| THIS WEEK: The health and fitness services in India |
| The health and fitness services market in India is estimated at Rs 2,500 crore. |
| It is expected to reach Rs 4,000 crore by 2010 with compound annual growth rate of 15 per cent. |
| There are 970 fitness clubs (excluding basic/mass centres) in the country, with an overall membership base of 1.2 million people. |
| Fitness club membership penetration in India is 0.10 per cent, which is amongst the lowest in the world. In the US, it is 16 per cent, while in the UK, it is 13 per cent. |
| The spend break for men and women is 70:30 for the entire country, and 60:40 for urban India. |
| The average annual spend on health and fitness by individuals is around Rs 2,600. However, the spend by individuals in up-market clubs is about Rs 20,000 a year. |
| NUGGETS Selections from management journals |
| Most firms have no formal programmes for anticipating and fulfilling talent needs, relying on an increasingly expensive pool of outside candidates that has been shrinking since it was created from the white-collar layoffs of the 1980s. But the advice these companies are getting to solve the problem "" institute large-scale internal development programmes "" is equally ineffective. |
| Internal development was the norm back in the 1950s, and every management-development practice that seems novel today was routine in those years "" from executive coaching to 360-degree feedback to job rotation to high-potential programmes. |
| However, the stable business environment and captive talent pipelines in which such practices were born no longer exist. It's time for a fundamentally new approach to talent management. Fortunately, companies already have such a model, one that has been well honed over decades to anticipate and meet demand in uncertain environments: supply chain management. |
| Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School, focuses on four practices in particular. First, companies should balance make-versus-buy decisions by using internal development programmes to produce most "" but not all "" of the needed talent, filling in with outside hiring. |
| Second, firms can reduce the risks in forecasting the demand for talent by sending smaller batches of candidates through more modularised training systems in much the same way manufacturers now employ components in just-in-time production lines. |
| Third, companies can improve their returns on investment in development efforts by adopting novel cost-sharing programmes. |
| Fourth, they should seek to protect their investments by generating internal opportunities to encourage newly trained managers to stick with the firm. Taken together, these principles form the foundation for a new paradigm in talent management: a talent-on-demand system. |
| Talent management for the twenty-first century By Peter Cappelli Harvard Business Review, March 2008 Read this article at www.hbr.com |
| When Microsoft announced a hostile bid for Yahoo, open source advocates, tech pundits, and Yahoo's chief competitor, Google, reacted strongly and negatively to the news. Now with Yahoo's formal rejection of the initial offer, the company appears poised to wait for additional money. |
| But just what would the tech world look like if a Microsoft and Yahoo merger did happen? Experts at Emory University's Goizueta Business School ponder the marriage of these differing tech companies, and present a variety of scenarios for their competitors, including Google and AOL, and for the future of the Internet. |
| Microsoft and Yahoo!: An unlikely union? Knowledge@Emory, February 13 - March 11 Read the article at http://knowledge.emory.edu/ |
| When Givenchy dressed Audrey Hepburn for her role in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's , luxury was still exclusive, the particular provenance of the refined social elite. By 1980, all that was changing. When Brooke Shields announced that nothing came between her and her Calvins, the message was not that Calvin Klein jeans were for her alone; it was that they were for everyone. |
| In the 20-year span between the film and the ad, luxury entered the mass market "" and, quite arguably, stopped being truly luxurious, as Dana Thomas, cultural correspondent for Newsweek, suggests in her book, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster. |
| Illusion, not quality: The transformation of the luxury niche into a global mass market Knowledge@Emory, February 13 - March 11 Read the article at http://knowledge.emory.edu/ |
| A substantial number of local companies in emerging markets have managed to hold their own "" or better "" in the face of competition from global Goliaths. Arindam Bhattacharya and David Michael of the Boston Consulting Group show how these domestic Davids have achieved that impressive feat. The secret is to adopt most, if not all, elements of a six-part strategy. |
| One, the homegrown winners customise products and services to meet local needs and initially go after economies of scope. Two, they develop business models to overcome market-specific obstacles and gain competitive advantage in the process. |
| Three, they create or buy the latest technologies and use them effectively. Four, they find ways to benefit from low-cost labour and train workers in-house to overcome shortages of skilled employees. Five, they scale quickly by going national before regional rivals can challenge them. |
| Six, they invest in top management talent in order to sustain rapid growth. No element on its own is groundbreaking, but in the aggregate the strategy is a potent one, as the authors illustrate with the story of Ctrip, China's largest online travel agent. |
| Successful as homegrown champions have been, a few multinationals, such as Yum Brands, Nokia, and Hyundai, have managed to beat the locals at their own game by using the six-part strategy. |
| Global companies would do well to study these models of achievement and, armed with acquired wisdom, rethink their own strategies before local rivals shut them out of lucrative emerging markets. |
| How local companies keep multinationals at bay By Arindam K Bhattacharya and David C Michael Harvard Business Review, March 2008 Read this article at www.hbr.com |
| WHO BOUGHT WHAT February 2008 |
| Top online buys |
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| Top searches Source: eBay India |
Strategic tools for the practising manager
KIT
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First Published: Mar 11 2008 | 12:00 AM IST
