Freelance Consultant's Diary

While India may provide tremendous growth opportunities , the strategies that an American corporation needs to deploy to succeed there have to be different from what we are used to here - the infrastructure is lacking, affordability continues to be an issue (despite the presence of aspiration), and finding the right people to drive strategy implementation continues to be a challenge. These were some of the messages that emerged yesterday at The Conference on India & Its Neighbors at the Harvard Business School . I was very impressed with the quality of the conference (speakers, panelists, and topics of discussion), and believe it or not, it was organized by the MBA students under the SABA umbrella. Here are some additional points that business leaders need to think about as they contemplate their India strategy: While BRIC countries often get clubbed together, I learned that India and China (China was also covered briefly during several panel discussions but I was surprised to lea

The American economy will continue to outpace the world over the next 10 years, while Europe, China and Russia will fall further behind, according to the 2005-2015 Decade Forecast by a research firm called Strategic Forecasting. The United States is set for a decade of high investment and high productivity growth , Stratfor says, in part because the US has the youngest -- and fastest-growing -- population among all the world's major economies. (Related article: How to bring economic prosperity to America ?) At the same time, as the huge and wealthy baby-boom generation nears retirement, its savings and investments will make available "an abundance of capital" that will lower borrowing costs, enabling American industry to increase efficiency by more rapidly replacing old industrial plants and equipment. (Related article: Strategies for fast growth companies ) This is a very bold forecast and will definitely cheer up many of us who have been discouraged by higher unemploym

While Shrek 2 and Harry Potter books have been some of the hottest products we have seen during last few years, nothing compares to the success of iPod (Related article: Business model transformation at Apple ) when it comes to redefining how we live our lives. Merrill Lynch estimates that Apple's iPod business in 2006 could be as much as $6 billion, or depending on the prices, somewhere around 60 million units (assuming an average price of $100). That is an impressive number to achieve in such a short period of time. (Related article: Apple Computer provides luxury for the masses ) And did you know that just about 2% of music is sold online today? The manner in which iPod is different is that it has fundamentally changed the market dynamics in the world of music (Related article: Mergers and acquisitions in blogosphere indicate rapid growth ). With the explosion in blogs and emergence of iPod as the preferred gadget for digital music, we are moving in a world of personalized conte

It is a very popular question that I am asked by both entrepreneurs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs (or those thinking of becoming one). I had posted my tips for entrepreneurs to seek venture capital in a previous article. But today I want to build on my suggestion about networking to find the right partners, either as a venture capitalist or as executive seeking to acquire startups or as entrepreneurs looking for either venture capital or companies to work with. 2005: Year in which VC cash is plenty But before I go any further, there is plenty of good news for anyone seeking investments from venture capitalists. If you know how the venture capital industry works, it is very simple to understand that these folks are as desperate to invest their funds as entrepreneurs are to find investors. And 2005 happens to be an year in which the level of desperation is particularly high. According to Keith Benjamin and Pascal Levensohn, managing directors at Levensohn Venture Partners, and qu

A very common question that I am asked by business leaders relates to the future and competitiveness of the United States. Analysis conducted by iProceed.com shows that there are several reasons why we might be entering a phase of moderate growth: Shift of the center of gravity of growth from the west to the east ( China and India ). Maturing of the US economy in terms of its appetite for consumption of low-value goods. High cost of doing business. That not only includes higher wages, but also costs of healthcare and business infrastructure. Opportunities for rapid growth with less competition in emerging economies. Availability of technology that allows corporations to do locate their resources in the most cost-effective manner. So what can we do keep economic growth high in the US? At a recent panel discussion that included many venture capitalists, the consensus was that as long as America continues to attract the best and brightest and provides them with education and research

There is plenty of confusion about what a blog is. And that is OK since blogs are still so new, despite the fact that blogs have become the preferred publishing medium during recent months. What a blog is not? A blog is no longer just an online, public, but personal diary. Those days are long gone. Since the blog technology evolved, blogs are slowly being used as another publishing platform for content. In fact, Blogger, the leading blog provider, calls blogs simply as "easy-to-use web site, where you can quickly post thoughts, interact with people." Surprisingly enough, there is a lot of philosophical discussion going on among publishers and bloggers if blogs should have advertisement or if there should be blogs developed with a very narrow focus, for instance, weight loss or supply chain management or the Tsunami disaster. Many early bloggers appear to be disappointed that yet another technology that was supposed to be the domain of techies has now entered the mainstream an

