Money is the fuel that drives economies, businesses and individual households. There can be absolutely no doubt about that. However, money, it must be remembered, is just a means to an end, and that end is surely the seeking of a better quality of life for society, the corporate and the individual? Businesses that focus on delivering a higher order of customer benefits reduce this to just a rhetorical question. Such businesses also know that–as Roger Martin points out in our Smart Thinking piece in this issue–“to really create shareholder value, a company should aim to maximize customer satisfaction.” According to Martin, if businesses are to actually succeed in delivering value to shareholders over the long run, the purpose of business itself needs to be redefined to prioritize customer satisfaction. In other words, the bottom line should be to help the customer achieve a better quality of life. Though this sounds fairly common-sensical, reinventing the hallowed ‘bottom line’ calls for some dramatic rewiring in attitudes. Mercedes-Benz India concurs. To quote the CEO Dr. Wilfried Aulbur in our cover story Branding in Wonderland, the biggest challenge is that “Right from the CEO to showroom security, receptionists to sales executives, everyone must know what their role is in the customer’s life, and that role cannot be an arrogant one.” For corporations operating in a market like India, the problem gets compounded by the great divide that has created two widely separated classes of consumers—which leads to far deeper issues than customer service: “Historically, [a] factor that has restricted the market here is the rich-poor divide, and unfortunately that’s a reality one can’t wish away. I am of course very biased to India, because I love living in an environment that allows me to say things freely. But for all that, I couldn’t find a counter-argument to Dr Norbert Walter, ex-Chief Economist, Deutsche Bank who once said that China scores simply because it has managed to get a lot more people out of poverty a lot faster.” Read the article to learn more about the importance of focusing on delivering a superior product experience to the customer and how this ties in with the larger question of inclusive growth. Talking about delivering a better experience, do check out our Smart Enterprise story on how Infosys is travelling The Green Mile. The story proves just how much human ingenuity can achieve in overcoming apparently insurmountable challenges and in securing a healthy future for the ecosystem that exists on this planet—keeping myopic preoccupations with the bottom line at bay. Hopefully, such stories will find their way into our daily conversations more regularly…notwithstanding the habits bred by centuries of bottom-line conditioning.

"In early-2002, the world witnessed a miracle of entrepreneurial resolve and common sense, far removed from the conventional arena of ‘entrepreneurship’. Twelve of continental Europe’s most powerful governments came together to create an economic utopia of sorts, embracing a single currency and paving the way for a notionally level market that serves over 300 million people today.

Our talent search should identify those who have braved adversities; those who show guts, passion and perseverance, and who would like to think of themselves as internal entrepreneurs - people with a spirit of wonder and a sense of adventure.

"In a world that is increasingly driven by hyperbole, it is imperative that business managers turn to critical thinking skills to process information and arrive at effective decisions. This involves, among other things, an understanding of the bigger picture, the use of logic, the recognition of biased assumptions, and the elimination of ego-driven imperatives.

"In the immediate aftermath of the current global economic meltdown, the world quickly turned its attention to fiscal, monetary and management strategies that may help businesses survive a recession and perhaps even emerge stronger...

"Look closely at any success story and you will probably find design at the heart of it. The design may not necessarily be...

The current economic turmoil, caused by the failure of financial giants to behave responsibly, brought back a memory from my advertising days. The agency I was then working for spent...

"Chaos Theory," often poetically illustrated by the ‘butterfly effect' is currently gaining in importance," says Lata Subramanian

In good times when economies boom and markets climb to dizzy heights, spirits lift and escalate to euphoric levels. When the trend reverses, however, deflation and gloom set in even quicker helped along by the media's penchant for hype and negativism. At both extremes, it does appear that market sentiment assumes higher significance than cold reason or enduring wisdom. Until, at least, a rational voice begins to be heard and prevails.

"Change is in the air, creating waves. If the new avatar of the Godrej brand is making its presence felt, even over the high decibel levels of IPL matches, the CEAT campaign, too, is not going unnoticed with its rather humorous explanation for its changeover to a new brand identity. Change is inevitable. Change is healthy. Those are the reasons CEAT gives for its changeover. However, one can quiet easily add to

Case studies tend to provoke opposite reactions. Of experienced managers, some enjoy reading them, others consider them a waste of time. Yet few cavil at the belief that "managers are the best teachers of managers", a belief that has underpinned The Smart Manager's editorial policy right from the beginning when the magazine was launched six years ago.

Do you ever listen to yourself? Do you really know what you want to be in your career? For a long time leadership guru Warren Bennis did not know what he wanted to be. He thought he wanted the corner office but when he attained it he was unhappy. He realized that 'he wanted to BE president and did want to DO president. Bennis emphasizes that the leader needs a dream and also the determination to live the dream.

