you to the door of your dream on the go. Like a computer maven searching for short keys,

it is natural in this ubiquitous “degree world” an ambitious student scouring intelligent

shortcuts to fast track his career life. So when S P Jain School of Global Management, built

their campaign around the famous quote by John M Capozzi ‘Why climb the corporate

ladder when you can take the elevator?’ it bagged a wide-eyed welcome in Dubai.

This innovative theme echoed at S P Jain’s stand at GETEX 2012, Dubai, the regions three-

day-long leading education and training exhibition, which attracted thousands of visitors.

The Financial Times ranking of B-schools for two consecutive years (2011 and 2012) have

marked S P Jain School of Global Management in the top 100 B-schools of the world.

The Global MBA, Global BBA, Executive MBA and Master of Global Business – a bevy of

innovative academic programs of S P Jain has delivered what students dreamed, a faster

placement with the who’s who of the market and a huge pay packet.

S P Jain participated for the 8th year running and received commendations for its innovative

stand design which incorporated the theme ‘Why climb the corporate ladder when you can

take the elevator’. “I could have never imagined how an elevator in the middle of a stand

could look this sophisticated, the whole concept makes you think and drives you to learn

more” said Abilash Ramesh from the British Council.

The idea was envisioned by Mr. Nitish Jain, President of S P Jain, which saw visitors

awestruck and taken aback at first sight. S P Jain’s marketing team, Global MBA students

and faculty were on hand to answer questions about the programs, the campus, and

learning experiences and assist students in making informed career choices. The 3 day

action-packed event generated a large number of enquiries and showcased S P Jain’s

innovative and unique multi-city programs.

GETEX 2012 began on 19 April and was inaugurated by Dr Saeed Al Hassani, Undersecretary

of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in the U.A.E. The exhibition had

over 400 educational institutions participating and more than 2,500 academic programs on

show.

Accordingly, we will dandy through the first story by introducing the recipe of a grand creation – single malt. It is with a glint in his eye, a fire in his belly and a spring in his step that a young lad went one day for a walk, pondering over the recent death of his male parent. This was in 1819 but since then the walk has been worth the talk. And because he was lucky, instead of the fields or the mines, he got the farm’s money to start his own grocery store. The little town of Kilmarnock in Scotland could now boast to have a well equipped grocer whose name was posted on the entrance: Johnnie Walker. The inconsistency of other spirited beverages took him to tinker with the different liquids and mixing his own potion. Suddenly it turned into a truly full-fledged commercial proposition. And a truly profitably one too, which then developed into an industry, a global range of offerings and a unique image constituted by the “blue” label in a D-squared bottle.

It is with this introspection in the background, that Dr. Grandhi opened the evening through a set of examples where time and space simply condensed as fear, suspense and finally joy gripped the audience. He showed the analogy of marketers nowadays having to address the changing mode of navigating markets, trends and big innovations out of the blue skies by focusing on the skills that pilots develop. They do so because they perfect the skills of decision making – as a good pilot friend of mine recently said to me: “Life is like a Gruyere cheese. Sometimes more than 86 holes are aligned and no matter how thorough your procedures are, an accident occurs”. To avoid that, marketers need to relentlessly learn the lessons of the perspective that will catapult them beyond the post-mortem as in a dream come true.

Subsequently the Masters of Ceremony introduced Ms. Knight – the Keynote Speaker who delighted all of us by taking us to an extremely exotic while also challenging place: South Africa. Ms. Knight long-standing expertise over more than forty years in the marketing profession, has founded Cube [on the Square] with colleague Luisa Mazinter, a marketing and business solutions consultancy specializing in multichannel strategies. Why would you pay attention to South Africa? First and foremost because it is changing the rules of the game. It is the country located at the tip of the second largest continent, with 11 official languages and a tremendous potential to continue growing. Accordingly, post-modern insights remain vital for fueling the needed inputs that will maintain Africa prosperous. Ms. Knight mentioned that after the info age and the middle media age, we are now dwelling on the human age. This is a time where balancing acts become genuinely important. As a fundamental tip she suggested to listen to what clients will not tell but are saying in their convictions of what is wrong. ‘It must be that we need to cut on marketing budgets’, a phrase heard so many times in her career when diagnosing the flaws of her clients. Then again, she would seek to reinforce the view that only if you are considering money spent on your own customers as investment, can you really treat the issues with serious strategic intent. And that is where your own databases will prove you wrong in the first place. Because the business of business is nothing else but business re-visited from the spectacular achievements and creative desires of world-class organizations. She cited Nando’s funny and edgy ads of the “where are my chips?” campaign, Wimpy Braille burger as well as red noses airplanes or …. Overall this was a sublime as well as thought-provoking discourse on the paramount importance to move with your times and stay tuned in to the requests of a society in constant transformation.

