Your Key to Strategic Success

Having trouble viewing this email? Click here to see it in a web browser. The Secrets to Strategic Success HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategy Is your company spending enormous time and energy on strategy development, with little to show for your efforts? We've combed through hundreds of HBR articles on strategy and selected the most important ones to help galvanize your organization's strategy development and execution. This collection includes 10 classic articles that will help you gain the competitive edge and achieve breakthrough performance for your organization. Save more than 60% off the price of the individual articles when you buy this collection. All 10 articles on strategy are yours for only $24.95!* Product #12601 • PDF or Paperback Collection ORDER NOW This specially priced collection includes: What Is Strategy? by Michael E. Porter Today's dynamic markets and technologies have called into question the sustainability of competitive advantage. Under pressure to improve productivity, quality, and speed, managers have embraced tools such as TQM, benchmarking, and reengineering. Dramatic operational improvements have resulted, but rarely have these gains translated into sustainable profitability. The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy by Michael E. Porter Porter undertakes a thorough reaffirmation and extension of his classic work of strategy formulation, which includes substantial new sections showing how to put the five forces analysis into practice. Only by understanding them can a company incorporate industry conditions into strategy. Building Your Company's Vision by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras Companies that enjoy enduring success have a core purpose and core values that remain fixed while their strategies and practices endlessly adapt to a changing world. The rare ability to balance continuity and change—requiring a consciously practiced discipline—is closely linked to the ability to develop a vision. Vision provides guidance about what to preserve and what to change. Reinventing Your Business Model by Mark W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen, and Henning Kagermann Why is it so difficult for established companies to pull off the new growth that business model innovation can bring? Here's why: They don't understand their current business model well enough to know if it would suit a new opportunity or hinder it, and they don't know how to build a new model when they need it. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne In studying more than 150 blue ocean creations in over 30 industries, the authors observed that the traditional units of strategic analysis—company and industry—are of limited use in explaining how and why blue oceans are created. The most appropriate unit of analysis is the strategic move, the set of managerial actions and decisions involved in making a major market-creating business offering. The Secrets of Successful Strategy Execution by Gary L. Neilson, Karla L. Martin, and Elizabeth Powers When a company finds itself unable to execute strategy, all too often the first reaction is to redraw the organization chart or tinker with incentives. Far more effective would be to clarify decision rights and improve the flow of information both up the line of command and across the organization. Then, the right structures and motivators tend to fall into place. Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton The balanced scorecard revolutionized conventional thinking about performance metrics. In this article from 1996, the authors describe how the balanced scorecard can address a serious deficiency in traditional management systems: the inability to link a company's long-term strategy with its short-term financial goals. Transforming Corner-Office Strategy into Frontline Action by Orit Gadiesh and James L. Gilbert In this article, Bain consultants Orit Gadiesh and James Gilbert explore the concept of the strategic principle—a memorable and actionable phrase that distills a company's corporate strategy into its unique essence and communicates it across an organization. Turning Great Stratgy into Great Performance by Michael C. Mankins and Richard Steele Despite the enormous time and energy that goes into strategy development, many companies have little to show for their efforts. Indeed, research by the consultancy Marakon Associates suggests that companies on average deliver only 63% of the financial performance their strategies promise. Michael Mankins and Richard Steele of Marakon present the findings of this research. Who Has the D?: How Clear Decision Roles Enhance Organizational Performance by Paul Rogers and Marcia Blenko Decisions are the coin of the realm in business. But even in highly respected companies, decisions can get stuck inside the organization like loose change. As a result, the entire decision-making process can stall, usually at one of four bottlenecks: global vs. local, center vs. business unit, function vs. function, and inside vs. outside partners. To order by phone, call us toll-free at 800-668-6780 and mention referral code 01152. Outside the U.S. and Canada, call +1-617-783-7450. * Purchasers are responsible for all shipping charges, duties, taxes, brokerage fees, and/or import fees imposed by the country of import. Please check with your customs office for details. If you do not wish to receive special offer email messages from Harvard Business Review, click here. If you do not wish to receive any email messages from Harvard Business Review, click here. Copyright © 2011 Harvard Business School Publishing, an affiliate of Harvard Business School. All rights reserved. Harvard Business Publishing | 60 Harvard Way | Boston, MA 02163 Customer Service: 800-545-7685 (+1-617-783-7600 outside the U.S. and Canada)

