Scrabulously Wrong!

The Open Source revolution is here to stay, say most internet and computer experts. The open source revolution which has spiralled from writing operating system programms like Linux to application ‘widgets’ for various we based applications is currently in vougue with most programming savvy people indulging in. The advantage of the open source revolution is volunatry sharing of user generated ‘open’ source codes for the applications which can be sold at a price if the developer so intends, but essentially is a free to be upgraged, modified and marketed by any user if he or she is also into coding. This is a tremendous opportuity for millions of computer programmers around the world who are able to use thier coding knowledge to build better models of a basic functional tool and market it for profits.
But there are many, for lack of a better word, discrepancies in the open source revolution. Take for instance a situation when an open source program creates an application which replicates a patented real world product, service or an experience in the virtual world. What are the rules which govern this? Is it in violation of the patent rules? This is exactly what is happening in the case of Hasbro vs Scrabulous. Scrabulous, developed by two Kolkata residents, Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla is the virtual version of the hit word game Scrabble which is a patented product owned by Hasbro.

Read On...

Olympic Mascots...

Why do the mascots for the Olympic Games suck? Most of the the mascots for the summer Olympic games fail to impress me. As a hobby, I follow mascots for various sporting events around the world. The mascots for the 2008 Beijing Olympics are called ‘Fuwa’ - five mascots which represent traditional Chinese elements of fire, wood, water, gold and earth. But I just don’t find these five interesting or cute enough. Read On

http://anandvrao.wordpress.com/

It lands, creates a buzz... then disappears!

I have been doing a study on the outdoor advertising industry in India recently as a part of a consultancy assignment at work, and one of the catch phrases which people in this industry use to describe their business is

In outdoor, the medium is the message!

Interestingly today, I came across this article about a 7500 square foot ad which has been commisioned for Chanel. It is a whole mobile art pavilion which looks something like this...

Designed by a London based designer, this futuristic looking building has been commissioned by Chanel. And voila! amongst one of the many description of the building, one of them goes as follows,

The most important piece of art is the container itself!

StumbleUpon a pot of Gold!

I have recently installed the now famous Stumbleupon toolbar on my internet explorer, and man! is it addictive! All I have to do is indicate what my preferences are and voila! I can be directed to very interesting websites I never knew existed! This works very well when you have sometime to kill; you have finished reading all the updates on the regular sites you usually visit and don’t know what to find on the internet. (Ofcourse, Stumbleupon is not a substitute for going outdoors or reading a book, when one has time to kill; but it defenitely makes sense when its pouring cats and dogs, especially in Mumbai, where one dares not venture far from home, during the rainy season)
Stumbleupon is a very powerful tool according to me. Google currently makes money by... Continue

" Read also at http://anandvrao.wordpress.com "

Constraints, and the way to approach issues

Manangement techniques and aproaches argue that there are constraints which govern any business model and the businesses need to exploit their available resources to the maximum extent therby achieving the best possible outcome that is ‘allowed’, as defined by the limits imposed by the constraints.
A thought came to me when I was travelling on the local suburban trains here in Mumbai. Amongst the three suburban rail corridors which run in Mumbai, the Western Railway system is considered to be better than that of the Central Railway and the Harbour Line. Not that the Western Railway is any less crowded, but what one observes is that rakes on the Western corridor are better maintained and rattle and sway less, literally!
I was being thrown about on the Central Railway earlier today, between the Currey Road junction and Victoria Terminus; and this dichotomy came to my mind.... Continue

" Read also at http://anandvrao.wordpress.com/ "

