All of you must be keenly watching the IPL matches - for the cricket, of course. But Jay Srinivasan discusses a few interesting learnings that he came across,  for all the entrepreneurs out there to mull over. Hope it sparks off some debate! Excerpts:

What's the Product?

The Indian Premier League started off, I thought, without a clear idea of what the product was all about. Was it about cricket? Entertainment? New masala medium to spike the TV ratings for some privileged channels? New line of business for jaded conglomerates? A radical form of sports entertainment never tried out in the country? Vijay Mallya was asked about this on TV on Day 1 and he responded by saying "let them play cricket, we will give the entertainment!" A case of dissonance between the investor and management? So, what was this new venture all about? Who was the target market and what was the business model? This confusion has beset ventures of all kinds, including established businesses who ought to know better.

Hype & Reality

Tremendous hype has surrounded this league. It's a paradigm shift; no, it's a game changer. It's gonna revolutionize the game of cricket, become the fulcrum of the game. Sounds rather suspiciously like the hype in the late 90s when the Internet went commercial.  Hype has a tendency to be its own worst enemy and the jury is out if the IPL can afford to peddle hype that has little connection to reality.

Valuation

There is a reason for all the hype - valuation. The Mumbai franchise was much touted in the media as being the most valuable. By whom? On what terms? With what reckoning? A huge conglomerate had bought out the team for the highest bid and it had an icon player and the assumption was the team was the most valuable! Does valuation matter? For a startup, valuation is purely notional; an arbitrary number arrived at to decide on investment and dilution. Real valuation comes when the venture has something to show - products that are perceived to have value in the market and begets revenues. Until then, the valuation game is a king's feast no one - especially the entrepreneur - can afford.

Team

If you have any doubts that a great team can do wonders, you only have to check out the Rajasthan Royals. It's a story of an inspired team that had self-belief and a will to succeed. We're just midway in the season, but from where they've come it's entirely a story of team performance that worked like magic. Managerial incompetence, team friction, hubris, and a profligate culture were the preeminent traits at Boo.com, a high profile UK-based sports and high fashion online retailer that was hugely funded by LVMH and J.P. Morgan, and one that can be identified with several elite IPL teams that came with guns blazing but now languish at the bottom of the league table. A stark example of a dysfunctional team that just couldn't get its act together and lost valuable momentum occurred at Apple under the leadership of John Sculley. Today's huge successes at Apple belie the death wish it had owing to severe team management problems in the late 1980s and 90s.

Leadership

The IPL is a great example to talk about leadership. Who *is* the leader in a franchise team? The owner or owners? The captain? The coach? The new-fangled CEO or manager? Even in these early days of the league's existence, the evidence appears stark. The teams that have worn its celebrity owners on its sleeves - think Vijay Mallya of Bangalore, the Ambanis of Mumbai, or Shah Rukh Khan of Kolkata - have had pitiable little to show for themselves, possibly arguing that real leadership has to come from elsewhere. On the contrary, Jaipur and Chennai have had its owners largely hidden, but sought to portray its leadership as originating with its players, especially the captain. Again, the leaders have been devoid of flamboyance and quietly gone about their business . Leadership has been likened to an elephant that several blind people see different things from their unique perspectives. While styles differ - autocratic, democratic, hands-off, participatory, etc - its larger characteristics lies actually in what is accomplished and how, and in that sense three things seem to matter: vision, accountability, and sensible management that fosters trust and empowerment.

Technology

"Build it and they will come" is an oft-heard expression, and an idea that is quite well entrenched in tech companies. This view places a premium on the product or technology and gives short shrift to customer value or market propensity. The list of examples of tech-focused products that bombed in the market is numerous: the Apple Newton, Sony Betamax and eVilla, Segway, the Ford Edsel, New Coke, CueCat, and on and on. At the IPL, one may think of the "technology" as equivalent to the icon player. In a decision that fundamentally set expectations, it decreed that certain city teams would have "icons", who would be paid more, and be the fulcrum of the respective teams. Hence we had Tendulkar fronting for Mumbai; Ganguly for Kolkata; Singh for Punjab, and Dravid for Bangalore. This was a case of shooting oneself in the foot as the total price cap together with the premium required to be paid for icons meant the icon teams had little left over to bid aggressively with. Result? Chennai and Hyderabad made the most of it.

Culture

Organizational culture has become synonymous with a type of management fad today. Pity. In a very real sense, the initial founding culture defines what the enterprise will be or how it will become what it sets out to be. The match between Bangalore and Chennai was a lot about the cultures of the respective teams. One founded on glitz and glamor that flowed from a flamboyant owner and the sexy aura of being associated with some of the strongest Indian and foreign brands - think ubiquitous Kingfisher beer, luxury Kingfisher airlines, F1 motorsport, and the hipness of the Washington Redskins cheerleaders - while the other had, well, nothing much to trot out with the exception of Sivamani on the drums.While a particular organizational culture does not appear to predispose the likelihood of success, it can point to issues that may detract from a startup venture's initial focus and ability to perform. Bangalore probably suffers from the destructiveness of an aggressive cultural overhang that its players find difficult to dissociate from.

The ideas above may not find agreement with all, nor is it expected to. It merely lays out some rather common issues of entrepreneurship that we would confront and to frame these in such a way that a young venture is able to see the larger context of decisions it or its founders may make.

Jay Srinivasan is founder of CubbonPark Consulting, a boutique management practice specializing in transformative processes and customer experience. He is co-author of Internet Commerce, Metrics and Models in the New Era of Accountability (Prentice Hall US, 2001 - ISBN 0130281867) and may be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .\n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ."

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Comments (1)

	1. 16-06-2008 13:52
	Core Competency The article has prceise selection of examples, to which I would add one more, and that is "Core Competence". I believe that though the SRK's Knight Riders did't fared very well in the game, the team per se and the owner have managed to make fair amount of money. SRK did focused on his core competency of glamour and was able to bag good advertising deals for his team. A lesson for others! http://lifeislikethatrasika.blogspot.com/ Registered Report

Rasika Gokhale

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