Ashwani's Blog

What next...

2012-01-28T23:46:00.000-08:00

TCS 10 K in June 2010 was my first brush with quasi marathons…Since“Sunfeast” used to sponsor it, I decided to give it a shot and startedpreparing from Jan. Hazzaar surfing on net, strategies on diet, running,outdoor running etc were drawn and followed. Record of timings, improvementsetc were kept and scientifically tracked. Had a good run, under 60 mins…

Initially it was a target setting and beating exercise (asusual) but I don’t know when I actually started enjoying it. “Endorphin” rush Iam told. A half marathon after that,another one due in Feb and I am sure it would go on.

What does it give me? Fitness, pleasure, feeling of wellbeing, good sleep, stress busting and above all feeling of no guilt after around of good beer…

Now all the science is thrown out of the window and I listento my body on the eating, drinking and effort requirement….

I don’t run with music in my ears, I talk to myself (till I can)while I run. My wife asked me what do I think while I am running. Goodquestion, I said. I will have to think…. I guess I concentrate on my running,enjoy the thoughts and after some time get numb on thinking…. but interestingthought, will concentrate on my thoughts from now onwards while running…

And these days, is it my imagination or is it actuallygetting popular in India? Also, a friend commented that it seems like a middleage syndrome now…

Whatever it may be “keep running”….

Long hiatus

2012-01-27T06:05:00.000-08:00

Been away for some time...graduated Sloan in 2009..new industry, new role, new work, new people to connect....been a great journey till date...will get back to blogging.
will write on my new passion - running

Profit for Not for Profit....contd...

2009-06-14T02:52:00.000-07:00

In this blog too, I would continue the topic of profit for social enterprise. Kim Alters and Greg Dees describe a framework for the social enterprise as a spectrum from pure philanthropic to pure for profit. Foster and Bradach, in their paper “should non profit seek profit” argue that the number of successful SEs who have transited to “for profit mode” is very few to make a difference. Both Des and Foster argue that the quest for profit might move the SE away from their core mission. The paper to which I would subscribe the most is Mohd Yunus’s benefit maximization approach. I would argue that it is very important for the SE to make continuous attempt to be profit making. Let me discuss the reasons in a bit more detail:

Sustainability and scalability model: Sustainability would be a basic criterion for success of the social enterprise. The unmet need can be met either by sustainable effort or else by making the enterprise itself redundant over a period of time. An example of sustainability can be Teach for America, which as been around now for 20 years and is growing the footprints across the globe. The Fairtrade movement in the developed world has gained quite some momentum for it to become an accepted business practice. Scalability is debatable; however my view is that for the SE to have a profound impact, both sustainability and scalability are essential.

Now imagine a pure philanthropic model, how would you rate it on these two parameters? Attaining scalability and sustainability when you are completely dependent on external resources is close to impossible. Entrepreneurs do spend a great deal of time on generating resources, but having to barely survive would mean no thoughts on growth.

In the paper “Toward a better understanding of social entrepreneurship: Some important distinctions” By Jerr Boschee and Jim McClurg, convincing argument is made on these lines.

Financial Discipline: Profit making (and not seeking) would instill an acute sense of financial discipline. Costs would be looked at with a microscopic lens and so would be the revenues. “Sweating the capital” is the mantra for entrepreneurs and would lead to what Mohd Yunus describes as “benefit maximization”. With as ever increasing competition, even within the social sector, the resources would come to the entrepreneur who delivers the maximum value for money.

Would it deviate from the mission: The argument in the papers by Dees as well as Foster is that seeking profit would deviate the SE from the mission. Yes, possibly. The difference in a business venture and SE is the core mission. Number of organisations has corporate social responsibility programs for social benefit. The difference is the core mission. Hence, as rightly argued, SE needs to be very careful that in the “earned income behaviour” it should not loose sight of the core mission. Example is cited of the opera house for aiding budding artists vs conducting for profit professional shows. In this case also, I would argue, that if the core is to help the upcoming artists; reasonable number of shows to support the main cause is justified.

Do the numbers indicate critical mass: No, the numbers would indicate that the SEs attaining financial independence is far little. That is where I indicate the difference between attempt to make profit and having an earned income behaviour vs actually making profits. Also, let us also look at the data of successful entrepreneurial launches in the business world and compare these two.

To sum up: To sum up, I would quote from Mohd Yunus paper, benefit maximization. “We started out by assuming a world with two kinds of people, one kind wants to make money and the other kind wants to do good. But in the real world there are not two types of people, but only one type of person with two types of interests, in varying proportion. The recognition would lead to building of appropriate conceptual and institutional frameworks. Introducing SBE into the market place will be the most important part of this recognition process. Let us make a beginning.”

