Tag Archives: Management

Insight Storm: Dia Mirza shares her Insights & Story

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AIMA and Storm the Norm co-created ‘Insight Storm’ – a novel format to generate sharp insights delivered powerfully. The Inaugural InsightStorm was organized on 10th August 2016 at Hotel Taj Lands End, Mumbai. This edition of InsightStorm paired up thought leaders from two diverse fields – Art and Business and in a 30-minute session, they shared three pre-created insights around a theme, followed it up with a ‘collision dialogue’ and ended with one fresh insight each.

Below are the 3 key insights and stories shared by Ms Dia Mirza, Model, Actor, Producer and Social Activist at Insight Storm.

Dia Mirza addressing the Insight Storm 2016

Dia Mirza addressing the Insight Storm 2016

Insight: Every individual is positive social change waiting to happen. Awareness plus Communication equals thoughts translating into action, simple Maths.

I was 18 years old when I won a beauty pageant and it made me a household name overnight in India and amongst many opportunities that came my way at the time, some of the opportunities made a huge impact on the way I perceive my own life and this incredible opportunity that had come my way. I was approached by the government of Andhra Pradesh to spread awareness on HIV and AIDS and we worked actively on that campaign for a year and statistics showed results and that made a big difference in the way I perceived the opportunity that had come along. I think in our early years when we are growing up, through our school education, there are many models and systems that encourage us to become participators, social participators to make a difference in people’s lives. I think as children we receive the gratitude that we get through that experience but as we grow older and start chasing life’s ambitions and wanting to do more with ourselves to make money, to grow, to become more successful we sometimes forget the gratitude that we’ve received in making a difference and I think it was somewhere in 2003 or 2004, many years after I had continued to participate in many social initiatives that I discovered that I could combine what I do with what it makes me feel. So the pursuit of opportunity did not necessarily have to be one that only correlated to the ambition to do better in life materially but also to make a difference alongside. And that was life changing for me because I haven’t looked back at a single day when I haven’t felt like my existence is not entirely insignificant and that this great opportunity life has given me in expanding my access to people to make a change and use all of it that I do through my everyday work which is whether it is making films or acting in films or anything else that I do, combine that with the social change that I would like to make and seek to make. And it’s been my key to happiness. I have made money along the way but more than that I have earned a lot of gratitude and that’s my key to happiness and I think everybody is seeking happiness eventually so yeah.

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42nd National Management Convention: Disruptive Innovation

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Excerpt from an insightful speech by D Shivakumar, Chairman & CEO – India Region, PepsiCo India Holdings Pvt Ltd at AIMA’s 42nd National Management Convention held on 30th September – 1st October 2015 at Hotel Taj Palace, New Delhi. The theme for this session was “Disruptive Innovation: Winning By Changing The Rules”.

“Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It’s always a pleasure to come for an AIMA National Management Convention. My experience of disruptive innovation is from my own career, working in Hindustan lever when we tried to make accessible and affordable categories like shampoo, face cream, detergent, baby care products etc, for the bottom of the pyramid. Then in Nokia, we made technology which was completely new to the world and accessible in a country like India, we went from something like 80 million subscribers to 900 million subscribers. That was the fundamental shift and now on the new journey of health and wellness platform. So what is disruptive innovation? What examples have we seen over the last decade of disruptive innovation and what we’ll see in the future?

D Shivakumar, Chairman & CEO - PepsiCo India addressing AIMA's 42nd NMC

D Shivakumar, Chairman & CEO – PepsiCo India addressing AIMA’s 42nd NMC

Disruptive Innovation is about creating new value! You can create new value through new price point, new quality point, a time dimension, so fundamentally creating new value in any market is a disruptive innovation. You create new market itself. Mobile phones created a new market; tablets are creating a new market, a market which did not exist before. Suddenly you bring something which is a new to the market. Most of the disruptive innovation is led by technology that’s what we have seen and when new entrants come into the market, they do not have old cost. The old costs of legacy players are completely disrupted by these new people with new business models. We have seen this in steel and every other industry. New players tend to have cost structure which is significantly lower and hence their business models are different. Then in the technology world, we see the concept of freemium, everything goes free but they make money somewhere else. So what do you do? How do you compete with something which is free? That is the disruptive innovation.

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Courage in Uncertainty – Sachin Pilot, Minister of State(I/C) for Corporate Affairs

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Sachin Pilot, Minister of State(I/C) for Corporate Affairs

The topic given to me this morning is ‘Courage in uncertainty’. Well, I think we should have courage in the most certain times. I will just spend a couple of minutes talking about what’s happening generally and I am sure you heard other speakers yesterday and you will hear more this morning and this afternoon.

