Cricket mania

Oh, what a week it was, eh? The world cup is India's again, after 28 long years. Was great fun and all that.

However, might as well quickly jot down some observations at a far more local, mundane level.

We goto hypercity for stuff and this is the big knockout stage week. And where's all the cricket merchandise that should sell like hot cakes in this 1 week? Nowhere to be seen. I would've thought face-painting kits, the national flag and team India t-shirts would be all over hypercity like Santa hats in x-mas season but that was not to be. Wonder why.

The IPL starts. Would be interesting to see how it evolves from a marketing/consumption point of view.

An aside

I wrote an aside last year on this exact day 18-oct. Probably the most eloquent piece I've ever written. A bit longish and no relation to MKTR. An aside, basically.

Project group formation - What's in a name?

Well,

Can't help but notice that at the time of writing, Section C clearly scores in its ability to pick interesting, relevant, thought-provoking names that don't look like IPL spoofs.

'Immortals of Meluha'? Wow. I immensely enjoyed reading that one. (The author is ex-IIMC, from my alma mater, btw). But I'm not sure it would qualify as an 'epic' in the classic sense, would it?

Anyway, its your group folks. Am OK with whatever name you go with. 'The eggplant' however simply does not cut it. Or maybe I'm missing something here.

Chalo, see half of you in class tomorrow. Ciao.

Sudhir

Hello and Welcome

A big 'Hi and welcome' to the class of 2011.

This is to introduce you to the (informal) course blog. A good way to see what role the blog plays is to check out what it did last year.

Pls find the introductory blogpost last year here. Most of the post holds for this year too. There are 4 changes, however:

1. Pls access the blog for information etc on a regular basis - at least once before a lecture and so on. This was 'optional' last year, but is upgraded to 'recommended' this year. IMO, this will save a ton of time, trouble and mass e-mail.

2. Anonymous commenting has been disabled this year. I found last year that it is indeed susceptible to misuse.

3. Your participation on the blog remains entirely optional. However, updates regarding announcements, notifications, clarifications, queries and doubts etc will break first on the blog. So pls check for updates regularly.

4. We'll have a mid-term and no end-term this year. Last year, we had an end-term and no mid-term.

Going through last year's blog posts, here are some typical ones:
Pls find an explanation for lecture slides non-distribution prior to class here.

You can browse through last year's project scope document here. If you browse posts under the 'Project' tag, you can see how things evolved last year re the project. Of course the project topic will change this year.

Some email feedback here and much more here.
Disclaimer: Quiz formats etc may change this year, so the posts for last year are indicative only.

Chalo, that's a start. 9 more lectures to go.

Sudhir

The big day (Oct-11) cometh

Oct-11 shall mark the start of the second time I teach MKTR at the ISB. There is only a touch of nervousness this time, unlike the flood of it last time. Hopefully, things will go smoothly.

Mistakes were made in the first edition. I trust those will be steered clear of this time. Am equally sure despite all efforts new stumbles will happen again this time. The cycle continues. Perfection is ever-elusive, anyway.

Am busy with updating the lecture slides, making caselets, prepping quizzes, the works. That explains the rather slim course manual this time. And that's fine too. A good part of the course manual last time didn;t find use. The relevant bits this time will be delivered as hard-copy in the classroom.

Research work, at a crucial stage in a couple of projects, will now perforce have to tone down. Can't escape the feeling that, well, if I had one more week, I'd have been able to do this and that within that time and send 'em papers out only. That feeling is always there and is probably false comfort.

Feedback from last year I have tried to incorporate - primarily the Indianizing of content, the standardization of software used, a streamlining of the project timetable, and a rebalancing of statistical analysis with qualitative insights. Time will tell how this goes.

Chalo, signing off for now. Adios.

A product exchange fiasco at Hypercity, Hyderabad

Hi, so its been a long hiatus. Well, am back, for a while at least.

I want to document a particular incident that happened with me yesterday. So on 23-June, I and my wife went to Hypercity, purpotedly India's largest hyperstore in the Inorbit mall and bought ourselves an AKAI DVD player for some 2 grand.

