Showing posts with label HP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HP. Show all posts

Monday, April 15, 2013

B&E This Fortnight

INTERNATIONAL

BUSINESS, ECONOMY & FINANCE
He end of Gaddafi

In what will probably be remembered as a landmark event in the history of dictatorships, Muammar Gaddafi, the man who ruled Libya for 42 years was captured, beaten ruthlessly and finally killed on October 21, 2011, as he tried to escape with his convoy. Although it is not clear how the tyrant was murdered, videos shot by bystanders and interviews of eye witnesses reveal the disturbing events which led to his death. Most of the videos circulating on the internet are graphic in nature and give an extremely violent account of his death. The entire drama led to an intervention by the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has even suggested a possible enquiry into the incident given its chaotic nature. However, the more important question is the risk of a power struggle, primarily because Libya has the ninth largest oil reserves in the world. According to data released by the CIA World Factbook, the country produced 1.789 million barrels of oil a day before the unrest started. This accounted for roughly 25% of the GDP. In the aftermath of these events, oil production has fallen to 400,000 barrels a day. More importantly, even if Libya does manage to restore production, it is not enough to fulfill the employment needs of all Libyans demanding jobs. The developments need to be closely monitored by the US in order to establish a healthy democratic system..

The netflix syndrome

‘Strategy’ has turned out to be one of the most alluring and elusive business terminologies ever conceived. What Apple has achieved through strategy, HP has destroyed. In yet another case of a strategically and financially sound company getting it wrong, Netflix has almost undone what it had managed to do over the past several years. A few weeks back, Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix, announced that he would be splitting up the company into two parts. While Netflix will continue to provide streaming service, the DVD rental business would be christened Qwikster. The idea has been hailed by some and criticised by many. The poorly introduced pricing and service alterations ended up upsetting customers. In fact, analysts are estimating that Netflix might have lost as many as 600,000 US subscribers since July. The announcements did not alienate the customers of its live streaming service who continued to opt for the $7.99 monthly rental plan. The backlash came from subscribers who were used to receiving DVDs in red envelopes. It appears that they perceived the streaming service as a free add-on. Now, the CEO has suddenly decided to backtrack on the plans. How the company will regain lost ground is still a question, but this was a very bad move on the part of Hastings (no wonder he’s on the board of Microsoft).


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
 
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
 
2012 : DNA National B-School Survey 2012
Ranked 1st in International Exposure (ahead of all the IIMs)
Ranked 6th Overall

Zee Business Best B-School Survey 2012
Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri’s Session at IMA Indore
IIPM IN FINANCIAL TIMES, UK. FEATURE OF THE WEEK
IIPM strong hold on Placement : 10000 Students Placed in last 5 year
IIPM’s Management Consulting Arm-Planman Consulting
Professor Arindam Chaudhuri – A Man For The Society….
IIPM: Indian Institute of Planning and Management
IIPM makes business education truly global
Management Guru Arindam Chaudhuri
Rajita Chaudhuri-The New Age Woman
IIPM B-School Facebook Page
IIPM Global Exposure
IIPM Best B School India
IIPM B-School Detail

IIPM Links
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face

Thursday, April 04, 2013

Search for The Next ‘Hundred Zeroes’!

Technology Companies are setting up VC funding Arms, Raising optimism of a Great Inorganic Leap forward. Seriously, aren’t corporate venture funds already too overrated?

When Google founders Sergey Brin & Larry Page decided to take up VC funding of $12.5 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1998, they told the VC firm’s partner John Doerr that they were willing to hire an outside CEO, but they backtracked a few months later; saying they would like to go on their own. They were then taken by Doerr to meet a number of CEOs like Andy Grove of Intel, Jeff Bezos of Amazon & Steve Jobs of Apple to really appreciate what a CEO’s job entailed. Finally, they relented on the outsider proposition, provided the outsider was Steve Jobs and no one else, before finally being convinced to explore further!

Considering Steve Jobs’ iconic personality and a high probability of a clash of equals, that may not have been a genuinely good idea. But this anecdote from Steven Levy’s book titled In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works & Shapes Our Lives, really underscores how Google’s founders never really were comfortable letting their baby being run by anyone but themselves. The inevitable happened this year, when Page took the reins as CEO and Eric Schmidt became Chairman. Page already is talking about taking Google back to its start up days when it comes to the culture of innovation.

They have always been concerned about the company slowing down on growth. Levy mentions that they once fired all the middle managers for that! In fact, though not all may take such extreme action, that reflects a genuine concern of technology companies beyond a certain size, as they risk getting blown over by the next disruptive technology in a dynamic industry. This fact has proved true for companies like Microsoft, Yahoo!, HP, BlackBerry, Dell, IBM and Google itself, to an extent. Apart from a number of initiatives to get the company on the innovation drive again, which include working on book search and autonomous vehicles, one of the Google’s most ambitious moves is with respect to its VC firm Google Ventures, which has earmarked $200 million to fund promising start up companies (touted as a move to find the next Google?). That’s significantly large by VC standards and Google claims that it has a special secret algorithm that can help it find what the next big start ups would be. Apart from Google itself, a number of big technology names are on the list of corporate venture funds like IBM, Intel, SAP, Microsoft and National Semiconductor. But how successful can this VC model led by technology companies be?


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles