Links to Pictures and Videos

The pictures and videos from Lyon are online. Enjoy!

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/em-lyon/show/
Video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SDWfxrMCsw

Diane Berard of Les Affaires reports from WEF

Image from: Les Affaires

Diane Berard works with Les Affaires, a publication in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. For those of you who can read French, here is an extract from Diane's blog which describes Harbinger's work. 

Le Groupement répond à la résolution #3 : promouvoir l’éducation continue des entrepreneurs via le partage des meilleures pratiques.

Ensuite, petite virée du côté de  l’Inde pour découvrir de la pépinière d’intrapreneurs de  Vikas Joshi, fondateur et président du conseil du Groupe Harbinger (logiciels). Harbinger est une des 50 sociétés qui croît le plus rapidement en Inde. Selon Red Herring, c’est aussi l’une des 100 meilleures entreprises techno au monde.

L’an dernier, Vikas Joshi a sélectionné 40/400 employés pour en faire des intrapreneurs. Il leur a donné le droit, et le devoir, de développer leur leaderhsip, d’innover, de créer. Résultat : un an plus tard, trois nouveaux projets lucratifs sont nés. Et cette année, il répète l’expérience avec 40 autres employés.

Sa citation : « On ne peut pas s’arrêter pour repeindre notre bateau. Nous devons à la fois peindre et ramer »

Using Google Translate, I was able to figure out the last line: His quote: "We can not stop to paint our boat. We need both to paint and (keep) rowing."
 
You can read Diane's full blog at http://tinyurl.com/36zlcl4
 

Day 3 - BSchool visit, more insights and commitments

EMLYON Business School played host to the World Entrepreneurship Forum this morning. After late dinner last night, most of us were experiencing sleep deprivation this morning as we got ready early to board the bus leaving for the B-School campus.

As the bus winded its way through the beautiful city of Lyon, we could witness the wonderful fall colors on the trees lining Lyon's twin rivers and atop hills on both sides. The city is the second most important place in France after Paris, and home to about half a million people.

The program at the school was a public workshop, aimed at disseminating the Forum's insights with a large audience - about 600 persons, including students, alumni, partners and forum members.

The highlight of the morning was a talk by LIU Chuan-Zhi, the founder of Lenovo, China, part of a diversified enterprise with $16.6 B in revenue. As we listened to Mr Liu's speech, translated in real-time from Chinese to English, through our headsets, we could discern the gems wisdom coming from a savvy businessman who put China's business acumen on the world map:

What helped Lenovo beat multinationals at their game was superior industry knowledge, higher agility in tweaking product-service offerings to quickly address unique needs of the Chinese, shrewd pricing, astute team building at the top (including leader selection) and capital structure reforms that helped create incentives for employees. "Take people with you" was his mantra.

The next speaker was Ila Bhatt of India, popularly known as Ilaben, who has founded the Self-Employed Women's Association, with a membership of over a million women. When I talked to her in person, her penchant was evident in the one line she kept repeating: "There is so much more to do".

The Junior WEF members presented their ideas for fostering entrepreneurship - one of them being cartoon stories which depict the entrepreneur as a super-hero. What better way to get children dreaming about entrepreneurship?

Prof Zoltan Acs presented his findings of entrepreneurial competitiveness of nations, measured using a combination of indicators for attitude, activity and aspirations. The top 5 nations were: Denmark, Canada, US, Sweden, and New Zealand.

An interesting presentation followed where the topic of discussion was entrepreneurial aptitude measurement. Unfortunately the program was running late, so the speakers had to really cut it short.

After lunch, the team continued working sessions where commitments were made by everyone to undertake a few initiatives in the coming year in our respective businesses, to further the cause of entrepreneurship.

As I write this, members are figuring out the best way to spend the evening. Some plan to hang out and network, others are visiting the city center to enjoy Lyon city life and cuisine.

Day 2 - Keynotes, Working Sessions, Awards and Gala Dinner

Sir Fazle Abed, founder of BRAC in Bangladesh, the largest NGO in the world talked on developing entrepreneurship at the base of the pyramid. He argued that the perception of BoP has changed from "help the poor" to "sell to the poor" and further to "co-create with the poor".

