The Fortune at the bottom of the Pyramid

Author: C K Prahlad

Publisher: The Wharton Press

A real Paradigm Shift about, what Market Is? Shows you how the Poor People, People at the Bottom Of the Pyramid (BOP), who were earlier neglected by the Big Corporate, are now considering them for future growth. It makes you believe, with practical case studies, how you can generate demand with sustainable profits by tapping into BOP. It’s no Philanthropy serving the BOP, its serious Business now and future growth will come from those sections only.
The BOP market is much more challenging and demanding than the high end markets, since the adversities there are much more. Companies have to clearly understand BOP requirements and bridge all the gaps between them by innovation. This could be by micro financing, improving distribution, cutting overheads, Introduction of low volume packs, generating awareness. Author shows how the solutions to BOP markets can be scaleable across geographies and thus generates sustainable markets.Author backs up his claims with proof of success, through real time case studies, and that’s the book's strongest point. Though the other day I had a talk with one of the ITC guy according to him e-choupal is still not in profits till now and ITC is not bullish on it, but otherwise claimed by the author. But this doesn’t affects, since the logical coherence shown by the author makes anybody believe it is possible.

Strategy and the Business landscape by Pankaj Ghemawat

Do you really know what the Business is? Do you know SCA? Do you know the “learn to burn ratio”? What is the slack and Hold up for your business? I’m not sure if you have not read the book “Strategy and Business landscape” by Pankaj Ghemawat. Business is all about learning and adapting to the external environment as well as internal environment. This book gives the good understanding on the modern theories used to plan your business. It starts with historical perspective on the field of strategy. This approach offers several advantages. Then it slowly progress to the early work on environmental analysis by giving in-depth analysis on Michael Porter’s influential “five forces” framework. Then finally it progresses to the dynamic issues for sustainability and superior performance model. The some of the tools understanding given in the book is Andrew’s Strategy Framework, Ansoff’s product/mission Matrix, BCG and the experience curve etc.

The book shows you how to look for the proper fit with applying the trade offs between the resources. Whether responsible for developing and implementing competitive strategy at the business, corporate, or global level, senior executives and teams must have an in-depth understanding of not only strategy itself and the strategy development process, but also of what it takes to sustain a unique value proposition over time. This book will help you to achieve the sustainable competitive advantage above your competitors.

The book is very practical and rigorous. There are rich examples to understand all the concepts in detail. The 10 real environment cases will form a good pillar to your knowledge. So read this book strategically.

The Mckinsey Mind

by Ethan M Rasiel

Had to read this book as it was suggested by my guide for my summers , but it turned out to be nice experience. While the previous book was from firms view this book gives you handy advice about how to use Mckinsey techniques in daily work life for problem solving. It maintains the style and format of the previous book. Taking a step by step approach the book says about the way to manage, analyze and presenting a problem to a client involving multiple stakeholders like client, you and peers. So how to manage each step is what they are explaining through the book.

Framing the problem- The first step starts from framing the problem. MECE ( Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive) is the way we should look at problems. The problem is not always out of blue. Some times similar problems have occurred and provide a good guideline for problem solving. We should be able to form an initial hypothesis in first sight. This will help us to focus , but also to save the time spent on the just forming a conception of the problem. This is based on intuition and works successfully. The last is that a problem is not always a problem, so decide what exactly is a problem.

Design the Analysis- Just focus on the key drivers responsible or the problem. Then look at the larger picture from different viewpoints. Don't strive hard to find that the stage you will find the solution. Sometime the solution just flow to you during the process.

Gathering the Data - Write a interview guide, find out the specific persons, decide on methods like interview, feedback from interviewer, thank you notes, careful planning of the interview process are important for data gathering. Just don't make your interviewee uncomfortable.

Interpreting your results- Find out the useful data. Usually 20 % of data will fulfill your 80% needs. Make charts for everyday progress, work according to your facts and be prepared to leave your solutions. Don't provide facts fitting the solutions. Just do the opposite.

Presenting the Data - Be structured, know your audience and act accordingly. Pre wire everything and just provide one message per chart. Avoid overloading the information.

Managing your Team - Get the right kind of people. Look for diversity, not in academic terms but also in terms of behaviour. Just keep everyone in the information loop, and always promote the team bonding. It helps in long run.

