American Foreign Policy - Henry A. Kissinger

PUNCH LINES
"If I am not for myself, who is for me, but if I am for myself alone, who am I?"

"Aggression unresisted is aggression encouraged"

"There is no alternative to peace", Dr.Eisenhower's View on nuclear age

President Kennedy points out "in the final analysis of our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."

Spirit of Thucydides "the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it."

KEY POINTS
The most difficult, indeed tragic, aspect of foreign policy is how to deal with the problem of conjecture. "When the scope for action is greatest, knowledge on which to base such action is little or ambiguous. When knowledge becomes available, the ability to affect events is usually at a minimum."
Eg: In 1936, no one could know whether Hitler was a misunderstood nationalist or a maniac. By the time certainty was achieved, it had to be paid for with millions of lives


Leadership groups are formed by at least three factors: their experiences during their rise to eminence; the structure in which they must operate; the values of their society. Three contemporary types will be discussed here:
(a) the bureaucratic-pragmatic type
(b) the ideological type
© the revolutionary-charismatic type

Declaration of independence, "Every human being had inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The state existed to protect the individual and permit full scope for the enjoyment of these rights"

Foreign policy must start with security, at the same time, security is a means, not an end.

GLOBAL CONSENSUS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Economic Development strategy should concentrate on five fundamental areas :
(a) Insuring Economic Security -
Global economic security depends on ...
The actions of suppliers of vital products
Stability of Export earnings
(b) Accelerating Economic Growth
Basic requirements for Economic growth in developing countries
Access to capital markets - World bank, ifc
Transfer of Technology - in energy, food products and improvement of nutrition, non-food agricultural and forest products
Transnational enterprises -
(c) Trade and Development
(d) Commodity and Trade Production
Food security
Other primary commodities
Comprehensive program of investment
(e) The Poorest Nations
Elemental economic security
Future economic growth

Smart Pricing - Jagmohan Raju & Z. John Zhang

PUNCH LINES
There is no such thing as a free lunch
Profit is the price of survival
A price war can be a great way to shake out competition and build a commanding market share in a short period of time
Price wars can be a potent effective marketing strategy when deployed with forethought and skill and under the right circumstances
The greatest challenge of the business today is how to charge the least and serve the most
"My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see", says Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, Bangladesh, and the recipient of Noble Award

KEY POINTS
Three simplistic and ad-hoc approaches for pricing
Ø Cost - Plus Servicing
Ø Competition-based pricing
Ø Consumer-based pricing

Four levers can be played to boost the sales/profits
Ø Sales
Ø Variable costs
Ø Fixed costs
Ø Price

"PAY AS YOU WISH" - what all businesses this can be applied to
Ø A product with a low marginal cost
Ø A fair-minded customer
Ø A product that can be sold credibly at a wide range of prices
Ø A strong relationship between buyer and seller
Ø A very competitive marketplace

Most consumer behavior suggests that buyers use three ways to decide the price they are willing to pay
Ø Anchor pricing
Ø Value pricing
Ø Fair pricing

Why do people care so much about few pennies ?
Ø Social norms
Ø People have trouble setting prices themselves
Ø People naturally prefer options with no downsides

Few chinese Players such as (Changhong, a TV manufacturer, and Galanz, a Microwave manufacturer) made the decision of waging a PRICE WAR for the number of following reasons
Ø A significant number of chinese households were ready to modernize their Kitchen
Ø Reorganize the industry for sustainable future growth
Ø Establish your cost advantages in the market place

Ideal times price war can be initiated
Ø Heterogeneous firms with wide distribution of cost efficiencies
Ø New technologies with significant scale economies (means an enterprise/company which can cut down costs and increase its efficiency with more throughput)

IBEA (Incremental Break Even Analysis)
dq = dP - (1-cm) dC / (cm - dP + (1-cm)dC)
dq = Breakeven sales increase in %
dP = Magnitude of a price cut
cm = contribution margin in percentage ( before price cut)
dC = Reduction in marginal costs in percentage due to price cuts

