to be tensed about?), people weren't really wild-eyed/red-eyed/close-eyed in class on Friday. After a long time, I remembered what 8 hours of sleep felt like...

Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation

Five minutes into class, and the prof drives right into the case for the day, a case revolving around an online PC distribution model. He poses the first question, expecting the burst of energy he's seen in all the previous classes, and other than one/two hands lazily climbing into the air, the only sound we can hear is the AC. (No, our ACs aren't loud, I'm trying to say the class was so silent, you could hear the subdued hum from it!) In all my past quarters at college, a few such instances have come, and the professor wrings his hands in despair, and makes an almightly plea while reprimanding/motivating the class to read the case for the day! The truthful profs also add that even though they really like to only hear their own voices in class, they also like the occasional question, disruption, banter that the class involves in. And then the usual spiel of "I put so much into preparing for the case, I think you students should also do the same". All totally valid points. But the students typically always have a reason why they hadn't read the case... the "Sir, we have internals today", "We had to submit four assignments today", or the rare-but-typically-unspoken "Case was boring, I thought some other classmate would read it". And this time was no different! It's midterm season, so everyone's preparing for some exam or the other, this time I had B2B's quiz, I'll come to that later.

Anyway, our prof didn't say any of the above, but we could see it in his eyes. No, I'm not kidding! We know that look! And then the class gives the response look, and then after a short impasse, we continue with the class... participating in a subdued manner, and the prof taking every chance he can to tell us "Read the numbers at the end of the case!". Unfortunately, when you combine midterms with a first-time-situation in this class where we have brilliant exhibits which we need to crunch for information, it almost makes our class look juvenile when we argue on the qualitative merits, instead of hard quant. This time, the case revolved around how you need to remember that even if your enterprise is out to fix a major problem, if some of the most important parties is being affected more negatively than positively, it's not going to fly. Overall, what you propose may be a very well-warranted solution, but sometimes without safeguarding the interests of all affected parties in the business, you're actually going to have an extremely tough ordeal ahead.

Social Entrepreneurship

This week we spoke about agricultural co-operatives. After last week's session, one thing was quite clear, the fundamental value in a co-operative comes from the people involved, not from the patrons behind it. It is not meant to be managed by someone, it is meant to empower the people themselves, almost democratic in its own way. The prof minces no words when he says that well meaning do-gooders come to the villages and try to setup co-ops, and leave disasters behind. There's no point coming to a village with a solution, without understanding the problem. He mentioned a personal experience where he went to a village with a few other people, and first tried to understand the problem itself. Obviously, since he was an outsider, he didn't want to seem too intrusive, so he was casually asking about the directions to nearby villages, and slowly after circling started asking stuff like "what's the name of this village?", "How many people here?", "What do you do?" etc. Within a short while, the villager tells him "Sir, there are enough poor people here, just come and do what you want.". And this prof is taken aback since he hasn't said a word about what he wants to do, but this guy has already understood that this "self-appointed-do-gooder" wants to do something, and directly given him the answer. and pat comes the moral of the story. Villagers aren't stupid, don't go there thinking anything along that direction.

They are used to city slickers coming down, and distributing money, baashans, advice, and clothes. So it's not new to them that someone wants to help them, even though its a passing fling. So, if you want to do something well-meaning, and empowering, you're definitely going to have to stay at it for a long time. More important than anything else, if you want the villagers to commit to an initiative that you start (irrespective of whether it's going to be driven by them), and take risks, you're going to need to earn their trust. To one of the questions "Can we assume they'll be capable of managing such a co-operative? They're not as well educated as us", the prof gives us a very interesting answer. He says, even if you go by statistics, 5% of people anywhere are going to be smart. It's not like the smart people are clustered only in metros. So, you go to such villages, these 5% will automatically stand up and take leadership. He also gave an example where a lady who had only studied upto the 7th grades, was handling the entire accounts for a very successful co-operative in the area. So, don't worry about the capabilities of the people. In fact, it's very important to let them run it, because if you do everything for them, and protect them from mistakes, when will they get a chance to learn? They'll always be dependent on an external entity, when in reality the external entity should only be responsible for the initial impetus, nothing more. So, let them make mistakes, let them learn from it. All we need to do is help them build a system of transparency, and accountability, and let the people take care of themselves.