Green Marketing

An idea which has come of age is that of ‘Green Marketing’. This consists of the marketing of products which are environmentally friendly. The scope of this includes not only the communication process which needs to be specially focussed on promoting the product as being environmentally friendly, but also the necessary product and process modification so as to actually make the product ‘Green’. Today, awareness about global warming and eco consciousness is at an all time high. With the massive deforestation of the rain forests and the rapidly eroding greenery in our cities and countryside the eco systems of our neighbourhoods are changing for the worse. Under such circumstances, ‘Green Marketing’ is a way for companies to at least partially follow a ‘blue ocean strategy’.
To quote an example, consider the case of electronic component manufacturers in India who are a part of a global supply chain. They are suppliers to various companies in Europe and America, where it is now illegal to have electronic items which have certain levels of hazardous chemicals. The electronic product manufacturers are governed by directives like RoHS which stands for Restriction of use of certain Hazardous Chemicals. This law which came into effect on 1st July 2006 prohibits any electronic product to be sold in the market which fails to comply with the standards as described in the RoHS directive. In an industry that is dependent on the assembly of components sourced effectively by the diverse supply base, these laws have implications which are far flung. These and other such laws also offer a unique opportunity for companies to gain competitive advantages over others by being the first to organize the supply chain to be able to cope with the requirements. Many Indian electronic component manufacturers, who previously found themselves in a tough position wrung by all the proverbial five forces described by Michael Porter, in the wake of stiff price competition from Chinese manufacturers, have used this opportunity to find themselves a ‘blue ocean’ to regain their market competence.
‘Green Marketing’ is essentially a way to create a point of differentiation for one’s products. Companies which can successfully brand themselves as a ‘Green’ company and at the same time successfully integrate their supply chains to cope with the requirements of producing a ‘Green’ product can gain a sustainable competitive advantage in the market place of the near future. This will require significant investment in research of both product development and supply chain integration and also in effective communication strategy. An example of this would be the investments made by Toyota Corporation in the hybrid cars division.
Unlike many horizon planning strategies which are followed by companies, where the investments in research for the future may not always be passed on to current customers, the scope and scale of investment required for ‘Green’ products may necessitate such a measure. Successful ‘Green’ marketers will be those who will be able to identify the opportunity costs involved and avoid making the current generation of customers bear the costs for those of the future; although it might be in the interest of the current generation of customers in the long run to do so!

" Read also at http://anandvrao.wordpress.com/ "

The Decision Maker

The famous economist Adam Smith once noted “having money gives one the ability to ‘command’ other’s labour”. This is a succinct way of explaining purchasing power and is very relevant for anyone who is trying to chart a career in marketing. Why? The answer is simple; marketing works best when those who you are marketing to, have the purchasing power, i.e. the ability to command your labour in exchange for their money.
But for marketers, is it sufficient to target those that have the money, to make a sale? Again, the ‘invisible hand’ theoretician had wise words for us. He warned us not to ignore the thrifty housewife’s contribution to the economy as she compares prices at a local store. For instance in India and most other countries of the world, men are the income earning members of the family and have the control over the expenditure of this income. But it is not difficult to observe that the majority of what the household spends on is decided by the women. So, as a marketer it makes more sense to catch the attention of the women and thereby influence those who have the control over the strings of the purse, rather than the men who may be the purse bearers. This need to capture the decision maker’s attention is a refinement over the traditional target audience definition which marketers identify while developing their strategy. If the traditional market segmentation is done based on demographic variables like age, gender, income bracket etc, the emphasis on targeting decision makers requires the marketer to create a special value proposition to those who may not be the end users, but rather the key influencers in the buying process.
Examples of this can be seen in the advertising schedules of many products and services. Advertisements for Star Cruise vacations are actually broadcast on channels like Cartoon Network and Pogo to catch the attention of children who then influence their parents to go on these vacations. The creative for a medicinal product which aids in the reduction of male pattern baldness actually addresses the woman, negotiating with her to purchase the medicine for her husband!
This emphasis on the decision maker also necessitates a different approach to the metrics of media plan. From a traditional Opportunity to See (OTS) measure of exposure to the target market segment, marketers are now moving towards more experiential marketing platforms. The experience which the decision maker has of the product or service becomes of paramount importance and media planners now look for Opportunity to Experience (OTE) components before deciding on the marketing plans.
For example, when Financial Times (FT), position themselves as a paper read by the CEOs, by organizing symposiums of global leaders, they are essentially conveying to their advertisers that the ‘Decision Makers’ are reading their paper and endorsing it; and hence add more value to their product. Gone are the days when the circulation and readership numbers of the newspaper, among target demographic audience could have helped attract more advertisers. If ICICI bank uses the catch line that they are ‘the most preferred bank’ among younger corporate decision makers, it is because they want other such people with high disposable incomes to bank with them.
And thus the value of the ‘Decision Maker’ is the critical variable in a marketer’s formula. Market research firms like AC-Nielsen ORG MARG now provide companies (like ICICI bank) with a Decision Maker’s Survey (DMS) to aid them in identifying the ideal channels for communicating to the ‘Decision Makers’ directly!

