European debt crisis

Every now and then for the last one year or so.we have been hearing about the latest development of the IMF bail-out package for troubled euro zone countries.The plethora of information highlighting different view points about what should Greece and other troubled euro zone countries do,have forced me to mull over this issue and come up with my understanding of the situation.
The bail regime for Greece started about one year ago.Earlier the politicians and the leading bankers thought that providing a stimulus package from the IMF coupled with the fiscal tightening by the Greece policy makers would do the trick and Greece should be able to ride through the tough waves.But now as the time has passed the proposed solution seems to be infeasible and once again the top European authorities of the likes of  European union and the European central bank are once again busy contemplating a new strategy which help this troubled economy to pass the stringent test which lies ahead.
The bond yields of Greece are rising at a very fast rate and for sure this rate is not sustainable for the government.It was planned earlier during the 1st IMF sanction that Greece will return to the  markets by 2012,butthe yields have risen to such an extent that it's impossible for the government to turn to private investors for its financing for the year 2012.What this has done that it has made clear that the current fiscal stimulus from the IMF is not enough and there is a need for other more pragmatic solution to this problem.The politician of the euro zone area are talking about possible debt restructuring,however the ECB is strictly opposing any such restructuring scheme.The ECB is opposed to this scheme because the write-down which comes with the restructuring will effect the banks who are currently holding the Greece government debentures.Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank is having a tough time convincing the politicians that any restructuring will effect badly not just the Greece banks but also various other large banks across the euro zone which are possessing the Greece government debentures.The probable solution which the ECB is suggesting that is to increase the maturity of the government bonds keeping the interest and the Principal intact.What this will do is that it will provide Greece with some more time but ultimately this is a short-term easing,ultimately the payment has to be made and at present level of 145-% of GDP deficit it is almost sure that Greece will not be able to do that.Restructuring is something which will have to be done-the sooner the better.
From the last we got an idea why restructuring is important in Greece case.But again as there are opposing concepts to every probable idea,this too has its cons.Most of the people who are opposed to this idea say that restructuring will promote other countries not to try harder to make sure that their fiscal policy are implemented with due diligence and in a punitive manner.Countries like Ireland and Portugal have al-ready been provided with IMF fiscal stimulus, so if we go in for restructuring for Greece case then we might have to consider restructuring for these two countries as well.This will for sure will put immense pressure on the European banks.
Finally to end this discussion i will like to conclude that restructuring has to be there in Greece case if we think of proving a long term solution.Without restructuring it will be impossible to sustain the deficit level and the Greece economy will succumb into dip recession much bigger than the Lehman brothers.What lies to be taken care of is the extent of restructuring and this is something which requires due diligence from the European politicians side.

Need for collaboration between corporates and social sector organization

In developing countries like ours own their is immense potential of unlocking new markets of business.But again as most of business men are agile the markets of high profit prospect has been captured.The urban area have seen sprawling of new business at a stupendous rate.The only market to have lacked this pace of launching of new businesses is the rural sector of India,the reason is quite obvious-no scope of sudden revenue generation
In the past decade the corporates have shown their potential through the phenomenal growth record of theirs.Social sector has been lagging in terms of growth that can be materialized i.e.growth which can be literally be shown on the various accounts statements.Of lately the social sector has come up with more and more innovative and the so called 'greener ideas' which seems the be the need of the hour of the 21st century.In India for example the innovative concepts like generation of electricity from husk and various other cleaner sources of electricity have come up and that to in large numbers.The government has also played a supportive role by promoting these initiatives through various subsidies schemes.What this has done that it has increased the growth rate of social sector at par to those of the corporates.
Now since the growth rate of both the sectors are commensurate to each other,most of the business savant are mulling over the possible collaboration of these two sectors.These two sectors combined can serve the need of the myriad people of the rural area in a new innovative and less costlier ways.Several examples have come up in which the collaboration of these two have not only been blessing for the rural India, but also has proven theirs economic viability.One such example is of E-Health Point.what this organization does is that it leverages technology to cater to the needs of the rural India.Diagnosis is done online so that the rural area people will not have to take the burden of traveling long distance as they can have a online diagnosis  at their village itself.Of-course the IT is acting as a facilitator here but again the idea has spawned by the various social sector organizations and with the help of corporates infrastructure they have turned the idea into a business model which is benefit able for both the corporates and the rural public.
The need of the hour as such is the that of a Hybrid value creation(HVC) with the collaboration from both the parties.This collaboration can recreate value across various dimensions like it can provide cost efficient as well a time efficient solution to the people and at the same time act as a new source of revenue generation for the corporates.But again for the revenues to become substantial some patience will be required as the growth aspects will not be as high as compared to various tested business models like urban retail and various financial models of the like of MF schemes etc.The benefits which this new collaborative platform has on offer is that the number of competitors are quite few and hence for those early movers whom in marketing term we call innovators have got a huge unlocked business potential needs to cater to.

