HOW TO: Build the Ultimate Social Media Resume

Link from Sharethis.com: HOW TO: Build the Ultimate Social Media Resume

Social media resumes are important for attracting hiring managers directly to you, without you having to submit your resume, blindly, to them. The problem with submitting your resume online to job postings is that most job postings aren’t (read more...)  Posted using ShareThis

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Launching LinkedIn From a Living Room

The founder of Linkedin opens up in an interview here. From 350 personal invites to 4500 within one month, and 50 million users today, this is a story to read! Click here.

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Blinds.com - Periodic table of marketing

Credits: Blinds.com
Click on image for a better picture!

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New Media New Marketing

Seth Godin: 10 Bestsellers: Using New Media, New Marketing, and New Thinking to Create 10 Bestselling Books

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Reasons Why Change Fails

This is a 2007 article from 'Be Excellent ® ' blog. Link for the original article: here. I suggest you visit the 'Be Excellent® - The Official Six Disciplines® Blog', and see some superb articles on strategy.

Quoting the 'Be Excellent ® ' blog:

Reasons Why Change Fails

It isn't inadequate processes, strategy or technology that lead so many organizational change programs to run into the sand.

The main reasons for failed change are all about people. 

Management-Issues reports that a study from Deloitte Consulting suggests that change programs need to tackle issues in an integrated and focused way and, in particular, look at the people issues facing the business before, during and after the program.

The research has come as a conference of 165 HR directors organized by PricewaterhouseCoopers has separately predicted that a growing focus on people issues means there will be a chief of human resources on the board of most organizations by 2015.

According to the research, there are eight key people-related areas companies need to be addressing:

1. People risk and impact management
2. Leadership alignment and stakeholder engagement
3. Communications
4. Culture
5. Organizational design and governance
6. Talent requirements and HR programs
7. Workforce transition
8. Learning and capability transfer

BOTTOMLINE: "Companies don't transform themselves just for fun, but to stay competitive, innovative, and operationally effective."

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Marketing Management

Marketing Management

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BS - Indian Slums - a Research

Unlike the general impression, slums in major Indian cities not only represent complex political and social issues, but also generate a lot of local economic activities, a latest research by the prestigious Stanford Graduate School of Business has said.

"Indian slums are incredibly productive.. (Read Full Article on Business Standard).

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The Collector: Jatin Das - WSJ

By MARGOT COHEN

Brief: Village fairs have always captivated Jatin Das. As a boy growing up in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, the artist, now 67 years old, would return home from bustling fairs with armfuls of brightly lacquered handcrafted toys. (A doting grandmother often indulged him.) 

So began his odyssey as a collector, recalls Mr. Das, now a renowned painter. While his artistic ambitions eventually led him to the prestigious Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai and subsequently to establish a home and studio in New Delhi, he still travels to Orissa at least six times a year to (Read full article)

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Social Media Marketing - Anis Khan

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Theories of Entrepreneurship

Theories of Entrepreneurship

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Alternative Startup Financing Schemes - Freeman Murray

I’ve seen a number of posts lately discussing the ‘changing face of venture capital’. Paul Graham talks about the change in dynamics caused by the low capital requirements of technology startups. Fred Wilson discusses the need for a market for privately held common stock. There seems to be a general consensus about the growing role angels play in the startup ecosystem, and sadly there also seems to be a general consensus indicating that angels should basically write off their investments the moment they make them.

This last point rings true for me. Before coming to India I made a number of investments in tech companies. During my chapter... [Read full article]

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Seth Godin on 'The next Google'

   Microsoft, home of the Zune, has just announced that they're going to launch Bing, a rebranding and reformatting of their search engine. So far, they've earmarked $100 million just for the marketing.

Bing, of course, stands for But It's Not Google. The problem, as far as I can tell, is that it is trying to be the next Google. And the challenge for Microsoft is that there already is a next Google. It's called Google.

Google is not seen as broken by many people, and a hundred million dollars trying to persuade us that it is, is money poorly spent. In times of change, the rule is this:

Don't try to be the 'next'. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.

If Microsoft adds a few features and they prove popular, how long precisely will it take Google to mirror or even leapfrog those features?

With $100 million, you could build (or even buy) something remarkable. Something that spread online without benefit of a lot of yelling and shouting. Something that changes the game in a fundamental way. The internet works best when you build a network, not when you buy a brand. In fact, I can't think of one successful online brand that was built with cash.

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Watch the Google Wave

Watch the google wave:

Email, instant messaging, wikis, forums, blogs, mobile, SMS... Google Wave completely obliterates business models and entire verticals of companies left and right.

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Ford Motor Company - 1902 Business Plan

Ford Motor Company 1902 Indus Khaitan

View more OpenOffice presentations from Indus Khaitan.

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Larry Winget - Who pays your salary

Larry Winget - Who pays your salary. Used with permission. Google Videos.