B2B Market Management

This class was the reason why we hadn't read the cases properly for the other two. I think today was a perfectly valid reason. We had three chapters to read, from an extremely intense book, and you could easily fall asleep in 3 paragraphs! So much jargon and intense reflection-packed statements make people reflect on their own lives, and totally forget about marketing. I scarcely remember a time while reading these 3 chapters (actually, I could only make it to two, I had to rush through ppt slides for the third, god bless this prof and his advance provision of slides). By the end of day Thursday (or should i say the wee morning of Friday), I had read so much about value, that I was beyond thinking of "value". This is like a repeat telecast of last week. This "value" thing is getting to be very addictive. I am still trying to quantify the value of me writing this blog now, instead of sleeping. It's really tough. Good thing we recently learnt about intrinsic and qualitative value. I can now postpone this blog quant value tradeoff to another day.

This week was negotiations week! There was a very interesting case, and our teams had to work either as a buyer or a seller, and work with the other party to decide on a final price. Looking at all the crunching we had to do, this price decision was actually very well thought out. We looked at all the factors, time of employees, breakdown idle time, annual maintenance, the entire shenanigan, and then we pitch our points. Results from all the teams were collated and then we did a final analysis, on what would be the right way to deal with such negotiation. Regarding the quiz, suffice to say that the prof nicely gave us some objective type questions. Knowing completely well that by the time, we'd be probably have only the word "value" in our brains and tick every answer that had the word "Value" embedded somewhere, he wickedly put "value" just about EVERYWHERE. Each question had atleast two answers that had this word, so the last minute gimmick of the unprepared did not work.

And now, on a Sunday morning, on to the next set of assignments.

Quarter 6 - Week 3

While almost every Sunday goes off in some project, or exams for the coming week, this one was one of those annual occurrences that you just have to watch out for. Because of Gandhi Jayanthi next week, since we'd have had a holiday on Saturday (Oct 2nd), our beloved institution figured that we should instead have classes on a Sunday as compensation. In the words of one of our professors, that great man would have been mortified if he got to know that most of the country was planning to chill out on the basis that it was his birthday, and that he probably would have rather wanted us to work on it! All good intentions of our profs aside, and also leaving aside the messups that such holidays can have with our sturdy college annual timetable, let's do some simple math.

In my case, right now, I have taken four subjects. Each subject has two sessions in a regular week - therefore 4 X 2 = 8 sessions. When you move another half-week's sessions (Friday's still on btw!) to a previous Sunday, we then have an additional 4 sessions in the previous week. Therefore, that makes a total of 12 (Yes, I know mathematics). Here's the kicker.. the full time students typically have 6 subjects in each quarter. That makes 12 sessions for them in a general week. THEREFORE, I just had to do the schedule of a full-time student this week, even though I spent a major portion of my time working. I'm happy to report that I'm alive, and that only the left half of my brain has stopped working, while the right half is contemplating different methods to fall asleep, unchecked by its neighbouring twin.

Let me help you out with this loooong post here. I like the experience from the Social Entrepreneurship and B2B class best. So I'd recommend that you check these out for certain!

Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation

This week we delved a little more into HOW a person goes about starting a venture. This covered the basic attributes of an entrepreneur and his style of execution, the kind of people he mixes with to start something, and how he reacts to situations as and when they come into play. And finally, how he prepares a business plan if he was to convince someone to put some moolah into his venture (here's four litres of my sweat, "show me the money!", Jerry Maguire-ishtyle).

