Democratization has set in for good.
There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s when IAS was the coveted job to do. Then came Engineering and Medicine that ruled the roost for very many years. Till one day in mid-1991, PVN Rao liberalized the country. Management and Chartered Accountancy suddenly became the rage.
Today, eighteen years later, anything is ok - fashion design, culinery courses, acting , interior design, real estate , NGO and charities are all considered at par. Water management , Civil engineering, Nanotechnology and Petroleum engineering are as coveted as Computer technology. A Dentist is as coveted as a Neurosurgeon.
'Business' was looked down upon and the middle class dream ended with a service and retirement pension. A pawn broker was looked down with contempt. Now, credit card and mortgage firms pay the highest salaries.The economy has shifted from being agrarian and industrial to knowledge driven. And one cold afternoon late last year, Jet Airways tried to retrench 1900 people, resulting in a huge stir, political protests, an apology from the chairman and a re-instatement of the people . A month later, as the world came crashing down financially, Jet quietly removed over a thousand of its employees without a protest. Hire and Fire is now an accepted part of Indian corporate world for good, settling the Union issue once and for all.
Accountability has also reached high standards. You need to tread the straight and the narrow - with judicial and media activism, its difficult to fool all the people all the time anymore.
And while its cool to be an entrepreneur in the knowledge economy, there's now a level playing field for first gen entrepreneurs.
Heave Ho !
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
On business - 2
The entreprenuer differs from the manager in only one aspect - risk apetite. This reflects directly on the rewards. An entreprenuer gambles big and makes it big, but a manager trades his skills for smaller, safer returns. The entrepreneur manages his external environment and needs skills to negotiate his way in the world , the manager manages his people and so focuses on operational efficiency.
Can a manager make a transition to entrepreneur ? While they are necessarily cut from different cloth ,some managers migrate to become entrepreurs and some even behave as entrepreneurs in their role with a high degree of ownership and responsibility which is occasionally traded for some stake in the firm.
The US is a great example of how an entire society is built on entrepreneural skills. Punjabis and Gujaratis adapted quickly into that environment and blended their entrepreneural skills with Jews, Britishers, East Europeans etc. South Indians waited for Y2K and leapt into the couldron with many IT ideas for outfits of all sizes, sweeping away the BPO business and SAP implementation worldwide. As the internet came into its own, a new generation of entrepreneurs was born.
The tech world also needs extensive collaboration - IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, HP and Google all need each other to survive. Unlike the rest of the industries, IT has high inter-dependence. Everyone is a cog in the wheel. Entrepreneurship comes easily in this space, you need to find a small niche, seek small funds, get guys with stars in their eyes on board with equity, build your product, find the wheel that needs your cog, get valued, sell-out and exit with your millions. Orace, for instance, has bought 52 companies in the last 24 months.
Most other businesses - TV sets, Cellphones, Cars,Films, Burgers, Garments - need you to market your product and find consumers. The tech world doesn't need you to find consumers, it only needs you to find the nearest complimentary product and then together you can tango ! e.g. The iphone has spurred over 6500 apps, each of whom on revenue share can roll in the moolah. The app makers focus on the open source code of the phone and create zillions of games etc. that people will download for a fee. A revenue share worked with the phone maker can fund your lifetime of travel.
The trick is in finding the idea.
Can a manager make a transition to entrepreneur ? While they are necessarily cut from different cloth ,some managers migrate to become entrepreurs and some even behave as entrepreneurs in their role with a high degree of ownership and responsibility which is occasionally traded for some stake in the firm.
The US is a great example of how an entire society is built on entrepreneural skills. Punjabis and Gujaratis adapted quickly into that environment and blended their entrepreneural skills with Jews, Britishers, East Europeans etc. South Indians waited for Y2K and leapt into the couldron with many IT ideas for outfits of all sizes, sweeping away the BPO business and SAP implementation worldwide. As the internet came into its own, a new generation of entrepreneurs was born.
The tech world also needs extensive collaboration - IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, HP and Google all need each other to survive. Unlike the rest of the industries, IT has high inter-dependence. Everyone is a cog in the wheel. Entrepreneurship comes easily in this space, you need to find a small niche, seek small funds, get guys with stars in their eyes on board with equity, build your product, find the wheel that needs your cog, get valued, sell-out and exit with your millions. Orace, for instance, has bought 52 companies in the last 24 months.
Most other businesses - TV sets, Cellphones, Cars,Films, Burgers, Garments - need you to market your product and find consumers. The tech world doesn't need you to find consumers, it only needs you to find the nearest complimentary product and then together you can tango ! e.g. The iphone has spurred over 6500 apps, each of whom on revenue share can roll in the moolah. The app makers focus on the open source code of the phone and create zillions of games etc. that people will download for a fee. A revenue share worked with the phone maker can fund your lifetime of travel.
The trick is in finding the idea.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
On business.
How is it that some people can create enormous businesses generating large scale employment and creating a lot of wealth in the process, while a large majority are destined to plough the till and seek salvation by becoming Sisyphuses ?
Maybe its in the genes. All of working humanity can arguably be divided into four parts - workers, managers, entrepreneurs and geniuses or talent. Talent creates the idea, entrepreneurs convert it into reality, managers run the ops and workers run the processes. The wheels of business churn to produce so as the rest of the world to consume - be it knowledge or goods or services.
Since these layers are a pyramid, there are very few entrepreneurs and fewer geniuses or talent, but a whole lot of workers at the base.
Workers slog to create EBIDTA while the entrepreneur laps up the PAT. Innumarable CxOs create inumerable balance sheets and stare at quaterly humungous profits, but none thinks of the possibility of creating that value for oneself. Some take the leap from one classification to the next- from manager to entrepreneur and maybe genius. Infosys is an example- Nandan and Murty have climbed the complete ladder. If Nandan cracks the national ID project, he is absolute bankable 'talent'. Sreedharan after the Delhi Metro has orders from the world over including Pakistan. Jobs, Buffet, Gates, Tata are gifted. But so are Subramaniam of Subhiksha, Majumdar of Symbiosis, Parekh of HDFC - they are among the many who have built businesses from scratch.
Now, if hard work, perseverance and some luck turns a worker into a manager, what helps make the transition from manager to entrepreneur?
And then to genius ?
Maybe its in the genes. All of working humanity can arguably be divided into four parts - workers, managers, entrepreneurs and geniuses or talent. Talent creates the idea, entrepreneurs convert it into reality, managers run the ops and workers run the processes. The wheels of business churn to produce so as the rest of the world to consume - be it knowledge or goods or services.
Since these layers are a pyramid, there are very few entrepreneurs and fewer geniuses or talent, but a whole lot of workers at the base.
Workers slog to create EBIDTA while the entrepreneur laps up the PAT. Innumarable CxOs create inumerable balance sheets and stare at quaterly humungous profits, but none thinks of the possibility of creating that value for oneself. Some take the leap from one classification to the next- from manager to entrepreneur and maybe genius. Infosys is an example- Nandan and Murty have climbed the complete ladder. If Nandan cracks the national ID project, he is absolute bankable 'talent'. Sreedharan after the Delhi Metro has orders from the world over including Pakistan. Jobs, Buffet, Gates, Tata are gifted. But so are Subramaniam of Subhiksha, Majumdar of Symbiosis, Parekh of HDFC - they are among the many who have built businesses from scratch.
Now, if hard work, perseverance and some luck turns a worker into a manager, what helps make the transition from manager to entrepreneur?
And then to genius ?
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