Category: Email Forwards

Allow others to win as well


There once lived a great Mathematician in a village outside Ujjain. He was often called by the local king to advice on matters related to the economy. His reputation had spread as far as Taxila in the North and Kanchi in the South. So it hurt him very much when the village headman told him, “You may be a great mathematician who advises the king on economic matters but your son does not know the value of gold or silver.”

The mathematician called his son and asked, “What is more valuable – gold or silver?” “Gold,” said the son. “That is correct. Why is it then that the village headman makes fun of you, claims you do not know the value of gold or silver? He teases me every day. He mocks me before other village elders as a father who neglects his son. This hurts me. I feel everyone in the village is laughing behind my back because you do not know what is more valuable, gold or silver. Explain this to me, son.”

So the son of the mathematician told his father the reason why the village headman carried this iMpression. “Every day on my way to school, the village headman calls me to his house. There, in front of all village elders, he holds out a silver coin in one hand and a gold coin in other. He asks me to pick up the more valuable coin. I pick the silver coin. He laughs, the elders jeer, everyone makes fun of me. And then I go to school. This happens every day. That is why they tell you I do not know the value of gold or silver.”

The father was confused. His son knew the value of gold and silver, and yet when asked to choose between a gold coin and silver coin always picked the silver coin. “Why don’t you pick up the gold coin?” he asked. In response, the son took the father to his room and showed him a box. In the box were at least a hundred silver coins. Turning to his father, the mathematician’s son said, “The day I pick up the gold coin the game will stop. They will stop having fun and I will stop making money.”

Moral:

Sometimes in life, we have to play the fool because our seniors and our peers, and sometimes even our juniors like it. That does not mean we lose in the game of life. It just means allowing others to win in one arena of the game, while we win in the other arena of the game. We have to choose which arena matters to us and which arenas do not.

Lessons from Bed Room


When I woke up this morning from bed & asked myself;

What is life all about?
What are some of the secrets of success in life?

The answers were right there in your room;

  • The Fan said – Be cool.
  • The Roof said – Aim high.
  • The Window said – See the world.
  • The Clock said – Every minute is precious.
  • The Mirror said – Reflect before you act.
  • The Calendar said – Be up to date.
  • The Door said – Push hard for your goals.
  • The Carpet said – Kneel down and pray. 

Carry a Heart that never Hates. Carry a Smile that never Fades. Carry a Touch that never Hurts.

KBC & SMS!!! Similarly weigh Airtel’s Forced activation of your mobiles for Worldcup Cricket Alerts


A little behind-the-scene info won’t  hurt……assuming it’s correct!

You all know it’s a good business. But have you ever pondered… How Good??

Any guesses?? Let’s see…  Airtel is charging Rs. 6 per SMS sent for this contest.

Assuming there are only 100 entries from say 10 cities of some 20 districts and 20 states…

6(Rs/SMS) x 100(entries) x 10(cities) x 20(districts) x 20(states) = 6 x 100 x 10 x 20 x 20 = Rs.24,00,000  (2.4 million) in 20 minutes. (People trying for the 2 lakhs cash prize)  Imagine what if 1000 entries try out from 100 cities????

The figure simply grows by 2 more zeroes and yields a whopping 24 Crores!!!!

And it does not stop there…  In practice it could be another multiple of 100 or worst case a multiple of 1000 on an average.  In that case it is 24 x 100 crores earnings in just 20 minutes on every episode!!!

And the prize money : A mere 2 crore (and from whose pocket?)  Smart Business By Siddharth Basu!  And the best part of this calculation is just the SMS earning!!  What about the Ad money???

A rough annual profit calculation goes like this:  2400 x 5 x 4) (episode/month) x 12 = 5,76,000 crores.  Let even 50% get dissolved in taxes and other payments, still you will be left with (which includes even the meagre 480 crores of prize money i.e.if every episode bags 2 crore prize)!

2,88,000  crores profit (only from SMS)

Simple Question “KAUN BANEGA CROREPATI” and your options are—
A) SONY TV
B) AIRTEL
C) AMITABH BACHAN
D) SIDDHARTH BASU,

Computerji iska jawab batayiye….

Ans : All FOUR.

Success does not happen in isolation


There was a farmer who grew superior quality and award-winning CORN. Each year he entered his CORN in the state fair where it won honor and prizes.

Once a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learnt something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors’.

“How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?” the reporter asked.

“Why sir, “said the farmer, “didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior, sub-standard and poor quality corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of My corn.

If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn

The farmer gave a superb insight into the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbor’s corn also improves. So it is in the other dimensions! Those who choose to be at harmony must help their neighbors and colleagues to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others to live well. The value of a life is measured by the lives it touches.

Moral: Success does not happen in isolation. It is very often a participative and collective process. So share the good practices, ideas, new learning’s with your family, team members, neighbor

 

The Coming Changes in Life and lifestyle – Not Political


Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come!

