Blogcritics Author: Sadagopan S

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

The Phenomenon Called Indian Mobile Market Growth

Sadagopan S — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 12:23:36 EDT

The Indian mobile market is on a high growth trajectory. I was in two different Indian cities last week – part of my five day-five city tour across Asia. While in India, I was told by my colleagues that the mobile telephone network connectivity has become so bad that connections are dropping often. I was in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur for a day and during a discussion with friends, a Malaysian expert told me that the prospects of two major Malaysian telecom operators look good owing to their investments in India. I was in a lunch meeting with a senior executive of a major Southeast airline the week before in Singapore - the most talked about topic over lunch was the advent of Indian aviation players creating ripples in the market. I was floored by the experience flying Jet Airways during the Chennai to Kuala Lumpur flight. My colleagues ask me to hold judgement till I get to fly Kingfisher. I am not someone to be impressed so easily -- my frequent flyer statement shows several hundred thousand miles with none other than Singapore Airlines. It is very likely aviation shall do an impressive repeat of the success of the mobile industry.Let's look at the telecom scene: Southeast Asian telecom operators have made significant investments in Indian mobile service players. These players took a financial stake in established growing businesses. Maxis, Malaysia’s largest telecom player has invested in Aircel, and Singtel has invested in Bharti, the largest mobile player in India. As these players slug it out, Maxis reports that Aircel added 588,000 new subscribers during the second quarter alone, which is more than double Maxis' achievement in Malaysia. The other Malaysian player, Telekom Malaysia, is investing in the third Indian Indian player – Spice communications. All the three are aggressively expanding their Indian opoerations.Monthy subscriptions inching towards six million additions per month - 5.9 million of them - are new mobile subscriptions, making India’s net addition the highest in the world, overtaking that of China – though the penetration levels may be lower. This New York Times article shows that china added 5.1 million subscribers, so the Indian run rate is 15% ahead of that of china. Look at the growth -- around 125 million subscribers have signed for mobile services in less than 15 years since the services were launched in the country. India believes that six or seven million monthy new subscriber additions are possible. Clearly liberalization and foreign investments all are helping the country in a big way -- after all, the Indian mobile subscription rates are amongst the lowest in the world and handset makers like Nokia are helping the cause by coming in with low cost models and in the process helping India create high tech manufacturing clusters in places like Sriperumpudur, India’s likely answer to Shenzhen. Three types of operators are alreasy investing here: the OEMs like Nokia, Motorola, the EMSs like Flextronics and Foxconn, and the component manufacturers who work with the OEM and EMS players. Dell is the recent addition planning to set up a manufacturing shop there. It's the most talked about thing in the tech sector today -- some of the largest telecom-related opportunties for system integrators/service players are available in India. Clearly opening up of the economy and the progress of the technology world is helping India advance faster and better -- the only eyesore is the Indian infrastructure. I do not want to write about my experience in the Bangalore airport clearing baggage or the time that it took for me to clear immigration on my return via Chennai.

S. Sadagopan, heads consulting and eBusiness for Satyam in the Asia Pacific, Middle Eastern and African markets based out of Singapore. He has led several consulting and technology transformation engagements covering multiple industries cutting across a wide variety of technologies around the world. His blog is focused on emerging technologies & trends. These are his personal views and he can be reached at sadagopan@gmail.com.

