Business Development

There is always a set of people in B-Schools who want to get into "Business Development". Seth Godin, in his usual style has written a blog on this which is reproduced here:

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Business Development is a mysterious title for a little discussed function or department in most larger companies. It's also a great way for an entrepreneur or small business to have fun, create value and make money.

Good business development allows businesses to profit by doing something that is tangential to their core mission. Sometimes the profit is so good, it becomes part of their core mission, other times it supports the brand and sometimes it just makes money. And often it's a little guy who can be flexible enough to make things happen.

Examples:

• Starbucks licenses their name to a maker of ice cream and generates millions in royalties.
• A rack jobber like Handleman does a deal with a mass marketer like K Mart. K Mart gives them room in the store to sell records and gets a cut, Handleman does all the work.
• AOL buys AIM instant messaging software and integrates it into their service.
• Years ago, I licensed the rights to Isaac Asimov's Robot novels from a business development person at his publisher and turned the books into a VCR murder mystery game which I licensed to a business development person at Kodak, a company that was experimenting with becoming a publisher. (Isaac made more from this project than he did from many of his books).
• Best Buy offers extended warranties on appliances you buy. They don't provide the warranty, of course, a business development person did a deal with an insurance/service company to do it and they share the profit.
• The Princeton Review built a huge test prep business, but only by licensing their brand to a series of books which did the lion's share of their marketing for them.

You don't see business development from the outside, particularly all the potential deals that fail along the way. Many companies, though, spend millions of dollars a year looking for deals and then discovering that they pay off many times over. Others, particularly smaller competitors, are so focused on their core business that it never occurs to them to consider partnerships, licensing, publishing, acquisition and other arrangements that might change everything. Harley Davidson probably makes more money on business development than they make on motorcycles.

The thing that makes business development fascinating is that the best deals have never been done before. There's no template, no cookie cutter grind it out approach to making it work. This is why most organizations are so astonishingly bad at it. They don't have the confidence to make decisions or believe they have the ability to make mistakes.

Think about the Apple Nike partnership on making a device that integrates your iPod with your sneakers. This took years and cost millions of dollars to develop. Most companies would just flee, giving up long before a deal was done and a product was shipped.

Here are some tactical tips on how to do business development better:

1. Process first, ideas second. If you're going to be bringing new partners and new ideas into your organization, you need a process to do it. Professionals don't, "know it when I see it." Instead, professionals think about the abilities of their company and strategies necessary to bring ideas in, refine them and launch them. Great business development people don't waste time in endless meetings with random vendors or hassle about tiny details up front. Instead, they have an agenda and a project manager's understanding of what it means to get things done. They don't keep the process a secret, either. They share it with anyone who wants to know. Someone needs to say, "here's how we do things around here," and then they have to tell the truth.
2. Who decides? Because every great business development project is different, it's incredibly easy to get stuck on who can say yes (of course, everyone can say no). Professional business development people intentionally limit the number of people who are allowed to weigh in and are clear to themselves and their potential partners about exactly who can (and must) give the go ahead. Don't bother starting a business development deal unless you know in advance who must say yes.
3. Courtship, negotiation and marriage. Every deal has three parts, and keeping them straight is essential. During the courtship phase, you win when you are respectful, diligent, enthusiastic, engaging, outgoing, and relentless in your search to make a connection. Do your homework, research people's backgrounds, learn about their kids, visit them--don't make them visit you. Look people in the eye, ask hard but engaging questions, you know the drill. Basically, treat people as you'd like to be treated, because the people you most want to work with have a choice, and they may just not pick you. Hint: if you skip the courtship part, the other two stages probably won't come up.
4. Buyer and seller. If you've ever pitched a product or service to a business, you know how soul-deadening it can be. The buyer works hard to make it clear that she's doing you a favor, and you need every dog and every pony available at all times (and you better be the cheapest). But business development doesn't have this dichotomy. Both sides are buying, both sides are selling, right? So talented business development people never act like jaded buyers, arms folded, demanding this and that. Instead, from the start, they seek out partners.
5. Enthusiasm is underrated. Business development people are exploring the unknown. That means that there's more than cash on the table, there's bravery and initiative and excitement. The best business development people I've ever worked with are able to capture the energy in the room and amplify it. They'll build on the ideas being presented, not make them smaller.
6. Close the open door. I regularly hear from readers who are frustrated because a big company wasn't willing to hear a great idea they mailed in. Here's the thing: there isn't a shortage of ideas. There's a shortage of execution. That means that successful business development teams look for proven partners and organizations with momentum. A key part of that is the decision to say no early and quickly and respectfully to people who don't meet that threshold.
7. Call the lawyers later. A business development deal that never happens is one that's sure to cause no problems. While the legal clarity you need is important, there's plenty of data that shows that ten page NDA agreements and onerous contracts early in the process don't protect you, they merely waste your time and energy.
8. Cast a wider net. The Allen and Co. annual gathering is a dumb place to choose a merger partner. Limiting the number of potential partners to people you've met at a trade show is also silly. Business development (when it works) creates huge value for both sides, so better to be proactive in searching out and soliciting the organizations that can make a difference. Here's a simple way to widen your net: start a blog and go to conferences to speak. Describe your successful business development projects to date and let the world know you're looking for more of them. How many amazing partnerships could the Apple store launch? How many great books could Starbucks highlight? Not only don't they do this, they hide. Don't hide.
9. Talk to the receptionist. This is huge, and so important. When a great partner shows up at your doorstep, do you know? Here's a test: call your organization (pretending to be from some respected organization), describe a business development opportunity and ask who can help. If you're not immediately transferred to your office, you've failed, right? Make it easy for the right people to know that you're the right guy.
10. Hire better. How do you decide who to put in this job? I'd argue that glibness and charisma aren't as important as strategic thinking, project management and humility.
11. Structure deals with the expectation of success. The only real reason to do business development deals is because when they work they're so powerful. Andrew Tobias put his name on a piece of software that ended up earning him millions of dollars. It's easy to get hung up on all the bad things that could happen, but keep your focus on how the world looks when you get it right.
12. End well. Most of the time, even good business development deals fall down before the end of the negotiation process. If a deal doesn't come together, say so. Acknowledge what went wrong, thank the other party and end well. If it does come together, track the integration and stay involved enough to learn from what works and what doesn't. I'm still waiting to hear from people who said they'd get back to me "tomorrow" fifteen years ago, but I'm losing hope... Ending well not only teaches you how to do better next time, but it keeps doors open for when you need to come back to someone who you should have done a deal with in the first place.