Daily Posterous Spaces Update

Vishwaalok Foundation
http://aalok-biswas.blogspot.com

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From: Subscriptions from Posterous Spaces <no-reply@posterous.com>

Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:27:21 -0800

To: <vishwaalok@mail.com>

Subject: Your Daily Posterous Spaces Update

December 15th, 2011 The Millennials: Best generation ever? [infographic] Posted about 17 hours ago by Annie Colbert to Holy Kaw! 2 Via Online Graduate Programs. Less biased infographics. Tax deduction for space burials Posted about 17 hours ago by Annie Colbert to Holy Kaw! Giving loved ones an out of this world final send-off could make good financial sense if a proposed bill in Virginia passes the state legislature. The proposed legislation would give an up to $2,500 per year income tax deductions to anyone who opts to have their cremated remains shot into space. Space burials first launched in 1997 with famous folks like Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry choosing the orbital departure. Virginia gained interest in the procedure after NASA announced plans to shutter the Shuttle program, leaving Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Wallops Island, VA without much to do. If the tax incentive sounds enticing, keep in mind that a space burial doesn’t come cheap, ranging in cost from $1000 to $45,000. Full story at TDW Geek. Blast off to space before kicking the bucket. Starmer limits inquiry | Rob Evans Posted about 17 hours ago by kimtopps to kimtopps's posterous Official report in Mark Kennedy case rejected a police view that a prosecutor was friendly to environmentalists Senior prosecutor Ian Cunningham bore the brunt of the blame in last week's report by Sir Christopher Rose into the Ratcliffe-on-Soar miscarriage of justice. As Rose says, Cunningham "as the prosecutor and reviewing lawyer must bear the primary responsibility for non-disclosure to the defence". Rose also blamed the police and, in a more fleeting way, other prosecutors for the failure to disclose the surveillance tapes recorded by police spy, Mark Kennedy. His report can be found here However there's an intriguing paragraph in his report. At the outset of the prosecution, police seemed to have a particular view of the CPS lawyer. Notes of a meeting between the police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in April 2009 indicate that the police viewed Cunningham as "danger - environmentally friendly". This seems to indicate that the police saw Cunningham as being in some way friendly to environmentalists and therefore they should be careful in their dealings with him. Rose clearly concluded that he could not find any evidence for the police's view. He took a very dim view of all this and gave the police a mild ticking-off. "I do not know for how long or in the minds of which police officers that perception of Mr Cunningham persisted. But it was an unfortunate starting point to a relationship which required, if the interests of justice were to be served, complete mutual trust between the police and the CPS..." Rose wrote that the police wanted to protect Kennedy as the source of the intelligence for the arrests of more than 100 protesters before they could occupy the power station. It appears that Cunningham has been involved in a previous prosecution of protesters. Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has taken a fair amount of flak for refusing to set up a wide-ranging inquiry to establish if there are more cases in which vital evidence has been withheld from trials of protesters. See this for instance for a trenchant view from one activist. Cunningham is now facing a disciplinary inquiry. Starmer has decided that this disciplinary inquiry should only be limited to the Ratcliffe case. Back in the summer we reported that Cunningham was also accused of failing to disclose evidence in two other cases, one concerning fraud, the other drugs. The background to those two cases can be found here. Starmer does not believe that extending the disciplinary inquiry to scrutinise Cunningham's conduct in those other two cases would be justified or necessary. Mark Kennedy Activism Surveillance Crime Rob Evans guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Elisha Cuthbert Eliza Dushku Emilie de Ravin Emma Heming Emma Stone FEATURE-German solar firms go from boom to bust Posted about 17 hours ago by maviczaki to maviczaki's posterous * Asian rivals a threat, German nuclear phase-out no help Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/bankruptcyNews/~3/TzmZ9zOiFCU/germany-solar-idUSL5E7N81QM20111214 credit debt bad credit student loans Matrimony rates hit record low in US Posted about 16 hours ago by maviczaki to maviczaki's posterous � Is it a hiccup or a long-term bear market for marriage? A new report shows that the share of American adults who are married dropped to a record low in 2009-2010 ? to just a smidge over half of population 18 and older. Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/13/9425241-matrimony-suffers-a-slump money cash loans credit France's faulty breast implants scandal Posted about 15 hours ago by kimtopps to kimtopps's posterous More than 30,000 women have had breast implants filled with industrial silicone instead of medical-grade fillers In a crowd of angry women shouting "We want justice!" outside the French health ministry, an ashen-faced factory worker hugged her anorak around her and fought back tears. Too shy to give her name, she didn't fit the stereotype too often slapped on the victims of France's biggest plastic-surgery scandal in decades. Tens of thousands of women complain that their lives are a living hell after being given faulty cheap implants made not from medical silicone but industrial silicone normally used for computer parts or the electronics industry. "I've always suffered from depression and mental-health problems linked to body image," said the 48-year-old from Normandy. "I earn ?1,000 [�840] a month in a factory. I couldn't afford breast surgery until my late 40s. But after the implants I felt better, I came off the antidepressants, I was able to face work. Then I find out the implants are poison. The tests say they're still in place but I'm having them removed anyway. I'm terrified they'll rupture or explode at any moment. "I try to sleep on my back, if I sleep at all. Some people try to avoid extreme physical exercise for fear of damaging the implants, but I do hard labour on a factory line. "I go to bed feeling bad, I wake up feeling bad. It's like living with a ticking bomb inside you." Over the past 10 years more than 30,000 women in France, and thousands of others in countries including Spain and the UK, had breast augmentation with what have turned out to be potentially defective implants in what is now described as a cosmetic surgery horror story. The scandal has sent panic through France's vast plastic surgery industry. The company Poly Implant Prosthesis (PIP), based in the south of France, was one of the world's leaders in silicone implant production until last year when it was found to have been cutting corners and saving an estimated ?1bn (�840m) a year by using industrial silicone instead of medical-grade fillers in their breast implants. The casing around