Elmar Mock, founder of SWATCH, the famous fashion watch brand, made a passionate case for unleashing the creative forces within people, so that the creative does not become slave to the systematic; renovation does not replace innovation; and evolution does not pass off as revolution.

Zoltan Acs, professor at George Mason University's center for entrepreneurship and public policy, talked of entrepreneurial cities. Prof. Alain Fayolle of EMLYON business school talked on entrepreneurship education.

These four talks served as keynotes for four parallel tracks in the conference. Focused working groups were formed, and they got busy forming a vision for 2050 by sharing experiences, identifying drivers and inhibitors, and brainstorming ideas.

Time to leave for the Gala Ceremony where Entrepreneur for the World awards will be given away, followed by Barbara Hendricks concert and Gala dinner.

Day 1 - Opening Session

The highlight of the opening session was meeting everyone in person - the energy of participants was palpable. Selected case studies of entrepreneurial initiatives were presented.

Barack Ben-Avinoam of Iris Ventures, Israel, presented how the venture has become a growth engine for the local, regional and national economy. Receiving about 300 business plans a year, they select a dozen and fund them. The technology incubator leverages matching funds from government.

I presented BaseCamp 2010, an ad-hoc social e-learning environment set up to foster entrepreneurial learning for corporate executives within Harbinger Group in 7 cities. The emphasis was on bringing out collaboration and team learning.

Sabetha Mwabenja presented women entrepreneurs finance program, from Exim Bank Tanzania.

Fernando Moncayo Castillo presented how they took the lessons in entrepreneurship development from Singapore government to Ecuador -  a great example of learning facilitated by World Economic Forum.

Prof. Patrick Molle, President of EMLYON Business School and Mr Jean-Luc Decornoy, President of KPMG SA welcomed the delegates. The conference has begun.

What's in a Product Name?

Anne Miller, the author of several books on sales and presentations, including Metaphorically Selling, recently published a book titled "Make What you Say Pay! The Language That Opens Minds, Closes Deals and Wows Crowds".

Ms Miller points out that When there is a point to be made, attention to be grabbed, a wish to be remembered, or an audience to persuade, the savviest people in business and in the public eye regularly reach for a metaphor to do the job. Throughout the book, Anne Miller gives numerous examples of metaphors used in business communication.

Are your site and your competitors' sites comprehensive and filled with good information? Great! You all get an “A” for Content, but, guess what? You get a “D” for Distinctiveness. Raise your Distinction quotient with a metaphor and you will spark more interest in your site and gain more business for yourself. 

If you search “presentation technology,” you will find 42,400 entries, but only one called www.yawnbuster.com. YawnBuster brings PowerPoint slides alive with various applications such as audience polls, games, group exercises, and competitions. Yawnbuster gets an audience to think, participate and identify key take-aways quickly and easily – all while having fun. The name of the site is exactly the benefit presenters seek who are afraid they will bore their audiences to death -- a happy match of metaphoric name with what the site actually does for presenters.

(Chapter 6, Stand out from the Competition, Make What You Say Pay!)

What‘s in a name? A raft of associations. Consider what Ivory soap, London Fog, Jaguar, and Cheerios mean to you, says Ms Miller.

About Lyon

Lyon, located on the eastern side of France, is known to be the absolute epitome of gastronomical France! I can't wait to sample its outstanding cuisine featuring tasty local specialties. As I check out the map of Lyon on Google, it seems to be a city situated between two rivers. Our hotel overlooks one of them. I am looking forward to enjoying the riverside walks, historic sites, cobbled streets lined by medieval buildings and green areas.

Some of the city attractions include the 12th century Cathédrale St. Jean with an astronomical clock, the hilltop amphitheater, the institute of cinematography, silk museum and fine art museum. I hope to catch up on a few if not all of them.

Last but not the least, I look forward to visiting and interacting with the faculty of  the EMLYON Business School, founded in 1872 and regarded as one of the best B-schools in France. Run with the motto of educating entrepreneurs of the world, the b-school focuses on three key themes: globalization, entrepreneurship and technology.

Getting Ready for Introductory Session

I am excited about the introductory session of the World Entrepreneurship Forum, to be held on Wednesday 3 November from 7:00 pm.

The session notably includes 5 members’ presentations of their initiatives aimed at promoting entrepreneurship. It seems I am one of them.

