IDEAS...........

After 3 quarters of MBA, 16 final exams, countless quizzes and mid-terms I just thought about reflecting on the quality of some of the exam papers. Well, some of them have been absolutely amazing...The Operations Research Paper in Q2 stands out as being the best so far....There are quite a few close that rank second..One among them is my Q3 marketing paper....

Just thought of writing about it...
I recollect the joy on my face after completing the exams. Not because I had cracked it..Infact I hadnt....But because of the quality of questions....Simply amazing...Made me think, think and think again...And the question paper started with the following words ' Take a deep breadth, think, think again, collect your thoughts and then write'.....




Ok now to cut the long story short..There was a question which said

Explain 2 retail formats and then try marrying them and see what you get of it and if its a faesable option ?

I thought about it ( ya..for a change took 5 minutes to think !) and finally took a call that factory outlets and malls are the best options. The malls have a lot of footfalls but it doesnt translate into sales, what if all the leading brands open their factory outlets in a mall.....I also mentioned about having such malls near the IT parks , would definitely translate into higher sales.....

I put a lot of fundae justifying this.....
And now the best part...

Check out this article from Business Line..This came a couple of days back...

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/catalyst/2007/03/22/stories/2007032200210100.htm

Wow..exciting isnt it ?...Some idea which I felt was viable is actually being implemented...And I didnt know about it earlier....!!!

Encourages me to keep reading and keep thinking

The Number Game

Being a hardcore cricket enthusiast you would be expecting me
to be working overnight to get India's Net run rate calculations right... An exact value that would enable us to reach the Super 8 stages of the World Cup. How much do we need to score if we bat first, by what margin do we need to win our remaining matches, how many wickets can we afford to lose in the bargain and so on...

Well, I am certainly dabbling with a lot of numbers, but of a slightly different nature...

Today, cricket is a great money spinner. The kind of money involved is mind boggling. It is speculated that advertisment slots worth around 12000 crores have already been sold. (Infact its so huge, that I really
dont know the exact number of zeros in it !! ). LG, Pepsi, Nike, Hutch, Nokia, ITC.. the list goes on and on..Why have all of them pumped in so much money ? For the simple reason that they expect Team India to reach atleast the semi-finals (If it does that, it would have played 10 matches) and this would guarantee a good TRP rating for the channel and probably a good ROI for the companies.

Just imagine what would happen to all this money if Team India is sent packing ! What happens to all the projected ROI's, sales estimation, month long promotional campaigns ?? Would a West Indies - Ireland 2nd round match generate the same viewership ??....Would the number of Indians watching the World Cup remain the same, or would half of them just switch off ?... Lots of questions......Much more difficult than calculating the Net Run Rate......

To add on...Even Mandira Bedi's clothes or the 'lack of it' wont be
able to do the trick.. Hence India has to qualify.....and something
tells me that they will... Not necessarily a cricketing reason !!!

Functional Expertise

A brilliant article..again talks about the importance of various
disciplines of management and why we should not compartmentalize....

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/manager/2007/03/19/stories/2007031900371000.htm

Mallu Nomenclatures


Found this extremely hilarious article on one of the blogs...
Its a must read............................

http://anilgeorge.blogspot.com/2007/03/naming-in-mallu-land-remake-6174.html

Compartmentalization V/S Generalization

Case 1
Almost a year back I read the news of the CFO if a major IT giant (am not taking names for security issues!!!) was shifted as the global head HR, with his main responsibility being to reduce attrition and attracting the best talent.

How on earth is it possible? Come on, he was the CFO, he must have taken only Fin Courses in colleges and laughed at people studying those ‘HR kinda jargons’…..Would he have ever imagined that one fine day he would be leading the global HR practice.. Definitely NOT……As usual, I read that piece of news and in a couple of days time had forgotten about it.

Case 2
When I joined IIT M, (this was around 9 months back) I had this strong opinion that ‘Marketing is all nonsense’, You cant teach it’, etc etc (I probably had harsher words for it…). And I remember when I saw the course structure, I was utterly disappointed…3 marketing papers…..! Kab khatam hoga ……


Today, after 3 ‘quarters’ of my MBA, I have a completely different opinion. I discovered..(note the word discovered…Nothing is given in a platter, atleast at PG level, it depends on the student initiative) that pure compartmentalization does not work. I have learnt to integrate what I learn in various courses.

If you are still not convinced here are a few examples how subjects are inter-related…

Stanton uses Economic Order Quantity funda in logistics, Kotler talks about ABC Analysis of costing; Operations Mgmt talks about aggregate planning being the backbone of ERP…The core of finance comes from theories in Mathematics and Economics…..etc etc……….

I guess integration is the key to success in the long term. That is the key why the person in Case 1 was successful in an entirely new role. He learnt, he applied, he integrated and he re-learnt…

Learning with a holistic perspective makes learning a lot more enjoyable………

Balaraman Chips in.............
Right from the first quarter i have been seeing many ppl linking assts with grades. I wud like to differ here. If u think finishing the asst is to help u score better grades then u can never improve ur knowledge base.
Consider every asst as an opportunity to explore the subject and try to learn something out of it. If u detach the assts from grades and try to look at it separately trust me not only ll it be enjoyable but also u will gain a whole lot of things
Observe youself...is there any use in submitting and finishing an assignment jus for the heck of it?? and it was really amazin to see how ppl manage to create a team project when individual assignments are given. i thiink they are all True , virgin team men!!!...why do ppl behave like this? Are they so busy or totally uninterested? Even if u r then waht rights do u have to claim something as yours when factually it is not so??
And then comes the ooos and aaas whenever there is an hint of assignment. Being an MBA we shud b given live projects.But here v r...burdened(?) by even the smallest of assignemnts. Be fortunate to get assts..the thing tht difeerentiates the premier schools frm others is the no of assts those students do in a week. More they are the better.
Then come the negotiations..is it possible to postpone because of this and tht..in real life is this possible.???..shudnt we equip ourselves with parallel processing. Mind u ...our brain is so powerful and capable ..v r not putting tht to gud use
So Frnds the next time v r given an asst..pls luk fwd for more... let us do justice to it as only then v ll do justice to our capacity..

From Passion to Aversion

You are extremely passionate about something. Really love doing it..and then all of a sudden ..you just starting hating it..want to avoid it any cost….How often in life does it happen?

What am I talking about?...Its about Holi..The festival of colors. As I look back (not very long ago… just high school days)..Holi was an exceptional day. Planning used to start a week in advance. It used to coincide with my 2nd unit test, so I better plan how I am going to allocate time for my celebrations. I chalked out my study plan is such a way that I found time to celebrate this wonderful festival. In great spirit we used to assemble at our building terrace and invite people to join. Note the word invite..I don’t remember forcing people to come in..Can’t claim to be a saint tho… an odd balloon used to be thrown at people walking on the road a few days prior to Holi..but they were all uncles and aunties we knew and it was all in good spirit.

Then a series of events took place that has completely shaken my belief about this festival. My take on it now..It is more of (Hooli) ganism…The amount of noise, forcing people to come and play..Its not just about only friendly splashing of colors…It’s a lot lot more…And Im unable to comprehend…Either I’m right or maybe that Ive gone nuts. But there is a way to do things. Giving an individual the freedom to choose if he wants to play or not is a basic one…Is that happening? We keep talking about Indian tradition and values, but there are a lot of things we can learn from the West. Give every man his space, freedom to choose what he wants to and never try to impose yourself on him/her. This is something I find missing….

Either Im right..or maybe Ive gone nuts…..Trying to find an answer?????