Sunday Posts

It has been a while I blogged, but my life has completely changed during these couple of months. Overall, these changes have been positive. An idea that a colleague and I developed became a company by itself and received investment. We were pursuing this possibility for several months, but in the last twelve weeks or so, it actually happened.  The other change that happened is in my role. Given that we were working inside a larger business, I confined my role to innovation and product development, leaving the financial and revenue responsibilities to the owner of the business. However, this became untenable after the investment came through. There was a clear requirement of disconnecting from the other group businesses and necessity to have control of finance and operations aligned to the business goals of the entity itself. Therefore, when offered, I took on the CEO role, assuming, along with my thousand other things to do, the responsibility for money and investment.  In a w...

When manholes started disappearing around the world in 2004, the world discovered China. Re-discovered, we should say, as, in the Chinese eyes, China was merely reasserting its historical manufacturing primacy after centuries of slumber. But, even in 2004, what it did was still just gruntwork at the bottom end of the world's value chain, jostling for space with Vietnam, Bangladesh and assorted sweatshop countries. Thereafter, came the phase of great copy-and-catch-up, to borrow Tyler Cowan's phrase, and cheap Chinese knock-offs flooded the global markets. The tabloids and governments razed about the poor quality of Chinese-made and pilferage of intellectual property. Yet, this outrage was reassuring, as China seemed far off from gaining any technological edge and forever consigned to fighting it out over the lower cost. 2019 changed all that. The message behind Trump's trade wars established that China, and its companies, may have achieved that technological ad...

China is redefining its universities, and, as a result, changing the landscape of International Higher Ed.  Indeed, this is early days, and most Chinese universities are still very traditional. But the game is changing, and it's time to pay heed. There was a time when British Universities loved China. It meant exotic foreign tours for staff and faculty, eager partners lining up elaborate welcome ceremonies, relatively easily winnable contracts and student numbers, which made nice little case studies. And, it didn't matter how good or bad the university was: Anything British would have done the job (one needed ranking, sure, but it did not matter which ranking: As a Chinese academic once told me, as long as you are the second best university on your street, it would do!) This seemingly unquenchable desire for foreign education came handy when the student numbers in the UK shrunk at the wake of immigration regime change under Theresa May's stewardship in...

The world of politics is changing profoundly. It is not just about the rise of the strongmen rulers - President Xi of China, Prime Minister Abe of Japan, Prime Minister Modi of India or President Duterte of Philippines - or their perennially ubiquitous counterparts in Mr Putin, Mr Erdoğan , Mr Netanyahu and Mr Zuma. The shift that we are seeing is more than the shocks, such as Brexit or a Trump Presidency, or the ascendance of extreme nationalists like Marine Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in Netherlands or Nobert Hoffer in Austria. The anti-Semitic rallies in Poland, the authoritarian Viktor Orbán in Hungary, the absurd Beppe Grillo in Italy and the abhorrent Golden Dawn in Greece are all part of a big shift, which is not just about the rise of nationalism and breakdown of the post-war institutions. There may be a more fundamental shift underway. Discussion about such a shift is not new. This has been discussed in the scholarly circles for some time. But, since the last year, ...

Martin Reeves' TED talk, below, makes an important point: That there are other ways of thinking about strategy, business strategy, than the usual, mechanical, pursuit of efficiency. Whether or not you agree with Mr Reeves' point about building a business around the principles of the human immune system, you would perhaps agree that there is not much point in a strategy that crash and burn all too quickly. As for me, I would want to see this conversation, though this is NOT the point of the talk, as a part of a broader conversation about making businesses 'More Human', the title of a book by Steve Hilton (his arguments summarised in the video below). This is not what Martin Reeves is talking about - he is indeed arguing about a cleverer way of making strategy and rightly pointing out that the current methods of optimising is getting us nowhere - but one should remember that Corporate Strategy is built and executed within an environment of ideas, which is mechanica...