I will be talking about our initiative to develop Corporate Entrepreneurship within our company, and it would be  a 10-minute presentation. The audience will be approximately 180 persons made up of World Entrepreneurship Forum members and media.


Time to prepare my slides! Gotta go.

All Is Well in Lyon

Just heard from Caroline: "No worries about strikes and demonstration, the situation is calm now!" Looking forward to meet everybody there. The LinkedIn group is getting active, and I hope many more participants contribute there.

What's Awaiting us in Lyon?

Today's Washington Post carries reports of angry demonstrations in the streets of Lyon. San Jose Mercury News shows a picture of a student arguing with riot police officers.

France's bitterly contested pension reforms have provoked a turmoil that brings the nation to a standstill. Hopefully the unrest peters out soon, but you never know. The unions have reportedly scheduled two major demonstrations on October 28 and Nov. 6, the latter ominously close to the conclusion of World Entrepreneurship Forum. That has got me worried from the perspective of travel back from Lyon.

Will the retirement age raise from 60 to 62 be voted in? That will be up to the French parliament to decide. We'll know soon.

Escaping the Competitive Herd

In her book expressively titled Different, Prof. Youngme Moon of Harvard Business School offers a refreshing insight into what makes some brands stand out as truly different. She argues that while companies understand they must differentiate, they compete head-on and unwittingly become more like each other. Feature-matching and product augmentation has the perverse effect of making a company similar to its competitors, not different.

Youngme Moon's book does not read like a business book - it rather is like talking to her, and understanding her views. You come away thinking that business is at its heart a profoundly human endeavor - urging us as businesspersons to focus on what makes people tick.

The book is organized in two parts. Part 1 is a critique of the herd and Part 2 is the celebration of those that rise above it.

When you ask consumers what they want, they will ask for what they are not getting, and their request will be driven by what competition is offering. Thus, market research has the perverse effect of driving your product to sameness. So Volvo drivers want sex appeal, Audi drivers want safety. A marketer's knee-jerk reaction is to round out the product by correcting weakness, rather than to  play to its strengths and make it stand out. So, well-meaning efforts to monitor your competitive position lead to homogenization.

Herd behavior demands very little of its participants. Don't collide with your neighbor, follow the general direction and speed, and drift in the average direction of nearby birds.

Product augmentation leads to competitors copying it, and the whole category is back to square one. It is an expensive way to commoditization. Now you have a hyper-mature category on your hands, where there is frenzied competitive hyper-activity, but slow overall growth. The customer satisfaction treadmill is ceaseless, and you are at a standstill.

Fortunately, there are exceptions to this. We live in a world where conformity reigns, but exceptions rule. Moon therefore celebrates a handful of brands that rise above the clutter - these are reverse brands, breakaway brands and hostile brands.

While other portals tried to cram as much content on their home pages as possible, Google competed by deleting all those things and making its start page really simple, focused on search. While furniture shops competed on the basis of durability, ease of purchase and shipping - IKEA did the opposite. IKEA made it plain that buyers need to haul the furniture themselves, assemble it at home, and the resulting ware would not necessarily survive a move. Yet, buyers flocked the shop for its ambiance, shopping experience, food, play areas for kids, excitement of assembling furniture and so forth. These are reverse brands.

When Sony created AIBO the household robot, in a stroke of genius they fashioned it as a pet. All of a sudden, AIBO's quirks were construed as a pet's idiosyncrasies, and customers loved the product. Cirque Du Soleil misses several key elements of a circus - the animals, the ringmaster and so forth. Yet, it calls itself precisely that - a circus, rather than position itself as a blend of theater, dance, opera. Why? Because CDS wants to position itself as a player in the category that is venturing out of bounds. Here, CDS is trying to redefine the category. Swatch, the bestselling watch brand in history, made watches into seasonal fashion accessories. These are breakaway brands. They challenge classifications. They offer alternate category rubrics in place of existing ones. That is why Kimberly Clark fashioned diapers as "Pull-Ups" and positioned away from diapers, and more as big-kid underpants.