the filling was also faulty and prone to rupture or leakage. The company has closed and more than 2,000 women have filed legal complaints. A judicial investigation has begun for involuntary homicide over a woman who died from cancer. The French government recently identified four known cases of cancer in women who have had the implants, two of whom have died, although they have not established a link between the implants and cancer. But on Wednesday French women who had PIP implants staged their first street demonstration outside the French health ministry, saying the state had not done enough. They believe the government should pay for all implant removals. "We're sick of being dismissed as bimbos," said one woman in the crowd who had PIP implants after breast removal from cancer. Many said they felt dismissed as vain or had themselves to blame. Most were on low incomes, had taken out loans for the initial surgery and were struggling to pay for removals. "There has been a wave of panic," said Alexandra Blachere, an ex-waitress from eastern France, who had breast augmentation following three pregnancies. She now heads an association for women with faulty implants. Sylvie, 57, who once ran a children's clothing business outside Paris, said: "The implant had leaked to such an extent I had four swellings hanging from my armpits which were full of silicone gel, and had to be drained." She had PIP implants for seven years after reconstruction surgery following breast cancer. "Last year I found out the implants were defective but I was having chemotherapy at the time so I couldn't have them removed immediately. It's as if a foreign element is poisoning your body as well as the cancer. If you think about it too much, you'd suffocate. You have to have a mentality of steel to survive." "I breastfed for eight months with these implants in place ? at what risk to my child?" asked Audrey, 32, a childminder from the C�te d'Azur. She said: "Flat-chested, I never felt like a woman. After the implants, I felt transformed. When I saw the TV reports of faulty implants, I went to have them removed. Tests had shown mine had not ruptured or leaked, but during surgery the doctor found they were in fact leaking." France's cosmetics and plastic surgery industry is among the biggest in Europe. Between 400,000 and 500,000 women in France have breast implants. An estimated 21,000 breast augmentations are carried out each year ? the most popular operation after liposuction and anti-wrinkle procedures. A study in 2009 found that although French women are the slimmest in western Europe, they also have the biggest complexes about their bodies and the toughest standards on weight. Surgeons say the number of breast operations has fallen since the scandal. The French authorities, like the British, say that women with the PIP implants should be tested regularly for ruptures or leakages. This year the UK healthcare regulator said there was no evidence of potential for cancer or chemical toxicity from the filling in the PIP implants. But some French doctors now say that even non-ruptured implants should be removed as a precaution. Dominique Poitou, who worked for a car-hire firm outside Paris, was about to have her one implant removed from a breast reconstructed after cancer surgery. "It's very hard to rebuild my life. We feel judged, we feel that we're not taken seriously because it's linked to cosmetic surgery. That's unfair. This scandal is criminal. You wouldn't implant this type of material into animals, let alone women." Plastic surgery France Health & wellbeing Europe Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Dido Diora Baird Dita Von Teese Dominique Swain Donna Feldman Tarullo, The Evolution of Capital Regulation Posted about 15 hours ago by maviczaki to maviczaki's posterous Speech at the Clearing House Business Meeting and Conference, New York, New York Source: http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/tarullo20111109a.htm money cash loans credit The power of recognition in the enterprise [infographic] Posted about 14 hours ago by Jason Lankow to Holy Kaw! 3 (Click on the infographic below to learn more.) Via Column Five for Socialcast Like infographics? So do we. A guide to child tax benefits [infographic] Posted about 14 hours ago by Jason Lankow to Holy Kaw! 3 (Click on the infographic below to learn more.) Via Column Five for TurboTax Like infographics? So do we. EU to cut phosphates to curb algae in waters Posted about 14 hours ago by maviczaki to maviczaki's posterous BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union will virtually ban phosphates in dishwasher and laundry soap to curb the pollution of rivers, lakes and seas by algae from 2013, EU lawmakers decided on Wednesday. Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/environment/~3/Lde-9xiN0JE/us-eu-phosphates-washing-idUSTRE7BD1PS20111214 student loans bad credit loans finance money Wikipedia Explains, In Great Detail, How Even An Updated SOPA Hurts The Web ... Posted about 14 hours ago by joelpomales to joelpomales's posterous Wikipedia Explains, In Great Detail, How Even An Updated SOPA Hurts The Web & Wikipedia via Techdirt by Mike Masnick on 12/14/11 While SOPA supporters are running around pretending that the minor fixes that Lamar Smith has proposed have made the bill perfectly acceptable, lots of people who understand this stuff are still pointing out that the bill is a horrific abomination that will have serious negative consequences. We'd already mentioned that Wikipedia was considering a blackout to protest SOPA. Now, Wikimedia's General Counsel, Geoff Brigham, has written a thorough, detailed, and thoughtful explanation for why SOPA is still terrible. There's a lot more at the link, but a few points: I’ve been asked for a legal opinion. And I will tell you, in my view, the new version of SOPA remains a serious threat to freedom of expression on the Internet. The new version continues to undermine the DMCA and federal jurisprudence that have promoted the Internet as well as cooperation between copyright holders and service providers. In doing so, SOPA creates a regime where the first step is federal litigation to block an entire site wholesale: it is a far cry from a less costly legal notice under the DMCA protocol to selectively take down specified infringing material. The crime is the link, not the copyright violation. The cost is litigation, not a simple notice. The expenses of such litigation could well force non-profit or low-budget sites, such as those in our free knowledge movement, to simply give up on contesting orders to remove their links. (Secs. 102(c)(3); 103(c)(2)) The international sites under attack may not have the resources to challenge extra-territorial judicial proceedings in the United States, even if the charges are false. Although rendering it discretionary (Secs.102(c)(2)(A-E); 103(c)(2)(A-B)), the new bill would still allow for serious security risks to our communications and national infrastructure. The bill no longer mandates DNS blocking but still allows it as an option. As Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director of Public Knowledge, explained: “The amendment continues to encourage DNS blocking and filtering, which should be concerning for Internet security exp