The first session was about how a person got involved in a venture, with two other people, all because he hit it off well with them and liked their attitude. They got into a field where none of them had any expertise, yet they did have the relevant expertise in their actual tasks. That means, I don't know jack about call centres, but I have been in marketing in my previous company, therefore I can market my good. etc. etc. So we analysed how he should choose to get into the next business, and what kind of thought processes run through his head. The next session was all about effectual entrepreneurship. This is typically a characteristic of serial/expert entrepreneurs. As it turns out, these guys just depend on who they are, what they know and who they know. So they just catch people along saying "Hey, you want to do something together? Cool.. get on board this ship", and then before you know it, they've got a Viking ship hurtling through a storm, with someone manning the sails, someone steering, someone cooking, someone rowing etc. Now this sounds counter-intuitive, I mean, do we really think one tender idea can be sufficiently grown in between multiple interests? Turns out that that the idea is constantly evolving due to the multiple partners... only the ones with interesting twists are being brought on board to lend a better shape to the idea, even if it is pulling the idea towards a different direction. Apparently, this has a better chance of success, and most serial entrepreneurs do stuff this way. I can see how it's successful... when multiple people are committed towards making an idea well, and the people are inherently good and proactive, there's a good chance of success. And that's what a VC banks on. He's not banking on the project, or the idea, he's banking on the team that's behind it... since he's sure they'll take his money someplace safe. And bring it back multiplied.

The third session was to do with the all-so-important business plan. Apparently, VCs have seen enough of the "We can change the world" business plans. Everyone seems to think their ideas are the best-est and they don't stop crowing about it. While pushing all the good points to the front, they quietly keep all the scary parts at the back. Why? Well, someone's gotta give them money, sure can't get money if you scare them away. The VCs must have learnt this trick early on, because they no longer buy sweet smelling poop. The VCs actually look to see if the team is good, again lending credence to the last idea of effectual entrepreneurship, as they know that no forecasts or planning can really be certain, because if it was, this world would have been a better place and all businesses would succeed. Sure, they are interested to know about your business and about where you plan to take it to, but they HATE it when someone puts all the nice stuff in front leaving out the bad. We need to remember that they care about the fact that their money should be put behind something good, and it's not their job to investigate our ideas. Instead, when we bring them the entire research, through their experience they know whether they should be backing this, or they give tips on which areas to watch out for. There was a whole lot more, but I can't cover that now. Only two things to remember - VCs look to see if the team can execute well, and one way they check it is by knowing if the team has sufficient experience in the arena they're pursuing. The second thing, VCs don't want to grow old and die with you and your company, so they're looking for an exit option (preferably within three-five years). Give them that option.

Social Entrepreneurship

After hearing enough criticism of microfinance over the last two weeks (well, the prof kind of feels that while some parts maybe good, for the most parts it's affecting more than helping. Remember that this comes out of experience of watching this on the field, and is not armchair theory) it was a little surprise to see someone come to talk to us about microfinance. Turns out that this person has been watching microfinance very closely, and a professor at another of India's best management institutions, so he comes with high credibility. One thing for sure, when we get guest lecturers here, they come armed with research and live field experience, nothing can be better than that. So he comes and talks to us about how microfinance works, explains the cogs and cracks, and then goes onto describe how the microfinance model has been evolving. In fact, while most people trumpet about the Grameen model and are implementing it everywhere, apparently Grameen itself has stopped using that model, and have moved on to Grameen 2. This seems to suggest that the optimal method has not yet arrived, and that the microfinance industry is slowly evolving. To the allegations that microfinance seems to be causing more pain in some areas, and that it's being exploited in yet other areas, the prof says that you can't help it when some people take control of a really good funda and use it for the bad. Yet, not to worry, a string of legislations and other legal clauses are on their way to set some of the things right in the microfinance arenas.

The last session for the week covered co-operatives, and how they've come to be in today's state. The shining example that was spoken about was Amul, one of the few successes (and might I add, what a scale!) and how it came to be. While the prof seemed to suggest that most of the co-operatives today are toothless sheep masquerading as tigers, there are quite a few that are having the intended results. Now why would he say that most of the co-operatives are pawns? Turns out that these are controlled by govermental bodies, and that the legislations that are currently in effect seem to actually hamper the true growth and acceptance rates of such movements. When the whole objective of co-operatives is to empower the society, and its constituents by bringing forth solidarity, when you take away the control from the people and leave it with a governing body that is far from facing a similar lifestyle (however well meaning, under claims of "They're illiterate, and don't know how to manage, we need to help them.." etc), you invariably dumb down the essential funda of societal empowerment. People are more likely to take something forward in a motivated manner, when they're in control. They don't know something? Teach them, and then let them be... trust them enough to be in charge of their fate. The prof however agrees that you can't suddenly tell people to wake up and start a co-operative. More often than not, an external impetus (maybe in monetary terms) is required to get things moving. But taking that off after a while, and avoiding steering the whole way is important.