" Read also at http://anandvrao.wordpress.com/ "

Private Labels

Private label pose the biggest threats to branded FMCG businesses. The normal margin structure in a typical FMCG supply chain today is as follows. The margin for the carry and forwarder (C&F) is ranges from 1 - 4%. That of a stockist ranges from 4 - 9% and that of the retailer ranges from around 8 – 17%. Also as the channel of distribution has gained prominence in the consumer’s mind due to pervasiveness of their reach, the retailer increasingly calls the shots. In such an environment, consumers increasingly face the pinch of higher prices. Hence, the best way for the retailer to add value to the consumer would be to remove the price burden he bears. The solution – creation of private labels. This makes good economic sense too as is indicated by the following table

Just as an indicator one can observe, that private label business of Wal-Mart is USD 126 billion. This figure is greater than that of the total sales revenue of Nestlé’s which is considered as the largest FMCG manufacturer brand in terms of sales.

" Read also at http://anandvrao.wordpress.com/ "

"Dissolve like Sugar in Milk" ... Ideas for FMCG

What is important today in terms of branding in FMCG products? With the clutter of products on display and available for consumption, there is increasingly a trend of consumer indifference towards your product. When the product life cycle is also very short, what becomes important is creating a sustainable brand. One solution for this can be explained with this story.

Legend says that when the Parsi immigrants from Iran landed in Gujarat, India many centuries ago, they approached the local King to seek permission to stay in his country. The King who was not very keen on letting foreigners to settle in his land showed the Parsi leader a bowl of milk filled to the brim and said that like this, there was no space for more people. The Parsi leader not to be outdone mixed some sugar into the milk and told the King that his people would dissolve into the society like the sugar and while remaining invisible, sweeten the whole experience!

Similar to this, what is required to help reduce consumer irritability towards FMCG products is that they need to become less in your face, but at the same time be give the consumer a sweet experience!

" Read also at http://anandvrao.wordpress.com/ "

"Branding the Zeitgeist" - Trends and implications for branding in future markets

The word Zeitgeist means “Spirit of the Age”. It is the adjective representative of the cultural ethos of the generation and is used to express a world view which is prevalent at a particular period of socio-cultural progression. It is an illustration of what is popular within the social context and deemed as popular culture. Brands are amongst the best symbols of the generation and branding as a faculty has also been an integral part of the creation of a generation’s identity. This has had a profound impact on the emphasis of marketers in their branding efforts. The method of marketing to a specific generation is affecting the way we promote and sell products and services. Each generation has its own characteristics and these are leveraged by marking these targets by marketers. Branding efforts for each generation is unique in its essence, and are so designed to not only suit a particular market niche but also in their wake create a market by means of contributing to the popular culture of the generation. Consumer behaviour which is a study of how, what, when and why people buy is also significantly influenced by the zeitgeist. The practices of studying trends always focus on understanding the shifts in preferences in consumer behaviour and seek to maximize the impact by pre-empting them. Each generation has created its own unique trait when it comes to consumer behaviour and marketing has always had to adapt to these changes.
Popular culture has been represented in the art of the generation and this is the focus of this paper. From painting and graffiti to comic books and music; design has evolved in parallel with the generations and with advance in technology has now moved into the virtual space with the boom of the global animation industry.

"Read also at http://anandvrao.wordpress.com/ "

The advertisement is selling you!

Selling a product, a service, an idea can be rather complicated. One must actually know what is being sold, what its applications are and who would find these products, services, ideas and their applications interesting.

Selling “those who find these applications interesting” to the seller, so that he can sell his products, his services, his ideas, to them can be even more complicated. The latter is what I have been trying to do for the past ten months.

You might by now be wondering what this profession is where I am apparently involved in selling people to another seller. Before you get all confused, angry and repulsed about the profession I am in and decide not to ever read anything written by such a disgusting person, I will tell you what this profession is. Its Advertising!

“Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor” – Definitions Committee of the American Marketing Association

Now, here is the question. Through advertising is a person or an entity actually selling products, services & ideas; or are they selling people to these products, services & ideas?

