Category: Strategy

Entrepreneurship, Strategy

Why Startups Fail?

There are only three things that can kill a startup: Running out of cash: This is the biggest reason why most startups and even some of the large organisations fail. They run out of cash. Startup founders would give themselves a much better chance of success if they are able to figure out a consistent cash flow. Profitability can come later in the life of a startup, cash flow must come first. This is akin to oxygen for humans. No oxygen, no life. No cash, no startup. Cash can come from investors, customers or founders. The most sustainable of the […]

Ideas, Strategy

Strategies for Success

It is that time of the year, when most of us schedule mid-year appraisals for ourselves and assess progress against the goals that we set up at the start of the year. While this is a good practice (if you do this, not just as an activity to just tick off of your to do list, but in all its sincerity, you are already better than most people), this still isn’t setting yourself up for success. I am as guilty of this as anyone else. Is this your story? I did my half yearly appraisal earlier this week and realised the following: […]

Business Model, Strategy

Google to Alphabet and a New Model for Organisational Growth

Google founders Sergey and Larry have the knack of doing unconventional things. They have done it again by giving birth to a parent company for Google – Alphabet. In a blog post, that seems to have surprised almost everyone, Larry explains their reasoning behind the need to create Alphabet and how the new structure will provide focus, leadership and independence to all their businesses, while allowing both Sergey and Larry the time and latitude to focus on their moonshots or the big bets that they are going after. In my opinion, the move is a good move because of the following reasons: This […]

Strategy

Starting Movements instead of Businesses

I recently watched a TEDx Talk titled, “How to start a movement | November Project | TEDxBeaconStreet”. This was about the founders of the November project sharing their success at holding open workout sessions across cities and their learnings from the experiment about starting a movement.  You can watch the entire video here. I really think that the lessons that they share about starting movements is not only important for people who want to start a social movement, but equally important for entrepreneurs to understand so that they are able to build a movement around their businesses. As an entrepreneur, […]

Strategy

Fighting Complexity By Embracing Simplicity

  According to the “Simplifying the Future of Work Study,” a survey conducted by Knowledge@Wharton and SAP, fighting complexity has become a strategic corporate imperative. You can find a link to the whitepaper which details the responses and the results here. The question that I would like to ponder here is the following: How does complexity creep into every aspect of our lives and what can we do about it In my opinion, every landscape (including IT landscape, process landscape, political landscape, personal landscape) is just like a garden. If we want to keep our gardens clean and well looked after, we […]