Exciting Innovation - Sixth Sense

So if you get a kick out of tech innovations, watch this video.

I bet in 10 years, this will be common across the globe. A new era in user experience!

Bloglines ... .. .

Am moving away from Bloglines after 5-6 years. I am not too sure how long they will survive and for some of us it appears as if people have already left forgetting to turn the servers off and at some point, when all payment reminders are sent and not responded, the ISPs might just decide to pull the plug.

Just worrying if such a state occurs to Facebook or LinkedIn!

Global Corruption Map

A global corruption map by Forbes. Maps countries against Corruption Perception Index.

Bandwidth Sync Correlation & Media

(reproduced from Seth Godin's blog, including the text)

So, what can you learn here?

1. There's a huge correlation between how much interaction there is and how powerful a medium is (at least among successful media). Telephones changed the world because the interaction is so real. As you get more interactive, though, you exchange less dense media. You can't have a real time conversation online that carries the digital impact of a movie or some other high bandwidth entertainment.
2. The bottom left corner is the scrap heap. It's hard to place a commercial value on this part of the grid and there's not a lot of commercially interesting work being done here. People just aren't interested in low bandwidth, non-interactive media. Graffiti, for example, rarely draws a paying crowd.
3. The top right of the corner is where huge value and difficult sales lie. Not everyone can pay for the scarce resources needed to deliver an in-person seminar or one on one coaching, but those that need and can afford it, love it.

If you had seen this chart three years ago, you obviously would have invented Twitter. Now that you see it today, what will you create?

(Thanks: Seth Godin).

Twittering

Ah. The World does move fast. Less than 10 years of blogging making a first appearance, it is already becoming a big bore to blog or read them. It is the world of twitter. Make it short, make it precise..

As I continue to blog, I am also going to twitter more and am eagerly awaiting the day when tweetdeck or other plugins let me post in one shot to twitter, facebook and blogspot!..

Misgovernance at World Bank

We all know how a pathetic institution World Bank is. While it claims to reduce poverty in the World, it has done little to reduce poverty of the beggars in front of its main posh offices at Washington, DC. This institution is a embodiment of incompetence, mis-governance, corruption, advancement of selfish & personal motives in the shroud of poverty reduction and what not?..

Harvard Business School has come out with its research on Mis-Governance at the World Bank. The draft of the paper can be found here and an interview with the authors here. While it is a very interesting paper, I also hope & believe that this is just the icing on the cake and one of the first to appear..

It is time that the World stops and rethinks & redefines the purpose, mission and operating procedure of this mammoth irrelevant institution. The least that we can do is to cut down the $1.5B in Op-Ex!!

Leadership Vacuum

Steve Hamm of BusinessWeek wrote

It has been a remarkable couple of weeks in New York. First, the financial system meltdown. Now, Meltdown Part II. Meanwhile, many of the world’s political, business, academic, and civil society leaders are in the city this week attending the UN General Assembly meeting, the Clinton Global Initiative conference and a smattering of smaller big-think events. It seems to be the end of the world as we knew it. And being on the edge of big and painful changes has put people on edge. There’s a sense of urgency. Also, anger.

