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Business News/ News / Business Of Life/  Q&A | Arindam Banerjee
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Q&A | Arindam Banerjee

A new book says curry-making and managing organizations have much in common

Management Essentials—A Recipe for Business Success: By Arindam Banerjee, Sage Publications, 141 pages, ₹295Premium
Management Essentials—A Recipe for Business Success: By Arindam Banerjee, Sage Publications, 141 pages, 295

OTHERS :

The good curry guide

Why is there a perception in industry that fresh business school graduates are not ready to hit the floor running? This is one of the questions Prof. Arindam Banerjee of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), takes up in his new book, Management Essentials: A Recipe for Business Success.

Banerjee writes, “In reality, many of the principles are pretty commonplace and ordinary, unlike the perception and the publicity the discipline has gathered." He breaks these principles down into easy-to-grasp concepts that can be applied in real business environments.

In an email interview, he talks about what sets true innovation apart, and the growing demands on managers to keep up with the developments in technology and services. Edited excerpts:

You have used the analogy of making curry in the book.

Curry-making and managing organizations—or even brain surgery, for that matter—have much in common. You need to be familiar with the elements—surgical tools, array of condiments or managerial tools and techniques—but that’s not enough. Successful brain surgeons, gourmet cooks and successful corporate leaders require the andaaz—the right mix and sequence—of the elements that need to go together in a timely fashion to cook up a good meal or ensure a successful surgery or maintain a profitable organization. That mix or recipe is very rarely provided in a logical fashion in management textbooks—it is hard to do so. I was lucky, I think, that the IIM-A provided me the plank via its programmes to discover parts of the management “recipe".

What is “smart" innovation?

Innovation that truly makes a change for the good of society and therefore is accepted, but also “knocks the wind"out of competition for at least a while—they take time to catch up. That would be a valuable innovation for any firm in a competitive market.

What is the discipline of “ATM" in innovation?

In a dynamic environment, organizations have to change with changing imperatives. Most organizations—large ones, especially—need time to change and adapt, and hence it is important that they can have adequate lead time to affect a successful “transformation". Adequate lead time is only available if organizations correctly plan in advance. Correct advance planning requires good “anticipatory" powers. Additionally, most successfully “transformations" require resource availability and, therefore, the best time to affect change in the organization from that standpoint is when the organizations are flush with resources (“money" is a generic surrogate for resources). Hence, the principle of the “ATM". Most organizations that have remained successful in the long run—apart from the fact that they got lucky—do exhibit some discipline of applying the concepts of “ATM".

Is accurate anticipation harder today, with innovations in services and disruptive technologies changing the way we do business ever faster?

Preponderance of innovations—true or otherwise—has created a more dynamic marketplace today. Good “anticipatory" mechanisms need to discern the good innovations that may truly change the marketplace from the many that will remain the “flavour of the season". There is too much data on change—and hence the process of “anticipation" is besieged with the task of identifying the real changes from the fake ones in this environment which is overloaded with data.

What role does data analysis play in good decision-making? Is this likely to change in any way in this age of big data?

Traditionally, data analysis has played the role of a good support system for decision-making; it is like building a bridge over a river to cross it—only in business the bridge never gets done and managers have to take the judgemental “leap" from the far end of the incomplete bridge to the other side. Good analysis helps in building a longer bridge to cover a significant amount of the span. The historical challenge has been about availability of data for consistent and rigorous analysis. In the past, scientific data analysis has been largely substituted by “gut feel", “intuition"and “experience"—which is more like data residing in and processing done by individual decision makers.

With technology inputs, data availability in the business domain, and accessible to a collection of managers in the organization, has grown, leading to more scientific analyses. The role of ERP (enterprise resource planning) has thus increased. “Big" Data is just another form of collectively accessible data—with characteristics such as large volume, myriad variety and high velocity. The challenge will be to find newer ways to reliably skim the information content from the haphazard variety and high velocity—something not encountered in the past.

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Published: 06 Oct 2013, 11:46 AM IST
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