Principles For Any Business

The major source of inputs for any company would lie in these six principles.

The very first strategic essential for everyone in the Business is: Fully embrace the product plus services. Fully embrace it -- which means don't hesitate, don't try and put a wall around the traditional [products].

The second is to extend the business value advantage for the customers. When I said this I mean, "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts." Making sure that the product should collectively deliver even greater value to the customers -- that's an important approach for any company. The business may have to compete on 18 or 20 different fronts. It has to compete as a group of capabilities that interoperate well with the company and its competitors.

The third is to delight the customers with unparalleled experiences. It has to come from companies where the experience is fundamentally the differentiator. The company should focus on: What is the user experience? What is the interaction model? How can we advance that cause? The quality of the experience is number three.
Clearly, customers are the starting point. Spending a great deal of time with existing customers -- or customers who may have said, "You know, this isn't right for us. You're missing something." Getting feedback from existing or prospective customers is an important element of it. When we have a conversation with a customer, it's less about pitching specific products and more about talking through how we help them solve business problems -- which today means saving money, becoming more productive, things like that.

Number four is about innovation -- both taking advantage of innovation that's going on within the company and around the industry, and also driving innovation. Part of the reason why Intel, Google, Apple, Tata (Nano) are here today is to stake out the position that they are driving innovation more aggressively than ever done in the past. That's something, particularly during tough economic times, which they feel is important. Now is the time to double down.
Companies do absolutely take clues from some of the broader trends they see -- economic, demographic and so forth. Studying those trends and understanding what's going on in research are all important factors that come into the planning process.
They also take a look at what's going on across the company and with their competitors to understand other trends that they need to avail themselves of.

Number five and six are more internally focused. Number five is to show operational excellence -- quality in engineering, customer satisfaction, hitting the numbers, driving revenue growth, driving margin growth. All the things you need to do to run a business.

And number six, which should be held very dearly at any company more so than any other company is to focus on employee excellence. Everyone says it; I know that. I'll tell you: At good companies, there is more time spent, more investment in ... communicating about individuals -- their performance, how to advance their career, how to help them develop as individuals. It really is remarkable. Examples are Infosys, Tata, and Google.

Companies will be blessed only if they hire the smartest people, it should be huge attractor of talent. When you're in a meeting, when you're in an intense conversation, boy, it's rich. You're constantly like, "Wow. That person knows what he's talking about." It's humbling, because you realize you simply don't know enough to keep up with everybody in the room. The quality of the people is there.

So to foster any business in long term we do need the above 6 principles to make it a great company and a dream company to work with.