From Shera to Sheru

This is probably my first consumer/society related writing on China. It has taken me long to start writing about this new place that I am in, may be I am growing old and I want to think a lot before writing anything or may be it is just more correct not to pass sweeping statements about a society and culture that is so old (as old as Indian or may be even older) and a society that I know so little of. I will first share an observation and then move to the possible implication.

Of course there are no pets by the name of Shera or Sheru, in China, but these names summarize the difference in relationship that exists between the owner and his pet, in Big City and Upcountry China.
This observation and enquiry was triggered by a statement that one of my Chinese friends made the other day. She said “my relatives in my Mom’s hometown were really surprised when they saw me pampering my Dog, while I was there visiting them in the holidays. They thought it was strange for me to treat my Dog like a toy or a Doll..”
This got me thinking and I began talking to more people abut their pets here and if any of their relatives from smaller town have pets and how do they kept them & treated them. Here is what I discovered - In big cities the role of a pet is more of a companion. A companion to old grand parents, to the widower Nannies, to the old parents who are alone as their only child is out of town or country to work or study (‘empty nesters’ in marketing parlance).
Pets are not just pals of older folk, even young girls living alone or with their friends; spinsters who have been in and out of multiple or a few relationships, love to have a Cat to caress or a dog to walk.
The pet is like a companion, a friend, a family member/partner. Thus his or her status is the same (well almost) as other members of the family. They eat the best food available in the market for them, they sleep in the bed like everyone else, and they get special grooming kits (shampoos etc) like others in the family, even clothes for different weather. The interaction with the pet is more conversational, so if you overhear what is being said to the pet – you could easily mistake it to be something that is being said to a person.
Why is it like this? What does this give the ‘owner’ in return? In fact is ‘owner’ the right word to use here?
Well I suppose what they get is something close to what I call ‘Unconditional love!’ Or perhaps a great listener, who anyway can’t talk (or not at least in a language that the owner can understand).

Cut to upcountry China – and the story is very different. The families are bigger and even for a small family (or lonely parents) they have friends and neighbours. These friends and neighbours are available to talk to, confide in, and share feelings with, much more than what their city counterparts could ever imagine.
Does this mean that upcountry China does not need pets? Well, they do but for an entirely different reason – ‘Security’.
Pets (predominantly dogs) are more of cheap labour. No wonder when my friend was cuddling her dog in her country home – her relatives were surprised.
In these non urban locations, the interaction between ‘owner’ (yes it sounds much better here) and the pet is much more instructional, giving commands most of the time (remember cheap labour!); the pet stays outside home most of the time and even if they step in there are no-go-zones clearly demarcated viz. kitchen, bed etc. Here the pet is not as much a part of the family as it is a part of the family infrastructure/support services.
Pets (predominantly dogs) are more of cheap labour.

So what does it mean? Well, from society point of view I look at big cities as torch bearers of the imminent loneliness and the desire to belong. China has smaller families, in big cities the family network = household and household is usually not more than 3 people strong. As the young ones in family grow up and go independent they start staying alone sometimes even before they are married. No wonder, these parents would need support.
Of course pets are not the only support, but they have a big role to play. Add to this the fact that these young boys or girls who are staying alone are marrying late (if they are i.e.) and there are many more broken marriages in urban China today than 5 years back.
Even this younger group needs companionship and pets come in handy even with this section of the society.

From the marketing point of view:
A huge pet food and pet indulgence market in making (if not already there);
A huge ‘eating out and indulging oneself’ market;
A large ‘drink to forget loneliness’ market

Also, noteworthy is the fact that this might not necessarily a China phenomenon. Many countries in the west have already gone through this cycle of need for unconditional companionship and many countries in Asia might be heading towards it.

Sheru after all is a much bigger marketing opportunity than Shera.
Marketing to me seems to be more and more of manipulation - manipulating personalities, manipulating society.
(I sure am not going to heaven after all!)

Nobody knows it all – be nobody

I was sitting at the Changchun airport (North East China) a few weeks back when one of our colleagues from another office opened his notebook and started asking our other colleagues about what we all thought were the key developments in Asia Pacific that could influence the fate of consumer markets in the next few years. He started slow but at the end of it he had more than 25 points to save before the last boarding call.

Recently I wrote a point of view on Amazon Kindle and shared with a group of friends and I realized that what I added to the original piece after the feedback from my friends was perhaps as rich, if not more, than the original piece that I had penned.