I think it is the latter.

If you are a marketing grad you would surely have had your professors and others tell you that “Advertising is a mass medium tool aimed at disseminating brand information”; or if you are an average Joe with a cable TV connection, you would have probably seen the show ‘Storyboard’ on CNBC-TV18, where guys with French beards, orange streaked hair and ear rings tell you stuff about target audience, product planning, branding, channels of distribution etc in relation to advertising.

At first instance, both the marketing grads and the average Joes amongst you might point out (to me) that, what the definitions committee, your professors and the French beard guys are telling, contradicts the “selling people to the product” idea.

But, voluntarily or involuntarily, what they are actually telling you is that Advertising is more of selling people to a product, service or idea, rather than the other way round!

Am I just stupid to continue asserting this, or is there some slinky, cunning meaning to this?

Well, you guessed right. Logical fallacy or not, consider the following reasoning.

You are a toothpaste company trying to sell your brand, through advertising. Once you have identified that your toothpaste is orange in color, you next go about identifying all those who find this an invigorating color for toothpaste. You then release an advertisement extolling the benefits of orange toothpaste in whitening ones teeth.

This process can also be understood as follows. Finding out the interested audience; application of this audience and the toothpaste’s interest in it, in context to the advertisement, is its purchasing power; and your goal for the advertisement is to “make a sale” of this audience’s purchasing power!

In effect, what actually is getting sold through an advertisement is the interested audience’s purchasing power for the product, service or an idea. Hence, there is a focus on target audience, product planning, branding, channels of distribution etc from the French beard guys and the focus on the masses that are being sold through the medium of advertising in your professors’ definition!

Make sense? Or, do you think I am saying this from an advertisement salesman’s (or more aptly, response executive, as we are known in my organization) perspective? To make your job easier in making sense of this, I will leave you with this further thought to chew upon. If my job it is to sell an advertisement to a toothpaste company wanting to sell their toothpaste, what will I be trying to “make a sale of” through the ad?

The toothpaste, the toothpaste company, the ad itself or ------------------------------------------------ your purchasing power for the toothpaste!

Three Cheers to Angelina!

This post is inspired by the recent CNN exclusive that I saw, titled “Angelina Jolie: On Her Mission and Motherhood”. I am not really a great fan of the charity and philanthropy brigade, who go about claiming to be pseudo saviors of the down-trodden and the backward, but something about the profile of this sultry screen icon as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador seemed genuine. I have previously taken a stance that, charity and philanthropy should be consequence of individual’s judgment and not something as dictated by the society, and this was exactly the impression I got when I saw and heard about Angelina’s mission.

What is it that drives this sinfully beautiful Hollywood celebrity to take such an active interest in the lives of the refugees in Africa or Afghanistan or Cambodia? Surely it cannot be for publicity, she cannot have enough of it as a result of her celebrity life. Is she competing in a beauty pageant where she is being judged on her “Charitable Quotient”? I am confident that all men and most women would not disagree with me when I say that Angelina Jolie, would win any beauty pageant hands down, irrespective of her having a “Charitable Quotient” or not!

Whether it is adopting children who have been orphaned because of AIDS affected parents or supporting the cause of Afghan refugees during the height of post 9/11 Anti-Afghanistan frenzy, Angelina Jolie has stood her ground against the barrage of criticism. Criticism, for the fact that her philanthropy was based not on what society deemed fit, but based on her judgment.

I will conclude this post with a linguistic alliteration. As I saw the television documentary on Angelina, and saw the pictures of her amongst the malnourished and petrified natives of a suffering African nation I could not help but wonder if they thought of her as someone who had descended from the heavens, their own ‘pretty little angel’ which when translated into French would be ‘Angelina Jolie’ !

Read More here at Wikipedia

Note:

On a humorous note, to point out the fact that everyone has their own interest when it comes to charity, as I write this post I am also watching an episode of Sienfeld where Jerry is about to be audited by the IRS for claiming illegal tax deductions for contributing for a fraudulent volcano relief fund for Krakatoa. It becomes really hilarious when Jerry claims he did so “thinking only of the brave Krakatoans, who have suffered so much for so long!”

