Strategic Canvas

The Strategy Canvas is a critical diagnostic and action tool utilized in the Blue Ocean Strategy process. It allows an organization to visualize the competitive factors and the current state of play of those factors within an industry and then compares the organization’s offering with those of the industry in general. When combined with other tools, the strategy canvas helps you create your new blue ocean strategy.

The strategy canvas helps you to create value innovation. As you read this, refer to the strategy canvas example below of the electronic games industry.

The strategy canvas has three components. First are the competitive factors. Competitive factors are the six to twelve features or benefits considered key or essential to the promotion of a product or service to its intended market. It is a value element used to attract buyers. These are listed across bottom horizontal axis of the canvas.

The second component is the Offering level up the vertical axis. The level of a competitive factor that the buyer receives and a company invests. I.e. at what level do you provide education? A high score means a company offers buyers more, and therefore invests more in that factor. In the case of price, a higher score means a higher price.

Understand that since you are going to be listing only your top 6 – 12 factors, the level of the offering is going to be high for each factor and each competitor in the industry.

The third component is the Value Curve created when you plot the competitive factor against the offering level and connect the dots. This key component of the strategy canvas is created when the offering level of an industry’s or organization’s competitive factors are plotted on the strategy canvas and the dots connected.

Think of this as a visual representation of the industry’s value proposition. A value proposition is what the customer gets for their money.

Because competitors benchmark each other, the competitors in each industry will follow the same general curve shape. Thus you can average the results and combine to create the industry canvas representing all competitors.

Policy for life

I am writing on this blog after long time. Not because I didn’t have time but I used to think I do not have time. I didn’t have time but not because I had lot to do rather I was not organized. If you are too busy in your life and keep complaining that does not have time for anything and this is affecting your family life also then it is high time to rethink. Because everybody has same 24 hours and they are enjoying their life well then why you have this problem; there is something wrong in your life. There might be the case that you have been mixing your personal or professional life. And the major problem that I have observed or think that if you do not follow the discipline then things goes wrong. For example if you do not have discipline then you will get up late and then you will delay you office and since you have not come on time you will go home late. Consequently will try to postpone all you work in night and then will affect your routine. Similarly because of your lack of discipline you will encroach your profession life because of personal life emergency or vice versa. And then life go on like these only and you don’t mind making mistake because you know that I have sufficient time…aaj nahi to kal kar lenge…thik hai aaj ghar nahi jayenge…think hai parents ke saath ya wife ke saath thoda kam samay bitayenge….but you really don’t know that how will it result. Since you have encroached you personal life with some other emergency that has been created out of your wrong habit; one day your personal life will be demanding or come in urgent situation. Then you will encroach in your professional life and the circle continues.

If you closely observe you situation then you will find out that almost all of us are victim of this problem. Since we do not have the discipline in our life and we keep committing mistake or overruling the life. It is similar to the problem of a company who does not have the policy in place. And since policy is not in place then company takes decisions as per the situation and hence some time decision taken for one instance contradict the decision of another instance with different situation. And the basic reason is that there is no policy in place. Now compare the situation of a company whose policy is in place. Now every decision has the reference from the policy.

Same applies in our life also. If we put some policy in place life would be much easier. For example if we decide to go for sleep max at 11 pm whatever be the situation, then you will not carry forward your work in the night and then when you have to face the consequence you will try to schedule your work on time. (Here I don’t say if anything comes which is so urgent that you will not delay your sleep –do it but not always and for everything). Again decide at least once in a week will spend 4 hours with family and decide the day; you will plan your work accordingly and will not defer this thing which may further affect your life.

So the take away of this discussion can be deice a policy for your life- from the perspective of your profession, family, self (will spare two hours in a week for self- it will help you to plan yourself. Organize the self and do things what you really passionate about), society. Put this policy with day wise specification like this thing on Monday or thins thing on Sunday, and if possible by time also i.e. will go to sleep everyday around 11 pm. Once the policy is decided, visit your policy everyday and implement it. You will see the change. Slowly you will see your life has been organized and focused also, as you will not have enough time to anything- irrespective of the relevance to your life/career.