I talked to Craig Barrett of Intel and Pramod Bhasin of India’s Genpact on Monday and Tuesday, and it was remarkable how frustrated they are—and how willing to express it. Barrett lamented that the US government has not responded to industry’s calls for long term planning and investing in national competitiveness. Instead our leaders stumble from crisis to crisis and play to the popularity polls. “The government is thumbing their noses at us!” he says. Bhasin bemoaned India’s corruption and lawlessness: “Private industry is trying to pull us into the 21st Century, but government is trying to keep us in the 18th Century!”

What’s going on here is we’re in the middle of a global leadership crisis. The US was once the undisputed world leader, economically, politically, and, after 9/11, morally. But the Bush administration blew that big time. In the past eight years, we have been diminished tremendously. When Bush gave his lifeless speech at the UN yesterday, he seemed to have shrunk to half of his former size. There was barely a ripple of reaction from the audience. He is not only despised; he’s now irrelevant. Meanwhile, the overheated and untruthful rhetoric of the US presidential election has diminished the stature not just of the liars but those they are lying about.

But the world needs leaders—individuals and countries with the authority, recognized wisdom, and clout to bring stability to global affairs and economics. And, right now, it doesn’t have any. Putin’s a powerful despot who commands no respect beyond his borders; China’s leadership is a faceless, self-absorbed bureaucracy; Britain’s Brown is a faded star; and Merkel is merely a competent technocrat. The only global political leaders who inspire respect and excitement (at least, from me) are India’s Singh, Columbia’s Uribe, and Rwanda’s Kagame. Unfortunately, Columbia and Rwanda are too small to matter except symbolically, and Singh governs a nearly ungovernable India.

Survey the business horizon, and you come to a similar conclusion. Only Warren Buffett commands almost god-like respect. What he thinks and says matters. Leaders such as IBM’s Palmisano and Intel’s Barrett are competently leading their large companies through the storm, but their influence is fairly limited beyond the borders of their supply chains.

In civil society, people expect a lot from Bill Gates now that he’s spending most of his time on his foundation. He has a ton of money, between his fortune and Buffett’s, and a bold strategy for attacking poverty and disease. I have a lot of hope for what he can do, too. In fact, I suggested to a couple of Gates Foundation people earlier this week that he should use his UN speech to try to calm the world. Their answer: It’s impossible to do that in the six minutes that have been allotted for him.

I have hope, though, for the state of leadership in the world and for America’s role in it. Think of the US in the early 1930s. We were in disarray, yet a great leader came in with a vision, a plan, and a commanding confidence that turned the tide and set us on the course that made America a positive role model and shaper of the course of world history for more than half a century. That sort of thing could happen again.

Math, anyone?

A favorite clip of mine.. Can you beat the logic? And btw, it isnt meant as a tirade against anyone;)!

Blame the B -Schools

Peggy Cunningham, the Director of Dalhousie's (Halifax, Canada)) MBA program echoed the thoughts of millions of others in this interview when she said that B-schools are to be blamed for current crisis and B-schools have ended up creating greedy monsters.

I tend to agree with her in largely. (If you dont, loook into placement fair historically in last 7 years at IIM-A). However I would add one tag to that. It is basically Bankers (& Finance MBAs) who are to be blamed for this. Of course, it doesnt mean rest of the world is as innocent as it can be. The overall greed still is the root cause of all evil - however Bankers (and I include Financial services giants as the leaders of this group) had the great evil genius brains to innovate bad financial instruments, make the rest of the world poor while they continue to grow rich - thus not bothering about true creation of wealth.

Captialism & Socialism - Mini Lecture Series - Parts I thru V

Re- posting notes from Capitalism & Socialism - Mini Lecture Series (I thru V).

• Part I - Introduction
  
• Part II - Failure to complement
  
• Part III - Greed & Impatience
  
• Part IV - Immature policies
  
• Part V - Liquidity Trap
  

Shareholder value is a myth - says who? Neutron Jack!

Jack Welch, the idolized management guru, Neutron Jack who mercilessly shutdown businesses which didnt add shareholder value, the same Jack who possibly influenced several MBA classrooms with his 'investor/shareholder returns should be focus of the business' thought gave an interesting interview in FT.

Jack says:

"On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world," he said. "Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy...your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products."

I still believe that there should be a minor tweak to the order of main constituencies - customers should come first, followed by employees and finally products. If every company strategizes "customer care" as a core competency and willing to risk short term gains, success is definitely on the cards. But then, getting to that decision and living by that commitment needs lot maturity.

The Satyam Marriage

Per today's Economic Times, one of India's highly unreliable business gossip dailies, the current list of Satyam suitors include IBM, KKR, iGate and Fidelity in addition to Tech Mahindra, Spice and L&T. Let us forget that ET news is as unreliable as it can get and do a quick and dirty analysis of who will win over Satyam finally. Of course, all the MBAs from various financial markets will publish voluminous analysis - especially that they have nothing else better to do anyway.

