Insights into Strategic Transformation and Change by Dr John Papatheohari (Partner, IBM - India) at XLRI

Dr John Papatheohari, Partner and Global Delivery Leader (Strategy & Change) - IBM India, addressed the students and faculty of XLRI as part of the Institute’s CEO interaction forum. The forum is a regular platform for XLers to interact with Industry leaders. Dr John elaborated on the importance of Strategic Transformation and Change in the current Business context and also highlighted the structure, operations and growth of IBM’s Strategy and Change group in India. The forum culminated with a Q&A session wherein queries on Strategy and Change in general and IBM’s operation in particular were addressed. Subsequently, Dr John also took time to interact with the GMP students (GMP is XLRI’s one year full time executive Management program for professionals with more than 5 years of experience) and highlighted the varied scope of opportunities available in the Strategy and Change group for management students with work experience.

The Global Brain - Satish Nambisan (XL '89)

Dear XL folks:

My new book on network-centric innovation has just come out:

The Global Brain: Your Roadmap for Innovating Faster & Smarter in a Networked World (Wharton School Publishing, 2007) (coauthor Mohan Sawhney, Kellogg School)

Sample book endorsements:

"This is a very important book on a very important topic by two of the world's foremost authorities in innovation. It bears the hallmark of great business writing. The authors do not sell a one-size fits-all prescription for every company's innovation problems. Rather, they offer different roadmaps that can be tailored to each company's situation. This is what makes their work so broadly useful." - Clayton M. Christensen, Robert & Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

“Applied Innovation is what creates value in organizations; it’s just very hard to do it. Nambisan and Sawhney have written a book that constructs a truly effective bridge between network driven innovation and its application. A refreshing look at Innovation and its practice. Useful for every business leader who is perplexed at the thought of actually ‘getting Innovation done.’” - Azim Premji, Chairman and CEO, WIPRO Technologies

More details about the book are at: www.theglobalbrain.net and also at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Global-Brain-Roadmap-Innovating-Networked/dp/013233951X/

Best regards,
Satish (XL, ’89)
_________________________________________________________________

Satish Nambisan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Technology Management & Strategy
Lally School of Management & Technology
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy, NY 12180

Want to halt attrition? Go to XLRI

From Business Standard

XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business and Human Resources, has drawn up a number of courses this financial year for companies to help combat attrition rate across industries.

These are expected to help managers and senior-level executives, especially HR personnel and team-leaders, to understand ways to retain employees and manage teams effectively.

Beginning November this year, a series of courses at XLRI will train managers in manpower planning, recruitment and selection, performance, career and succession management, managing and coping with the trauma associated with mergers and acquisitions, technological change, training, development and redeployment problems, retention and motivation strategies, empowerment and team-building, redundancy and downsising.

According to XLRI officials, the success of managerial efforts largely depend on the executives’ ability to develop and sustain team-spirit among the people under his or her care, both as a team member as well as a team leader.

The interpersonal skills for building and working in teams, and for managing conflicts, become essential prerequisites for managers as team leaders.

The new courses are therefore designed to help participants learn how to manage their own styles and orientations, while influencing others as leaders in their teams.

The courses will also help to understand the dynamics of peoples’ interaction within team members and to develop skills for working with others and leading teams.

Moreover, with the rapid growth of information technology , information systems has evolved to become the core of many organisations’ competitive strategies.

According to XLRI, the Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) capitalises on the synergy between the two precious assets, human resources and IT.

So, specialists and generalists in the area of human resources are required to develop and improve their information system competencies in order to add strategic value to their organisations.

The new set of courses are also designed to improve the participant’s understanding of technology and tools, the people who work with it, and their role in organisational performance.

The courses will impart training in evaluating, selecting and planning an appropriate human resources information system, re-engineering human resources for HRIS, the human resources processes of SAP HR, emerging trends in HRIS that involve networking, the internet, the intranet, as well as internet recruiting, privacy, security and employee self-service.

