Price wars, Political wars and now wars on patents. Today, with the world’s financial engine gaining momentum once again after the housing bubble, the coming years seem to be tough time for analysts.

Infringement of patents was seen as an integral part of emerging nations until recently when two top notch organizations from the developed nations jumped in the battle field arguing hard on the patent infringements.

In October, the lord of the ‘I’s (Apple) was accused by the King of ‘N’s (Nokia) for 10 patent infringements related to wireless data, speech technology, security and encryption technologies. Nokia, one of the largest player in the handsets market, has spend more than 40 billion Euros in the last two decades on R&D to develop such technologies. Nokia has agreement with more than 40 handset manufacturers world over for the usage of its technologies, however, Apple is an exception.

In early December, Apple counter attacked rival Nokia with 13 patent infringements!

And now Nokia has filed a case in International Trade Commission (ITC) against Apple.

Nokia experienced first quarter loss after a decade whereas Apple touched profits of $1.6 billion, thanks to the growth in sales of iPods and iPhones. Nokia is finding it difficult to digest this and doing all sort of analysis to find the root cause. In the race to satisfy the shareholders both these companies are compromising with their brand values which is built over decades. Who will win this patent war? Apple, Nokia or other competitors

Rogues

China, a communist country, started its economic turnaround with the concept of small organizations like Town and Village enterprises in the 70s. Many reports say that their infrastructure was the key to their miraculous growth. However, if we compare the infrastructure levels of India with that of China in early 80s, we find that the length of roads, expressways and railway tracks were all higher in India than China. During this period, China had only one resource called human resource or HR.

In the business cycle, all developed economies of the world have started with small innovations, developments and small organizations. Which grew by leaps and bounds with continuous improvement in process and technology. In the 90s, a general perception creeped in to the minds of people that Big is better and thus every country and organization competed with themselves to achieve the “Biggest Status”. Forbes list of richests, biggests and highests fueled this aspiration like a virus. Highest building, largest workforce, biggest company, largest plant, richest CEO and all sorts of permutation and combination.

Now, with the successful launch of TATA NANO (Smallest/Cheapest Car), TATA Swach (Cheapest water purifier: Threat to bottled water industry), micro financing products and other nano products, the “B” word seems to be dampening. TATA with its bottom of the Pyramid approach is poised to revolutionize the way world thinks. As C.K. Prahlad  said in his theory that the real money is residing in with the people at the bottom. TATA is also planning to launch its NANO housing model where in people can get cheap affordable accommodation even during housing bubbles bursting everywhere.

In contrast Reliance has lived through its glorious days by building the biggest complexes and biggest chains. Very often people forget that every big thing is build on the platform of small products. Like the mobile revolution by Ambanis which made mobile affodable to every Indian from top to bottom of the pyramid. IBM is going small by targeting Small and medium sized companies. FMCG companies have experienced the growth by launching the smallest SKUs (shampoo/oil in Sachets).

You name the industry and you would realize that small is big. Is it the magical tool which communism invented centuries ago or is it the magical tool which capitalists are exploiting?

Rogues

Business to business marketing is a specialized field of marketing where the rules of the game is substantially different. Transaction between Microsoft and Dell can be compared to transaction between P&G and a consumer John, but to a certain extent. The level of trust and relationship is markedly different in the above two business transactions. The intricacies of trust and relationship in B2B transactions have been discussed in depth in a paper written by Shelby D Hunt. In the past decade there has been a paradigm shift towards relationship marketing and this is more evident in B2B segment. However, at the kirana store level the importance of relationship marketing cannot be neglected in a developing country. It is seen that the importance of this concept varies with the level of development in the society. The more developed a country the less is the importance at B2C level. In emerging nations where the systems are not well defined and where best practices are rare, adjustment and adoption to individual customers is been practiced since decades.

Business to business marketing is a specialized field of marketing where the rules of the game is substantially different. Transaction between Microsoft and Dell can be compared to transaction between P&G and a consumer John, but to a certain extent. The level of trust and relationship is markedly different in the above two business transactions. The intricacies of trust and relationship in B2B transactions have been discussed in depth in a paper written by Shelby D Hunt. In the past decade there has been a paradigm shift towards relationship marketing and this is more evident in B2B segment. However, at the kirana store level the importance of relationship marketing cannot be neglected in a developing country. It is seen that the importance of this concept varies with the level of development in the society. The more developed a country the less is the importance at B2C level. In emerging nations where the systems are not well defined and where best practices are rare, adjustment and adoption to individual customers is been practiced since decades.

With this background information, here i would like to throw some light on an interesting relation between human behavior and relationship marketing. Interaction and transaction among human beings happen at three levels:

one-With family members

Two-with friends

Three-with acquaintance

Let us explore the importance and consequence of relationship in all the three scenarios. At level one, humans compulsorily adopt to the family members needs and change involuntarily. If your wife needs some time, she need not take an appointment from you. At level two, humans adopt to the needs of their friends voluntarily. If your friend wants to meet you, you might change your regular appointment to accommodate your friends need. However, at level three, the chances that you treat the acquaintance differently are very bleak.

Now, let us explore these options for a business house.

level one: Big client without whom you cannot survive. Just like family members.

level Two: key clients whom you perceive to be better than other clients (in terms of business, process or growth prospects). Just like friends.

level Three: other clients

In level one, your client defines the way you work and can be compared to family members.

In level two, there is a mutual adjustment and you act as if they are your friends. You would change your normal business process wherever required.

Interestingly, at level three, you do business with other not so important clients and you act as if they are just acquaintance and you resist any demand in process change.

From the above comparison i conclude that a manager can understand its business better if he handles the clients as if they are family members, friends or just acquaintance.

“Three tier relationship management in business”.

Rogues

A survey from 2007 to 2009 in 135 countries by Gallups revealed that 16% of the worlds adult population would like to leave their home country for a country of their choice. This 16% converts to 700 million people and that is more than adult population of entire North & South America!

The most desired country was found to be US, Canada, UK, Germany, Saudi Arabia and Australia. Out of these 700 million majority would like to migrate to North america. Among the countries from where people would like to migrate, Africa tops the list along with other developing countries.

Why is this disparity between countries? Why does the grass on the other side seem to be greener always?

In this context we could say that the people from emerging nations aspire to live one day in a country as developed as US or UK. The IT/ITES revolution of this century have increased the awareness about what a developed country is all about. The standard of living, the ease of transportation and the predictability play major roles in setting a benchmark for choice of a country. People believe that sometime in future their country will emerge as a country of their dream. However, the waiting time for such transformation is huge in most of the cases. This urge of shortening the waiting time can be one of the reason for these 700 million to dream of switching the country.

Rogues