INDUSTRY WATCH

India- Infrastructure Report: Proliferating domestic and offshore infrastructure funds target the Indian infrastructure market, driven by strong demand from the transport, power, urban infrastructure and irrigation segments. Government showing increasing willingness to carry out pro-business reforms (e.g. land acquisition bill, delinking forest with environmental clearances).

Online Travel Market in India: Ease of communication and convenience has motivated people to switch to the online mode. The online travel segment drives the e-Commerce market and mainly comprises of ticket booking, hotel accommodation and packaged tours.

Oil & Gas: Breaking Free: Energy independence for India seems to little farfetched right now, which can be targeted to reach through a domestic E&P boost by: (a) remunerative / market-linked pricing, and (b) stable fiscal regime / PSC to attract investment, coupled with fast tracking of administrative timelines. apart from boosting domestic E&P should be towards developing (a) unconventional hydrocarbons, (b) renewable energy sources, (c) monetizing discovered gas, and (d) aggressively acquiring overseas reserves.

Property Sector in Asia-Pacific: In present scenario developers and occupiers are focusing on sustainable buildings that use less energy and reduce their environmental footprint. Countries like Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam are increasingly viable options for property market investment. The Asia-Pacific property market should continue to grow in 2014, strengthened by steady economic growth from Japan and China.

2014 Asia-Pacific Medical Devices Outlook: The luxury vehicle market in India will be growing in the metro cities, where the wealth accumulation has increased gradually. With the rising number of HNWIs, the introduction of new models (B Class), and the local assembly of several models, the market for luxury vehicles will remain strong in India.
 

ARTICLE ALERT

Deals That Transform Companies:
As capital remains cheap and competition increases, more and more corporate finance strategists are willing to take on transformational deals. Unlike absorption deals, in which companies acquire businesses that complement their existing operations, transformational deals involve acquiring new markets, channels, products, or processes in a way that requires significant operational integration. In fact, successful integration is key to realizing the potential value of these deals.

Mining Marketing Meaning from Online Chatter: Online chatter, or user-generated content, constitutes an excellent emerging source for marketers to mine meaning at a high temporal frequency. This meaning can be distilled by extracting key latent dimensions of consumer satisfaction about the quality of brands.

Managing Strategic Change - The Duality of CEO Personality: Corporate social commitment and corporate environmental commitment are often combined under the general rubric of corporate social responsibility. Although the two sets of activities are similar, they are also very different. Both CSC and CEC respond to issues raised by stakeholders, but CEC tends to be more “technical”. This characteristic demands that CEC fit with the organization, which exposes greater economic opportunities than CSC.

Sustainability in the Boardroom: One surprising role of Nike’s committee is to provide support for innovation. More and more companies recognize importance of corporate responsibility to their long-term success--and yet the matter gets short shrift in most boardrooms, consistently ranking at the bottom of some two dozen possible priorities.

The role of physical distribution services as determinants of product returns in Internet retailing : Students and parents share many attitudes about online education, but their needs have grown more varied and demanding than ever before. Institutions that fail to respond to these shifts risk losing relevance and overall market share. Those that adapt will tap into new sources of growth and innovation.

ARTICLE ALERT

The War for Talent: From Oxford’s quads to Harvard Yard and many a steel and glass palace of higher education in between, exams are giving way to holidays. As students consider life after graduation, universities are facing questions about their own future. The higher-education model of lecturing, cramming and examination has barely changed for centuries. Now, three disruptive waves are threatening to upend established ways of teaching and learning.

Business schools broaden their horizons: In the days when most students left campus to take up traditional positions in large corporations, the core curriculum line-up made sense. However, students now seek jobs from a far wider range of postgraduate options, from start-ups to healthcare systems and social enterprises.

Confidence matters as much as competence: The women who are entering the corporate workforce today are skilled and business savvy. Yet to rise to the ranks of the C-suite, confidence matters as much as competence. Encouraging more women to pursue MBAs would not only strengthen the skills and confidence they need to succeed, but it would allow corporations to tap into a larger and more diversified talent pool of future business leaders. Schools must also do their part to attract women.

Business Schools Aren't Producing Ethical Graduates: You can’t accuse them of not trying. Business schools make efforts to teach students to carry ethical lessons from their MBA program into the working world and to behave ethically as professionals. Most top schools include ethics courses or build ethics-related segments into classes on global management and leadership. Here are three actions all business schools can take to improve ethics education.

An opportunity for innovation rather than a challenge:
Business schools have a key role to play in this, but few have translated the implications of global sustainability into strategic research and education programmes. Business schools excel at providing executives with the methodologies to induce and manage innovation and sustainability represents an opportunity for them as well as for businesses.

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