Monthly Archives: August 2013

Let’s Do Nothing!

Posted in Hot, Ideas
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Now the title may sound like a pessimistic advice but there is a case for doing less and not more.

The below is cover page of one of the favorite books that I enjoy reading to my kids. They love it. The idea of two kids – Frankie and Sal, trying not to do anything and ending up spending time thinking and pretending is hilarious to kids and something for all to think about.

do_nothing

In our work life, we are slowly and surely getting slaved by the following 4 M’s

1. Mindless web surfing – This is increasingly taking away lot more time than most people realize. Aimlesslely surfing internet or social web sites and reading articles of no value and not aligned to what you are trying to do in short or long term wastes time.

2. Meetings – A lot has been written about it. Jeff Weiner, CEO of Linkedin wrote a great article on how to eliminate useless meetings.

3. Mail – Checking e- Mails at the dinner table is no longer cool. Many folks can’t go to bed without checking their inbox. Work is routinely carried back home. The problem and solution is widely known – lack of discipline and commitment to generate lesser mail traffic is required.

4. Managing operations – This is the most important one that hurts organizations. Many top minds and executives time is better spend thinking about strategy. Operations help execution of plans but does not prepare company for future. Strategic thinking requires some uncluttered time. When Jack Welch was at GE, he used to spend an hour a day “doing nothing”!

How can we be like Frankie and Sal and do nothing, even for few minutes?

eBook and Big Six publishers

Posted in Book, Data visualization, Education
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I recently completed analysis of Big six publishers to understand eBook market that they represent. I decided to summarize my analysis using my first ever infographics using piktochart. I will summarize my experience in detail later but it suffice to say that infographics tool have way to go before they are ready for wider adoption.

Big six publishers

Some interesting observations – while the revenue seems to be increasing, there is a decline in profit because of larger share of eBook. I have used data from 2012 when Penguin and Random House were still separate entity. The data is collected for various public reports available on internet.

What does the future hold for the bigwig publishers of eBook industry – now Big Five?

How business models like subscription impact innovation culture

Posted in General, People & Culture
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I was recently reading an article by Steve Blank on how startup is not a smaller version of a large company. One of the important points that he mentioned was around value system and the differences in a way a large company evaluate business opportunity than a startup.

Now think about a business model like subscription. A subscription based business model increases predictability in revenue on an ongoing basis. This is because subscribers pay for the duration of subscription and if they like the services, subscribers are highly likely to renew their subscription. This typically happens in advance as subscribers provide payment information in advance. Wikipedia says –

“Businesses benefit because they are assured a predictable and constant revenue stream from subscribed individuals for the duration of the subscriber’s agreement. Not only does this greatly reduce uncertainty and the riskiness of the enterprise, but it often provides payment in advance (as with magazines, concert tickets), while allowing customers to become greatly attached to using the service and, therefore, more likely to extend by signing an agreement for the next period close to when the current agreement expires”

too risky

This is unlike perpetual/one-time transaction model, still uncertain. Now business managers can predict quarterly revenue with increasing accuracy with subscription. This means that the value system being built is one to reduce uncertainty and riskiness which is what a new product idea does not have. A new product idea by definition is in a phase of discovery and building sustainable business model. And hence unpredictable and risky.

This conflict can have serious negative impact on innovation culture of an organization – more so for large organizations as they want to reduce risk and have smaller variations in their quarterly and annual results. Subscription is a new business model and many large organizations are experimenting with it. It will be a while before this value system gets deep rooted and impacts innovation culture. Organizations need to watch out!

In my next article, I will describe what companies can do to leverage this change and still be innovative.