Offshore Business Process Outsourcing At The Crossroads

Sadagopan S — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 13:56:19 EDT

Capgemini buys majority stake in Unilever's India BPO, scream the headlines all over. For starters, business process outsourcing (BPO) is the leveraging of technology or specialist process vendors to provide and manage enterprise processes and applications, both critical and non-critical. Common examples include the likes of call centres, human resources, accounting and payroll outsourcing. Generally speaking, business process outsourcing may also involve the use of off-shore resources.The Unilever India Shared Services (Indigo), is a captive BPO company set up by Unilever in India with around 600 employees in Chennai (India) at its development centre. The captive centre carries out finance and accounting-related processing for Unilever companies in 45 countries. Paul Hermelin, CEO of Capgemini, says that he would look at acquiring the remaining stake at a later date. While the cost of the acquisition (sellout?) was not known, it is expected that since the deal includes the price of acquisition of the stake and a revenue contract for future business, the total cost may not be very high. Indigo had revenues of Rs 22.3 crore for the year ending December 2005, with the average per head revenue of Indigo at e20,000 (Rs 17.4 lakh). Since captive BPO units are primarily cost centres, revenues or earnings are not likely to be the relevant benchmarks in valuing the deal. Instead, the valuation is likely to be based more on land, building and other infrastructure. The news also said that Capgemini and the Unilever group have also entered into a seven-year agreement to deliver the full range of BPO F&A services to all the Unilever companies, which Indigo currently serves. As I see it, many are looking at this as a strategy beneficial to CG for scaling up in India. I would also urge readers to look at it through a different lens – that of HLL; unarguably India’s corporate icon and Unilever’s crown jewel would not have taken such a decision without working out its near and medium term benefits. Its likely the case that HLL must have thought that sustaining a captive BPO center may not be the best option available in front of it – seen from an expertise, economics, and scaling up perspective. I like Lever's approach - unlock the value/renounce management control where the operational challenges cannot be managed with its existing core competency. There are lessons for several multinationals who are setting up /scaling up their captive centers in India. No MNC can understand India better than Unilever. HLL has been in the country for several decades and is perhaps the largest non-government oil/IT services corporation in India. While the captive option may look attractive for some software product vendors and others in a limited way and for short duration, in reality, we see that captive option falls short on one most important dimension – arresting turnovers, repeatedly cited as a matter of concern. The ability to support a wide range of operations may also be doubtful with captive models. Dell may be a notable exception. Those who look at offshoring as just a means to shave off some costs and hope to improve on savings with passing time would definitely fail to achieve their goal measured over a period of time, unless they manage to work on the ability to manage it in a concerted way. In my experience, I find that maximizing productivity and minimizing risk seems to be the most prudent option that enterprises choose to pursue while attempting offshoring and the ability of the captives on that front to outperform outsourcing is still an open question. The process of offshore outsourcing may be more evolutionary and a determined pursuit to engage more wide and deep would be a sure way to reap consistent benefits. I echoed similar views when I wrote that when Apple chose to close down its India-based support operations that there is no merit in keeping support as a captive unit where scale is not there - whichever part of the world it might be - outsourcing support may be the long term option for Apple (all other industry majors across verticals). Clearly those investing in captive centers may need to review the options in front of them more carefully.

HP's Patricia Dunn Should Go

Sadagopan S — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 10:15:10 EDT

The HP board spying scandal drama is getting more and more murky. HP's chairperson, Patricia Dunn now says the use of pretexting (a scenario in which one person masquerades as another in order to obtain private information) for board members and reporters has been a "major embarrassment." Clearly the cognoscenti look disturbed at the developments thus far."Patricia Dunn should go", writes David Kirkpatrick. HP's chairperson reportedly spied on the company’s directors by having their telephone conversations tapped. If these allegations are true, it is very clearly unethical and perhaps illegal as well. The Wall Street Journal quotes people in the know as saying there were criminal acts involved in the methods used to search the collected records. After all, HP is a legendary company and the founders of the company were well known for their neat and clean approach toward conducting business. Too often, the board fails to stand up and lead by example; this should not be tolerated any longer. The board and its conduct are always answerable to shareholders and the law. It's also definitely a good practice to have the CEO and Chairman of the Board positions kept separate. It is high time HP stands up and, in the process, sends a firm, loud and clear message that it is, once and for all, putting behind the shame and agony of the ugly happenings centered around its board members. For a technology company, being able to respect privacy rights and behaving in an ethical manner, given that it operates around the world, is an absolute must. There is no room for ambiguity in this case. Ms. Dunn need not wait for the board to declare loss of confidence in her. She should be fired immediately. Too often the board fails to stand up and lead by example. This should not be tolerated any further. It is high time that the HP board shows that it can act decisiviely to put this controversy behind it and take a strong stand against any sort of unethical acquisition of personal information. One essential way to send that message is to get rid of Ms. Dunn. Otherwise this will remain a mess that impacts the good reputation of HP.