Moving on, two brilliant GMBA participants shared their enthusiasm by pointing at the major difference between the Mafia and a postmodernist. Answer: The mafia makes you an offer you cannot refuse, while a postmodernist makes you an offer you cannot understand! This humorous note was only the beginning of a thrilling journey into queries difficult still to explain, like why did ‘drip painting’ by Jackon Pollock become ever so popular and also so impossible to imitate? To the question of what exactly is consumer power? While highlighting the Hero Motor Corporation, the case of Airtel with their friend focus campaign and finally the Nestle’ pages on Maggi as the recipe for happiness, they also kept as last golden nugget the case of the North Face in China. The Holy Grail of post-marketing perspectives was found. By launching the conquest of the red flags everywhere users of the app would go and notify “the rest of the tribe”, the entire map soon became a lively icon of the outdoors apparel’s brand. We loved it!

And it was time to take a pause for the Masters of Ceremony to introduce now the members of the panel. Panel? Well as a post-modern starter we also had an extra presentation first by Mr. McClelland Jr. who is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Center House Ltd., a consulting firm specializing in management consulting, business development, and business advisory services. He is also the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Luxury Marketing Council (Middle East). For him the entrepreneur, as a creator of the new and a destroyer of the old, is constantly in conflict with convention. He inhabits a world where belief precedes results, and where the best possibilities are usually invisible to others. His world is dominated by denial, rejection, difficulty, and doubt. And although as an innovator, he is unceasingly imitated when successful, he always remains an outsider to the ‘establishment.’

These ideas paved the way for the discussion which was oriented first at inquiring about the debate surrounding modernity as mere scientific virtue versus the artistic, the attributes of intuition, creativity and spontaneity that imbue post-modernity. Dr. Contardo moderating the panel asked how does a company become the icon for the scrumptious delicacies of ice cream? Mr. Dixit, the marketing professional managing the brand for the entire GCC was addressed: how do you build on the history of Baskin Robbins in the Middle East as well as sustain those ideals in the mind of your consumers?

The CEO, Mr. Chander Dudeja, very willingly gave the participants a tour through the manufacturing and packaging units of the company.  Also, he gave  useful insights about the company and the FMCG industry as a whole. The GM of the sales and marketing department, Mr. J. Tripathi, also took them through a presentation explaining  in depth about the products that the company manufactures, the marketing strategies being used and the future growth plans of the company.

In all, the tour equipped the participants with the first hand knowledge of the food processing industry – how the products are manufactured and packaged.  This, in turn, has enabled them to understand how the food industry works and will therefore help them to make an informed choice about working in this industry in future.

Leaders make decisions every day based on explicit assumptions and non-emotive, rational processes.

Or do they?

The latest economic crises highlighted a plethora of bad decisions, made by well-educated leaders using the best tools and data available. As these decisions are analysed and criticised, an alternative school of thought is becoming mainstream. Both behavioural economics and neuroscience confer that decision-making is, in fact, emotional, irrational and based on tacit assumptions.

Savvy decision-makers are now turning to both technical and cognitive tools to guard against making poor decisions. One such tool is critical thinking, an indispensable management aid right up there with emotional intelligence.

Critical thinking is neither creative nor strategic thinking; it is a way of striving for the highest level of reasoning and judgment that lead to sound decision-making. It is thinking about thinking. The critical thinking process involves 3 main actions.

1.Become aware that mental biases exist

A mental bias is a distortion in the way we perceive reality and process information. We should all know how they affect our thinking in order to avoid them and their consequences. Over 100 mental biases have been documented. Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman first introduced the idea of mental biases, or mistakes, in 1972 and the latter was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2002 for this work. Here are three common mental biases:

Framing effects:Packaging is a multibillion-dollar industry because how an object is presented affects its desirability.  How a problem is framed or presented has been shown to have far reaching consequences on our conclusions as well.

