TEN SUPER STARS OR ONE SUPER TEAM? DECIDE!

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There is more IPL action happening on the front pages of newspapers than the sports pages. The controversies, the money spent on buying “super players”, $2.75 million on Kieron Pollard, $1.3 million on Shane Bond, got me intrigued. Does stacking your team with the best players guarantee success?

The myth of the Lone ranger
Personal leadership is the most studied, researched topic in American life. However romantic the idea of a larger than life individual working alone and accomplishing great things may sound, the fact remains – seldom can success be attributed to one individual. Most of the times, it’s not great men or great women, but great groups that have been responsible for
success.

MARKETING BY THE MOB - THE POWER OF “YOU”!

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“Team sunegi, duniya dekhegi;” it’s your chance to tell Mumbai Indians how to play. And if that’s not enough, then for a cricket crazy nation there is more. You can help Kolkata Knight Riders by actually coaching them, for this time, Shahrukh is asking for your suggestions & making you a coach of his team. “Main bhi coach,” sums up the Indian mentality where everybody sitting in front of their TV sets knows the exact “winning mantra” for each match. This time, a lot of IPL teams are asking you, and rewarding you too for your suggestions. Why?

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT 100

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It’s a special issue that we hold in our hands today and hence a time to celebrate, and celebrate we will. For as someone said, “Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey.” It’s been an amazing journey for 4Ps B&M. It stared as a dream, an idea, and over the years was nurtured and made grandiose by A. Sandeep, the most witty, dynamic and intelligent Editor of the magazine. He was, is and will be the backbone of this magazine. It’s geniuses like him and Sutanu Guru, Steven and Aditi who have made this magazine so popular and revered! 100 is after all a very special number and our 100th issue very special too. It symbolises commitment, consistency and great quality and trust which our readers have put in the magazine.

“Trust” is the keyword and various instances in the recent past have once again proved that this is the most important factor. No one has realised this more than Toyota. In February 2010, Toyota recalled hundreds of thousands of its cars from America and Japan due to faulty brakes resulting in huge losses. According to a survey, Toyota previously had a flawless reputation, with nearly 92% respondents trusting the brand almost blindly. Post the recall issue, only 66% consumers consider it reliable. In fact, in USA, about 26% judged Toyota to be of a lower quality than domestic brands. In this world of cut-throat competition, this is not good as competitors don’t miss a chance to beat you down... which is exactly what Ford did. It’s the only American car company to have survived the steepest sales downturn in decades – that too without a government bailout. When it comes to winning new customers and their trust and admiration, Ford has taken the lead and its showing in their balance sheets too. In 2009, Ford actually made profits – for the first time after fi ve years and thanks to the once-in-a-lifetime “golden” opportunity provided by Toyota. Ford now says there’ll be no “brakes” on its profitability even in 2010.

It is trust that has made Apple top the charts, third year in a row as “the world’s most admired company.” Apple generates a hysteria around its products. This year, its sales are generating the same hysteria. Just three years old, in the smart phone category and the iPhone has already become the world’s third largest smart phone maker. Apple doubled its iPhone sales last year to 25 million. It is trust built over the years by Disney due to its obsessive focus on product quality that has seen it get ranked No.1 in world class quality by consumers.

Trust is that intangible factor that keeps companies afloat & enables them to beat competition; trust is something we value most. It’s the trust that our readers have put in us that we have been able to reach the “100th issue” milestone. “100” after all is an interesting number. There seems to be a magical ring to it. Ask any cricket lover and he will be able to recount the magical and fastest 100 scored by Shahid Afridi against Srilanka in Nairobi. A 102 runs out of just 37 balls. If one 100 can get people so excited, then think of two 100s and you could even get a Bharat Ratna, if not deliriously happy to say the least! Sachin Tendulkar became the first cricketer in the history of one-day cricket to score a double hundred in Gwalior. Every Indian’s heart swelled with pride.

It’s interesting to note that the most powerful man on Earth is judged by the work he does in the first 100 days of taking oath. An odd custom, some may say, but that’s how it’s been since the days of Franklin D Roosevelt, who also took office at a time of dire economic crisis. Roosevelt used the first 100 days to jumpstart the economy and put people back to work. FDR’s first 100 days were the greatest, and no President has been able to equal that time when Democrats & Republicans worked as one! Barack Obama too had the boldest 100 days and more or less everyone felt his first 100 days were impressive as a leader! Yes, 100 seems to influence a lot of things as Albert Einstein once said, “I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right”. Be it 100 runs, 100 days, or 100 conclusions, it’s one number that seems to be an important milestone to judge many things.

100!

‘Google’ was actually meant to be named “Googol” but due to a misspelling landed up as “Google”. ‘Googol’ means, one allowed by a 100 zeros. Dr. Kasner a prominent mathematician wanted a name for a very large number and Milton, his 9 year old nephew, came up with ‘Googol’!

Fascinating but true, sometimes what you think to be a hundred is not so. The famous “100 year war”, the longest war in history fought between England and France, actually went on for 116 years. The dictionary meaning of “centurion” would read as 100 soldiers, but typically a Roman centurion commands 80 soldiers. In Dhaka, a 100 mangoes equals 112 in the metric system, while in Dinjpur a 100 betel leaves is 64.

While on the number 100, here are some interesting quirky facts. Your daily cup of coffee contains more than 100 chemicals. When you sneeze, the sneeze it travels out of your mouth at over 100 miles per hour, and your heart beats over 100 thousand times a day. A “jiffy” is actually a unit of time for 1/100th of a second. The cat can produce over 100 vocal sounds and a shark can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water. Come to think of it, the Earth gets 100 tons heavier everyday due to falling space dust. The book by Gabriel Marquez listed as one of the best books of the twentieth century is called “100 years of solitude”.

