Google : The Secret behind the Success

Can one think about life with out google? One day going with out its services? Ranging from the all powerful search engine to Google Maps, Google Books, to Youtube!

I’ve been reading a bit about how google gained its massive populatiry and how was its rise to being to most accessed site for searching the web and an important tool all round.As we know Google was a university project that was started by its founders as a way to query the sites that had been indexed for research purpose.

There have been a few things that have caught my eye, and also the rest of the world’s.

I can list down a few things they did differerntly and better in a way, which eventually led to their rise.

Initially there was a shortage of money to set up their business and this was a huge problem since they had to buy terabytes of space, at that time Inktomi was launched, they provided software for ISPs.

Google’s founders though didn’t know a lot about marketing and advertising, they did know how to build a product that customers would use. They also realized that if they could act as the gateway to a growing web, they'd be well-positioned, and here’s what Google did well as a company.

• Focused on a product designed for real users
• Set a strong vision about information access
• Took hiring very seriously; lots of energy into trying to hire the right people. Most of the early hires are now VPs of major areas (of the first 35, 6 are VPs)
• Performed scientific-level analysis of what worked

There was cost cutting at the very beginning of the company, when they didn’t have office space they used velcors and used bungee cords of Earthquake proofing.

They also did Encouraging engineers to spend 20% of their time on creative projects, which has resulted in big successes like Google News, but also means that you have to be comfortable with chaos.

Spending budget on exploration. Again, though they didn't do this early in the company's life, Google spending is now 70% on core products, 20% on related products, and 10% on research.

Flat organizational structure. At one time, the VP of Engineering had 150 direct reports - and though they've backed down from this crazy peak, Google is still relatively flat.

Looking at the philosophy, we find its keeping it simple, that has been the backbone of the company, and the reason why many users come to google products. Its precise, crisp and sharp.

Today, Google tries to support an entrepreneurial spirit with programs like the Founder Awards, which provide large stock grants to teams that make significant contributions.

Google also tries to go outside the bounds of the typical corporate environment,as they are a hugely CSR driven organization. Google donates 1% of its profits to charitable causes, which in turn makes the Googlers feel good about participating in programs that give back to the community. This helps with recruiting and the brand, and it's important for them as a company. Eventually, What started out as a research project coincidentally turned into a multi-billion dollar business.

Click here to see a clip of CNBC's Original "Inside the mind of Google"

STRATEGIC GLOBAL BUSINESS

Your mobile, is such an integral part of your life, it is the culmination of Globalisation, the lithium for the battery comes from Bolivia, the LCDs for the screen from Japan, chips from China, the software running it from India, Corporate HQ in the EU. Such a simple yet elegant reduction of what globalisation is. It’s in your palm!

There has always been a sharing of goods, services, knowledge and cultures between people and countries, but in recent years improved technologies and a reduction of barriers means the speed of exchange is much faster. Globalisation provides opportunities and challenges. Bigger markets can mean a bigger profit which leads to greater wealth for investing in development and reducing poverty in many countries. Weak domestic policies, institutions and infrastructure and trade barriers can restrict a country’s ability to take advantages of the changes.

Every company, producer, exporter, service provider, manufacturer and just about anyone connected to the markets abroad, needs to have a strategy regarding his business abroad, which is different from his strategy in the domestic market. The need for a global level strategy arises due to the organizations considering internal as well as external environments. In fact, the external environment is more crucial to be considered when you are operating at a global level because at a domestic level competition is very directional and optimized, but at international level the competition is crucially important to be considered; otherwise survival is not at all possible at global level.

Bringing us to a Global Strategy.

Strategic global business can be broken down into major heading of Planning, Marketing, Management and Pricing policy.

Planning:

Global strategic planning is a process adopted by multinational organizations in order to formulate an effective global strategy. It is a process of evaluating the internal and external environment by multinational organizations, through which they set their long-term and short-term goals and then they implement a specific plan of action in order to achieve those objectives.

Strategy formulation

The GSP of a company depends upon the internationalization approach followed by the company itself i.e. an ethnocentric organization will always formulate their GSP as an extension strategy; on the other hand a polycentric organization will formulate a more complex GSP. For strategic planning the first step is the evaluation of external and internal environment.

For external environment evaluation, organizations scan the environment for the presence of various competitors. For an internal environment evaluation, organizations analyse their total physical resources and the skills of the employees working in the organization. MNCs also conduct VCA (value chain analysis) in order to integrate various primary and supportive activities of the organization.

After environment evaluation, organizations decide their long-term and short-term goals. And then to achieve these goals, organizations implement their plan of action. Implementation of the plan involves three activities — location, selection, ownership decision and finally functional decisions i.e. arrangement of finance etc.

