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My
Musings
Its not Audiogalaxy, its P2P that's dead, u silly
(June 02)
First Napster, now Audiogalaxy. What is clear from latest debacle of P2P community is that P2P is dead. Sad. But true.
When Napster buckled, I was even sadder than I am today. But then came other alternatives. In fact, MUCH better ones, the likes of Audiogalaxy. But I didn't expect AG to buckle under capitalistic pressures becuase I was always given a dose of its-non-central-server-unlike-napster kinda crap. But here we are facing the same gloomy day again, exactly after one year!
My take on the whole p2p file-sharing domain is that no high-profile service will survive in long term. Operative word is 'high-profile'. By that obviously I mean, large user base. As soon as user base becomes large enough to be on the radar screen of some greedy music establishments, it will be asked to shut down, failing which it will be forced to shut down.
Did u say, we can always have small groups of file sharing users operating discreetly? Well maybe, you can. But what's the point dear? Think about it, the whole success of file sharing services lies in the fact that whatever music you want is available in fraction of seconds and that kinda availability comes only from having a large number of users. Call it a critical mass or threshold base or whatever u might like. But the HEART of a p2p systems is this lower limit. Sadly enough, this limit is also gonna to bring death to the same system which needs it in order to explode exponentially. 'Cause as soon as (or soon after) the critical user base in a file sharing system is achieved, it is bound to be noticabe by the 'outsiders'. So u see, its a catch-22 situation. Know of anyone, who could solve a catch-22 or recursive problem?
While you think about that, let me mourn the death of AG and take recourse in 25 GB music on my machine, which I developed over the time.
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Hindi Music: Demise of Napster?
(Feb 01)
Napster
is dying
These days if you log on to this once hugely
popular song swapping service called Napster, things are not the same.
Earlier, on an average, one would get 3000-4000 GB of music shared on one
Napster server. And there are hundreds of Napster servers! But now you
would only get 200-300 GB of music on a server. That is a reduction of more than
ninety percent!! Impressive? Wait a minute.
Or
is it really?
So is the music pircay through Napster over?
Yes and no. Yes to some extent, if you are talking about western music.
But consider Indian music scenario. Its still available GBs a kbps!! All
you need to do is to hook up to Napster and voila: choose your music and you
have it! Napster for Hindi music is still like the Hitchhiker's guide to
the galaxy which had answers to all questions on galactic matters.
That raises some serious questions. Do
the Indian music companies not bother about the revenues being taken away from
them? Or, is the volume of Hindi music traded on Napster is so small that
they do not have to worry about it? Or, just simply, are they not aware of
the damage?
I would place my bets on the last one.
Because, as an active participant of the song-swapping community, I can vouch
that the volume traded on Napster and other such services is huge. Just to
verify this, try checking any Indian user's file list in Napster and you are
sure to get a lot of unlicensed Indian music.
Indian
Scenario
In fact, the Indian music industry's is
lagging behind so much that all IMIA (Indian Music Industry association), a
recognized recording industry association consisting of 50 companies, has to say
about anti-piracy operations is that its team would identify and raid units and
people involved in pirated 'CD and cassettes' trading/manufacturing.
Where’s the digital piracy? Sure, IMI does talk about raiding the
copyright violators but there is no indication about any alarm setting off over
the issue of on-line music copying.
Nasscom is working hard towards nabbing
software piracy and Karnataka government even announced recently its intentions
of making Bangalore a piracy-free software capital. So who is in charge of
nabbing music piracy? IMIA? IMIA sure has a great anti-piracy team
headed by EX-DGPs and all. But Indian music industry still loses around
$200 million every year due to illegal piracy of music CDs and cassettes,
according to Julio Ribeiro, head of the Indian Music Industry Association.
Now what did you ask? Results? Keep it down, dude. Don’t ask
that aloud 'cause ever heard of any anti music piracy raids conducted? Maybe
sometimes. But they obviously are far and few in between.
Pirated sales in India account for nearly 30%
of total unit sales. But on-line, there is no sales. And hence its
not a question of how much revenue you are losing because someone else is
selling your licensed music but its a question of how much music is trading
hands (actually computers) without ever being sold!!
Piracy levels were 80% plus in eighties and
lot seems to be improved if we look at the given figure of 30%. But add
online piracy to that figure and I bet, it will bloat to its eighties' level.
Are you listening Indian Music Industry?
(Companies') Ignorance is bliss (for
music-lovers)!
References
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www.indianmi.org
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'Indian Music industry losing $150 m due to piracy', The Times of India,
April 25th, 2000
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Management
Doctoral Studies in India: A Primer
(Feb 02)
Overview
Management education in India has come a long
way since the early days of establishing of IIMs. The flagship management
education programme, MBA, is wildly popular as it offers quick gateway to the
riches and to the top echelon of corporate world. From catering mainly to
PSUs and few domestic private companies, top management institutes in country
are favored destination for international recruiters today.
Let’s look at the other side of this success
equation: the faculty at management institutes. Without world-class
faculty, this success would have never been possible. Ironically, even as
b-schools continues to proliferate – we have some 850 business schools today
in India – only a very select few offer doctoral programmes, the supply
engines of the management academicians.
Dearth
of faculty
One of the topmost challenges that any
management institute in India faces today, is the scarcity of faculty.
Most of the present faculty members at top management institutes in India are
educated in best of the foreign universities. But the pressing issue and
one that is a subject matter of great deliberation today is: how to keep the
intellectual pool of the institute more and more current by hiring people with
research background in latest management issues. This situation is a
vicious circle in itself. You would not have enough indigenous faculty
pool available to select from for your institute unless you have good quality
doctoral programmes available in the country. And you can not have a good
doctoral programme without good, sizeable faculty pool in the first
place. Take any management institute and you will find a number of
visiting/guest faculty members teaching full credit courses.
