Big Company Lessons for Small Businesses

Most small businesses think that big companies have limitless resources and tons of money, and accordingly can do whatever they want. At the same time, most large companies think that all small ones are entrepreneurial, acting quickly, and bursting with creativity. Neither of these common beliefs is true. Most big companies do not throw a lot of resources at every project, and most small companies tend to become stagnant when they are through with their initial, entrepreneurial stage.

       Small businesses have important competitive advantages. When founders are leading the company, they do so with an authentic passion to deliver on a vision. It's their life. They know their business and customers better than anyone else, and this knowledge can be hugely leveraged with the right operational practices. A large company may have more money for research, but the leader of a small company almost always has more direct interaction with their customers. I am a huge believer that customer-driven strategies win over the long run.

1st World SME Conference in Delhi

This is a good news for Small and Medium Enterprises in Indian demography that we can listen some news about them. Nothing to say about that they contribute about 70% of GDP and 80% of workforce. But I was feeling that they didn't get the plateform for which they deserved. 

Now-a-days lots of event happening whether it is from the banks like ICICI, college or the government. In the same track there is a big conference held in Delhi where we dicussed many issues to uplift our SMEs.....

Click on the link to take a look.........thanks

LICENSE TO INNOVATE

FOR BUDDING ENTREPRENEURS, VENTURING INTO UNEXPLORED TERRITORIES BY DEFYING TRADITIONAL NORMS IS A DAUNTING TASK. YASMIN TAJ MEETS THREE SUCH RISK-TAKERS WHO HAVE EMERGED VICTORIOUS AFTER STEPPING INTO UNTAPPED DOMAINS, THUS PAVING THE WAY FOR MANY TO FOLLOW

--- The Economic Times

Linking employee benefits to talent management

Most companies treat benefits as a cost of doing business. They should see them instead as a competitive weapon.
A few companies, however, are changing the game. Emerging best practices are reducing the cost of benefits by 10 to 20 percent a year, keeping employee satisfaction steady—or better—and linking these expenditures more tightly to corporate objectives, particularly investments in talent to gain competitive advantage. Such investments are increasingly important to the profitable growth of the world’s most successful companies: from 1995 to 2005, profits per employee jumped to $83,000, from $35,000, and the number of employees more than doubled.1 Benefits represent a major part of that outlay: US companies spend more than $2 trillion on them each year, but though the cost of health care in particular is on the rise, companies aren’t scrutinizing benefits as closely as they do other investments

Upgrading talent

Downturns place companies’ talent strategies at risk. As deteriorating performance forces increasingly aggressive head count reductions, it’s easy to lose valuable contributors inadvertently, damage morale or the company’s external reputation among potential employees, or drop the ball on important training and staff-development programs. But there is a better way. By emphasizing talent in cost-cutting efforts, employers can intelligently strengthen the value proposition they offer current and potential employees and position themselves strongly for growth when economic

Positioning the Possibilities

People who have advanced degrees are everywhere. Anyone who has spent time recruiting knows that a master’s degree or PhD does not bestow any level of common sense or intelligence. Despite what schools would like us to believe, the degree, by itself, will not get you a job if you haven’t found another way to convince the company of your potential. Instead, you have to dig into your experience and come up with the stories that will get a hiring manager to think

Revamp management education

It is nobody’s case that management institutes should stop listening to the needs and wants of industry. But they cannot afford to be perceived as placement agencies rather than educational institutes, says Vasant V Bang.

EVEN before the current financial meltdown, scholars from within the management education fraternity had questioned the ways of management schools. Henry Mintzberg wrote a book titled Managers, not MBAs. Last year Harvard professors Rakesh Khurana and Jim Heskette wrote about deprofessionalisation of management education. Joan Magretta a former editor of Harvard Business Review wrote: “Leading business schools certainly played a role in legitimising the culture of easy money in 1990s. The pitch business schools made to the students in the late nineties was: you shall need connections. We have got them.”

The Brand Called Me

Is branding oneself a positive approach that employees should have? Personal branding is not all about selfpromotion and marketing tactics; it is more fundamental than that. It is a clear, deep, and profound understanding of who you are and what you stand for. “Every organisation should believe in playing with the strengths of the individual. The employees who can brand and market themselves well carry an image that gets associated with not only their brand name but also the organisation’s. Self-branding always helps.