pros and cons of multi-side platform

In  2009 toys company toys 'R' us sued amazon saying that it had violated some of the agreement of their multi- side platform deal in which amazon will provide the platform for selling the toys of toys 'R' us through it's online web-site.But it turns out that toys 'R' us learnt it the hard way that amazon was focusing more on toys 'R' client in order to create a rapport with them which was more oriented towards creating a value for amazon.
The above stated dispute is only one of the myriad issue which one needs to understand in order to get an insight into nuances of MSP. There are various issues which a firm should consider before going in for a msp with an existing platform provider like amazon,ebay etc.first of all let me elaborate the cons whcih are stated in a point wise manner
1.The platform provider can access  your customer base and can focus more on creating value for themselves rather than focusing on your concern.

2.Differentiating your product is quite difficult when you are using multi-side platform.This is the sole reason why exclusive companies like Louis-Vuitton prefer to have their own platform rather than going in for msp
.
3.seamless integration between you and the provider may not be there.


Now let us see what are the pros of going in for a MSP
1.lesser cost.this is quite obvious as you not concocting anything rather you are just using the service of an existing platform.

2.Access to larger customer base-the provider which you use will have been there in the market for quite some time and thus it is expected that their customer base will also be quite wide.This gives an instant access to the existing customer base.

3.Also these days the provider are providing some space for customization of your offering.This can be used as a tool for differentiating your product,but again no 100% customization is there.


Deciding whether to go for a msp or concocting yours own platform is a strategical problem.The firm must know what sort of business they are in, whether they have a long term orientation or they thrive more on short term gains.A mismatch between the orientation of the platform provider and the subscriber has always been a source of discrepancy.In the amazon case amazon has a long term orientation whereas toys 'R' us has a short-term orientation as toys market thrives mainly on short-term intermittent innovations.Most of the time the paltform provider tries to monopolize by setting in certain demands.Microsoft developed an opensocial paltform in which applications which can run on any social network platform like facebook,myspace,linkedln can be developed.As a barter for providing this service what microsoft demanded was an access to the customer of these social network sites.Linkedln sniffed some hidden motive behind this and opposed this motion of microsoft.Instead of going in with opensocial linedln created it's own platform which used only few features of opensocial which were quintessential like searching based on a particualr calendar date and an event to see who all members of linkedln or other socialnetworking sites where attending it.

Companies like google has been raking in quite a lot of money through advertisement wherein they charge the companies which use theirs ads to promote themselves.Generally the companies which use this feature of google pays on the basis what exact search pattern string which they will like to purchase,whenever the user types in the search string which a particular company has purchased,ads of that company will pop up along with the search results.A firm can also go in for more than one MSP for example the same firm can use the advertising facility of both google and yahoo.

In the past there has been the case where the MSP has become kind of monopolist and in order to discourage this type of monopolism various firms have chipped in to search for new service providers.But again while choosing new service provider firms must make sure that they are not tipping the new provider to become another monopolist.This is exactly what happened with apple's i tunes,initially it was encouraged to end the monopoly of napster but overtime it grew so large and commanded such a high stake in online music store business market that it itself has become a sort of monopolist.

To end this discussion all that can be summed-up is that whether to go in for msp or to build your own platform is a strategic decision.firms must have a complete knowledge of what they are striving to achieve including the knowledge of the customers which they are targeting, type of the market which they are into ,whether it has long term or short term orientation etc and various other factors which vary with the requirement of the firm.

what it takes to be a high potential employee

Recently there has been quite a buzz regarding how the various companies distinguish the top employees from the rest of the bunch.There are various different view points regarding whether the company should be overt about who are those top 3 or 4% employees whom they consider as high potential,some say that it's a good idea as this will encourage competition among the employees whereas others feel that this should not been done as it may demotivate those employees who are not on the list.This brouhaha about what should been done has been a source of inspiration of my mulling over what is it that being a high performing employees takes.