The analysis will have to be done typically 5 angles - investors of original Satyam, buyers/current investors, the employees of Satyam, clients of Satyam and the Govt. (appointed board)...

Investors of 'original' Satyam - this is a easy set of people to be ignored. In the current scenario, any type of purchase is not going to recover the lost money, especially all the goodwill asset value. However the undoubted optimist will still hope that it will be a large public company (read IBM) that will buyout Satyam with a share-exchange plan in place. Institutional investors will oppose any PE buyout because they know all they will get is few peanuts if that was the case.

Buyers/Current investors - Given Satyam clientele, the large workforce, processes of Satyam, IBM might see lot of value in the acquisition. Particularly after HP has lapped up EDS/MPhasis and Obama creating issues for offshoring jobs, IBM might want to solidify its commanding presence in low cost labor. For Tech Mahindra, it is a great time to scale huge right away. iGate's story is still vague - am not sure they have done a due diligence of what they will do if they acquire Satyam - more or less they would get eaten away by the magnitude of Satyam's operations. L&T, Spice are not right suitors according to me. They neither have a good vision nor the capacity to manage a large ITeS organization for now. However, the most important suitor is KKR. No matter what KKR says, the end result is that it will break Satyam into smaller pieces and sell them off one at a time within 5 years or less.

Employees of Satyam - Currently the employees are the strength of the company. However, it is also to be noted that the employees dont have much bargaining power, given the economy. In this kind of situation, the employees would prefer taken over only by an IT Services organization - IBM, Tech Mahindra, iGate - in that order. For them moving to IBM is the safest option - they get a better branded tag and also move into a safe, comfortable and familiar territory. The employees' big fear would be to be taken over by KKR. For a KKR buyout will clearly result in quick layoffs of the excess fat right away and KKR would never hesitate to take tough decisions in tough times.

Clients of Satyam - This is a tough set to deal with. I am sure that the clients would not prefer a L&T/Spice takeover. The clients might be ok with an IBM takeover, with IBM's established reputation. From their point of view KKR may not be a bad choice either - however, the clients know that if KKR steps in, their bargaining power will go down for sure.

Govt/Board - Now what would the board declare as a victory? Am sure that the board would definitely not accept a PE takeover as a victory. For one, the PE pricing will be the most conservative and PE buyout will create lot of uneasiness for various stakeholders. For the board, a sale to Spice might be a full victory -an Indian company transitioned to a Indian company. IBM may be a close choice as well - safe zone.. and IBM has a history of mess-up in a lot of things and will live up to that reputation - a mess in Satyam acquisition will be soon forgotten.

Considering all above, as one can sense, IBM comes to close enough to satisfying lot of factors and a suited suitor for Satyam, though in my opinion, KKR would possibly be the right buyer at the moment. Satyam, in spite of having a strong workforce, is definitely struggling with a immature senior management and a bloated labor force to some extent. KKR would be the right choice to put the company back in shape.

IBM is popular. KKR is a fit. But we should not forget a lot of other players in this game - institutional shareholders, LIC, NASSCOM, other Indian IT Services majors, media and finally Raju (!). 

Lets see who wins the Swayamwaram.

Project Management Quotes

Stephen Seay compiled this wonderful list of quotes on Project Management. I thought this is a interesting read and must be passed along. So here you go:

Good estimators aren't modest: if it's huge they say so.

The sooner you begin coding the later you finish.

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

What is not on paper has not been said.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

If you fail to plan you are planning to fail.

If you don't attack the risks, the risks will attack you.

A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning.

The sooner you get behind schedule, the more time you have to make it up.

A badly planned project will take three times longer than expected - a well-planned project only twice as long as expected.

If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs, you haven't understood the plan.

When all's said and done a lot more is said than done.

If at first you don't succeed, remove all evidence you ever tried.

Feather and down are padding - changes and contingencies will be real events.

There are no good project managers - only lucky ones.

The more you plan the luckier you get.

A project is one small step for the project sponsor, one giant leap for the project manager.

Good project management is not so much knowing what to do and when, as knowing what excuses to give and when.

If everything is going exactly to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong.

Everyone asks for a strong project manager - when they get him they don't want him.

Overtime is a figment of the naïve project manager's imagination.

Quantitative project management is for predicting cost and schedule overruns well in advance.

Good project managers know when not to manage a project.

Metrics are learned men's excuses.

For a project manager overruns are as certain as death and taxes.

If there were no problem people there'd be no need for people who solve problems.

Some projects finish on time in spite of project management best practices.

Good project managers admit mistakes: that's why you so rarely meet a good project manager.

Fast - cheap - good: you can have any two.

There is such a thing as an unrealistic timescale.

The more ridiculous the deadline the more money will be wasted trying to meet it.

