Click-and-motor

When the Dells and Amazons burst into the online shopping scene, there was all this talk of what's the best business model and how will the traditional brick-and-mortar companies compete and survive against their nimble online counterparts. The grudging response from the brick-and-mortar companies was to spring up websites as a marketing tool or, going a step further, allow purchase online for a store pickup. This was referred to as click-and-mortar. This survives even to this date, but has just added a new unsuspecting entrant. The Tata Nano.

Tata had indicated that the volumes at which Nano is expected to sell would require them to be inventive about their channel strategy. True to that promise, Nano can not only be bought from thousands of SBI outlets, but you can just as well place an order online. Of course, you wouldn't expect a courier dropping your car at your doorstep in a few days (at least not yet). So, you still have to visit your nearest dealer to pick up the car. As long as dealers are given a cut, they are happy serving as the last mile in the car purchase.

Clearly, this is no different from click-and-mortar. Only that, in this case, you could call it click-and-motor!

Communist fix to a recession?

Media's role in spiraling an economic downturn out of control is often underestimated. Once a few self-proclaimed economists predict a recession, it only takes a few months of replaying of the same messages by the media before that prophecy can self-fulfill. How do we claw this recession out of this media juggernaut?

Just filter media to only let that rare piece of positive news through and lead everyone to believe that there's nothing amiss with the economy. A bit of communist streak to revive a very capitalist economy?

But then, didn't exactly such illusion, i.e. a fake sense of prosperity, get us into this state in the first place?!

The future is touchbooks

I was reading today that iPod Touch and iPhone are bringing the touch interface to the forefront and we would very soon see laptops with similar touch screens running Windows 7. Keyboards and mice are already being written off. Would it be still be called a laptop? Will it still look like a laptop? What would you type on? Combine this with flexible displays, a laptop would be no more than a folder. Unfold and scratch or type away. 

Better still, what if an iPhone can just be stretched to a laptop when required?

Recycling souls

I was intrigued by Buddhism and contemplated converting to the religion recently. I have always heard that it is takes a very practical take on life which is a fresh breath of air amidst all the fanaticism around. As a start, I figured I should start with understanding the religion better. It didn't however take me long before I hit the first obstacle. Buddhism is big on rebirth. In fact, one of man's biggest objectives in life appears to be escaping rebirth. But I've never considered this practical at all. On one hand, when we can't even get ourselves to recycle paper, recycling souls seems far fetched. More importantly, if every birth is borne out of a recycled soul, how do you explain increase in population. On top of that, some of us apparently escape rebirth, further worsening the shortage.

I've heard parents having to reserve a slot in kindergarten even before childbirth. Very soon parents may be required to reserve a soul even before considering having kids!

A rare moment of hope

I had the BBC running in the background today while I was working on something else and I happened to feebly hear the only encouraging news I've heard in a long time - "After being severely impacted, we are now seeing signs of a recovery...". For a second, I thought (or wanted to hear) that someone has predicted or noticed signs of recovery in the economy. Not a snowball's chance! It's not the economy, stupid! She was only referring to how UK is slowly recovering from the blanket of snow.

If only recession were like snow, just wait for a few days and it just melts way... of course, as long as it stops snowing soon enough, just as we expect the economy to not shrink two quarters in a row... This has to be more than just coincidence - UK can't possibly be hit by one of the worst snow showers and recession in the same year. You can blame the former on global warming; what about the latter... global greed?

Blame it all on credit crunch

Why blame poor retail sales on credit crunch? Retailers are getting less creative by the day in inventing reasons for their poor December performance. I went out yesterday with a clear agenda to spend ££ on a specific product at John Lewis. Only mistake, I landed there at 7:15 pm. In most parts of the world, you would expect a big retailer struggling to push products out of their shelves to remain open at least till 8 pm, on a Saturday for crying out loud! Right? Wrong.

Can we still blame the credit crunch for everything?

Unity in diversity, the Mikaeel Jackson way

Some of the cornerstones that define us (though we can surely live without some of them) are caste, color, creed and gender. Most of us, even the adventurous amongst us, never outlive any of these dimensions in a lifetime. 

Barring an aberration. Jacko, the whacko, is almost doggedly defying many of these conventions. Starting as a black, Christian, Male, he has transcended into a white, Muslim, effeminate creature in less than 30 years!

