Sylvia Earle: Here's how to protect the blue heart of the planet

Check out this excellent presentation by Legendary ocean researcher Sylvia Earle. As part of this session she shares astonishing images of the ocean and shocking stats about its rapid decline -- as she makes her TED Prize wish: that we will join her in protecting the vital blue heart of the planet.



As she rightly points out, environment destruction is visible at land and people are beginning to take note of it and start acting on it. In the oceans the destruction is not visible to the eye however the impact is equally bad if not worse. Protecting oceans is very critical for survival of earth and to prevent mass extinctions and climatic changes. She calls for creation of protected marine areas across the globe to help sustain and protect the ocean life. Excellent one!

Auto Meltdown - End of an era (Part 1)

This is the first of a 3 part series on Auto Industry meltdown. As part of this post I will be covering the current state of auto industry and my reasoning on what led to this bubble.

Current State

February 2009 has been the worst month for US auto industry in decades. The overall auto industry demand has fallen to 4 decade lows of 9.1M vehicles in 2009. The top 3 US companies sees their demand halved from last year's base. GM was the worst with 53.1% decline, Ford 48% decline and Chrysler 44% decline. The Japanese car companies fared slightly better than US companies however still took a significant hit. Toyota saw 40% decline in sales, Honda saw 38% decline and Nissan 27% decline. There is a virtual blood shed happening in auto market both US and globally.

US has been the top auto market in the world for years peaking at 17M+ vehicle sales in 2007. China was a distant second coming in at around 7M+ vehicles in 2008. For the first time in history Chinese car sales exceeded US car sales in Jan 2009. Is this going to be trend in future?

Auto Bubble - How did this happen?

Over the last couple of decades US has been experiencing an 'Auto Bubble' similar to the housing bubble or the dot com bubble. The demand in US auto industry is unsustainable. Overall there are around 251M vehicles in US and 199M licensed drivers this translates to around 1.3 vehicles/driver. I think this would most likely be the peak vehicle ownership ratio. It will start going down from here and eventually settle down between 1-1.1 vehicles/individual. Here are some of the key factors that led to this bubble:

• Low interest rates and easy availability of credit in the last couple of decades fueled an increase in consumption(similar to housing) leading up to a bubble. It will be interesting to check out the foreclosure(or equivalent) rate for auto industry.
  

• Low cost of Fuel - Low gasoline cost in US meant low operating costs for owning a car. This spurred people to travel more and buy more cars and less fuel efficient vehicles. In fact the average miles/gallon in US is 17.1 which is very low by global standards. People really didn't mind this low fuel efficiency till recently due to low fuel cost in US(one of the lowest in western hemisphere).
  

• Reducing ownership cost -Technology improvements, innovation and automation has made cars more affordable and cheaper to operate at the same time offering more features and comforts. Opening up of US economy to Japanese and Korean cars also contributed to this trend.
  

• Increase in disposable income - Over a 30 yr window between mid 70s to mid 2000's the average car price of american cars increased by 15% in constant currency terms. The average per capita income increased by more than 270%.

All the above factors led to building up of a bubble over the last couple of decades leading to peaking of demand in 2007. When the economy took a turn for the worse last year due to credit crisis things really started falling apart and auto companies started taking big hits with a drastic reduction in demand culminating in halving of their sales this Feb.

Please let me know your thoughts on the above. If I've left out any more key factors feel free to add to the above.

In my next post I will be covering my analysis of how Detroit got into this mess

Microsoft Office Labs vision 2019

Check out this excellent video & presentation on future of technology in 2019. Microsoft’s Business Division president Stephen Elop unveiled the latest production from Microsoft Office Labs called "Office Labs 2019" at the Wharton Business Technology Conference, starring stock photo men, women and children playing with the next-generation of communication, collaboration and production technologies.

Microsoft office labs vision 2019 - Video

Source: www.Microsoft.com

A Glimpse Ahead - Presentation by Steven Elop

02 27 Elop Wharton K Eynote

View more presentations from Nandu Muralidharan.

Source: www.Microsoft.com

Pls click here to see the transcript of this session.

The technologies showcased above looks exciting and revolutionary. Excellent vision of future tech by Microsoft. It will be interesting to see how well they deliver to this vision!

For more details check out the below links
Started Something blog
Microsoft Business Division Virtual Presskit
Steve Clayton's Blog - Geek in disguise

Planning to invest in Real Estate? Watch out the market hasn't bottomed out yet!

I came across this interesting graph on index of American home prices for the last 120 yrs that was originally produced by Professor Robert J Shiller and later updated by a reader and posted at www.ritholtz.com. Shiller had initially come up with this analysis as part of his book 'Irrational Exuberance'. The magnitude of the rise in housing values during this boom cycle was in excess of 100%, that too within a short span on 6-8yrs. In some of the hot markets like Florida, California, Nevada etc the price increase was much higher than the national average. No wonder the fall has been equally dramatic! Comparing this with the previous boom/bust cycles puts lot of things in context and brings out the magnitude of the bubble. As you can see from the chart, while the real estate prices has come down by a significant margin in the last couple of years, we are still at the mid-point and have a long way to go before the markets bottoms out.

