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To Marry or to Date?

We will be learning about Strategic Alliances this term, and while our Professor has given us just 415 pages to read, it set me thinking about how I could draw similarities between all the technical definitions I am learning and examples from day to day life. This post is the result.

The business world reflects life - our parents got married (merger or acquisition) for life, but today, we first evaluate many partners from around the world (globalisation) and then go steady (strategic alliance), then live in (joint venture), and finally either get married or break up. In the past, marriages (mergers and acquisitions) worked because there was limited awareness, no Internet and no way to reach out to the better choices out there; there were strict societal/ parental (government) norms and the world was comfortable with the feudal system. Then came the Industrial Revolution, the Russian revolution (twice), computers, the Internet, Facebook and Twitter. The world got “Googled” and my friend Steve made it his “Job” to put the googled world under our fingertips! Rapid technological advances became a major motive for alliances. Men wanted choices (as always), and women had better choices for the first time and the economic freedom to walk out of a bad relationship. Thus entered economic uncertainty (for men at work and home) - another major motive for seeking alliances.

As we added more friends of every colour from across the world on Facebook, our outlook became global - we learnt about new customs and new ideas germinated. For some, it was access to low-cost capital, for others it was access to new markets, and for still others, it was low-cost production; in any case, you figured out that alliances offered lower transaction costs (another motive). Think of your parents marriage (M&A) and what it cost. A few thousand rupees would have made it a rich wedding then. Today, you have wedding planners who play in a well segmented market - under one crore, between two and five crores, above five crores, and the obscene crores segment.

And, all the while, rapid technological advances keep happening, product life cycles are short, there is uncertainty, both men and women find other cost-effective options, governments have relaxed rules, and suddenly, there is no longer any reason to remain invested in the one to obscene crore marriage. Ugly or happy divorces take place, once again there is a huge cost (and mental trauma added to the mix) ... and sometimes, one or both the partners just wither away and sometimes they become wiser.

The wiser ones then go the dating, steady (strategic alliance) and/ or live-in (joint venture) route and may never marry, or their marriage (M&A) will be an informed decision. You know exactly what each other’s strengths and weaknesses are, whether you have complementary skills, whether there are learning opportunities on both sides, and hopefully, if the M&A does happen, it leads to a united front (whether it is progressive or otherwise depends on many other factors). Yes, I jumped to our favourite bashing boy -  the UPA alliance. Interesting, isn’t it, that in politics you rarely find M&A but only alliances, because they offer so much more flexibility and you can play up or down the entire spectrum of goodwill to acrimony without batting an eyelid - wily politicians, indeed!

So ultimately, the moral of this post and Term 8 is: be smart, date, go steady, live in and be fully informed before you marry. There are no guarantees that the marriage will still succeed, but at least you’ll improve the chances of success (Arun and Professor Deshmukh's probability) and not burn a hole all over your sari/ shirt. Of course, this is gender neutral global advice: Grow up, man!

Bindumalini Krishnan
PGPMAX Class of 2013