Control and evaluation

Implementation is not the complete story; after implementing the plan of action organizations are also required to control it. Controlling is an effort under which organizations compare the planned performance with actual behaviour of the plan, and check for any deviations. If there are any deviations, the organizations take corrective actions to control the plan. In this way Global Strategic Planning helps the multinational organizations to achieve their goals in the global business environment.

Strategic Management

A simple definition of strategic management puts emphasis on making sure the business process is humming along nicely and producing desired results. A wise business owner or manager will secure and distribute resources in the correct measure so that no one part of the business struggles to achieve its stated objective. There should be no corner of the corporation left with too much to do, and too few tools with which to do it.

For example, trying to reach a certain level of revenue may not be possible in a certain location, for example. Answering this question can be a great way to start: Where does this business fit in the current economic scene?

At this point, the process of strategic management turns to finding a way to get to the declared objective. A detailed business plan is needed at this juncture, one that identifies the resources and assets needed to make the revenue.

In addition to physical assets and a process for producing the goods and services, a strategic-management plan will put individuals in place who are correct for the task. Having this solid human-resource foundation in place early may eliminate many stressful moments at a later date.

International Marketing Strategy

Marketing can simply be defined as an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering the value to the customers and managing the customer relationships in much a way that is beneficial for both the customers as well as the stakeholders. At international level, marketing can simply be defined as the process of finding out the needs of customers in foreign countries and then providing them the required entities at right place and at right price.

The basic concept of marketing is the same even at international level, but some modifications are always required. Only a few multinational organizations are lucky enough to use the same marketing strategy in the whole world, for example—a pen manufacturing organization that uses a marketing slogan “finest writing in the world” will not be required to change its marketing slogan in any part of world. But a majority of multinational organizations need to modify or specifically formulate their marketing strategy at the international level. Example a fast food retailer would definitely change its strategy nation to nation and would necessarily be ethno-centric.

Formulation of strategy

For formulating its international marketing strategy every organization follows a five step procedure.

This includes product strategy, price strategy, place strategy and promotion strategy and market assessment

The first four segments of strategy formulation are the popular 4 P’s of marketing but the last segment—market assessment—is a new factor to be considered while formulating an international marketing strategy.

Social Innovation : Step 2

Corporate Social Responsibility has been the fad for sometime, with corporates and governments making the Human side of big multinationals their usp. The shift in trend towards catering to the society equally if not more than the profit making intentions are being appreciated by the world's media.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become an increasingly important activity for businesses nationally and internationally. As globalisation accelerates and large corporations serve as global providers, these corporations have progressively recognised the

benefits of providing CSR programs in their various locations. CSR activities are now being undertaken throughout the globe.

While this change is well received and is making headway into taking up responsibilities previously exclusively in the domain of the governments, we are now looking at the next step.

CSR, next what?

Now that CSR has started rolling into firms and is a mandate ( in the EU especially ) the economists are now looking at expanding the concept to cover more than just the environment around their campus, their consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders.

Browsing around for the next big step i came across Social Innovation.

Social Innovation can be used to refer to social processes of innovation, such as open source methods and techniques. Alternatively it refers to innovations which have a social purpose - like micro-credit or distance learning. The concept can also be related to social entrepreneurship and it also overlaps with innovation in public policy and governance. Social innovation can take place within government, within the for-profit sector, or within the nonprofit sector or in the space between them. On going research has focused on the types of platforms needed to help put into practice such cross-sector collaborative social innovation.

This blog I came across is also an indicator of things to come and why Social Innovation is indeed Step 2.

http://www.gauravonomics.com/blog/five-reasons-why-corporations-must-move-from-social-responsibility-to-social-innovation/

Social Network and Marketing : Whats What and Whats Not!

So, you’re turning to Facebook to grow your business. Fantastic choice! Facebook is the largest social network with over 500 million users. Many people misunderstand social network marketing, and thus try to promote their business outright. The first thing you need to understand is that Facebook is a social network.Today, there is no escaping from the fact the the internet has become a place to hangout and socialize with individuals from all over the world. Social networking websites are actually some of the most visited websites today. Where one jus is not simply following friends, but additionally businesses, and pages set up for fans of almost any group or organization. If you're the manager or owner of a company, you mustn't underestimate the value of social networking sites for marketing.When you understand this concept, social network marketing becomes a little bit easier to understand. Having a fan page for your business is an excellent way to promote your business on Facebook. A fan page is only good if you are able to get fans to like your page. However, not only do you have to get them to like your page, you need to develop a relationship with them. People buy from other people or businesses that they know, like and trust.

