Category Archives: Business

Jerry Seinfeld never made a sitcom after the immensely successful Seinfeld. It is only imaginable the kind of offers he must be getting from network executives to make something. The reason being he had already made his masterpiece. He very well knows that whatever he makes next is not going to be as good as Seinfeld and it will be in comparison, no matter how successful it is, sub par.

Another television personality I adore is Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin, in my opinion, had a masterpiece in The West Wing. He followed that by shows like Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and The Newsroom, but none came close to getting the acclaim he earned for The West Wing. Both these shows were great in their own ways, but their problem was that they were following Sorkin’s masterpiece.

Masterpiece is a dream and a curse. Everyone, be it an artist or an entrepreneur, wants that masterpiece in a lifetime. It brings with itself all you want for which you burn that midnight oil, put your more than 100%. You got to earn it and it’s not easy. But once you have it, it instantly becomes a curse. The act that follows the masterpiece is the hardest. You set the bar way above anything that is normal by any standards and to meet it is as rare as it gets.

The best thing to do is to accept it and move on to do something completely different. John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates have done the same and they went on to have (or are going to have) a new masterpiece stroke in their second innings which will be incomparable to their masterpiece in their first act.

I happened to walk into a Cold Stone Creamery outlet on the 72nd Street last week. It was around 8 pm, there was one person managing the store, not a single customer in a relatively big store. We hanged around there for about 15 minute and no one entered the store. Interestingly, on our way back we passed through about 5 yogurt places all pretty packed.

This brings up an interesting point. Why did a major ice cream parlor chain with more than 1000 stores nationwide missed the boat to serve customers what they wanted to eat? How did the yogurt parlors manage to steal their customers? For that matter, the same question is valid on lot of other industries. Apple killed the Walkman maker Sony with iPod. Amazon did it to Barnes & Noble. The list can go pretty long where an incumbent leader is brought down by new upstarts.

There are a few reasons for this. One of the key reasons is complacency. Companies are on the path of downward spiral when they start thinking they are invincible. Another reason is legacy. It is so hard for companies with all the extra fat and years of legacy to be nimble. Then there is always that fear of cannibalization. Companies don’t want to shift their attention or take any kind of risk that might cannibalize their money generating business. And to top it all up, there is denial. Something that is far too evident is not visible because companies are stuck in the state of denial.

The core way to tackle this is by understanding what is important for your customers. Understand what they want in your industry, why they need it and how can you provide it. Be nimble and quick in transforming yourself to meet the needs of customers. Don’t be scared to nudge your existing business. You got to understand that you cannibalizing your own business is so much better than someone else doing it. Way too often you won’t be at the forefront of innovation and transformation, some other company with a fresh mindset will be ahead of you. In that case, just shed the extra weight and follow your customers as fast as you can.

The biggest sign of over confidence is to think and believe that you are invincible, and it is well-known that the road to downfall starts at the home of over confidence.

Sport stars play a good case study when it comes to the topic of invincibility. History books are full of sportsmen who were once upon a time big stars in their fields but were displaced from their place of authority by new faces way before they have used their full potential because they were lost in the belief of being invincible.

Same is true in the field of business and product development. Products become obsolete as soon as the developers start believing that their creation is invincible. You got to be on top of where your industry is going. You got to have a vision of what your customers will embrace next, because if you don’t there is someone out there doing exactly that while you are swimming in the pool of invincibility.

So who is invincible? The one who keeps re-innovating, changing, adapting and getting better. The one who continuously focuses on what’s next.

Note: The article was published in Deccan Herald by Kusum Kanojia on April 25, 2013. It features findings from a category research done by MavenMagnet.

Tea lovers and the health conscious it appears, have finally acknowledged and woken up to the goodness of green tea. A research conducted by MavenMagnet concluded that Indians love green tea today more than ever.

The result was based on an analysis of over 9000 conversations from the social media space in the past one year. And, it came out that 78 per cent Indians have a positive take on green tea with the Southern region topping the list. The flavours, however, vary on the basis of region.

Ice cool it, brew it with fruits or serve it piping hot – green tea emerges a winner. Best enjoyed without milk and sugar, green tea does wonders even when simply brewed in boiling water. For those who are not so calorie conscious, a small dollop of cream should do.

Tata Global Beverages, which analysed the research, informs that north Indians relish and rely on green tea with lemonade while amla ginger tea works best in searing summer of the Southern region. The Eastrners enjoy mango flavored green tea while central India beats the heat with jaljeera flavored green tea. As for the West, it experiences green tea with aloe vera flavor.

Green tea leaves undergo minimal oxidation process. The antioxidants, therefore, in green tea prevent damage to healthy cells and tissues caused by harmful UV rays.

Dr Karuna Malhotra, a homeopath physician, says: “Oligomeric proanthocyanidins is one of the most powerful antioxidants found in nature and the high levels of the same are present in green tea. It helps in slowing down the premature ageing process thus leaving your skin youthful.”

“It also reduces blood fat while detoxifying the body and suppressing untimely food cravings,” she adds.

The flavors preferred work best as per the weather conditions of these regions. Living in the hot plains of the north India is no less than a challenge given the extreme weather conditions. With this, come problems like heat strokes, nausea and acute dehydration.

While colas provide temporary relief from the heat they are high on unhealthy acids sugar content that do more harm than good. Green tea comes as a relief as it contains antioxidants that help in coping dehydration better.