Is “Not for Profit” the mantra for Social Entrepreneurship

2009-05-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

I have, for quite some time, struggled with the association of profit with “Social Entrepreneurship”. Should it be or should it not be? I have my own views on it, but I wanted to explore some expert’s opinion before I pen my naïve views.

SE has been defined in various ways. To quote a couple:

Asoka foundation: Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change.

Wikepedia: A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.

Skoll Centre: Social entrepreneurship is the product of individuals, organizations, and networks that challenge conventional structures by addressing failures - and identifying new opportunities - in the institutional arrangements that currently cause the inadequate provision or unequal distribution of social and environmental goods.

School for social entrepreneurship: A social entrepreneur is someone who works in an entrepreneurial manner, but for public or social benefit, rather than to make money. Social entrepreneurs may work in ethical businesses, governmental or public bodies, quangos, or the voluntary and community sector.

The list can go on. For me the common thread is

Unmet social need
Entrepreneurial capability to resolve the need

This obviously leads to explore the definition of entrepreneur:

Wikepedia: An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of an enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. An ambitious leader who combines land, labor, and capital to create and market new goods or services

All the other definitions are (surprisingly) fairly close to Wikepedia’s.

Now why am I rambling with these definitions?

The reason is that I am not able to reconcile that “social entrepreneurship” can exist without an attempt to make profits. When I say attempt to make profits, I mean that a revenue generation source and an income statement. The firm might be a loss making enterprise, with loans/grants/donations also as a revenue stream. This is what differentiates SE from normal charity. The entrepreneurship mindset would mean taking risk, generating resources, fighting against all odds, resolve the problem and at the same time generate revenue.

The confusion creeps in when at all these sites, one sees great charity work, great social causes being identified as SE. People doing great work in charity or not for profit organisations for social issues like AIDS, cancer, poverty alleviation, education are referred to as social entrepreneurs.

Is my thinking too narrow and the definition broader or do we need to look at the definition?

Some real crazy viral videos

2009-03-13T17:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX1-650KIsU - You tube description - Extremely well executed viral ad which will make you believe it's just a home video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBbson2LLB4 Samsung Viral ad - page 3 style

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVGi7mgLSbM - and finally explanation for the glasses video shown in class

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5DjZ0Q7G98 and its sequel - bobbing for glasses

Entertainment business @ Internet

2009-03-07T05:28:00.000-08:00

One of the study group assignments made me research on the business of “professional video content download” business. To crystal gaze, some research was carried out on the video watching and buying pattern of consumers. Some of the results point out to not so encouraging behaviour on net. Will some business models need to be rewritten, going forward?

Though 39% of the consumers watch online videos but only circa 8% are willing to pay for the online content. Top online video sites are the ones offering for free (you tube, BBC etc)

Average length of the movie watched is only 3 min.
For every 1 official song download, 40 are downloaded illegitimately. A large percentage (almost 35%) have clear preference for pirated downloads.

Another interesting issue is the preference of content consumption. It is estimated that people want to watch long duration videos on TV. Hence a mad rush to reach the content on TV. Apple iTV, launched and admitted as a mistake. Is it a case on not understanding the consumer needs or actually forcible creation of needs?

Monetising eyeballs wherever possible

2009-02-28T03:40:00.000-08:00

http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/ads-in-google-news-search-results.html

What a fabulous model... compile news from various sources and earn money..

Is Internet a good medium for subliminal advertising

2009-02-19T03:14:00.000-08:00

In the Sloan Marketing core class on Wednesday, we had a discussion on subliminal advertisement. Srijib referred to a very interesting video by Darren Brown. Is the internet advertising also subliminal in a way…..?

To define subliminal - Advertising intended to influence an audience subconsciously, especially through images shown very briefly on a movie or television screen (dictionary.bnet)

A subliminal message is a signal or message embedded in another medium, designed to pass below the normal limits of the human mind's perception. These messages are unrecognizable by the conscious mind, but in certain situations can affect the subconscious mind and can negatively or positively influence subsequent later thoughts, behaviors, actions, attitudes, belief systems and value systems. The term subliminal means "beneath a limen" (sensory threshold), this is from the Latin words sub, meaning under, and limen, meaning threshold. (Wikipedia)

To illustrate further, lots of print ads have subliminal messages hidden (the messages are mostly around sex). The enclosed link gives a very good illustration - http://www.artistmike.com/Temp/SubliminalAd.html

On the insertion of frames in normal videos or TV programs, the enclosed food guide video has McDonald ad inserted. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amnZX-jjBD8

The reference to cocaine evident in the coke cans - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztTCbbXE24I&feature=related

Some of these correlations seem far fetched (figment of imagination at times), and in any case subliminal advertisement has no empirical correlation to sales and has been declared illegal.

On internet, tracking the behaviour of the user and placing ads accordingly, isn’t it a form of subliminal advertising? Depending on the sites he/she visits, color she likes, books she buys, movies she watches, her spending behaviour and zillions of such things decide the ads placed.

