December 28, 2010

" Social Networking "

Username: omnipotent_updated_addicted@socialnetwork.com
Password: omnipresent

With 21st century booting in, the expressive human lives across the globe are getting hyphened with, 'icons, status updates, like, comments, etc etc'. Web Sphere has become, 'the dynamic place' competing with human imagination. With each typed alphabets finding words, filling in with sentences, and resulting paragraph with click. Google termed such weird mathematical algorithmic web sync behavior as, 'Spider Web Networking'.

Social networking is the most significant business development of year 2010, cling the resurgence of the automobile industry. During the year, social networking morphed from a personal communications tool for young people into a new vehicle that business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to dual mode of interaction. That's one reason Time magazine just named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year.

A year ago, when I was addicted to orkut.com, many people poked fun at Facebook as a place where kids shared their latest party news. Today more than 600 million users worldwide are active on the site. The most rapidly growing demographic is people over forty. More than 300 million people spend at least one hour a day on Facebook. Approximately two hundred million people are active on Twitter in spite of-or because of-its 140-character limitation. Another 100 million use LinkedIn. None of these social networks even existed at the beginning of the decade.

Corporate Gods like IBM's Sam Palmisano, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi, Apple's Steve Jobs, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Carlson's Marilyn Nelson, and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria are all active social network users. Why? Because these social networks are a unique way of broadly communicating real-time messages to the audiences they want to reach. They can write a message anywhere, anytime, and share it with interested parties without any public relations meddling, speech writers, airplane travel, canned videos, or voice-mail messages. Now their words are much more authentic and can be remarkably empowering with the reach. Social networking is also flattening organizations by distributing access to information. Everyone is equal on the social network. No hierarchies need get involved.

The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may become obsolete when they are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization. The key to success in the social networking era is to empower the people who do the actual work, designing products, manufacturing them, creating marketing innovations, or selling services, to step up and lead without a hierarchy.

Consumer marketing companies are lining up to use these networks to reach their tailored demographics with highly personalized messages. Already they are revolutionizing marketing by shifting dollars from purchased media advertisements to building their own outlets and content. Kraft Foods, for example, is now one of the largest publishers of food-related materials. IBM is launching thought leadership communities. PepsiCo uses social networks to reach millions of social entrepreneurs in lieu of advertising at the Super Bowl. From a leadership perspective, social networking is making authentic leadership a reality and a necessity for 21st century leaders. You can't hide on your social network when you're revealing who you are and what you really believe. Transparency is essential here

Even more important, this new phenomenon is enabling business leaders to regain the trust and credibility they have lost over the last 10 years. That's why social networking is the most important business development of the year.

" Social Networking should improve your life, not become your life "
Anyone listening..hello facebook...tweet..tweet..yo hoo Orkut..damn this sites I tell you!!

- Surya Kant Jena -
soorajkiran1@gmail.com

December 20, 2010

India, "Education Loan @ 12% but Car Loan @ 6% "

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Subject: Incredible Super Power, “India” hahahaha....

This is one of those emails that flood my Inbox every morning, but was different from the rest, it made me laugh aloud and ponder hard at the same time.

India is:

nation where Pizza reaches home faster than Ambulance, Fire brigade and Police!
nation where you get Car Loan @ 6% but Education Loan @ 12%!
nation where Rice is Rs.4 but Sim card is Rs.50!

and again ironically a nation where people standing at a tea stall reading an article in a newspaper about child labour can be heard saying, "Yaar, bacchho se kaam karwane walo ko tho faansi pe chadha dena chaahiye"and then suddenly they shout, "Oye, Chottu 3 chai la dae!"

This really sums up the pragmatic and entrepreneurial spirit of India that is being celebrated across the globe. Several books, case studies have been dedicated to this by business schools in the US and Europe.

What make the point perhaps even more forcefully blunt are the two news snippets below:

1. According to the World Economic Forum’s Business Competitiveness Report for year 2010-11 India has dropped two places to rank 59 because of lack of education, health and infrastructure. At the same time, China has overtaken two countries to rise to number 27 in the rankings. In stark contrast to its poor competitiveness, India is seen as an attractive destination for FDI. It is second only to China in terms of top destinations for foreign capital. Listen to any fund manager selling his unique product with a pick of diverse Indian companies; they make equities in India sound safer than my Fixed Deposits in the Reserve Band of India.