Book Review: Eimona by G.B. Prabhat

Sadagopan S — Sun, 3 Sep 2006 00:15:10 EDT

G.B.Prabhat, the author of Eimona, has impressive credentials. He is a pioneer in offshore consulting business and a well known name in the global IT/business consulting space. Eimona is his second novel, and after an interesting opening, rapidly paces to an amazingly engrossing read, very rich in words and full of events and eminently suitable for a non-stop read. The humor and the depth of characterization, the distinct messages and thoughts centered on each of the characters are indeed telling. The new flat world is forcing disparate cultures to come together in an enmeshed way – with business and new-found prosperity accelerating the pace of life like never before, resulting in practices and events that were unthinkable a couple of decades back. These happen quite routinely and have the potential effect of denting the fabric of society and traditional family values. Eimona is certainly amongst the early attempts to capture and bring out in its own brilliant way that these advancements come with a trade-off. Invariably society and most individuals pay a price for pursuing things that are centered on the such things as “live for the moment,” or “follow-the-group syndrome.” The deleterious consequences of such a mechanical life, characterized by hollow plastic smiles and superficial values, generally follow hauntingly and unfailingly. Prabhat’s work is woven brilliantly, combining wit, humour, false values, aimless materialism, simplicity, and virtuous life, and raises serious questions. The novel is set in Madras in India and captures the nuances of Eimona, a place that does not physically exist on any of the continents but alas perhaps exists everywhere in this flat world. Clearly the message is universal even though the setting may be contextual. What is Eimona? It is the reverse of anomie – “an affliction that causes the victim to have social interaction that’s lower than the usual standards in the group, a sort of rootlessness,” For Subbu, the 84-year-old simple man who is the key character in the novel, the world as he sees it is changing so fast in all its facets that established norms turn upside down. The way the change in norms are captured and presented makes the reading absorbing, filled as they are with good humor and deeply thought out observations. Subbu’s mind goes back and forth and assesses events and happenings based on new norms highlighting the conflict between the New India of stock options and artificial values and the Old India. The cold blast that hits Subbu in the form of fortunes that get built based on stock options, the prenuptial agreements, and the different business setups where the employed and the organization have a purely contractual relationship make reading of the novel a very meaningful exercise. For example, when his great-granddaughter is born, he worries that she should not be named with the new economy tongue-twisters – Vrimnolika, Karnishta or Avnita. He is relieved when she is named Maya, a simple but traditional name. Subbu, who has seen so many of his family members gone forever in his lifetime dotes on the eight-year-old Maya, his great-granddaughter. The powerful characterization of the ever uncertain Bharat, a successful investment banker and Subbu’s grandson and his personable but aggressive wife Indu, an executive in a software firm, adds to the richness of the plot. Of note are the ways the events move when she can’t accept their young daughter’s nonchalant attitude towards the e-world’s modern tools – online chat, games, and all other non-academic activities, while the girl loves nature and pursues simple interests, which transcend social class and technology barriers. A nature-loving child becomes a problem child when she does not get attracted to the Internet, expected of her in these times. Rule-setting Indu wants to run the family with an iron grip, in the same way she works in the office, and that includes her old, suffering father, who lives alone and who in the past had a great social and business life. Several of Indu’s actions, so well brought out, typically represent the false sense of righteousness that pervades the society and her own response towards sad personal events and the partying life makes readers wonder and worry about the chaotic degeneration that we all see in our presentday lives. Subbu also finds many modern day activities at odds with what he has seen in his prime – every working day in any family, the apartment complex transforms into a bedlam of noise and confusion by seven-thirty in the morning, only to become quiet and solemn in an hour. His concerns about the potential inequity that modern society is spreading and how the beneficiaries tend to overlook it are a representative point about the type of issues that the novel seeks to bring out. Bharat’s inability to make up his mind, particularly in moments of crisis, the appearance of Buridan’s ass and the knowledge he gained that in the long run, the majority always wins, are all classic follies that we tend to see in modern life. What happens to the simple-minded old man Subbu and his great-granddaughter Maya closer to the end adds to the excitement in reading the book.Yet, despite addressing such serious issues, the novel has an undercurrent of natural humour that amplifies the effect of the book many times over. Eimona brings out quite fascinatingly many destructive shortcomings of the so-called meritorious society where conformity to the new norms is non-negotiable, however bizarre they might appear to the balanced mind. It raises several questions that deserve to be answered by every thinking person. A combination of sharp observation and an eloquent style, liberally embedded with gentle satire, Eimona clearly qualifies to be the most representative story of the modern life and the digital generation. It leaves a sense that we need to pause, reflect, and question the happenings in our fast-paced modern lives and perhaps realign and revise our outlook towards life. G.B. Prabhat hopes that Eimona becomes an often referred word around the world. This is a must read book – one can perhaps keep reading year after year.