Amazing experiences both of these. They just reminded me how group think was turbo charging knowledge and creativity.

To me, it seems that the meaning of a creator is morphing to stand for a group than just an individual. Or should I say – a carefully chosen group that has the potential to quadruple the output.

Here are some personality-approaches that I believe seem to be working in this new world of accelerated group thinking:

Aggregator: Most (not all) of the things are already there – just gets them at one place and then tries to derive connections and contradictions.

Collaborator: Realizes there are way too many bright people out there – opens up and prepares to learn from them. Does not fight forces, leverages them.

Spontaneous Communicator: Realizes that people do not know what others are thinking – motivates/provokes them to talk in the hope that may be some of them have another thought that can be built upon.

Social (selectively and liberally both – do not ask how!): Believes there is no one way of being social, however thinks that being ‘selectively social’ and yet ‘open to random connections’ helps in forming a network of minds that stoke creativity.

Is his own ego slayer: Nicholas Taleb wrote in his outstanding book ‘Fooled by randomness’, - “I consider it my primary job to attack people, who take the quality of their knowledge rather too seriously”. I believe real knowledge and education is about understanding that we do not know enough. We need to strike a dynamic balance between confidence in our knowledge and yet a firm belief that there is a lot out there we do not have any clue about and thus we must learn to say, “I do not know” – trust me, there is nothing wrong in saying that.

Our Ego Slayer swallows his experience ego, ignores knowledge ego and always thinks that he is to young for the age ego.

In the end there is no one center. No one knows everything. No one is best. No one is complete. All of us are just sparks. Some are initiation sparks, some are early sparks, some are late sparks, some are question sparks, some are answer sparks and some are just different sparks.

Not just at individual level, even at organizational level – it helps to acknowledge that network thinking can really help. No wonder leading edge research in large and respectable organizations is moving from the Laboratory model to what some of them like IBM call, the Collaboratories. IBM is trying to shift from the Brick-and- operations to more collaborative outreach programs. For starters it is partnering with Saudi Arabia focusing on Nanotechnology (perhaps the Saudi answer to ‘what after the oil runs out!’).
IBM as quoted in Businessweek recently –acknowledge that the nature of research is changing and great ideas are springing up everywhere. Only a distributed thinking model and do full justice to this new approach to innovation.

Tomorrow is residing in billions of networked minds; nobody knows it all, better be nobody.

Business Philosophy is for forums

Why do businesses exist?
The usual answer is ‘profit’.
But more recently there have been a lot of instances where companies of different sizes have gone ahead and talked about how profits are a byproduct of their business practices. Many of them profess that they exist for a larger cause preferably (& usually) in the territory of
Improving the quality of life for humanity or
Prosperity for all or
Sustainable development for communities and concern for environment or
Making their nation proud or
Redefining the planet
and there are many more which are more focused than these.

A few days back I was interacting with a group of bright management students. I was trying to provoke them by challenging the very concept of vision, mission, business philosophy etc. is articulated only after the company reaches a certain size?

What made the discussion interesting was realizing the fact that most of the great businesses of today (local or MNC) started simply as great innovations or were an implementation of solid business ideas. This also means that these businesses were started by super-ambitious individuals, who were not just passionate creators but had a personal goal in life, along-with keen business sense and conviction that they could make it happen.
These individuals went about realizing their dreams and ambitions, riding on their strengths & skills in business.
But as company grows, it ceases to be just a business. It is no more an individual, instead it begins to look more like a network, a network of people, places, processes, principles, goals, dreams, desires and a lot more. With so many nodes and interconnections in this network, the business is now no more just about one man with his ambition and skills. It needs more than passion and conviction of just one person to steer or lead it.
Thus there is needed a charter, a war cry, a goal that each and every person who is a part of this network can look at and know where this network wants to be. What is that it is trying to do? And why does it want to be that?
Business Philosophy, Vision and Mission statements are the modern day counterparts of pronouncements and key phrases that yesteryear’s military Generals used to marshal their troops to achieve their goals.
Business philosophy, Vision etc is like the velvet glove of the iron fist of profit orientation. While it seems that this glove is mainly a good talking point for forums or people who might not be as much interested in the figure against depreciation in a company’s balance sheet, it none the less helps in making more handshakes happen and keep the network alive and aligned.