Have a look at this sequence of numbers 5-4-9-1-7-10-3-2. 6 And 8 have been omitted. Can you see where they belong? Tricky, isn’t it?

This problem presented numerically, which makes you think in numbers. In fact, these numbers are in alphabetical order, which is hard to see if you are in a numeric frame of mind. Those trained in creative subjects and critical thinkers are capable of purposefully changing their frame or perspective on a problem to come up with better solutions, faster. Decision making tools that encourage different points of view such as De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats or Systems Thinking help to avoid falling into such framing traps. However, decision makers should acknowledge that their initial frame of mind may not be the only one nor the best with which to tackle a problem.

Confirmation bias is a systematic error where we look for, recall or interpret information so that it confirms our own point of view. Perhaps you have your heart set on a certain product that you research on the internet before buying. You may notice that you gather more positive than negative reviews.

This bias can lead to disastrous decisions, especially in organisational, military and political contexts where leaders tend to surround themselves with like-minded people rather than those who really challenge their decisions.

Have you ever signed up for a gym membership or timeshare and used it less than you expected, or used a new credit card more than you promised yourself you would? Have you ever been dead sure of an answer only to be surprised by an unexpected outcome? Our inbuilt overconfidence allows us to triumph over many of life’s setbacks but can have an adverse impact on the quality of our decision-making. We can be overconfident in our abilities and fall in love with our decisions when our ego is left unchecked.

2.Reduce biases that lead to suboptimal outcomes

Admitting that each of us makes mental mistakes is the first and most critical step in the critical thinking process. Thereafter the quality of our decision-making can be significantly boosted with some simple steps.

*Look for evidence that tests your ideas, not merely confirms them.
*Before dismissing negative feedback, try to defend it.
*Actively seek out at least 2 contrary opinions, if they aren’t forthcoming.
*Calibration is an effective way to keep overconfidence in check. To calibrate your decision-making prowess, track the results of every professional decision that you take. You will soon detect behavioural patterns in both successes and failures.

These steps are surprisingly hard to do. However, if you want to make the best possible decisions, you will need to take the necessary steps to avoid mental biases.

Conventional wisdom also leads to all sorts of decision-making evils. If the status quo or other conventional thinking is an input in decision-making, it is seldom challenged because it’s widely accepted. Rooting out any given facts in a problem and challenging the assumptions underlying them may change the dynamics and conclusions of the problem. Questioning popular thinking is uncomfortable and requires one to make unpopular decisions, but for a critical thinker popularity is not more important than sound judgment.

3.Using reflective thinking regularly

When children fail we comfort them with the time-tested phrase; “It’s OK to make a mistake but learn from it so that you don’t repeat it.” When we succeed at something no-one says; “That’s awesome, what did you learn from your success?” Learning from successes is as important as learning from failures. Reflecting on and learning from our successes helps us identify areas of positive deviance. This shows what worked and what we should do and not only avoid next time.

Learning from other’s mistakes and successes is a risk-free way of becoming a better thinker. However we seldom explore other people’s foibles as they usually happen in a context different to our own. Can a CEO in manufacturing learn from the mistakes of a stockbroker or a politician? Yes. Whilst the outcome of the error is indeed irrelevant for the CEO, the thought process and mental mistakes involved are applicable in various decision-making contexts.

Becoming a critical thinker is much like learning a new language. We can read about it extensively, but it’s only when we practice that we begin the process of improving our thinking, our decision making and hence the quality of our professional and personal lives.

Case Study

History is littered with disastrous decision-making. The build-up of the dotcom bubble in the late 1990s showed symptoms of confirmation bias and herd behaviour. Many investors ignored information showing an impending downturn in stock valuations as these contradicted their own blue-sky assessments. In the build up to the war on terror, George Bush seemed to seek out evidence only in support of his theory on Iraq. Critical thinking could have changed the course of history in both cases.