The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time the last 10% takes the other 90%.

The project would not have been started if the truth had been told about the cost and timescale.

To estimate a project, work out how long it would take one person to do it then multiply that by the number of people on the project.

Never underestimate the ability of senior management to buy a bad idea and fail to buy a good idea.

The most successful project managers have perfected the skill of being comfortable being uncomfortable.

When the weight of the project paperwork equals the weight of the project itself, the project can be considered complete.

If it wasn't for the 'last minute', nothing would get done.

Nothing gets done till nothing gets done.

Warning: dates in the calendar are closer than you think.

There is no such thing as scope creep, only scope gallop.

Anything that can be changed will be changed until there is no time left to change anything.

If project content is allowed to change freely the rate of change will exceed the rate of progress.

If you can interpret project status data in several different ways, only the most painful interpretation will be correct.

A project gets a year late one day at a time.

A project isn’t over until the fat check is cashed.

Powerful project managers don't solve problems, they get rid of them.

Global Savings Glut

Would like to post a couple of interesting links for those who would like to explore more information on how the global debt crisis began.

The first link is that of my favorite Nobel Prize winning columnist Paul Krugman's NYT Op-ed. He discusses Ben Bernanke's famous 2005 speech on Global Savings glut and explains it in layman's terms.

Revenge of the Glut

The second link is that of the original speech by current Chairman of Fed Reserve Ben Bernanke, who explains his view on how the emerging Asian markets, especially China exported Capital amongst other things to western world, thereby causing a savings glut.

Global savings glut and US Current Account deficit

Those of you interested in exploring more (similar) articles, ping me.

Stockbrokers :)

An old but relevant joke:

Stockbrokers are called so because they advise/help us in investing in stocks that make us go broke!

B School & Placements

One thing that many of us haven't yet got right is the fact that going to B -School is NOT going to a placement/career fair. But that is the way the B-School advertisers, media and even alumni have projected it. And it will stay no matter what anyone says.

One crore + salaries are abundant in B-school placements in India. Every IIM boasts for at least 1 if not more 1CR+ salaries. The media goes ga-ga about it. And IIMs, the institution that is responsible for generating talent that will help India move forward, has just become a placement factory like any other private B-school, only with better results. Doesn't it look queer when a MBA grad from IIM, with 1 or 0 years of experience gets a 1 CR salary? Either something is wrong with the company/industry that is hiring him/her, or he/she is so exceptionally talented - in which case we can use that person to help us get out of such economic crisis as the one we are facing.

The pressure of students in IIMs about placements, and the reports that they drink their sorrow just shows what wrong set of candidates the institutes have admitted in the first place. Aren't these students just trained to cope with crisis and provide leadership to situations? Instead of fighting for placements, losing hope and drinking in sorrow, aren't these top notch exceptionally talented MBA grads supposed to provide leadership to themselves, their institutes and be creative to steer out of crisis?

What is the point in hiring those with great 1CR salaries, when they are fighting like cocks for jobs? Even amongst the IIMs, there is a bitter cold war across the A,B,C,L institutes to "claim" companies for placements. They have also been playing by moving their placement dates up and down to get the companies "first". And worse, they have gone to connect with thousands of companies, who have been ignored and ashamed by the same institute all these years.

What is worse, one can blame this "placement focused" attitude and curriculum of IIMs as the base for killing enterpreneurship and arming students with skills to survive and compete.

The management boards of IIMs should come together to declare that they would stop babysitting their students for placements. Going to a B-School is to arm onself with skills that will help him/her to be successful as a leader and create a vision. It is not a placement fair. And of all places, institutes like IIM should start setting right examples.

Recruiters can wake up and stop being irrational in recruitment. And for Godssake, the usually stupid media can stop evaluating B-schools in terms of top salaries and placement statistics.

Leadership is not a popularity contest, Mr. Obama

I have so far restrained myself from making any posts relating to politics in this blog. However, as I had said in an earlier post, it will be stupid to form theories and predict outcomes ignoring effect of powerful externalities like politics. It is like a Physicist proving something under vacuum conditions and proposing that the same would happen when normal atmosphere is present.

The last few days have been anything but depressing. What Obama intends to do is extremely unclear. Does he, as the historic President of United States, really wants to support the falling economy and get it back on track? Or is he just content to be the first Black President who got bi-partisan support for every bill he introduced on the floor?

Time and again, renowned economists like Prof Krugman and Thomas Friedman have been arguing the necessity of a huge stimulus to try & fix the large black hole. In spite of having some well known names in his Economic Team, Obama has introduced a bill, which in all likelihood would have lost its meaning by the time it passes the floor. And what is worse, he didn't even manage to get bi-partisan support for it!

