Down the archived road…

I went through all of my previous posts and added a couple of categories that you can take a look at.

Edge-Centric has all the posts I make related to new-age marketing or product design

Hiring and HR is related to the general employee <–> employer gap and situation as I find out about in PK.

Entrepreneurship has ideas for innovators in our industry, or highlights the people at the forefront of this

Professionalism has my advice on what constitutes the basics of professional ethics for employees in companies.

Lean Operations has tips or advice for companies to make their operations more efficient.

The rest are obvious.

I might have missed tagging a couple of posts here and there. If you feel I missed something please add a comment about it. Thanks

Blog of the day — gee!

Green & White became Blog of the Day at WordPress.com over the controversy with LUMS.

Er… thanks!?

Hopefully G&W will become BOTD on better posts — InshaAllah

What is The Network Effect?

Understanding the Network Effect is almost critical to the life of a marketer focusing on long tail / edge-centric models.

Here is a live example of the effect in progress.

Yesterday I wrote a somewhat controversial post on this blog. Here is the traffic that resulted:

Just to be sure, yes, it’s all traffic for one post (seen below)

The thing is — almost all of these people have never visited Green & White before. So how did they hear about the blog? Why did they choose to come?

The evidence is here:

Notice all of the gmail, yahoo, and lums squirrelmail accounts.

So what does this example have to do with marketing?

Doesn’t controversy sell? Ok seriously.

Everyone who read the post proabably forwarded it to their friends and their friends and their friends.

If this was a product, I would just have to market this to one person — and the news would spread across the social networks to where people will be diving over each other to buy the product.

Provided ofcourse, that the product is actually valuable. Scratch that .. that the story around the product is valuable.

So, the product is a blog post, but maybe the story in these emails was “This raving madman is shunning lums — all students: organize yourself in groups to march out and burn buildings until he stops because we will be destroyed unless we defend our university”

That’s a good story, and it certainly drove people here in hordes with pitchforks and silver stakes.

A good actual physical product can do the same thing: A good product will automatically create a good story around it that people would want to

• explore for themselves to make their own opinions about
• give them an incentive to participate in the story of the product (by either sharing with others, or refining it for themselves)

Did anyone hear about or use this software Napster? Did you know they only ever marketed that product to 50 people?

They called up 50 students in 50 fraternities in 50 universities in America. “Hey man, there’s a cool new software which lets you share music files with your buddies”. That was their total marketing cost.

How many users did they have when the illegal version was shut down — 5M? 50M?

So now you know what a network effect is — the challenge: How to make one for something not controversial.

Followup on LUMS…

Wow. This is a first for me.

I write a post with a few claims … people respond with attacks … but they all prove those claims.

Yesterday I wrote that I had heard from a number of reputable IT companies — whose names I will not disclose as a professional — that they had found the LUMS people they hired to be hotheaded, living in utopia about their worth, looking down at companies and refusing to fit into organizational goals.

The commenters gave a first hand demonstration of all of those traits!

It may be great to think that ‘I choose my own path’ and ‘I have vision, that’s why I dont stick into any company longer than 3 months’ and ‘no company can afford to sustain me’ but really, kids, the world doesn’t accept those types of professional ethics.

What’s more, most of the same companies that cannot afford to hire LUMS grads find a justification to hire people from Stanford. I wonder why….

I must say I am sorely disappointed with the professionalism and constructive behavior demonstrated in the comments. Rather than denying and challenging the basic fact — why not sit down over coffee to figure out a plan? That too with someone who’s been an Operations Consultant with IT firms and could probably influence them more than rants would?

Why not find out who this coffee person is in the first place — maybe he is the decision maker in the hiring process of 3 companies?! [companies that have not yet banned LUMS]

I personally really had higher standards from the professional graduates from LUMS.

All of you is what our industry is looking towards to be the visionaries that bring social welfare and change to our society. Taking that responsibility should be your utmost priority.

I sincerely hope you take this advice, that a good mentor gave me a long time ago:

Dont live your life assuming the world owes you a favor. Nay, it is you — with your superior education and privileged experiences — you owe the world and your society your dedication to the betterment of their lives.

IT Companies banning LUMS … does LUMS breed instabiltiy?

I keep hearing about more and more that IT companies now starting to outright ban job applicants from LUMS. These companies include many notable firms, and while this is not a well coordinated effort between them (maybe it should be?) they are all independently saying they do this to put some pressure on the university to shape up.

What is the list of grievances these companies hold which results in this ban? Here is the top three.

