Aparna Ballakur joined Flipkart as the Chief People Officer (CPO) in 2012. Before Flipkart, the Cornell-educated Ballakur worked in Yahoo India, Adobe Systems, McAfee Software and Sasken Communication Technologies. Starting as a R&D engineer, she soon realised that passionate people rather than perfect processes drive success and that set her off on the way to aligning people’s motivation to organisations' desired outcomes.A firm believer in you are only as good as your team, Ballakur thinks HR needs to be participatory rather than dictatorial and be willing to challenge current thinking and own the talent agenda.ExcerptsWhat made you choose HR as a profession?In my first job as an R&D engineer, I had to work very closely with shop floor workers to build my prototypes. There were many instances where just relying on the process didn’t work. Collaborating closely with the workers to fine-tune my design and get the prototypes built opened my eyes to the fact that passionate people rather than perfect processes drive success. In hindsight, I think that was also the start of my learning journey on how to align people’s motivation to an organisation/ team’s desired outcomes.What has been the biggest achievement in your career?Every company I have worked with has offered me the opportunity to contribute and do things I hadn’t done previously. There are a couple that I am particularly satisfied about.I helped build a world-class technology team in a start-up I worked for. We were able to attract top-notch technologists from the US back to India, at a time when returning to India was not yet fashionable. I’ve also been able to support the successful integration of a big acquisition at a company that I worked with. In acquisitions, retaining top talent from the acquired company is always a challenge. We were able to do that very well and these people are still at the company and doing very well.What have been the primary traits/qualities that have helped you attain your present position?I have an insatiable curiosity, which drives me to constantly learn - be it about the business, HR, science etc. I also have a high risk appetite- the willingness to do different things and things differently. Above all, I believe that you are only as good as your team. So building and growing a talented team is something I work on all the time. What sets your company apart from other companies as far as work culture goes?Flipkart offers a fabulous combination — the flexibility and freedom of a start-up and the scale and vision of a large company. This, combined with a young, vibrant workforce, is helping us create a unique work culture, which is both transparent and participative.We are a great fit for people who want to build/ create and want to change the world. What are the challenges you are facing in organisation?As a rapidly growing company with a young, talented workforce, one of the areas that we are focusing on is to build leadership capability across all levels in the organisation. We believe that this is particularly important as we scale exponentially. We want to be able to create leaders internally to take up larger responsibilities in the organisation as we grow. How do you retain talent in your company? What is your rate of attrition?People come to Flipkart because they see the opportunity to build an organisation that is changing the face of e-commerce in India. This gives them the learning and growth that they would never have got anywhere else. Our transparent and participatory culture combined with freedom and flexibility to contribute and grow is what retains people who join us.Of course, continuing to keep the environment informal and engaging is extremely important - especially given the young employee base. What is the biggest challenge you face when selecting people?E-commerce is a new industry in India and we are the leaders in this space. Given this, our biggest challenge is getting people who have the right domain experience in all functions within the organisation. For many senior positions, our search has been global and we have been able to attract people outside of India to join us.How do you track employees' satisfaction or dissatisfaction?We do multiple things to build a workplace that employees feel is a great place to work. For example, we do an annual engagement survey to get deep feedback on critical aspects. We also work on constant employee round tables to get feedback from employees. Leaders do town halls; skip level meetings and many other informal interactions to keep a finger on the pulse of the organization. Employee participation is an important aspect of our culture. For e.g, we asked employees to vote on the holiday list for the year, instead of letting HR decide the list. Before we roll out a policy we ask for employee feedback – this helps us ensure that the policy addresses employee needs.How HR has been important to the bottom line of the company?For a young company that is growing at breakneck speed, our talented workforce is a key differentiator for our success. This is where HR plays a significant role - we enable the on-boarding, development and engagement of this workforce, which in turn drives our growth and success. How has the downturn affected HR?I am a firm believer that both in in good times and bad, a company must not lose focus on its talent. We must always hire the best fit talent, invest in them and create an environment where there is respect, transparency and flexibility. If an organisation is consistent with this, people will stay and help the organisation grow. A company can never take a short-term view of people and it is the HR leader’s responsibility to ensure that this happens.How should HR be integrated with the core line of business?Any business that relies on the talent of its people for its success needs to make people its priority. This is where a good HR team is able to add value to the business and be a core function. On-boarding, developing and engaging employees is where HR can add significant value by being a partner to the business. HR also needs to understand the priorities and language of the business. HR cannot be driving process or ideas just because they are cool or they are the latest fad. We should be driving what’s right for the business we work with - we have the responsibility of helping business leaders balance people priorities in the context of business priorities.What are the steps a company should take to develop and motivate future leaders?An organisation needs to be continuously on-board, develop and engage its leaders as much as its other employees. At senior levels, impact, visibility and development are key motivators. Organisations need to invest significantly in doing all these three things well. We not only need to design roles where leaders are able to create maximum impact for the organization- but we also must provide these leaders visibility both within and outside the organisation, so that they are able to build credibility and a strong personal leadership brand. It is important to continuously invest in our leaders to help them build on their strengths and work on their areas of development.If you could change three things about HR practices, what would they be?Looking at HR practices from 3 perspectives-Employee: be participatory rather than dictatorial.Business: solve real world business/talent issues rather than chasing fadsHR Community: Be willing to challenge current thinking and own the talent agenda(As told to Poonam Kumar)