We come home and try it on and the DVD reader doesn't work on any DVD or CD we could find. So, the next day, armed witht he puchase bill, I goto Hydeprcity and try to get a product refund or exchange. I see that a board there proudly proclaims a 14 day exchange policy. Wow, so the product exchange service, meant to de-risk and hence spike consumer trial and purchase, had come to India after all!

So, one floor employee plugs the DVD into one of their TVs and tries soem DVDs out. Same result. Then an entire baraat of line staff arrive to do the same. Its 30 mins plus by now. Clearly, the product is defective. But my queries are bounced along like email forwards within this ever changing group of line employees. Finally, after some 45 mins of endurance testing, someone from 'management' comes in. And then she tells me that store policy prohibits refund or exchange of electronic items.

Well, I'm foxed. Now, why go through this sordid product checking saga for so long, I wonder. And why not check the product before the sale, if this is what policy says?

So I try to reason with the lady - "Look, you sold me a defective product. Why don;'t you contact the vendor for recall? Why am I supposed to go to some service center somewhere when the product never worked even for 1 minute?" and so on.

But the manager is an expert at stonewalling. She continues to wave the policy document around. I tell her, "Fine, I've been a loyal customer, have bought 1000s in goods in the past year alone and that the store gains nothing from pi$$ing me off." She claims to understand. Well, OK.

"See, Wal-Mart, among the cheapest chains i nthe US offers a 60 day return policy. Why don't you keep good on your 14 day one?"
She says: 'But we're not wal-mart'.
"Sure, I can see you're not, but why not aspire to be world-class at least? Does a third-world location serve as a catch all excuse?" I argue. Deaf ears are all the rage by now.

Finally I ask her if she's line staff or managerial staff. She's foxed for a minute and then grandly declares she's a 'manager' here. And I try to explain that unlike line staff, who have no authority to deviate from policy, managers are supposed to exercise judgement. That is why they are given discretionary authority. Since she's clearly unwilling to do so, could she take me to her boss or somebody higher up who has the authority to take a decision?
"No, the boss is not in."
Yeah, right.

And my wife was planning on buying a flat-screen from that store. Imagine getting stuck with a defective product worth several 1000s instead of just a few 1000s? "Whew", I guess. The cloud perhaps did have a silver lining.

Anyway, object lesson here: Pls, pls, pls be careful when buying electronics, mobiles and the like from even fancy name stores, especially from Hypercity, Hyderabad. Always, always better to check the product in store prior to purchase. The fancy big-name stores may not be agreebale to that, if so ditch them.

Anyway, my 2 cents. Jai Ho.

Some Best Books I've read

Well, well.

Received this interesting email from a (former) student from the class of 2010. Small excerpt below:

I’d like you to fill up the blank below



If there is one book that I would want all my students to read it would be ______



Let this book be anything – a textbook, novel, fiction, non-fiction or anything else that has influenced you in your teaching.

Here's my rather long-winded (to my surprise) response. Another trip down nostalgia lane.

Hi A,


Congratulations on your graduation. And good luck for the journey ahead.


And I can identify with the bittersweet feeling of losing student-status permanently. Yup, my engg and MBA student days were easily among the happier ones in my late adolescent period, I guess. But it was time to move on and move on we all do. Time changes everything.



There’ve been many books I’ve read at different times of my life each time thinking this is the likely best book I will read in a while, each time to be proven wrong. In my late teens, I was a huge fan of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. Early 20s, I was so, so taken in by Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. Then in my MBA days, by Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, then by Vivekananda’s Raja Yoga (From the Ramakrishna Mission Publication series), later by JRR's epic saga The Lord of the Rings, then by RajaGopalachari’s Mahabharata-the mother of epic sagas. So each period, different book.


The book I would most recommend now, the one that influenced me most recently, is, easily, Pavan K Varma’s Becoming Indian.

Masterpiece, I say. A book waiting to be written, one that almost wrote itself. Indeed, if it were upto me, I would make this book compulsory reading for every graduate in each of India’s elite institutions – from the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Administration (where civil servants train) to the IMA, Doon, the DSSC and the NDC (where the military elite train) to the IIMs and the ISB (where the Business elite train).


It’s a keeper. A collector’s item. Hope you’ll enjoy and imbibe it as much as I did.


Jai ho.

