Jeff Immelt's strategy on turning GE into Ecofriendly

We all know that  Jeff Immelt is Chairman and CEO of GE. One of  the biggest companies in the world in terms of market capitalization. GE is conglomeration of various business like energy, aviation, locomotives and financial services.

Jeff succeeded Jack Welch after Jack retirement from Chairman and CEO of GE in 2001
Jeff has developed a business model that is ecofriendly which they term as "Ecomagination®".

Ecomagination is the initiatives taken by the GE under the leadership of Jeff Immelt, for developing cleaner technologies and improve companies energy efficiency.

The main reason behind launching this model is:

• To go for "green" technologies.
• To improve the customer efficiency by delivering the at-most value of the product.
• To practice socio-economic sustainability.
• To provide innovative solutions to the present day energy challenges.

GE's five primary commitments in the business initiative are:

• To increase revenues through ecomagination products.
• Double the investment on research and development for cleaner technologies.
• Reduce green houses gases emissions.
• Reduce water use and improving the water reuse.
• Keep the public informed.

Impact of MOOC on present day univeristies

Recently we have seen changing pattern of learning by students, business practitioners and professionals, etc. This is because of introducing MOOC(Massive Open Online Course) by various universities in the world.

What is MOOC:-

• It is a online courses offered by various universities by providing their course material and sharing their intellectual property. 
• The courses contain various assessments, course material and assignments.

Before introduction of MOOC, the learning the courses is majorly from physical universities through enrollment for full time or part time and distance education. Due to this students has to spend lot of money for their undergraduate/post-graduate education and the only source of learning is by tuition or by private institutions.

Impact of MOOCs on physical universities:-

Due to introduction of MOOCs, the students community welcomed because it helps them to learn new concepts and enhancing their knowledge. For every step taken by mankind has effects which is like two sides of a coin. As for as my knowledge is concerned the following areas of learning may effect.

Some of the positive and negative points are listed down.

Positive points  

• World class knowledge: Many universities may not access to the world class resources due to intellectual property rights this makes the students from various countries and others universities to access to their material. 
• Learning pattern: Previously students are depend on the text books and videos available, but now they can access to the multiple sources for their reference.
• Popularity of the offering university: The offering university develops a special status in minds of readers, as readers will be across the globe.

Negative points

• Effect on admissions:- Due online courses and access to virtual class rooms, the students community may prefer to register in online rather than to physical universities.
• Intellectual property:- There may be chance of misuse of the intellectual property rights.
• Damage to traditional way of learning. 

Some of the famous MOOCs are listed down:-

1. MIT's OCW.
2. UDACITY.
3. COURSERA
4. EDX
5. NPTEL(Indian context)

All above points are my personal views and any suggestions & constructive feedback is always welcome.

Relevance of proverb: Jack of all trades, but master of none.

We all know the English proverb "Jack of all trades, but master of none" do we think that this is valid anymore in this present day world. As this 21st century is highly competitive and filled with advanced technological know-how.

I think it has to rephrased as "Jack of all trades, but master of one" his statement can be best suit in this world where we should be equipped with at-least one skill for employable.

I think today's world we have two perceptive's to think about, they are:

• Company's perceptive
• Individual perceptive

Company perceptive:-

The company looks for the individuals who are experts in the domain knowledge and their skills and they look for candidates who are expertise at-least in one of the their core abilities, so that we are value creators to the company.

Individual perceptive:-

As a individual we wanted to gain knowledge irrespective of the area of our interest i.e., wanted to learn about everything what we see, but this good until some point of time.

We as a individual has to develop an area of interest for creating a competitive edge over others( friends, colleagues and peers). So by building our ability on one area we can develop a niche in that area of interest. 

3 C's for a Strategic decision making

Generally for any decision making we think so much for reducing risk and unknowns in our decisions in day to day life, i wondered how companies will take decision's for achieving it's mission and vision.

In this regard Mr Kenichi Ohmae,  developed a strategic triangle for business decisions. The three elements of the triangle are:

• Customers
• Competitors
• Corporation

(Source:- The Mind of the Strategist by Kenichi Ohmae)

The success of the business is achieved by properly balancing this three elements, if any one of the element is not given sufficient priority then the strategy will go for a toss which ultimately impact the business.

• Customers:- Customers are the ultimate buyers of our products/services, which should appeal to them and the decisions should address the total market in which the company is operating. In further to that, in present day market condition every market is not homogeneous but it is heterogeneous addressing this market is very difficult.
• Competitors:-In a free and open economy, the market place is filled with lot of competitors and we should carefully address them. The strategy what we take should differentiate with the competitors product/service it may be price, packing,functionality, etc...  
• Corporation:- The strategic decisions what we make should be aligned to our business mission and vision. These decisions may be functionary inclined and should strength the corporations uniqueness.

Kellogg's failure in India

Kellogg's is world's leading breakfast cereal manufacturing company hardhearted in USA.
In 1994 Kellogg's entered Indian market with it's iconic brand Corn flakes, this brand was a strategic failure for them. why they failed??