A major concern for business leaders, particularly those participating in businesses that create value through innovative use of technology, is the shrinking product lifecycle. So much so that the term "instant markets" is being used to describe situations where a business opportunity pops up and unless you can capture it in an instant, you may be too late. So while I had interpreted strategic moves by Apple as a business model transformation , the recent announcement of price cuts (with enhanced product attributes in iPod family) is making me think that the strategy is beyond providing luxury for the masses . I am tempted to think that Apple is merely responding to product life cycles that are increasingly shorter. And it is not just the tech world that is a victim. Even the pharmaceutical companies that have patent protection are finding out that the actual number of years during which they can operate without any competition can be in single digits. (Related article: How

The drama with Cox-2 inhibitor drugs got even more interesting last week. In a bizarre turn of events, a drug that was supposedly so dangerous that its manufacturer recalled it voluntarily, was found safe to be sold again by a panel of scientists. That is when the scientists were almost unanimous in their belief that the drugs were less safe than it was believed before the Vioxx controversy started in September 2004. (Related article: Merck's flawed Vioxx recall strategy ) Benefits to Pfizer It gets to sell both Celebrex and Bextra (though with black-box warnings). The FDA panel did not fully agree with the company that these drugs were safe. Most experts do not expect that either Celebrex or Bextra will achieve the pre-controversy level of sales, considering all the bad news that has come out during last four months. (Related article: Pfizer's wrong strategy for Celebrex and Bextra ) Benefits to Merck It is too early to predict how being able to sell Vioxx again will help Merc

I continue to believe that with all the major problems that Merck faces, it should simply be sold in pieces . It used to be a great company, it still has some excellent scientists, and drug portfolio that has more value on their own than as part of Merck, a company that will spend more energy on lawsuits than on refining its business model . If Merck continues to pursue this flawed strategy , it will simply turn into another W R Grace. Having said that about Merck, let us talk about Pfizer. For several weeks I have argued that Pfizer too has pursued a wrong strategy for Celebrex and Bextra . I sincerely hope that business leaders will learn from the experience with Vioxx, Celebrex, and Bextra and never sell a product that they know is dangerous. While it is early to say what will happen next week when both the FDA and the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) meet, but there is a strong likelihood that both drugs will receive strong warnings, if not banned outright. The (Australian) Therape

If you are engaged in strategic planning and/or marketing, you probably get access to a lot of market research data in forms of press releases, articles, reports, and consultants. In fact, very likely you pay for a lot of this business intelligence. As a management consultant , I have not only used a lot of such data I have also generated a lot of it as part of our analysis. This article is written to help you interpret market research data and use it in a way that you can make the best use of it in your planning: (Related article: How to pick a market research firm ?) If you get any market data for free, read it for entertainment only. Once in a while it is good to entertain yourself with some numbers and forecast. Never get married to a forecast. Remember, it is only a forecast, and in most cases, a forecast by a six-year old is just as good as that from Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. If you do not believe me, just read a market research report from 5/10 years ago and compare them wit

Despite being a rather unexciting budget for businesses overall , the proposed FY06 budget has some good news for the Information Technology( IT) industry. IT Budget of $65.2 billion for the Federal government, appears to represent a more than 7% growth rate. A four year view shows the IT budget represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.5% over four years (FY03 through FY06). (Related article: Does IT matter ?) "This is not unexpected, and represents healthy growth for IT, considering that the top line budgets of many agencies are dropping or funded below requested," said Karen Wilson, vice president, consulting for FSI. "The IT portions of this budget are growing, which is good news for the industry." Some examples of major new projects include: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA): Health eVet - funded at $311 million for FY06. The project replaces the existing VistA-Legacy system. VistA is the technical infrastructure that supports the VHA provision of

Not so long ago (2001), we were struggling to figure out what to do with the (projected, not real) huge surpluses. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan came up with this argument on May 10, 2001, "I am far more convinced that when confronted with this type of situation (projected budget surpluses) you reduce taxes. You don't increase spending to reduce the surplus." So it is ironical that just a few years later we are trying to massage numbers to make the deficit look smaller than it really is. Therefore, the budget proposals prepared by the White House have been a disappointment for most business leaders, except for those that are exploring new business opportunities in homeland security and defense. Here are our thoughts on the budget and what you can do to respond: The total federal debt would swell to $11 trillion in 2010 from $8 trillion this year. This is not a good indicator of long-term economic health of the United States. Little is being done to reduce the budget defici

Ask Jeeves , a search engine, is acquiring Trustic, the company that owns and operates Bloglines . Bloglines is a popular free online service for searching, subscribing, publishing and sharing real simple syndication (RSS) feeds, blogs and rich web content. The company has indexed 280 million live web content elements-news feed and blog articles, images, audio and video (compared to 8 billion by Google ). Another notable acquisition in the blogosphere is by Six Apart , the makers of the highly acclaimed Movable Type publishing platform and TypePad personal weblogging service, of Danga Interactive, the operators of another similar service, LiveJournal , popular among teenagers and college students. Google operates Blogger, a similar service, and many experts estimate that it may no longer be the largest now. Microsoft has also launched a competitive product called MSN Spaces . The day is not far off when Yahoo might jump into the game as well since it already provides a blog reader in

