Google keeps No. 1 position as ideal employer!

A survey by Universum revealed that Google kept its top position as an indeal employer for young professionals for 3 years now(No surprises here!). At the same time, Apple has slowly climbed itself to the 2nd spot. In my recent article here, I discussed how APPLE has used The Choice Paradox throughout which has apparently helped it in some way or the other.

Sad that Apple doesn't have much presence in India. And how much ever I love their innovation and Steve Jobs presentations, I hate them for this: "We get iPad1 one month before the worldwide launch of iPad2!" They need some lessons in scaling their business I guess.

Anyways, here's the list of dream companies of the Indian youths (some MNCs in India couldn't find their rightful place in spite of paying highly on account of their low intake & hence lower participants' pie in the survey):

Business:
1. Google
2. ICICI Bank
3. Nokia
4. State Bank of India
5. Microsoft
6. HDFC
7. HSBC
8. Infosys
9. Air India
10.BMW

Engineering/IT/Natural Sciences:
1. Google
2. IBM
3. Microsoft
4. Infosys
5. Intel
6. Wipro
7. HCL Technologies
8. Tata Consultancy Services
9. L&T
10.Dell

MBA:
1. Google
2. Infosys
3. IBM
4. Microsoft
5. HDFC
6. ICICI Bank
7. State Bank of India
8. Tata Consultancy Services
9. Nokia
10.L&T

Source: http://www.universumglobal.com/Newsroom/News/Asia/Google-is-the-Ideal-Employer-for-India

Apparently, some respondents even wrote Facebook inspite of it not being in the survey list ;)

Note: Don't forget to put in your reactions to this post below :)

The Choice Paradox - How APPLE outperforms!

Recently, I saw a TED talk "Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice". Briefly, it says, "The more are the available choices, the more difficult is decision making processes".Check out:



The topic was indeed so relevant to our daily lives, especially with this fast-changing world with new products/facilities/services being poured into the market every day. Also, this threw a question on the product development & marketing strategy of many companies. For example, most mobile companies have innumerable no. of handsets, many of which have only a slight difference. This probably just leaves the customer more confused over which one to choose. In turn, the decision of "Which handset to buy?" is delayed and delayed and delayed... In the mean time, he might switch to some other company handset with someone's recommendation. Similar is the situation of the insurance sector - innumerable policies -> more confusion -> delay in selection. And as the speaker says, we human beings just love to postpone things!

This made me wonder if there is some real example of a company who implements the theory proposed in the talk, and has achieved results. One day later, in a discussion with someone, a topic about APPLE's product strategy comes up. And I realize, BINGO! APPLE is the one!

APPLE has been following this theory since it's very birth! It gives limited choices to the customers -> One iPhone, one iPad, and a few for Macintosh, one in each category. They only update the product and phase out the old versions.No wonder, in some way, this helped Apple surpass even Google in terms of market capitalization.

Something to note for the strategy makers of all the companies, I guess!