In the 1939 American movie The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy had only route to reach her destination: a yellow brick road. However in today's world we have many paths to success. In this issue of The Smart Manager we present two diametrically different views. Pankaj Ghemawat, professor of global strategy at Barcelona's IESE Business School argues that the world is not flat. He advises managers to formulate strategies based on the reality that national borders will matter, and neither the extremes of loc

As India turns sixty, it is a good moment to ask why it is so difficult to capture knowledge and pass it on. We appear to find the process extraordinarily difficult. Thus you may find Gabriel Szulanski's article, Sticky Knowledge, an eye opener. In a companion piece, Zensar's Ganesh Natarajan, who has been closely observing knowledge management practices in Indian IT firms, discusses how the captured knowledge can be gainfully used by firms.

Over the years, I've learnt the importance of leveraging people's strengths rather than looking at people's weaknesses,says Harsh Mariwala, Chairman of Marico who shares his experiences and learnings in role rotation in a firstperson account in this issue of The Smart Manager. "Each person is born with some inherent strengths and weaknesses. Typically, organizations look at the weaknesses first, and try to find ways to reduce the weakness, or try to improve the person. I believe it is more

In early 2000, I once did a comparative survey taking the top 100 public sector enterprises, the top 100 family run companies and the top 100 multinationals as listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange as my sample. The 300 companies were plotted on a graph with each company's growth rate being plotted on the x axis and its MVA (market value added, averaged over a one year period) plotted against the y axis. The idea was to discover which of the three categories produced more value creators.

Except for a brief moment in the 1980s when Japanese managers introduced revolutionary management tools particularly in the quality area

We will empower you! Align with our values and grow with us! Own your business, be your own CEO! Get people’s buy-in and see your division take off! Puzzled as to how they can motivate their huge armies of employees, large companies in every country in the world try one experiment after another. One day it is ‘empowerment’, another day, ‘ownership’.

Twelve years ago I was invited by the Bombay Management Association to give a talk. I painted a canvas of change and its implications, much to the horror, dismay and ultimately, hostility of the audience. The post-liberalization euphoria had evaporated. Indian managers were reeling over the effects of competitive shock induced by the 1991 reforms. They were angry that I was asking them to shed their complacency, transform themselves, and prepare for much fiercer competition.

The day I became an entrepreneur, I bought a copy of Philip Kotler’s Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation, and Control. Even today I have it near to hand. It’s a thick tome, packed with insights but perhaps the one that resonates most with me is, “Good companies will meet needs, great companies will create markets.” But how exactly can this be done? That’s really the question picked up by Professor Nitin Nohria of the Harvard Business School in his case study, Planning the Un

By some strange serendipity, this issue turned into a celebration of talent. APJ Kalam, CK Prahalad, Dhirubhai Ambani, Laura Tyson, Raj Bagri, MS Oberoi, MR Srinivasan, Rajat Gupta: each is an extraordinary achiever born in an ordinary home. The children of poorly paid school teachers, a boatman, an immigrant, a farmer, they imposed their will on destiny. Each pursued a unique route to success and it is hard to discern commonalities in their lives. A few threads stand out however.

One sultry evening in Mumbai, three of us were talking to each other. Two of us listened as the HR head of one of India's leading companies described his lifeline: how he did his MBA, how he managed to land his first job, the slow climb up the ladder, and finally the large responsibilities of his current position. I asked Manesh Shrikant, head of SP Jain Institute of Management, whether his b-school creates leaders or managers. He tapped the HR head's shoulder, "Do you think he sounds like a lea

Kishore Biyani makes an interesting point:why can’t managers be nice? What’s the big deal about ruthlessness? His comments,published in this issue of The Smart Manager, immediately struck a chord in me: I have been waiting for an Indian manager to say this for a long long time. For two reasons.Both require a somewhat long-winded explanation,so please do bear with me.

Successful leaders are masters of the art of possibility. They flirt with innovations and schmooze with potential ideators. They scan newspapers for leads, They always keep some free time every day in case an opportunity walks in through the door. Sunil Mittal, profiled in this issue, is an excellent example. A fine strategist, he certainly did not know that one day he would lead the mobile telephone revolution in India when he launched his business career by selling Suzuki generator sets.

