Now a days, business is viewed more as a profession or occupation. From the days of family owned business, we have reached a stage of professionals and experts starting and running business. It could also be noted that business administration and business management have emerged as the most prospective field of study and occupation. Persons with educational background in business, enter business or join business organizations to make them successfully function. Unlike the olden days, a number of interests are involved in business today, viz. owners, investors in business, suppliers, customers, employees, government, stake holders, administrators, managers, strategists, executives, and so many others. Hence, every business activity has to meet the goals or aims or objectives of these various groups of people. That in fact, has made business a most complicated activity. Modern business has a number of features. Understanding of these would help to appreciate and organize business activities Continue reading
Modern Business Concepts
Blending Spiritual Values with Business
The root for value is valor, which means strength. Values are sources of strength because they give people the power to take action. Values are deep and emotional and often difficult to change. Values are the essence of any organization and philosophy for achieving success. Values provide employees with a sense of common direction and guidelines for day to day behavior. The first step in creating an atmosphere of common commitment is to invite the hearts and minds of employees to join the purpose of the organization. Shared missions, values and vision bring people together. They unite and provide the link between diverse people and activities. People who share values or vision are more likely to take responsibility; they are more likely to challenge the limits of convention. Values provide guidance. Spiritual value is a way of expressing more humanity and recognizes each persons own beliefs. Traditional ways of achieving Continue reading
Overview of Reverse Innovation Concept
Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble, in their book on Reverse Innovation defined the term “Reverse Innovation”; they define it as any idea, which will be first adopted in developing world. This phenomenon was not very common in the past for a simple reason that the rich and affluent that had the ability to demand were mostly concentrated in developed nations. Demand drove the technology and hence most of innovations happened in the west. United States and Germany have about 300 noble laureates in science and technology, while India and China who are six times in population have less than ten of them in total. Most of the solutions that were innovated in the west were hence imported. Slightly modified versions of the global products, mostly their low-end were “Glocalized” and were seem to be most relevant. This view, over time, is seemed to be no longer accurate. The nature of Continue reading
Innovation Management – Managing Innovation in Business
For many organizations and countries alike, innovation and innovation management are no longer luxury items, but rather necessities and a means of sustaining economic development and competitiveness. To serve customer well and maintain the competitive position in business, companies are forced to focus on the creation, updating, availability, quality & use of innovation by all employees and teams at work and in the market place. Innovation can be defined as the implementation of new created ideas for generating business value. Many times, people use the term ‘innovation’ for ‘innovation creation’. But there is a difference between the two. While innovation creation is an important aspect of innovation processes, so is the ability to search for and identify relevant external innovation, applying existing innovation to new contexts, understand and absorb unfamiliar external innovation to blend and integrate different bodies of innovation together. Thus innovation processes are much more than innovation creation Continue reading
Business Process Reengineering (BPR)
History of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) Concept In 1990, Michael Hammer, a former professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published an article in the Harvard Business Review, in which he claimed that the major challenge for managers is to obliterate non-value adding work, rather than using technology for automating it. This statement implicitly accused managers of having focused on the wrong issues, namely that technology in general, and more specifically information technology, has been used primarily for automating existing work rather than using it as an enabler for making non-value adding work obsolete. Hammer’s claim was simple: Most of the work being done does not add any value for customers, and this work should be removed, not accelerated through automation. Instead, companies should reconsider their processes in order to maximize customer value, while minimizing the consumption of resources required for delivering their product or service. Continue reading
Business Analytics – Meaning, Use and Scope
Business Analytics deals with the methodologies employed by organizations to enhance their business by making optimized decisions with the use of statistical techniques that might involve data collection and analysis. Business analytics might require many complex techniques that need advanced statistics. Applying Business Analytics, it may be possible to find how a territory or a region reacts to certain product variations or added features. This information can be very useful in devising new product line with features that are likely to maximize sales in a particular region for a set of target audiences. A proper analysis of data might also tell about things like recurring customer support issues and thereby proactive steps can be taken before it grows out of proportion. Business Analytics is often used by marketing folks in predicting and analyzing consumer behavior. This is done by applying statistical analytical techniques on historical data of customer transactions. Without Continue reading