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“Internet here feels like America in 1994,” said Google Chairman Eric Schmidt at a Google event in the capital. Schmidt, who is on his first visit to India said internet in India, is under-penetrated because of lack of adequate connectivity.“Let me tell you a simple formula. Take fibre optic cables and run them into the ground everywhere the government can imagine. Every road, every ditch, every piece of land- bury fibre optic cables. These will amplify and scale in 20-30 years,” he says.He also pointed that India was lagging behind exploiting the power of Internet because of the telecom industry which is under-capitalised and had failed to invest in high-speed networks.Connectivity Is The SolutionFor Schmidt, “connectivity” is the solution to India’s every problem be it education, health services or banking.“Education would probably improve through mobile devices. Eventually the mobile applications will be more powerful as they are more personal,” says Schmidt. “You have a large underserved banking population. Through a very clever system involving a UID it will be possible for people to have a unique name tied to an e-commerce banking system,” he adds.According to Schmidt, as in the last two years, mobile will continue to be the next big thing and that advertising, which is a key source of generating money for Google, will have to evolve around mobile advertising.Read Also: Chrome, Android OS To Stay Separate: Google's Schmidt“The future is tablets, the rumored Apple watch or Google Glass,” he said, adding that Google was focusing on mobile ads and that they will come at par with the rest of the ads in future. When asked if conversion rates might not be as good on mobile as on PC, he said PC growth was slowing anyway and that the conversion rate on mobile will be good.“Google has showed that advertising can be a science as well as an art,” he says adding mobile too will be equally successful as it gives more information about the user.Rubbishing rumours that he would be quitting Google, Schmidt said his plans of selling nearly 40 per cent stake in Google is only for asset diversification. “Google is my home,”And Some More On Privacy...Amid hearty laughs, Schmidt raised a serious concern over the issue of privacy that arises out of having too much information available over the internet. “I am concerned that we need to fight for our privacy or we’ll lose it. The reason why I am concerned about this is that it’s natural for such technology to aggregate information about citizens.” Citing a recent trip to Mexico, Schmidt said the situation where the government kept a close watch on all citizens to the extent that a dossier was available on each individual. While this is done in order to deal with the drug killings and other such real problems of the country, there are serious repercussions that could occur if the information is passed on to an irresponsible government, claims Schmidt.With the inerasable memory of the Internet, Schmidt pointed out that a mistake is never forgotten. However he ended with a hopeful note, claiming that these were hurdles that would have to be dealt with through conversation, because the value of the internet is profoundly positive.
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Videocon Telecommunications Limited (VTL) is trying to do something that no other telecom service provider in the country has tried to do before. It plans to launch mobile broadband services using LTE (long term evolution) on the 1800MHz band by March 2014. All other operators are looking to launch broadband wireless services in the 2600MHz band.Videocon can do that since it has acquired liberalised spectrum in the November 2012 auction. That allows it to offer any kind of service—be it 2G, 3G, 4G or anything else. Unlike incumbent operators, the entire spectrum owned by Videocon is liberalised.Videocon whose licences were cancelled by the Supreme Court in February 2012 had already invested close to Rs 10,000 crore on the network. It won 5MHz of spectrum in six circles — Gujarat, Haryana, UP west, UP east, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh—for Rs 2,221 crore during the November 2012 spectrum auction. The initial focus of Videocon Telecommunications will be on these six circles which account for 46 per cent of the population. Barring Haryana and Gujarat, the teledensity in these circles is lower than the national average.What VTL is trying to do is not new. It is trying to replicate what some global operators including Australia’s Telstra and Deutsche Telecom among others have already done. The 1800 MHz band is dominant band for LTE network deployments. At least 58 operators, use 1800 MHz spectrum either as a single band system, or as part of a multi-band deployment, in 39 countries.As of end January 2013, VTL had 2.25 million subscribers across the six circles. “We are looking to be a pan-India player over the next two to three years, “ says says Arvind Bali, director & CEO, Videocon Telecommunications. VTL is collaboration with Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks to upgrade its existing network. Videocon expects to leverage the growth in 3G and LTE services over the next couple of years. According to a study, the 3G and LTE base is expected to exceed 120 million by 2015 from the current 20 million.However, the big question is whether there will be an ecosystem for LTE on the 1800MHz band. Many of the newer devices launched in recent times—iPhone 5, Samsung Note 2—can offer LTE on the 1800MHz band. However, the bulk of the devices are either routers or dongles. As a telecom consultant points out: It remains to be seen whether the company will be able to acquire subscribers willing to pay big money for an iPhone or Note2.”Videocon would start by offering 4G services in select areas of each circle. “We can always acquire more spectrum depending on future requirements,” Bali said. However, the success of the service will depend on the quality of the network and the possible solutions that people can use it for.
