HBS ALUMNI AWARDS 2005

Harward Business School has announced the Alumni achievements awards for 2005. Rahul Bajaj also figured in the list with four other distinguished business leaders Nancy M. Barry, Louis V. Gerstner Jr., Judith R. Haberkorn, and Joseph J. O'Donnell.

The award was constitued in 1963 and it recognises the contribution of Business leaders to their companies and communities while upholding the highest standards and values in everything they do. As such, they represent the best in HBS alumni body. Exemplary role models, they inspire all those who aspire to have an impact on both business and society.

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Innovation and Venture Capital

The Business Cycle paradigm is not only having its impact on profit and employee retention but it is a key factor in leading the process of innovations.Knowledge at Wharton has an article on the role of VC’s in spurring innovation despite the bubble burst and economic upheavals.

After the dot-com bubble burst about five years ago, corporate-sponsored venture capital funds jumped off that bandwagon in droves. Investing in startup technology companies -- thought to be a quick way to beef up the corporate bottom line and look technologically hip while doing so -- suddenly didn't seem like such a smart idea.

So why bother? Because venture capital is an essential tool available to a corporation to increase its innovativeness, says Wharton management professor Gary Dushnitsky. In his dissertation work, as well as three co-authored papers with Michael J. Lenox of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, Dushnitsky argues that corporate officials -- who once saw a quick windfall in financing outside technologies -- got it wrong then, and may be wrong now to recoil from making such investments.

Corporate venture capital is one leg of a three-legged stool whose other two legs are a strong internal R&D capability and strong alliances with academic or government researchers.

Corporations that have stayed the course with venture investing -- DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, IBM and others -- tend to make equity investments in innovative startup companies with strategic rather than simply financial motives, and in time reap both strategic and financial benefits, Dushnitsky suggests, noting that "a strategically driven program exploits synergies between what I am doing and what they are doing." It's creating actual value that in turn is translated into superior financial performance.

To read the complete article click here

Communities and Teams

Knowledge Management Review lastest issue talks about the differences between the Communities of Practise and Teams. Communities and teams have different ways of sharing information an learning practises.

It defines Community of practise as a group that shares knowledge, learns together and creates common practices. COPs share information, insight, experience and tools about an area of common interest. This could be a professional discipline (such as reservoir engineering or biology), a skill (like machine repair), a topic (such as technology), an industry or a segment of a production process.

Consulting companies usually organize COPs around both disciplines, such as organizational change, and industries like banking, petroleum or insurance. Community members frequently help each other to solve problems and develop new approaches or tools for their field. This makes it easier for community members to show their weak spots and learn together in the "public space" of the community.

Teams and communities are differentiated on the following parameters:

Teams are tightly integrated units driven by deliverables, defined by managed tasks and bound together by members' collective commitment to results.

COPs are loosely knit groups driven by the value they provide to members – defined by the opportunities to learn and share what they discover and bound by the sense of collective identity that the members form.

The heart of a team is a set of interdependent tasks that lead to an objective. The heart of a community of practice, on the other hand, is the knowledge members share and develop.

Since community members apply their knowledge on teams outside the community, it is not possible to predict exactly what knowledge will be important to the community.

COPs therefore follow opportunities for sharing knowledge as they arise, and as a result the "hot topics" in a community shift over time. As topics shift new people join the community, adding their perspective and shaping its direction.

While teams often have clear boundaries and membership, COPs have many partial, part-time, and marginal members. Like a double-knit fabric, they can stretch as topics and needs evolve.

HR:Business Transformation Outsourcing

HR Business Process outsourcing is gaining momentum and experts believe that HR processes outsourcing will be a major decision making challenge for organizations. By outsourcing HR processes the organization make themselves vulnerable to outside influences, and so the is need to adopt a very flexible and dynamic approach towards the process. Failure to adopt a strategic and well calibrated approach may cause great loss to the organizations reputations and well as resources.

IBM Consultancy services has released a research paper on how organizations must embrace themselves for the challenges of HR process outsourcing .It gives a comprehensive guideline for adopting what they call Human Resource Business Transformation Outsourcing HR BTO. The report outlines the risks associated with outsourcing and raises the following issues.

Leadership Capabilities

• Have you identified individuals who have demonstrated the key leadership characteristics needed to support an ongoing outsourcing relationship?

• If one individual does not have all of these skills, are there other members of the ongoing outsourcing leadership team with complementary skill sets?

• To what extent have you identified potential individuals in other areas of the organization whose skill sets could benefit the overall outsourcing relationship?

Transitional Management

• Are adequate resources available to develop plans for building the new environment?

- Employee transition and redeployment management
- Delivery operations
- Workplace and infrastructure management

• What level of emphasis has been placed on developing a knowledge transfer strategy and are the appropriate resources in place?

• Has a structure been established to oversee the larger HR transformation effort that incorporates both client- and vendor-led projects?

• How comprehensive is the change management strategy for this transition? And has the organization committed sufficient resources to execute it?

Governance and Relationship Management

• Has the organization identified the key roles and responsibilities for governance at all three levels – strategic, program and operational?

• How collaboratively has the client worked with the vendor to assign clear governance roles and expectations?

• What mechanisms have been put in place to encourage the development of trust among the governance teams of the outsourcing arrangement?

Measurement and reporting

• What process is the organization using to develop service level agreements and how are they reported to the various governing boards?

• How is the organization validating that the measurements will be useful in making decisions throughout the lifetime of the arrangement?

• How is the organization planning to collect the appropriate operating measures or workforce analytics that will allow it to make decisions about its workforce?

To read the complete Report Click Here

To Blog or not to Blog

In one of my previous post I had mentioned about the impact of blogging on the way business is done .It is believed that blogging is one of the biggest threat to the Corporate PR industry. The content factor blog has come out with two white papers on blogging . If you are interested to know more you can click the links given below.

The Content Factor

Corporate Blogging White Paper 1

8 rules for Blogging

Blog Consultancy

Business Blog Consultancy

My Previous Post

Creativity and organisational challenges

The Ten Faces of Innovation, by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman, to be published on October 18 by Currency Books, talks about the personality types it takes to keep creativity thriving--and the devil's advocate at bay. Here’s excerpt’s of the book from the Fast Company site

The Learning Personas

Individuals and organizations need to constantly gather new sources of information in order to expand their knowledge and grow, so the first three personas are learning roles. These personas are driven by the idea that no matter how successful a company currently is, no one can afford to be complacent.

The world is changing at an accelerated pace, and today's great idea may be tomorrow's anachronism. The learning roles help keep your team from becoming too internally focused and remind the organization not to be so smug about what you know.

People who adopt the learning roles are humble enough to question their own worldview, and in doing so, they remain open to new insights every day.

The Organizing Personas

The next three personas are organizing roles, played by individuals who are savvy about the often counterintuitive process of how organizations move ideas forward. At Ideo, we used to believe that the ideas should speak for themselves.

Now we understand what the Hurdler, the Collaborator, and the Director have known all along: that even the best ideas must continuously compete for time, attention, and resources.

Those who adopt these organizing roles don't dismiss the process of budget and resource allocation as "politics" or "red tape." They recognize it as a complex game of chess, and they play to win.

The Building Personas

The four remaining personas are building roles that apply insights from the learning roles and channel the empowerment from the organizing roles to make innovation happen.

When people adopt the building personas, they stamp their mark on your organization. People in these roles are highly visible, so you'll often find them right at the heart of the action.


To read more click here