An anecdote that was mentioned comes to mind. Apparently, one of our earliest Prime Ministers once wanted to visit Anand (the area from where AMUL began), and Dr. Verghese Kurien (the Father of the White revolution in India) urged him to spend a night in one of the villages nearby, before dropping in to meet him. Since this was the time when we didn't have reporters falling out of helicopters to cover every damn thing, not many people were really aware that the PM was coming down. All that the host in the village was told is that a foreign guest is coming to town, so keep your house clean, but don't have to do much else. But sooner or later, the village got to know the PM's in town, and so instead of sleeping, the PM actually spent the night talking to the people to know what's up.

Now I wasn't there when this happened, I dont think my mom was born yet, so this is not a direct quote, but try to get the gist. The next morning, when he went to meet Dr. Kurien, he asks him.. "Dr., I was very curious to know why the co-operative in Gujarat seems to be doing so well, while it's struggling in other states. I first thought it had to do with the land, or weather, or people here. But there are other states with far better tillable land, with more amenable weather. Last night, I find that the villagers are also very similar. So I dont get it, how?". Dr. Kurien replies "In Gujarat, the villagers are in charge of the co-operative. That's why it works here." Again, long before B-schools, this visionary man seems to have understood the power and connection between giving the responsibility to the people and its resulting motivation. He spent a long time fighting the powers that be, to get this in place. 60 years he's been there. AMUL is now recognized as the most successful example of co-operatives across the world. India, from a milk-deficit country at the time, is now the world's leading exporter in milk. Now, that's social entrepreneurship.

Business 2 Business Market Management

The last two weeks, all I've been hearing is Value, Value and more Value. This kind of value, that kind of value. So much so in fact, that I've been dreaming value. For real! My alarm's ringing, and I'm thinking "What is the value that I get out of an extra half hour of sleep? What is the value I get by reading the rest of the case that I have left in that half hour? Which one is more?". I actually woke up frightened because I realized that this was one of those instances when the "engineer" was slowly being transformed into the "businessman". Anyway, not like you care much about my fears... your time is more valuable than this. SEE??! I did it again!

Anyway, this week didn't really have too much. I'm serious. I've got the funda now. While the word "Value" is being twisted into different phrases for different meanings, and we've moved from chapter 2 to chapter 3, the funda still remains the same. When you're trying to sell something different, and want to know the price, see how much benefit is accrued to the customer because he uses your product. Then, based on that extra moolah he makes, you get to take a partial share in the name of "But, I've given you much more value!". This week started out no different. New product, this much savings, that much extra work, everyone happy, my share -> ka-ching!

The last session seemed to be no different. This was a cool guest lecturer, who had a different style of teaching. His energy seemed to be constantly high. Anyway, some yada-yada about how one company found an ingenious way to save some time and money for its customers by modifying the build structure of a tool being used. They then do a couple of field trials, and they can't believe their eyes when they see the amount that it saves their customer. Apparently, the previous tool weathered out quite soon, and had to replaced 40 times during a particular job, but with the new and improved tool, this came down to 1 replacement or so. And so, we get into how much money do they save, how much time do they save (changing the tool each time it wears out, and the increased effectiveness of the new tool), and then we find that for a piece that used to cost around 2$, our new costs are 25$. Bummer we say. But hey, look at the revenues for a second. We just got the client an extra 950$! OMG! Therefore, the benefits I'm giving is 950, the cost increase is 23, can you see the value? So, the final question turned out to be, "How much do you charge the customer now?". Here's the awesome part. The part for which I'm paying through my nose. (Why am I giving it out for free?)

