Category: Strategy

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 […]

Strategy, transformation

Self Appraisal – A Year Gone By..

I started the year 2014 by announcing publicly my goals for 2014. You can find them here. I now wanted to reflect on the year gone by and do a self-appraisal on my progress from where I started and intended to reach. I had decided that the single word for the year would be “Transformation” – in 5 different realms. Physical Transformation: I am glad that I have been able to  lose 7Kgs and a few inches around my waist. What worked in my favor was getting a fitbit device. The device provided the constant feedback on how I was doing […]

Strategy

What Could FlipKart Do Post its Billion Dollar Day Experience

FlipKart’s big billion day was one of the watershed moments in the eCommerce industry in India as they garnered up more than 100 million dollars in sale in 10 hours. You can find the official statement from one of the founders: However, there has been a lot of criticism that they have faced around every aspect of the sale and had to eventually apologize to all their registered customers. There is a lot of learning for all online retailers in India.  The most critical learning in my opinion is that the Indian consumer is still highly price conscious and demanding […]