Harvard Business School proclaims social media and networking to be the "the most significant business development of 2010."Entrepreneurs may have initially seen social media - most notably MySpace, Twitter and Facebook - as a playground for the younger generations. Yet as the true power of Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook creation began to shape business visibility in the online marketplace, companies had to scramble to make an appearance. Not surprisingly, less tech-savvy businesses were not as adept at presenting themselves to the consumer. As a result, a good many businesses are now built around primarily the aspect of promoting other businesses through social media (and especially mobile social media)applications. Freelance writers, website builders and online marketers have grown a cottage industry around the function of introducing the world to small, midsized and larger businesses alike.

Social Network Marketing: Branding, Promoting, and Building a Fan Base

There are several methods one is able to use this form of marketing to their benefit. Among the simplest methods could be to provide something useful for your followers. For example, if you're associated with the automobile industry, your followers might be people who want to buy or sell a car. If you were to offer advice on how to improve the chances of a quick sale, this could be appreciated widely.One other way of increasing the profile and image of your business would be to embed a variety of how-to videos into your page. Many people now go online in search of such media.

The key is branding yourself and your business. Picture your perfect customer for just a second. What do you have to offer that will help solve a problem for your customer? Why will the customer want to do business with you, then in return recommend your products or services to their friends? These are questions you have to consider when you’re promoting your fan page.

Case Study: Egypt and Tunisia

Mobile devices in conjunction with social media are also credited with influencing national politics. Cases in point are the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Used to rally demonstrators, Facebook postings, mobile phone images and SMS messaging played a huge role in organizing a thus-far loose-knit regime opposition.Using YouTube to transfer up-to-the minute information about events, protests and government responses to the entire world, 'sanctioned' local media outlets had no possibility to distort what was going on. Not only did social media shift the world's sympathies to be with the protesters, but when sharing pictures of what was happening, it was possible to motivate even the people within the countries to keep going and get even more people involved in the demonstrations. Dispelling various incorrect claims made by the media, it became quickly apparent that the regimes of Tunisia and Egypt had failed, even as official liaisons denied any changes in power.

The Dark Side of Social Media

For all its benefits and the commercial advantages of social media applications, there is a decided downside to the mobility of the experience. For example, teenagers and even adults are spending a large portion of their days engaged in the virtual reality created by social media, which in turn affects school and work results. Who does not know someone who "just had to check their crops" before they wilted on Facebook's widely popular game Farmville?
Even more sinister is the peer pressure on teenagers to do "cool" things to show off, sometimes resulting in accidents, ill-advised meet-ups with predators and of course cyber-bullying by peers. There is a also an emerging culture that leads to a constant self-comparison with other social media users, especially by teenagers, resulting in possible psychological trauma and even depression. After all, it is difficult to not feel rejected if a friend or classmate fails to "like" a comment or suggestion.

What Awaits Us in the Near Future?

Tech boffins are busy making mobile devices faster, smaller and more powerful than ever.The already more commonplace text-to-speech and speech-to-text software -- along with the mind-controlling device and simple headphones -- could even make hand held devices and laptops obsolete. Social media users may just opt to hear tweets/messages via a headphone and then post messages via speech-to-text technology.

Of course, this does precious little when it comes time for harvesting the crops on Farmville...

Click Here to jump to a video on Facebook and Marketing

Future and Renewables

Energy is the essence of life.

Don't we all know that, but one also needs to have an epiphany that we aren't bestowed with limitless energy resources. The Greenpeace boffins would tell you we are in dire need to replace these gravely over used energy resources with what we call " Renewables".

Renewables are those which are "perpetual" goes on for every, have been, will be. Though they are also finite, but they will out live the human civilization!! The renewables are also in sync with nature, they do not harm, disrupt cycles in the natural realm, renewables have their ideology enshrined in the fact that nature is supreme, and humans being a part of this elaborate web of interdependencies and interconnections rather than Man here to harness and control nature. They consist of the sources derived from the Sun.

The Wind, Tides and of course Solar, all are forms of renewables, and they are at the fore front of being the "Next Big thing" in the energy realm, with the coming of the 21st century and with the final chapter in fossil fuels written these sources are stated to launch into the main stream. There are a few roadblocks but doesn't every major shift in ideology and thought and the way society functions. One needs to appreciate that change is inevitable.

And with the wielding of the sword of tech and innovation we can get through to the other side!

Are you game?

To jump to a video on Renewable Energy Click here

CHANGE = INNOVATION

The world we live in is one of constant change and dynamism is the norm. We are looking at changes in every field, like the saying goes, the only constant in this world is Change.

Change is such a misused word. We attribute "change" to the ideas and innovations that work, one would always move towards positive or constructive change.

What will drive us into the next decade is going to be "Innovation and innovative ideas."