I have been working on Internationalisation of Higher and Professional Education for over a decade now, mostly at the business ends of things and exploring strategic opportunities. Therefore, I find myself often in conversations about how to internationalise educational offerings, often involving developed country institutions trying to tap into demographic booms in emerging markets, and sometimes, emerging market institutions reaching out the other way.  Most of this conversation, as I see it, is opportunistic. The list of failed attempts is long, which, not incidentally, include my own two years of developing a business to deliver British qualifications online in partnership with colleges in India and China. So, my current wisdom is not just theoretical - it has all the practicalities of someone who burnt himself in the process!  This makes me reluctant, often to the surprise of willing collaborators or investors who would see me try again, to engage again in cross...

In the world of Unicorn companies , privately held start-ups with valuations of $1 billion or more,  global strategy is no longer what it used to be. In fact, the old, dated idea that one goes global only after securing its home market, and having cash flows to sustain far-flung operations, is as good as dead. Getting global fast, rather, is the thing to do, as the copy-and-catchup innovation, as popular in many fast-growing emerging markets, can alter the dynamic for a start-up quite dramatically by capturing large market share in foreign markets and becoming a threat almost instantly. Whatever we may think of them, copycats, imitators, etc., the copy-and-catchup ecosystem in India, China, Middle East and Africa, are made of very smart entrepreneurs, savvy technologists, and investors who are ready to back them either looking to exit in a global M&A or going global through acquisitions themselves. With this, right now, start-ups are usually born-global rather than not, and d...

To paraphrase Dickens, this is the best and the worst of the times for Global Higher Education. There has never been a time of greater demand and greater desire for it. As millions join the ranks of middle classes in Asia and Africa, the West, its lifestyle, income levels and culture define the shape of the dream - and global higher education represents the pathway to it. On the other hand, these students were never less welcome in the metropolitan centres of Europe, Australia and the United States. For all its high-minded rhetoric of borderless knowledge, the West feels overcome with migration, the modern-era exodus through the heart of Europe being its most visible manifestation. It is under an intellectual seizure, with extremist rhetoric and isolationist tendencies on the ascendance across the continent. Global education, in the form we came to know it, has never been more difficult to attain or costlier. One crucial factor that widens this chasm is the nature of the ...

India is one of the most complex markets of Higher Education in the world. It is complicated with multiple layers of regulation, with the States and the Centre having a say, and neither of them having a definitive say. It is a strange marketplace with a modern service economy overlaid on a middle class created by public sector careers, where conservatism and aspiration are in constant conflict. It is unusually corrupt, and this is one sector where Private Sector matches or betters Public Sector corruption (see my lament here ). All this makes any new idea, and market entry for a new institution, global or local, extremely difficult. ( see more here ) I have done several projects with global organisations trying to enter Indian Higher Ed market, and understand why they must try. ( see my earlier post here ) Despite the complexities, India is simply the biggest market for education. It is the arena where the big questions of education innovation are being played out, and to be a pl...

I have faced this personally. When I tried to raise money for an Education Start-up in the UK, I would regularly get asked, during investor pitches, what our key markets would be. By default, everyone would assume that we would do India, specifically because of my heritage (UK Private education sector worked like that - minority ethnic founders enrolling students primarily from their ethnic groups), while I, cognisant of the complexities of the Indian market ( see my earlier post here ), would be far more circumspect.  Revisiting those discussions, and the experiences since (our sales efforts will go nowhere in India, but would eventually find traction in China), I still think that an innovative education start-up should have an India plan. The reason is obvious - India would simply be worlds largest market for Higher Education. China has more students right now, but India is at a different demographic point than China, and the growth in India would be far more dramatic. ...

In an insightful article in Strategy and Business, John Jullens present a view on How Emerging Markets Can Finally Arrive . This is required reading for anyone who cares about emerging markets, if only for going beyond the orthodoxy of free trade and flexible labour market. The broader point - that every market needs its own strategy and that the strategy may vary from stage to stage of development - is also extremely valuable, as this is usually overlooked in any politically tinted discussion about development.  At the core of it, this article has a China theory at its core. China is affecting a transformation of its economy, and it may just pull it off. While some commentators in the United States would say that China can not be a model for most other countries, just because of its political structure, it is becoming a model for many countries, including, for India, the alternate that these commentators would love to highlight. China has proved the naysayers wrong several t...