Mr. Obama, it is time to wake up and realize that leadership is not a popularity contest. You were in a popularity contest till Nov 20, 2008. You have already won it. It is not enough to give powerful speeches anymore. It is the time of action. And every day that we lose is precious.. It is not time to experiment with getting bipartisan support. It is not time to just talk about greediness of Wall Street or anything. It is time to frame strigent policies and jump to rescue. It is not enough to be called the popular first black president. It is better to be called as a true leader who led the renaissance of the US economy.

It is a time to show leadership.

Financial Mess and the Reforms

I was worried.

I was worried very deeply when this financial crisis hit. Not just because lot of us lost truckloads of money in stocks or real estate investments; not just because lot of us may find ourselves deprived of comforts that we otherwise would have enjoyed; certainly not just because lot may go unemployed..

But I was worried because this financial mess might just be one another passing phase where the so called dark side and socialists shout for reforms and the rest of free market capitalists waiting for their time to go back to bad old ways. I was worried that we might never actually work and implement some of the financial reforms that will keep more checks and balances in the systems. I was worried that we might never get to action-ize what Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Prof. Jeff Sachs have been talking about for a very long time.

But now I am not that worried. If the latest IMF report released today were to be believed, looks like the financial mess will stay for quite some time in spite of coordinated actions by bankers and governments. And that the world will witness just 0.5% growth - the lowest since Second World War. Don't mistake me as a sadist - I am very depressed about all this just the way you are. But I see this as an opportunity to learn tough lessons; to put into reality some of the measures that the Keynesians have been cribbing for quite some time; to put checks against financial institutions that go on a spree unchecked; to persuade development institutions who blackmail cutting of loans/funds unless there is free & open market without thinking through the consequences.; to work towards reducing growth gaps.

This is the best opportunity we have to work on financial reforms. If we dont use it, we have only all of us to blame in less than a decade again for similar situations.

ISB is World #15 - FT MBA 2009 rankings

ISB did it again!

After catapulting itself to FT #20 for MBA 2008 rankings, ISB has bettered its act. FT announced ISB as the World's 15th best MBA school in its 2009 rankings.

Last year, after the rankings were released, there was a major downplay of this record by non-sportive people. But ISB has proved itself and made sure that it is here to stay and is not just a one time (w)oneder. One of the comments in my previous blog when ISB was declared a FT #20 school said I was being profound. I stand by what I said that day and am proud of this school and this moment again.

Congrats to ex-dean MR, Dean Ajit, Chairman Rajat, the Governing board, all resident and visiting Professors, all the staff and all the alumni and students of this great school.

This is really an awesome time for Indian higher education. Go ISB!

Obama and he future of offshoring/Indian IT/ITeS

So Obama is in the coveted seat finally.

And after all the celebration of the black man moving into the White house, now the who's who of India Inc. is sitting up to see what this revolution means to them. In particular sweat are the IT/ITeS guys who worry that Obama's anti-offshore stand would affect their glorious run for a long time.

Their concerns are filled with reason. The new President has promised to punish those companies who send American jobs offshore. After all, the democrats are a labor party. And how can their President not listen to the socialistic calls? I have seen lot of Op-Ed columns in recent days blaming Obama for not taking a leadership stand when it comes to offshoring issues, but just succumbing to partisan politics and short term benefits.

A couple of days back at a social gathering, one of my acquaintances, who is a Senior VP with India's largest tech services company, said that the IT future of India looks bleak and maybe we will go back to pre-2000 days. Though the companies would remain profitable, he added that the margins will shrink, hiring will slow down and growth will not be at amazing numbers like before. A few people asked me what my take was.

Yes. We don't have a rosy picture for India now. Economic meltdown, Mumbai attacks, Satyam fiasco, Obama in the White house - infact it looks like when it rains, it pours!. So many anti-effects for India-IT.Com.. Yeah, the picture isn't good and analysts sentiments are real bad. Infact even after good results, a few IT companies stocks have been downgraded by analysts because the future is uncertain and current performances are largely because of currency fluctuations.

But lets put analysts away for a while. Business and world do not run by what media or analysts "think". Evaluating future of IT companies of India by analyst sentiments is lequivalent to saying that the Fed should form its operating principles based on what gamblers in Atlantic City or Las Vegas "think".

As much as we talk about problems of globalization, the inequalities created because of such moves (and I am a very strong subscriber to that faith), the (unfortunate) truth is that nobody is in control of globalization. It is not a phenomenon that you can stop by pushing a button. Obama may sit in the Oval office and proclaim himself as the World's most powerful man, but neither he nor anyone has the power to stop globalization. The world is shrinking at such a rapid pace that competitve advantages will overcome absolute advantages over a very short period of time.

If Obama thinks that he can "control" offshoring, by offering tax breaks to those who dont offshore and "punishing" those who do, he is simply trying to cover his eyes and claim that the Sun is gone. US has been doing this kind of manipulation in several sectors (like Textiles, or Fisheries for example); but in a matter of time, companies will stop buying this. You cannot control offshoring by these kind of laws. If he is serious about improving jobs in America, Obama would rather focus on building education platforms, control cost of living and make labor freely available with necessary talent.

