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Blogging from Silicon Valley: M&A lessons from Cisco

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Cisco

This article is part of a series on the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management Executive MBA annual class trip to the Silicon Valley. The recent trip was part of the EMBA curriculum on “Innovation and Entrepreneurship.”

Day six of the Telfer Executive MBA’s Silicon Valley experience was spent in San José, where we visited two highly successful tech companies and long-time residents of the Valley: IBM Almaden Research Centre and Cisco.

We started at IBM’s world-class research laboratory space where great minds come to collaborate and innovate in the hopes of discovering the next big thing. Tucked away, almost hidden among 1,600 acres of wildlife habitat, the main campus and IBM buildings recalled a time where high-tech companies spent a lot time and effort in making sure that their locations were highly secure, secretive and discreet – a far cry from today’s near transparent approach to collaboration and openness.

Our tour guide and greeter, client relationship manager John Day, provided a quick overview of today’s IBM and introduced the class to two researchers and lecturers who provided us with amazing insights on current research underway.

Gone are the days of IBM selling laptops. Today’s IBM recognizes the importance of the role of disruptive technologies and embraces change, seeing itself as a leader in transforming healthcare, reinventing education and enabling startups in support of innovation and design thinking.

Relational databases, Watson, and Copper chips are some of the building blocks that make up IBM’s modern culture of innovation. In fact, once a year, IBM researchers have an opportunity to pitch their ideas to a board of directors. Those who are successful are given up to three or four people, a budget and two years’ time to further develop their project into a real and practical technical solution.

Cisco

Our next stop was a working luncheon hosted by Cisco’s corporate development integration team. Senior director John DeRusso led us through Cisco’s M&A strategies, specifically Cisco’s approach to enablement and integration of acquired entities.

The discussion revealed three M&A approaches:

  • Full absorption of a company’s products and brands;

  • Full-phased approach where the brand is absorbed over-time; and

  • Cisco’s extended and federated approach, which allows a product to carry on with its brand.

Cisco also underscored the importance of active change management after an acquisition in ensuring a smooth transitions for employees.

Cisco also provided two more engaging presentations. The first was on digital disruption and how senior management needs to take action to understand how disruptors affect the future of their organizations and to embrace disruption and make plans to implement digital technologies to stay ahead of the trends and continually grow in a modern organizational landscape.

The second presenter provided great insights and a unique view into Cisco’s financial organizational structure, giving all students a bird’s eye view of a large Silicon Valley financial structure.

Key learnings

Digital disruption is real and it is challenging traditional organizations in every industry. Rather than waiting to be disrupted or become obsolete, leaders must learn to build the agility to anticipate threats, sense opportunities and seize them before rivals do.

[“Source-obj”]

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Education

Almost 1,500 school pupils in Aberdeen given anti-weapons lessons

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

Almost 1,500 secondary pupils across Aberdeen have been given anti-weapons lessons in the wake of the killing of schoolboy Bailey Gwynne.

Bailey, 16, was stabbed during a fight with a fellow pupil at Cults Academy.

The schoolboy’s killer is serving nine years for culpable homicide.

An independent review into the death of Bailey in October last year found his death was “potentially avoidable” if teachers had known his attacker carried a knife.

The sessions will be rolled out next year to P7 pupils in Aberdeen.

‘Tragic incident’

Critics have questioned whether pupils would report their friends.

PC Seb Cook, of Police Scotland, told one S1 class at Aberdeen’s Hazlehead Academy: “You’ll have heard about the tragic incident that happened a year ago in Aberdeen.

“We never, ever want anything like that to happen again.

“You guys will never need to take anything sharp or dangerous into school.”

Police talk on weapons
Image captionTalks about weapons have been held at Hazlehead Academy and other schools

Hazlehead head teacher Jim Purdie said: “It’s not just about carrying weapons or blades, it’s about the legal aspect of that, and then the consequences for the pupils, for their families, for their friends.

“There’s an expression we often use, which is if we don’t know things are happening we can’t do anything about them. We are constantly reminding our children to take responsibility.

“If there’s something that is upsetting them, they know who to tell.”

‘Think of consequences’

One pupil, asked what they would do if they knew someone had a weapon, told BBC Scotland: “I would probably just go up to a teacher, maybe even up to the person and just say ‘why are you doing that, think of the consequences’.”

Another said: “People say don’t grass up a mate, but if it’s serious I think you should.”

Police Scotland was asked about incidents involving weapons in schools.

Supt Andy McKay, of Police Scotland Safer Communities, said: “Police Scotland relies on local authorities to report all incidents of weapon possession so that accurate figures can be collated.

“Following the report into Bailey Gwynne’s death, Aberdeen City have been working closely with Police Scotland to ensure each and every incident of weapon possession is reported, however it will be up to other local authorities to consider this recommendation moving forward.

“As a result, the figures collated to date may not offer a true reflection of the national picture in relation to possession of weapons in schools due to inconsistent reporting and recording methods.

“Figures represent a snapshot in time, and may not accurately portray a divisional or national perspective.”

A strategy aimed at preventing knives and weapons getting into Aberdeen schools was approved last month.

Staff will be provided with clarity on the recording of incidents in schools, pupil searches and when and how to confiscate weapons, including knives.

Other actions approved by the council include providing professional learning opportunities to teachers in order that they can deliver anti-weapon and knife crime lessons.

A review, conducted by child welfare professional Andrew Lowe, made 21 recommendations.

[Source:- BBC]

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Education

How to… plan engaging maths lessons

by Rajdeep
written by Rajdeep

One teacher shares some simple tricks for making your maths lessons more exciting

All too often, maths gets branded a “dull” subject. Particularly if you are a non-specialist, it can be difficult to think of ways to make your maths lessons really come alive.