A stunning success of critical thinking comes from a construction materials company in Watsonville, California; Graniterock. They craved a reputation for delighting their customers and in one smart strategy they changed the frame within which their clients perceived them, reduced overconfidence from sales and management staff, challenged conventional wisdom and forced immediate calibration on their entire organisation. How? The following was printed on their invoices: “If you are not satisfied for any reason, don’t pay us for it. Simply scratch out the line item, write a brief note about the problem, and return a copy of this invoice along with your check for the balance.” (www.jimcollins.com)

This was a radical and extremely successful policy that has changed over time, but its premise still underlies their customer strategy today. (www.graniterock.com)

Author: Prof. Tremaine du Preez is adjunct Professor for Critical Thinking at S P Jain Center of Management and author of Think Smart, Work Smarter published by Marshall Cavendish 2011. She is also an international keynote speaker and author on both critical thinking and leadership.

Published by Mingle Box

On Friday, the 5^th of August 2011 the world woke up to a reality that USA has lost its credit rating of triple A. This means that USA is no more the safe haven for investment it always was. The main reason for this credit rating downgrade was the politicking in Washington at the cost of overall interest of the world in general and Americans in particular. The timing for this down grading couldn’t have been worse. Europe was already in the midst of debt crisis with Greece, Portugal and Ireland on the brink and seeking bailout packages from their EU partners; and Italy also looking very vulnerable. The tremors of these economic upheavals are now felt all over the world. Global stock markets and currency markets are on a swing with trillions of dollars lost in the stock markets and investors finding safety in investing in gold. We are indeed living in a world where the economic volatility in the one hemisphere is affecting governments, large investors, banks, MNCs and people all over the world.

During the recessionary period of 2008 and 2009, there was an adverse impact of economic uncertainty on the global macro-economic indices like GDP growth, inflation, per capita income, and employment rate. The difference between the economic crisis of 2008 and the present economic crisis is that, in 2008 there was a loss of confidence in the banking system, and this time the trigger is the loss of confidence in political system in the United States and monetary policies in Europe. This political and monetary trigger has the potential to consume the world economic order and therefore has far more serious consequences than the previous crisis. It is however too early to predict the depth and the span of this present crisis. Much will depend on the political leadership and the proactive measures they take. In the meantime, for the businesses it will be worth taking the stock of the present situation and define the strategy for the near future.

It is expected that in the near to medium term there will be an uncertainty in the consumer demand for all types of products. The reason is that the consumers will be affected by slowing down of economic growth as well as rise in inflation due to increased borrowing rates from the banks. Also due to lack of investment in the public as well as private sector, there could be fewer new job opportunities and in the wake of austerity measures there is a likelihood of job losses. The cumulative result will be a decline in the consumer optimism and consequently in the purchasing power of the consumer. In the face of uncertainty there could be a wait and watch attitude for all types of spending. The consumer would tend to think twice before spending his hard earned dollar. This trend would affect both industrial, consumer durable and consumer products. The magnitude of this effect may vary across the sectors, however if the past trend is taken into account, we are once again faced with the possibility of a global recession.

In a recessionary scenario; both the manufacturers as well as retailers face decline in demand. As the demand forecasting accuracy is a challenge in this situation, a manufacturer does not know what to produce, when to produce and how much to produce. This affects his forecasts for raw materials and consumables. In the process his orders to his suppliers start drying up and his outstandings with the suppliers keep on mounting, since his receivables from the market are also piling up. This may lead to a loss of confidence between the manufacturer and his suppliers. In such case inventories of raw materials, in-process goods and finished goods keep piling across the supply chain. The same is observed at the retailer’s end also; where there is an uncertainty in consumer demand. The movement of inventories on the store shelves slows down and the inventories in warehouses and distribution centers keep increasing. In a globally integrated market, there is stock pile of inventories in different parts of the world waiting for the normalcy in the market to return.