The south essentially experiences a tropical climate . The hot and humid climate makes one sweat, lowering down the water content in body. Amla tea is good for summer season as amla berries are a natural source of Vitamin C, which helps in building immunity system and improves resistance of the body.

Summer in central India is hot, dry, and windy where temperatures easily touch above 40 degrees and plus. The cooling properties of green tea with jaljeera flavor work great against the temperature of the region.

East India blends the benefits of unripe mangoes with the goodness of green tea. Mangoes with green tea extract help in replenishing essential body nutrients and salts along with improving body’s metabolic rate.

Vikram Grover, Vice President (Marketing), Tata Global Beverages, says: “This survey helps us in understanding that green tea has been positively spoken about and people are adopting the habit of drinking it for wellness purpose. It means it is no longer viewed as a lifestyle beverage. So when you have an interesting blend of health and taste, there’s no excuse.”

Identity is something that defines you. It’s what you stand for and what people expect from you. It is important for everyone to create an identity and be true to it. The same holds true for a business.

Why is it that important to have an identity? The reason is quite simple. You cannot be everything for everyone. You need to define your niche. The one thing you are great at doing. The one thing you do better than everyone else.

Take entertainment industry for example. Most successful individuals as well as businesses in this industry have an identity. Aaron Sorkin, the guy behind TV shows like The West Wing and The Newsroom, has an identity. His shows focus on the what goes behind the scene, whether it’s how the people behind the President runs a country (The West Wing), or how a great anchor does news (The Newsroom), or how a live sketch comedy show is put together in a week (Studio 60 at the Sunset Strip). He is great at it and has stuck to the same pattern even when doing movies like Moneyball (how a perfect baseball team was put together with limited resources) and the Social Network (what went behind creating the biggest online social network).

Same is true for successful businesses. Disney has an identity of being the perfect place for wholesome family entertainment which ranges from a dozen TV channels to movies to theme parks. They are always true to it and you as a consumer have perfect sense of what to expect from them.

It all seems to simple and straightforward. You find your niche, understand what you are good at and stick to it. So why does everyone not have a strong identity? There are a couple of reasons for that. First is greed. You think you can do everything and can be the best at everything. This is rarely true and leads to losing the identity. Second is lack of focus. It is hard to be really good at one thing and build an identity.You got to have good focus and stick to that one thing. It takes time and effort at building the identity and many people get lost in between.

We at MavenMagnet have defined an identity and are true to it. We do market research leveraging the power of online conversation and are great at it, better than everyone else.

While you build and market a product, it is important to decide (at least to start with) if you want to make a product with functional expertise or industry expertise. There is no wrong approach, but at the same time there are trade-offs in both of them. In order to define it, consider an analogy in terms of depth and breadth. How deep you go or the depth you cover, defines how much expertise you are building in your product for a particular industry. How much wide you expand or how much breadth you cover, defines how many industries have application for your product.

Functional expertise is what we can define as a mile wide and an inch deep. A product that is great at doing one particular thing or solving one particular problem and is applicable to solve the same problem in multiple industries. When you go for this approach, the goal is to do one thing, but do it better than anyone else. You should have the core platform that is solid enough to add a different skin and be applicable in another industry. The upside for the approach is that you have scope to expand your reach to multiple industries. Your product can be the standard product of choice for solving that particular problem in any industry that faces the problem. Downside being you are not expert in any one industry and your customer might be more comfortable dealing with a product suite that solves many other problems for them along with the one you are addressing.

Industry expertise is something that can be defined as an inch wide and a mile deep. You develop a product for a particular industry but that product (or family of products) address many issues in one industry. When you go for this approach, the goal is to become integral part of this industry. Your product should be the best there can be to solve the problems in this particular industry. The upside is while you market the product, you are building strong relationship with one particular industry. If you do it right, you build trust with your customer in that particular industry. The downside for the approach is you are dependent on the one particular industry. Your success and failure would have direct correlation with the kind of reception your product receives in this industry.

When you start building the product, you are working at dimensions of an inch wide and an inch deep, or in other words, you are solving one particular problem in one particular industry. The way to expand is to contemplate if you love that particular industry or that particular product. Do you find scope and expertise to do a lot more in that particular industry or do you see application for your product to be applied to multiple industries? It is very lucrative to go for a mile deep and a mile wide, but more often than not, it is wiser to pick an inch in either one of the two dimensions!

Last week temperature in New York was at least 7-10 points sub 32 degree Fahrenheit. End of the week it was 32, and it felt really good (on the warmer side).  On the other hand, in my home town of Indore in India, the temperature was in late 40s for the week and came down to 30s end of week and my parents felt it was really bad (on the colder side). This brings up the point that everything around us is in fact relative to something else.

We experience it everyday at work. The quality of work being good or bad doesn’t mean anything. It is either better than someone else’s work or worse. The cost is more often than not either cheaper than the alternatives or more expensive. The company performance is either better than the same quarter last year or worse.

Same is true when you look at your brand in your industry. When doing research on your brand, you have to consider what kind of perception your consumers have about your brand as compared to the competition. In technical terms, we call this benchmarking. The basic idea of benchmarking is setting the foundation for relativity.

While almost always an absolute analysis of your brand is required and is immensely valuable, the relative analysis helps you prioritize your resources, fix the areas where you are most vulnerable to the competition as well as publicize and exploit the areas where you have competitive advantage in the industry.