Avatar !!!!!!

Perhaps among the very first on this planet to write a characterization of the epic-movie "AVATAR"........

Went to watch the pre-release premiere of perhaps the most awaited movie of the year. All movie I kept wondering how come the phrase, AVATAR. Though the answer may seem plausible to some but, at least, not to me.

Not sure how firangis will endure this marathon but it was kind of a typical, wishful, fairy-tale movie....With everything you could well expect to happen.....Graphics were superb and may be termed as the sunrise of a new era in (animated) movies but the flip point of under-deliverance still remains....A lot of hype may have led to this but I believe benchmarks are meant to be adhered to. If Mr. Cameron has raised his bar, then I feel, he should have lived upto it.

Not sure if it's even a one time watch but I'm sure this movie is not very far from being aired on some movies channel......so people plan your tickets accordingly....

Signing off,
Me.

Strong Attack or Strong Defence....

Last night was just pondering over the strategies used by various companies to gain or to hold onto their market shares. Majority of the articles encouraged "attacking or aggressive" strategy as the most prescribed strategy for gaining market share. But I didn't seem to agree.

I am working in a company which has been a market leader earlier, lost its place to competitors when it decided to aggressively attack the market. Though a boom did build up, it eventually left the company cash strapped and we lost four places to wind up at number five. "What went wrong" became the case study at many B-Schools. Recently an IIM-C prof conducted a thorough research of the events and was surprised to see the "unhoped-for" outcomes of our aggressive stances.

What I've studied in my MBA stands disapproved when I consider these events. We've been taught aggressive attacking techniques in our curriculum but all of them stand refuted in context to my present organization.

To add icing on the cake, I am amazed to see our organizations revival. It is being led by a strong defensive strategy, which prohibits selling on an accrual basis, i.e., no credit......WOW..... Strategy Books here is an Exception..... Growth based on defensive plans of action.

Signing off
Me.....

The "smiling" act.....

One weird thought I wanted to share (though I believe this whole blogging thing is as weird as anything could be)......

This is something I observed while I was doing my favorite thing, "doing nothing" in a parking lot.....I watched a guy, who was jogging on the side of the road, accidentally bang into someone while running....the other thing I noted was how the guy who had hit into the other guy started passing a smile so as to ease the steam off the situation.........it made me thinking.....that this is something very unusually usual, which we witness almost every now and then....to find somebody smiling after he has done something wrong, not exactly a mistake but certainly something which could irritate others........

we smile and, in a way, offer our apologies.......I trust that this particular behavior of ours has a certain relation to our genes and not only conditioning......this logic can be had from the behavior of a kid who is rampant and takes pleasure in throwing the stuff around.....

for observing this particular thing I chose my 2 years old nephew who is (in)famous for his anarchic traits.....it didn't take me long before he was back in full swing and threw my sister's mobile off the bed....he being utterly innocent (at least as it seems to me), looked towards didi and offered an unconditional smile (read apology).....It certainly had me thinking that this act of his is not driven by any "conditioning" but is rather passed-on from one generation to the other and is thus inculcated into our perpetually evolving genes.......

though the sample size that I chose for conducting this "uncanny" experiment of mine was extremely small, yet I believe that the results which I observed are not any windfall outcomes but are a validation of a phenomenon much wider than the realms of our thoughts and imaginations.........

Thou Lord shan't be Supreme.....

I by no means have the slightest of the intention to slander or to be sacrilegious by writing this post. At times I just wonder as in why do we portray the lord (or the God) as the Supreme..... As someone who will only help those who will seek his help( or let me put it that way, as to helping those who pay obeisance to him)....

Isn't it too human ???? To payback.....

Whats godly in it????

"Storing my Services"

Well, welcome back.........

Though its been more than 6 months I wrote here but in the mean while I have been writing a lot, be it the reports at my work place or preparing notes for the (then) upcoming CFA exam.

Writing is indulgence. If done consummately, may give the requisite gratification. And while I was writing for the intent of making my notes I happened to dwell over the idea of "inventorying" services.

Services, as the definition goes, cannot be stored or "inventoried". But again, the beauty of this concept lies in challenging the existing definitions and creating something disruptive. Something which could challenge the actuality, change the way life is lived or become an integral part of our belief system, precisely the way we never question the existence of gravity around us but is ubiquitous and instilled in our nervous system.

Taking the concept a little further, I believe if we could store the services, like storing the hair-cut done by Javed for the purpose of using it when demand is high or like stacking-in the treatment of a dentist as and when required by the patient.

I'll be wrong to assert that services have never been inventoried before but what I want to convey here is the opinion that the scope of inventorying the services is mammoth and still unexplored.

The picture here is unclear and the fog is prevailing strong. Let me tersely present what I mean when I say "Store my Services".

Traditional View – Services cannot be inventoried.

Modern View – The traditional view is narrow in approach as it assumes inventory to be something related with only finished products and not WIP (work-in-progress).

My observation is that services, with the help of various physical apparatuses, can be inventoried. This may guide us to lower lead times as well as improvement in quality.

Since services involve customer as an integral part of its production process, it becomes difficult (if not impossible) to store services. Recent innovations and development in technology has helped various services to be stored in WIP stage and at some places even to the extent of fully completed products.

An instance could be that of virtual classrooms that are fast gaining popularity among the students fraternity. The recorded lectures are being delivered to the students on-line and a software, containing a large pool of pre-solved questions, is synchronized to the lecture window so that most of the queries are answered on the spot. Any query, if not found in the question data bank, is stored for later response.

Another classical example is of cassettes (or CDs etc these days), where the services of the singer are stored for the purpose of using them later at the user's will. And how about the call-centers of telecom companies that we call and get pre-recorded replies.

Its all about how you innovate and remove the anomalies, arising from varied level of services given by various people giving them.

The scope of holding services is unsung and at the same time undiscovered.

The forum is open and so is our mind.......