All of you know, exactly, where the art way in terms of our economy, where is India’s position, what needs to be done and I am sure you all are brimming the ideas on how best to fix the situation at hand. When I say ‘fixing it’, I say this with the sense of reality that today we are growing at between 4-5%, perhaps .5% +/-. But generally speaking, the last 18months have been a slower growth than expected. Again, the key word is ‘expected’. If the US economy grows at 1%, the base is so large that it’s a phenomenal growth for them. The European economies are struggling to get positive growth. However, when India grows at 8-8.5%, it’s expected to grow at 8-8.5%. The potential for the economy is perhaps more than that. Where does the word potential come from? It’s the expectations from the people of this country and the global community because we have the talent force; we have the engines, the capacities to absorb that kind of growth, the consumptive capacity, the productive capacity. So, when India grows at 4-5%, everybody, all the rating agencies, the World Bank, all the pink press, the entire world says it’s not good enough. Sure, not good enough. But what needs to be done to fix this growth of the GDP and the forward momentum, is what we have to take into account. The first thing we have done as a government from the last 6months or so, is to reduce the current account deficit. And I think the finance minister has done a great job in pulling back the current account deficit to the target that he set for us, as 4.8%. Also, I think, we have done a little bit better than the 4.8% target that we set out for ourselves. Continue reading →

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Brand Mnemonics – Mr. D Shivakumar, President AIMA & Sr. Vice President – IMEA, Nokia

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Mr. D Shivakumar, President AIMA & Sr. Vice President – IMEA, Nokia

Brands have different types of mnemonics. Some have audio or sound mnemonics, some have color mnemonics, some have logos and some have a combination of audio, color, and logo.

An example of a mnemonic is the Amul  Girl, is the Mercedes and BMW symbols, and is the red color of Coca cola and the blue shade of IBM.

Mnemonics have been around for years and were useful in differentiating and adding an experience layer to brands. The origin of branding was in marking a product/commodity and then adding a symbol or picture to it. The symbol or picture was very important in the early days of branding because the vast population was illiterate and there was little media except posters. So the ability to put up a symbol on a poster led to the early mnemonics. Continue reading →

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Managing post-appraisal meltdown

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In a recent survey of HR professionals by All India Management Association (AIMA), 70 per cent of the respondents said that they expected annual performance appraisals to cause employee attrition. Also, the survey revealed that neither the appraiser nor the subject were completely happy with the appraisal process.  Still, there is no stopping the annual performance appraisals.

The appraisal season is almost over and employees have been handed out their rewards and retributions. In a few weeks, the emotions will subside, new equations among colleagues will become routine and teams will settle down after promotions, transfers, exits and replacements. However, the HR managers and department heads will have a torrid time till then. They will have to play confidants and counsellors, even shrinks, to the unhappy majority. Also, the appraisal outcomes will add fresh fuel to the debate about the utility of annual appraisals and the legitimacy of the appraisal processes. Continue reading →

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Women making it big in extreme sports

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Skydiving is known as an extreme sport and we enjoy it to the max. I remember one journalist who was literally dying to ask me: Are you normal? To him and all others who wanted me to comment on why women are getting into this bizarre phenomenon of adventurous extreme sport , I want to say “Take Wings my friends and fly and you will discover the magic called life.”

The lady who is No. 1 in competitive skydiving is almost 50 years old and there’s nobody to take away her number one spot in competitive skydiving. In skydiving, like is relevant in every other field, one has to take that first step, that first plunge into thin air, the first step to do something.  That’s when you find yourself sooner than later that you are really being reckoned in an elite group of path breakers like how I am standing out here in front of you. I have had a very short journey. I started skydiving in 2009. But October 8th 2011 was a big day for us because on the 79th anniversary of Indian Air Force we were launched as the first ever official women skydiving team of the Indian Air Force.

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Brand Leadership in Volatile Times – K. Ramakrishnan, President Marketing, Cafe Coffee Day

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“Someone once said, that coffee is a serious man’s drink.”

We, at Café Coffee Day believe that the café culture is inherent and so is the need for people to connect. We saw the opportunity to humanise the affair and that’s why we went ahead and added a smile to it. Talking about challenging conventional methods, we often hear people stating, “I have 25 years of experience”.

One needs to understand that what matters more is wisdom and not the number of years, unless things are done differently.

Talking about challenging conventional methods, Social Media has been a great revolution and we as a brand have adopted it in a big way. It has been the cause, catalyst and outcome of challenging convention. The core of this medium is that it catalyzes change and that’s the first step in challenging convention!

We believe that simplicity is of utmost importance and it is critical to ignore the noise around you. Further, it’s not necessary to re-invent the wheel all the time.

I would like to share some examples from our own experience back in 1996, when Café Coffee Day started its first CCD in Bangalore. People, at that time couldn’t imagine paying more than 3 rupees for a cup of coffee. When we launched, we started with a cup of coffee for 25 rupees and with the concept of providing cyber cafes where people can manage to carry on their work using free Internet while enjoying a cup of coffee.

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