By enacting laws to prevent offshoring, Obama will enable only weaking of companies who struggle to survive without quality labor or who struggle to live with high cost labor and finally end up offshoring anyway or worse, close shop or lose to competition from rest of the world.

So my take on this matter is that, Obama can do what he wants to do - the Indian IT will not face any crunch as long as we are backed my good educational institutions, great talent and of course, comparitively cheap labor. If we are worried with stock downgrades, I think we should conveniently stop worrying - as the analysts who do these funny acts really are playing without getting the big picture. After all, the analysts are gamblers - Do you still listen to them?

Satyam - a Poison Pill?

It has been bothering me for some time if Satyam had eventually decided to swallow the poison-pill? When the Maytas news broke out on Dec 16, there has been a bunch of conspiracy theories going around.

One big possibility which I tended to incline slightly at that time was:
- the promoters stake was getting diluted because sale of mortgaged Satyam stock by lenders (which were mortgaged in the first place to invest in Real estate)
- the only way the promoters could keep management control was to do a MBO(management buyout) of the company (with help of PEs)
- and the best way to do it was to reduce the buyout rate

While the above seems a nice little corporate theatrical act, there are lot of obvious gaps in the story.

With news being surfaced about the controversial Dec 16 board meet, there are questions if Satyam really decide to take the poison pill to avoid takeover by IBM or HP? That Satyam may get acquired is not a new story. As early as 2003, there have been strong rumors of a EDS takeover. From 2005, it was a IBM takeover story - the rumors got only stronger.
- What if they werent rumors? What if one of the IT biggies was ready to swallow the Indian IT major?
- By taking a poison pill to invest in real estate and infrastructure, it was a smart way to keep the interested parties away as they would have no interest in these kind of ventures
- Or was the poison pill an act too? - to cover up siphoning of funds and/or lack of real cash?

Some time back I watched Barbarians at the Gate - the fall of RJR Nabisco. Maybe we will have our own movie soon once we figure out the screenplay.

(For the record, I HATE conspiracy theories of any sort).

Trusting Economists - an oxymoron?

Uwe Reinhardt, an economics professor at Princeton says

Matters are worse when, wittingly or unwittingly, economists infuse their analysis with their own (or a political client’s) preferred ideology.

Consider, for example, President Bill Clinton’s 1993-94 health-reform plan. In this plan, President Clinton proposed a mandate on employers to provide their employees with health insurance.

Politically conservative economists predicted that the mandate on employers to provide employees with health insurance would lead to vast unemployment. Economists supporting the Clinton health plan predicted that the negative employment effect of the mandate would be small, and that the effect might even be to increase employment.

It can be shown with a simple mathematical model that an economist’s prediction in this regard is powerfully driven by two assumptions about the behavioral responses to mandated employer-paid health insurance.

The first is the responsiveness of the supply of labor — that is, how many workers are willing to work — to changes in take-home pay. Economists generally believe that employers reduce take-home pay to recoup their contributions to any sort of fringe benefit, including employer-paid health insurance. If workers are very sensitive to changes in take-home pay, one would predict a highly negative employment effect in response to government-mandated, employer-paid health insurance, other things being equal — i.e., the number of people with jobs should go down.

On the other hand, if the supply of labor is relatively unresponsive to declines in take-home pay, one would predict only a small decline in overall employment in response to the mandate. Unfortunately, the empirical literature on this responsiveness offers economists a wide range of estimates from which they can choose judiciously to make their (or their political client’s) preferred case.

The second effect bearing on this issue is the value workers place on having health insurance on the job. If that value is high, then the employment effect of the mandate might even be positive, other things being equal, as people choose to enter the work force just to get health insurance. Some economists in the Clinton era who supported the Clinton health plan appear to have used this hypothesized effect to predict a net increase in employment in response to the employer mandate.

This example starkly illustrates how easy it is for economists to infuse their own ideology – or that of their clients – into what may appear to outsiders as objective, scientific analysis.

………
So there you have the flexibility, shall we say, that economists enjoy when they apply their professional skills to affairs of state in what may seem, to outsiders, like purely scientific analyses.

In the first lecture of my freshman economics course at Princeton titled “The Art of Siffing Among Seasoned Adults,” I demonstrate how seasoned adults routinely structure information felicitously (i.e., “sif”) to further their own agenda, and I point out that economists can be among the most skillful practitioners of this art.

“If at the end of this course you still trust me,” I warn them, “I have failed in my mission. When economists advise on public policy, the operative mantra is Caveat Emptor!”

