In an interview with the BBC, the boss of the world’s largest mobile phone company (by revenue) Britain’s Vodafone Group plc was upbeat about his company’s prospects at weathering the credit crunch clouds hovering over businesses in Europe and the US.
Under oversight of Arun Sarin (CEO), Vodafone has successfully repositioned the company to counter global forces for the upcoming years. It can be characterised as a textbook example of a diversification strategy in terms of market segments (offered products and services) and geographical areas (geographic spread).
Yesterday it was a mobile telecom company and tomorrow it wil be a mobile telecom, internet, broadband, and financial service company. Furthermore, Vodafone used be very OECD developed market centric and now they have added an emerging markets portfolio with strong presence in the BRIC countries and further pushing into the Next Eleven (n-11) countries. The entire interview with Arun Sarin can be found here.
In any field of human endeavour you ultimately reach a point where you can’t solve the new problems using the old principles. Hamel thinks we’ve reached that point in the evolution of management. When you go back to the discipline upon which our modern companies are built: standardisation, specialisation, hierarchy, and so on, you realise that those are not bad principles but are inadequate for the challenges that lie ahead.
Management and organisational innovation often lags far behind technological innovation. Right now, your company has 21st-century, internet-enabled business processes, mid-20th-century management processes, all built atop 19th century management principles. Without a transformation in our management DNA in line with principles I outlined in chapter 8, the power of the web to transform the work of management will go unexploited (Hamel, 2007).
Below you can find a video where Hamel comments on his latest book.
If you are interested in globalisation, you can hardly ignore the experiences of General Electric. Claudia Deutsch has written a fascinating article about the giant company’s journey from scepticism, to facing up to globalisation’s challenges, and now to become a truly global business in all facets.
“They are managing their worldwide organization as a network, not a centralized hub with foreign appendages,” said Christopher Bartlett, a professor at the Harvard Business School who has written several case studies on GE.
“Everyone talks about outsourcing manufacturing, but it is the high-level R&D jobs that are the great marketing tools, and I’m a salesman, remember. I know that you don’t get to sell things for long unless you are part of the culture into which you are selling.” Immelt said.
For example, GE Healthcare unit has already moved its headquarters to the London area, and another may follow soon. London, it turns out, is a better hub for global operations than Connecticut. If the whole company eventually follows, it won’t be the first time a Fortune 500 company has left the United States - and it certainly won’t be the last.
First good old GE, they really put imagination at work beyond their fancy slogan. It surprises me how such an established and large company can still thrive and pull off a number of new breakthroughs every year. Secondly Nike, the sporting goods company from Beaverton, OR. Nike is the only company in the top 10 not engaged in an internet or technology driven industry. Thirdly, the Chinese internet company Alibaba, its the only company from emerging markets that made it into the top 10.
#1 Google
#2 Apple
#3 Facebook
#4 GE
#5 IDEO
#6 Nike
#7 Nokia
#8 Alibaba
#9 Amazon
#10 Nintendo
Today, (February 1st) Microsoft Corporation, the world’s biggest software maker, made an unsolicited $44.6 billion offer for Yahoo! Inc. to challenge Google Inc.’s dominance in Internet search services and advertising. The proposed deal, which would transform the software and internet-services industries, values Yahoo! at $31 a share, a 62% premium over the closing price on Thursday. What will the outcome be?
Today, the world’s biggest bank delivers dreadful results. Citigroup recorded a net loss of $9.8 billion, driven by a whopping $18.1 billion in pre-tax write-downs and credit costs on exposure to subprime mortgages.
Worse, it is no longer just collateralised-debt obligations and other complex securitised products that are hurting the world’s largest bank (by assets if no longer by market value). Credit cards and other consumer-finance businesses are deteriorating fast as America’s economy flirts with recession.
Capital markets around the world ended the day all in red digits. What more can we expect the upcoming weeks when other leading financials record their 4Q and FY2007 results? How much more write downs can capital markets digest? How can we fix it?
Curious about what consumer trends will emerge this year? Trendwatching.com made again a fair attempt in predicting them for you. The full report can be found here (PDF).
The moment has finally come. Today Tata has unveiled the world’s cheapest motor car. Tata’s stripped-down motor car will cost you around US$2,500 (100,000 Rupees), and it’s aimed at the company’s home market of India. But its popularity need not stop there.
This is not only a breakthrough from a price point perspective. It basically puts a car into the reach of people that previously only could dream of owning a scooter or moped. Nevertheless there are still billions of people who cannot afford an investment of $2500,-. In essence this is a car aimed at the world’s middle class. There are hundreds of millions of people who will be able to afford the People’s Car - in China, in Vietnam, in Pakistan, in coastal Africa…. They’ll buy, as long as the quality is reasonable and the car doesn’t become a laughingstock, like the old Yugo.
Furthermore, in affect, the People’s car will also change the competitive dynamics of the entire auto landscape. Everyone except the luxury car makers might want to think about entering this uncontested market segment. If Tata can sell a good product for US$2,500, then it will be able to keep moving its consumers up the economic motor car ladder, to a US$5,000 car, and then a US$10,000 car. When you consider a growing market of hundreds of millions worldwide, a little brand loyalty could go a long way.
Updated @ Jan 11th.: Interested in the applied cost-cutting tricks please follow this link.
What will happen if China stumbles? Alright, Daniel Altman was so kind to answer my question here?
Why “innocent drinks” are so little and overpriced but so damn tasty?
Why there is still no usage of cameras and other technologies in football matches to rectify the referee decision?
Why greater flexibility is advised for logos and branding? ooh wait Wolff Olins comes with a solution here and here! Love it!
Why Wordpress doesn’t let me wrap text around an image easily?
Why I didn’t come up with the idea for Facebook?
On the Facebook note, would it be better for a company/charity to have a profile on Facebook, or a group? I think my preference now goes out to a profile. Makes it easier to follow what they do, since it’ll show up on the feeds on my Facebook homepage. I still haven’t figured out how (if) to get the changes on my groups on my RSS feeds.
Why brand management or advertisement agencies always have the coolest and most innovate website designs? Please check out the new Wolff Olins site. Lovely!
How International Herald Tribune (IHT) can always pull it off to be higher ahead of the curve with respect to usability of its webpage? I was quite some time I visited the webpage but I think the current layout is quite 2.0! E.g. you can listen to each news article, write a comment, and even translate the text. Furthermore, the layout is very comfortable, dynamic, and interactive, and still clean!
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