Found this on Vasant's Weblog

India, with more than 85 million businesses, is the most entrepreneurial country by volume, says a new study.

Worldwide, the researchers of the study estimated, about 297 million people in the 41 countries surveyed were trying to develop 192 million businesses past their initial launch.

On the power play in consulting Companies

Consulting Magazine says:

"Let's face it. On the profession's totem pole of prestige, the client-facing consultants who maintain the biggest accounts are the ones who sit at the top. Some may argue that those who do not maintain clients don't belong on the pole at all. But others say that an internal role can be just as satisfying as one serving clients.
Most people are drawn to the profession because they want to serve clients, and suggesting anything else elicits a response whose more polite version is, 'Are you crazy?' The bias toward client work shapes all types of attitudes in consulting and dictates actions pros take. It's the reason senior executives don't just manage their staff, they juggle clients, too. And although a firm might need the very minds it sends out to organizations to help with its own business development, marketing, human resource, and IT issues, consultants who take these assignments like to make clear to all who are listening that their roles are only temporary. "

Got this from The Consulting Magazine

Interesting part is that there are two folks from HR consulting firms too on the list...from Hewitt and Towers Perrin. That's good to know !

As expected its dominated by the Strategy boys (Mac...Bain...BCG)

Personally, I only know of two on the list...Rajat Gupta and Tom Davenport ...amazing that Larry Prusack didn't make it...or Porter..!

The Top 25 Most Influential Consultants, 2003


Joshua Aaron, Business Technology Partners
Hans-Paul Burkner, The Boston Consulting Group
Thomas Davenport, Accenture
Ian Davis, McKinsey & Company
Bryan Doyle, Hewitt Associates
Robert Felton, McKinsey & Company
Glover Ferguson, Accenture
Steven Gold, BearingPoint
Rajat Gupta, McKinsey & Company
David Hofrichter, Buck Consultants
Gary Holdren, Huron Consulting Group
Arthur Levitt, Securities & Exchange Commission (this is a consulting firm???)
Donald Lowman, Towers Perrin
David Morrison, Mercer Management Consulting
John Parkinson, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young
Alan Pearson, BearingPoint
Stephen Pratt, Deloitte Consulting
Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company
Ginni Rometty, IBM Business Consulting Services
Michael Silverstein, The Boston Consulting Group
Adrian Slywotzky, Mercer Management Consulting
Carl Steidtmann, Deloitte Consulting
Gail Steinel, BearingPoint
Damian Walch, T -Systems
James Woolsey, Booz Allen & Hamilton

I picked this from somewhere on the net...interesting view points...specially coming from David himself (my claim to fame is that David once mailed me !)For those who'd say "David who??" ....David Weinberger is co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined. He is also a a blogger extraordinaire.

======================================================
Learning From Political Blogging
Go Off Message!
By David Weinberger

(exceprt)
The point is that it's a campaign blog, and campaigns aren't individuals. Neither are corporations. So, I think this first, successful campaign blog points to what corporate, commercial weblogs will become.

The most significant lesson is, I believe, the importance of going off-message.

This is a tough thing for businesses -- and political campaigns -- to learn. We've been trained for decades to think that marketing is all about pounding a single idea into the warm, mushy brains of consumers...over and over and over until the consumers want to seal their ears with molten lead or maybe just buy a TiVo. We "consumers" are totally bored with the safe, bland jingles we've been fed. We're eager to hear some real voices. And we want to do much of the talking for a change. We want to connect...to one another and to partisans inside the organization who share our passion. We want to talk about what we want to talk about, not about what the business keeps telling us is interesting. We don't want to be "messaged" to, we're not mere "consumers" of goods, and you may own the product/service but we own our conversation about it. We're going to talk about what we want to talk about.
Compare and contrast with the message-focused marketing mentality: Simple, uninteresting message. A one-way broadcast. Intense control of the communications. Keep it simple, stupid.

There's nothing wrong with any of that, except everything. What's appealing to us in a campaign blog and, potentially in a corporate blog, is precisely the lack of message discipline. And that's a lesson businesses desperately need to learn.

Brilliant piece...strikes the nail on the head ...what say??

XLers who Blog !

Well I dunno if there are XL alumni who blog but here are some of the current students who blog from the batch of 2005 !

Vasant and Mononeeta !

If you are an XLer and if you Blog, do let me know by posting in to comments on the left hand navigation bar !

Even the Harvard Law School keeps Blogs on its site !

Some cool MBA blogs I came across !

Snapshots from IIM(Hel)L in which the blogger hopes that my batchmate Riktta hsn't read his views on HLL ;-) Well Aniruddha, from IIM(hel)L to H(e)LL would be a natural move ;-))

Venkat also from IIML covers a lot of stuff rather than just B School life !

And believe it or not here is Russel who's compiled The League of MBA Bloggers (!!) from across the world !