Considering that it may take some time for the economic volatility to subside and the market to return to its normal self, global business must plan for its survival in the downturn. The first challenge to tackle is forecast accuracy. To get closer to the reality it will be a good idea to have an open sharing of information across the supply chain. Retailers can share their point-of-sale data with upstream partners to better understand the market pulse. This will help to make suitable revisions in the short term forecasts in order to achieve inventory accuracy near to the point of consumption as well as point of manufacturing. Though inventory is considered as an asset on the balance sheet, for a supply chain manager it is a liability which needs to be liquidated as early as possible. Information sharing also helps in highlighting the pockets of slow moving inventory in some parts of supply chain. It will then be possible to move such inventory to the areas where the possibility of its sale is better. During the recessionary period, many retailers offer discounts, exchange offers or gift schemes to liquidate the inventory on hand. This leads to sudden surge in demand. It is important to share the information about such promotional offers across the supply chain, failing which the manufacturer, whole sellers and distributors may perceive this surge in demand as a signal of market revival and may start manufacturing more. This can translate in to “bull whip effect”, where by a small increase in the sale at retailer’s end, will result in large piles of inventories across the upstream supply chain partners.

Secondly during the downturn there is an immediate need to control the costs. Optimization of available resources could be a part of the strategy to reduce the cost burden on the organization. During the growth period in the market, there is a tendency to expand the warehousing and storage facilities in order to quickly respond to the market demand. Recession is the time when a thought for re-configuration of distribution network needs to be given. The facilities which are not contributing to revenues can be curtailed, particularly when such a facility is rented. This will help the organizations to prune their overheads to a large extent. If the facility is owned, sharing it with others in the market can help generate additional revenues for the organization. Another area of resource optimization is transportation. For global players, this is the time to get into long term contracts with the shipping lines, trucking companies and logistics service providers. The reason is that due to fall in demand for transportation services, long term discounts can be negotiated during the recession. For smaller players, this is the time for cargo consolidation on ‘Less than Truckload’ of ‘Less than Container Load’ basis to control transportation costs. Third and the most important resource is manpower. One of the most traumatic outcomes of resource optimization during the recession is loss of jobs. Employers can consider training their employees in additional skills during the lean period in the business. Survival instinct will motivate the employees to train themselves to learn new techniques of business, adapt new technologies and shoulder new responsibilities. This will not only keep the unemployment figures low, but it will also help to sustain the demand in the domestic market.

Thirdly recession is also the ideal time for product and process innovation. It is a fact that even during the recession, there is a demand for innovative products and services and the consumers are willing to pay premium on such products. Apple has set an example of product innovation with new products coming out of its stable with a regular frequency. Delighted consumers are responding by queuing to buy Apple products at their exclusive retail outlets. Cisco is another example of innovation due to its unique ‘Customer Value Chain Management’ practices and regionalized supply network architecture. The result is their ability to respond to the market demand despite uncertainty. Proctor and Gamble, the FMCG major have established ‘control towers’ to manage the flow of products to the distributors. These control towers monitor inbound and outbound distribution flow. At PepsiCo, the innovativeness is in the form of ‘Direct Store Delivery’ capability which enables them to control the costs and delivery time. Such innovations help the business to bind the customers with their brands and retain their market share. In India, where owning a car is the aspiration of millions, but limited purchasing power a reality, Tata Motors have responded with a car with a sticker price of USD 3000. Tata Nano meets the consumer aspiration as well as their budget.

In a globalized world, economic volatility is a fact of life. The organizations that remain prepared for meeting the consumer demand under uncertainty will survive and grow irrespective of economic cycle. Small and medium enterprises have limited resources at their disposal and can argue that they cannot adopt the sophisticated techniques adopted by Multi National Corporations. They can however learn to be lean and agile within their resources and survive the market volatility.

Contributed by Dr. Rajiv Aserkar, Professor, Logistics & Supply Chain Management, S P Jain Center of Management

With a passionate message of “Peace Out!” volunteers from the freshmen batch took the challenge of organising an event, with minimal assistance from sophomores and only four days to prepare. Their will was undoubtedly commendable; more so because it has only been a month since they have arrived in Singapore.

The event started off with the Jaguars distributing peace-themed batches to the attendees. They even brought out their creative spirit and painted the peace symbol on everyone’s hands. Hand-crafted posters adorned the Leadership Hall, the venue of the event. Everyone was dressed in the peaceful shade of white.

Prathamesh Tiwari, leading his fellow classmates hosted the program gracefully. It began with an inspirational audio-visual on war and peace tickling the minds of the audience. Its effect was amplified with a live instrumental performance by Anirudh Premkumar on the drums, Nishant Store on the guitar and Billy Goenewan playing the keyboard.