Source: www.ritholtz.com

Note: The above chart is an adaptation of the classic Shiller housing price chart with updated data. The original graphic is via NY Times.

Here is another interesting graph from Reggie Middleton's boom bust blog. The below graph is an extrapolation of the Robert Shiller's analysis in comparison with interest rates, population growth, building costs etc and it highlights at what point the market is expected to bottom out. As you can see from the below graph, the interest rates and building costs came down during the 80's and 90's, setting the stage for this historic boom. Another interesting statistic to note is that, the last time the housing crash happened back around 1920 it took almost 25 yrs for the market to recover!

Source: www.boombustblog.com

One of the important parameters to consider for market recovery is the foreclosure rates. So far the housing bubble has led to foreclosure of around 2.3 million homes. In 2009, with all the economic issues and lay-off's that are happening, this trend is expected to accelerate further leading to foreclosure of around 2.4 million more homes. Looking at a longer term, around 8.1 million homeowners are expected to lose their homes by 2012. So we are in for a prolonged real estate downturn. If you are planning to invest on a home, wait and watch for another year or two before you take the plunge!

For those interested in reading more you could check out the below links:

United States Housing bubble
Causes of the United States Housing Bubble
No Ceiling yet on Home Losses: Report: Expect 8.1 Million Foreclosures by 2010

How to Survive the Economic Downturn?

I was reading an interesting case study in HBR blogs couple of days back. The case study was about a Home improvement store chain whose sales/profits were going down. The company was faced with a tough decision to cut costs in order to survive. Headcount reduction seemed to be the only course of action. The author lays out the various thoughts of the company's leadership team and employees and asks for our opinion on what is the best course of action.

This seems to be a pretty common occurrence these days with lot of companies facing similar situation. Economic downturns & recessions are an inherent part of capitalism intended to shake up the market and weed out the weak companies. It’s all about survival of the fittest. Companies can either become stronger or weaker based on their response to the crisis and the actions take take during these tough conditions. As part of this blog I've attempted to list down the possible solutions they can adopt to survive and thrive in the downturn. These solutions typically fall under three major categories which are:

Optimization & Cost reduction solutions

These solutions are aimed at reducing wastage in the system and costs.

Solutions for fixing issues/Problems

These solutions are aimed at identifying the root-cause for sales/profit decline & fixing them.

Growth enabling solutions
These solutions are aimed at improving the competitive advantage of companies and enabling them to come out ahead of their competition.

There is no single solution that will fix the issue. Companies need to undertake a combination of all the three major solution categories listed above in order to sustain & emerge stronger from the downturn. Here are top 10 solutions that companies could adopt during tough market conditions:

1. Eliminate excess fluff

Most large organizations as part of their growth create lot of redundant roles, position and non-critical functions. All the roles and functions that are non-critical need to be reviewed and pruned down as appropriate. In addition for each of the functions we need to analyze if there are ways and means in which productivity could be improved thru automation etc and if it can be performed with reduced effort. If feasible some of the people displaced thru this reorganization should be re-trained and deployed in core functions. Companies could also explore options like outsourcing their manufacturing, services etc to low cost locations to reduce cost.

2. Weed out the non-performers

In most environments non-performers are a big drag on the system. They generally are very negative and low on morale. Not only is their productivity impacted they also impact the morale of the good people in the system. Identify the bottom x% of non-performers and weed them out of the system.

3. Reduce Wastage

Wastage of resources is a big drain on enterprises. In normal working conditions these go unnoticed. This is good time to ‘go green’ and reduce wastages in the system. Some of the examples of reducing wastage include – Utilize power saving techniques, Encourage Paper-less office (reduce consumables usage), Reduce T&E expenses (utilize collaboration tools, video-conferences etc), Optimize supply chain (Just in Time, low inventory etc).

4. Renegotiate contract with Suppliers/Vendors

This is a good time to relook at the contracts with your suppliers and see if some of the rates can be renegotiated. Most enterprises get into multi-year contracts with vendors/suppliers and are stuck with the high rates thru the conract. These rates would have looked attractive at the time of signing contracts however due to market pressures they could have reduced later. As an example during the early-mid 2000’s companies that had multi-year contract with telecom service providers realized that as an outcome of dot com burst telecom prices came crashing down due to huge availability of bandwidth however lot of companies were still stuck with old pricing. Some of them pushed their carriers to revise the pricing based on current market conditions.

5. Identify reasons for fall in sales and fix it

This is one of the most important activities that a company needs to do. In a lot of cases companies attribute fall in sales to macro economic conditions and dismiss it. A good indicator for this would be to check how your company is performing w.r.to its industry and some of its key competitors. If the company sales is falling more than its competition it’s an indicator for a problem. Some of the reasons that could impact sales include Product quality, Customer service, Differentiation, Market perception of the company/product, Cost etc. A detailed root-cause analysis needs to be done to identify the problems and appropriate action items need to be taken to fix it.