Market Research and the Media

{Also cross-posted at the Indian Media Bash Blog. Read Here }

Having recently joined the media advertising industry, I now have to deal with an overwhelming amount of data pertaining to various market data. In the print industry certain figures hold a lot of value; they are the Audit Bureau of Circulation figures called the ABCs and the National Readership Survey figures called the NRS-es. These data provide an estimate of the number and habits of people reading newspapers and magazines. This is very relevant for marketing the newspaper or magazine to the advertisers because most decisions about media buying are based on these figures. It helps the advertiser ascertain the kind of readers who will eventually see their advertisements and if it will provide them with expected response.

Targeting the Decision Maker

With the demographics of India showing a considerable skew towards a youthful populace and as youngsters with larger disposable incomes become independent decision makers, more and more advertisers are now very interested in knowing the habits of these decision makers. While the ABCs and the NRS-es give the data about the reach the media instruments have, the DMS or the Decision Makers Survey, now presents a very important value proposition to the advertiser. What this mainly describes is the kind of readership the publication has among decision makers, whether it be in terms of corporate decisions or day to day household purchase decisions. For instance FMCG companies selling a product like Sunflower Oil would rather advertise in a family channel like Star Plus which is watched by a large number of household purchase decision makers, the housewives rather than CNBC which is watched more by business men.

Experiential Media

What is also relevant in the media today is a shift towards more experiential platforms of advertising. Advertisers today are looking at providing the customer with an experience with their brands and not just the product. This is based on the psychographics, or attitudes and behaviors of the consumer. It has been ascertained, for instance that due to the rising attention deficiency syndrome amongst readers of a newspaper the time spent by an average reader with a newspaper is significantly lower than before. What this means is that, the print advertisements although reaching the audience indicated by the readership figures of the NRS-es and ABCs, are not actually providing brand connect. Hence it becomes imperative for the advertiser to look for media which does not only provide an Opportunity to See, but actually an Opportunity to Experience.

So its market research then?

So it is clear that market research and surveys is an integral cog in the wheels of the media decision vehicle. But can all decisions be taken based on these surveys? Although generally when one is presented with such a question, we usually disagree and say that not all marketing decisions can be taken based on market research; there are very few arguments which disapprove of it as a useful tool. But, I was recently introduced to a rather potent argument about how market research is not all powerful as claimed by the statisticians and hardcore data junkies. Consider a scenario where a toothpaste company conducting a market survey about its product, poses various questions to its users about the taste, smell, color, package ergonomics etc. The kind of response which can be expected could be about wanting a higher mint flavor, a fresher smell, a greener color and so on. But what the argument contends is that by conducting such a conventional market survey, what the toothpaste company is getting are only incremental improvement suggestions for their product and not very significant experiential changes. For instance, because of a restrictive question set in the market survey pertaining to the past and current experiences of consumers about the product, the company loses out in tapping aspirations of the consumer for newer experiences like that of a teeth protecting chewing gum.

Capturing Relevant Audiences

This above situation is a very relevant discrepancy in terms of a market research exercise because of its reliance on past and current experiences as the basis on which the future is to be extrapolated. While these suggestions are predominantly incremental improvements in nature, what is more relevant today is capturing the experiential aspirations for the future. Also important is the need to make the advertising reach the relevant audience more than anybody, and with values becoming more and more embedded in experiences than in just the product, market research has to be redefined from being survey figures to being portals to experiential aspirations of relevant audiences.

Newselicious!

[Updated: Read the updates to this post below]

{Also cross-posted at the Indian Media Bash Blog. Read Here}

There is lots of news going on about news media in India. A whole bunch of new channels have sprouted in a very short period of time, and the journalistic world is all upbeat about the variety and richness in content that is expected by this increase in the number of channels. Many blogs have also commented on this topic, like here and here. I remember vaguely when Star News started in the mid-90s with Prannoy Roy’s NDTV providing the content. This started the change in the way people got news, very different from the way DD news used to handle it. The content was more opinionated and the journalists were also more “involved”. From the famous “News-Readers” of the DD era like Minu Singh and Usha Albuquerque we grew up to “News-Presenters” like Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt.