First of all if you want yourself to be projected as a high potential employee your performance has to be very good,there is no compromise on this front,but again this is not the only criteria.Another important thing is that you have to be very good at learning new things like various new technology it certainly gives you sort of edge over your peers and shows your knack for gaining insights about newer things,but again this is important only during your early days as time goes on technical agility do not play very important role.After certain time it is your qualitative qualities like your behavior which really counts.Factors like technical nimbleness are taken for granted once you reach a top position,so in order to distinguish yourself from the lot you will have to focus more on your soft skills.By soft skill I mean how you communicate to your peers,sub-ordinates,customers,what is yours attitude towards them etc.

The factors described in the above para are quite generic in nature,so now i will like to elaborate on the x-factors which distinguishes you from the lot.Let me list these factors point wise so that it is easier for the raeder to comprehend where this discussion is headed.

1.Desire to excel
Most of you will be wondering that how can this be a distinguishing factor as almost everyone of us have a high desire for success,but again the thing is having a desire is something and really working hard to make those desire come true is another thing.People who are so called high potential have this desire and are willing to sacrifice without feeling nostalgic or whining  about how things are going on.

2.Catalytic learning
Learning is a very important tool which once leveraged can do wonders.but again simply learning about something wont do we have got to learn about how to use in practical what we have learn t.In order to explain this point let me take a example suppose you are trying to learn a new language then you wont be able to learn it completely just by reading it what you have to do is that you have to try and speak in that language daily thats what called practical implication.

3.Enterprising Spirit
This point is of paramount importance in today's dynamic world where as they say no job is permanent.You may be working in one project for quite sometime but suddenly your boss calls up and tells you that you have to move on to some another important project.Initially there might be some inertia preventing you from moving on from the current project to the newer one as you devoted quite a lot effort of yours towards the ongoing project, but again as time goes on you have to accept the very fact that you wont always be working as per your wish sometimes you will have to put up with things.

4.Dynamic sensors
Again this point has gained quite a lot of importance lately.Most of the high potential employees get tempted by offers which seems quite lucrative initially only to be found not at all interesting later.high potential employees recover from a mistake committed by them quite fastly and hence their so called sensors are dynamic in nature.


This blog post of mine has been inspired from the june 2010 edition of the hbr.I have tried to present this fact from my understanding of the article and have tried my level best to not make is sound like a Verbatim

Vitality of Sustainablity for managers

The concept of sustainability has been there in the business world for a long time,however the area or to me more precise the broader aspects which it covers is increasing day by day.Earlier before investing in a new business avenue the most important factor which the top notch of the company used to see was whether the proposed business is financially viable or not.By financial viability they mean that whether the revenues which are being generated because of the implementation of the business idea outweigh the cost of implementing the idea.But now a days financial viability is not the only important criteria,sure it is there among the list of important things to checked of before the implementation,but certain other factors like the one which has gained the most importance-the environmental sustainablity.
Environment sustainability has become one of the influencing factors these days as companies are striving really hard to make an impact on its customers and to be seen as a company which places a great deal of importance to ecological conservation.Various companies herald this commitment of theirs through various programs like the corporate social responsibility(CSR).With the ever increasing pressure from the various NGOs, companies before implementing any of their plans make sure that they are in accordance with the environmental law existing in that area.The government too is encouraging the companies to be more and more environmentally responsible by using more and more greener ways of producing.The help from the government side comes in the form of various subsidies which are provided once the company reduces it pollution level.There are various methods of measuring the pollution level and the one which is quite famous these days is carbon footprint.Their is quite a tussle within companies to reduce their carbon footprint and be seen as a more greener companies.Recently government of India in order to promote this initiative has waived the import taxes on greener sources of power like solar panels etc which are imported from other countries.Even newer concepts like trading if carbon footprints has come up and has been in existence for quite some time in countries like US.However the carbon footprint trading concept proved out to be a sort of a fad.
The use of greener products is definitely a topic which the environmental specialist will like to foster,but again these products are not cheap and hence the initial set-up cost are quite huge and because of this high set-up cost reaching the break even point will be difficult until and unless there is large demand and the company is able to reach economies of scale.The developed countries are pondering upon the developing countries which are still in the industrialization phase to use more and more greener ways,however the most important issue which they are not addressing is that how the developing countries is going to have access to the huge capital investment required for this pourpose. This is one of the reasons why the copanhagen summit was not that successful.