Venture Capital & Indian Entrepreneurial Growth

Sadagopan S — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 22:44:24 EDT

Sramana Mitra, an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley, comes out with an amazing perspective about venture capital (VC) and entrepreneurial maturity in the Indian ecosystem. With tech giants committing large investments in India, and many VC firms upping their interest, she thinks that in today’s India, the commodity in short supply is good entrepreneurs. In VC parlance, fundable deals are few and far between. She points out that this goes back to India’s traditional role as the world’s back-office and the skill set that has developed in India is that of engineering management and coding. As she sees it, the Indian managers may not understand global technology markets and may be found wanting in the marketing discipline. She thinks that services being the forte of the country - the VC partners tend to take the view that the entry barriers are low and the existing strong service players may get stronger and hence the investment appeal for funding startup service firms may go down. VC’s may like internet, mobile, travel, matrimonial type of sites, and investors are looking at other areas such as retail, real estate etc. She concludes that due to a number of such reasons that the Silicon Valley would continue to be the hotbed of technology innovation, which Indian back offices can then implement and scale. Blogger Charles Zedlewski, who regularly writes about enterprise software trends has a similar set of concerns and thinks that with all the VC money flowing into India, a new startup model for Indian companies.My Take: I note that more than 95% (my estimates are based on the compiled list of web 2.0 enterprises) of the web2.0 setups have primarily come from within the US. Kudos to the technology leadership that the US is showing here - forget Asia or Europe. Initiative, speed, and zest for trying out in the tech sector still remain a US vestige. Ofcourse this is good for America and by extension good for the world. As I see it, it's also the time for action in places like India right now. Some like CK.Prahalad expect China & India to dramatically change things in the years ahead. A recent delegation of venture capitalists visiting India, while noticing infrastructural problems, also noted the ethos of circumventing such difficulties to carry on. While some investments are beginning to happen, the ground reality is that vast majority of venture money tends to go into existing and later-stage businesses. There is little or no real VC money available in India that startups can tap easily. Companies that are receiving money in India are either spin outs from existing large businesses, captive units, or second-tier outsourcing providers that may lack the size or scale to compete with IT service giants and want the private equity money to grow through rollup and acquisitions. In the US, venture money goes into early stage, pre-product, or pre-revenue companies, while in India, a majority of the private equity is going into late stage businesses. A friend asked me when to expect the likes of next Google to come out of India. I had no answer to provide. Truth is that, in general, most Indian enterprises are hardly innovation-chasing entities, and the framework for VC entry & exits are poorly defined. Coupled with limited VC activity in the past and archaic regulations, these make it a tougher breeding ground for enterprises like that of what is seen in the valley. I agree with Sramana that the Valley shall continue to be the springboard of innovation and technological advances for some more time to come and we may see some limited action in other parts of the world – we may see the activity in India to be the equivalent of say a Boston area or Texas area for springing up startups but valley shall remain the central node for technological advances. Let's hope breakthrough big deals and innovative enterprises spring out of this momentum. But, I am not in agreement with Sramana about few things: Entrepreneurism is not in short supply in India. I see an increase by multiple times in terms of aspiring entrepreneurs in India, and while I agree that she is right in terms of lack of marketing mindset amongst Indian setups, it is changing fast. Mostly what I see is that lack of capital had been a major reason.The scene is changing fast. I now see many India-based entrepreneurs going around with brimming ideas, but the fact remains that VC’s are not so forthcoming in funding ideas as we see in the US market. This is understandable as they are in a new terrain. We are not hearing of VC’s closing deals in India all that fast as we see elsewhere. I also feel that even in traditional outsourcing there are lots of white spaces waiting to be invested by the VC’s. I do feel that the investment levels in pursuing mobile related opportunities are far too less in the country, and I think it is still not a settled issue if Indian firms can be there – there are few more steps before ruling out the possibility. We are not seeing ambitions to build a next Cisco like firm in the mobile application space – fact is that we may not see a Socialtext, Google, SAP, Cisco to come out of India in the next 5 years timeframe but things are improving and are definitely slated to improve further in the coming years.

