Most experts say women are under-represented in corner offices across the world. How well does India score? Our panel of experts, who are stereotype-busters in their own right, share their experiences.

Is the glass ceiling a myth or a reality?

Business Standard

Anxiety is possibly the single largest inhibitor of growth both for an individual and for a corporation, says Thomas J DeLong, Philip J Stomberg Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School. He says the best way to deal with workplace anxiety is to accept failure and treat it as an unavoidable aspect of being creative and successful. In this interview to Saumya Prakash, DeLong shares some insights on the role of HR professionals in managing anxiety and conflict in an organisation as well as in dealing with redundancy.

The only way to deal with conflict is to listen to one another and empathise: Thomas J DeLong

Del Monte has found an unusual spokesperson in Chhota Bheem, an animated character from the eponymous series on Pogo.

A recipe for success

When technology bellwethers take to TV promotion, you know they are targetting more than just the online crowd. Microsoft and Google have been flashing TV ads in India, where each company is trying to humanise its technology products and services.

Tech firms score with offline ads

From compromised machines to mass email lists for spamming, electronically-transferring funds out of bank accounts to phishing attacks&mdash;India&rsquo;s 100 million internet users have become prime targets for hackers across the globe.

Cyber crime is now a booming industry

Finally, some respite for Indian motorists tackling heavy city traffic and potholed roads every day. Dutch navigation company TomTom, which announced its entry into India last September, is moving forward to make its products available to the retail customer. To begin with it will offer three portable navigation devices under its Via range &mdash; the Via 100, the Via 120, and the Via 125 &mdash; that are loaded with local maps. The devices are priced between Rs 15,000 and Rs 19,000. TomTom is in talks with various automakers in India and soon the products will be available at Reliance Autozones and Reliance Digital, besides independent car accessory dealers and car dealers.

TomTom: More control, less stress

Unlike clothes, brands don&rsquo;t come with care instructions. There are no labels for brand managers that say &ldquo;Manage with care. Do not treat customers coldly. Use warmth inside out. Do not behave like machines. Use kid gloves instead of iron hands to handle criticism. Do not ever wash your hands off even your worst customers.&rdquo; Sometimes though, you wish they did come with an instruction label. Maybe then we&rsquo;d realise that our jobs are not remotely over as we soon as the consumer buys our brand. That&rsquo;s only the beginning.

The fabric of relationships

Micromax has fallen back on crowdsourcing to revamp the company&rsquo;s logo. The Delhi-based mobile handset maker has organised a nationwide creative hunt in the digital space in association with Talenthouse India, a joint venture between Reliance Entertainment, the flagship media and entertainment arm of India&rsquo;s Reliance Group, and the California-based, Talenthouse. Says Pratik Seal, country head, marketing, Micromax India, &ldquo;The design that reflects the brand&rsquo;s personality &mdash; that is, young, innovative, audacious, outgoing, dynamic, fluid and energetic with an international appeal &mdash; will surely be on the top.

Micromax: Of the people, by the people

The top 10 business bestsellers

Facebook, the world&rsquo;s largest social networking site, has just launched a new initiative under which advertisements will appear in the form of &lsquo;stories&rsquo; or posts about a product in its news feed labelled as &lsquo;featured&rsquo;. Marketers can only pay for these adverts to appear in a user&rsquo;s feed if the user has already &lsquo;liked&rsquo; the page. And the advertiser does not have the option to add its own additional message once the post is live.

Indian brands warming up to Facebook ads in news feeds

Sonata, the mass-market watch brand contributing to roughly half of Titan watch division&rsquo;s turnover, has launched a watch priced at Rs 225. Targeted at the &lsquo;bottom of the pyramid&rsquo;, it is touted as the cheapest branded watch in the country. Designed with cost-effective polyurethane material, the watch has a youthful appeal and comes loaded with features like a stop watch, light, alarm, day-date among others.

Sonata takes on small boys

Maharaja, the kitchen appliances brand, has always been known as a low-priced mass market player.

Maharaja's premium play

AFTER decades of listening to a talking tuna, consumers are talking back.

New ads bring back old memories

Pulok Chatterjee, perceived as being close to Sonia Gandhi, has joined the Prime Minister&rsquo;s Office. His brief is to get things moving. Santosh Tiwari on the PM&rsquo;s new principal secretary.

Mover & shaker

R V Kanoria takes over Ficci when Marwaris in Kolkata are apprehensive about their future. Surajeet Das Gupta and Bhupesh Bhandari talk to him.

The right chemistry

Perhaps the phenomenal growth of caf&eacute;s, coffee bars and even the practice of drinking coffee is a symptom of this generation&rsquo;s need to have spaces to goof off, loaf in and do nothing.

Art of doing nothing

The standoff at the Jaipur Literature Festival mirrors the crisis of Indian writing, says Mihir S Sharma. Both are unworldly and fragile.

Bursting the beautiful bubble

Mamata Banerjee&rsquo;s memoir is now available in English. In the following excerpts from the book, she describes her campaign in Singur, West Bengal, against the state&rsquo;s acquisition of farming land for Tata&rsquo;s Nano car factory.

Singur: 'I bet my life'

Ultra-modern Singapore celebrates the Chinese New Year the traditional way.

Enter the Dragon year

The SL350 got me into a fair amount of trouble, you know. Friends called me after my school reunion and said, &ldquo;My child&rsquo;s asking my husband why we can&rsquo;t have a cool Transformer car like Pablo&rsquo;s. You&rsquo;re such a rascal!&rdquo; I have to say that I received all this with a smile on my face, partly because it was all said in jest, but mainly because I appeared to have achieved my objective &mdash; rock up to the reunion in the SL, create a bit of a stir, have a party and leave in a cloud of tyre smoke. This kind of out-there behaviour is highly unusual for me, I hasten to add &mdash; in any large gathering, you&rsquo;ll usually find me in a quiet corner, nursing a beverage and minding my own business. This, however, is the kind of car that makes even a wallflower like me want to preen a bit.

School Cat

For all your real car questions, there&rsquo;s the &lsquo;Which Car?&rsquo; section on this page, but what about your completely unreal fantasies? Say you wanted to drive a completely modded Ford Mustang on a race track? Well, for that and other driving related fantasies, we&rsquo;ve got for you a few of the top driving games available in stores now.

Game on!

- Find Specials News, Features, Analysis and more at Business Standard. Full coverage of Goafest 2014

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