So now it appears that the Tata search committee has decided that an &ldquo;insider&rdquo; will be Ratan Tata&rsquo;s successor as group chairman when he steps down in December next year (&ldquo;Consensus grows on an internal Tata successor&rdquo;, Business Standard, August 29). And, yes, it&rsquo;s easy to think the result is a foregone conclusion because one &ldquo;insider&rdquo; in the running is a member of the promoter family and of &ldquo;a particular community&rdquo; as one irate letter writer from Kolkata phrased it. But even if we set aside suspicions of future nepotism, the search committee could have saved itself a lot of time if it had taken that decision from the start. Globally, &ldquo;insider&rdquo; successors to CEOs are considered the best option for a conglomerate that is stable and growing &mdash; which would pretty much apply to most of the Tata group.

Kanika Datta: Insiders versus outsiders

Business Standard

Consumer product licensing of TV characters finally takes off in India...

Screen test

Harsh Pati Singhania, managing director, JK Paper, doesn&rsquo;t look like a man in a hurry. But if one is operating in an industry like paper, one needs to keep that margin for the unexpected up one&rsquo;s sleeve. Besides being capital intensive, procurement of raw materials and fluctuating international prices are big issues one has to grapple with. Then, of course, there is the task of differentiation and branding.

Q&A: Harsh Pati Singhania, MD, JK Paper

Most marketing emails never see the light of day.

Don't end up in the spam box

With the social media reaching a stage where an individual's 'tweet' is a matter of concern for the whole organisation, the Loyola Institute of Business &amp; Administration (LIBA) is planning to cash in on the trend. LIBA will be one of the first such institutes that will be offering 'Social Media Management' as an elective for their two year full time MBA programme.

LIBA to offer MBA in social media management

Siva Sivani Institute of Management (SSIM), a Secunderabad-based autonomous business school, on Monday announced plans to achieve the &lsquo;deemed university&rsquo; status within five years.

Siva Sivani sets its sights on deemed varsity status

Premium ice-cream retailer Baskin-Robbins is giving its stores a face lift to increase footfalls. This is in line with the global repositioning exercise &lsquo;We make people happy&rsquo; which will slowly trickle into India. Stores will now don a happier look where walls and display windows will be adorned with graphics and messages that showcase happy moments. The staid menu displays are being replaced with back lit menus to make the store environment livelier.

Baskin-Robbins in search of distribution flavour

At a time of concern about sustained momentum in India&rsquo;s economic growth, some recent findings including a case study in India offer fresh pointers on the implications for management and organisation in emerging economies.

Shyam Ponappa: Management as capital

In a boring pictures contest, the photos of industrialists arriving to meet Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday would have been rivalled only by those of Prime Minister&rsquo;s Economic Advisory Council (EAC) releasing, on the same day, its report on the economic outlook for 2011-12. But the latter event was far less a cause of concern than the former.

Kanika Datta: Raisina Hill's India Inc Club

B&ndash;schools are worried about job hopping.

Student's corner

A medley of factors has meant influx of Indian students to places they should never have gone.

That risky rush for a US degree

The UK government's review of its visa norms since April is making students explore other study destinations.

Student traffic to UK, US may decline

All of you must be in regular touch with Alpha pups, make elevator pitches, adopt blue-sky thinking, avoid boiling the ocean and learn to cut out the need for brain dumping by making HQ more task-oriented.

Shyamal Majumdar: Of Alpha pups and Assmosis

Bajaj Auto hopes the 150 cc bike, to be launched this month, will make deep inroads in the rural market, now dominated by Hero Honda&rsquo;s Splendor.

Will Boxer pack a punch?

In the early 1900s America globalised by building on Ford&rsquo;s concept of mass production. The invasion was driven in the food, automotive and personal product categories, such as Coke, McDonalds, GM, Ford, and Procter &amp; Gamble, and later by technology companies like IBM and Microsoft. After World War II, Japan globalised by miniaturising American products and building electronic expertise &mdash; thus were born global giants like Toyota, Sony, Mitsubishi and Honda.

Madhukar Sabnavis: Think local, go global

Gautam Ashok Choksi did his undergraduation in the US before plunging into his family business some 13-odd years ago. Though he enjoyed his work as vice president-finance of Hindustan Platinum Limited, his desire to obtain an MBA degree never left him.

ISB programme for senior executives catches on

To promote the 2001 film, A Knight&rsquo;s Tale, a Sony marketing executive invented a reviewer and concocted a suitable quote to be highlighted in its promotional poster. The movie went on to become a blockbuster.

VW Polo romps home

New brands won&rsquo;t be built by doing what old brands did better; new brands are built by thinking about the world in new ways, by reimagining the role and purpose of brands in people&rsquo;s lives. Branding is first and foremost a battle of &ldquo;episteme&rdquo;, to own the ideological framework, one that determines truth itself. Big brands are good at passing off their truths as the ultimate truths. Dettol will make you believe that the whole world is hostile and we are under siege, Airtel and Nokia will convince you that &ldquo;We&rdquo; is greater than &ldquo;I&rdquo;, Nike will make you believe that if you have a body you can be an athlete and so on.

No holds barred

The role is fast changing from managing to being a growth champion.

New, improved marketing manager

    This company was founded by the first user of the 1-800 toll free number as a sales channel in the US. His company&rsquo;s famous slogan was &ldquo;leave off the last S for savings&rdquo;. Name him and his company.

The Strategist Quiz (#213)

    He is known as &ldquo;any time, any quantity man&rdquo;. Name the person and his company which were in the news recently.

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