Vishal Suri's Blog

(Feeling of) Scarcity to Increase Demand

2011-10-30T23:51:00.000+05:30

I read in Enchantment last week how creating a sense of scarcity can increase demand in some cases. Saw this happening on the day of Diwali at a sweets shop. The owner knew that people were doing their last minute shopping and would not want to go back home without sweets. So he kept only a small percentage of the quantity that he generally keeps on display, and told the customers that everything else was sold. As I stood there in line waiting and thinking what to buy, I saw how the workers kept replacing the empty trays with less than half filled trays. The trays kept selling and getting replaced again with less than half filled trays. Anyone who entered the shop got a feeling that there was not much left and would buy in haste. Everyone was so busy buying that it was hard to notice what was going on. Oh, and while I was leaving the store, I overheard a distressed wife telling her husband how she had been asking him to go and buy the sweets and now everything was over. :-)

Time To Reflect

2011-04-28T22:22:00.001+05:30

I recently read this wonderful HBR article How Will You Measure Your Life, which has made me thinking for the last few days.

With just a two more weeks left for graduation, I think it's the best time to ask myself these questions:

• How can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career?

• How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness?

• How can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?

What did your professors gift you when you graduated?

2011-04-21T04:47:00.000+05:30

Check this LipDub the faculty and staff at our school did for our graduation brunch.

Ads in Books?

2011-04-13T04:32:00.002+05:30

Just saw that Amazon has announced Kindle with special offers for $114; $25 less than their cheapest model in the market today. I think this is a nice and clever step from Amazon to keep the model with $139 price tag in market. Not sure if Amazon will be able to make up for those $25 from the ads/special offers. But this will attract people who thought $139 was a high price for Kindle and these offers, since only present on the home screen and screensavers do not interrupt reading.

For people waiting to buy a new kindle for a $100 in near future, they may have to put up with ads within books while reading. Hmm.. would be interesting to see.

Comcast Outage Threw Me Off The Cloud

2010-11-29T20:56:00.000+05:30

I have read and sometimes felt that we are so used to be connected 24x7, that not having internet makes us feel that something is missing. I experienced it first hand last night. At around 9pm EST, by internet connection from Comcast suddenly stopped working. It took me around 2 hours to figure out a workaround to access the internet and to realize this strange addiction.

After I started thinking about it, I wondered what it would mean for all those already in the business of cloud computing - both who provide such services and who consume such services. I'm sure they might have already considered such risks. But I thought what if this outage was not on a sunday night but on a Monday morning and was more widespread; what would have it meant for the businesses impacted.

What about the Chrome OS and many other such OS to come? I don't know the technical details of Google Chrome OS, but if it is something that will run only using the internet, and is meant for people spending most of their time on internet, what would it mean having a Google Chrome OS computer but no internet connection. I wonder!

Novell Enters Social Collaboration Space Through Vibe

2010-11-16T20:51:00.001+05:30

I just saw that Novell has launched a new social collaboration tool called Vibe. From the video and text on its website, it sounds more like Google Buzz. But it looks more formal. Currently, it is open to everyone to join and profiles are public. But if it is received well, I can see Novell rolling it out for enterprises with teams using this tool for collaboration.

Fall Colors in Boston

2010-11-16T06:22:00.000+05:30

I was in US for three years earlier but could never come up north to see the fall colors. In last two years, I have seen some wonderful sights of fall colors in the city. I wish I had gone to NH or Maine, but maybe next time. Here is one of the pictures that I took in Boston Public Garden two weeks ago. Hope you like it.

Online Music Sales in India

2010-10-23T06:49:00.002+05:30

I just read that Google has launched Music Service in India. This looks like a good move. The article suggests that there is a growing demand of online music sales in India. The PwC chart looks just too promising.

It's been long since I bought an Indian music cassette (I have never bought a CD). I have been roaming around since CDs became more prevalent in India and never wanted to invest in a CD player. Also, I think sale of music on CDs was very short-lived. Internet soon made CDs obsolete too.

After reading this news, I went to www.saregama.com and saw a lot of songs have a price tag of $0.79, which amounts to approx Rs.35. I don't know why but I still feel that Rs35 is a little too much for a song in India. I don't know if I would spend this much to buy a song. I just wonder if people are really spending that much or is it just me who thinks that it's still a high price to pay for a song.

Social Ads Soon to Revolutionize the Advertising Industry

2010-10-02T20:33:00.002+05:30

How annoying are the ads that suddenly come up when we are engrossed in a thrilling scene of a movie or popup when we are reading something important. But still, there are ads that we just love to watch again and again. YouTube has thousands of those. But companies never had a way to know if the customers loved their ads till they had drained down huge sums of money in advertising.

