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India Retail Report : The Indian retail sector is changing fast from an 'unorganized' market consisting of local kirana, paan and beedi (corner) shops to a more sophisticated retail landscape of chain and specialty stores. Domestic and foreign players are increasingly challenging the dominance of the country's traditional 'mom and pop' stores by opening modern outlets.
Indian IT Services : Higher growth was on account of improved business environment in the key US and European geographies, together contributing about 86% to the revenues of large Indian IT companies. Indian IT companies have also improved their service/execution capabilities, as reflected in their success in bagging large deals in recent years.
Gas Utilities in India : The gas utilities market covers all natural gas consumption, net of distribution or transmission losses, by end-users in the the categories viz industrial, commercial and public-sector organizations, residential consumers, electric power generation etc.
The Indian Hydroelectric Power Sector : India ranks fifth in terms of exploitable hydro power potential globally, but the development in this sector has been somewhat poor due to several socioeconomic and technical constraints like longer gestation period of projects, inadequate financing, poor revenue security, resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) issues and construction delays.
Vitamins and Dietary Supplements : Preventative health and wellness trends are generating revenue opportunities for companies selling vitamins and dietary supplements. Informal sources, such as recommendations from friends, are among the most instrumental in influencing product decisions, while internet and mobile apps provide an effective means for informing and communicating with VDS users.
The Focused Leader : Leaders must learn to focus their own attention. When we speak about being focused, we commonly mean thinking about one thing while filtering out distractions. But a wealth of recent research in neuroscience shows that we focus in many ways, for different purposes, drawing on different neural pathways—some of which work in concert, while others tend to stand in opposition.
What’s driving the surge in new-drug approvals? : In 2012 Much has been written about the pharmaceutical industry’s R&D-productivity challenge during the past decade: the decline in new-drug approvals has raised discovery and development costs just as companies struggle to find new drugs to replace blockbusters that have lost (or will soon lose) their exclusivity. Yet by one important measure, the output of the pharmaceutical R&D process has accelerated significantly.
Strategic Choices in Converging Industries : As industries converge and seemingly unrelated businesses suddenly become rivals, managers must understand the new challenges and the long-term implications. Companies such as Apple, Google and samsung have increasingly dominated the smartphone market and appear to be shaping its future.
A Supply Approach to Valuation : What determines equity valuation? This economic question is immensely important in theory and practice. A vast literature has built on present value models such as the dividend discounting and the residual income models for equity valuation. Widely practiced in the financial services industry, valuation is at the core of standard business school curricula around the world with many textbook treatments, investors’ demand of risky securities, traditional valuation approach calculates the present value of future dividends.
Spurring Innovation Through Competitions : Even the most successful companies have trouble developing breakthroughs. R&D road maps, as helpful as they can be at accelerating progress in known areas, are not particularly effective at spotting new opportunities outside a company’s experience base. Resource allocation mechanisms tend to be biased in favor of innovations that reinforce existing business models. Executives obsess about tying R&D tightly to production and grounding new ideas in reality.
Campus Hiring Gets a New Spin : Campus recruitments no longer follow a predictable pattern. Company representatives sit across the table with students, engage them in set-format interviews or group discussions and seal the deal, as it were. In times of heavy competition, recruitments are being given a new spin. From taking shortlisted candidates out to dinner or administering psychometric tests to assess their leadership styles, organizations are lining up unique strategies to hire best candidate in the shortest possible time.
Harvard Business Review Defends New Restrictions on Sharing Articles : In 2009, Harvard Business Review sought higher fees from a small number of university libraries that used the academic aggregator EBSCO to provide students access to the journal. EBSCO licenses, the publication argued, were intended for academic research, not to share course materials. Business schools that wanted to use the HBR articles, generally summaries of scholarly research written for a non-academic audience were asked to pay an additional fee.
After Premji and Nadar, Hero’s Munjal forays into education : Hero Group, which has business interests ranging from automobiles to financial services, is foraying into education. The Munjal family, promoter of the Hero Group, announced the opening of BML Munjal University in Haryana. The university will be run by the Munjal family, through a foundation. The university, which will kick start from the next academic year, will offer courses in engineering, management and liberal arts. It is a not-for profit initiative.
Corporate India on ego trip at IIT campuses : Many IITs launched a “graveyard” slot this year on the opening day of the placement season. While the official kick-off date was December 1, many began the process right after November 30 midnight. The rush among companies to offer jobs to some of India’s best and brightest students played only a small role in the decision to start placements at such an unearthly hour.
GMAC Global Management Education Graduate Survey : Career enhancements and exposure to new professional and business opportunities topped the list of desired graduate business school outcomes among prospective students. Future employment success, however, depends on many factors, including regional variations in employer demand for different types of business degree candidates. This report explores the early job search success for 5,331 graduating students in the class of 2013 from 159 business schools located in 33 countries worldwide.
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