Waamax

NY. Awesome.

When you are truly living on the edge, walking on the moon, perhaps, or caught in the grip of extreme poverty–there’s no room at all for error. It’s a luxury you can’t afford.

For the rest of us, though, there’s a cushion. Being wrong isn’t fatal, it’s merely something we’d prefer to avoid. We have the privilege of being wrong. Not being wrong on purpose, of course, but wrong as a cost on the way to being right.

As you gain resources, the act of being wrong goes from being fatal to annoying to a precious opportunity, something that you’ve earned. You won’t advance your cause or discover new truths if you’re obsessed with being right all the time–and so the best way to compound your advantage and accomplish even more than you already have is to set out (with relish) to be as open to wrong as often as you can afford to be.

Source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Executive Summary (Revitalizing Dell – Case Study)

Dell’s recent diminishing growth rate raises concern that the direction of the company is not aligned with changing consumer demand. A shift in consumers purchasing personal computers from Dell’s industry leading direct sales model to indirectly via retail outlets can justify some of the stagnant growth identified in this case. Dell was evaluated with the resources model, five-forces model, and illustrated with data from the case.

Porter’s analysis suggests with high competitive rivalry, high strength of buyers and suppliers, and low threats of new entrants and substitute, the PC market is still a very competitive market. The resources based view (RBV), analyzes Dell’s direct sales method, lean inventory, customer service, and mass customization.

A common set of criteria was used to evaluate two different alternatives. One alternative to differentiate from competitors based upon Dell’s superior customer service. Another alternative is to expand focus into the indirect sales model. By evaluating these alternatives by these criteria, it is recommended that Dell shift its focus from direct to indirect sales.

Implementation of this expansion is outlined by Kotter’s 8-step framework. Since resources will need to be allocated from the focus on direct sales to indirect sales, a resistance in change is expected. Therefore, by creating and maintaining of a sense of urgency throughout the change stakeholders will be motivated throughout the entire process.
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This was a case as of 2007 when Dell was struggling all of a sudden in its sales compared to its competitors like HP.

Mesmerizing Blacksburg Sunset.

Exposure.

This word had a different meaning when I was in my teens. My parents and all my elders used to advise me that its good for me to get a better exposure. It will widen my skill sets and will make me multidimensional (a fancy name for jack of all trades).

Growing up in a boarding school as a typical teen, exposure also meant the fancy glamourous cinema world (actress esp). Exposure was even better here.

During my senior year when I got really into photography, “Exposure” meant something different. It was one of the ways to experiment and play with my camera.

But now, at 26 and as a second year MBA major in finance, the word exhibit completely different meaning. As we quants work like crazy to minimize the financial risk, exposure is the least thing you want. All my effort I put in my MBA program is to learn the skill sets to reduce the exposure of my portfolio. So now all of a sudden exposure is a sin.

Its interesting how the meaning of words change as you move on. life.

“World of our own”.

I have heard this phrase so many times. But this is amazingly personified by the Salem Girls. You gals Rock!

Recently I have been watching “Grey’s Anatomy” TV series (I am still in season 1, episode 7 and I don’t watch TV series). But contradictory to many people saying that they are a pure waste of time, there are certainly lots of things to learn.

Apart from the ins and outs of surgeon life, there are lots to learn from these ridiculously busy creatures. The level of dedication and commitment and the effort they put is second to none.

So in this one particular episode the protagonist (Grey) is talking about people putting things off due to the fear of failure. And she referenced it by stating the wise words of Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “Never leave that till tomorrow what you can do today”. I don’t know why we put things off. I guess it has to do with fear – fear of pain, fear of loss or rejection. Sometimes a fear of making a decision. What if you are wrong, what if you are making a mistake you can’t undo?

But whatever the fear we have, one thing holds true. By the time the pain of not doing the thing gets worse that the fear of doing it, it can feel like we are carrying a giant tumor.

(And in that instant the interns were introduced to this patient who has a huge tumor and who has been hiding this tumor till the last moment. Grey ends up by saying, “And you thought I was taking metaphor?”) Awesome stuff.

Unfortunately the patient dies due to tumor as it was already in the last stage and it has done sufficient damages to the arteries.

Picture (Credit)

This is my new effort to make blogging easier with Desktop application. I got Mars Edit for my Mac and it rocks.

So this makes it possible to quickly jot down thoughts and save it in offline mode. Actually what I have ideally wanted was to integrate my blog with my twitter account. So whenever I update my twitter account, it would update my blog at the same time.

I need to research more on this. I guess there is already an app for that.

I love technology.

Picture Credit (My mac wallpaper)

~ Waamax

Note: This post was written using Google Chrome.

Choose a career that is scalable. [An advice flow from Nasim Taleb to me which he got from one of his seniors]
Here is an example.

An artist with his/her new album, doesn’t have to sing those song for each set of different audience. The songs are recorded and made into an album and could be replicated zillion times for it to be used by entire human kind. And it can also be stored for the future generations as well. So the effort is the same if its for 10 audience or 100 million audience. That’s the power of scalability.

Compare this with a top neuro surgeon. No matter how good she is, she always has to be there (operating theatre) to operate on the patients. To serve 100 patients she has to be there with 100 patients and operate at least 100 times (hopefully she is good enough that an operation is enough to treat his patients). She can’t just operate a masterpiece operation and wish it to be replicated.

Picture: [My room] Golf ball and my Music Controller