Moving on, we had Josh Jackson deliver a speech on his perspective on peace and related his ideas to the recent riots in London, his hometown. Following that, the freshers’ performed a moving skit. The idea revolved around us as commoners, who are helpless in times of war and are unnecessarily driven in the pit of all commotion. Changing the mood thereafter were Avni Nanabhai and Menaka Ramkrishnan matching note to note with Shaun Philip on the guitar singing “Pray for Me Brother”.

The event concluded with Nishant Store throwing light on the importance of “peace” within a smaller section of the society as opposed to just an antonym to war. After a vote of thanks by the host, everyone moved out for refreshments with a peaceful mind, with the awareness that their contribution to a peaceful world makes a difference as well.

Author: Eshita Durve, Literary Secretary, Students’ Council, GBBA 2010- 2014, S P Jain Center of Management

Prior to joining S P Jain, Mr. Anil S Kumar was the Director of Career Advancement Services and Head of Business Development at the Indian School of Business. During his tenure at ISB, Anil successfully implemented a new model that transformed the way Corporate Relations activities are done. This resulted in better corporate alliances, research, executive education, placements and funding.

Anil Kumar, an MBA, has undergone numerous certification and diploma courses conducted by Kellogg School of Management, London Business School and ISB in Leadership Skills for Top Management, Negotiation Strategies, Accelerated Sales force performance, Strategic Account Management, Strategic Talent management and Global Marketing. In addition, he has also been through the Accelerated Management Program (AMP) at ISB.

In the past, Anil has also held various senior management positions in globally admired corporations that include University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign, iGATE (formerly Mastek) and HCL Perot. In addition, he has held leadership positions as Chapter President, Special Advisor, and Vice President in various industry forums, including National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and National HRD (NHRD).
Mr. Nitish Jain, Director, S P Jain Center of Management takes pleasure in announcing Mr.Anil Kumar as the Executive Director- Global Corporate Relations.”Let’s face the reality. Our MBA participants join our program for rapid career growth. So as a school we give importance to aiding our students to get a job in India, South East Asia and the Middle East. So when a stalwart like Anil Kumar joins us we are sure that our graduates will be served very well. Anil left the safe warm waters of ISB as he believed in our global model as a means to create differentiated global leaders.”, says Mr. Nitish Jain.

Steve gave the world amazing products – the Mac, iPod, iPhone and the iPad. All of them were blockbusters. Yet he will be remembered for the way he shaped the future of industries like music, computing, movies and the cell phone to name a few.  Currently Apple is neck to neck with Exxon Mobil for the title of the world’s most valuable company. This has to be seen against the fact that about 10 years ago, Apple faced the risk of going under.

Much has been written about Steve’s genius as a designer, visionary, marketer, charm and personality. The last attribute needs elaboration. In my view Steve can be compared only to Leonardo da Vinci – the engineer, the artist, the scientist capable of absorbing from various disciplines and synthesizing them with his own sharp instinct. In this area – none of the other industry legends including Bill Gates, Andy Grove or Larry Ellison came close. Steve Jobs passion for perfection is well recounted by Vic Gandotra of Google here.

Here are some  lessons that I learnt from him:

Make products functional and the heart sing:

Technology alone is not enough. It’s technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields the results that makes our hearts sing.

Nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices…that need to be even easier to use than a PC, that need to be even more intuitive than a PC; and where the software and the hardware and the applications need to intertwine in an even more seamless way than they do on a PC.

We think we are on the right track with this. We think we have the right architecture not just in silicon but in the organization to build these kinds of products.” – Steve Jobs during the launch of iPad

Say No to a thousand things:

“In a 2004 BusinessWeek interview Jobs said “And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”

Stay loyal to the suppliers:

Apple  stayed loyal to Foxconn through multiple releases of iPods, iPhones and iPads in spite of sweatshop accusations, employee suicides and factory explosions in its Chinese facilities. Most companies like to diversify between company owned and outsourced plants and certainly across geographies.

Innovation not in product or business model, but even use of cash:

In 2005, “Apple reached long term supply agreements with a number of memory supply companies including Hynix, Intel, Micro, Samsung Electronics and Toshiba. Apple will prepay up to $1.25 billion for flash memory over the next three months. The agreements secure a supply of NAND flash memory through 2010.”

