Global Forces breaking all Trends

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/strategy/the_four_global_forces_breaking_all_the_trends

1. The age of urbanization: shifting of the locus of economic activity and dynamism to emerging markets like China and to cities within those markets
2. Acceleration in the scope, scale, and economic impact of technology: The ubiquity of technology in our lives and the speed of change. Connectivity, Data revolution in hands of everyone, more and more technology enabled business models
3. Challenges of an aging world: Caring for large numbers of elderly people will put severe pressure on government finances
4. Globalization: Greater global connections in Trade, people, finance, and data (information/ communication). It is not just trade and finance which are globalized now.

Technology Predictions for 2016

http://news.microsoft.com/features/from-ai-and-data-science-to-cryptography-microsoft-researchers-offer-16-predictions-for-16/

• Successful and large-scale inclusion of specialized compute acceleration in the cloud
• Online conversations will increasingly be mediated by conversation assistants, blurring the way we think about computers and phones
• Continued rapid progress in natural language processing based on deep learning methods and state-of-the-art machine translation performance.
• Cheap, long range, low-power sensors and radios will enable an exponential acceleration of environmental monitoring and create the foundations for unparalleled access to information about the planet.
• Every data science program will have a data ethics curriculum
• In next 10 years:
  • Every kid who goes to school will learn to code
  • AI agents will feel so real and play such a central, trusted role in our lives that we will require them to have the same ethical and legal relationships that we have with doctors, lawyers and therapists.
  • Deep learning will advance to match or exceed human-level AI competence in several major areas of speech and vision, and possibly in some areas of cognitive functions as well.
  • It will be commonplace for people to have digitally augmented experiences in education, shopping, traveling and interactions with people and things.

Dosti

Once in a while the chain mails on the alum groups are good 🙂

Friendship is not about “I m sorry”  its about “abbe teri  galti hai”

Friendship is not about “I m there for u” or “I missed u”  it’s about “kahan marr gaya saale”

Friendship is not about “I understand”  its about “sab teri wajah se hua manhus”

Friendship is not about “I care for u”  its about “kamino tumhe chhod ke kahan jaunga”

Friendship is not about “I m happy for ur success “its about “chal party de saale”

Friendship is not about “I love that girl”  its about “saalo izzat se dekho tumhari bhabhi hain”

Friendship is not about “R u coming for outing tomorrow” its about “nautanki nahi, hum kal bahar ja rahe hai”

Friendship is not about “Get well soon” its about “Itna piyega toh yehi hoga”

Friendship is not about “All the best for ur career” its about “bahut hua, abhi toh switch maar saale”

Franchises vs startups

Michael Gerber makes some interesting comparisons in his book “E-myth revisited – Why small businesses don’t work”

Statistics for small business: 40% fail in 1 year. Of those who survive 1year, 80% fail in 5 years, and of those who survive 5 years, another 80% fail. In comparison to the dismal rate of ordinary small-business start-ups, 75% of franchises succeed at 5 years.

For turning businesses around, or getting them off the right foot,  look at franchises as a model. The reason they succeed is that they are set up so that any unskilled person off the street could walk in, buy a franchise, run all operations in the franchise, and have a fairly good chance of success. The product of franchise companies is a business model, not food, hotel rooms, etc. In order to meet this level of success, franchise companies have clear operations manuals, procedures, consistent sales approaches -every detail of running the business is specified down to dress codes and wall paper.

By asking us to consider the franchise approach, I am not saying to go out and buy a franchise license. Instead, imagine that you want to sell your business as a successful franchise within a finite period of time. If so, what will you need to do regarding your business plan and management in order to meet this goal? That is, if you were going to make your business fool-proof so that any unskilled person could take over as owner after a few years and succeed with it, what will you need to do?

Presentations – Steve Jobs Style

The book Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs is making a lot of noise in my friend circle and I decided to find a quick summary of the key messages from the book …nothing too fancy but we rarely remember them when really needed

1. What is the one big idea you want to leave with your audience? It should be short, memorable, and in subject-verb-object sequence.
2. Identify why you’re excited about this company/product/feature, etc.
3. Write out the three messages you want the audience to receive, and develop metaphors and analogies in support.
4. Include a demonstration if your product topic lends itself to such. (Eg. pull the product out of your pocket if it is ‘pocket-sized.’
5. Invite partners and customers to participate.
6. Include video clips if helpful, but limit to three minutes or less.
7. Answer the “Why should I care?” that’s in the audience’s mind. Have a passion for creating a better future.
8. Having an enemy (eg. IBM, Microsoft) helps visualize ‘the problem’ you’re solving.
9. Simplify your presentation (and products).
10. Make numbers meaningful – eg. “Stores 1,000 songs,” not “5 GB memory.”
11. Don’t use ‘bullet-point’ style visuals; instead, use short phrases that accompany your talk, or pictures.
12. Practice, practice, practice – and ask for feedback.

Ofcourse, Guy Kawasaki has said that …

How many times have you sat through a presentation where each slide has over 20 words in size 12 point and the presenter practically reads the words adding little to what is on the slide? Follow the 10-20-30 rule. 10 slides, 20 minutes, and size 30 font.

Yelling is the new spanking

Interesting article on the NY Times today which talks of parents … yelling !!

As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again.

Parental yelling today may be partly a releasing of stress for multitasking, overachieving adults ….Yelling is done when parents feel irritable and anxious.

People who yell at others — and especially parents who yell at children — reflect a complete inability to express themselves in any meaningful, thoughtful, useful or constructive way.

Resetting Life :)

Good one 🙂

Difference between stock split and bonus issue

• In stock split, the paid-up capital of the company remains the same. So if a company has issued $ 10 shares aggregating to $ 100 Million, a stock split resulting in the face value being reduced to $ 1 per share is not going to increase the paid-up share capital of the company; only the number of shares would have increased ten-fold.
• But a 1:1 bonus issue has the effect of doubling the paid-up capital of a company.

Three questions on Expectations

Interesting article on the three questions managers can ask to ensure that employees follow through on their responsibilities.

1. Do people know what is expected of them? Too often we assume people know their jobs. People may know the specifics, but often lack knowledge about how what they do helps the entire organization.

2. Do employees know what they can expect from you? It is important to let employees know that you as their manager are available to them.

3. Do employees know what is expected of each other? What matters most is that employees know who does what so work can be completed in a timely and responsible fashion.

Agency Problem: Key is personality of boss not incentives

The economist has an interesting article which highlights that the personality of the boss has more affect on aligning the interests of management with shareholders, than even management incentives which focus on long term shareholding incentives