When Red Bull excludes those consumers who don't like its taste, does not squash rumors about what it is manufactured from, and builds a fanatic follower base that spreads the word of mouth, you are witnessing a hostile brand. A hostile brand tells the consumers what they are in for, and if they don't like it, shows them the door - quickly. These are "take it or leave it" brands. They refuse to sand away the rough edges. Their attitude is - if Red Bull makes you nervous, don't drink it. They polarize. They summon resistance. MINI says loud and clear: The SUV backlash starts here.

Contrast these bravely positioned products with the countless breakfast cereals, detergents, family cars, laptops and many other categories where me-too competition has resulted in a category continuum to a point of  no differentiation - which by definition means the products are all but commoditized. Unless you are a category connoisseur, you cannot navigate the category, nor understand the differences.When product alternatives within a category explode, the differences become meaningless, the category attains heterogeneous homogeneity. The differences are there, but they are lost in a sea of sameness.

Youngme Moon has done a great service to marketing professionals, innovators and entrepreneurs by highlighting the idea brands that dare to be different.

Why Care for Corporate Social Responsibility

A recent article  in the Wall Street Journal by the University of Michigan professor Aneel Karnani builds on the premise that the business of business is business. The article, titled The Case Against Corporate Social Responsibility, makes a strong argument  that the idea (of CSR) is an illusion, and a potentially dangerous one. The idea that companies have a duty to address social ills is not just flawed, according to Professor Karnani, it also makes it more likely that we'll ignore the real solutions to these problems.

The topic of CSR is debated hotly in online media, colleges and boardrooms.There is plenty of recent literature offering insights into the interaction between CSR and strategy.Two areas stand out.

CSR and Marketing
In their MIT Sloan Review article Does it Pay to be Good?  authors Remi Trudel and June Cotte advise corporate marketers to pursue a socially responsible differentiation strategy. They point out that consumers will punish the producer of unethically produced goods to a greater extent than they will reward a company that offers ethically produced products. The negative effects of unethical behavior have a substantially greater impact on consumer willingness to pay than the positive effects of ethical behavior.


CSR and Talent Management
CSR's effectiveness as a lever for talent management is explored by Bhattacharya, Sen and Korschun in Using CSR to Win the War for Talent. They propose how business leaders can make CSR effective in attracting and managing talent. The payoff, according to the authors, is in the area of employee perception of the company. To effectively use CSR as an internal marketing lever, however, companies must make sure to:

1. Consistently communicate CSR efforts to employees
2. Consider employee need diversity in designing CSR initiatives
3. Understand the psychological underpinnings of pro-company behaviors, higher productivity, longer tenures and so on
4. Involve employees on their own terms - not by forcing CSR top-down

Whether you agree with Professor Karnani's viewpoint or not, the two concrete examples above should serve to help make a case for CSR initiatives - in a manner consistent with his premise. Do you see additional areas where the link between social responsibility and positive business outcomes can be explicitly illustrated?

Strategy and Implementation Must Co-exist

The Mind of the Strategist, Kenichi Ohmae's classic on corporate strategy,  makes several important points. There is a huge difference between the mindsets required for strategic decision making and tactical decision making. (See my earlier post: Strategic vs Tactical). The strategist looks for relative superiority over competition to create a competitive advantage. Superiority is created by exploiting various strategic dimensions of differentiation.


One important point Ohmae makes concerns the relationship between strategy and execution. It is best to present it in his own words.

Corporate performance is the result of combining planning and execution. It resembles a boat race. No matter how hard each crew member rows, if the coxswain doesn’t choose the right direction, the crew can never hope to win. Conversely, even if the coxswain is a perfect navigator, you cannot win the race unless the rowers strive hard and in unison.

- Kenichi Ohmae (The Mind of The Strategist)

Revenue Modeling for Software as a Service

The difference between Software as a Service (SaaS) and packaged software goes beyond the method of distribution. Obviously, SaaS is delivered over the internet on-demand, and packaged software is installed on user computers (desktops or servers). However, SaaS enables a whole variety of revenue streams that need to be considered carefully when determining its revenue model.