The motivation for such repeated rediscoveries is beyond comprehension; but, there are some brighter aspects to it. He would be an interviewer's delight - you can never be charged of discrimination. He could also be a great pick for a country's national emblem or mascot - he after all epitomises unity in diversity!

Tidying up National Rail

This past weekend, I was on the National Rail when I happen to notice a message that said "Please help us keep this train tidy". As if the exorbitant price I paid for the trip wasn't enough, I was being asked to clean up the trains too! What we probably need is a tidying up of National Rail. Only a government sponsored monopoly can have the audacity to hope we will tidy up their mess.

Obama for President

With just about three days to go before a historic election, I felt I had to publicly declare my endorsement. So, here I go - I vote for Mr. Obama as the next President of the United States. He isn't an obvious choice given his economic conservatism and a relatively thin resume. However, what US needs the most now, notwithstanding the current financial crisis, is a fresh pang of foreign policy. In this context, a ex-GI Joe (not the plumber, mind you) as President is a bad choice. It just got worse when he picked Barbie for VP.

Btw, we have all heard Palin say that the difference between her and a pitbull is lipstick. On the contrary, what is the similarity between Palin and a pitbull?

Bullshit!

Dis'CERN'ing the financial blackhole

When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was about to be fired off, some sceptics feared it might create micro blackholes that might suck in the entire planet! It isn't clear what's cooking in the 27km Swiss-French kitchen, but the world surely did witness a micro blackhole develop. Only that it was across the Atlantic, and it wasn't a Higgs boson but Lehman's bosom in the eye of the storm. Hank Paulson must have wished the LHC did suck up the whole world before he was called out to build a Hank's arc to save all the toxic waste spewing out of Wall Street.

Let's just hope we come out of the recent blackhole and never get into the other.

Hurricane Palin

Just after McCain introduced hurricane Palin to the country, another hurricane chose to steal her thunder. Gustav is no VP candidate but surely captured national limelight away from the Republican convention and Palin.

I believe these hurricane names are alphabetical with Hanna and Ike following Gustav. McCain should have picked a VP candidate who legitimately preceded Gustav. Huckabee, Romney and Jindal don't cut it. Maybe a less popular Lindsay Graham. McCain clearly missed a trick.

Golden truth

India happens to be the largest consumer of gold jewelry. So, when it comes to buying gold, we are tops. Not so much when you have to earn it, specially in Olympics! We at least seemed to have found a golden goose in Bindra this time around but it remains to be seen whether we can multiply this by London 2012 or just kill it in a few months when we all go "Bindra, who?" and switch back to Twenty20.

Most of the big grossers in Beijing 2008 seemed to have found their niches with Jamaica and Ethiopia running away with the track events, Americans with swimming, Brits with cycling/sailing and Chinese mopping up pretty much everything else. What could be that niche for India?

Looking at our typical contingent, I have to say shooting! But, it is too ironic to go unnoticed. I could imagine the US exceling in shooting (just put that on NRA's agenda). But, India? With equipment beyond not only economic reach but also legal reach (at least for the non-terrorists).

The quickest option is to lobby for cricket to be included in Olympics and concoct 10 different categories for medals! In the long term, if we don't want to take the brute force (literally) method the Chinese adopted to groom their Olympians for Beijing 2008, we could invite a few healthy Jamaicans, Chinese, Russians etc. so they can procreate in India now and generate a new breed of Olympians for 2024. (I'm told 16 is the legal age for participating in Olympics; that is, if you aren't Chinese).

If Nestle were to make planes...

Qantas would be first in line for Nestle's "The Plane with the Hole". For the ad-challenged, here's the original (http://www.nestle.co.uk/OurBrands/AboutOurBrands/ConfectioneryAndCakes/Sugar+Confectionery.htm).

This triggered a hunt for more such cross-pollination in business. I will ignore the old ones such as Microsoft making cars or GM building software. How about:

1. If IKEA were to make coffee, you would have to make your own decaf, skinny mocha with cream at home reading the manual!
2. If Kelloggs were to make movies, we would have an overdose of 'cereal' killer thrillers!
3. If Gillette were to make mobile phones, we would have to replace SIM cards every few weeks!
4. If Motorola made razors... Duh, it does!

Anyways, if you have more such examples, add them to the list...

Comedy is no joke

US unemployment rates recently shot up beyond expectations. But, this is only going to get worse as we approach November when a host of comedians will lose their jobs. It is no mere coincidence that the current government comes to a close around the same time.

