6 AM Pacific

Setting Targets or Expectation Setting

Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram in an interview about India’s slowing GDP growth, to the Wall Street Journal says,

“We must aim at 9%, as I will, and we must be happy if it’s between 8% and 9%.”

This begs the question “Is he setting a goal for GDP growth for the country or is he managing expectations?”

A goal, IMO, is something that is ‘actionable’, i.e. you and your team can take actions which help you achieve that goal. Much like a goal in football, you can’t score one by just being on the field. More »

I am Never Wrong – Just Ahead of My Time

After last week’s post, here’s another one based upon a gem from Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness. It’s called the bias against self-contradiction and it goes like this - if you make a bet that the market will go a certain way and it doesn’t, you tend to stick with your bet and your viewpoint a good bit longer than you would have, had you been a perfectly rational person. Over time, this will likely lower your performance as an investor. According to Taleb, some investors that he has great respect for – people like George Soros – change their minds often. More »

The Importance of being Articulate

If you happen to travel in the US-India corridor, as I do, next time watch CNBC in the US and then go watch CNBC in India, or vice versa. You’ll immediately notice some differences.

One difference is in how the two channels see the stock market. CNBC in India treats the market as an ‘actor’. It doesn’t just go up or down, it often has a mind of its own and moves in ‘mysterious ways its wonders to perform’. A lot more air-time is spent on the ‘technical’ analysis of the market. CNBC in the US takes a more ‘fundamental’ view of the market – changes in the market are an ‘outcome’ of what’s happening to the economy, sub-prime loans, oil prices or whatever. More time is spent on analysis of companies and the economy. I wonder what lies at the bottom of this difference in how they see the markets.

Another difference that is immediately evident is how articulate business leaders are on CNBC in the US compared to their counterparts in India. They are not only better tutored on how to handle the press and TV but they are just plain better speakers. More »

Contaminated Food

The ongoing saga of contaminated toothpaste and food imports from China into the US is in its third month but is far from over.

For those of you who haven’t heard about it here’s what’s been happening.

In October 2006, at least 100 people in Panama died from cough syrup contaminated with diethylene glycol, a poisonous low cost substitute for glycerine. In May 2007 the contaminated glycerine was traced back to its Chinese manufacturer Taixing Glycerine Factory. The same month, the US FDA issues guidance to the industry to test products containing glycerine for diethylene glycol. On June 8, the FDA issued a ‘toothpaste FAQ’ for the general public. More »

The real deal with offshore captives

Recently Forrester Research released a report that says that offshore captives, which have been much in vogue for the last three years, are “imploding”. A blog post here makes for interesting reading, especially the comments. More »

More insiders being recruited as CEOs

A few months back I had written on Runaway CEO compensation after the Bob Nardelli/Home Depot fiasco. My sole recommendation on the way out of the CEO compensation mess was - better succession planning. More »

Notes from the CRV conference

Spent a couple of days last week at the Charles River Ventures conference. (CRV is the lead investor in Gridstone). The attraction of the conference to me was to meet other entrepreneurs and to meet a great roster of speakers. As it turned out, the former objective wasn’t quite fulfilled, for good reason. But the speakers made the trip more than worthwhile. More »

The H1-B visa program needs a revamp

This year the INS received 150,000 H1-B visa applications for the coming year starting in October, on the first day that it started accepting applications - for a total of 65,000 visas! An article in the New York Times takes a look at the issues surrounding this. A table from the same article reproduced below gives you the breakup of the visas requested by company. Indian IT Services companies are the only companies at the top of the list.

More »

Offshore Backlash Redux

It’s back. With the Democrats in Congress and soon perhaps in the Whitehouse and an economy that most think will turn sour soon, it is almost the perfect storm. Trade in services, fondly called “offshoring” is back on the front pages and it bodes ill for global business. More »

Apple and the Music Industry

Last week’s post on YouTube and Viacom got some great comments. If you get a moment go read them. Ram Medury brings up the case of VAS content providers in India, who get a small fraction of the revenues. The rest is kept by the Indian mobile service provider. Senthil says that it’s about the quality of the content. If the content is compelling it will pull in the dollars. Also, Robert Young at Gigaom has a very thought provoking post on the subject of Google and old media companies.

Onward ho! As promised, this week I take up another interesting space where the “Content vs. Distribution” battle is being played out – digital music. More »