India Anchored Service Providers See Huge Growth Ahead

Sadagopan S — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 13:37:33 EDT

First it was Forrester's Stephanie Moore, who gave a ringing endorsement of the growth of the offshore players. Now, Dana Stiffler from AMR has come out with an excellent perspective on the state of affairs of India Inc. I liked Dana’s use of the term India Inc. to describe India-headquartered or India-anchored companies. She points out that things are on fire -- tremendous growth opportunities are being felt by these majors. The scalability shown by these players are a real record of sorts. Dana makes a studied observation here -- while all players are seeing an increase in their cost structure, seen from a customer perspective, the benefits still outweigh the costs. They have no intention of backpedaling on their outsourcing and offshoring strategy. Another interesting thing to watch in Dana’s chart is the revenue/employee comparison between the global and Indian players. As I see it, sourcing relationships actually encompass a wide array of choices given the dynamic nature of business and the intersections of various levels of capabilities that lay within enterprises and service providers. The increasing expectations associated with outsourcing are becoming difficult to meet. With a wide range of functions getting outsourced, the ability of the outsourcer to bind and manage all these functions meets with a varying degree of disruption. On the other hand, the service providers are coming under huge pressure to improve operational efficiencies and to maintain and enhance margins. So in essence, seen from a customer perspective, offshoring strategies need to be dynamically re-evaluated as the business needs, strategies, models and execution methods keep changing. Clearly for the foreseeable future, despite the higher salaries experienced in India and other offshore markets, customers can continue to work with their chosen offshore service provider out of the existing locations to maintain the cost advantage besides reaping a set of other known higher-order benefits in offshore outsourcing opportunities. The Tier 1 Indian headquartered firms continue to make huge strides and despite some attendant difficulties in scaling up (which they are addressing quite well) they are seen to be executing very well, restrategising and as needed realigning their approach -- seen from operational, financial, competitive value added and efficiency perspectives. It must be said that the focus now needs to shift to improving productivity and yield converting into better business value as can be seen by executing faster and providing better business solutions.