I just saw this post on Google's blog, where the author talks about the future of display advertising. Even though there are many interesting forecasts in this post, the one that I really struck me was that 75 percent of ads on the web will be social in nature. People will be able to share ads and comment on them. I think that this will completely change the game in the advertising industry.

Today, so many companies run advertisement campaigns and have to wait for a certain period of time to measure the performance of these campaigns and see the results. Even then they hardly come to know what people who watch the ads like or dislike about the ads. If ads go social, the companies will receive one more level, but a very important one, of insight. Companies will start knowing what did people who watch the ads and purchase the product, like in the ads. Companies will know real time what their target audience doesn't like about the ads and will be able to change the ads on the fly. It will also change the business models of the advertising companies. Companies will start paying advertising agencies money based on the real-time performance and customer feedbacks. This will not only apply to the internet based ads. With Google TV, Apple TV and probably many more in the pipeline, social ads will have a huge impact in the TV industry too.

I wrote this post for my IT strategy class blog here:

Browser Wars Again

2010-09-15T19:08:00.000+05:30

I came across this WSJ news article on companies trying to gain share in the web browser market.
We discussed in our IT Strategy class last week how mobile users worldwide will soon surpass desktop users and most of the people will access internet via mobile devices. One of the implications we discussed about this trend was the prominence and growth of Apps and a decline in the use of web browsers. This also came up when we were discussing Web is Dead. Apps are, no doubt, a great way to enhance not only the user experience but also the marketing capabilities of companies.

So, why do companies like Microsoft, Google or Apple, who are aggressively pursuing the mobile internet market and trying to create their own App markets, worry about their web browsers? Microsoft and other companies probably realize that the next big gadget to rule the market is going to be tablet PCs. Apple's IPad has already given a glimpse of endless possibilities and opportunities that tablet PCs will create for internet users and businesses. Apps will be a dominant way to access certain services on web, but people will still use Web Browsers on tablet PCs to access information on internet. Web Browsers will be able to tell the same information (well, almost!) about the users that the apps will tell. So, is IE9 only for better graphics? Or is Microsoft developing IE9 (or maybe more versions?) of web browsers specifically for tablet PCs that will run on Windows OS. The IE9 screenshot in the WSJ article seems to be something we have seen only on IPads.

Also, Microsoft and Google compete against each other in the Search Engine market too. Their growth and decline in the market share for web browsers may impact their share in the search engine. It will be interesting to watch if Microsoft can re-gain the market share in the web browser market and help that feed its Bing growth or will Google or Apple respond with something new.

Multiple Signatures in Gmail

2010-07-27T05:15:00.003+05:30

Most of us now use multiple email addresses - primarily work and business in our day to day life. Having a single interface to access and use multiple email accounts comes handy. I use Gmail to access my personal and BU emails. But not always. Even though Gmail has had a feature that lets the users decide which email account to send the email from, it used to attach the same signature (if enabled) to all the messages sent from any account. This was very annoying. I use a formal signature for my school emails and don't use any signature for my personal email address. A few months back, I wanted to use only Gmail for my BU emails too, so that I have all my emails at one place. So I added the BU signature to my gmail. But after a while, it became a real pain because I had to manually delete the signature from the email editor everytime I wanted to send an email from my gmail account. And if I chose not to have the signature added automatically, I had to type the full signature everytime I needed to - a much bigger pain.

Fortunately, Gmail has recently added an option (MS Outlook has had it since long) to attach different signatures to their respective email accounts. I wonder what took Google so long to come up with this! At the same time, I also think that even though I wished for this feature for a long time, I never complained - maybe because Gmail has always been free and it was good enough (one of the best!) for something that you get for free.

How Do You Cherish Your Photos?

2010-07-26T08:16:00.001+05:30

I have been using digital cameras since early 2005 (a point and shoot first and then an SLR) and have taken a lot of photographs since then - many of them of no use because the digital technology lets you take as many photographs as you want, good or bad, without worrying about running out of the film and the cost of developing every photo you shoot. I have hardly printed any photographs (thrice including today) on paper in all those years, mainly because I knew that I was staying temporarily wherever I was and I didn't want to collect stuff that I would not be able to carry along with me whenever I move.

But whenever I have printed a photo, I have always felt that it looks better on paper than it looks on my computer/laptop screen. I don't know why but it has a very different feel and its own charm. The colors seem more bright and vibrant on paper. In this age of storing and saving photos digitally, I wonder how many people print their photos and cherish those.

It worked out well in the end...