#3 : LUMS graduates are no better at their work than any other university… but they expect 2 times the salary — (in other words, the LUMS brand is not worth its weight in gold)

#2 : LUMS graduates carry too much baggage with them — their egos prevent them from fitting in and actually being constructive in a firm

#1 : LUMS graduates are highly unstable.

This instability ranks at the top of grievances. They say LUMS grads never stick in any company longer than 4-5 months, and often feel that they are inherently better than the company that they work for.

Now, I haven’t met too many LUMS grads, but I do feel that LUMS as a university talks too much about some things and too little about others.

E.g., I suspect that LUMS and LUMS staff will emphasize too much the importance of being a LUMS graduate, rather than emphasizing the importance of being an engineer / MBA / etc. There is too little clarity on how business or IT careers work.

They emphasize too much that the grads should persue whatever “interests them” rather than emphasizing the importance of realizing one’s place in the global business ecosystem, and that it is a noble thing that the industry doesn’t take risks on “interesting things”.

The resulting instability is because (I think in my humble opinion) the typical LUMS graduate will think it is OK to make an impromptu decision that greatly impacts their company / business, and decide that the world will accept them anyway even if they do. The typical graduate will think mostly of himself, and not enough about growing together with the industry. The typical graduate will not be afraid of changing his career on just a few days or weeks’ worth of thinking, rather than realizing that change is always a phased out process.

I hope LUMS takes a good serious notice of this shift before it becomes an avalanche.

On a side note: I have also had the pleasure of meeting a few IBA graudates recently and I have been most impressed by the level of professional ethics demonstrated by them.

Upcoming blogging slowdown

Just a note to the readers, I may be posting infrequently over the next couple of weeks.

I thought I was able to find more time for blogs but it seems that these days I cannot go two days without a new unanticipated issue to resolve.

Will keep you all in the loop with the world as much as I can find time to do. There are many interesting Pakistani business models I want to write about when there is some time…

More Product Management

An interesting Day in the Life of a Product Manager

Nice video to showcase the Rise of the Edge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

How to evangelise software 2: What do product managers do?

In continuation of CDF’s search for Product Managers who actually know something about that field, I thought I would post this fantastic writeup on the role of Product Management.

I would encourage everyone to go through this, because it is a very clear description.

This is what I would add to this:

• They need to be quick learners. Product Managers will also need to perform quick business analysis to measure industry trends and adjust their approach accordingly. Thus they should be able to effectively observe people and companies, identify new trends or business ethics, and use them in their day to day approach
• They need to keep up to date with the state of the art of modern business and marketing trends. Long Tail economics, Prosumer marketing, Permission Marketing, Edge-Centric Marketing and Product Design, Network Effect, etc…. each of these is a distinctive unique marketing and business model that is emerging and implemented by cutting-edge business leaders today. Any good Product Manager will be forward thinking enough to be able to learn these. It doesn’t matter if the company is doing business in Pakistan or elsewhere — cutting-edge business practice knowledge is essential. If a Product Manager today doubts that blogs are an effective communication medium just because they are on the edge of the industry, they are very seriously in the wrong career.
• They should not be afraid of disrupting industries. Although this is a very rare and very gradual incident, each highly effective product has the potential of disrupting industries, or changing the way people live or work. While this is not a day-to-day requirement of product managers, it helps to have a feverish urge to do that, as that certainly helps the Product Manager check his plans 3-4 times more carefully.
• They live, breathe and dream about the Company. It is just not possible to be a Product Manager if you look at work as a means of personal well being (i.e. if “the package” is how you define the work). If you are that person, you’re in the wrong path of life, and should consider Sales as a good profession to drive you. All Product Managers need to believe in their work over and above all else, and should consider their package as a compensation for the dedication they bring to their firm.
• They must be Multi-Dimensional Employees. This is almost a core requirement. You can read more here.

Coffee for Thought: How well do you take criticism?

As a company, have you thought of this?

I know criticism is really hard to accept, face, or digest — especially if it seems like some average Joe like me is trashing more than 5-6 months of hard work in an instant.

The truth is, the people who shout the loudest against your products and services are your most valuable customers.

They are all telling you precisely what they would like to see in your products for them to buy, and they are telling you this for free. They are working consciously hard to ensure that their advice to you gets to you.

You dont get insight like that from any market research effort. So embrace your lead customers and make them partners in your vision.

Consumers: If you love the company who offer your services, call their customer service and start shouting. You know its good for them.