Bush might not have created many jobs during his tenure but he certainly created a class of Bush-comics that is now fearing an end to an unprecedented era. If the writers and actors guilds indeed have lobby power (they certainly used it well to get themselves a fatter paycheck), they might even throw their weight behind the candidate who is most likely to replace Bush in their jokes.

Who do you think fits the bill the best? I think Ludacris might have the answer...

That old saying about people living in glass houses...

"Citi may take $7 bn more in writeoffs: Morgan Stanley". How credible is this given Morgan Stanley couldn't have predicted how much they would write off in 07/08, if we bothered to ask them, that is. Maybe, we should have asked Citi instead?

A (ex-)post about ex-ante

I had long ago promised myself to write about the two most expensive words I've come across, ex-ante and ex-post. Together, they cost me EUR43500.

Before I up the ante, let me introduce these words ex-ante and you can decide ex-post whether they should really cost so much. Ex-ante is Latin for "Before the event" and you should have guessed by now ex-post must mean "After the event".

Any b-school case seemed incomplete without these words. Using them made mundane observations seem esoteric. Not everyone is well versed in Latin, so it conveniently guides you away from the main purpose of the paper, if there's one, while still making you feel you learnt something. The reason behind this is simple. Any average b-school research is mostly observational, and by definition, ex-post. But, the writers want you to believe they figured it all out ex-ante and are merely justifying their new found wisdom with real world examples.

Now that you know more about them, I would like hear your thoughts ex-post.

Spare some change

Obama seems to have become of the e-successes a la Amazon. He asked millions of young and old, white and black, god-fearing and blasphemic, straight and not-so-straight voters to spare some change in the name of change and he got nearly $260m so far, dwarfing the paltry $90m in public campaign financing. Most of this coming by way of the internet.

The election now boils down to answering the question: do you believe in the change Obama can bring in or do you believe the leader in McCain.

So far, Obama has clearly embodied the change that he constantly preaches about (now that's something he did learn from his pastor). He changed his mind from endorsing Jeremiah Wright to disowning him. He changed his mind from using public campaign financing to using his own $260m war chest. Will he change colors (I am obviously not hinting that he will do an MJ) like Bush the lesser did?

McCain is certainly a good leader for a midget army, an aging army, I must add. But can he prove that he is really different from his predecessor without starting to sound like a Democrat?

Change we have to wait for...

Spell disaster

The Indians were back to the fore again in this year's Scripps Spelling Bee. I wonderred whether we Indian folk have a natural advantege when it comes to speling? Mine is probably a biased view but having had to spell my name correctly through school, I am not surpriced I could spell very well. If I were to be American-born and had a set of parents who found a new pass time in watching me spell floccinauxinihilipilification, I would have been crowned the Big Bee at age 7. On the contrery, I tend to think I might just have asked my parents to mind their own beeswax?

As a kid, whether you win or not, you probably spend days buried in the debri of words while other normal kids are buried in sand or, in the worst case, just homework. Having written off a year out of your childhood, and possibly faced a setback, you find yourself distroyed and out of steam or even self-esteem. What does this mean to your future? I suspect it spells disaster!

P.S: The blogger spell check seems to have gotten irational lately. So, if you find many spelling errors highlited when you read this, just ignore them.

Phones to Gremlins

"Do what you do best" - this is what BT would like to you to believe if you were running an SME. If you believed this, you would also believe that BT is good at destroying destructive Gremlins! I am referring to the latest ad starring Peter Jones and the specially designed Gremlins. Why would you trust BT with your Gremlin-busting chores? Phones to Gremlins. Not your average case of a company reinventing itself, is it?

A tortuous, torturous torch relay

A tortuous, nearly clandestine relay which at times turned out plain torturous with some Tibetan supporters beaten blue by similarly hued henchmen of the Chinese paramilitary. The Indian flame path was probably unknown even to the cops to the extent that I won't be surprised if they showed up, in specially issued khaki, at the wrong end of the town leaving the blue man group stranded with fire amidst them and under their behinds. I wonder whether any of the athletes is a second-generation Tibetan who won't mind jeopardizing his/her career to make a statement! Irrespective of any more surprises awaiting us in the month of August, I am glad China has done a lot of good to disabuse the world community of the values it stands for!