  1. The Post Office: Get ready to imagine a world without the post office.  They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your every day mail  is junk mail and bills..
  2. The Check: Britain is already laying  groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.
  3. The Newspaper: The younger generation doesn’t read newspapers. They don’t subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. Newspapers will go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it.. The rise in mobile Internet devices and  e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone  companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.
  4. The Book: You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real  book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can’t wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you’re holding a gadget instead of a book.
  5. The Land Line Telephone: Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don’t need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they’ve always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.
  6. Music: This is the saddest part of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death, and not just because of illegal downloading.  It’s the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption are the problem. The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over 40% of the music purchased today are “catalog items,” meaning it’s traditional music that the public is familiar with, by older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, “Appetite for Self-Destruction” by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, “Before the Music Dies.”
  7. Television: Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they’re playing games and doing lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV.  Prime time shows have degenerated to lower than the lowest common denominator. Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It’s time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery.. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.
  8. The “Things” That You Own: Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in “the cloud.” Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest “cloud services.” That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider. In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That’s the good news. But, will you actually own any of this “stuff” or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big “Poof?” Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.
  9. Privacy: If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That’s gone. It’s been gone for a long time anyway. Try Google search on your name and see how much information is available and you will be appalled.  There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, “They” know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And “They” will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

All we will have,that can’t be changed, are our Memories.

3 Nice Stories


1. Once, all villagers decided to pray for rain. On the day of prayer, all people gathered; but only one boy came with an umbrella.
THATS CONFIDENCE.

2. When you throw a one year old baby in the air, he laughs because he knows you will catch him.
THATS TRUST.

3. Every night when we go to bed, we have no assurance to wake up alive the next morning, but still we have plans for tomorrow.:-)
THATS HOPE

Dont’s of LIFE


Don’t make promise when you are in joy!
Don’t reply when you are sad!
Don’t take decision when you are angry!
Think twice before you act!
The other word is “Think before act, but don’t think too much”

Nokia CEO’s Letter to his Employees


Finland-based Nokia faces a key test this week when chief executive Stephen Elop finally unveils a plan to reverse a sharp slide in the fortunes of the world’s number one mobile phone maker.

Nokia holds a strategy and financial briefing in London on Friday, two weeks after it reported a 21 percent slump in fourth quarter earnings and Elop promised: “The industry’s changed and now it’s time for Nokia to change faster.”

Engadget has reprinted a copy of the text from an internal Nokia memo from the CEO Elop to the company’s employees. Here’s over to the letter which several analysts have termed ‘brutually honest’.

Hello there,

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames.

Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a “burning platform,” and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times – his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a “burning platform” caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a “burning platform” and we must decide how we are. going to change our behaviour.

Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you what I’ve heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I’m going to share what I’ve learned and what have come to believe.

I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

And, we have more than one explosion – we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.

In 2008, Apple’s market share in the $300+ price range was 25 percent; by 2010 it escalated to 61 percent. They are enjoying a tremendous growth trajectory with a 78 percent earnings growth year over year in Q4 2010. Apple demonstrated that if designed well, consumers would buy a high-priced phone with a great experience and developers would build applications. They changed the game, and today, Apple owns the high-end range.

And then, there is Android. In about two years, Android created a platform that attracts application developers, service providers and hardware manufacturers.

Android came in at the high-end, they are now winning the mid-range, and quickly they are going downstream to phones under €100. Google has become a gravitational force, drawing much of the industry’s innovation to its core.

Let’s not forget about the low-end price range. In 2008, MediaTek supplied complete reference designs for phone chipsets, which enabled manufacturers in the Shenzhen region of China to produce phones at an unbelievable pace. By some accounts, this ecosystem now produces more than one third of the phones sold globally – taking share from us in emerging markets.

While competitors poured flames on our market share, what happened at Nokia? We fell behind, we missed big trends, and we lost time. At that time, we thought we were making the right decisions; but, with the benefit of hindsight, we now find ourselves years behind.

The first iPhone shipped in 2007, and we still don’t have a product that is close to their experience. Android came on the scene just over 2 years ago, and this week they took our leadership position in smartphone volumes. Unbelievable.

We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Nokia, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones. However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.

At the midrange, we have Symbian. It has proven to be non-competitive in leading markets like North America. Additionally, Symbian is proving to be an increasingly difficult environment in which to develop to meet the continuously expanding consumer requirements, leading to slowness in product development and also creating a disadvantage when we seek to take advantage of new hardware platforms. As a result, if we continue like before, we will get further and further behind, while our competitors advance further and further ahead.

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.” They are fast, they are cheap, and they are challenging us.

And the truly perplexing aspect is that we’re not even fighting with the right weapons. We are still too often trying to approach each price range on a device-to-device basis.

The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we’ve lost market share, we’ve lost mind share and we’ve lost time.

On Tuesday, Standard & Poor’s informed that they will put our A long term and A-1 short term ratings on negative credit watch. This is a similar rating action to the one that Moody’s took last week. Basically it means that during the next few weeks they will make an analysis of Nokia, and decide on a possible credit
rating downgrade. Why are these credit agencies contemplating these changes?

Because they are concerned about our competitiveness.

Consumer preference for Nokia declined worldwide. In the UK, our brand preference has slipped to 20 percent, which is 8 percent lower than last year. That means only 1 out of 5 people in the UK prefer Nokia to other brands. It’s also down in the other markets, which are traditionally our strongholds: Russia, Germany, Indonesia, UAE, and on and on and on.

How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Nokia. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven’t been delivering innovation fast enough. We’re not collaborating internally.

Nokia, our platform is burning.

We are working on a path forward — a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

Stephen.

Even to steal there should be a value


Some guy  bought a new fridge for his house.

To get rid of his old  fridge, he put it in his front yard and hung asign on it  saying: ‘Free to good home. You want it, you take  it.’

For three days the fridge sat there without anyone  looking twice.

He eventually decided that people were too  mistrustful of this deal.

So he changed the sign to read:  ‘Fridge for sale $50.’

The next day someone  stole it!