feverish, lazy

Yesterday a trip to Chennai landed me in serious trouble. Down with dry cough and high temperature. Ahh! Grrr! Head is heavy, don’t feel like leaving the bed, I was thinking… Isn’t Chennai warmer? Does moving from a colder location to a warmer place affect the body temperature? How does an antibody function? Can I control my body temperature back to normal by concentrating on a charka point? Huh?? Anyway, I was practicing the art of lazing around. Believe me you actually savoir moments like this. Moments when body is too weak to lift itself, while the mind active as hell, which in turn forces a physical movement. You do a balancing act, somehow manage to control calm the mind to zero physical movement and just think. But think about what??

How to study a changing category?

Studying category conventions and mapping changing dynamics (any source is good source) gives me a real high. It allows me to quickly derive at five absolute critical points or quick directions. The best part of the thrill - I get to chase any direction to arrive at a hypothesis. Well, most of the time just to validate how wrong it was. Lol. What I meant was I enjoy doing it. A fun exercise when you’ve fever or just want to laze.

At the moment automotive category in India is the best example. The best, I tell you. It’s completely chaotic. It’s changing. And it’s hot and happening. The real action is in the small car segment. A small car at every price point. Luxury hatchbacks; multiple ownerships. Well, while searching those critical points, I made a laundry list of questions to see what hypotheses can be created.

Now if you’ve a point of view on this, please do share, it’s ‘collective learning’ you see.

Why is Bajaj getting into the four wheeler category? Do they believe in the next 10 years, demand for (their) city bikes will hit rock bottom? (What will happen to bicycles then? Will they even exist then, if yes, in what format?) Are they diversifying because they understand the implications of changing category dynamics? Are they getting future ready for that shift to happen? Will Nano really manage to eat into the two wheeler market? How will small car segment evolve over the next ten years? How will the two wheeler market evolve itself? Will evolution mean bikes getting meatier and meaner, maybe 300cc + will become the standard of what 125cc is today? What role will Royal Enfield play then - follow the Harley path to success?

(There’s lot to learn from the Walkman example. Remember how CDs took over cassette tapes? Later how MP3 players started evolving over CD players? How was Sony’s reply to the changing category dynamics with their mobile phones?)

Don’t you think I should shut up and take rest? Eh? Do let me know what you think... ;-)