From this title, a lot of people will get there-we-go-again feeling. But I am not writing about the brilliance of Steve Jobs, his ability to put himself in the shoes of the consumer, or his commitment to beautiful design or usability. These things have been talked about before, and still gets talked about, as Apple continues to perform astonishingly well. This post is about just one rather mundane aspect of business strategy, where Apple outguns everyone else, and something the universities are really bad at, habitually. And, the point of this post is that perhaps time has come for the universities to look closely at Apple, because this one key strategic point is becoming ever more important. In his recent article in International New York Times about how Apple overtook Microsoft ( See the article here ), James Stewart emphasises the courage Apple has shown in cannibalising itself. They were unafraid to undermine their most successful products. Apple destroyed its own very succes...

If one is to set up a new university today, what shape would it take? This isn't a theoretical question. Simultaneously with the predictions of university's demise in the West, which is perhaps overblown, the rate of creation of new universities all over the world has only accelerated. This is particularly true for the newly industrialising countries like India and China, where the governments are keen to create additional Higher Education capacity to accommodate the aspirations of the rapidly expanding middle classes. From the vantage point of the makers of the new universities - these are, it must be made, mostly private endeavours - the questions about its shape and structure are of secondary importance. They are indeed responding to a market of nearly bottomless demand. For example, India's graduate population, already at more than 25 million, is expected to reach the 40 million mark in less than 10 years from now. For the 600 odd universities in India, that w...

The more we do it, we love what we are doing, and this must be a good sign. But even better is that we are learning as we go along - we have tested every assumption that we had and now have a fairly clear idea of the constraints and the opportunities - and I have learnt more in the last nine months about the business of international education than I did in my previous twenty years. There are several reasons why I feel that way, but chiefly because I can now push the boundaries and trying to do something which is truly ambitious. Also, it is an important fact that we are really small, just a start-up with few people and quite finite resources, and this puts things in perspective. So, for us, ambition is not a fancy thing to be indulged upon, but rather a constant reminder of our limitations and an invitation to be innovative. Which means every new opportunity means revisiting the business plan, a temptation to meddle with the sacred Excel sheets that we got made through a friendly...

India seems indecipherable. It is an exciting market, just that it never materialises. I have used one expression - borrowed somewhat from James Kynge's book on China - that while India looks like a huge multiplier effect for businesses from outside, the moment you set foot in the country, the endless game of divisions begins. Also, India is like El Dorado - everyone wants to go there, but no one knows how. After repeated failed efforts, excitements in the world markets, the sentiments are now cooling: The India play is treated with caution, often avoided in favour of more exciting regions, like Brazil, or Indonesia, and now even Burma or Mongolia. However, it is hard to ignore India. Apart from the fact that it has so many of the new consumers, it is a potential breeding ground for competition in other markets. Leave India to local companies for far too long and a competitor will certainly emerge, who will better the game in prized markets that you wanted to keep your eggs in...

This is a bit of Washington-speak I picked up from watching the news: It basically means that the American strategy for world dominion, shall we say world peace, have changed its focus to Asia. The Cold War is well and truly over, and despite its vast nuclear arsenal and apparent ambitions, Russia is no longer considered a threat. The American military personnel and arsenal would now shift to Asia, particularly East Asia, where the Chinese presents the biggest threat to the current world order, one of American hegemony. Or, at least that's the plan.  Indeed, despite the professed Asian pivot, very little has actually happened on the ground. The United States has started withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Europe, but they have mostly gone home. The American military may have the biggest budget in the world, but they may have been over-reaching, not in terms of technology or military prowess, but in terms of willingness to engage all over the world and to b...