2010-07-23T04:36:00.001+05:30

I am more than half way through in my internship at Ipswitch. It has been a great experience so far - a lot to learn and a good opportunity to apply what I learnt in school recently. I was excited from the day one for various reasons

I spent 6 years of my professional career in IT. All were in the IT services environment. I had always wondered how it would be to work at a products-based company and had wanted to be a part of a product team.

As I moved up in my career, I started moving away from my technical role and started getting involved more in managerial activities. I also started getting more involved with pre-sales and business development and had started thinking of shifting my career focus to marketing.

I was a science student in school, studied engineering in my undergrad and spent a considerable amount of time working in the tech industry. So, I wanted to be connected to the technology or IT in my post-MBA job.

I got all of these at Ipswitch this summer. Besides, it is a great place to work. BBJ recently ranked Ipswitch among the best places to work for in Boston under mid-size businesses category.

Searching for a summer internship was a tough ordeal but I am happy that it worked out very well in the end!

Nice Break !

2010-05-18T09:52:00.014+05:30

I had a nice break of around 10 days after my second semester. It was good having no cases to read or no homeworks/assignments. It felt strange for the first few days but then it started feeling good after a while. The first few days were gloomy because of weather and full of anxiety as I was waiting to hear back from two companies I interviewed with for the summer internship. Half way down the break, the weather cleared up and I got an internship offer for the summer. I had a plan of a road trip to Niagara in this break but it didn't work out because I got lazy and because I don't have enough money right now. But I spent the last 3-4 days (re-)visiting few places in the city.

First day, we went upto Coolidge corner. We had never been to Trader Joe's before. We just thought of stopping by there to see what the store has. To our amusement, we found really cheap wines - even some good ones which are available at other stores were really at a discount there. I bought my first most inexpensive wine that day - only for $2.99. I was way better than I had expected and than many other expensive wines I had tried.

The next day, we went to Boston Common. The last time we had been to that park was in winter - Dec 31 to see the fireworks. It was good to see so much greenery after a long time. After a good sunny afternoon at the park, we decided to take a walk on the Charles Street. I really like that place as it reminds me of streets in India that have shops on both sides of the street at the ground level and houses and apartments on top of those shops, something not very common to see in US. We walked all the way upto the Charles MGH T-stop, walked up the bridge, stood there for a while and watched Boston Skyline, small boats sailing in Charles River and duck tours making their last rides. I really wished I had my camera at that time.

I just couldn't resist that itch of taking out my camera again and we went to the harbor the next day. A beautiful sunny afternoon with clear blue sky and light breeze was a perfect day to be at the harbor. It was also the day when we walked the most. After spending time at harbor, we walked up to the Charles River bridge again, took some photos and then walked to the MIT stop. It was tiring but a good walk.

After a good warming up session with my camera at the harbor, I needed more of the photography and some more of the sun. I knew I would be very busy for the next few weeks. So, on the last day of my break, we went out again, this time to the Charles River sidewalk along the BU campus. This place is at the top of my favorites in Boston so far. I took some photos that I really liked a lot. It was a perfect day to end my small break, to sit on a bench along the river and just relax.

Now, I'm back to the daily drill of summer intensives of the MS part of my program - classes from 8am to 6pm for the next three weeks. More to come about those shortly.

GTalk Status Messages In Google Buzz: Feature Or Bug?

2010-05-10T10:06:00.003+05:30

I don't use Google Buzz a lot. When it was launched, it just felt like another redundant addition to already a huge list of ways of sharing of information with one's 'social' network. I was very distracted by having Buzz in my Gmail. I felt an urge to clean that unread count in Buzz like with my Inbox and ended up wasting my time. After using it for a while, I removed it from my Gmail. Just recently, I thought of adding it back to my Gmail tab to see if anything has changed. Just after one day of putting it back, I was listening to some songs while preparing for my exams and had set my gtalk status message to the show the songs I was listening to. Suddenly, it occurred to me that the gtalk status message is shared on Buzz and when I checked Buzz, I wasn't surprised to see so many updates from me each one stating my new status message on gtalk. I am not sure if people read those. I would find it somewhat annoying if I saw a friend's 20 gtalk status messages in a row - that too the songs that friend was listening to. I wonder if it was by design ( a feature) or Google just forgot to think about it (a bug?).