(source: The New York Times)

Blacklisting (and) World Bank

I am not sure what is this big obsession with World Bank blacklisting companies. After the Satyam fiasco, now IBN and ET are reporting in big titles that Indian IT companies Wipro, Megasoft have also been barred by this lending institution. The World Bank is also acting as a moral king by saying that they are publicly disclosing these names (and it is on the first home page of the worldbank.org website) for transparency reasons.

Now lets come to the point - so what?

The World Bank does not carry morals of any sort to command such a important headline in this area. If they have banned Satyam, Wipro or anyone, it is something internal to them. Why does the developing world need to care so much? The World Bank has not set any standards on ethics or corruption free practices. The World Bank has not set or upped any bar on moral codes of conduct. The World Bank has not even tried to keep its house in clean order before banning others for polluting it.

If only the World Bank was a publicly listed entity, no one would be purchasing its shares in any market- developing or otherwise. The organization would have folded for corporate governance (or the lack of it), (mis)management, double standards and corrupt practices. Ideally many organizations like Wipro would have banned doing any business with World Bank.

Maybe, the first thing the World Bank can do to ensure its integrity is to publish a list of (total, if not of individual staff) share holdings with institutions and and real estate holdings of areas/countries they do business with.

Back to my other rhetoric. The emerging popular media of India, IBN, CNBC, NDTV & TOI should stop sleeping with anyone who can be called as "flash news". The top respected journalists of India should be setting standards now, instead of running a TRP ratings war against each other. The media should ask relevant questions and also understand sensitivities. But when who cares?

Lot of good (wo)men..

It hurts.

After being celebrated as a czar of India software, today Ramalinga Raju is the most shamed corporate king in India Inc. Incident of this sort is unprecedented in India. It is not to say that there have been no frauds of this magnitude, but they have all been dealt with either secretly or somehow. And today, the media has a field day with reporters from CNBC, NDTV Profit shouting a the top of their voices 24x7 on the Satyam fiasco.

How is it possible that a company survived a lie of this sort so long? How is it possible that of all people, Ramalinga Raju - a supposedly perfect gentleman, a top philanthropist of India could have done this? How could any of them involved sleep peacefully for years trying to stuff this cash vacuum into their pillowcases? All invetigations, media rumors will fetch the truth slowly. The role of auditors, bankers, government will come out along with erstwhile management of the company.

But it is not about the company and its financials. An IT company is about people. It is about talent that is accumulated. And Satyam undoubtedly has some of the best talents of this country. What is to become to all of them? It is important for the Satyam staff to stay united. All the leadership principles that have been fed in the past years have to swing into action now. This is the time of real crisis - something which no one has imagined would happen, leave alone experiencing it in the past. All the emotional guns have to be fired now. For at the middle of it, there is a strong company, supported by strong people and servicing strong clients. 80% of the company's revenues come from 20% of the customers. It is important for the current leadership to connect with that 20% and retain business.

What Satyam needs to provide now is a swift, dramatic response. It is important for the company to prove that "Not everyone in Satyam is like Raju and Raju alone does not make Satyam".

The employees have to stop panicking. Trying to jump ship blindly is useless at this time. It is recession and no one is hiring. Jumping ship now is like jumping into the ocean leaving a current ship, which can still be made workable and move ahead. It is important for all employees to stay united, reassure clients, and try to salvage what is left. This is easier said than done - but definitely is the better course. Any mass resignations will only start a downward spiral.

Finally the media. All I have to write is a rhetoric. As it is, the big financial institutional investors are just gamblers who do nothing worthwhile on their own, but bet money on horses and try to make massive profits out of the winning horse. And financial analysts are even worse - all they do it just give some random running commentary of the horse race and make money of it. The media analysts are the most horrible - With no real talent to make a product or sale or run a business and generate money on their own, they just try to make profits by advising people on who runs better business. These are a bunch of jokers who have no idea of what is smoking under their pants until there is fire in entire building. I havent seen anything predictive out of the so called smart analysts. All they have done is more damage by pressurising people who do real work to manipulate financial records like backdating stock options or cooking books or bloating profits.

But who wants to hear? If the media can mess up something sensitive as Mumbai terror attack with utmost disregard for human lives and national security, will they ever find out that they are the ones who are putting unnecessary pressures on people who run real businesses? Will media ever understand that 50000 employees of Satyam are wondering about their livelihood and will need support at this point of time? Well, for those who copy titles like India's 9/11 and India's Enron and India's Obama, am sure they will not have any brains to think along these lines.

Until the next fraud happens, life will go on for media/analysts/investors. This episode will become a reference case for media and B-school case in Strategy (mis)mangement. But for current Satyamites, this is a struggle, a challenge and a war - one which they never wanted or imagined to be part of.

However the IT folks are much much better than analysts, investors and media. The IT engineers to do real operational work and make real money out of their work - than by betting and commenting and advising. That is why I still feel all the associates of Satyam will ensure that they can bounce back.

There are not just few good (wo)men in Satyam, there are lots of them.