You must be hearing a lot about Apple these days. After the enormous success of the iPod (and related products in the portfolio), iTunes, and all sorts of innovative versions of its product line including iPod Photo, PowerBook, Mac Mini, and iPod Mini, Apple has reported record financial results. Plus, it has become the world's leading brand, replacing Google. The investors are cheering and if Apple's stock performance (chart at the bottom of this page) is any indicator, it is now one of the hottest companies, along with Google and eBay . (Related article: Google's robust strategy and business model ) Secret of Apple's success - Business model transformation Broadened its customer base: Apple traditionally appealed to a segment of customers that were fanatic about its products. Apple's customers in Japan are almost like a cult. But so are customers of Louis Vuitton or Prada or Hermes. While that narrow focus makes sense for high-end bags, apparel, scarves, etc., i

There are strong indications that some form of privatization of Social Security will happen soon. President Bush may not get everything that he wants but there is a reason why he is starting off with such an ambitious agenda (Related article: How to negotiate smartly ?). He is hoping that at least even partial privatization will start the process of complete privatization in a few years. So what does privatization of Social Security mean for business leaders? While it is still too early to predict what kinds of business opportunities (Read previous article: New business opportunities from privatization of Social Security ), a few things are certain: The equities market will go up. According to the Social Security Administration , with 1% point of the 12.4% Social Security payroll tax, when invested in private accounts starting in 2006, and returning an average 6% per year, by 2013 the pie will be as large as half-a-trillion dollars. This will definitely have a huge impact on the US (an

There is some great news for online media companies like eCreativa . Advertising spending is expected to increase 5.1 percent in 2005 to $150 billion, according to full-year forecasts released today by TNS Media Intelligence. This increase follows the estimated growth of 10.6 percent in 2004, as the U.S. economy continues to show signs of stability. (Related article: Strong forecast for ebusiness and nanopublishing ) Indeed 2004 was a stellar year for online publishers, but the number that we have to look at more closely is the online advertising, which is expected to grow at 11% in 2005. TNS Media Intelligence is also forecasting that Spanish language television advertising will grow at 9.4% a year. While no information is available on Spanish online advertising, it is a fair assumption to make that advertisers will see an opportunity in advertising on Spanish language websites with Spanish copy and Spanish landing pages (it will be wonderful if they also provide at least some custome

In recent days, much has been made of the launch of a search engine by MSN and the fact that Apple took the #1 spot among brands replacing Google . And not too long ago, there was another report that showed how Yahoo and MSN have increased their market share in the search space . Of course, all of these are developments are important to assess Google's worth as a company and to analyze its future prospect, but a close look at the financials presented by Google today tells us at iProceed that Google is a very solid company, principally because of a great business model and a robust strategy. Google's business model transformation Google is no longer a search engine company. That is evident from its expansion into many additional offerings for both consumers (Picasa, Blogger, Keyhole, Gmail, and other small features, along with rumors of a browser) and enterprise (primarily search). While Google has not announced that it is restructuring its business model, as a management consu

I have received a lot of comments about my article on how to develop a press release strategy . First, let me share some of the mistakes that companies commit, provide a few tips, and then I will talk about a model for a press release. How to get maximum exposure for your press release? Make it as widely available as possible, with minimum pain. For instance, Datamonitor, a business information company (how ironic?), requires you to contact their press office to get a copy. What is a busy editor going to do? Just ignore them. And with bloggers becoming a major force in the world of publishing, companies like Datamonitor will rarely get mentioned, which is important as the Marqui example shows how it is actively courting bloggers in its guerilla marketing efforts . Make the press release available as soon as possible. Some companies will first do a release and make it accessible only to registered publishers or to only selected media companies. Big mistake. The moment a press release

While everyone is focused on the Social Security privatization issue and what it means for businesses , I was attracted to a speech by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Director of the Congressional Budget Office. In his opinion, the bigger problem is Medicare. Almost all business leaders in companies of all sizes know the impact on the bottomline due to out of control rise in healthcare costs. General Motors will spend as much as $5.6 billion for health care of its employees and retirees in the U.S alone. The story is being repeated all over the country. While companies are coming up with creative solutions - for instance, Toyota is opening up its own pharmacies at its U.S. operations while others are passing on more of their costs to their employees. (Related article: Total spending on healthcare in America ) Two factors are contributing to the increase of Medicare costs - an increase in health care costs and the aging of America - resulting in a projected increase in Medicare spending of 9% per