Thinking Small
Ø Pitch pennies (9.99$, ending with 88, etc)
Ø Just pennies per day (Bring down the quantum of charges to decimals..)
Ø Supersize my profits (McDonalds, give more quantity for lesser price)
Ø Small price to pay (rent jets, share resorts on time basis)

It's not About the Bike - Lance Armstrong

Rating : 3.5/5

My fav quotes/one liners .....
1. “Make every obstacle an opportunity” / “Make every negative a positive”

2. As a parent, you gotta be with your child whenever he/she finds it tough going through, you never know how much your child draws confidence/inspiration from your presence (ref: He won all the events when Linda was there)

3. Never lose hope even if things look worse and don’t work in your way, you gotta believe in yourself and strive through those.

4. Maintain few healthy friends who can have helping hand in adversaries.

5. Being stubborn helps @ times, and do not lose your heart, ever, ever n ever.

Diplomacy - Henry A Kissinger

Rating : 4/5

My fav quotes/one liners .....

1. Man is immortal, his salvation is hereafter

2. "Traveler", there are no roads, Roads are made by walking - Spanish Saying

3. "Knowing what was wrong was easy, Knowing what was right was the hard part" - Gorbachev remarked this way, about the communist system needed to be changed from top to bottom

4. "a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought" - Reagan's overused epigram

5. "the eyes are burned from the head and the hair falls from the body and so forth." - Reagan believes this passage foretold Hiroshima.

6. "We are not involved in the world because we have commitments; we have commitments because we are involved. Our interests must shape my commitments, rather than the other way around" - Richard Nixon's first foreign policy in 1970 expressed this view.

7. "Careful elaboration of political goals and military strategy to achieve them before the decision is made to go to war" - When you need a war ?

8. "When we talk about the violation of the rules of war, we must keep in mind that the fundamental violation, from which all other specific violations follow, is the very waging of this kind of war" - Even Hans Morgenthau, the doyen of American Philosophers of the national interest, commented during America's war in Vietnam

9. "A conventional war is about control of territory; a guerilla war is about the security of the population" - Definition by H.A.Kissinger, while describing the events unfolded during Vietnam war

10. "all nations and all peoples are free to govern themselves as they see fit….. We have sought no territory. We have imposed our will on none. We have asked for no privileges we would not extend to others" - Truman in his inaugural address of January 20, 1949

11. "Man limited by his nature is infinite in his desires" - De Gaulle in 60's

12. "There can be no peace - without law. And there can be no law - if we were to invoke one code of international conduct for those who oppose us - and another for our friends" - Eisenhower in his address of October 31st 1956

13. "We will not accept a Hitler-dominated world. And we will not accept a world, like the postwar world of the 1920s, in which the seeds of Hitlerism can again be planted and allowed to grow.

14. We will accept only a word consecrated to freedom of speech and expression - freedom of every person to worship God in his own way - freedom from want - and freedom from terror " - Roosevelt in his radio address on May 27,1941

15. "The peace, the freedom and the security of ninety percent of the population of the world is being jeopardized by the remaining ten percent who are threatening a breakdown of all international order and law….. It seems to be unfortunately true that the epidemic of world lawlessness is spreading. When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the diesase" - Famous Quarantine Speech by Roosevelt after his victory in 1936

16. "I feel as if I am pushing open the door to a dark room, never seen before, without knowing what lies behind the door" - Hitler in December 1941 before the second world war

17. "In 1914,there had been a strategy but no policy; in 1939 ,there was a policy but no strategy" - H.A.K's assessment of two world wars

18. "I do not want to be extinguished like a lamp that is smoking. I want to sink down as though I were a star"

19. "Bridge the gap between formulation of an idea and implementation"

20. "It is reality, not publicity, that determines whether a leader has made a difference"