Sixteen Ventures web site has a presentation titled SaaS Revenue Modeling: Details of the 7 Revenue Streams. The authors classify revenue streams into two:


Scalable Revenue Streams
These revenue streams can scale significantly with the growth of the SaaS venture. Four such streams are identified:

1. Recurring: This type of revenue comes from site subscriptions. 
2. Ecosystem: The SaaS vendor realizes revenue by providing APIs to other players providing complementary offerings
3. Ancillary: Revenue coming for ancillary fees such as setup fee
4. Network: Anonymized and aggregated data from SaaS users is provided to those who will pay for it. This leverages the multi-tenancy of SaaS ventures.

Non-Scalable Revenue Streams
These are useful revenue streams but harder and sometimes impossible to scale. Three such streams are identified:

1. Products: Units that are shipped to users of SaaS - these could be devices and gadgets of sorts
2. Services: Setup, configuration, content development, software development, training
3. Advertising: Monetizes site by displaying advertisements alongside SaaS user interface

The presentation can be found on Sixteen Ventures site.

Can You Sell Something That Is Available For Free?

Setting a price for a product is tricky business. Particularly when a substitute is available for a low price. If you price the product too low, you risk viability. If you price high, nobody wants to buy your product.

As an extreme case of this dilemma, let's ask ourselves the question: Can you sell something for a price if that product is available for free?

Consider photo sharing. With Picasa and numerous other photo sharing sites that are free, is there a business model for a site which charges a subscription fee for photo sharing?

For an answer, we need to look no further than Smugmug, a site that charges you $40 to $150 per year to share photos online. Are they out of their mind? Apparently not. They have 300,000 paying customers, and have nearly a billion photos hosted at the time of this writing.

How do they pull this off? I will let you decide. Here is some messaging from their site.

• You Look Better Here
• Your photos look better here
• Your fans will tell you how great your photos look here

Here is what they have to say about themselves.

• We dream of an independent company devoted to nothing but your priceless photos.
• A company that backs up your precious memories so they're safe and sound.
• A profitable, debt-free company.
• That earns your fanatical loyalty.
• We're living that dream.

I am sure there are other examples where people willingly pay more to obtain a product or a service from a provider because they believe - correctly - that they are getting more value.

5 Rules of Entrepreneurship

Here is a simple list to remember, extracted from my speech at 20th Harbinger Group Annual Awards Function.

1. If you want to jump into business, jump with both your feet.
2. Money is the result of business, not its sole purpose.
3. Never lie to a customer.
4. Reward employees on merit.
5. Sell and do what you are passionate about - business thrives on passion.

Of course, I have deleted all the funny examples that accompanied the recitation of these rules. Hope the summary helps.

Turning Adversity into Advantage

Silicon India's International Women's Day this year featured Harbinger Group as a Platinum Sponsor along with Nokia. For a second year in a row, executives from several organizations shared thoughts and ideas.

One of the panels featured Swati Ketkar, Executive Director at Harbinger Systems. Her topic was - 'Achieving Success: Turning Every Adversity into an Advantage'.

Excerpts from her talk -

1. Adversity is often a leading indicator of calamity - don't deny it, accept it and plan to overcome it to avoid further trouble
2. Adversity creates conditions that are conducive to change. In normal times people are too comfortable to be open to change. Adversity pushes everyone past the tipping point. 
3. Adverse conditions help unite teams and create a sense of bonding. Everyone goes 'we are in it together'.
4. Bad times test your character and integrity
5. Facing adversity is a transforming experience. Regardless of how well you did, what matters more is what the experience did to you - did you emerge stronger?
6. In some adverse conditions, the best response is to wait it out until conditions improve. This is a great opportunity to revisit other important and interesting things you may have left on back-burner.

These ideas bring out the positive side of adversity, which is otherwise generally considered a negative vibe. Being crestfallen is not a solution to adversity; rather it can be used as a force for superior achievement, resilience, agility, innovation, energy, and happiness.

The Innovative Entrepreneur

Like everyone else, the innovative entrepreneur sees the world and understands what is wrong with it. Then he questions why it must be that way, and realizes opportunities for change. This gives him passion.

He imagines, in his mind's eye, a different world. It looks different, better and compelling. He visualizes that new world to be a destination, not yet knowing which path leads there. This is vision.

His search for a path quickly reveals that he needs other people to join his pursuit. To win them over, he shares the vision of future with them. Here begins leadership.