The world is divided into different kinds of people. One kind says "Charge them 900$". Yes, let's take all the money and leave them the extra 50$ in tips. The second kind says "No, charge them 500$", some for me, some for you. The third kind says "Naah.. we don't need so much, charge them 200$", we're business guys who're anyway going to make shitloads of money here... serve the deal to the customer! And the last set says "Charge them 30$, we need to protect ourselves from new entrants!". The 'let's-be-caution' gang, that sees that market penetration is more important than charging premium. So which would you go for? And here's where the prof says, "If you guys are going to charge 30$, or 200$ or something low, then what the hell do we need B2B marketing for? Your job, as marketers, is to educate the customer about the value that he's making by using your good, and to take a reasonable share of it, because you had a part to play in it. Do not underestimate the power of marketing. Marketing is all about knowing if (1) Do you have a value proposition? (2) Can this be explained by you to a non-PhD? and (3) Having understood this thing, can this be converted into the required sale?"

Because, if you're giving away the value for cheap, then you're avoiding the whole issue of value just because you're trying to play safe. Don't be afraid to charge your price for the value that you bring to the customer, that's what you're there for. It won't be too soon before you're fired, because you're giving away valuable expertise and technology for peanuts, while drawing a big fat salary. You're in B2B Marketing, don't undervalue the advantage you bring to your customer.

I like this guy.

International Business Negotiation Skills

This week was more to do with negotiations, or atleast that's what it seemed to be like. Like I've said before, the prof's in "moral of the story" mode, at a 40000 feet level. Yet, he did come down to our level a couple of times. For one thing, he explained how the process works out. Negotiations start even before you sit at the table, there's a lot at play. We then spoke about the people part. About the fact that companies don't negotiate, people do. It's extremely important to be hard on the problem at hand, and soft on the people. While the typical memory of negotiations seems to be "I win, you lose, sucker!" right out of high-profile English movies, the reality couldn't be further. Turns out, we're evolving to a point where creative solutions which turn out to be a win-win are coming to be far more present. To which the following addendum is highly important. While persuasion is key to a great negotiation experience, effective persuaders can be themselves persuaded. To be able to bend another's mind, it's supremely important that one's own mind should be capable of bending. As such, it provides the signal to the other party that this person is capable of accepting my points and is not all out to be aggressive. And effective negotiators dont plan the sequence of what happens at what stage. Only the stage is set for the game, and relevant chapters identified. But checkpoints are not maintained, because doing so would mean you've already planned out what is to happen, and by direct derivation, there is no room to negotiate.

In any case, he doesnt say that aggression is not present in negotiations. When you have powerful parties at the table, maybe one party gets away with just being dominant. But the true flavour seems to come about with well-matched parties. That's when aggression by itself does not work, or flexibility might end up being disastrous. And hence, the next important point and one I remember strongly, you need to perfect your strongest negotiation influence style, and just maintain a moderate level in all the other styles. You can not afford to neglect any of those weaknesses under the shadow of your strength. Because you never know when you need to switch from one to the other. If you're unable to play a moderate game in one of your weak areas, how in the world would you then be able to steer the style towards your strong area.

Quarter 6 - Week 2

I knew that having four subjects would mean more books, but this is ridiculous. Just because two profs don't give us text books, it's cruel to give us such HUGE binders! Our hearts had been so light for those 10 seconds when they said "No books". Well, yeaaaaaaah, the articles might be good, but still... I reserve the right to crib! We also had the Product Management Conclave happen this week, so a few of our batchmates could be seen running around before class, sleeping in class, getting psyched out after class, I felt so bad for them that I almost went and offered help. Thankfully, lethargy takes control just in time, and I think "Next time. For sure!"

Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation

A case discussion in the first session focussed on a scenario where people just got together to start something up, more often than not in their area of expertise. After doing something here and there for two years or so, they then begin to start focusing on what they really want to do. They had worked recently on things completely unconnected to their domain (which hints that you DONT have to work in the same field if you want to do something). Some lessons here and there.

