"CEOs can't wait to read Sunny Bindra's articles every week."

I was sitting by my favourite ocean (there is only one) the other day (I was on a break, remember) and I noticed some ominous-looking dark clouds over the ocean. I asked a passing waiter whether he thought it might rain. He looked at the sky, and said with gratifying certainty: “No chance. Those clouds […]

“TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its […]

The Encyclopedia Britannica has ended print publication after 244 years. I must admit I fell silent after hearing this piece of news earlier in the week. Anyone who admires books and has encountered the venerable encyclopedia in a home or library cannot fail to feel some sadness. The weathered leather covers, the musty pages, the […]

“One of the odd questions I keep being asked about the iPad is “Where do you plug in USB stuff?” It’s a sister phrase to the weird criticism oft thrust at Apple’s device, “Ah, it’s too limiting for me: I can’t plug in USB sticks.” This is weird because other makers, notably Apple’s biggest competitor, […]

In business, relationship management is all the rage these days. There seem to be no salespersons any more, just relationship managers (RMs). It sounds warm and fuzzy and touchy-feely, as though you, the customer, have someone in the organization specially focused on you. Most of the time, it’s an elaborate hoax. What’s the difference between […]

“Soon after Citigroup let go of 100 employees across India last month, many functional heads received an unusual brief. They were asked to scout for jobs for those who had been terminated. Counsellors were also roped in to soften the blow and professional services firms were hired to make the career transition of the terminated […]

People everywhere love freebies. If it’s “free,” we want it. And we want lots of it. Here’s the thing, though: nothing is really free. Resources are limited. To provide or make anything on this planet consumes resources. So if something seems free, it’s up to you to work out who’s bearing the cost. Some simple […]

A few weeks ago I predicted that 2012 would be the year of the “Twitter Big Stick” in Kenya: a time when both politicians and large organizations feel the force of feedback from social media. I pointed out that the reason for this is that the little people – customers, users, voters – now have […]

“I long ago realised that to understand a business I would learn much more by talking to people involved in day-to-day operations than the chief executive. They represented “what is really going on here?”” JOHN KAY, Financial Times (January 3, 2011) The excerpt shown, from Professor John Kay’s regular FT column, caught my eye. I […]

We are becoming a country of queues. Wherever you look, and wherever you go, people are standing in queues. Increasingly long queues. What is a queue? A place where a long-suffering user or customer gets increasingly annoyed with your organization and your brand. Given how widespread this problem is, it always amazes me how little […]

“Japanese police, prosecutors and securities agencies in Japan, the United States and Britain are investigating Olympus after the firm admitted this month that it hid losses on securities investments for decades, disguising some as acquisition payments and fees. The scandal at the once-proud firm has rekindled concerns about lax corporate governance in Japan and revived […]

Once upon a time, businesses could get away with being bad to customers. They could neglect them and abuse them and not face any real consequences. What could a customer do in that world, anyway? Throw a fit on the company premises? Only a few employees, and possibly a handful of other customers, would observe […]

When I was a very young boy in Nairobi, watching wrestling on TV was all the rage. Every week, whole families would sit down and be regaled by the antics of the likes of Big Daddy, Johnny Saint and Giant Haystacks. Not to mention evil incarnate, Kendo Nagasaki (those of a certain age will remember […]

“The rise of tablets and smartphones also reflects a big shift in the world of technology itself. For years many of the most exciting advances in personal computing have come from the armed forces, large research centres or big businesses that focused mainly on corporate customers. Sometimes these breakthroughs found their way to consumers after […]

“In the mid-1990s I paid several visits to Kodak’s headquarters in Rochester, New York, and the cultural mindset was – with hindsight – on full display. Various executives told me how wonderful silver halide was. Professional photographers could not do without it, nor could Hollywood. Digital was for amateurs. And even they would always want […]

“We’re always searching for that secret formula, that magic pixie dust to sprinkle over our products, services, books, causes, brands, blogs to bring them to life and make them Super Successful. Most marketing-related buzzwords gain traction by promising pixie dust results if applied to whatever it is we make, do, sell. “Add more Social!”. “Just […]

“In the US they call it the “Murdoch discount”. This is the amount by which US analysts reckon shares in News Corporation are depressed because of the controlling stake held by the Murdoch family; about 40 per cent of the B voting shares, although only 13 per cent of the share capital. Analysts never like […]

“Timothy Post (@timothypost): #tcdisrupt I’m beginning to think that “startups” are what entrepreneurs do when they’re NOT jetting to all the tech conferences each month.” TWITTER (24 May 2011) This column has been quoting and analyzing interesting stuff from books, journals, magazines and newspapers for years now. It’s time to move with the times and […]

Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, so long a global behemoth, is in serious trouble. Commentators are scrambling to make sense of the events that led to the closure of a 168-year-old newspaper, the News of the World (NOTW) – until last Sunday Britain’s most popular newspaper. It won’t end there. The shenanigans at NOTW threaten to […]

“If Tom Watson Sr. were to visit IBM today, he would hardly recognize what we make or the services we provide—analytics, clouds, the Jeopardy!-winning computer named in his honor, solutions for a smarter planet. But he would very much recognize why IBM is pioneering these spaces—to make the world work better through information and the […]

“Bottom of the pyramid” is all the rage these days. To make money in emerging economies, you have to find a mass-market product, says the conventional wisdom. M-Pesa, Equity Bank, Senator beer – these are all great examples of bold innovations that captured the bottom end of the market in unprecedented ways. We take great […]

“A great brand deserves a great logo and great graphic design and visuals. It can make the difference when the customer is choosing between two great brands. But these alone cannot make your brand great. Ultimately, brand is about caring about your business at every level and in every detail, from the big things like […]

I have been a customer of a large global bank for a couple of decades. Recently, however, I closed all my accounts in despair. Why? Because after years of halfway decent service, this bank fell victim to the modern business malaise of automating all its customer interfaces. I began fearing the worst some years ago […]

I wrote here last week that so many of our businesses seem hell-bent on sacrificing long-term strategic gain at the altar of ‘shrewdness’ – the mistaken belief that you must get the best possible deal for yourself in every transaction. That article seemed to touch a nerve: I was deluged with tweets and comments from […]

If you spend time with businesspeople, you soon pick up that they value something called “shrewdness” over most other things – if you aren’t sharp and quick-witted, with an instinctively predatory commercial instinct, you shouldn’t really be in business. By this they mean that the ability to sniff out and design a great deal is […]

“What’s the best way to make the competition irrelevant? It’s a question that has obsessed generation after generation of strategists, pundits, and gurus. Is it new business models, new market space, harder hardball, or better knowledge? The answer is: none of the above. It’s Brian Fitzpatrick’s concise summary of Google’s great insight: “Disrupt yourself before […]

Last week I suggested that most of you may not be reading your newspaper in its current form for too much longer – simply because technology and social change has whacked the underlying business model. Who else is affected? Pretty much everyone. Consider one of the most wonderful products ever invented by humankind: the book. […]

Consider this product. The life of the product begins when mammoth trees are grown on a huge scale, then pulled down and turned into pulp with massive machinery. The pulp is taken to giant mills and turned into huge rolls of paper. Those rolls are trucked and shipped around the world. The rolls are then […]