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Time is ripe for tech entrepreneurship evangelism in India and March is the season for start-up boosters. With the launch of the logo, 10,000 Start-ups on 20 March, Nasscom introduced a programme for incubating, funding and supporting 10,000 technology start-ups in India over the next ten years. Added bonus? A 5-fold increase in start-up employment.The programme, supported by Indian Angel Network and supported by Google, Microsoft and Verisign, saw Eric Schmidt, Chairman, Google Inc. giving tips to aspiring/successful CEOs.Som Mittal, President Nasscom, said, “10,000 Start-ups aims to catalyse the technology start-up ecosystem by 5X and create a significant national impact on employment, GDP, innovation and entrepreneurship indices. This is one of the largest initiatives that Nasscom is undertaking and will be vital to realise the industry vision of $300 billion by 2020”.The programme will focus on activities to foster entrepreneurship, building entrepreneurial capabilities at scale and providing robust early stage support through incubation, mentorship and angel funding.They will provide a funding of Rs 5 lakh and Rs 2 crore in the early stages of a start-up with three to four months of incubation and acceleration. There will be a start-up kit consisting of hosting credits and other technology and business tools valued over $25,000.Rajan Anandan, VP and MD, Google India said: "With over 150 million internet users and growing, the internet in India presents enormous opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship. At Google we are very excited about the possibilities that India represents and are committed to extend all the support to make this initiative a roaring success. We will work very closely with Nasscom and all the players in the ecosystem to boost the technology innovation rate in India."The three core areas the programme will focus on include:Evangelising and creating awareness about technology entrepreneurship as a preferred career option. India has an organised workforce of 30 million of which 3 million are IT professionals.Engaging deeply with aspiring entrepreneurs through digital / social channels and start-up support groups to create entrepreneurial capability at scale. The 10,000 Start-ups programme will facilitate over 7,000 start-up events such as hackathons, investor roadshows and best practices workshops across 30 cities. Tech talks and white space discussions will help young entrepreneurs identify global technology trends and needs.Incubating and facilitating funding of 10,000 start-ups through partnerships with some of the leading incubators / accelerators and angel networks in India. 10,000 Start-ups will also extend support to incubators / funding partners in the form of industry connects and co-working infrastructure and a start-up kit consisting of hosting credits and other technology and business tools valued over $25,000.Nasscom has a long history of initiatives to promote Indian start-up ecosystem through programme such as BizSpark, BizSpark Plus and the Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure. "We will continue to work with the startup ecosystem of India, both on our own, and in partnership with industry bodies like Nasscom. We believe that disruptive technologies and opportunities in the Indian market supported by this collaborative initiative will propel technology entrepreneurship in India to the next level," said Bhaskar Pramanik, Chairman, Microsoft India.Incidenatally, Techcircle DEMO India 2013, the India edition of the technology products launch platform DEMO, also started on 20 March 2013 in Bangalore with 29 plus companies showcasing their consumer and enterprise products.