Learning Good from Bad

Hi, I am writing on the wall after long long time...its not the case I didn't have something to write but was too busy in solving the problems in life that this was completely out of mind. But few incidence happened in last few days provoked me to start writing. As usual I will start with a story. Generally in Mumbai I travel on western Line through taxi(shared one). Every time a get a shared taxi from any places like bandra/andheri/goregaon and get down at Thakur village and pay almost 20-30 Rs for the same. Everytime when I get down from the taxi, after paying I thank the driver. Yesterday while coming from Andheri i took a shared taxi and asked for kandivali - sai dham...he said ok. But on the way all his passanger got down before kandivali, so he told me that he can not go till thakur village and will drop me at kandivali police station. I shout on him and was so angry that I didn't thank him and said all taxi wala are like that only.
Today again I took a taxi from Kandivali till Andheri....and the driver was also rude this time. I was thinking all drivers are like this only and was struggling to decide whether I should say thanks while getting down or not? Sometime it was coming as yes and sometime as no.
But finally I decided to thank him and you know what the result was very positive and I think it will have some positive ripple effect.

The theory behind that- No one is bad by birth....one behave rudely because someone must have behaved rudely with him. so the this bad behavior has ripple effect. Then I though why can't we have the ripple effect of good behaviour....so even after his rude behavior I thanked him..."he was soo ashamed of his behavior that he could not react and say anything but his situation was palpable." But I was happy and I am sure next time he is not going to behave rudely to all by considering that every passanger is rude.

Moral of the story is that...spread good behavior it will turn to you as a good behavior. I have started so when are you starting??????


cheers,

Can entrepreneurship be taught???

Can entrepreneurship been taught is a million dollar question in the present world of business education and can also mark a question on courses pr programme running on these line….. But sometime I do think that it is worth debating…..What we should teach - Entrepreneurship or managing enterprise????
Rightly quoted by one of the senior professor at Beijing University, Beijing “In my opinion, entrepreneurship is a matter of the heart, and education is a matter of the brain. It is difficult to teach a heart." So nobody can teach you to take risk. It is the function of the state of an individual in a particular situation. Although by counseling, simulating certain environment equipping with certain tools and techniques you can persuade one to take risk at one stage. But will it ensure for the next or next to next stages and so on. No, one cannot. This is the big differences where the entrepreneurship and managing enterprises comes in. Top executive in the company always come across such a question what to do? Whether to go ahead with this or to drop??? Finally they do take a call but is it that risks their life?? In my opinion, it is not always. They always have an answer -will see…it may affect my current job but not the life, But to be an entrepreneur one always need to answer these type of question…should I go ahead or drop the idea???? Here no business managing skills are required –the only thing which helps out here is the ability to take a risk and say “move on”.
But if this underline fat of entrepreneurship then what is the role of formal education in entrepreneurship???? In my opinion as mentioned earlier entrepreneurship cannot be taught but we can always develop the skills that how to manage the enterprise developed out of entrepreneurship….
Entrepreneurship always calls for an action and that action can lead to you in any situation – good or bad. And to take that action you need to have courage to take risk…this risk taking ability can be learned from the environment but cannot be taught in the classroom. Classroom learning helps you to develop the aptitude or your thought process and skills to manage the business but day to day decision making ability has to come from Heart not Brain!!!!