If that’s not enough, then for all you people below 100 years of age, try this (13837) x (your age) x 73= a very interesting number. Check it out.

And as you mull over the impact of 100 in our lives, we hope you enjoy this 100th issue a hundred times more than any other. A 100 cheers to all as we celebrate this important milestone, for you all will surely agree there’s something special about 100.

THE NEW WORLD OF ADAMS AND IPADS

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As the world became sure of the rumours that Apple would launch its “much talked- about-tablet” the iPad by January end, NASDAQ went into a tizzy. Apple’s share prices soared. The world was bursting with excitement of what would Steve Jobs do this time! Gawker Media even went to the extent of publicly offering up to $1,00,000 in cash for photos of the Apple tablet a week before the actual launch. Yes, Jobs knows his job very well. He knows how to excite the world and how to very intelligently market his inventions. Moses knew the power of the “tablet” when years ago he descended on Earth with the 10 commandments engraved on it. Steve Jobs did much the same when he demonstrated how the world would change its ways after the iPad!

IPAD GIVES COMPETITION A RUN FOR ITS MONEY
Amazon’s e-reader ‘Kindle’ is definitely going to feel the heat for the iPad. Apart from being a beautiful device, the iPad is much cooler and more fun. It’s colorful, sleek and will come with zillions of applications for the user to download. Priced almost at par with the Kindle, the iPad would definitely be giving sleepless nights to Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com & Kindle). The tablet is going to be the new form of browsing the web.

The iPad, with its new technology, makes browsing super fast, easy and most importantly an absolute delight. We might soon be saying goodbye to our laptops and desktops! The iPad brings along with it the “Tablet Age” and soon we could see a lot of people reaching out for a ‘Tablet’ to do a lot of things!

ADAM GIVES IPAD A RUN FOR ITS MONEY.
Yes, the iPad is changing the rules of the game yet again. However, there is someone who might give it sleepless nights too. It’s none other than our very own ex-student from IIPM, Sachin Ralhan, and his friends who have designed the Indian tablet PC, ‘ADAM’! It would be released in July in America and many feel it’s better than the iPad. It has everything that the iPad doesn’t have. It is slimmer than the iPad, it’s cheaper, it’s got a longer battery life, can run a 1080p HD video (which the iPad cannot), and uses NVIDIA’s new Tegra2 chipset (making its hardware sturdier than iPad’s), has USB ports and runs Flash, both of which the iPad cannot! Three cheers to Sachin, to IIPM and India! I’m surely waiting for the ‘Adam’! All the eves, the envious, the curious and various others, let’s together root for Adam!

TABLETS GIVE BUSINESSES A CHANCE TO RUN FOR THEIR MONE
Tablets are a new way of sharing content with the consumers. And you might have heard how they are going to save the newspaper business, the music companies, magazines and movie studios, television producers and just about everybody! I wonder how much they will save, but they sure will change the rules of many businesses and give them a new dimension to explore. Of course, the possibilities are endless. The iPad and its rich interface will make gaming more thrilling. A magazine will be brought to life with moving pictures, videos, graphics being embedded along with the text!

Condé Nast started working on its digital version for tablets of Wired magazine even before the iPad was launched. It’s a new format and publishers who will reinvent will stay in business. Dwindling advertising revenues could rise again with a whole world of possibilities emerging thanks to ‘tablets’. Digital magazines can have digital ads, which are more interactive than plain print ads.

The iPad, the Adam, are “media viewing machines” and very powerful ones too! Check out the Sports Illustrated – Tablet Demo 1.5 on YouTube to see how reading will never be the same again. An art book now could have videos of the museum; a cookery book on the tablet could show the chef giving his tips. The creative possibilities for publishers are endless.

Travis Boatman of the gaming company EA says that playing games like Scrabble and other board games on the iPad would be a delight. Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger says Digi-books for children would come to life on the iPad. The Guardian, which can be downloaded on your iPhone for £2.39, claims it was downloaded 70,000 times in a month. The iPad, like the iPhone, too could open interesting revenue streams for newspapers and advertisers. The tablet gives advertisers a scope to be more creative. When people thought Billboards were dead, David Ogilvy proved the world wrong. He put up a billboard with a girl in a bikini and a tag line, “She takes off her top next week.” She did and people gawked. “She takes off her bottom next,” he wrote in the second week. The world waited and yes, she kept her promise and people agreed – creativity and not billboards were dead. Ogilvy showed how a creative idea always works. Kenzo pinned poppies on its billboards, which you could simply unpin and take home – a unique way of giving samples. Internet advertising has not been so effective; the iPad and a large dose of creativity could change this. Not surprising, many are calling it a “1.5 pound sack of potential.” One needs to ‘reinvent’ and ‘reimagine’ constantly; and for many businesses, iPad provides that rich canvas to showcase all their creativity.

It’s the game of ‘applications’. In spite of free content being made available, nearly 75 million iPhone and iTouch users download a paid application every month. The Apple store boasts of two billion applications. Even though most are free, the remainder generated sales of $200 million in a month. Not bad for a side business. Adam realizes this is going to be a war of applications – so it’s planning to announce a prize of $1m for developers of applications.

Go Adam...go and make us proud! Be it the Adam, iPad or any other tablet, this is for sure, every developer is now thinking of tablets, just the way the iPhone changed the business of mobiles. Would it be smarter than the smartphones? Would it be lapped up faster than laptops by the market? For those answers, we need to wait till March. However one thing’s sure – the tablet’s sure made technology more interesting and fun!

The future is going to be all about iPads and Adams!