News with Views

Talk shows and debates also got introduced into the news channels. Shows like “The Big Fight” and “We the People” hosted by Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt respectively very not only a must see on Saturdays and Sundays, but both of them attained cult status with the our generation. Compared to the days of dull news reporting of DD, this was a paradigm change and people’s voices were heard. They asked tougher questions than those before them, but many felt a bias of a socialist nature in the views expressed by them. This also started the interesting trend of news channels making an “Impact” on the people’s lives. From taking the case of finding homes for abandoned babies to generating aid for a blind girl to go to school, news channels connected with the audience in a way, so as to involve them in social stigmas.

Channel Mela

The completion of Star news’ contract with NDTV saw the launch of new channels like 24X7 and India by NDTV. While these channels maintained the same look, feel and content like their earlier persona as Star News, Star TV itself took the tabloid way out. At the same time, the India Today group which had been running the highly successful Aaj Tak, Hindi news channels launched Headlines Today in English. Although Headlines Today is similar (Very generalized word) in its feel with NDTV, the competition has never been fierce. Unfortunately for HT, their tag line of “Sharp news for sharp people” has not caught on, and the only news presenter most people can associate with HT is Jujhar Singh and not for his news reading skills but for his funny accent!

NDTV 24X7 is still my most preferred news channel. Apart from Prannoy Roy, the dependable and seasoned presenter/head honcho of NDTV, five presenters stood out, Rajdeep Sardesai and Barkha Dutt each with their trademark shows and Vikram Chandra, Arnab Goswami and Sonia Verma with the daily news. Around an year ago, Rajedeep Sardesai went missing from the screens of NDTV and from the show the Big Fight and finally about a six months ago I read in the print media that he was now editor in chief of “IBN- India Broadcast News”, and with a tie up with CNN was soon to launch a channel of his own. To be very frank, I did not notice the exit of Arnab Goswami from NDTV, until I saw him as a presenter in the promotional features of a yet to be launched new channel “Times Now” from the Times of India Group. Barkha Dutt & Vikram Chandra are still active on NDTV, but Sonia Verma is a rarity these days, although I doubt if she is involved with another channel.

Bite from the NDTV apple.

Now that CNN-IBN is out and a couple of months old, the similarities with NDTV are not easily hidden. It is not very surprising since many from the NDTV staff have been poached by Rajdeep for his channel. Anubha Bhosle, Suhasini Haider, Priyanjana Dutta are just some of them who have made the switch from NDTV to CNN-IBN. Even Headlines Today has lost a few like HR Venkatesh to CNN-IBN. If NDTV started the sensationalization of news to some extent and Headlines Today was one step ahead, I think CNN-IBN is taking it to the next level. But I think the team there deserves some latitude from the viewers in this regard, as they are a young channel and still finding their footing in the market.

But a few things do look and feel a little funny with CNN-IBN. I found it very amusing to note that CNN-IBN gives fancy names like “Chief Cricket Correspondent” and “Chief International Affairs Correspondent” to their journalists similar to the fancy names for their shows like LOC- The Love of Cricket! But, Sonali Chander of NDTV with her flirtatious attitude towards Navjot Sidhu does a much better job of covering cricket, than Nishant Arora of CNN-IBN. Another thing new which I observed with Rajdeep’s channel was the CNN-like feel to hosting news shows. The anchor in the studio is not the overall compeer, but field reporters also link to other field reporters while developing a story. This kind of tagged-presenting is very common with CNN’s anchor driven shows like Anderson Cooper 360, or News Night with Aaron Brown.

It is taking Whatever!

There is a deluge of media portals that have opened up recently. General news channels like NDTV and Zee News have also sprouted business channels like NDTV profit and Zee Business to compete in the business news space with CNBC-TV18. With all this activity in the TV space, radio and print are not far behind. With the recent legislation of allowing more private FM players into the market, maybe we will soon have a city based radio news channel as well. The print media has seen brand new papers like Mumbai Mirror and DNA in Mumbai and the entry of Hindustan Times into the Mumbai market. With the economy of Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad also booming, it won’t be long before many news papers start making a foray into these markets as well. Finally, the greatest revolution in news media is going to be in the internet space with the Blogosphere gaining popularity as in your face kind of journalism. The plethora of ideas and vastness of the coverage that the Blogosphere is made up of cannot be ignored. With the world moving towards a pod-casting, RSS- Really Simple Syndication and Push Button Publishing kind of a market, the content is not only going to get diverse, but also very customer specific.