But there are some simple strategies that I have found work really well to engage even the most reluctant learner. Maths specialist or not, try some of these tips when you are planning your lessons to prove to students that maths is far from “dull”.

  1. Relate the work to something the class are interested inI recently taught a Pokémon-themed lesson on calculation. The students picked their favourite characters and found the differences and totals of combat power points, heights, weights etc.

    Even if you think that the latest craze is a load of nonsense, it can be worth putting personal opinions aside if it gets your class engaged.

  2. Teach in bitesize chunksParticularly with a class that tends to be disengaged, try teaching for a couple of minutes and then sending the students off with a mini exercise. By repeating quick bursts of learning throughout the lesson, the students are kept busy, on-task and focused.
  3. Give the students answers instead of questionsProviding the answers first can make activities much more open. Instead of giving your class a page full of sums, write some numbers on the board and ask students to work out what the questions could have been. This technique has the added bonus of making differentiation simpler, as children can push themselves to find really tricky questions.
  4. Try some project-based learningAsk your students to come up with an idea they’d like to investigate and then challenge them to create their own portfolio of findings. This kind of self-directed project can make students more motivated and make learning feel more rewarding.

    When the projects are complete, students can share them with one another to disseminate the knowledge.

  5. Get things wrong The first time I tried this was when I made a genuine mistake and one of my pupils politely pointed it out. But I noticed that it made the children eager to spot more errors… so I started making them on purpose.                   [Source:- tes]
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Blogging

On Blogging, Cheating, and Winning: Business Lessons From Seth Godin

by Loknath Das
written by Loknath Das

Image result for On Blogging, Cheating, and Winning: Business Lessons From Seth Godin

Motley Fool co-founder David Gardner may spend a lot of time working for his goal of helping us all invest better, but that’s just part of his ambition. Really, he wants to help us all live better, and financial security is just one piece of that.

Another piece: Introducing us to fascinating new ideas and the authors who share them. So this month, the Rule Breaker Investing podcast’s theme is “Authors in August,” and to lead off, he’s got author, entrepreneur, blogger, and marketing guru Seth Godin, whose popular nonfiction books include The Dip, Purple Cow, and Free Prize Inside.

In this segment, Godin talks about his views on why everyone should be blogging, plus why businesses and entrepreneurs should be “cheating” — though his definition of that might not be what you’d expect.

A full transcript follows the video.

David Gardner: Let’s shift now a little bit from marketing to business, just some thoughts. I think that was a nice transition right there, helping us along. Seth, your blog, I’m thinking about your blog, maybe the first popular blog that I learned about. When did you officially start Seth’s Blog, and what are your reflections on it?

Seth Godin: My recollection is, it was an email newsletter in 1990 or ’91. I had a little bit of a head start, 27 years. It didn’t reach its official current form until maybe 15 years ago.

For me, what it represents is, anyone can be a columnist now. They give Pulitzer prizes to newspaper columnists, but anyone can be one. Anyone who has something to say or share can put that into the world. If you’re not doing it, I think you’re being selfish, because there are people who want to hear from you, there are people who want to be connected by you. If you’re not showing up to do that, I feel like you’re taking things from people.

Gardner: Does blogging pay?

Godin: Pay cash money?

Gardner: Yeah.

Godin: Using a StairMaster pays, because you’re not going to have a heart attack, and that’s really expensive. I think having a blog will get you a better job in the long run, it will help you make better decisions, it will do countless things for you. But if you’re trying to run a blog on Tuesday so you make money on Wednesday, you’re going to be a lousy blogger and not a very good citizen, either.

Gardner: Seth, I want to go to a page. We’re going to stick with business here. I’m thinking of page 38 from Purple Cow, which you mentioned. Besides your book coming out this November, This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See, but, you mentioned Purple Cow in addition, being a great one to start with, and I agree. On page 38, at least of my edition, you write a short chapter, I think it’s about one page, and it’s called Cheating. I’ve always loved this concept.

Cheating, for me, as an investor, I’m looking for businesses, in your words, that cheat — basically finding businesses that have some unfair competitive advantage. I’ll give two quick examples. Old Dominion Freight Lines, which is a less than truckload trucking company, and a very fine one for more than a century, basically doesn’t have any unionized workforce in an industry that’s dominated by unionized workforces. They’re cheating, in your parlance. Or, Netflix being able to bid on TV show content based on its voluminous customer data that its competitors simply lack. Netflix is cheating. And so on.

First off, I love the concept. It’s always helped me pick stocks. Second, do you have some newer examples today that you think of when you’re thinking about the good form of cheating?

Godin: What I mean by cheating is, what business is supposed to do, which is to create an asset that, when they use it, gives them leverage over everyone else. Otherwise, everyone’s in the commodity business. So, most of the people who pump oil out of the ground are pumping oil out of ground the same as everybody else. It’s a commodity. You don’t care, when you fill your car up with gas, what kind of gas you’re putting in. The goal here is to find an institution that has that asset and can put it to work.

Think about the ratchets that Amazon has been turning for the last ten years. Now, they have two or three ratchets all working in the same direction. They have a brand that people trust. They have the lowest cost of doing certain kinds of operations. They have the most efficient web services. When you add those things up, that’s an unfair advantage.

But it’s also a kind of cheating if you have permission to talk to people. If I can send an email to a million people and say, “My new book is ready,” I’m cheating. I can put my new book in front of 50 times as many people as an author who waited until the last minute before they started to build an audience. So, what my books are about is, which assets will we choose to build? Not just because we’re good humans and good citizens, but because once we build one of those assets, then we have the privilege of doing ever-better work, and we can use that asset to advance our head start.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. David Gardner owns shares of Amazon and Netflix. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Amazon and Netflix. The Motley Fool recommends Old Dominion Freight Line. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

 

[“Source-fool”]

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