Learn to kill your own children:

Apple was happy to see the iPhone kill the iPod and iPad kill the MacBook. He wasn’t there to protect his previous blockbuster. You don’t walk ahead with your eyes looking behind.

When you are right, wait for the world to see it:

Be it in simple product decisions like killing the floppy drive in the iMac or removing the optical drive in the Macbook Air or even refusing to license the Mac OS, If Apple and Steve’s incredible comeback teaches us something, it’s that when you are right and the world doesn’t see it that way, you just have to be patient and wait for the world to change its mind—Om Malik in his tribute to Steve. The rest of Om’s article is a great read.

Be the right kind of benevolent dictator:

Steve has been often referred to as a dictator, but since his comeback, he became a benevolent dictator – a sort of leadership model which is unusual. He embedded himself so deeply within the cultural fabric of Apple that the company no longer needs him. He focused on making sure everyone else at Apple was able to build great products too, not just himself.

I am sure others have their own favorite lessons to learn from this great icon. For people who are keen on reading Steve Jobs’ quotes, the Wall Street Journal has compiled them here. Each one is a gem!

Thanks Steve.

Author: Mr. Subbaraman (Subba) Iyer, Information Technology professor, S P Jain Center of Management.

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With the placement training to get underway, I thought I will give you my 2 c worth Having been a career counselor and an executive coach of some standing and seen some of the interviewees fail (including some good capable candidates), I felt that I will share some useful pointers to make you stand out.

Before you go into some “interview mode training” and some of you parroting “standard responses” to equally “standard questions”, PAUSE..! Do a little bit of exploration, some introspection and arrive at a “sweet spot” that’s unique to you. You will be authentic and good employers will pay a premium to such professionals than cookie cutter /imitators. Please keep in mind that the guys who got ahead of the pack didn’t do what the pack did; but took the road less traveled and in the end that made all the difference!

Here’s a sample list of questions that should lead to some interesting personal discoveries:

1. What are you best at doing? It is amazing how many people spend years trying to get good at what they’re bad at instead of getting better at what they’re good at.
2. What talents do you have that you haven’t developed? Don’t say none.
3. Which of your skills are you most proud of? This often reflects obstacles you’ve overcome.
4. What were you doing when you were happiest in your work life? Could you find a way to be doing that now?
5. What are your most cherished hopes for your future work life? What could keep you from realizing those hopes?

Well, thinking about these questions helps you define your “self worth” and that is key to great interviewing.

Author: Mr. Subbaraman (Subba) Iyer, Information Technology professor, S P Jain Center of Management. Prof, Subba has spend 28 years in technology, business, consulting in various corporate roles in the IT and Internet industry. Despite of his  success in the corporate world, his true calling is exploiting human potential and he attempts to do it through counseling, coaching, and inspiring people to scale new heights. As a executive coach, he has helped  professionals and teams improve performance significantly by expanding perspectives and envisioning new possibilities.

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The Ghar Angna Project was initiated in 2009 with the objective of providing underprivileged children with basic education and, thereby, preventing them from engaging in begging and/or manual labour. The school started with only 15 students but, thanks to the amazing support of donors and volunteers, the project has increased its student strength to over 150 in a matter of two years.

It was an overwhelming experience to see a smile on the faces of these children when our alums helped them in their art work and donated food and desserts to these kids. It is truly humbling to see our alums engaging in such grass-root level activities and giving back to the society and hope that the  continues engaging in such activities.

“Meeting these children made me realize how privileged I am and how easily I forget to appreciate all that I have. Their smiles will always warm my heart and I hope to be a part of Ghar Angna and help in every way possible.” – Ms. Yuthika Dagar (GMBA Batch of 2008)

With its growing student strength, the Ghar Angna Project is in need of two part-time teachers. As such, they are seeking donations from the members of the society so that they may use the funds towards hiring of these teachers.

For any of our alums interested in donating towards this cause, please get in touch with Varun Verma, Manager – Corporate & Alumni Relations (Global MBA – Batch of 2008), by dropping him an e-mail at varun.verma@spjain.org.