The Business of Creation



All that is created is by Him we believe. But I guess its safe to assume that even he has a process to it. Life in a B-School teaches you that all that exists or moves has a framework supporting it and a whole load of research backing it up or else there would be no prudence in believing in its existence. So let us take this thought a step further and explore how God creates a human being. Reliable sources tell me that God has a focus group up there that does all the thinking and gives him insights into his next creation keeping in mind existing products and prevailing market entry strategies in place. Even though God is a monopolist in the human being creation process, he still believes in strict quality control and due to increasing demographics which he has to cater to, he has adopted the ‘Just In Time’ ideology from his Japanese creations.

Business intelligence provided by one of my strategic partners have given me an insight into the creation process adopted by God along with a focus group, a technique he has adopted from marketing research firms and ad agencies on Earth. Apparently he was quite impressed with the way his many earthlingsTM have evolved and in an effort to integrate human competencies with celestial innovations, he has begun a new approach to his creations.

To get the best out of his production cycle he has reduced it by a few steps thereby reducing costs and designing an extremely cost efficient system. The use of focus groups in deciding how the ‘new person’ must be is a positive step in the person development cycle as it helps glean consumer insights into the development process. These focus groups have been decided keeping His ‘global delivery model’ in place adopted from one of His favourite companies ‘Infosys’. This model allows him to decide on a focus group keeping in mind that his ‘person’ maybe launched in any market as determined by his ‘Delivery’ team and the market or customer who is in the right position to receive it. This approach has been ratified by the in-house research team and the ad agency that has taken the job of moderating these focus groups. No blind tests are allowed in these focus groups as the ‘person’ is too sensitive to such judgements. The ad agency has been working towards finding customers for the ‘persons’ created and this is a long drawn out process which begins nearly a year in advance or much more in normal cases. The ad agency is paid only after the client enters the final 9 month ‘person purchase’ window and is eligible for a further 20% commission in the case of ‘persons’ instead of a ‘person’ being acquired.

The focus group keeps changing as and when a new perspective is needed and if the focus group approves a ‘person’ which turns out to be a failure in the market. Case in point being ‘persons’ like Osama Bin Laden, George Bush, Mayawati and the likes. These ‘persons’ have been huge failures and case studies are being designed to understand what went wrong with these ‘person lines’. The entire category was disbanded but due to rampant counterfeiting, many more such ‘persons’ made it to the market like, Dawood Ibrahim, Lalu Prasad Yadav and the list goes on. To counter this problem consultants from ‘person development and integrated improvement’ consultancies were brought in for big bucks and they analysed existing markets, past markets, created revenue models, SWOT analysis, developed Aaker’s Brand Identity models for existing and future ‘persons’, developed a BCG matrix to understand the current available ‘persons’, spent some more bucks and finally submitted a comprehensive report that stated that:

‘Person lines should be altered to a point where the overall corporate strategies can be in line with business strategies to orchestrate a flank attack on counterfeiting to further improve the overall productivity and reach of the ‘person lines’ and promotional strategies so that consumers may differentiate ‘persons’ on the basis of high quality standards and improved competency benchmarking which in turn will add to the value creation frontier and bring out the superior capabilities of the manufacturer who besides running a smooth lean manufacturing process can also produce new ‘persons’ which can cut across new demographics and redefine existing business practices and establish their own set of best practices.’

The consultants spent a huge sum of money and in return have given Him not much to go on. He has therefore decided to abandon the entire project and go back to the old process of development where he makes all the decisions and no focus group or ad agency or consultancy affect his thinking. It’s just Him, His imagination and the world. He decided that people should meet on their own, decide to procreate on their own and he will just provide the raw materials. He would no more be the CEO but just the Chairman and observe the ‘person’ development stage and would then enjoy the ‘person life cycle’. His only profits would be the lives He would get to see change and his company has promised daily dividends irrespective of bull or bear markets. He has shut all futures and options markets for the ‘persons’ he produces and has opened the ‘hopes’ and ‘wishes’ market. And finally in a move much appreciated by industry observers, he has gone public and much to the joy of his under writers, the offer has been oversubscribed many times over. He has collected in his Initial Public Offering, millions and millions of prayers. Profitability is high, profits are sky rocketing and the business is back on track…