Lunar Eclipse

Shot by my Canon D. 500 SLR

Lunar Eclipse

Diwali Celebrations (Shri Shri Kali Puja at Dakshineshwar Kali Bari, Vasant Kunj New Delhi)

Kolaveri Di-the song

kolaveri_di.flv Watch on Posterous

The South Indian Rage, now widespread allover!

Facebook newsfeed link by: UNICEF USA

UNICEF USA shared the following link and had this to say about it:

NEWS: UNICEF aims to make nutrition a national priority in Niger

http://www.unicefusa.org/news/news-from-the-field/unicef-niger-nutrition.html

The U.S. Fund for UNICEF supports child survival, protection and development worldwide through education, advocacy and fundraising.
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Facebook newsfeed post by: Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho wrote:

26/11/2011 or 1/1/1433 in Hijrah: Happy New Year my Muslim friends! "If you know yourself, then you'll not be harmed by what is said about you." (Arab proverb)
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Fw: Digest of the Beyond Teaching posts for teachers

- AB

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: BeyondTeaching Support <teachers@beyondteaching.com>

Here's a digest of the latest posts at your own exclusive teacher portal, www.BeyondTeaching.com:

Interactive whiteboard for less than Rs. 3,000!
We are sure you would have heard of all the commercial whiteboards available in the market that sell upwards of Rs. 50,000 each. Most of the schools and colleges who could afford them have probably purchased them already, or are in the process of purchasing them. For an educational institution, this is a very high investment considering that the number of whiteboards needed may be in double digits!