After there intensive market analysis they understood that the traditional Indian breakfast consists of hot served food like Idly, vada, Roti  & Puri, etc but the Kellogg corn flakes should be taken with cold milk which is not preferred by Indians. So there is a mission component of customers preferences in their decision making.

As i described above that for  any strategic decision making the three C's must be taken into account for success for the decision.

Value analysis and Value engineering- A tool for cost cutting

I wondered how companies are doing cost cutting in their products to achieve a competitive edge over the competitors with absolute no compromising on the quality of the products.
In this regard, present day companies figured out a competitive tool for analysis of  the product with at-most detail, this tool is termed as "Value analysis" and "Value engineering".

Generally people tend to call Value analysis as Value engineering and vice verse.

Kenichi Ohmae describes VA and VE in his book "The mind of the strategist" as "analysis of the purchased materials or components from the point of view of price so that the results can be incorporated into planning in such areas as cost reduction and development of new products".

Value analysis/Value engineering :- It is a orderly method to increase the value of the material or component in the system by understanding it's present value and it's associated costs.

In general sense the term value can be determined as the ratio of it's functionality and cost.

VA/VE tend to improve the value by increasing the functionality of the product or decrease the cost associated with it.

Example:
Consider a product X which is charged at Rs 10 and product Y is charged at Rs 10, both are competing in the same market place and both companies are trying to increase their market share, so both companies are allocating huge budgets for marketing people to push the their respective products.

Due to increasing intense competition, the company manufacturing product X wanted to increase their market share and revenue from the product with out any additional budget, so they decide to undertake cost cutting scheme but without affecting the quality of the product.

At this times VA/VE helps to come out of this situation, by analyzing  each and every component.

First, collect the competitors product Y and product X, dismantle both the products to the smaller components . Now analyse both the components of products and you can know which component and do cost analysis for the component then you can know which component is costing more and you can try to reduce it with out compromising on the quality of it.

This how the cost cutting measures are taken by major automobiles manufacturing companies in Japan.

Power of Geometric Progression

Recently i heard an anecdote regarding the power of geometric progression, the anecdote goes like this:

There was a Sadhu(saint), who lives a normal life in the forests roaming near by villages for food and he is very knowledgeable person in all aspects and it is believed that he is the inventor of chess game.

Once he got a chance meet the king and explained the game, king got fascinated about the game as it involves the real life scenario and that to it's associated with the strategy.

King liked the game and told to sadhu that ask what ever you want i will give you, then sadhu asked i want rice, king replied that ask some thing that suits my status like gold, precious stones, etc.

Sadhu didn't change his mind and king told nodded for the sadhu request and asked hoe much rich you want then he told some conditions for fulfilling the the sadhu words, the conditions are:-

• Rice that can be filled the boxes of the chess board( 64 boxes) and 
• The number of rive grains should be double of every box succeeding it i.e., 1,2,4,8,16,32.....

At end of the day the king couldn't fulfill the sadhu gift and even he sold his entire kingdom for the fulfilling the sadhu gift because the condition that the sadhu told of the geometric progression series i.e.,

1,2,4,8,16,32,64,126,...(1,2^1,2^2,2^3,2^4,2^5,2^6,2^7,2^8....)

In another instance, Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Tipping point", he explains that when a paper is folded 50 times then the distance would as the approximate distance to the sun from the earth. That is the power of geometric progression.

Diplomatic mission extraterritoriality in country

Recently i came across some interesting facts about the diplomatic mission or embassy in the countries, where they enjoy at-most freedom from the host country.

This rules and procedures are laid down in Vienna convention on Diplomatic Relations-1961, a short summary of the convention is :-

• The convention has framed a legal document, which has 53 articles which contains defining a diplomatic, duties can be performed and relation of rules to the diplomat and embassy or mission.
• Articles 1,2, 3,4 & 5 describes defining a head of the mission, establishment of the mission or embassy, functions, agreement between the host & sending country and establishment of head of mission for more than two countries.
• Articles 14, 15 & 16 defines the classification of head of mission and assigning of diplomatic staff 
• Articles 22 defines that the entry of host country to the mission.
• Articles from 23 to 41 explains the exemptions to head of mission. diplomatic staff and agents.
• Articles 42,43 & 44 explains some of the functions of diplomats.
• Articles 45 & 46 tells what to perform in emergency times like war time, etc.

Some of exemptions to diplomats and mission/embassy from the host country is:-

• Tax exemptions and custom duty exemptions to diplomats.
• No civil or criminal cases against the diplomats.
• No interference in communication between diplomat and the home country.
• Immune to local laws and legal procedures.

Diplomatic Bag:- A bag or pouch usually carried by the diplomats for carrying confidential information from host country to their home country and it is exempted from checking by police, custom officials and this cannot be scanned through x-rays. scanners. This may a small bay, suit case , etc...

Diplomatic courier:- A person carrying the diplomatic bag and person enjoys exemption from scrutiny by the security people and there are given diplomatic immunity.

• Embassy or mission is the only place in the country that the host country laws are not implemented.