This issue is about managers who are also leaders. Today's era is characterized by changes in terms of deregulation, disruptive technology and innovation. It becomes imperative for managers, therefore, to not just manage their existing resources but to actually assume the mantle of leadership, in order to create an environment capable for expanding business. Some questions to ponder, if you're a manager aspiring to be a leader:

When friends acknowledge our capabilities, we feel appreciated. When critics applaud, the feeling turns to cautions joy. And that's exactly what has happened - twice - to Subir Raha, the embattled head of ONGC.Despite ONGC's awesome profits, its improved morale, its clearly defined global and local strategy, the oil giant and its feisty chief have been in the news for all the wrong reasons: the explosion at a major oil rig; the crash of a helicop

It's every manager's dream: how to embed sustainable competitive advantage in a company. And of course, no one has yet discovered the formula. Sandwiched as they are between the forces of competition and innovation, it's impossible for companies and their managers to foresee the future. Often two CEOs in the same business will view the hazy horizon in totally opposite ways. One succeeds, the other fails.

In a sluggish market, if my competitor drops the price of his brand, should I do the same? If I want to improve my bottom line, should I push sales up or should I push costs down? How can I make my managers 'own' a new process? If I am inexperienced, how can I persuade a new client to give me the business?

Last year when we conducted the 'best of the best' survey we were unprepared for the tremendous response it received. It encouraged us to make this survey a regular feature at The Smart Manager. For the second 'best of the best' survey we chose the Olympics theme to celebrate the world class achievements of India's finest managers.

This issue is about managers, not leaders. Leaders dream up visions, draw up strategy. But it's the managers who come up with the ideas. Without these ideas, strategies would remain where they are born, as ephemeral dots of light in a powerpoint presentation or doodles on paper. In this issue, we decided to celebrate the manager, to explore how they come up with smart ideas, the ones which convert strategies into sales.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister who led the UK out of World War II, it's wonderful to be alive in this century, to be able to chronicle living history at a moment when India is poised to enter a new age of prosperity.

Passion is infective, especially when attached to noble ambitions. Take CK Prahalad, the internationally renowned management guru and thought leader from Michigan University, as an example. Since 1995, he has been searching for a corporate solution to eradicate poverty. His dream is to mobilize the investment capacity of large firms and harness it to the knowledge and commitment of NGOs in order to improve the living standards of the poor.

Why are so many extremely bright managers unsuccessful? Why do some organizations perform better than others? That's precisely the question which this issue of The Smart Manager examines. Clearly there can be no single right answer on an issue involving human beings of all types, but through the various articles contributed by our writers, some thought provoking themes do reveal themselves.

There's more written about change than any other management topic. In fact, change is a multi-billion dollar industry with hundreds of thousands of books devoted to the topic. Phrases such as 'change is inevitable, embrace change' or 'control your destiny or someone else will' pepper these books yet KV Kamath describes his experience as a change agent as

To write about a colleague is always tough and when the colleague has recently passed away, the job becomes infinitely more difficult. Yet not to pay a tribute to one of our cofounders, not to grieve his loss and celebrate his life, was unthinkable. In order to do so, I spoke to various people who came in contact with him, and the first thought which struck me was how extraordinary Sumantra Ghoshal's life was - by any standards.

When friends acknowledge our capabilities, we feel appreciated. When critics applaud, the feeling turns to cautions joy. And that's exactly what has happened - twice - to Subir Raha, the embattled head of ONGC. Despite ONGC's awesome profits, its improved morale, its clearly defined global and local strategy, the oil giant and its feisty chief have been in the news for all the wrong reasons: the explosion at a major oil rig; the crash of a helico

One sultry evening in Mumbai, three of us were talking to each other. Two of us listened as the HR head of one of India's leading companies described his lifeline: how he did his MBA, how he managed to land his first job, the slow climb up the ladder, and finally the large responsibilities of his current position. I asked Manesh Shrikant, head of SP Jain Institute of Management, whether his b-school creates leaders or managers.

There's good news and bad news. Let's start with the good news. According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's annual survey, the entrepreneurial activity level in India has been consistently on the rise for the past three years, from 8.9% in 2000 to 11.6% in 2001 to 17.9% in 2002.

This issue of The Smart Manager has been a major turning point in my education at a personal level. As a student of entrepreneurship and family business, the role of the second generation in business families has been baffling me for some time now. I’ve never been satisfied by the stereotype image of the second generation as consolidators, the children who expand the business that their father or mother handed down to them.

We have two exceptional articles in this issue.The profile of Niall FitzGerald by Kamini Banga is powerful not just because the Unilever chairman is an unusual man but also because of Kamini’s skill as an interviewer and writer. She has created a rare portrait of one of the world’s finest managers at his best: thoughtful yet dynamic, introspective yet living in the moment.

Almost a quarter century ago, I used to go daily to the library in Mumbai’s Rajabhai Tower, researching on India’s ‘Monopoly Houses’. So much has changed since those days when business and businessmen were looked down upon. Now companies are seen as value creators. Despite the social stigma, the 1970s and 1980s were easier times. Today we live in a far more complex world. It is a disruptive age. A painful age.