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What they don't teach you at IIM. MBA model of producing arm chair thinkers

July 31, 2008

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Takeover- Why Akbar is Relevant

Akbar, was a really powerful king. He had an empire that extended from the mountains of Hindu-Kush to the Bay of Bengal. As an emperor he had the sheer might to crush his opponents, to smash their kingdom into rubble. Like they do ‘a hostile’ (takeover) these days. Akbar, however, preferred to integrate. He married into the Rajputs , his fiercest & most tenacious opponents. His favoured queen was a Rajput queen Jodhabai. He gave Rajputs a lot of respect, important jobs in the army and bestowed on them a lot of honours. It was a wise thing to do. While Akbar was an uncontested Emperor, the Rajputs remained kings of their small kingdoms. So while Akbar had a vast empire he saved a lot of his time from martial pursuits. Instead he worked on pursuits of a different kind like ideating about a new religion. History teaches us that takeovers in the Indian context are never clean. It is not as if somebody is selling his company, because the company will be better off with

What they don't teach you at IIM. MBA model of producing arm chair thinkers

Management education in the best institutes in the country and all over the world lays great emphasis on strategy development rather than execution. Management institutes have umpteen number of case study discussions on 'what should be done' rather than 'how it should be done'. Management students are trained to strategize , not execute . The curriculum also emphasizes on strategy formulation with courses relating to business strategy, marketing strategy etc. Various management games and cases at the school level encourage theoretical discussions and emphasis on 'strategy formulation'. The need of the hour is to have dedicated courses that deal exclusively with execution; courses that look at what happens when the 'rubber meets the road'. It is not as if execution is totally absent, but given its vital necessity for business success , it has not been incorporated in a meaningful manner. Part of the problem also stems from background of many manage

Behavioural Priming, a Cognitive Bias that Influences Behavior. Application of Behavioral Science in Marketing, Advertising and Research

In this video Dr Kurt Nelson explains the concept of behavioral priming in a simple manner. In a nutshell, behavioral priming refers to the notion that exposing people to an external stimulus activates a mental construct or neural pathways associated with this stimulus which may in turn affect overt behavior without the actor necessarily being aware of this influence . Dr Kurt is an innovative leader, engaged in helping companies use behavioral science insights to help companies and people improve.

Marketing to Younger Generation, Teenagers is like B2B Marketing with Influencers as Expert Advisors - Professor Michael Solomon discusses the 'Me vs We' dichotomy

Make it dumb & simple. Or forget about scaling up a business idea

Make it ‘dumb and simple’. It is something that I spend a lot of time on; convincing the CEO to think from the customer standpoint, talking to the department head about what will deliver results at the frontlines. It requires a lot of thinking to make something ‘dumb’ and it is never simple to make anything ‘simple’. Companies are often caught in a situation where they are terribly excited about a slew of product launches or service upgrades which they think is going to be terribly exciting to the customer. The customer may indeed be excited, only if somebody told him about it or better still answered all his queries. Our client, a travel company, launched a few options through which air ticketing could be done. This included the GDS option, tie up with a wholesaler & an alliance with an OTA. These competitive options would enable the client & his franchisees to offer the best deals and a variety of options to their customers for a specific route say Mumbai-Bangalore. T

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