I liked the second session a little more. The professor had invited a few incubatees from NSRCEL (The incubation centre at IIMB. For the record, you don't have to be a student to come here!) We had a person from our immediate senior batch out of PGSEM give us a talk on how he got started. We also had a much older PGP alumnus amongst this group. I couldn't help noticing that they all had some experience in that field before they quit to get into it full time, and that there had support from some powerful contacts. Networking apparently is a good thing! There was almost no time for questions, but I think people might go down to NSRCEL to get more doubts cleared.

Social Entrepreneurship

The prof first speaks to us about NGOs, and how the vast majority are more known as NFP (Not For Profit) orgs. So he tells us about how they try to achieve buy-in from the community, not by approaching them with the solution and trying to find a problem, but by really looking into the problems and doing something about it. He also spoke to us about how NGOs are answerable to the donors. This tends to go both good and bad, good because we get money for the cause, and bad because more often than not the bad guys think they're God's gifts to society and have the right to interfere in every small thing.

In the next session, the prof spoke about Agriculture related issues, and went a little closer to explain to us the state of a majority of people in agriculture. Apparently 70% of India's farm land is rain-fed and not irrigated. Therefore, it tends to give much lesser yields and much more pains. He spoke about how money lenders and even micro finance team in these places charge far higher interest than banks. And he's quite sure that such a finance model can not be sustained. The poor don't have enough money to repay the principal, and here we're trying to charge much higher interest. He gave us his take on the typical happenings in a full year, and it was a little easier to connect the dots at the end when you realize that the seeds are planted in May, the harvest collected around Oct/November, and then for the next three month you clear off your loans and all that by migrating to the city and getting a job for these months! There is no money left to carry on the next year! And then you take loans all over again. Even if people want to charge lesser, they can't.. because there's a cartelization of moneylenders in most of these districts, and such an action can create a shunning of the moneylender by the others. So the solution is not clear yet. Today at least.

B2B Market Management

The prof is trying to cover the basics of B2B Marketing, we were talking the difference between value, price and fitting it all together nicely with frameworks. The frame of reference was the cases given for reading, and surprisingly a LOT of people read the case. I'm not saying the common lot, I mean the LOT, everyone! Well, almost, but you get the point.

It's quite nice to see all our classmates pitch in for the discussions when things are being written on the board. We tried to take it apart based on all the numbers assigned in the case. And low and behold! 5 minutes before the class ends, we've decided exactly how to go about this case. Now just put us in charge of the company. Or maybe not... next time, for sure!

International Business Negotiation Skills

Walk into class and the sudden burst in headcount just catches you there. Apparently even the prof wasn't weak-sighted enough to notice this. As new people kept walking in, his eyebrows kept climbing higher and higher. Thankfully, not too many people entered again after that. Anyway, the prof begins as usual at 40000 feet. BUT, this time he tells us at the start that it's our responsibility to bring him down when he goes higher. If we have any doubts, we should speak up immediately! In fact, he's quite open to interruptions. The fact that few people interrupt him is a different thing altogether. But those that do... they get his time, and doubts clarified.

He is still talking more from a high-level funda-types OB side. He was trying to get us to understand the important of an open mind. And so he spoke to us about what we need to do if we want to enhance our abilities of receptivity and reflection. Imagine that if OB is typically funda based courses, then this is funda OB. Get it? And yet, he didnt leave it all qualitative. He stressed on the importance of process and discipline, that it's important to have such qualities under your control. A lot of tips for receptivity (I'm guessing he thinks mere mortals like us incapable of accepting other people's ideas. Well, I dont accept that!). As a glimpse into the type of process he was talking about, he told us about how do we know what triggers us to perform better and faster, and what pulls us down (swastha and aswastha). His solution was quite simple. From the previous evening till this morning, mark down whatever you did with the minutest of details on days when you feel at your top, and on days when you feel really low. After three such occasions, you may begin to see a pattern. Learn from it. And then avoid what causes the drain. He gave us an anecdote of how it worked for him, a live example. I'd dare not repeat it here. What happens within the institute, should stay within the institute! ;)

A good week overall. A little hazy, but hey, other than a library of readings, not much else to complain about!