India's Ranking in Global Competitiveness Index 2012-2013

Recently i read a report "The Global Competitiveness Report 2012-2013", which is published by World Economic Forum in which it gives details about the impact of competitiveness on the economic factors and  factors relating to level of productivity .

What is Competitiveness?

"Competitiveness is a set of institutions, policies and factors that determine the level of productivity of a country."

(Source:The Global competitiveness report 2012-2013)

The report has identified twelve factors under which the global competitiveness index is based upon and the report clearly explains how these factors influence the economic condition of the country.

The factors are:-

1. Institutions
2. Infrastructure
3. Macroeconomic environment
4. Health and primary education
5. Higher education and training
6. Goods market efficiency
7. Labour market efficiency
8. Financial market efficiency
9. Technological readiness
10. Market size
11. Business sophistication.
12. Innovation.

When we take Indian context, the facts are given below:-

• India ranks 59th out of 144 countries.
• India is in last position with respect to BRICS countries.
• India is behind Thailand, Indonesia, Republic of Korea, China, Japan in Asian Countries.

Some of the findings that they have reported with respect to Indian context is:

• India lacks in basic infrastructure and in technological aspects.
• No proper transport system and energy infrastructure.
• Indian is in 101th rank in health care and in education.
• India is in 99th position in Macroeconomic environment and 106th in politics.
• India has a well sophisticated financial markets and regulations.

My understandings from this report is:-

• India has to develop infrastructure in both transport and in energy this can be done by PPP model.
• India has to improve quality of the education and should totally revamp it's existing model and this can be achieved by utilizing present day technology.
• India has to improve in health care.

Link for the Global competitiveness report 2012-2013

venkat.....

Learning from the book "The Game Changer" by A.G.Lafley and Ram Charan

Recently i completed studying an interesting book named "The Game Changer: How every leader can drive everyday innovation" by A.G.Lafley and Ram Charan.

About authors:
A.G.Lafley: CEO of P&G(Procter and Gamble)
Ram Charan: A well known author and business consultant.

About the book:
It was a good book to be read by every MBA student, which explains how Innovation important to a organization to sustain in the market. The book also explains about how innovation is key in companies like Lego, DuPont, Toyota, GE and Honeywell.

The book reveals the penetration of innovation in P&G work culture and also it tells how it impacted the company.

A.G.Lafley is instrumental in bringing innovation into the company and transformed P&G, a world class leader in FMCG sector.

Takeaways from the book:

• Importance of innovation to the company
• Work culture of companies like:- P&G, DuPont, Honeywell and GE
• Business models of the companies.
• Strategy formulation and execution.
• Thinking out of the box.
• Leadership attributes.
• Managing people.

At end the book a chapter is dedicated for the  leadership qualities of Jeff R. Immelt, CEO of GE.

Note: I strongly recommend this book to your personal library....

Hansei(Self reflection)- A tool for self improvement

We all know that Toyota is know for it's quality products and we also aware of TPS(Toyota Production System), an unique production methods keeping quality as a motive and to deliver at-most value to the customer.

In TPS, we are all aware of 5s and lean technique which made a TPS a powerful tool for a manufacturing industry.One important thing which we didn't know about its powerful tool is:

Hansei, a Japanese word which means Self Reflection.

Toyota always looks for continuous improvements in its products, in this regard Toyota  learns from its past .

Toyota strictly follows this Hansei, by which they understand 

• why a product failed?
• How it failed?
• Reasons for failure.
• Expected and real outcomes of taking that project.
• What would be the possible steps to be taken to overcome this type of failure in future projects.

One example to showcase that Toyota learnt from incidents(Hansei in practice):-

Toyopet Crown, a 1950's Sedan had been a hit in  Japan, so Toyota was eager to grab an opportunity in the United States and shipped off the Toyopet Crown  to United States and debuted in California in 1956 but it failed to impress Americans and ultimately Crown was a flop and it was a major blow to Toyota.

From this incident, Toyota did not return for 8 year and during this period Toyota learnt:-

• About American customers.
• Customers lifestyle, culture.
• They also understood unmet demands for the cars. 

After a gap of 8 years, Toyota launched Corona in 1965, which boosted the sales and showcased their ability in automobile industry in USA. 

So in everyone's life we should learn from our past and should analyze 

• why it happened? 
• how it happened? 
• what made to happen this event and in future 
• what precautions to be taken for overcoming this?