Update 1: I think, CNN-IBN's "Whatever it takes" tag-line is going a bit too far. Today another "CNN-IBN IMPACT" feature was aired. Titled "The King is Dying" it was about the dwindling population of Lions in the Gir Forest in Gujrat. The creepy part was that it was hosted by a person called "Bahar Dutt", sporting a bob-cut look, with gestures and reporting style very similar to NDTV's Barkha Dutt! Come on Rajdeep! You can do better! [Unfortunately, the poor corrspondent is not to be blamed for having a similar name and look, but I smell a rat somewhere!]-21/1/2006

Update 2: As indicated by an anonymous commentator and later google verified by me it is confirmed that Bahar Dutt is actually Barkha's sister. So no blame can be passed to her about the similarity of gestures with her sis!

Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility

Should companies be satisfied by complying with legal standards or should they be involved more in the ethical standards and conducts of society? Should there be a dichotomy between the society and the companies as there is a separation between the state and the religious establishment [or is there?]. Or should there be larger interest in public private partnerships? These were some of the questions addressed by Mr.Nandan Nilekani in the recently held lecture at J.R.D. Tata auditorium in Bangalore. Speaking in the inaugural event of the General Thimmappa lecture series, instituted in honor of the Cottonian stalwart, Mr. Nilekani the CEO of Infosys and an ex-cottonian himself, discussed what according to him where the causes, needs and explanations of Corporate Social Responsibility.

Globalization 2.0 and Globalization 3.0 according to Thomas Friedman in his book The World is Flat is when large corporations around the world have made the size of the world smaller, tinier and also “flat” it in the process. It is no wonder that these corporations are the main drivers of the economy and account for almost 50% of the largest economies in the world. With corporate giants like Wal-Mart being bigger than the economy of countries like Indonesia, it is not hard to believe that 28% of the world’s economy is accounted for by some 200 corporations. In such a scenario, would it be correct for businesses to adhere to Milton Freidman’s old adage “The Business of business is business!”

In his lecture, Mr. Nilekani discussed how such a narrow minded approach towards the responsibilities of global business houses would not be a constructive way ahead. He elucidated the following points as the key features which he believes form the basic framework of Responsible Corporate Citizenry.

1. Corporate Governance

2. Sustainability

3. Corporate Philanthropy

4. Public Private Partnerships

5. Corporate Advocacy

Corporate governance which further simplified he explained would mean the ensuring of fair and ethical practices in terms of labor handling and decision making by corporations. Sustainability of growth and wealth creation is another imperative for ensuring accountability. It was the last three points which he chose to highlight as the real significance behind a genuine implementation of the principles of corporate social responsibility. Corporate Philanthropy he argued was an active involvement of responsible corporations to the resolution of social stigmas of the environment in which they are functioning. Creating a difference in the context of the company’s employees and their social contexts is as important a function of the company as its main business interests. Further advocating the setting up of effective public private partnerships to improve the state of infrastructure and human intellectual capital, he argued quoting a few successful examples. He also explained how involvement in public private partnerships did not mean the private capture of public opportunities and services and categorically disagreed with such faulty generalizations. Imploring the gathered crowd of various corporate heads to take up corporate advocacy and involve in decision making at the government and bureaucratic frameworks he said that it was essential for ensuring not only trade friendly regulations but also for reducing the problems facing the global environment and goals of energy conservation.

It is interesting to note the amount of thought that is going into these topics which arise as a result of a successful business built on a capitalistic background wanting to better the environment in which it thrived. But the contribution of business to the society by being successful should not be underestimated. After all, what greater contribution can a corporation provide to society other than being profitable and succesful with the goals of creating a sustainable enterprise of wealth!

Note: This lecture was held at the J.R.D.Tata Auditorium at NIAS campus of IISc on 17th December 2005. This is not the same as the J.N.Tata auditorium which is also in the IISc campus where the deplorable terrorist attack took place yesterday (28th December, 2005).

En Garde! It is a Dual-Core Duel!