Success: A yardstick of self or others

“Success” the word which everybody is looking for or rather to say everybody is running for. I always used to think on this word and on this line that what is success after all? But never thought to pen down on this. But today one of my students now colleague started a discussion on LinkedIn- What is the simplest definition of success? This provoked me to put my thought on the paper.
I don’t say that I am a legend like Stephen Covey or Robin Sharma or Marshal Goldsmith etc etc who understands the human psychology and have authority on saying something on these topics and that suits the majority of the environment too. But I have my own thought and Philosophy that I want to express. Similarly I have my own Philosophy on success.
For me success is the attainment of self desire. It is more of what I want to achieve in life, or to year down the line or 20 year down the line or may be two minute after now and attaining those goal and off course with my values (if one has). And in this way success leads to happiness. Success is the result and happiness is the reward effort employed. And happiness is more related to self realization of the result. So success should also be realized by self. But unfortunately sometimes or most of the time success is not realized by self but by others. We tend to define the success from others point of view. For example if somebody says success means having good reputation in society so he will feel himself successful if society respects him/her and at the same time for him/her all those person who have good reputation in society are successful. But this may or may not be the reality, as for few of them success may be the having good wealth not the reputation. So ideally it has to be defined by the self but we tend to look at society what they feel of us. Whether they feel -we are successful or not. And if this is the case we will have to define it from other’s point of view.
But I always use to think why have we given this yardstick to the society? Who is this society to decide that whether we are successful or not. I know I am happy at my home living with my parents even if I do not have any great opportunity to work on, but then why am I running for money, reputation, designation, luxury which will not make me available to my family? Is this because I want to be called as successful by the society even if I am not from my heart? Or is this the case is that we have camouflaged our definition of success with society’s definition of success? These are the question which one must asked him/her before calling themselves successful.
It takes lots of guts to define success against all these odds and that is why we prefer to be called as a successful by society than asking self.
Have a successful life……….

LLPs: to take off.

In connection to my previous posting (Limited Liability Partnership: A new method of company Incorporation), this discusses about the new rules in LLPs. Currently, FDI is not permitted in Partnership Firm, but allowed in companies subject to Sectoral caps. But now Govt. propose 49% FDI cap in selected sector while RBI propose the FDI in all sector with 49% cap.
Akash Gupta, Executive director, PwC says more is needed to take off this structure. “While allowing FDI in LLPs there is also a need to address sector regulatory issues that prohibit these entities from carrying on a particular activity,”. LLPs for instance, cannot bid for a road project as per guidelines of the National Highway Authority of India. Till now only 914 LLPs has been registered.

Design by default

The first step of personal development is the understanding of “Who am I” or “how our life is designed”? This is something like “if you want to reveal the secret you will have to go into that.

As quoted by Mr. James.J.Mapes in his book Quantum Leap Thinking, we always have options in our life and the choices that we make out of these option finally shapes our life. But the challenge become apparent when we have to make choices, because choices we make are result of the way we look at the life. Or in other words we see life through a filter of belief system. The composition of that filter determines the quality of our choices. And the clarity of the filter depends on many things- experience, education and environment.

Theoretical concept of this conditioning of life has been proposed by many others like Shiv Khera who says….in one of his book “You Can Win” that our life is conditioned (I think designed) by the situation or the persons (surrounding us) we encounter throughout our life. It may lead to a positive attitude or negative attitude (toward life or other things).He defines these surroundings as environment- family, society, friends, works etc – experience – with person and situation and education- formal or informal.

Carrying this philosophy forward I just want to say, everything in this world has its phases of development, being it a business, life or career it has to pass through formative, growth, maturity and finally end phases. The quality or the design of each phase is somewhat determined by the act of preceding phase (except formative). As discussed the choices taken in growth phase of life is the function of the filter system built during formative phase that finally decide the design of latter stage of growth phase. Same applies in career as well, initial quality of your experience at work station further shape the future of your career to an extent (not completely).

The point I want to make here is, no matter how our life or career is designed, we can alter it…..yes we can…..”Every moment is the seed for new life”. At any point of time if we think we can change our self we should take charge of our life and move ahead. This is what everybody says starting from Vivekananda to new generation motivational speaker Robin Sharma. But my thinking here is, so what if our conditioning or designing was done by default can we take charge to design the life of others as a parent to design the life of our next generation, as a boss to design the career of our subordinate? Can we create a positive environment around us, can we create a good experience for others or can we pass on the right education to others? If we can do this we can change the world.