Earlier this year, Tata Motors announced a new brand identity. ‘Connecting Aspirations’. Sounds good, but how well is the company truly connecting aspirations? For many years now, I have wondered why Tata Motors isn’t among the top 2 selling passenger cars in India. Despite being, what I believe, is a company and group that represents…
Along their entrepreneurial journey, some entrepreneurs constantly think of better and simpler ways to describe their business. This is an evolutionary process, as their business model undergoes refinement. So, when they meet new people or investors, they can often quickly describe what their startup exactly does. Then of course, there are others, who build their…
What the Customer Wants There has been the occasional debate between two schools of thought: You need to ask the customer what he/she wants; and, The customer doesn’t know what he/she wants until we show them (remember ol Steve Jobs?) A bulk of the views I’ve come across so far lie on the side of…
Image: source A Design Question: Turn Indicators on Cars As cars get sleeker, so do its lights. But I’ve noticed that the entire rear light cluster has been shrinking in size on some cars. And in some, the turn indicators are designed or placed in a way that possibly defeats its purpose. A car’s rear…
Ryan International school – Are CCTVs the Best Solution? 5 min. read. When faced with a problem, ideally, we should get to the source of the problem first. Only then can we attempt to solve it. But of course, we all know that! And yet, almost always, we will first react to a problem by…
Fierce Competition A lot of companies face problems from time to time. Let’s focus on problems that are controllable, i.e., outside of those to do with a declining economy, financial meltdowns, etc. In such situations, many business leaders have had to address shareholder concerns. And many of them justify the situation as ‘witnessing fierce competition’,…
Design Thinking: What a Patient Wants Design Thinking is a relatively new concept in many countries including India. It is, however, already some decades old now. And having been practicing it for a few years now, I often get asked what it is about. And for examples of its applications. For starters, design thinking is…
The Earning of Trust. I recently subscribed to NewsLaundry. It is a very young but self-proclaimed “media critique, news and current affairs portal”. It claims to operate on the obvious but often forgotten premise that news should be for the masses. And not for advertisers, or to distort reality for the masses. Current times are seeing…
Choose your mistakes. Life has made a lot of things extremely easy to start. Even the seemingly most impossible of tasks. The knowledge and resources available to us increase our confidence multi-fold, and daunting initiatives don’t look so big anymore. So yes, starting anything is damn easy. What’s the tough part? The toughest bit of it all, is to…
Form or Function? How about Form and Function? The eternal fight between form and function. Between show and effectiveness. Between being followed by a herd with questionable loyalty, and walking with a small group with unwavering conviction in your vision. Here’s a fancy looking video by HBX, Harvard‘s online programs platform. Professor Christensen undoubtedly sounds like…