The Enterprise Software Consolidation Jigsaw Puzzle: Customers Beware

Sadagopan S — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 21:45:15 EDT

Post IBM's proposed buyout of Filenet, the buzz in the ECM market is getting more and more shrill. For players like IBM, its 16 billion software business now contributes even more profit to the bottom line than services, and it's just now emerging as the $91 billion company's most dependable growth engine. Actually, this is insightful -- Annex Research estimates that for 2006, software will account for 20% of IBM's revenues but 37% of its profits. Meanwhile, services, which represent 53% of revenues, account for 35% of profits, and systems and technology (mostly hardware products), which represent 24% of revenues, account for just 12%. IBM's software unit enjoys gross margins of 84.2%, compared with 35.9% for hardware and 27.7% for services. For players like HP, it’s a catch-up game. BI Vendors could be buying out ECM players says this article, predicting more twists in the content management space. Bizarre, to say the least. If such a thing would happen, this would throw the BI players/ECM players into an awkward situation -- they will lose their identity. Look at this -- BI operates on structured data and too often ECM players operate on unstructured/hybrid data. BI mostly operates on data built on transactions; it cant be said of ECM to the same degree. Look at it from a buyer's perspective – what would he get out of such a combined play? NOTHING, TO SAY THE LEAST. Also it may be technically possible (though not so easy), to combine these together – this would be a heavy duty investment for any enterprise and would definitely not be more flexible or friendly to operate/extend and integrate with other applications. More consolidation of ECM space appears plausible – that would be bringing together platform/infrastructure players, portal players, ECM players together . while some acquisitions look sensible, clearly all may not make the cut. The early results of acquisition of proximate space play have not delivered well. The future of enterprise software is in partnering meaningfully, consolidating where there is a clear rationale, but not to come together for the sake of coming together!

Indian-Headquartered Offshore Service Players and Their Edge

Sadagopan S — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 07:21:46 EDT

Forrester's Stephanie Moore writes that major global service providers continue to lose ground to large Indian firms, especially in the application services market. She finds that the tier one Indian providers have continued to thrive while most legacy service providers have posted minimal to negative growth and goes on to assert that Indian firms will continue to grow -- and not just because they are a lower-cost option but they have caused a fundamental and structural change in the service provider/client relationship. More importantly, she nails the fact that offshore providers have taught clients to expect transparency, efficiency, and accountability in service delivery. Stephanie, well known in the analyst community/industry for her superior understanding of the Indian offshoring phenomenon earlier wrote how Accenture & Cap Gemini are scaling/distributing/perfecting their global delivery models. Better delivery is ensuring that Indian-headquartered companies are growing better than the global majors with offshore presence says this article. Due to their focus and operational efficiencies, Indian headquartered vendors are winning more deals than traditional players. Gartner's Partha Iyengar is quoted therein in support of this observed trend.A few months back, while acknowledging the impressive ramp up of offshore presence of global majors, I wrote that more and more opportunities are beginning to get won in large numbers and most of the Indian big players are anyway hiring Big Six veterans to help strategise better to go after bigger deals.An acquisition of the big players may be the final assault on the dominance of Big Six - but this could mean that the Indian companies may need to have a different mindset to manage - (with limited margins and more longterm in their outlook).It may disrupt the traditional economics of the Indian players, but nonetheless would be a move much needed in time. Infosys in their recent analysts meet again emphasized that acquisition for scale is not an approach aligned with the disruptive business model for the offshore players but niche/special expertise may be the drivers for acquisitions. Certainly, I expect that at least one/two acquisitions would be made by Indian players in the mega deal outsourcing players space in 2006/early 2007. This is possible, as adaptability and speed of operations have always characterized their growth in the last decade - the important thing is to not lose sight of humongous opportunities that lay in front and go after them as aggressively as they used to do while growing. It's still not game even - the gap may seem to be narrowing but even then, Indian HQ players have a lot more advantages sitting on their side. This is not to underrate the significant strides that multinational players are making with their India-centric plans. The collective share of the offshore players business in the global outsourcing industry is still very small, but they are gaining marketshare rapidly. The services industry is by itself a very different type of industry governed by an entirely different set of drivers.