6. Identify loss making division/products and fix them

In a lot of cases there might be specific products/divisions in the company that might be pulling down the whole company. Identify the non-performing divisions/products and fix them. In case some of these are non-core to the company it may be divest them. It also makes sense to run each of these products/divisions as separate profit centers.

7. Identify what’s core to your company and focus on it

One of the foremost strategies recommended during downturn is to focus on core operations of the company. Over course of time companies tend to deviate off their core offerings and venture into multiple areas. Companies need to clearly identify what is core to their operations and stick to it. In order to be successful they need to have razor sharp focus on their core operations and continuously invest in it to stay ahead of the field. All non-core operations could be spun-off and divested from the company. This would also help to generate much needed cash for running the core operations.

8. Improve differentiation against competition

In order for enterprises to be successful they need to successfully differentiate against competition. Companies need to constantly ask themselves the question - why would customers want to buy their products/services? They should identify unique value proposition that customers would get by engaging the company. Differentiation can be in terms of superior service, Higher quality, Unique features, Customer experience, Better value for cost etc.

9. Invest in Innovation and research

Innovation is a necessity in order to drive sustained growth and market domination over the long term. Companies need to be aggressive and encourage innovation and invest in research to help develop new products and new ways for delivering services to customers. Innovation could also help with operations more efficient thereby driving down cost/Time to Market etc. As an example companies like Google, Amazon, Ebay, Facebook etc kept their focus and invested in innovation and research during the dot com bust and have emerged as the industry leaders today. Similarly American car manufacturers are in the brink of collapse today as they did not innovate for the last few decades.

10. Invest in talent

Challenging market conditions are the best time to hire the top talent in the market. Lot of good talent will be available in the market due to lay-off, company closures etc during challenging times. Successful companies are constantly on the look-out and hire the best talent in the market during challenging times.

I have made the above list generic so that it will fit a wide range of Industries. Pls let me know your views on the above solutions. If you feel that there are other ideas in addition to the ones i have listed above pls feel free to add to this list.

Credit Crisis demystified by Jonathan Jarvis

Here's an excellent educational video on the credit crisis by Jonathan Jarvis. The video explains how the whole mortgage & credit system works and what went wrong with the system leading us to the present crisis. This is a "must watch" video for folks who are closely following the credit/economic crisis and wondering how this all happened and why no one has caught this earlier.

I loved the way Jonathan has demystified this complex issue and presented it in such a simple and entertaining way. I've spent countless hours reading up numerous articles/blogs & discussing with my friends in financial world to understand the credit crisis, This is the best and simplest explanation I've seen till date. Hope you like it:-)

For those interested in reading more, here's an stirring article from Orin Woodward on why government shouldn't get involved in this credit crisis and use taxpayers money to bailout banks. He says that this is creative destruction and this would help us evolve much stronger from this crisis. While I do agree with Orrin's reasoning, Govt sitting back and letting things take its own course is definitely not an option given the current recessionary conditions & scale of this crisis. Some of the banks/bankers who were the prime reason for this crisis might stand to gain from this Govt intervention, that cannot be prevented and its part of the deal. The risk of Govt not intervening and letting the country/world go into prolonged depression is way too high. It is going to be more expensive to clean up later and people will have to go through more pains (similar to 1929 depression) before we get the system back on track.

The real crisis? We stopped being wise - Barry Schwartz's speech at TED

This is an excellent speech by Barry Schwartz at TED 2009. In this speech he says that the real crisis we are facing is our loss of wisdom. He talks about the importance of values, virtues etc and says that putting rules and more rules is not the solution. He also says that virtues cannot be taught at school nor can be put as an instruction sheet, it needs to be practiced by people and imbibed as part of our values.

This seems to echo my thoughts on one of my earlier blogs regarding the ethical/moral crisis reg Sathyam.

There are some excellent speeches published in TED website. You could check them out if you are interested.

How Twitter changed my life!

I came across this excellent presentation on Twitter and how to use it. Just wanted to share it with you folks. For those of you who dont know about Twitter its a micro blogging service where you share updates with your friends/followers on key happenings/updates in your life.

How Twitter Changed My Life

View more presentations from Minxuan Lee. (tags: micro twitter)

Personally in my case i started using Twitter close to 3 months back. Initially I was not sure how to use it & didn't see much value in it. However over the last couple of months I've really started to love twitter. The key is picking the right set of people to follow and start interacting regularly with your network. Quantity doesn't matter, quality does else you will get overwhelmed with junk.

Twitter has helped me build a good social network and interact with them in a meaningful way in addition to increasing the quality of my browsing time. One word of caution of using Twitter though, it can be pretty addictive and will eat away your time if you don't do good time management. Here again you don't need to browse all tweets, instead pick the tweets you want to read & respond back. If you try to read everything that comes your way it will overwhelm you. You might also want to use tools like tweetdeck, twhirl etc to organize and browse your tweets.

Here's another good video about Twitter.


Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

For those who are in Twitter you can follow me - @Shogun1947. For those who are not yet in Twitter you might want to get started quickly and start building your social network!