Vijay Dandapani

Avoiding Innovation's Terrible Toll is the headline for an article in the Wall Street Journal's management section which explores the life span of corporations. The Journal cites a study conducted by two management professors that spanned over six million firms and came to the conclusion: that only a tiny fraction (of firms) reach the age of 40.  And with the rapid pace of technological change the lifespan is likely to be shorter in the years to come.

Some key observations of the study include insights from business leaders, academics and venture capitalists, all of whom say that "large companies that do manage to survive are ruthless about change. The most successful ones aren't afraid to cannibalize their big revenue generators to build new businesses."  Successful (those with longer lifespans) firms "often make frequent—but,...

Open source financial website Finchannel notes despite the fact that several pre-holiday surveys have confirmed shoppers’ intentions to spend either the same or less on purchases during the 2011 holiday season as compared 2010, the "promise of convenience and cost-savings online will bring more consumers than ever to shop on the web for the holidays, spending a greater share of their gift budget there when they do." Similarly the website eMarketer estimates that US retail ecommerce holiday-season sales during November and December will rise 16.8% this year to $46.7 billion with year end sales going up 16.5% over 2010.

That spike has focused attention on the talent behind, or more aptly ahead of e-commerce. The Wall Street Journal...

The prolonged recession, NBER's definition notwithstanding, has challenged companies, big and small, when it comes to employee engagement. Assuming a forthcoming emergence (doubtful to many) from recession, many businesses are likely to find that they are faced with low employee engagement and poor workplace morale.  

Being a relatively well-trodden topic, there are reams of research from around the world which have long highlighted the fact that having an active employee engagement strategy has a direct correlation to the bottom line. Some like Gallup's consulting arm claim that companies with "world-class engagement have (an astounding) 3.9 times the EPS growth rate compared with organizations with lower engagement in their same industry.  The performance-management experts at Gallup note the massive gains to be had...

In an agnostic business environment found in most parts of the Western world it is expected that purveyors of products and services will not let their preferences and/or prejudices play a role in excluding  customers based on the latter's personal profile. In a melting pot economy like the US the probabilty that one's customer base is different to the ownership profile is 1. Customers who feel unrecognized  will most surely vote with their feet. If they are specifically excluded it can lead to more woes than a one time revenue loss. 

Apart from it being illegal it makes eminent to sense to be inclusionary rather than exclusionary as long as a business is capable of meeting customers' expectations. Nevertheless, rational business decisions that result in signifcant accretions to revenue do not always prevail. That seems to have been the case with at least one hospitality operation which deliberately chose to be inhospitable to a potential client.