The Home Song Stories & PPIN

The Home Song Stories, the autobiographical second feature by (Macau-born) writer-director Tony Ayres, is a story of a boy, Tom, his sister May and their mother, Rose, a Shanghainese singer who lands in suburban Melbourne in the 60s with little English and no money. Rose's only assets are her beauty, her cheongsams and an ability to seduce men. What unfolds is a tale of epic emotions. http://www.homesongstories.com

"Everything that happens in The Home Song Stories actually happened in real life," says Tony. "I had an extraordinary, wild traumatic childhood, largely due to the erratic behaviour of my charismatic but mentally unstable mother. My sister and I were buffeted by these events, but survived, mainly because of our love for each other. But also because, in spite of everything, we knew that our mother loved us. As a film maker, I knew that I was compelled to tell this story eventually." To me, there's a clear message conveyed - Things happened in our childhood have great impacts in our personalities & behaviors. If unfortunately, we were hurt or mistreated while innocent, somehow we need an approriate channel to release the pain. Probably throught counselling, recounting the stories, open up the scars, etc. The ultimate goal as the film director said is "to accept, to forgive & to love……"

It reminds me of the unique IMD pre-course assignment: Personal and Professional Identity Narrative

PURPOSE:
The purpose of the Personal and Professional Identity Narrative is to provide you with a “working document” that will help you to orient yourself as you make personal and professional decisions in the course of your life. If you take the process of reflecting on your life seriously that the PPIN provides, it can help you to better understand the key events of your life and their continued influence.

PROCEDURE:
We are asking you to complete a 10 to 15-page draft of your PPIN before arriving to the programme opening dinner. You will be given the opportunity to re-visit your PPIN during the year, and to modify the contents as you reflect on your learning from the programme. A relatively complete working document would be a narrative of between 15 and 20 pages.

DESCRIPTION:
The PPIN will be a narrative essay describing:
where you have come from, i.e., the central influences—people and events—in your life,
where you are now in the course of your life, and
the general direction in which you feel you are headed, i.e., your sense of a provisional life plan, however indistinct it might truly feel...

The Infosys Phenomenon - by IMD Prof. Georges Haour

By Professor Georges Haour (September, 2007)

As we look for models of corporate success, European and North American ethnocentric ways need to rapidly yield to being much more curious and knowledgeable about Asia’s ascending actors. The IT services company Infosys is a striking example of successful, profitable growth.

Early days of Infosys
Infosys was founded in 1981 by seven computer engineers. Their vision for the company did not have much to do with revenues and profits. They wanted to create the most respected company in India. For its customers, the company would deliver on promises and meet expectations. For its employees, it would create an open, fair meritocracy. For investors, it would provide consistent financial performance.

Infosys got its first real break from the German technology company Bosch. It moved from Mumbai to Bangalore, in order to be close to Bosch’s data center. It subsequently carried out application maintenance and software development for General Electric, Schlumberger, Siemens, Airbus and Crédit Suisse, delivering these services out of its offices in India.
In 1993, Infosys went public on the Indian stock market and shifted strategy to focus on selected vertical markets. The 1991 liberalization of the Indian economy, India’s plentiful and lower cost, skilled labor, and a time difference enabling round-the-clock operations for US/European companies, fuelled the growth of Infosys and India’s emerging software industry.
Mid-2007, Infosys counted 72,000 staff working in 22 countries. With sales of $ 3,1 billion per annum, its profitability is better than the average in this industry.

Ingredients for success
One element of Infosys’ operational excellence is its Global Delivery Model, based on doing work where it adds most value – that is, utilizing the best global resources with the lowest associated cost and at the highest possible quality. Reliable telecom infrastructure and India’s low-cost skilled manpower allowed most of the work to be conducted offshore. Onsite aspects of the project are limited to those aspects requiring market proximity and customer interaction. The resulting ratio of 30:70 onshore/offshore provides a strong customer focus, as well as significantly reduced delivery costs. Thus, close to 45,000 Infosys employees are based in India.

Customer satisfaction is another key to Infosys’ breakneck rate of profitable growth. Over a 25-year period, the company has successfully completed more than 20,000 projects with a 99.998% error-free record. Over 93% of the projects were delivered on time and on budget, far above the industry average of 30%. Such high customer satisfaction rates have resulted in 95% of clients coming back to Infosys for further projects.

Building on such exceptional customer satisfaction, Infosys proactively seeks to expand the scope of the work it does with existing clients, further fueling revenue growth. Infosys fully understands that in the business of outsourced services, lower cost alone is not sufficient. Quality, reliability, speed and customer orientation are fully part of the equation.

Infosys’ concern to provide its customers with a competitive advantage led to the creation, in 2001, of the Corporate R&D unit SETLabs (Software Engineering and Technology Laboratories). This unit develops methodologies, frameworks and tools to drive efficiency in project execution and delivery. SETLabs help clients with development projects, addressing specific technology or business problems, while also looking into radical innovations and long-term strategic issues supporting business process innovation for the customers. By mid 2007, SET Labs had grown to 500 consultants and software engineers, filing numerous patent applications.

Concerning staff training, Infosys massively invests in technical and management education. Young staff joining the firm typically follows a four month course. This is carried out in Infosys’ training center in Mysore, West of Bangalore, where 6 000 employees can be trained simultaneously. This contributes to Infosys having a staff much lower staff turnover than is typical in the industry.

Today, Infosys’ market capitalization is $30 billion. Revenues have consistently grown at over 50% annually through the past decade. As a result, it took 23 years for Infosys to reach $1 billion in revenues, but only 23 months to reach the $2 billion mark.

What can we learn from the Infosys experience?
I believe that the remarkable success of Infosys suggests that following elements were key:
At the core, the creation of a widely respected meritocracy combining engineering excellence with a relentless customer orientation
A no nonsense approach: speed and frugality
A sincere and acute focus on employee satisfaction and skills development
Agility: in a highly competitive environment, adapting constantly and anticipating the future through on-going business process innovation.

Georges Haour teaches innovation management in the Orchestrating Winning Performance program . His latest book is Resolving the Innovation Paradox . This text is derived from his recent IMD case study, first used at Orchestrating Winning Performance in June 2007, and now used in several IMD programs.

Start-Ups, Shout Out!

IMD 2007 Start-up Competition: Best Year Ever

Out of well over 70 ventures, 22 start-up companies have been chosen to work with IMD's MBA and EMBA programs in 2007. These are the winners of the 9th annual IMD Start-Up Competition.

According to the organizers of the competition, Jim Pulcrano and Dr. Benoit Leleux, the overall quality of the start-ups who entered the competition was the best IMD has ever seen in the past nine years. Jim Pulcrano comments: “Every year we have had a couple of stars, but this year we had many great start-ups to choose from. We had to make some difficult choices.” Benoit Leleux commented, “It was a challenge to decide which companies have the highest potential for commercial success and provide the best learning opportunities for our students.”

The IMD Start-Up competition provides a unique opportunity for early-stage companies to benefit from the support and insights of a team of dedicated and experienced participants from two of IMD’s flagship programs, the MBA and the Executive MBA. The objectives of this unique collaboration between entrepreneurs and managers/participants are two-fold: Provide hands-on learning experience in entrepreneurship and new ventures for the IMD MBA and EMBA classes Provide input and support to early stage companies, to improve their chances of funding and success.

“Life in a private company is unstructured, and IMD helped us to become more structured in our way of thinking”, comments Anil Sethi, CEO of Flisom, a start-up that worked with a team of IMD EMBA participants in 2005.

Winners of the 2007 IMD start-up competition: http://www.imd.ch/news/IMD-start-up-competition.cfm