If you have worked in a corporate, then you have surely been ‘trained’ a few times – ranging from technical skills on how to use the new email gadget, to people skills like team management and negotiation, and business skills for sales and profitability. If you searched the market for trainers, you will be amazed at how many there are. A simple Google search for ‘corporate training’ gives back 162 million search results. Is that a lot? Well, a search for ‘viagra’ the super popular Internet product gives 42 million search results. The point is – corporate training is a very popular business expense.
Corporates seem to like making training investments, but do they pay-off? In this video prepared by Canada AM, Jim Clemmer explains why corporate training usually doesn’t work because the training is so far removed from the “real” work environment. One of his useful suggestions is about how the effective training is usually the one delivered by senior management – and as you can feel, its also the most difficult to achieve! His website is: www.Clemmer.net
Category Archives: Start-ups
Nandan Nilekani at India@60 event in NYC
Nandan Nilekani, Co-Chairman of Infosys Technologies has been a core member for the India@60 event in NYC, along with Sunil Mittal of Bharti Enterprises (also the President of CII). Those who know them will see clear marks of their planning and big-thinking behind this $10 million event.
Nandan’s point in the following video – about Human Capital Development- is bang on. While, its true that India has huge numbers of English speaking graduates in various disciplines from Engineering to Medicine, the fact remains that as of today, only 30% of India’s population is engaged in the current growth engine. The remaining 70% population of about 750 million is still not engaged. And majority of them are youth and children. So India is sitting on a treasure mine of human capital, and strong government initiatives can make big differences.
Business School for Kids – guess we can learn too
If you thought business plan discussions with teenagers felt strange, think again. Here’s an amazing video by Lindsey Mills in which you can see how primary school students are being trained in business start-ups, and how they start talking about Seed Capital, Venture Capital Rounds, Debt Capital and Income Statements…things which many of us learned sometime during our first or second job! The Start Em Up Business program gives students an introduction to business. Students learn the basic business concepts through playing fun business games, starting a real business, and making money. It feels like training numerous Tiger Woods for business – very interesting. The potential of something like this is immense because in 5-10 years from now, we could see start-ups from kids. You can learn more here: www.simplyoutrageous.org
Why Sales Deals Stall?
If you are into any forms of customer interaction or sales, you will benefit from this interesting sales training video by Dan Lappin of Caskey Training, where he shares “why sales deals stall”. It’s just 6 minutes long and worth watching full. You’ll learn three sales strategies that can improve your ability to control the sales process, improve your credibility, and will have your customers pursuing you. This video has been popular with audience at Myorbit from the time we started last year in 2006. So thanks very much to Dan Lappin.
Google buys Feedburner
By PureVC
If you haven’t heard already, Google has purchased Feedburner. Fred Wilson gives some color to the deal on his blog. While terms were not disclosed, Fred admits that his firm made about 3 times its money on the deal. That doesn’t sound like a “homerun” but he clearly outlines how rewarding the investment was for him and his firm in terms of personal satisfaction and in learning about the new media feed world.
This transaction confirms what few prescient VCs have known is the next wave of startups that take advantage of new media. Several years ago no one knew what a widget was or what a feed was. We were all using email and looking at portals and webpages. A very small iteration occurred, and that included the “blog”, the “feed”, and the “community”. In the past few years these have taken off and it remains an undercapitalized investment category simply because a lot of VCs don’t understand the power of this space. Continue reading