Guys,

Recently some of my employees got unsolicited call from a gentleman called Manish Gupta, who wants to woo them away from my company to his startup. Of course like every normal human being, my colleagues also need a reason to go and work for a relatively unknown and small company.  So they need convincing. And he did put up an argument to convince them…

And then came the bummer!

He thinks that my colleagues should work for his company because he has a bigger vision and everyone has a bright future with him. But how do people believe him? Simple - His was the runner-up of the Business Baazigar contest of Zee TV.

:D

I could not stop myself from laughing out at this humbleness.

Then I thought of doing some research on the business model and modus-operandi of his company. I found out that there was no innovation and no marketing strategy (mind you, he must have spent time in sales, but definitely not in marketing). He is selling the same old wine in the same old bottle with no value addition. There is no investment in human resource development, since the human resource policy is absolutely based on poaching.

Is this the vision, he is selling to my employees?

I wish him best of luck!

BTW, in all my humbleness, I will like to get my message across to Mr. Gupta that I have been on the jury panel of nationwide business plan contest (organized by one of the most reputed management institution in India), giving my inputs to several business baazigars who are working hard to build their dream company!

And yes, it does not hurt me anywhere. But it is sad to see this approach to business after getting the said recognition.

I hope he learn to differenciate, innovate and deliver!

And yes, I am fast losing faith in TV programs like Business Baazigar if this is the talent they have identified

Business organizations can never be in equilibrium or achieve stable position. Either they are moving up or they are moving down, depending upon their innovation quotient. 

If you are trying to keep things stable, they won’t remain so. You will slowly slide down simply because:

• there is no exclusivity,
• competition will catch up on the technology front and -
  • either cut price - if they too are not innovating (resulting in your margins to shrink)
  • or innovate and better the product - if they want to add value to the product and move up the value chain (resulting in your market share to shrink)

And if you continuously innovate and apply new ideas (refer to my post on manufacturing ideas), you will continue to move up.

It is unfortunate that in some cases, the entire industry decides to stabilize their position and take customer wants for granted. For example, consider:

• radio manufacturers,
• alarm clock manufacturers,
• camera manufacturers (there are some really big names out there)

They decided to stay at their position and were swept away by mobile companies like Nokia (who is the largest digital camera manufacturer in the world today). They decided to experiment and give more to their customers by integrating digital camera in mobile phones (possibly the thought process was that mobile, camera, clock, alarm are all things that need to be handy). It took some time to gather market acceptance which was created by the initial hype, but later on sustained due to the instant-in-the-hand value of the additional gadgets.

Seth Godin has highlighted how alarm clock manufacturers can still make a small change in their product and make it stand out. These are simple improvements which can make a product stand out and desirable!

Are you moving up or moving down?

How many times have you heard?

• He is successful because he has the first mover advantage.
• I have a bright idea. I will seek venture funding and make it BIG!
• There are so many simmilar businesses around? There will be a lot of competition for my new business.

I bet, you must have come across a variant of one of these statements.

They all signify the general perception that a unique idea (or a first mover advantage, or an invention) is the core of a business. Actually this is not true.

Ideas are important. In fact, a business to keep its edge in the industry need to keep re-inventing itself and come up with new ideas, variance, reasons-to-do-business-with and disruptive trends to gain a leading position or maintain his leadership.

Ideas are the fundamental inputs for running a business. They are nothing special. If you cannot think out of the box, or come up with something unique on an ongoing basis, forget about succeeding in this cut-throat competitive economy. It is not for the light hearted ones.

But hold on. The process is execution! There cannot be an output without the process. The output will remain equal to the input if there is no process! It is a pity to see so many people burn midnight oil and hundreds of hours in defining, refining and protecting their idea, but they hardly take the first step forward to execute the same.

History is full of examples where visionary companies have emerged from innovation and smart execution of ideas which were conceived by someone else or invented by someone else.

• Microsoft didnt invented operating systems
• Apple didnt invented GUI
• Google was not the first search engine
• Dell was not the first desktop manufacturer
• Infosys was not the first outsourcing company
• Dhirubhai Ambani didnt set up the first polyster manufacturing unit in the world

The list is endless..

What these guys did and what is important is: See the Gap!

Nothing is perfect. Things happen in a given way which is good, may be better, but never the best. You can always better the effort by finding the gap what makes it imperfect. For a moment think of an "ideal scenario" and how it differs from what you are seeing today in a given context. Are you happy with everything? You cannot be. Its a utopian scenario.

If you see with a consumers’ point of view, you will be able to see a gap almost everywhere, everytime and with everything! So if you want to really make the next big search engine - find the gap - find the pain - find the imperfection. And hey - you have an idea! It’s so easy.

Now whats next!

• Validate your idea. See if it offers value to its stakeholders and create win-win synergy?
• Plan for the execution of the idea, but keep yourself flexible about its implementation and nitty-grittys.
• Plan for the risks. Risks can never be avoided. They can be managed.
• Set achievable targets and take youir first step.

All this really means - Take action!

So, when you can create idea at random (like an idea factory), you can always differenciate. And when you can differenciate and make things better - go ahead and do it. Take action.

Take baby steps. But try to walk. And soon you will be able to run.

Microsoft was a visionary company. It saw the potential in the business of operating systems. It harnessed its power and made it available for masses in form of DOS. They marketed it well and went on from becoming an innovator (mind you - not an inventor) to a world class company.

Google found that people are not getting the right results and they feel frustrated while searching for what they want on internet. They deviced algorithm which solved the problem. I bet when they started off, it was not a code as complex as you will have in spaceships! But they kept innovating, removing gaps as they saw them.

Social networking concept was initially mastered by a site called Friendster. However there are many more websites who have followed the same fundamental principle and improvised on that to achieve more fame and hiher valuation.

I am like a friend to most of my clients. When I speak to them, I always have this advice at the back of my mind. I advise them to do things differently to make it better in small increments based on those small ideas that you can generate at your will. To start taking the first steps towards a better web-application or a better business model. I am a strong advocate of compunding of small improvements done over a period of time to result in a considerable net effect.

So, its all about seeing the gap. Building small bridges and walking over them to leave your competition behind.

I look forward to see you all at the top at the game - ahead of the guys who invented the same.

Best of luck!

I recently came across Google Answers (answers.google.com/answers/) and found that they are no longer accepting questions.

So Google closes down its Google Answers service. Though I did not sense this coming, but once I saw it, I felt this is a logical step Google has taken. I anticipate the following reasons:

1. Google does not want to concentrate its energy in “people intensive” business models as they are not very scalable. They are “technology focused” and backed with solid processing infrastructure.  They will like machines to do the work!

2. Google Answers is a pay-and-use model. This makes it “less popular” compared to free services available. Again the money Google makes out of it is so small that it does not make good business sense to continue with this.

Yahoo on the other hand has a free service which has gained much more popularity than Google Answers, putting up a tough competition.

3. I saw few answers which were very well researched and were done for only $10-$20. I doubt that they were done with an intention to make money. The fees was kind of a reward or a way to say “thank you”. It was not purely business driven.

4. Google in itself is a “Answering machine” and therefore it does not need Google Answers! (as suggested by my colleague, Mukul)

Overall, I feel that Google Answers was not fitting into the long term strategy of Google and a stiff competition in the same market by Yahoo (which is a very successful in leading people backed systems dating back from its famous directory) made them retract from this business.

Links to few discussions:

www.webmasterworld.com/forum35/3728.htm
www.webmasterworld.com/goog/3171877.htm