Extraordinary metrics for extraordinary times
The best quote I read today came from Vivek Ranadive: "If you do everything you are asked to do and you do it very well, you get a C. In order to be a superstar (to get an A or Aplus) you have to do things that nobody asked you to do," he told Economic Times.
Vivek Ranadive is one of the smartest persons in the world of business today. He started a company while he was still a student at MIT in the 80s. He founded TIBCO in 1997, grew it to 900 million dollar business, while earning a reputation that went beyond the revenue numbers suggest. He has written two books – one on real time and predictive technologies, both regarded highly by people in the field. He was a friend of Steve Jobs. In a piece he wrote in ET earlier, he described how when Steve was trying to build NeXT he came to his office and sat on the floor. When Ranadive asked him why he was sitting on floor, Jobs replied: "You are the master of selling technology to Wall Street and I want to learn from you."
Ranadive knows how to apply things he learned in one field to another. In a superb profile in New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about how he coached his daughter’s basket ball team to victory. The piece was entitled 'How David beats Goliath'.
Here’s a short video of him speaking about how software can oneday replace the Fed.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPODDhl5O6c[/youtube]
With businesses everywhere facing a period of prolonged uncertainty, it’s safe to bet that voices of people like Ranadive will be heard louder and louder.
Basab Pradhan on Infosys 3.0
Basab Pradhan, who heads global sales and marketing at Infosys, and writes an insightful blog at 6ampacific , told Business Standard: "We are saying we need to create an IP-based, non-linear model, otherwise we will never be able to get away from commoditisation of our services. If we choose to stay there and not move away, we are jeopardising our future. Many people have questioned our strategy. That’s ok, we can live with it; but we cannot jeopardise our business."
As far as we know, no one has questioned the wisdom of Infosys moving towards an IP-based, non-linear model from the present model, which gives Infosys most of its business. What most observers worry about is the apparent absence of growth drivers while they are making a shift. To be fair, it’s not as if Infosys did not think about it. It was betting on growth from consulting and system integration business – but the global economy threw sand in the machine.
The trouble with acquisitions
Microsoft saw its first quarterly loss since its shares were listed in 1986, thanks to writing off $6.2 billion towards an acquisition it made in 2007. It wanted to take on Google by buying an online ad service company called aQuantive. It did not work out. Meanwhile, Google, which also reported its results on the same day, said its core intenet business revenue increased by 21%. However, it’s not clear how its acquisition of Motorola is panning out. Reuters reports Patrick Pichette, Google’s CFO as saying the company was still in the process of evaluating every business and division of Motorola.
Technology killed them PC World has a list of 20 idioms made redundant by technology here. I liked these:
Can you think of more? Anything India specific?
Also of interest
The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.
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