The path to the vision usually involves solving multiple problems. The innovative entrepreneur nurtures a childlike curiosity for options available. He attacks problems with the zeal of a puzzle solver, enjoying the solving process. He thinks laterally, questions assumptions, backtracks when confounded, reasons, analyzes, and synthesizes. Above all, he puts up with all the chaos that accompanies thought. And finally an idea takes shape. This is innovation.

With his team, he nurtures the idea and fleshes it out. Then he questions it, subjects it to scrutiny and determines if it can play a role in realizing the vision. He must now make choices about investing scarce resources in pursuit of objectives. This is strategy.

With a deeply held belief in the venture the entrepreneur goes about leading his team to realizing the shared vision. Along the way, he needs to make decisions that are consistent with his values and principles. He needs to juggle resources. He needs to refine processes. This is execution.

Strengths Deserve Attention!

Unfortunately, most of us have little sense of our innate talents and strengths, much less the ability to build our lives around them. Instead, guided by our parents, by our teachers, by our managers and by psychology’s fascination with pathology, we become experts in our weaknesses and spend our lives trying to repair these flaws, while our strengths lie dormant and neglected. What bigger injustice can we inflict upon ourselves, than to suppress our true potential this way?

- Marcus Buckingham, author of the bestseller Now, Discover Your Strengths

What causes us to stay unaware of our strengths? What is behind this mental paralysis? Have we given up the courage, curiosity and sense of adventure that we were born with, and lived with, as children? Do we lose the desire to continue our hero-journey into our own unexploited potential, as we start growing up and conforming to the world around us some time along the way?

Each one of us is unique. No two fingerprints match, much less thinking patterns, abilities and behaviors. Then why do we try to be “like each other”? What does it take to be different?

When you want to be different, where do you look for encouragement except to your inner calling? How to build confidence in that inner calling? How do you forge ahead with our inner voice, when outer life is erecting roadblocks everywhere? How to look at success and failure in such cases?

It takes courage to stand up and assert your strengths. When you say you will build on a strength and reach excellence, it is a bold statement you make, and you make yourself accountable. It is easier to admit weaknesses. By agreeing to repair them and stop there, you agree to reach a level of mediocrity which matches the “average” around you. Socially this may be more acceptable than aspiring to excellence, but do we really want to go there?

Focusing on your strength is not about being selfish. On the contrary, if you bring the best out of yourself, you can inspire others, help them and make a difference to the world in many ways.

Whole Product Experience Roadmap: A Simple Tool for Product Managers

Software product managers with an engineering background routinely use the product engineering roadmap, which is a document that lays out a broad time-line and engineering work items to be completed as a product evolves from one version to the next. Some of the work items are features that end-users can see and use, yet others are improvements that strengthen the product at the back-end with enhanced scalability, performance, security etc. A well maintained product roadmap goes a long way in providing a guideline for product development and maintenance efforts. It serves as a reference point for all planning discussions.

That said, products are rarely mere engineering artifacts. End-users are increasingly experiencing the consumerization of web. Consequently, the bar for total product experience keeps going up. Users need a whole array of value-adds to the core product, at various touch-points along the product experience cycle. These include online user community, social media user groups, forums for sharing best practices, webinars, on-demand videos illustrating product usage, tips, documentation, guidance on product use in specific business situations, purchase justification support, installation support, sample use cases and so forth. Geoffrey Moore, in his famous book Crossing the Chasm, refers to these value-adds collectively as the augmented product. According to him, the core product and the augmented product together make up the whole product.

Which brings us to the Whole Product Experience Roadmap, a simple tool to track the building up of a whole product experience. Prepare a tabular roadmap where rows correspond to several attributes of product experience such as Features, Documentation, Training, Community, Installation, Distribution, Pricing, Expectation Setting etc and columns correspond to successive months. For each month pick a few cells and fill them with goals that aim at enhancing product experience. It is that simple.

Now, you can record progress as you keep enhancing product experience and easily visualize the gaps which need to be filled. Every time you hear back from marketing, sales, support or directly from a customer or a partner something that could be improved in the product experience, you simply add a row to the whole product experience roadmap.

If you provide services instead of products, you can still use the same tool with minor variations. Whatever be the nature of your offering - product or service - the idea of designing a customer experience is much the same. Identify the touch-points throughout the engagement experience and plan improvements with time.