The Business Partner Model: past & future perspectives

The informal business partner model has existed for well over 100 years when effective staff support functions, including HR, contributed to business results. Formalizing how HR professionals create more value as “business partners” has been of increased interest in the last 10-15 years. Given the emerging importance of HR as a contributor to business success, we suggest that it might be useful to pause and reflect on what we have learned in the past decade about the relevance of the business partner model and on the challenges that lie ahead.

More from Dave Ulrich

Awakening entrepreneurial spirit

An 18 day train journey to meet with business and social entrepreneurs who are changing India

Tata Jagriti Yatra '08 (December 24th 2008 - January 11th, 2009) is an annual train journey that will take 350 of India's highly motivated youth (with some participation of international students) between the ages of 18-25 on a eighteen day national odyssey, introducing them to unsung heroes of India. The aim is to awaken the spirit of entrepreneurship - both social and economic - within India's youth by exposing them to individuals and institutions that are developing unique solutions to India's challenges. Through this national event we will inspire them to lead and develop institutions nationally and within their communities. This event is conducted in 13 locations across India.

A to Z for Global Meldown

Dear Friends,
I got this wonderful link for the given subject. As we know we are about to launch our professional career. In the process we will challenge many tools for screaning in an interview as like Group Discussion.
If we would be able to give something more than the selection board's expectations, it can be a strong reason for our selection. It is difficult to accept but we know that the general mindset of industry people--HR students have a less exposure in Finance World.
So to break this myth for us, we should be very handy for finacial and economical trends. Do visit to this link which will be very beneficial to all of us.

http://www.rediff.com/money/lehman.html

Global meltdown to affect MBA placements

With the global financial crisis hitting several sectors, top management institutes are worried it will adversely affect the job prospects of their students, who are expecting a drop in the number of offers and the level of pay packages. Several top notch companies have already conveyed their intention to freeze campus placements, while some have decided to hire a limited number of candidates in the final placements.

Management institutes like the IITs fear the hike in average pay packages could reduce by 20 per cent, whereas students are apprehensive of a more severe downturn.

"The market meltdown will definitely affect the final campus placements with indications that companies would squeeze their requirements to a bare minimum. Companies, which had recruited five-six students during the last campus placements, may now restrict the number to one or two," Prof Sourav Mukherjee, placement chairman, IIM-Bangalore, said.


Pay packages for fresh students may not be as attractive this time. For the last five years, the increase in annual package offered to fresh graduates used to be in the range of 20-30 per cent, but now it could be in the range of 10 per cent, with average salary being Rs 14,00,000," said Prof Sushil Kumar, placements chairman, IIM-Lucknow

Read More.......

Retrenchment shadow falls on HR personnel

With most companies either retrenching or freezing recruitment plans, human resources personnel across sectors are a worried lot.
Recruitment-related HR executives are being moved to other HR functions like training and development and other day-to-day HR functions, or being taken on contract. If things worsen, there could also be layoffs.

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TO START OR NOT TO START?

A downturn is both a good and a bad time for entrepreneurs. It throws up numerous opportunities but also seperates the wheat from the chaff.

STARTING a business may not be the most important thing on the minds of salaried professionals worried by future layoffs by cost-conscious employers in a downturn. But for those wanting to turn entrepreneurs for some time, this could actually be the right opportunity to jump right in—with the right kind of business models. While starting a new business in these difficult times, one needs to understand that people are spending less, and more carefully too. “A smart entrepreneur will look at opportunities that didn’t exist till now. Whenever there is a mess, there is an opportunity to think out-of-the-box,” says Saurabh Srivastava, founding member of the Indian Angel Network.

Innovation In designing the Office of Today

What if you step into your office building, one fine day and find out that the entire appearance of the office has undergone a major makeover? You find that all the glass cubicles have been dismantled to create more open space and you now share your workstation with your CEO! Your canteen has a LAN connection and you are encouraged to work using your laptop, sipping cappuccino, while being seated cozily on a beanbag. Your boss encourages you to have your weekly brainstorming sessions at the office recreational centre, while working out on the treadmill. Your new office is swanky, contemporary and stylish!

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