These are some of the reasons why
the need of emphasis on the management doctoral studies is more urgent today
than ever.
Objectives
The goal of doctoral studies in
management is to produce specialists in particular areas of management.
These specialists can cater to the requirements of:
- Academic depth needed for teaching and
research.
- Domain expertise for consulting.
- Knowledge and skill sets for functional
positions in industry.
Eligibility
and programme structure
Most of the doctoral programmes
need either a master’s degree or an engineer graduate degree with some work
experience. Some institutes like
IIM Calcutta offer admissions to fresh engineering graduates also.
Candidate has to apply for a specific specialization because the
admission is into a certain management discipline such as Information Systems,
Marketing, Corporate Strategy and Policy, Finance, Economics, Production and
Operations Management, Organizational Behaviour & Human Resource Management.
The doctoral programme usually
consists of two parts: coursework and dissertation. Coursework is the first one or two years of class-room work
which is essentially the grounding in basic management disciplines.
Irrespective of the area of specialization for which one has been
admitted, its mandatory to go through this basic coursework.
Most of the institutes find it convenient and effective to combine this
first year of foundation general management coursework with MBA classes.
However, the grades requirement for advancement to second year is
generally higher than the MBA criterion.
Some institutes like IIM Lucknow
offer an exchange programme also for doctoral students.
Financial
assistance
§
Almost all of the institutes offer some kind of financial
assistance. There is usually a
monthly fellowship and an annual contingency grant available for purchase of
books, journals etc. Exact amount
of fellowship might differ from one institute to other but pattern is the same.
§
Apart from these institute fellowships, for the last three
years, Infosys has instituted fellowships worth 9.0 lakh rupees each, spread
over three years, at three IIMs. At
each of these IIMs, a maximum number of two Infosys fellowships are awarded
every year. The requirement: thesis work related to information
technology/software industry.
§
Also, after first year, students may assist faculty in
courses and other various projects.
Even
though primary objective of the doctoral programmes is to produce excellent
teachers and researchers, career prospects, however, are not limited to academic
arena. Joining corporate world as specialists, starting own consulting
practice are some of other opportunities that are available after the completion
of a doctoral programme in management.
Top
"Look
Ma, I am an MBA now". Fine. But what next?
(Mar 01)
________________________________________________________________________
Excerpt
The
article takes a look at two diverse paths for an MBA graduate: take up job or
strike it out on your own. This piece makes a case for the later and
explains the prevalent trends.
________________________________________________________________________
MBA in
India is not seen merely as an educational degree. It is much more and
comes with a lot of hype. It is considered to be the key to all the
success, all the money, and all the goodies. Rightly so.
Right? Wrong. It is true that most plum jobs in the country go
to the MBA graduates but that’s just it: It’s still a job. You have to
work for someone else. You have a boss. So what? That might very
well sum up the prevalent mindset of current generation of Indian
MBAs.
Its relevant here to take a
break and look at what their counterparts in the rest of the world are
doing. At all the leading business schools, the career trends have
been shifting recently and shifted they have fast. Twenty seven
percent of the last batch (class of ’99) of Harvard Business School took
up jobs with small companies (<100 employees) reflecting the significant
entrepreneurial interests of students. Students showed interest in
both venture capital and high technology firms, with 12 % and 18 % of the
class employed in such firms.
Why these new trends? One
factor is clarity of objectives and goals. Almost 50% of the class if
generally above 27 years of age and this percentage has only been
increasing. The stakes are higher at that age as compared to the
average age of 22-23 years at Indian MBA schools. This is one factor
that demands more focus from the student. As a matter of fact,
students abroad are pretty focused even before joining the MBA programme.
Contrast this with the single-minded aim of landing a neat job at the end of
MBA, back home.
But are we blaming the
students here? Yes and No. There are two factors that matter for
a person to strike it out on his/her own: Individualistic/Personal factors
and Systemic/Environmental ones. Personal factors are something that
can be directly compared across space. Students in the west are more
risk-taking, ambitious, open to uncertainties. The underlying thread
of Indian society does not encourage risk-taking and security is the name of
the game.
On the Systemic side, the
comparison is not so straight. The markets in the west are developed
whereas they are just emerging here. There is much easier availability
of capital abroad as compared to the developing countries like India, though
the scenario is changing here too. A number of success stories also
have set the precedent there but in India too, we have start-up success
stories now being charted out.
On the part of B-schools, a
lot needs to be done. ‘Entrepreneurship’ deserves, rather demands,
separate focused attention. The schools need to identify the fire in
the belly and fan it up. That’s where B-schools can do
wonders. They should provide the ambience, much like an incubator, for
the students to realize their true goals. The acceptance ratio of 1:50 at
IIMs does not compare well with a very low ratio of 1:10 at schools abroad.
IIMB has set up a Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies in association with the
industry. B-schools also need to increase their intake. With
steps like these, B-schools can prove to be the engines of business growth
in the economy.
In this context, we need to
bring out the difference between professionalism and commercialism.
The world of trade is commercialism and the world of an MBA as a skilled
worker is professionalism. These are the two ends of the
pole. Earlier, there was no match between the two but these days, with
the advent of new businesses and new business models, a combination of two
is very much in place such as in IT start-ups. So, this is where lies
the opportunity for an MBA to make a transition: jump to commercialism while
retaining professionalism for achieving the optimal results in the new
business era.
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