THE Y-AXIS by Rajesh Kumar

The joke goes back to when we were engineering students. A highly respected professor, who inspired awe in Mechanical Engineering students had just finished teaching concepts of IC Engine and left for home in his car. The car unfortunately broke down near the hostel, and the professor had to arrange a mechanic. It was a strange sight of two types of experts - one who probably know all about the mechanics of a car engine but could not figure out what was wrong with his own car, and the second(mechanic) - who knew how to get the car started, but probably knew little about the calculations of valve timing or the firing sequence of cylinders. Paradox, isn't it? Digital Marketing today has exactly these two types of 'experts'. Unfortunately, the industry needs practitioners one can interweave conceptual understanding backed by hands on expertise on tools and techniques - knowing one of the two is not enough.  It is with this intent that we subjected students of Martech career tr...

For way too long, observers in business transformation space have kept their telescope intently focused on large, billion-dollar enterprises. The unintended consequence of this telescope vision is that small enterprises, that are all around us, have been missed. We can contend that maybe something akin of a ‘periscopic view’ that allows for a 360 scan of the neighbourhood is required to observe something remarkable that is taking place next to us. However, to understand this in proper context, we must step back and look at the waves of technology adoption and its impact on the businesses. In the initial years of IT adoption, or computerization as it was called then, was primarily a functional level adoption in large organisations in the West, be it Banks (transactional data of customers), Hospitals (patient records management), Manufacturing (production planning or inventory) or Insurance companies (claims processing). It was all about efficiency. In the next wave, organisations took...

 Cornflakes are not very preferred breakfast in my house so very often we don't even have it in stock. So this morning when I told my daughter I am going out to get a pack, she insisted I get the plain flavour. She reminded me specifically not to get the honey flavour. I assumed this is because she did not like the honey flavour which I seem to have bought the previous time.  What happened next is quite intriguing. Not only did she pour cornflakes and milk in the bowl, she also poured a large spoon of honey on top. I asked her the reason - "that's the  right way  to eat cornflakes", she insisted.  The brand would read this act of pouring honey in cornflakes as potential demand for honey flavoured cornflakes - the agency would helpfully bring in the supporting data probably - but only one problem -  this customer cluster does not want it, they want to  experience  adding the honey to it! Many brands still sell by deconstructing their physical ...

This article of mine is available on the Hindu Businessline. Click here to access it.

 Very pleased to see the initiative from students at Jagdish Sheth School of Management in launching their journal, that they have nicely christened as JAGSOM World . 

 Live blogging is fun, especially if the event is such intensely engaging. BTW, conferences are supposed to happen in large auditoriums or hotel banquet halls, aren't they? Fortunately, the answer is a no. This is the inaugural session of Convergence 2020  and there are over 150 attendees not visible in the picture, because they are online!! Dr Atish Chattopadhyay, Director, IFIM Business School, while speaking at the start of the event, brought the concept of Service as "seva", which he pointed our as worship, as believed in the eastern philosophy, as opposed to a transaction (or a set of transactions) in the West. Dr A. Parasuraman,  while introducing the event make the remark (I think he was quoting someone but I could not make a note of that), "Nothing is more practical than a good theory". He was underscoring the point that research is not an exercise in isolation, but it has to be take away for the practice. Such a telling point in few words!! Two amazing ...

Conferences have meant different things to me at different times. Over a decade back, when my wife was working on her PhD, I was curious to know what is it that academicians and researchers travel across the world to speak and listen to, because I used to see her very excitedly prepare for such conferences. I was in the industry then, and my view was guided by  industry conferences  attended and organised. They were full of gloss - dazzling presentations, jargons being dropped and lapped up, dapper looking executives who were more found in the lobby than in the main hall, and the my-car-is-more-expensive-than-your-car glance that was noticed at the hotel entrance.It was my view then that it was only the travel and hospitality industry that gains from conferences! Things took a different turn when I switched careers and crossed over to academia. While conferences retained the fun quotient, they became an interesting hot-spot to meet the real thought leaders . White background s...

A Disaster Recovery situation is the worst nightmare of an application manager. There are a zillion data back-up solutions available in the market, but at best they are just like insurance - you hope it would work in the event of a crisis such as cyber attack or crash, but one doesn't know for sure. The reality is that getting an application up is messy, once we add application configuration and application data to the mix. With most applications on cloud these days, they remain exposed to the worst of internet threats.  No airline can stop booking tickets just because their ticketing system went down. Neither can a retailer afford to lose billing on a Black Friday because the order capture or the inventory system is down due to an internal or external event. That's where's Kubesafe's innovative approach comes in. It not just takes snapshot of applications and  configurations as one image, but in the event of an internal or external event leading to disaster, Kubesafe r...

 One of the major challenges of Corona Pandemic is that one always feels the need to get informed advice on various aspects of preventive care from it. While the Covid vaccines are sometime away, what does one do, if we feel some anxiety about any other ailment that requires medical advice? Fortunately, we have Ayurveda and other forms of wellness advice to look at. Dr Pankaj Chansarkar is an accomplished Ayurveda Specialist, Holistic Healing and Wellness Coach , who is just a video call away. 

