Rajesh Tripathi

Our brain is not under our control. The utmost seat of Lateral Thinking, brain makes everybody go into wilderness; knowingly but most of the time unknowingly. More you wander, more you go deep. This brain wilderness, help in finding answers to many complicated questions; but sometimes it makes everything around very confused & blurred. This wilderness gets aggravated, for corporate citizens primarily, when one has fair understanding of business subjects like Sales & Marketing, Supply Chain, Business Strategies, and Finance etc. In corporate, answer to the very basic question, every other CEO does want to know; what makes a company successful and other fail. Every subject and more so every professional with specialized subject knowledge seems like giving a panacea for challenges coming the way of building a sustainable-successful business or what products can make a company successful in real sense. Benchmark could be Apple, today.  One day, on my journey to mental wilde...

Stephen Hawking needs no introduction. To me, ‘ he is a scientist by nature, a thinker by passion and a challenger to his physical disability by determination.’ Exclusivity has been in the nature of Human Being. The moment, someone is in majority out of any defined to undefined parameters, people create exclusive clubs for themselves. Since ages, people are discriminated based on such unethical & ‘acceptable by some' norms. Society has revolted on such exclusivity norms in past, time & again, in every part of the world. Still, we see discrimination in every society. Sometimes, some points make me think, does Exclusivity follow Darwin's Law of Survival? But when I introspect, it seems to me, it is not matter of survival but ‘Law of Majority’ that makes it happen, by & large. As majority wields power, people tend to follow it more. Majority could be anything – physical to even beliefs. However, people have started realizing of late, that this exclusivity, in...

'Do not overlook your Non-Strategic Purchase' Traditionally, companies in B2B market follow a distinct operational approach in every sphere of business. I frankly speaking did not come across any specific reason accept the feeling given that the company to company business has a different conducting relationship? Is it true? Lets us examine it. What happens in a business transaction between a buyer and a seller in B2C?  A buyer looks for a product and its inherent value, able to satisfying his extrinsic or intrinsic need & does try paying as less as possible so that the maximum possible price value he can be extracted from the transaction. The seller, in turn, tries attracting the potential consumer with the product features & his non-price value benefits for levying maximum possible charge on it. Inherent force application is maximum realization at both the end of the transaction.  Is it different in B2B?  As far as my understanding goes, only difference ...

Specific attributes or characteristics which differentiate a person with others and can make a person to be seen as a Talent and not others, are the building blocks for a person’s success or failure. Therefore, often referred to word ‘Talent’ means soft skills, nothing else. We may refer to it, in general parlance as an ‘attitude’ too. In corporate, you would find ‘Technical’ persons vehemently trying overlooking the importance of it. So much so that pressurizing a management crumble under the pressure. My belief here is that people know the importance of soft skills, but personal biases come their way to accept it. Simple reason, acceptance may devoid them of getting ‘vertical growths’ or more compensation without having required skills. Personal Interests!!! Personal interests to make companies fail. I mentioned about the ‘Talent’ in a different context in one of my previous blogs. Point there, I put forth was that there is no shortage of any talent except if managers do no...

Is India story over? Somebody asked me in one of the ‘Intellectual discussions’ I was part of. I said with all conviction, NO.  My basis at the time was the often quoted saying, ‘Every one learns from mistakes and so will a country. A country, to my belief, is a living entity; so is India. India will surely learn from its experience of last few years. But, frankly speaking I did not have any substantial reason of my saying no, except my conviction and above phrase. I believe in ‘Gut’ Feeling. Guts more often than not, come true. I started looking for reasons to check my conviction, however later. I could find..... India grew with the ‘Hindu Growth Rate’ of about 3.5% for the first fifty years after its independence, followed by ‘Accelerated Growth Rate’ of 8-10% annually. Then, came year 2008 with a centrifugal force that threw every other country out of gear including India. So, there was nothing unusual with India story. Only one thing what made us pessimistic was, fina...

STILL YOU LOVE TO BUY A BRANDED PRODUCT! WHY? If you want to buy a camera for yourself, I am sure the first criterion that will come to you mind will be how much are the megapixels counts of the chosen camera. Isn’t it? But, if I say the quality of pictures does not depend on the pixels counts but on the size of the light of sensor, I am sure it would be shocking information for you. Same way, automobile buyers look for horsepower rather than torque; but it is torque that provides acceleration and associated thrill of driving what people look for. This is how brands or related features influence your decision to buy a product. Yes! Sometimes wrong decisions are made by people due to brands or features bombardment by companies in the market. You have no choice, that’s how businesses are made successful around brands. It is therefore essential to build brands to force customers decide to buy products, may be wrong products or for wrong features but right products. End resul...

CEOs: Revenue or Cost, what is more important to you? My assumption is, since the time, man has learnt doing business, he has not been able to take a conclusive decision about what is more important to run a business successfully, that too for a longer period of time – revenue or cost. More attempts to seek advice, more one gets confused. Complications have multiplied with the advent of various strategies like Differentiation strategy, cost strategy etc which emphasize different aspect of business to achieve continuous success. Let me say, there is nothing wrong in all these strategies as all aim to increase business propensity. Only thing, Business Heads, primarily CEOs need to decide is what is more important for them – Revenue or Cost to build their businesses. More challenging it may become, if a CEO follows Cost Leadership, whereby decides to check cost of production to increase gross margin or profitability. Important is focus or not to focus on cost reduction but remain ...

I am sure most of the readers must be aware of the classic experiment done to know the value of the Brand. In this experiment business minded people were asked, what would happen to the ability of raising funds of the Coca Cola Company if its assets gets destroyed in a fire one day. Most of people said it would only cost time, efforts and money, as it would be very easy for the company to raise funds and re-create its assets around the world again. On the other hand, if because of some reason all customers of Coca Cola Company taken sick of partial amnesia one fine morning, the answer given by people was that Coca Cola would not remain Coca Cola despite its having all assets around the world intact. Therefore, the value resides in the minds of customers and not in company’s assets . This is value of the Brand. Time and again, it has been proved that brand creates a business for a company and not a product. Products are only a means. There are instances in our life, proving to us ...

NEW OUTLOOK ON HR Wednesday, 26 February 2014 | Rajesh Tripathi 1 2 3 4 5 0 The scope of HR has grown by leaps and bounds as it is required by every business for its burgeoning demands, in terms of people orientation, creativity and innovative thinking to be cultivated among its employees, says  Rajesh Tripathi HR has evolved as an integral function in organisations these days. Today, there is a lot more emphasis on the Human Resource function in organisations as they look forward to inculcate a people driven orientation. As Henry Ford said: “Take everything, but leave me my people, and in two years I’ll be at the top again”. So it’s the people who make the organisation and the rest of them like material, machine and information, follows. Organisations are looking to develop and groom their employees as the axis has shifted from production to productivity. The onus is now on HR to shape and nurture people for better productivity. Job responsibilit...