a nice article on gold standard

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/goldbug.html

of course need to discount krugman's political attacks..

cant copy everything

Found this example quite interesting.. Thats why a synergy between all aspects of a firm is important..

An example of those dangers is the adoption by the Detroit auto companies some years ago of the "quality circles" used by Japanese auto companies to increase productivity by encouraging their workers to suggest productivity-enhancing innovations. The quality circles failed in Detroit because the auto companies did not realize that what made the quality circles work in Japan was the practice of lifetime employment; our workers were reluctant to suggest productivity improvements because they knew it might well result in a smaller workforce and therefore in layoffs.

Many airlines tried to copy South Western and failed miserably. Its not only low price offering but making sure that operations including management are synchronised with low cost principle.. Ryan Airlines entrepreneur and CEO show a similar approach where he runs a tight ship for upper management too. Post-it notes and highlighters are banned. Executives bring in their own pen. The CEO himself travels Ryanair and doesnt use even the omnipresent blackberry for businessman. The concept and thinking is synchronised to create a concept and core competency. This is the most difficult to be copied since it is created from organizational interactions and an organizational thinking.

Wake Up Sid

Just watched the movie. Unlike all those who accompanied, I really liked the movie. Will rate it somewhere better than average. So lets hear first what is wrong with the movie so as to cover up the bad aspects with what I liked. It is too long. This may be because of pressures from distributor and I guess now multiplexes( need interval breaks for making popcorn money). Or the director dont know how to edit. This could have been made a smaller 1.5 hr movie which would make it small and sweet. So what is good about this? Many things . Havent seen a romantic Hindi movie with different characterizations for a long time. The background music and songs were apt and lovely. Camerawork and Set Designs were good. This is where Karan Johar excels. Though his movies sucks big time with hackeyned plot, wooden face characters and too much of emotion, he makes sure that movie is beautiful. This has also some nice shots of Mumbai and one of my favourite places Nariman Point. So in this movie, Karan Johar outsources the direction and hence story and else I guess to someone else but you can feel his presence in crafting sets and camerawork. Konkana sen is as good as expected. It is always nice to see Hindi heroines who dont have a singleton expression throughout the movie. But what really caught my eye is Ranvir Kapoor. I missed his first movie but let me make a prediction with the possibility of eating my word later, this lad is a new star on the horizon.

Good movie in all...

Lets strategize

Lets strategize

Core competency has to be found

Differentiation learnt,Organization dismembered

Consultant paid

Lets strategize

Its not theory its practice

No ex-ante only ex-post

So what it doesnt mean anything

Look concerned, look suave

Show efficiency, show effectiveness

Put things on power point

Lets strategize

collection of macroeconomic state after crisis blogs

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/09/whats-wrong-with-macroeconomics.html

Branding - 1

"Intel Inside"

Intel advertised heavily with its "Intel Inside" campaign to create a brand awareness. This was an unusal move for a component maker who sells to computer assembler and not directly to consumers. The management was of the view that most of the value of uniqueness of patents underlying Intel chips was exproporiated by assemblers instead of Intel. The advertisement paid the company handsomely with a strong brand created. Intel was able to extract a premium from consumers with "Intel Inside" written on all computers.

"Devil's Envy"

I had seen this Onida Ad since childhood where a character is a devil depicting envy, jealousy for buying television. Thinking back, this was so apt as a brand identity. Television home owners was scarce and people bough television as to show that they have acheived something as a matter of social status. The feeling of making other jealous was part of this though not expressed. The ad makers were able to tap this through this advertisement. Dont know how successful was this but sure a good example of correlation between brand identity and feelings it want to evoke in customers.

"Natural vs Ayurvedic"

Read this statement that ayurvedic has the perception among people of treating disease from inside and hence more effective. Natural has just the perception of being fresh. The difference is for a cleansing or cosmetics product, natural brings a feeling of being not chemical, different from the artificial created product while ayurvedic products are non-chemical which solves the beauty problem using Indian tradition. Does this ayurvedic positioning work ? Need to see more examples .. will do so..

Strange data

I was discussing with a friend earlier whether dishtv has a potential market in rural areas. The advantage of dish tv is that one dont need cables and choce of channels. The disadvantage is that it is costly due to its high setup cost. Also there are questions over whether really a rural market with a high potential to be tapaed exists. Spending 1500/- for a cable connection seems high . And why will people go for dish tv of the local cable guys can provide cables with the very customized channel to local taste in an easier way. If people live far away from each other in a village, may be dish tv makes better sense due to high cost of cables. Or if cable service is not good while dish tv can provide better service through direct connection. Also mode of payment will be a concern in village due to lack of internet and credit cards. Probably mobile sim card is used as a payment facility.

Also this huge potential of rural market is circumspect in my view and i am not yet convinced. AN economy which revolves around agriculture growing at 4% cant produce enough income growth to justify a high set up cost item. If a few percentage of people in rural India does satisfy the income level, the cost of distribution is high to distant villages and dispersed demand. This high cost applies for dish tv also.

Today I saw one of the research carried out and published in newspaper that 70% of total dish tv connections are in villages. And this sector is also growing at a higher rate than villages. So a disconnect from what I was thinking earlier.

Shall we try to justify this number? Need to see more details of the research before I can comment. But the obvious reason would be that television being the only source of entertainment presents a very inelastic demand in villages and through use of good marketing and low setup costs, one will be able to sell dishTV. Never under-estimate consumers who is different from you.

difficulty in economic forecasting: 2005 (current account deficits)

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/09/the_coming_doll.html