Last month, Volvo AB Chief Executive Olof Pearson announced an investment of Rs 2,000 crore for its bus division in India. Pearson had enough reasons to be pleased with his top team in the country.

Volvo's first-mover advantage

Business Standard

Every time Apple launches a new product, service or software upgrade, consumers can&rsquo;t help but get hysterical. It happened last week, too, when Apple announced Indian consumers can now buy music, films and even rent videos on iTunes store (just like their counterparts in the US).

iTunes at last! But there are the others

Much of the management and leadership literature that business people are exposed to tends to be of Anglo-Saxon origin. More specifically, it is American. There is nothing wrong or right about it, but it is important to be conscious of the cultural moorings of the ideas espoused by such writings and books.

The high-potential manager

Management is about people and relationships.

Phi Beta Kappa people do not necessarily make great managers: R Gopalakrishnan

I would consider this as one of my best works as we made buying Springwel mattresses not just a transaction, but an act of greater good. As a brand, Springwel has taken a higher ground and it will continue to do good for the society.

My Best Campaign: Ashutosh Karkhanis

The top 10 business bestsellers

    The name for this start-up brand was taken from a character in the song-poem composed by Roscoe Mitchell, an African American composer and Jazz instrumentalist. It was founded by 3 musicians from California, who sold freshly squeezed juice from the back of an old Volkswagen van. It was NASDAQ Company till it was bought by a global MNC. Name the founders, the brand and its current owner.

The Strategist Quiz (#283)

    Audio products from the House of Marley set up by Bob Marley&rsquo;s son Rohan Marley. Bob Marley named his son after the famous West Indian Cricketer Rohan Kanhai.

Answers to last week`s quiz (#282)

Companies in retail, wholesale and distribution sectors need to pay more attention to their supply chain as they are more likely to get hit by fraud involving customers (23% ) and vendors (24%). However, the survey finds that they are less likely than average to be investing in partner, client and vendor due diligence. More attention here could pay dividends.

Fraud in the retail sector

According to prevailing business wisdom, it&rsquo;s a lot easier and cheaper to build on the success of an established brand name, such as Dove, than to build a new one ground up. Brand extensions are more than twice as likely to be successful than products that start their lives as completely new brands. Understandably, many companies are turning to extensions to boost sluggish sales of established products.

Learn to stretch success

It is difficult and expensive to build a brand. High media clutter, high shelf-clutter and high mind-space clutter (coupled with ever shortening attention span by consumers) makes for very few successful new brands in the country. It can be argued that apart from a very select handful that includes Fastrack, Caf&eacute; Coffee Day and Big Bazaar, there are no truly successful new brands out there. The lure of brand extensions is understandable as it utilises the current equity of a brand and leverages it for brands to foray in other categories.

How far is too far?

Vienna retains the top spot as the city with the world&rsquo;s best quality of living, according to the Mercer 2012 Quality of Living Survey. Zurich and Auckland follow in second and third places, respectively. Munich is in the fourth place, followed by Vancouver in fifth. D&uuml;sseldorf dropped one spot to sixth followed by Frankfurt (7th), Geneva (8th), Copenhagen (9th), and Bern and Sydney at 10th.

Live and let live

Great brands fire people&rsquo;s hopes and ambitions. Aspirations &mdash; people&rsquo;s hopes and ambitions &mdash; fuel choices. For marketers and brand builders, being tuned into people&rsquo;s aspirations matters. Because brands that are aspirational win loyalty, premium and appeal. Brand owners and shapers strive to make their brands more aspirational. However, few brands are so in the minds of the consumers.

The power of aspiration

The players remain the same, but the battleground has changed. The attention of the two big brands in health - Lifebuoy and Dettol - is shifting to new emerging categories such as handwash.

A new battleground

For its campaign with Beyonc&eacute; next year, Pepsi doesn&rsquo;t just want to sign up the telegenic pop star for another TV commercial. It also wants to get into the Beyonc&eacute; business.

In Beyonce deal, Pepsi focuses on collaboration

In 2011, Voltas became a market leader in room air conditioners, which is the fastest growing segment in ACs and worth Rs 6,000 crore in terms of primary sales. A year later, the Tata brand became the number one player in terms of secondary sales as well, with a market share of 18.3 per cent (Nielsen data). This improved further to 20.3 per cent in the September 2012 quarter, widening the gap with the second largest player, LG.

Voltas on top, but faces heat

Does the name Nibiru strike fear into your heart? It should. It may sound like some yakuza who plans to stuff your Christmas stocking with your own fingers and toes, but it&rsquo;s much, much worse.

Apocalypse now-ish

Magnus Carlsen produced a standout performance to win the London Classic and push his rating into new territory. The Norwegian GM ended with +5,=3 to win ahead of Kramnik whose +4,=4, result would have taken the event most years.

Chess (#1023)

With the year-end festive season upon us and the media exhorting all &ldquo;to be of good cheer&rdquo;, it would be useful to review what the pitfalls are of being &ldquo;high spirited&rdquo; in India &mdash; something normally brought home to a reveller if/when pulled up by cops for testing blood alcohol content (BAC).

All about drinking and driving

Steve Raymer, an acclaimed photographer, made six trips to Kolkata between 2009 and 2012 for this book of images of the city. His objective, as he declares early on, was to document the &ldquo;legendary city&rdquo; that has &ldquo;become the byword for unspeakable poverty&rdquo;. Only his project wasn&rsquo;t as disinterested as the word &ldquo;document&rdquo; implies. Raymer had grander ambitions, as the title reveals, of &ldquo;redeeming&rdquo; Calcutta&rsquo;s reputation, of showing that there was far more to the city than the ubiquitous poverty. It&rsquo;s an impulse guaranteed to get an indulgent reception from every true-blue Calcuttan &mdash; and I am one, despite, or perhaps because of, having left the city many years ago.

City of cliches

Aabhas Sharma &amp; Veenu Sandhu list out the full extent of the rot in the country&rsquo;s sports administration which has been brought into the open now by the Indian Olympic body&rsquo;s suspension by its international parent.

Spoilsports

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