Breakthology is a venture of Tarunjit Singh Bachcher, a top organisation performance coach in India. Good to see the shiny new website of Breakthology .

Prayanama benefits us in several ways. It regulates our body's processes, reduces stress, protects us from common respiratory issues, improves sleep and digestion and so on. It also makes one feel joyful. Learning Pranayama has two elements: 1. Some guidance from a practitioner who understands every human body is different 2. Regularity, regularity and regularity The following instructions are to help you start your Pranayama journey. Some simple instructions to follow for Pranayama in the morning: *Pre* Loose dress. Empty bowel Take bath if weather in your city is warm No tea/coffee or any food prior to this (last 4 hours at least). Two classes of water, at least 10 minutes before starting. Warm water ideally. Basic Yoga mat *During* No aroma of food, perfume or agarbatti nearby Please open the window - fresh air/ventilated room is an important requirement. Don't wear watches or trackers etc. Turn off the fan *Post* Move/walk within the house for 10 ...

Last fortnight was a joy, as we came to the launch of Metis Talent Management's website. Metis is a Singapore based organisation that advises clients on Talent Management with a primary focus on Talent Development and Organisation Design . Best wishes to team Metis! The other great thing is how folks at Metis approached this by going in for a full overhaul, including getting a new logo and brand colours. Do leave your comments on what you feel about the website and the logo!!

Of late I have found myself very obsessed with Alex Osterwalder's business model canvas. It seems to be all over the place - in workshops, training sessions, CEO talks in B-Schools and in generally every intellectually sounding talk! Having heard this turn business model at the turn of the century when all sort of logic-defying business ideas were bandied about as unique business models, I had become programmed to turn an instant sceptic whenever this term was used in presentations. Thanks to this refreshing new approach, which appears as smooth as Swiss Chocolate, I found myself forced to look at the 9 blocks of Osterwalder's business model which seem to present a more complete picture. Of late, I have been part of few envisioning exercises myself and found this model very handy, though I do add my own spice to it, such as using colour code in that box which reflects significant innovation and is critical for the value proposition.

For generations of MBA students who have grown up on the staple of the Marketing Management that so lovingly called just 'Kotler', the book, yet another one bearing Kotler's name, brings in a bagful of fresh air. Marketing 4.0: Moving from Traditional to Digital If management or business books can be classified as instructional, conceptual, feel good and general read, this book qualifies as all four. Add to that keen observation skills of the authors as well as intellectual intrigue present in the book, the combination of which makes it a must-read for anyone who wants to be informed of the evolutionary directions in marketing. This book follows (not succeeds) “Marketing 3.0”, published by the same authors(Kotler, Kartajaya and Setiwan) in the year 2010. Perhaps the fact that Kotler is an academician and researcher par-excellence and Kartajaya and Setiwan happen to be practicing marketers, provides this book a unique perspective, one that is neither too academic in na...

The news came overnight of Microsoft announcing its acquisition of GitHub, something that was rumoured over the web in the last couple of days. I see a considerable outpouring of emotions in the developer community regarding this acquisition. As someone whose first introduction (as a developer) to Microsoft was in the year 2001 learning what as beta versions of .Net development platform, I have passively watched the evolution Microsoft and other tech giants this century. I wasn't great at programming, but this experience, as well as subsequent ones, offered me a good perspective of the tech world. My advice is, watch before you jump in joy at Microsoft acquisition of GitHub. The reasons are as follows: A.  Microsoft has a very questionable record about making meaningful sense with many of its big-ticket acquisitions. Cases in point - Skype(Loosely hanging in its portfolio, we used it a decade back, now we don't), Nokia(yes, the company ...

Since we started www.ideacopter.com at the turn of the year, we ventured into the unknown. But having a very exciting four months and we feel our mission of making marketing accessible to startups is more valid than ever. Marketing in general, but more specifically branding, digital marketing etc is practised in a very unscientific fashion in most startups. But the great thing is that all startups realize Brand is something they can't afford to ignore anymore, especially, if they wish to scale up. We at Ideacopter attempt to fill that gap. Let's see how the rest of the year goes.

Competence has been defined as the ability to do something successfully. It has been linked to intelligence. Therefore, one can say that becoming culturally competent requires one to be culturally intelligent. But what is cultural intelligence? An outsider, who has a natural ability to understand and interpret an unfamiliar culture is said to be culturally intelligent. This can be very useful in today's world when people travel for work quite early in their career. A person who is culturally intelligent(and competent) does not judge things very quickly, rather, tries to get into the next layer of behaviour. The Head-Body-Heart concept stated in the article "Cultural Intelligence" by Early and Mosakowski presents an interesting approach. The authors argue that when stepping into a new culture, one needs to build bridges using 'Head'(Cognitive issues), 'Body'(Physical dimensions such as dresses) and 'Heart'(emotional & motivational). ...