Improving MKTR for next year

Hi all,

I met some MKTR janta over the past week who shared their opinion on what can be done to make MKTR better for the class of 2011. Of course, it being my first prep, teaching your class was both a unique and a difficult experience. Would like to know what can be done to smooth things over for next year.

Some of the broader points that I do intend to incorporate:

1. Reduce course scope - reduce the number of topics covered and spend more time on each method. Something I do intend to do. Shall get rid of lec 10 altogether and spend that time on modeling and estimation.

2. Do away with the quizzes, have HW assignments instead based on excel datasets. For example, extracting broad descriptive summaries and cross-tabs for the beer and the ice cream datasets.

3. More cases/applied focus for each and every method/tool covered.
Now, am not a great guru on the case method. Personally, I prefer the data method - hands on immersion into data works best IMHO, especially for a course like MKTR.

Am also considering going easy on HBS style long cases and instead focussing on caselets - 1-2 page real business situations. Am sure I can come up with a dozen odd India based examples over the next 1 year.

4. Have project on much earlier on. Get phase I complete by week 2, phase II done by week 3 and then the other 2 weeks devoted to phase III.

Provide as much structure and guidance as feasible early on, not just for the project but also for the assignments and the exam.

5. Make blog more interactive (but how?). Would be great if your class occasionally drops in to give advice to the class of 2011.

6.Get software issues settled. Some things that I would like to see happen and shall push for at ASA is getting SPSS licenses from week 1 itself. Dunno how it will work, but will push for it for sure. Also, will make Stats I and II core courses pre-requisites for MKTR just so that folks coming in know revising stats would be helpful.

Well, that's about all I could think of and gather from people.

Pls feel free to add your own bit of advice about course content modification in the comments section. Thoughtful, actionable feedback would be much appreciated.

Sudhir

About Early Rising - on Nostalgia Lane

OT to Mktg.

Ran into some janta in the Goel Hall remarking I was an early riser. I am and not necessarily by choice. Sleep to me is a primal force of nature that I gave up trying to fight long ago. It literally overpowers the will. Something the Mrs never quite got as she's always found it somewhat difficult to fall asleep.

Even in my MBA days in Joka, Kolkata I would crash by 10 pm and rise by 4.30-5 am. And not because I wanted to. I mean, I missed a lot of the good stuff in the student hostels that only really starts at like 11 pm. The birthday bumpings, the mishti fights, the antaksharis and movie screenings, the card games and footer volley in the hostel quad, the smoke sessions and daru parties.... I slept through it all most of the time.

It also meant that I wasn't particularly popular as a project team mate - I wouldn't/couldn't show up for most project meets only. Even otherwise was more of a loner then, relatively speaking.

Anyway, the nice part was that I could get to wake up reeeally early, when most other janta would be crashing off reluctantly. Serene mornings by the Joka lakes..... Used to practise pranayam those days, have lost the good habits along with the bad ones I guess. My hostel name in those days was 'Monk' and has partly to do with my meditative attempts pre-dawn. Of course, there is also the 'Old Monk' connection.... And then when I troop down to mousees - the 24/7 roadside dhaba just outside the IIMC gate for puri-bhaji and chai, most janta would be trooping back from mousees to crash for the half day.

Almost never missed a class but almost always missed the party - admittedly not a braggable attribute. BTW, IIMC those days had no 'compulsory attendance' policy. Dunno about now, all tyhe IIMs implicitly accepted and copied the 'superiority' of the IIMA strict-regimen format. And the 'no compulsory attendance' suited everybody - separated the interesteds from the disinteresteds from the uninteresteds.

Another issue was that IIMC class profile those days (even now perhaps) was different - skewed towards younger people. Avg work-ex would be like <1 year. Close to half the batch had 0 work-ex. And what IIMC's lack of regimented structure did was it allowed people who should have known better to slack off. I have seen otherwise good people waste away because there was no structure to guide them, no pressure to meet some minimum in performance thresholds. Which is why I'm wiser now. And thankful sleep overpowers me the way it does. It helped me back at a time when I wouldn't a have known better.

Anyway, long ramble. Time to logoff. Shall be back in office today most of the time. Have lunch at Prof. Rishtee's place, so will be away in the afternoon 12.30-2 I think.

Sudhir