India is the birth place of the business organization of the future. A confluence of three factors is driving change in India &mdash; an unprecedented change in the consumer and the marketplace, an acceleration of competitive intensity and finally a complete change in the talent landscape. All these changes call for a coherent organizational response in terms of business models and strategy. Most important, it calls for a mindset of passion, paranoia, curiosity and accountability.

Winning in a fast changing world

Business Standard

A year after its split with Britannia, the French dairy major is betting big on milk products.

Danone India sees wealth in health

The Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode (IIM-K), has decided to commemorate the contribution made by late Professor C K Prahalad, by setting up an endowment fund in his name. The aim of this fund is to globalise Indian thought leadership through knowledge creation and dissemination.

IIM-K to set up Prahalad fund

In its latest campaign for the Ritz, Maruti Suzuki says that the premium car has it all.

Ritz by choice?

Motorola is lining up products this year to liven up two of its businesses &mdash; handsets and network solutions. In the handset business, it has fallen way behind aggressive competitors such as Nokia, Samsung and LG. In network solutions and managed services, analysts reckon it lags behind players such as Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia Siemens and Alcatel Lucent.

Motorola: Trying to catch up

In October 2009, Reebok launched its EasyTone footwear for women, a shoe meant to increase muscle activation with miniature balance balls underneath the sole.

Reebok: Fitness first

The most common types of loyalty programmes are frequent shopper schemes, frequent flyers, frequent guest schemes, credit card rewards, coalition loyalty programmes, coupons and vouchers.

KIT: Loyalty programmes

    This business group&rsquo;s corporate headquarters was built by an Italian who was the managing director of one of its group companies. His desire was to build a replica of the Hawa Mahal. Name this building and the business group that owns it.

Answers to last week's quiz (#145)

START-UP NATION
Authors: Dan Senor and Saul Singer
Publisher: Twelve
Price: Rs 695
ISBN: 9780446541466.
ON THE BRINK 
Author: Hank Paulson
Publisher: Business Plus
Price: Rs 599
ISBN: 9780755360543.
NO MONEY MARKETING
Authors: Jessie Paul
Publisher: Tata McGraw-Hill
Price: Rs 395
ISBN: 9780070152700.
THE NEW AGE OF INNOVATION
Author: C K Prahalad
Publisher: Tata McGraw-Hill 
Price: Rs 750
ISBN: 9780070248618.
ANDY GROVE
Author: Richard S Tedlow
Publisher: Penguin Books
Price: Rs 695
ISBN: 9780670999484.
INSPIRATIONS 
Author: Paulo Coelho
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 499
ISBN: 9781846141973.
COMMON WEALTH 
Author: Jeffrey Sachs
Publisher: Penguin 
Price: Rs 350
ISBN: 9780713999198.
SCREW IT LET&rsquo;S DO IT
Author: Richard Branson
Publisher: Rupa &amp; Co 
Price: Rs 475
ISBN: 9780753511497.
THE ASCENT OF MONEY
Author: Niall Ferguson
Publisher: Penguin 
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 9781846141928.
THE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE
Authors: Jim Kouzes and Barry

The top 10 business bestsellers

&nbsp;

    Who coined the term newsmagazine?&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    What is common to a chandelier made of Swarovski crystals at the JFK airport and Puma shoes?&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    Why has the book Winnie-the-Pooh been in the news of late?&nbsp;
    &nbsp;
    Which company established a special relationship with the world of sport and invented several devices for the precise timing of sporting events, such as the &ldquo;broken wire&rdquo; in 1912, the Photogines, the first mechanism to

The Strategist Quiz (#146)

The India-born global management guru not only helped companies but also MBA students and faculty to think laterally.

Prahalad taught them to think outside the box

The tie-up with Pepsi is aimed at leveraging the US giant&rsquo;s skills in the beverage business.

Tata Tea's new gambit

Loyalty points that can earn you a trip abroad or get you free gifts are common marketing strategies for consumer products companies. But even steel firms have started going the same way now.

Brand-savvy steel takes FMCG route

Recently I have seen at least four different brands that end their ads by saying &lsquo;change your life&rsquo; or &lsquo;change your world&rsquo; or &lsquo;it changes you&rsquo;. There are many ways of looking at this. One, that almost every second product or service these days is going to totally change our lives. Two, there are a lot of creative people out there thinking the same thing. Three, (probably most likely) could it just be possible that we use lines like &lsquo;change your life&rsquo; or &lsquo;get more&rsquo; because you can&rsquo;t really go wrong with something like that? Especially since the reason all of us anyways use a product or service is to change something in our lives (look better, travel more comfortably, communicate more efficiently).

How far can you see?

Till recently, General Electric (GE) honchos would often talk of a turnover of $8 billion in India by 2010. This was 16 per cent of the company&rsquo;s projected emerging market business for the year. At that time, GE hoped to sell gas turbines, consumer loans, water treatment plants, medical equipment et al in large numbers; hence the ambitious target.

General Electric 2.0

The downturn has made companies the world over more sensitive to the way they manage and grow business. Aware of the uncertainties of today&rsquo;s business environment, they are taking every step with caution. Yet they are eyeing growth and see emerging markets as their playground.

'India should take its innovation to the developed world'

Ravikanth Mishra, a civil engineering graduate from an engineering college in Chennai, received many job offers from construction companies, but chose to accept an offer from a merchant bank. He is working there as an analyst. &ldquo;I make at least 50 per cent more money than my classmates who have taken up jobs in the infrastructure and construction sectors,&rdquo; claims Mishra.

Skills crunch to derail infra juggernaut

Volkswagen (VW), who? That&rsquo;s the common question the bosses at the world&rsquo;s third largest car maker faced every time they made a marketing pitch in India. While its two sister brands &ndash; Audi and SkodaAuto &ndash; had a high recall value, very few were aware of the VW brand name here.

Volkswagen's big leap

When National Stock Exchange Managing Director Ravi Narain flagged off the Chennai-bound Rajdhani Express at the New Delhi Railway Station on Wednesday, he signalled the premier bourse&rsquo;s debut in an unusual area: promotion of investor awareness on long-distance trains.

Branding on the move

Italian premium brand Diesel wants to replicate its American success story in India. The company, which draws $ 200 million (around Rs 920 crore) in sales in the US markets, sees a similar potential here in the next 10-15 years.

Diesel looks at repeating US success story in India

When it started, Lalit Modi said the Indian Premier League (IPL) was supposedly modelled on the hugely successful English Premier League (EPL), which began in 1992 and has emerged as one of the world&rsquo;s most popular and richest sporting events. Actually, there are significant differences between the two in terms of structure and format that could partly explain why the cricketing version is so convulsed in controversy within three years of starting. This is not to say that EPL hasn&rsquo;t had its share of disputes, but nothing on the IPL scale, involving senior ministers or attracting the attention of the income tax authorities.

Page 660 - News