Managing your Client- Sell your solutions to clients without letting them know. Just be careful about structuring your promises and engagements. The client should be encouraged for participatory role than a listener.

Managing yourself - Most important part of is you , so just give ample attention to yourself. Find out your own mentor in the organization, make your boss look great, encourage your subordinates, lay down your rules for family and yourself and stick to them. Manage your work life and family life balance.

Thus all in all a guide for how to approach a problem. So follow these steps, try to think differently and let the success welcome you. I strongly recommend this for students and professionals. Happy reading........ :)

Retire Young, Retire Rich

Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter

I have been a fan of Robert Kiyosaki for a while now and so even before writing this review, I know in which direction this is headed.

Firstly I took a long time to read this book , this is not a book which you can just speed read and leave it at that, the main purpose in reading this is to get something of value. Something that you can take home and apply to your life.

Even if I don't get rich or retire young :-) reading this book did give me a different perspective to things. Time and again he speaks about leverage. in fact if you see the Table of contents HERE. You can see that 11 of the 21 chapters have titles beginning with "LEVERAGE" .

This book basically shuttles between his varied experiences over the past 20 years investing in real estate and changes that he had to do in himself and his thinking (or as per the book "Context") to get ahead in life.

I found the first half of the book very interesting, where he exhorts a possibility thinking, so that we do not limit ourselves by our context. I particularly like his way of putting things and dividing people into 4 classes depending on the stream of their income or cashflow> i.e the Cashflow quadrant > which defines whether you are an

1) Salaried employee 2) Self employed

3) Investor 4) Business man

Robert goes on explaining on why it is better to earn income from the latter 2 classes than the former, and why we must try to move to the latter two. Logically speaking he is not too off the mark but only if we had the GUTS.

In general I found this book pretty useful, and infact very motivating, especially some of the examples of real estate investing are really interesting. The latter part of the book was pretty DRAB, where he goes on to explain about the futures and options industry. Also he blatantly advertises his other books time and again in his writings.

If you want to read a scathing review of Robert Kiyosaki and his books have a look here. I do not agree with whatever he has written but it just gives you a counterview. Copy of the original post here.

The Art of War

By Sun Tzu

This is the book I started reading around five years back. I saw it lying in the drawer of my boss. It was love at first sight. Since then, I have never left it.

This book was written by Sun Tzu around 3000 years back. Was it written by him, or compiled by him is still unknown. The book is juice of Chinese tactics of warfare. It is greatly inspired by Taoism. As the book is in Chinese, we get to read only the translations. Lots of authors have tried to translate it and present the exact notions of Master Sun Tzu. But none have succeeded much. I have referred to the translation by Thomas Cleary.

The book says that the great warrior is not the one, who wins the war by fighting it, but is the one who wins it without fighting it. The book has lot of quotes inspired by Taoism. My favorite one among them is:-

“Deep knowledge is to be aware of disturbance before disturbance, to be aware of danger before danger, to be aware of destruction before destruction, to be aware of calamity before calamity.
By deep knowledge of principle, one can change disturbance into order, change danger into safety, change destruction into survival, change calamity into fortune.”

The book is divided into 13 chapters covering all the major areas of war
Strategic Assessments
Doing Battle
Planning a Siege
Formation
Force
Emptiness and Fullness
Armed Struggle
Adaptations
Maneuvering Armies
Terrain
Nine Groups
Fire Attack
On the use of Spies

There are five parameters of assessing the war scenario of different armies involved. These are The Way, The Whether, The Terrain, The Leadership and The Discipline. Based on these parameters general can determine whether his army will win or loose, before going to war.

Though the book was written from the perspective of ground warfare, but the wisdom in it can be very well applied to any war like situation even today. It could be personal enmity, business situation or any other scenario. Lot of business leaders, army generals and politicians follow it religiously today also.

Once I discussed with one of my mentors that I have been reading it since last 5 years but every time I read it, it seems totally a new book to me, and till date I have been only been able to absorb 20% out of it. According to him, he has been reading it since last 30 years and could absorb only 40% of it. He further discussed that if we can assimilate all the wisdom in it in few years, then what would be the difference between Master Sun Tzu and us.

This is the book to be presented to your friends and kept away from your enemies.
More information about it can be found on http://www.sonshi.com/