Online forum to solve problems of parents and principals
Parents often hold principals responsible for every decision of the school. Fee hike, corporal punishment or homework overload- Principals are supposed to be the culprits. Principals face the challenge to strike a balance between student interests and management needs. They have tough issues of their own and often nobody to help them resolve their problems. Now a group of Principals and psychiatrists have become active on an online forum where matters troubling them, as well as parents and students, are discussed.

How do you motivate a rural teacher to join and then continue?
In the meeting with the Principals at Nagpur, one particular "social" challenge by a Principal in a rural area got me stumped! How does she get teachers for her school and once she gets someone, how does she motivate them to perform? In the same breath she also confessed that it was not possible for the school to pay out very high salaries to the teachers, as the funds generated from student fees could barely be sufficient.

Footprint for higher education
With the world’s second largest population, more than 50% of which is below the age of 35 years, India is at a critical juncture where its population, if properly harnessed, has the potential to turn the nation into a hub of trained manpower.

Solar harvest
Stephen Sweeney informs about a new space platform that will capture solar energy and use lasers to beam it back to earth. A team from the University of Surrey, led by Stephen Sweeney, professor of physics and head of photonics, is working in partnership with a space technology organisation, EADS-Astrium to create a space platform that uses lasers to beam solar energy back to the earth.

Teaching and learning in government schools
A study on teaching and learning in government schools was conducted by ASER Centre in collaboration with MHRD, Unicef and Unesco, across five states.There were some very significant findings...

Using internet tools to make science learning fun
BT had recommended its members to get on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to learn new things. Proving BT correct an NGO -Science Popularisation Association of Communicators and Educators (SPACE) is training over 300 teachers to use theses social networking sites to make science more easy to communicate and interesting .

Indian Students at NASA
Nearly 60 students from Himachal Pradesh get an opportunity to visit NASA next month. They will get to know about the world of space sciences, robotics and nuances involved in designing of space shuttle. Children also get a chance to visit Florida based Kennedy Research Centre, which is also a unit of NASA. They are scheduled to visit Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory also. Not only this, they also get to visit Hollywood Studios, Orlando, New York. A real opprtunity in true sense!

"I want to be an Astronaut"
Today morning, I got this twitter update from @NASA: "Less than 5 minutes until launch of three new space station crew members at 11:14pmET. Watch at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv" and I immediately clicked on the link to watch LIVE the successful launch of Expedition 29 in heavy snow to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at India Time around 9 am!
 

While watching live launch on this Children's Day, I could imagine how happy Nehru would have been, if some of his beloved children dreaming of becoming an astronaut could have seen this launch in their schools! In today's world, it is fairly simple for teachers to beam events like these into their classrooms. For a child, nothing can be more motivating than watching the three space travellers LIVE in her class! The dreamy words "I want to be an astronaut" take an entirely new meaning, and give a sense of direction to the child.

Tips for using Social Networking to get your dream job!
An article by Priya Kapoor in The Economic Times throws some light on the way people are using social networking sites to get jobs. According to the Kelly Global Workforce Index 2011, which covered 97,000 people across 30 countries and 2,000 people in India, about 35% of the respondents in the country scoured social networking sites to seek job openings.
Some tips from the article on how to use these sites more effectively:
o Join specific interest groups that show your interests and specializations
o Keep an active profile by discussing and posting relevant stuff
o Get some good recommendations
o Be careful about what you do online!

World Bank aid to Madhya Pradesh for improving higher education
MP seems to have caught the World Bank’s attention to improve its higher education. The Rs. 350 cr assistance will be used in skills development. BT had reported a severe shortage in skilled manpower and this seems to be another step in the right direction. Teachers can take up a major role in making this change.

Read full stories of the above updates on your site, www.BeyondTeaching.com. Your fellow teachers want you in the discussions. Please do login and share your views on these teaching-related matters.

Warm regards,

Teachers @ Beyond Teaching

foursquare venue info - Gurgaon Toll Plaza

Gurgaon Toll Plaza
recent tip: Don't throw the toll receipt on the road- be a good citizen! http://4sq.com/l5Ou1o
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