March 2017

Innovation alone cannot guarantee Google & Apple its Financial Success

Be first to come up with innovative products and service alone cannot automatically guarantee long term financial success for a company, including Google or Apple. Yes, it definitely helps to be first-one to enter in non-competitive space and capture the major market share but a quick study of successful companies that dominated market for decades are also the first-best to commercialize the given opportunity. There is nothing more suicidal than letting your competitors know about your promising products and then again miserably failing to capitalize its benefits. Any lousy job in expansion or poor designing or pathetic customer experience for example is clear invitation for others to enter with improved offerings.

Poor implementation of wonderful offering publicly exposes your cards to other businesses that too compete in similar space – it given them better chance to launch their improved products after learning from your mistakes. So be the first-one and also be the first-best to jump into the market with all basics correct. Apple was not the first to come up with MP3 player but definitely was first-best to launch it and so is Amazon was not the first to sell online books.

Innovations that are technologically driven loses it differentiation as soon as the first products reaches market – either it gets copied or improved or even opens up war for pricing differentiation instead of technological differentiation. Be rest assured that there will be companies to deliver similar ore even better products with lesser cost after learning from your competencies.

Instead of beaten up by competitor’s edge be first to understand the changing customer behavior, be first to innovate to meet customer’s newer expectations and be first-best to risk full-fledged launch hence not making it easy for others to replace your value proposition.

Get connected to your own abundant source of Positivity to leave Mediocrity & Achieve BIG

It is not easy to leave something that you’re used to – leaving comfort zone is difficult because it exposes you to new world of uncertainties and makes you addressed unaddressed internal and external challenges. But why, some are more comfortable than others in becoming uncomfortable to leave their comfort zone? What drives them and where they source their extra energy to fuel “extra-ordinary” ambition? 

There was no real need for the risk-takers who were living comfortably but chose to travel less travelled path and set examples for others. Be it Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Mandela. The question now is – what is the vital source of their positivity that makes them glued, unwavering to their goals for decades. 

The single most important of source of positive energy comes from unshakable conviction. It turn their goals into beautiful and compelling dreams where they don’t mind undergoing trivial inconvenience which others in absence of such conviction looks gigantic and become a true show stopper. We all have heard dozens and dozens of times the famous inspiration story of Thomas Edison who failed thousands of times to invent light bulb but few would know that the only reason he didn’t give up and patiently continued to achieve his goal because he make his goal compelling beautiful that no amount of hardship could stop him. What is your beautiful and compelling goal that fuels your actions?

Parenting Perks – 10 Simple & Powerful Tips To Empower Your Child

Your child becomes:

Content when sharing

Caring when felt strong

Rich with power of choice

Adoptable by living in groups

Positive with love and sacrifice

Creative with quality engagement

Friend when you treat him like one

Responsible by giving responsibilities

Confident when asked for her opinions

Independent when allowed to take decisions

One mistake all failing business make during bad times

Market conditions are changing every second day. Customer buying behavior is getting more and more unpredictable. When technology or pricing differentiation is fast eroding then businesses need to learn to reposition their products and services to keep on finding right customers.

Recession is tough time, the whole economy shifts to saving mode from spending mode. Customer tend to postpone buying decisions, business struggle to meet the cash flows and employees become paralyzed with fear and uncertainty.

Businesses which constantly focus on adding cost-effective solutions emerge as true winner during recession but all failing business instead of empowering employees with innovative trainings and better exposure to promote sales and newer competency they fuels negativity by cutting cost, clamping innovation efforts to reach more customers – even to the extent of restricting their day to day operations. These inactions further breeds fear among employees and lose trust in the organizational leadership, and then the worst of all things happens – the good employees leave the company and join the competitors.

For some companies, where the leadership team fail to give quality engagement to its employees and leave them unprotected from outside negativity only deteriorate atmosphere within company and stretches recession.

No matter what, the sales engine should always fire if company wishes to remain in business and hence all the employees even during tough times should be positively charged to tap new customers. It is golden opportunity to make your business expansion more visible during recession when others curtailing their efforts to zero and waiting endlessly for improving in market conditions. Businesses that don’t wait to turn negative market to become positive but make sure to always keep positive work force see no recession.

5  Simple things to nourish your marriage relationships

According to dozens of researches spanning over 75 years from leading universities cross the world – the long term and meaningful relationships forms the basis of living a happy family and fulfilling personal life. It also leads to financial success and develops gratitude to fellow people; builds positive framework where we get opportunity to contribute to family and society thus playing important supporting roles through up and downs in our lives.

But have we reached the point where it takes someone very special to understand and value relationships, especially in marriages? As a society, and in the name of independence, we constantly depleting our appetite to bond for long term family goals and resorted to short term valueless tantrums thus exposing us to huge mess of diseases and degradation of values and chaos in the society.  For example, every second marriage within five years is a divorce. More children, in Europe, are conceived outside of marriages than in the marriages. There is very strong correlation between children coming out of the broken relationships of parents and crime rate of these children.

It has been established that people with relationship issues suffer premature ageing, undergoes lot of mental stress, resort to drugs and alcohols,  witness early ending to their financial life cycle and send early invitation to high blood-pressure and other life style related diseases.

It is high time, instead shying away from relationship responsibilities and fanning ego in the name of “independence” we start to invest our time and energy in nourishing relationships that can stand tall when we require it the most. Marriage is the oldest arrangement and family is the oldest institution that society relied for generation to breed values and culture in the society but now the backbone of the society itself needs support.  