2. All these highlight the contradictions that somehow come together in India but elsewhere might lead to doom and failure. You might ask, “Do corrupt and ineffective governments or lack of infrastructure have no role to play in the growth of business?” I am told by corporate bigwigs that the government in India is entirely decoupled from business! So are we to forget that IT became the poster child of our economy because of the government’s economic liberal policy for that industry or that the auto industry in India was protected for years helping our domestic manufacturers to come up to speed with international brand quality?

What should one make of these paradoxes: would you bet your money on India?

With my very limited understanding of the ever dynamic financial world, I fear I will soon succumb to the seduction of the Indian markets. Endorsement comes from UK Prime Minister’s faith in India becoming one of the key powers of the world, and Nobel laureate Economist Thomas Friedman saying, “if India were a stock I would definitely buy it”. As time comes to decide whether to put my money on India, I must turn to hard data.

It comes from the Euromonitor report suggesting that consumption in Emerging markets, including India, is only going upwards and that number of households with an annual disposable income of $10,000 and over will more than double from now to 2020.

Now, concentrate and analyse:

Expenditure pattern across developing nations is predicted to look something like this; housing at 21%, and the same as food and beverages, transport at 12% and alcoholic drinks another 10%.

Interestingly, personal care, jewelery, watches, finance and “miscellaneous” goods and services show a healthy 10% share of spend. Leisure and recreation will grow by 100% and India will lead in communications with a 150% rise in sales in the next decade as mobile phones drive the industry.

As with everything in India, here is the caveat, with a slug fest among 16 telecom companies in India there is no money to be made in the sector.

Interestingly, despite dramatic shifts in consumption by 2020, average per capita expenditure in Emerging markets will only be around $6,000, compared with $20,000 in the US and the largest Western European markets.

But millions of Chottus will continue to oil the wheels of commerce in India and I am hoping my bet would have paid off.

India shining? yeah...yeah...!!

- Surya Kant Jena -

soorajkiran1@gmail.com

December 02, 2010

" Learn, Unlearn, and Relearn "


Amused and thinking hard at how amazingly people are different from each other, skipping the physical composition.

The way they think, the way they behave, the way they react to situations, the friends they make, the values they have, the priorities they have, the way they treat other people, even the way they treat themselves, and to the extent they live.

How does a mundane human being decide to live his/her life?

Is there a formula to it?

Perhaps there really is a formula. Each one of us has a formula by which we live our lives. A practically proven formula derived over the years by umpteen observations, experiences and experimentations, overlooked mistakes, slapped lessons, and etc etc learnt from these experienced/ missed mistakes.

The most mind-boggling part is, this derivation keeps changing as the years pass by, and no two people have the exact same derivation.

It's a continuous process of improvisation, change, flexibility, and adaptation. We add certain ingredients, we taste then remove some, some work out, some result in explosions, and then finally we come up with a suitable derivation. Suitable for our life at that particular moment, because come tomorrow, it may change.

Hell, I know life will metamorphic for sure.

Here are a few ingredients that go into the present formula of my life now and then:

“Never forget that the most important people in your life are your parents”

“If you love and trust, do so completely”

“Accept people for who they are”

“Take your job seriously, some day you will want to look back at it and be proud”

“Play hard but ensure safety”

“Be nice to girls, they won't always understand you. Understand that”

“There may be certain people who dislike you and piss you off, but for each of them, you have ten others who love you”

“You can't possibly love everyone on the planet, its okay to not like some people”

“It's okay to be angry, hurt, and jealous and negative at times”

“Invest in your friendships, they are precious, and you have to work at them to make them work”

“Travel more, there's a lot to be seen, and there isn't enough time”

“Money is important, save some of it”

“Be polite but sometimes firm”

“If you are in a position to help someone in need, don't think. Just do it. You have no idea how fortunate you are just to be able to help”

“Love people around you, but be prepared to steer your ship alone in a storm”

“Never miss an opportunity to surprise a loved one”

“Don't let anyone hurt you without your explicit permission”

It's true; no one has yet discovered the one magic formula that would be applicable to everyone to live that 'perfect life'. Perhaps I guess because there is no such thing as a perfect life or perhaps because we need to create from scratch, our own little perfect lives, with our own little imperfections.

The best advice always is to not follow advice. Try life by yourself. I'm just a man that has gone in the direction of his personal legend, taking risks and learning daily from all around me. We are all on a pilgrimage, whether we like it or not and the target, or goal if u like is, "Death". Get as much as you can from the journey because in the end, "The Journey" is all you have.

- Surya Kanta Jena -

soorajkiran1@gmail.com