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Why would Headstart be a hit this summer

Namit Nangia's remarks:

I am not one of the volunteers for Headstart, neither have I nominated LifeMojo for this summer, but I know why Headstart be a hit this summer.

Two of the people (I know are working hard to make Headstart a success) Amit and Kartik whom, I had met some time 5-7 months back called me to take feedback about the Headstart event.

Amit wasn’t willing to take “Yes, it was all nice” kinda feedback as an answer, he wanted details!

“What is it that a startup thinks about before participating in such a event?” came the next question…

This, and the series of questions that followed me made believe that folks @ Headstart are working hard and smart to make it a success!

All the best guys! Have a rocking show!

http://www.namitnangia.com/

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Of foster parenting and technology marketing

One of my  articles published on the NSRCEL Blog

The state of technology marketing in India (and else where) is something that is of prime concern for the introduction of new products and the so-called buzz being created to focus on innovative products in SW. We have mostly been a service based economy as far as IT is concerned and there is a sentiment of venture gurus to focus more on innovation, so as to sustain and lead in this arena. Many folks blame the marketing fellows to have failed in sustaining innovation, even if technical folks are busy creating newer ideas. A number of product companies funded by well-known money mines are being shelved, and the blame goes to the entrepreneurs behind these ideas. Are they really failing? Many of them get swallowed by the biggies such as MS and Google (the founders consider it success for them if they have been bought over by a bigger player!).

        

I believe there is an amazing mismatch between marketing fellows and the techies, and this is the primary reason that they fail. People at the top are unable to comprehend, where buckets-full of money is vanishing in the name of branding a product. For every failure in the market, there are many success stories - sometimes the smaller fish is bought over by a giant or simply shelved into file-13.

I was interacting with the marketing fellow of a techie product - we did not know that he was not a PhD and not a techie fellow, until his boss revealed. The depth of understanding he had about 'how his product is going to help the customer' was superb. Another example, I would suggest a fellow from Mathworks Inc, who was completely from the sales and marketing side - the clarity he had about the usability of the product was the inspiration to even think of an alternative solution to the tool we were using at hand. You have to keep in mind, just two things - make the customer understand the technology involved in a very simple manner, and secondly, you have got to get the right price. Many marketing fellows avoid the most important questions, saying that they'll get back to the tech team. And some others, over-promise the merits of the product without even taking the tech team into confidence.

It is very difficult (particularly for the bigger companies, who are the guys with the money), to shift from a software tool to a newer one. They keep working with the older tool because their client overseas has not yet upgraded to the latest version or the newer tool in discussion.

Pouring money to marketing of technology is never going to work in the long run and we keep lamenting the disappearance of innovative SW. It has to (blame it to Darwin or to anyone) vanish unless sustained in a motherly way (marketing folks always have a mix of fear for tech and over-commitment, making them almost step-parental). In the same lines, we need more and more tech fellow develop the ability to market for themselves or assist the marketing fellow (instead of looking at the marketing fellow as a money-minded jerk who gets paid for 'just babbling'). In many successful companies, the pitching team always comprises of a combination of a tech person and a non-tech person.

We got to evolve. SW ideas evolve faster than they get accepted in the market. Secondly, SW ideas come to shape faster than bigger project's life cycle. Example, an Airbus 380 project had loss in billions of USD just because the SW they used underwent a major version upgrade. For this reason, the bigger projects prefer to freeze the SW till the project is delivered and the support for the project continues with the same tool. Its like, you have ten soaps on the shelf to take bath with, you'd generally choose one for the whole period of the bath (the project). Can you say that another soap which was bought while you were busy bathing has failed, for you!? Every innovation is important - to make it viable  in the business sense needs planned effort.

It is high time that VCs and the folks whose money is involved, get deeper into the idea behind an idea, than just playing with spreadsheets. It has become like the discussion between a foster parent with her teenage daughter - the adult is not interested in going into details of what the teenager wants to prove, and the teenager does not want to or is incapable of explaining the real meaning of her intentions. The money-folks keep looking at the halo over the head of the inventor, and the inventor may lack the basics of explaining the money aspects of the innovation. Unfortunately, the idea gets shelved!

Money (funnily, many folks really understand it as muscle power - its true!) plus better marketing/entreprenuers can make more number of SW innovations see the light of the day - and we need not lament dying innovations (due to Darwin stuff about evolution and the survival of the fittest) - if people can do without them, they will.

Incubators such as NSRCEL are a great source of a collection of mentors who bridge this gap to a large extent. You will find people who are interested in both technology and money, (in an equally ignorant way!), so as to look at the better aspects of both. When you look at an idea from a non-rejection perspective, and with all the patience that it deserves, it will evolve faster and healthier. "Generally at the NSRCEL no Idea is rejected." And if you observe, the gap between the marketing and the techies are being filled by appropriate support from NSRCEL. To have the right kind of folks do the job they are best at is the focus. This will help the techies focus on innovation and would make sense when the need of the hour is to focus on innovative products.

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