Book Review: Small Is The New Big by Seth Godin

Sadagopan S — Sun, 6 Aug 2006 23:08:47 EDT

Seth Godin’s new Small is the New Big promises to make for interesting reading. Godin provides an explanation for what makes an idea take shape and attain meaning. As he sees it, for an idea to be spread, it needs to be sent and received and both sender and receiver must have specific differentiated reasons to do so, and of course this needs to be done effectively and must be seen as having value to both. Case in point: No one “gets” an idea unless:The first impression is good and the necessary background is in place for them to understand the idea. The sender is seen to be one of repute and if it is clear that time invested would be worthwhile.In other words, the point to note is that success depends on the value to be perceived by the receiver and the form in which the information is packaged. No doubt as Guy Kawasaki says, this is like a polygraph test for web 2.0 entrepreneurs. Read this in tandem with the operational metric, so important for entrepreneurs.Let’s examine the form part of it : Sensational wins have been traditionally centered around communication and miniaturization – the PC, iPod, Walkman etc. This is a book where Godin compiles entries from his popular blog. Many are only a few paragraphs long, although he also adds longer entries, from his Fast Company column, to the mix. As if it proves his idea in action, he arranges the articles in the book alphabetically rather then sequentially – making to easier for readers to access relevant articles. As he sees it, the first key to successful marketing is to produce something remarkable and let it grow. "If your idea is great, people will find you," he advises. "[I]f your target audience isn't listening, it's not their fault, it's yours." He urges people to take control of their creative lives by taking responsibility for tough decisions and pushing themselves to make bolder choices. Godin's writings are generally inspirational - the book is a huge bowl of ideas that you can gobble in one sitting or dip into at any time. As Godin writes in his introduction: I guarantee that you'll find some ideas that don’t work for you. But I’m certain that you're smart enough to see the stuff you’ve always wanted to do, buried deep inside one of these riffs. And I’m betting that once inspired, you’ll actually make something happen. This is quite relevant in the age of The Long Tail; as Chris Anderson points out in his book of the same name, small players can collectively make up a market that rivals the giants.

A Sensible Strategy: The Mighty Google and Tiny Acquisitions

Sadagopan S — Sun, 6 Aug 2006 07:48:01 EDT

Courtesy of Google Blogoscoped, I came across this interview with Eric Schmidt. I listened to the interview as well. Reporter: How many acquisitions do you do? Schmidt: “It’s one or two a week it seems. Most acquisitions: They are very small. 1-2-3 people and you never, never hear about them.” “Why would you want to be acquired?” Schmidt asked reporters rhetorically. “The venture guys have so much money, you don’t need to get acquired by us for capital. “The reasons… that they (start-ups) would choose be to be acquired are not what you might think. There is so much capital. And many of these businesses require no capital. “The reason to be acquired is that Google gives them (Web entrepreneurs) a platform that they might otherwise not be able to get. As markets consolidate these little companies often cannot get enough ‘mindshare,’ even though their technology is really good. Any one of these people are a reasonable (acquisition) candidate. Also listen to Eric talking about how some thought that Google was run by idiots and how it too faced problems like every other enterprise. I certainly feel that Google Hype needs to be watched more carefully, but I can give the company credit - that they have been very sensible about their acquisitions – they have not taken (so far), the "throw money and grab that share/space" approach. Instead they had been trying to take the business as growth platform approach, at least in their core business. Recently, I was talking to a good friend, who was not decided on an opportunity that would have meant that he would be earning almost twice his current salary in a company of better stature and bigger size; he said that one concern that was holding him back was that the other company had made a series of acquisitions in the recent past and the information is that the integration is taking time and proving to be painful.The general refrain is that acquisitions destroy value. Generally speaking, as many as two-thirds of all acquirers fail to achieve the benefits planned at the outset of an acquisition. In part, this is thought to be due to the fact that too many acquirers are more concerned about size and top-line growth than value creation. Of course there are exceptions – well-crafted acquisition moves can help charter the road to success. Only a handful, however, turn out to be a long-term win for shareholders. Smaller acquisitions in contrast are easily integrated and where successful definitely creates value. That’s why, seen through the lens of Eric Schmidt, Google's acquisition strategy stands out to be sensible – on an industry where every growing company looks attractive. In the enterprise space, SAP's acquisition strategy also looks lot more sane at a time when acquisitions galore and it could even be threatening the vibrant software ecosystem.