The courses will cost between Rs 15,000 and Rs 30,000. The duration of these programmes will range from two days to one month, depending upon the variety, magnitude and complexity of the topics covered.

Dr Anand Jaiswal (06FPM) on BOP (http://www.nextbillion.net/)

http://www.nextbillion.net/blogs/2007/10/22/guest-post-anand-k-jaiswal-on-the-role-of-small-and-medium-enterprises

Guest Post: Anand K. Jaiswal on the Role of Small and Medium Enterprises

Submitted by Rob Katz on October 22, 2007 - 11:04.

Published in: Consumer Products | Microfinance | Strategy

Guest blogger Dr. Anand Kumar Jaiswal is a faculty in marketing area at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, India. He received his Ph.D. from XLRI Jamshedpur. His research interests include business strategies for low-income markets, sustainable development, services management and business-to-consumer e-commerce. He has published articles in refereed journals, besides several presentations at research conferences. His latest paper, Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: An Alternate Perspective, was featured on NextBillion.net here.

By Professor Anand Kumar Jaiswal

Prahalad’s argument is that MNCs should play a proactive and important role in tapping "base of the pyramid" (BOP) markets. However, most initiatives catering to the needs of BOP customers have come from local entrepreneurs and SMEs. In India, participation of MNCs in BOP markets is mostly limited to products such as fast moving consumer products that are technologically less sophisticated. SMEs have shown better record in understanding the needs of BOP customers and fulfilling them effectively.

Micro finance is one area where local organizations in developing countries have been far more successful in reaching out to BOP customers. Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and organizations such as BASIX and nationalized banks in India have been instrumental in making micro credit an effective tool for fight against poverty. MNCs participation in micro finance in developing countries has been minimal.

BOP markets pose a different kind of challenge to multinationals. For example, in India rural markets are spread over 600,000 villages. About 82 percent of the rural population lives in villages with a population less than 5,000 (Swamy, 1999). Reaching out to this population is not easy, given the poor physical infrastructure. Large areas are not connected with roadways. The thin dispersal of rural markets poses serious challenges in terms of logistics, product shipment, delivery of stocks and reaching out to retailers. Lack of communication network and power unavailability are common (Venugopal, 2002). Further, because of low purchasing power, BOP customers buy lower volume of products on each purchase occasion, pay a lower price and consume smaller quantities on a per capita basis and hence transaction cost is much higher. These factors make it difficult for MNCs to achieve manufacturing and distribution efficiencies through increase in product volume. The high cost structure of MNC operations compounds the problems in BOP markets.

In general, SMEs are better placed than MNCs in serving BOP customers owing to their low overheads and small scale of operation. In fact SME involvement is more feasible and desirable. SMEs play a crucial role in economic development. They contribute towards large scale employment generation. Recent research has shown that in countries like India and China SMEs are leading the economic growth and development. It is estimated that in 2002, SMEs contributed about 60 percent of industrial output in China. Further, they provide employment to 75 percent of urban workforce (Economic Times, 2006). With focus on bottom line, MNCs prefer lean organizations with minimum workforce. As Prahalad himself has admitted not even 1 percent of the world population is employed by MNCs (Prahalad and Hart, 2002, p.10). This indicates that the contribution of MNCs in generating employment opportunities is marginal. Strong presence of SMEs has other advantages too. As they are more close to markets and have greater understanding of consumers, SMEs are often far more innovative in developing products suitable for BOP consumers despite resource constraints and lack of advance technology. They have been proved to be better in preserving local culture and often are more sensitive to environmental and ecological considerations.

Whether MNCs can cater to BOP markets in a similar way like SMEs is an important question. It is well accepted that performance of SMEs and local firms suffer as a result of the growing presence of MNCs owing to factors such as MNCs’ initial lower local content of inputs, their siphoning off local demand and their capacity to attract and recruit superior workforce by offering better pay packages (Aitken and Harrison, 1999, quoted in World Bank, 2002). MNCs’ dominance of BOP markets may result in weakening and possible closures of SMEs, the impact of which on employment opportunities and livelihood for low income communities can easily be predicted.