A news Item from The Financial Express on IT Firms Seeking Tieups With XLRI

JAMSHEDPUR, JAN 28: The last six months have seen several IT majors tying up with XLRI here. While organisations like Navision India, representatives of Microsoft Business Solutions in India, have already chalked out their plans, others like Novell, Pramati Technologies, Empower Works, etc, are in the process of exploration.

Each of the firms is seeking to enhance the students’ managerial skills by taking recourse to the technology route. At the recently concluded 5th National IT Seminar here conducted by XLRI’s Socrates (Society for Rapid Assimilation of Technology & Systems), the head (technology) of Navision India had announced the setting up of a ‘centre for excellence’ at the B-School from the third week of January 2004.

The centre, set up by Navision, would initiate a course on “integrated business solutions”, which is to become a part of the XLRI curriculum. For this, Navision is to provide an educational licence to the B-School, whereby students would be able to take up the course during their summer projects.

It is expected that as the course proceeds, professors would be able to utilise their knowledge and build add-ons or verticals on these base solutions. The purpose for the initiative (both from XLRI & Navision) is to ensure that young men and women who graduate from the B-School pass out as tech-savvy managers and are exposed to business solutions.

XLer is a finalist at the Mercer award !

Sonali Kumar (XL PM&IR 2003) is currently working as a Human Resource Consultant with Hewitt Associates in New Delhi

You can find her paper
The effect of career anchors here

Her dissertation, titled "The Effect of Career Anchors on the Relationship between Job Characteristics and Organizational Citizenship Behavior", under the guidance of Dr. R.K. Premarajan at XLRI. This research was presented at the Business and Economics Society International Seminar at San Francisco in July 2003.

Management Consultancy recruitment reaches 3 year high

After years of layoffs, headcount reductions and salary freezes, recruitment within Management Consultancy is starting the New Year with a bang. Read the online forums and you will quickly see that - from Accenture to CGE&Y – the majors are all interviewing furiously and making countless job offers. "

Now Placements go online at XLRI !

The Economic Times says: "This year recruiting XLRI students is going to be a click. After moving student applications and alumni management online over the past few years, XLRI is now taking its annual campus placement process on to the net.
Already, since November 2003, the XLRI placement committee, students and recruiting companies have been using the online campus placement system. This year, the system will be used as a channel to post students’ curriculum vitae (CV), with companies coming down to campus for the traditional PPTs and the actual placement process.
“In the coming years we intend to add more features. Companies would be placing their presentations online, have live interactions with the candidates online etc. The long-term vision is to eventually have the complete placement process online,” says placement committee secretary, Aneesh Banerjee. "

How can a director be independent, industry can't figure

The Economic Times news item says :

"The debate over independence of directors refuses to die down. The industry which has been opposed to the proposal requiring at least 50% of the directors on the boards to be independent, now say, there is no such thing as an ‘independent’ director.
All directors are dependent and hold office at the pleasure of those appointing them — be it promoters who hold majority shares or financial institutions that have outstanding loans or equity in the company. The industry wants the proposal on majority for independent directors in the board rooms to be only recommendatory in nature rather than mandatory. It may be recalled that the now-withdrawn Companies Bill 2003 and Sebi mandated amendment to clause 49 of the Listing Agreement of the Stock Exchanges required majority board seats for independent directors. "

Well, this one will take a long time to settle down - Gautam ;-)

Hay Group study challenges perception of lower executive pay in Europe than in US


Read it Here:

" A new study by Hay Group shows that European executives are not only closing the pay gap on their US counterparts, but in many cases earning even more.

'The study challenges the perception that executive pay is lower in Europe than in the US,' according to Doug Jensen, head of Hay Group's US executive compensation practice. 'This perception is true for the very top jobs in the biggest companies, but pay packages at US companies drop very quickly as you move down the organization--especially if stock options continue to lose favor as a long-term incentive vehicle. By contrast, many European companies have more egalitarian cultures, and senior executives often have the same incentive opportunity as the CEO (proportionate to salary). The result is that packages often exceed those for the US equivalents.'

Hay Group surveyed 153 publicly traded European companies to determine the prevalence and level of executive compensation practices, covering nearly 1,000 executives from 11 European countries. These results were then compared against data from 63 companies of a similar size from Hay's US Executive Compensation Survey, covering nearly 700 executive jobs.

The study showed that there is a greater diversity of executive compensation levels and practices in Europe than in the US. Within Europe, typical base salary levels are highest in the UK, and the highest bonuses tend to be paid in Germany. Long-term incentives are greatest in large French and German companies, which pay very well--up to 30% above the European norm. The lowest packages tend to be in the Nordic countries, which are often more than 30% below the European norm."

HR.com places my article in its "Best of 2003 list" !

HR.com has put my article "Ideas, Knowledge, Intellect and the Structure of the future" among its best of 2003 features naming it amongst "articles full of exceptional thought and insight"

Phew !