Corporate Governance and The MBA Oath

2010-04-30T05:25:00.007+05:30

Today was the last session (yes, 2 semesters done) of our Strategy class and we talked about Corporate Governance and Ethics. It's always an interesting topic of discussion in the class with strong opinions and arguments flowing across the room. We also touched upon the idea of teaching ethics in a business school. Again, some were in favor and some were not. Personally, I don't think ethics can be taught to a graduate student in a classroom. My belief is that ethics are the underlying values of a person's character and cannot be taught at this point in someone's life. The value system under which someone is brought up in childhood is a key influencing factor in shaping up someone's beliefs and conception of ethics and is really hard to change. So, if you want to teach ethics to someone, start in school.

I was also reminded of the famous MBA Oath that was proposed by some HBS graduates last year.To me, it was a very naive idea and a stupid solution to a very important global societal problem. There was a big push from a section of faculty and students to sign the oath. Well, I never liked the idea.

First of all, I felt that by signing the MBA oath, I would admit that all the economic mess was caused by the MBAs. It was like saying "I am sorry for what I did and now I promise that I will behave myself".

Second, I don't believe that signing an oath can change someone's value system and view of ethics. If you believe in doing the right thing, you will do it no matter what and if you don't, an oath that you signed 10 years ago in school will not come to stop you when you are in a situation. People all over the world take oaths and then forget about those (policemen in India wouldn't be a bad example!). I am not saying that just because people don't stick to their oaths, so it is a bad idea. I believe that there should be proper measures to catch and punish the unethical behaviors - to set examples so that others don't think of repeating the same mistakes. I don't think that if people who are responsible for financial crisis or any other corporate scam in the world (MBAs or not!) had taken the oath, it would not have happened. And if people responsible for the current crisis go unpunished, I'm sure there is a big chance that some of them would already be thinking of the next and bigger scam.

Now, it would be interesting to see if people who signed this oath will, in future, be accused of a behavior opposite to what they signed up for !

We Did It!

2010-04-24T09:49:00.009+05:30

We finally did it last Saturday. I was thinking of calling off the meet just a week before the date of event. We had only 4 students and 2 alumni signed up for the event. Why?

It was a long weekend
We started sending emails just 10 days before the event because the place where he event was originally planned backed out at the last moment and we had to look for a new place. People had made their plans for the weekend by then
Chinese MBA Conference was being held at Harvard Business School on the same day

But fortunately, it worked out well. We had a decent number of people show up. Met some interesting people and made good connections. I had never organized any event earlier, so it was a great learning experience for me. I'm sure the next alumni event will be much better.

Oh, and not to forget, I gave my first little impromptu speech as the President of the Asian Business Club :)

How many people do you need at an Alumni Networking event?

2010-04-17T03:12:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I was sending reminder emails to students for the Alumni Event we have organized in Boston. I didn't know how to pursuade people to come to the event. I heard from some that they looked at guest list and saw very small list of attendees. So, everyone was waiting for others to sign up the confirmations just didn't move. Part of less confirmations initially was because we got very late in sending out the invites as the place we had booked earlier backed out of the deal. The other reason is there is another conference on China in HBS during the weekend. But I thought - isn't it better to have less people around you so that you get more time to spend with alumni and make stronger connections ?

Foreign Universities in India

2010-04-14T11:48:00.001+05:30

I was very happy to read the news a few weeks ago when the bill to allow foreign Universities to invest and open campuses in India was passed. It sounded like a great solution to the problem of lack of quality higher education in India. The government had a good argument that they don't have the infrastructure to support the current and a fast growing demand of education.

I came across a news article about Left opposing the bill a few days later. My first reaction was "Why do they have to oppose everything that the government in power does?" But when I was done reading the article, I was really thinking hard and felt that some of the concerns raised by the Left parties seem to be valid. The most important one is that allowing foreign universities come in and setup their campuses will make the cost of education go up. Well, to some extent, that may be true. One reason I thought was that there is already a dearth of good teachers/instructors to teach in schools and colleges. If good colleges open their campuses or even tie up with Indian schools, they will need good teachers to maintain their image, brand and to provide the same level of education as they provide in their own countries. With a shortage of good teachers and a spurt in demand, schools will spend a lot of money to attract the best talent. Schools will definitely compete each other to attract those teachers and one of the ways would be the better salaries, and all these costs will be ultimately passed on to the students. I hope someone in the government is thinking about all such issues while implementing this law.

Internships - Paid or Unpaid ?

2010-04-10T03:17:00.013+05:30

The percentage of students doing internships while they study has increased significantly and the internships during school are pretty much the norm these days. Students start searching for internships as soon as they land in school and the schools start helping them right from the day one. From my experience, I have found searching for an internship is as much if not more difficult than searching for a full-time job. Internships have become more important for carrier-switchers, a big chunk of which might be in MBA, I assume. These jobs become a means of getting your foot in the door, bridging that gap in your experience and to prove to your prospective employer, that you are committed towards that new career path.