Role of Government and Social Organizations:

Though Prahalad has argued for BOP initiatives by the private sector, it is unlikely that the private sector alone can solve all the problems of BOP population. One should not ignore the role of government. The governments have critical role in creating system and regulatory framework for meaningful engagement by the private sector in the BOP markets. In areas like education and healthcare, government and private sector can complement each other. Through public sector banks in India government has provided banking services in remote rural areas where private sector organizations were reluctant to go. NGOs, not-for-profit and other types of social service organizations which are professionally managed and are operationally efficient can contribute in serving BOP population. Unlike large corporations, for these organizations profits serve as a means for sustenance, they do not have to continuously please shareholders and hence can play an important role in touching the lives of billions of the poor.

References:

1. Aitken, B and Harrison, A (1999). “Do Domestic Firms Benefit from Foreign Direct Investment? Evidence from Venezuela,” American Economic Review, 89 (3), 605-618.
2. Economic Times (2006). “Start-Ups Propel India, China Growth,” December 7, 2.Swamy R K (1999).
   
3. “Guide to Market Planning,” R K Swamy / BBDO Advertising Ltd.
4. Venugopal, Pingali (2002). “Accessing rural markets,” Unpublished paper, XLRI Jamshedpur: 1-43.
5. World Bank Policy Research Report (2002). “Globalization, Growth and Poverty - Builiding an Inclusive World Economy,” A co-publication of the World Bank and Oxford University Press, January.

XL alum Lokesh Jindal (BM 92) in the news

BM 92 alumnus Lokesh Jindal was mentioned in our local Bay Area 'India West' newspaper yesterday in connection with the opening of a new CA dev center in Andhra Pradesh. Lokesh was part of our California alumni group (& attended one of the last well-attended picnics we had, back in 2002) before he moved to CA's HQ in New York. Looks like he is now in India & is heading this unit.

CA Launches State-of-the-Art Technology Center in Hyderabad, India

HYDERABAD, India & ISLANDIA, N.Y., Oct 17, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) --
CA (NYSE: CA) today announced the official opening of its India Technology Center (ITC) in Hyderabad at a ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by CA President and CEO John Swainson.

The state-of-the-art campus, which cost US$30 million to build, reflects the substantial investment CA has made in staffing the ITC's research and development operations and sales departments. CA's workforce in India now exceeds 1,600. The ITC team will take a lead role in advancing CA's Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision of unifying and simplifying IT management.

"The ITC underscores CA's commitment to India, both as a source of an exceptionally high-quality workforce with expertise across the full range of leading-edge IT disciplines and as a rapidly growing and dynamic IT market," said Swainson. "India is now home to nearly 30 percent of our global R&D staff - further demonstrating the importance of our operations here in our overall business strategy."

Led by senior vice president and general manager Lokesh Jindal, ITC software engineers will work on multiple high-profile CA product lines that will help customers govern, manage and secure IT more effectively and cost-efficiently - enabling them to adapt dynamically to changing business demands and optimize returns on their technology investments. The ITC team will also work closely with a number of India's top-tier systems integrators to help them with both their in-house IT needs and those of private and public sector customers around the world.

Jindal, who is also a member of CA's global Senior Leadership Team, is responsible for strategic leadership of the ITC and oversight of all major business functions, including product development and management, human resources, facilities and finance. Before taking on the role, Jindal was vice president of product management and strategy for CA's Business Service Optimization business unit. Prior to joining the Company in 2002, Jindal was a principal with the McKenna Group, a leading technology market strategy firm. Earlier, he worked as an entrepreneur in consumer marketing and people development and as a regional marketing manager for HCL Hewlett- Packard.

Built in the Nanakramguda Village area of the Serilingampally Municipality, the ITC is a leading-edge, 260,672 square-foot (79,452 square meters) IT facility that includes recreational facilities, a cafeteria and a 600-seat amphitheater.

Thanks Tipu for this info.