Let’s face it, being an electronics engineer does no good to your hopes of a life filled with James Bond like adventures. Sure, all the movies show these suave heroes and heroines hacking into computers networks of casinos, defusing electronically controlled bombs and plugging in a new chip in a socket and automatically redirecting a speeding ballistic missile in mid air. But the role of “electronic engineer” is always portrayed in plural with one Chinese and one Indian guy moving around with laptops with amazing graphic interfaces where the software readily asks for the longitudinal coordinates of the missile to be redirected, at a push of a button. The worst hit to the ego of an electronics engineer comes when these hunky heroes who are in the midst of saving the lives of millions from the threat of a bomb or a damsel about to be vaporized by a laser, seem to figure out the electronics in less than two minutes, while we have to pore over stuff like linear integrated circuits and feedback equalizers for about a decade before understanding the relation between current and voltage. “Isolate the power source here with a toothpick stuck in the negative terminal, couple the output with the input using chewing gum” will no longer vaporize the girl but genetically enhance her beauty! and voila!, the laser

But now, after all these years of denial of adventure for the electronics engineer something has come up which has made our entire community chivalrous. Unfortunately, it does not involve any damsel about to be vaporized, but nevertheless electronics engineers are not backing down from this real life adventure. It is time for the duel between the electronic giants Intel and AMD over the Dual Core Processor! But before I proceed further on describing about the duel, I think I should make my loyalties clear for the benefit of the reader. I have seen four generations of computers in my family. Great grandpa computer, an IBM286 machine, was born in my house in early 1992. Those were the dark ages where one did not worry too much about processor speeds and he spent his days running programs like GW-Basic and games like Dig-Dug. But come 1998, grandpa computer was born, and the generation gap was significant. He was an AMD K6 266Mhz computer who was at his time so advanced that poor old great grandpa was equivalent to a pocket calculator in front of him. Times had changed and considerable thought went into the selection of the processor with due considerations to the speed. But soon he too was obsolete and as the workload increased he was unable to cope with it. Soon a relatively simple brain transplant was carried out and old pa computer was born in late 2003. Now this guy was advanced! He had the same body as the old guy but he has an AMD Athalon XP 2400+ processor and to this day a good workhorse. Meanwhile, early 2005 saw the fourth generation computer, a young lady with a mobile AMD Sempron 2800+ was born and being a notebook, she is upwardly mobile as all of the younger generation today. Now that it must be clear to most of you that I am an out and out AMD guy, I think we can go ahead and explore the news about the duel more closely.

Back in 2003, when old pa computer was born, a geeky electronics engineer classmate of mine marveling at the capabilities of the highly advanced AMD Athalon XP 2400+ processor went into a tizzy. After using my computer for one evening he looked liked this was what he had been waiting for all those years of his life for. He was also an AMD aficionado and excitedly declared that if an AMD processor and an Intel processor were made to run a race, AMD would win. He wanted a world wide public contest between the two giants to prove that the cheaper AMD worked faster and better than the brand heavy Intel. I was impressed. The electronic engineers at AMD also seem to have the same idea; they have recently issued a challenge to Intel for a public duel between their new Dual Core Opteron 800 series and the corresponding Intel x86 server processors.

Now, without going into too much details, what is special about the dual core processor is this. As every electronic engineer knows, Moore’s law means two times more transistor on a chip every other 18 months. What they probably also know is that this means proportional increase in heat dissipated. That’s not all; higher clock speed to span these newly added transistors means that further power consumption and heat problems. This is where the dual core makes its entry. The solution to the above problem is what is called as thread-level parallelism. By keeping clock speeds down and putting multiple CPU cores on a chip, processor performance can rise as transistor counts do. One of the advantage of this for instance would be that OS can now run on its own separate processor core and leave the other processor core on the same chip for other peripheral activities. Now, AMD want to be the first to manufacture and deliver these beasts for workstations and servers. And hence the battle lines are drawn, which was made public with advertisements about AMD issuing an open challenge to Intel for a Dual Core Duel.

This new battle between the giants has brought the electronics community to battle hungry frenzy. Just as AMD’s advertisement beckons Intel to accept the challenge the electronics engineers are eagerly waiting for the fencing match to begin! Touché Intel?

More about this duel is can be read at the following URL:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/0,,3715_13368_13369,00.html?redir=CPSW51

References:

http://www.techreport.com/

http://www.extremetech.com/

http://www.amd.com/