In the current economic scenario, where jobs and internships are hard to come by, unpaid internships are not unheard of. Many people, and in many cases schools too, advise students to go for an unpaid internship to get that experience that they need to apply for their next job. I was not aware until I read this article in NYT, that unpaid internships may be actually illegal in some cases. So, I asked myself, "Why do people still go for unpaid internships, if it is illegal?" I started thinking of what's in it for students, companies and let's not forget schools.

Students benefit the most from internships. For someone who has never worked in a function or an industry, it's hard to prove to the employer one's credibility when there are many other candidates with years of experience applying for the same job. Internships come as a handy tool to break this vicious catch-22 circle. Students generally benefit more from the internships than the companies do. Apart from getting paid,they also get an opportunity to

gain experience in relevant area
network with people in the company
know the work culture at the company and see if it's a good fit
rethink their decision to get into that profession
prove themselves to be a great full-time candidate at the same company

Companies share some of the interests with the students. It gives them an opportunity to see if the intern is a good fit with the company culture. That was the only reason I was aware of before I started my MBA. I saw companies posting part-time jobs as interns, where they clearly wanted some student to work for them for cheap. I also saw a lot of internships listed as unpaid. The unpaid internships from non-profits made atleast some sense, but the idea of working for a for-profit company for free just baffled me. Some of the jobs that I saw were just part-time jobs, that companies wanted to get done by students for free.

There is a always a good chance that a student interning at a company might get a full time offer from the same company. So, the schools would definitely want students to get internships that they can convert to job offers. Placement numbers every year play a very important role in the school rankings. Besides, which school would want their students not to have a good job after school? And, internships always help students in their full time job hunts. So, schools sometimes advise students to take internships in their fields of interest even if they are unpaid, especially if they think the internship experience can later help them in getting a job. I felt sometimes that schools should not let for-profit companies list unpaid internship postings on the job board. But then thinking about the kind of economic mess we are in, a lot of people are ready to take those short stints only hoping it will help them a year later.

Course Registration Frenzy

2010-04-08T04:18:00.015+05:30

I wish there was a better and less stressful way to register for classes at the school. Every year, people wake up early, sync their clocks and wait cautiously and anxsiously for the clock to strike 07:00am. That's when the registration for the next semester's courses opens. As in every school, some of the subjects go at a premium". The classes for those subjects literally get filled in within first 30 seconds or even less than that. Some students get all the courses they wish to register for, some don't. It just turns out to be a matter of luck.

Well, it seemed for some time that I got lucky today till I realized that I had forgotten to register for some of the required courses of the MS program (I got all the good electives of the MBA program!). And when I tried to register for the required courses, one class that is being offered at two different times had only one time slot available and was conflicting with one of my electives, that got filled within a minute today morning. It turns out they will not add more seats to the filled class, so I will have to either wait for soemone to drop so that I can get in, or drop the elective and chose something else (all the good ones are already gone!). OR I can let go off the MS :)

BU Case Competition

2010-03-30T03:51:00.002+05:30

Saturday was a great day both outside and inside the SMG. The participants at the Case Competition experienced the real New-England weather as they saw snow, rain, sun-shine, clear sky and warm weather in just two days. Inside, watching students from top business schools was great.

I watched three final presentations. It was tough guessing who would win among the first three. There were people debating and talking about good and bad things about each presentation. It was great listening to different perspectives.

The presentations were followed by a great reception and a fabulous dinner with Ericson senior executives from all over the world and the CEO of Ericsson Hans Vestberg. I was really inspired by his words, vision and passion for making a change in the world through Ericsson. I look forward to an awesome event next year and hope to be one of the competing teams.

Another week

2010-03-29T09:33:00.003+05:30

Another week of more classes and project-end preparations begins.

the day of experiments

2008-08-15T23:25:00.004+05:30

Ah.. The much awaited "long weekends" but not in India. I was wondering today how we used to make plans for a "long weekend" months in advance. Anyways, I didn't work on the things I had actually planned for today. But ended up experimenting with my old photos with HDR. Here are a few samples:

Memory or dream?

2008-08-15T01:26:00.002+05:30

I miss this trip. Thanksgiving weekend of 2006. Vineet, patlu and hannu had come to DE and we had a fun filled time together. We went to philly, DC, NYC and Atlantic City. Patlu had a great time in AC. After hopping from one table to another we settled down for a game or roulette. Patlu started with a $20 bill and within half an hour he had won $200. I was tempted too on seeing him winning every bet and I thought of trying my luck too. But it was only patlu's day ! :-)
This photo was shot at National Space Museum at DC.