Here are five simple ways to boost your relationships:

1. The major reason behind relationship turmoil is expectation gap of partners. Minimize it by constantly communicating and proactively taking that “first step” to overcome impasses. Remember it’s your life and your relationships, no one other than you will gain or lose the most.
2. Marriage like any other arrangement works well only if the roles of each partner is clear. Ask this magic question to yourself and to your partner. “What one thing you willing to contribute without complaining about it?” could be looking after children, earning money etc.
3. In relationships small things are not small, they are big. Buying chocolate or surprise your partner before anniversary with his or her favorite color dress is big. Let’s don’t ignore the small things that play big roles in the relationships.
4. Relationship also has other synonym like sacrifices, tolerance, acceptance which you never find in any dictionary. Learn what you need to sacrifice, tolerate and accept to move on. Remember some battle when you lose, you actually win.
5. Finally, expect element of surprises every now and then. Be flexible to adopt and don’t shy away from apologizing for your mistakes and be accommodative for other’s limitation.
6. Bonus – never forget to have fun!

Why Krishna didn’t Speak Bhagavad Gita directly to me?

Is Bhagavad Gita’s teaching still applicable in this day and age? If so how I can learn from it? On one hand where Bhagavad Gita is revered and most quoted book during normal conversations but on the other hand, in absence of true Guru people for generations fail to grasp its core message as they cannot identify themselves with Krishna’s Arjun of Bhagavad Gita.

My simple question is “Why Krishna didn’t spoke Bhagavad Gita’s directly to me to remove all my doubts?” At least that would have by far increased my faith on Him and empowered me to get rid of identify crises.

Yes ! it would have been fantastic if Krishna spoke the knowledge of Bhagavad Gita directly to each one of us – at least we would have avoided all confusions. Bhagavad Gita in essence is the one-on-one question-answer session between Bhagawan Krishna and great warrior Arjuna. The greatness of the session was not just answers but the quality of questions that Arjuna posed to Krishna in the midst of highest calamity. The questions were so pertinent that every seeker of true knowledge in every ages and in all time to come should know. The scope of Arjuna’s enquiry was neither petty nor limited to mundane realms but was meant to empower the whole humanity with sublime knowledge to free the embodied souls from the perpetual cycle of births and deaths.

Now compare what would have been your boundary of questions with that of Arjuna’s? Will it ever cross the boundary of self and family and enquire about well-being of conditioned souls – the real purpose of human life; instead of enquiring on how to improve your existence in this miserable and temporary world will you be focusing your questions on how to attain eternal truth, knowledge and happiness?

It was Krishna’s mercy to enlighten us with the real and complete knowledge that cannot be contained in the any time frame or any section of society or living entity. It is to revive the relationship between soul and super soul, in fact Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita in seventh chapter, that “O Arjuna now I’m telling you that transcendental knowledge, after knowing this nothing more needs to be known.” What a profound and substantial statement is that no duo can take place for it . We need empowered and fearless souls like Arjuna to enquire from all knowing and all merciful God to get message to empower and take us away from the fear to fearlessness which any conditioned souls would have easily failed to ask and hence Krishna choose Arjuna on behalf of every living entity to spoke the message of Bhagavad Gita for everyone real benefit.

Is Indian IT Industry Heading for Suicide?

Even the best innovation of its time needs timely renovations, Indian IT industry is no exception. As much as half of Indian IT work force, if goes with some reports, could face axe in coming 2 to 5 years due to non-compatible skills of its mid-age staff that arguably put them into non-coachable zone. Has Indian IT industry long back headed for suicide by comfortably ignoring not to train its staff on emerging technologies and banked on traditional roles for its sustenance?

The defining trends within industry to Next-Gen outsourcing services of aggregators and remotely based innovation contributors though loomed long but not long enough to convince IT industry leaders to upgrade traditional roles of coders and service support staff.

For nearly three decades wealthy organizations mostly from western countries chose India as cheap outsourcing destination just because they could no longer justify high infrastructure cost and huge ongoing investment on human resource especially for their non-value adding products and services. India on the other hand grab the opportunity with both hands and didn’t mind being used as dumping ground as it created millions of jobs of and served perfectly as cost-effective destination.

The arrangement worked fine till it helped in maintaining high profit margins for the company and pleased shareholders with higher earnings per share.

But going ahead the scenario is looking bleak as competitiveness and profitability; the two major differentiators of outsourcing are fast losing edge to in-house innovations requiring very limited backend staff to support which instead of outsourcing can be handled locally onsite for better control. Outsourcing on the other hand didn’t remained as cost-effective any more as it was in last few decades due to higher percentage of mid to senior level management staff incurring high cost with huge experience which may not be required for the automation prone work that is being siphoned and that is disturbing the profitability of client and diminishing the probability of gaining more outsourcing work. Has IT industry failed to upgrade the skills of its senior staff that neither overseas clients wants to retain and nor Indian IT company wants to train?

The situation of experienced IT staffer is like now that of old parents who spend all their youth in earing and enriching family to become successful but now their own children are not ready to have them anymore. It is totally understandable for overseas clients not to train Indian IT staffs on latest technology as it defeats their purpose of cost-effectiveness but how can we explain the myopic view of Indian IT companies who didn’t bothered to timely sharpen its work force with newer technologies and worked totally in isolation without making any efforts to make their work force employable in changing scenarios.

The solution is simple but may not be easy; upgrade the skills set and train the trainable IT staff – young or experienced on cutting edge technologies to develop world’s best competencies – swiftly  providing scalable solutions in a more customizable way to cater wider business needs. Be proactive to position products and services to wider industry needs with varying size, expenditure and expectations.

Create newer Green Ocean – be first to acknowledge changing expectation and be the best to embrace the change – generate newer competencies to regain cost effective value additions.