Moreover, with such ads banned in traditional media and internet laws applicability not so clear, Internet becomes a rich medium of subliminal explosion.

Should the current form, therefore, fall under the purview of the existing law?

Internet Community as a Marketing Framework

2009-02-13T02:40:00.000-08:00

The number of consultants and marketing firm which come in the organic search of “Internet Marketing” and related topics and the plethora of ads speak volumes about the subject. For current generation marketers, it seems as if this medium is to be ignored on your own risk…

Internet community – nicely explored through analogy…

http://www.nysun.com/blogs/culture-of-congestion/2008/08/are-internet-communities-cities-1.html

Internet community as marketing tool – though the site has an annoying popup asking you to join…

http://www.marketingprofs.com/6/collier1.asp

Measuring Effectiveness: Not much reading and research though…Seems like a topic people are shying away from..

http://www.networksmarketinggroup.com

Hall of Fame:

http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/the-top-10-viral-marketing-campaigns-of-all-time/654/

Not many Integrated campaigns appear as case studies though….

My experiments with Internet

2009-01-30T04:26:00.000-08:00

“My experiments with truth” is the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. I feel the same after 3 sessions on Internet Marketing.

For me it has been a world of new opportunities and new area opened up. Strategy, Marketing, Brands, Organisation Behaviour, Teams, Leadership and all the other jargons is what I have been living with. And here comes IM. Wow! So much to learn, experiment, create, innovate…What a new subject! Might sound a bit archived to youngsters, but that is what it is. Net to me till date has been a vast source of information, websites, jobsites etc and the usual stuff. But to discover it as an alternate business model, create enterprises around…. Now that is new…

Sites like Madbidding, Clickfraud, are completely new and innovative models. Skepticism is around the profitability, real value and so on, but I am impressed with creativity at the moment.

I am struggling to set the Adsense account and get it to work on my blog…I am sure that I shall overcome one day….

Hail CPC, CPA, GPT, DNI, TCP, IMDB……

Fortune Cookie...!?

2009-01-24T03:25:00.000-08:00

Last evening we were celebrating Chinese New year with the Sloan fellow mates in a Chinese restaurant (where else?). We were served with Fortune Cookies to start with. The blog is not about the advent of fortune cookies and so forth but on another thought with tickled my mind because of the message which one of my friends got in the cookie. It was a kind of message which one would not expect in something which is named “fortune” cookie.

I could not get this thought out of my mind and late night, in another session, we got talking on issue of destiny, fate and its role in one’s life. I think this is one thought which is common across the world, irrespective of culture, race etc etc. God and Fate are well understood words across cultures. The degree of belief might vary but it is very uniting on the other hand. I might write another blog on the religion but would dedicate this space to my thoughts on issue of “fate”

We do like to believe that we are in control of our destiny and our actions cast our future. But have we ever wondered that the future is largely dependent on the postal code on address. Is this destiny by birth? One might argue that people from same postal code do not end up in similar circumstances… Point taken, but how many of us are able to completely adhere to our plans of the school we want to study or the job we want to get into… Inspite of all our efforts, we make compromises and end up somewhere else. How many times has one heard from successful entrepreneurs “It was a chance meeting/idea which led me here.

I am not prescribing that we leave things to fate but is everything in our perfect control?

Recent trip to India (Shining)

2009-01-12T07:51:00.000-08:00

I had been planning to blog for some time (not wanting to miss the bandwagon) and fortunately the IM program has pushed me to do it... Here is my first stab..

I think the best way to start my first feed would be write about my feelings during my recent trip to India.

Amidst the fog and the air traffic chaos, my flight landed in time and I was pleasantly surprised to breeze through the immigration and the baggage receipt. My vehicle arrived in time and the Delhi traffic was also well managed (I mean it). I felt as if we have mastered the efficiency trick in middle of the chaotic boom. Watching latest movie in the plush mall with zillions of shoppers and the International Brands, young employed citizens, mobiles chiming and packed restaurants made me feel proud of the buzzing India…

The construction of the mass transport system “Metro” and related “unending infrastructure dug roads” reminded me of Prof Andrew Scott and his theory of Capital Led growth. Whatever… It is fine as long as we continue to grow.

180 km away from Delhi, in a small town “Saharanpur”, the Xmas and New Year parties were probably as rocking as were in cities like “Bangalore” or “London” (no exaggeration). “Happiness Index”, whatever way it is calculated, seems high and the talk of Recession is much less. Newspapers do not kill you with the “R” word and the interest in Politics and Elections is as high as ever.

The spirit is fighting the 26/11 and back up and running..

I believe that the heart remains the same and we are slowly but steadily realizing our dream – a dream of making Indian Shining..