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Several domestic and global business leaders spoke about their experiences at a workshop and debate on anti-corruption measures in New Delhi, recently. Most came up with constructive suggestions to battle corruption. There was a moment of epiphany though. A prominent domestic business leader said that this event was the first event on anti-corruption measures that he had attended in India. This business leader has been working for close to three decades and is the chairman of a global corporation. Among the innumerable conferences and events he attended, not one was on anti-corruption issues. That set me thinking and I realised how true it was. I tried hard to think of business meets that focused on fighting corruption, but could not think of any. Sure, corruption is mentioned at various meets. And many social and political bodies do not tire of raising issues of corruption. But it is rare to see corporate captains discussing corruption on an economic platform. This workshop and debate was organised by the World Economic Forum’s Partnership Against Corruption Initiative (PACI) along with organisations including Transparency International and UN Global Compact. The last couple of years have seen vigorous debates and public action on corruption in India. Most of the anger around corruption has been targeted against government agencies. Big business has been attacked too. But what is missing is a call to action by business leaders to fight corruption. While government bodies remain terribly opaque, ministers maintain huge discretionary powers and officials are inventive in undermining law, business is equally complicit. Corporate leaders in India are loud in criticizing government corruption. But they are stunningly silent about peer companies who are deeply involved in scams.Business heads often blame government rules and regulations for corruption. This is true. But it is not the sole reason for corruption. It is crony capitalism that is taking corruption to new levels. Proximity to ministers and officials is leveraged by routinely bending rules for corporate gain. Business leaders do not accept publicly that many companies use corrupt practices to stay ahead of competition. Indian business leaders will have to adopt higher levels of transparency and probity if they want to reduce the hurdles to growth. Civil society will not allow easy access to natural resources unless it trusts industry. Opposition to big business from communities is already a huge hurdle for growth in India. Even as the government is changing laws to improve transparency in rules, business world must also name and shame peers who aggressively encourage corruption. Much of this can happen if companies that believe in transparency come together and form a force. This could be the tipping point. Many companies have signed up for the PACI effort and pledged clean practices. They truly believe that business without bribing pays in the long run. Many more companies must join efforts like this. Industry bodies in India must be frank and candid about graft and corruption. There must be more public debates. Civil society leaders must encourage and celebrate companies that openly pledge to be clean. This could be the only way to sustain a winning fight against corruption. (Pranjal Sharma is a senior business writer. He can be contacted at pranjalx@gmail.com)
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In this connected world we often take for granted the simple things. Small wires, connectors and cables are considered items of mystery because for most of our lives we are just end users. TE Connectivity is a $14 billion company that focuses on these small things that enable the larger objective of bringing industries to life, everything from SCADA machines, to industrial robots to solar plants work use their products in some form or the other. Simply put, they protect the flow of power, signals and data. Being a vendor to some large companies such as Siemens and ABB, TE Connectivity has big plans for emerging markets in this decade. In fact, 40 per cent of its global revenues come from Asia. Its executive vice president, Terrence Curtin, who is also in charge of the industrial automation and controls division was in India to discuss the plans for the country. Curtin shares a few insights on where the global manufacturing industry is heading with BW | Businessworld's Vishal Krishna.What are the opportunities in markets like India and what do we have to grapple with in the coming decade?The growth of power infrastructure is the buzz word in emerging markets. There is an opportunity in generation and distribution of power. We already work with companies that set up power plants and also make products for power plants. The biggest opportunity for our division is the railways in India. They too need management of energy, data and infotainment and signaling controls. The other opportunity in India is the sub assembly automation in manufacturing. There is a high growth in this segment because tomorrow’s world will be a mix of robotics and men. Everything is about enterprise communication and how the work flow happens. You need connectors that make this possible. We see automation as an opportunity as large companies are already using robots to perform tasks. Sensors are needed in everything today; we have intelligent buildings, cars and machines. These sensors need to be highly durable in an industrial environment and you need to make them energy efficient. TE Connectivity’s focus is spread globally if you see our revenue growth, but emerging markets will see an increase in revenue because people are investing in capacity while the rest of the world has slowed down. The other opportunity that I must mention globally is solar energy. There is an immense demand for grounding products and junction boxes. Our engineers can help companies or institutions set up their solar strategy and requirement. India has sunshine for most of the year and solar can be big in the coming years. We are already Rs 1,200 crore company in India and with the way the country is growing I think there is a potential to be large. But I cannot give you a number on our future revenues for this country. But Asia is already a large market for us.What about Europe, Japan and the US, have the markets changed their dynamics?It is interesting to note that Japan and Europe are going through a deeper crisis. Japan more so because they have a current account surplus, yet they are growing slowly. It is also an economy that is ageing. There is a problem globally with wage inflation. What was true in 2008 is true now, as an organisation you need to size yourself to the new market. You cannot hold on to certain low growth items and say that you will grow in the long run. Take for example the US, the last recession just plummeted auto sales by 50 per cent. It hurt us as a company. But we picked growth areas and actually grew in the recession. The general mood in the world today is that the US will grow, Europe will continue to yield less, but orders are picking up and there is going to be an improvement. I was CFO for six years in TE Connectivity and had to handle the storm. We did well because our value chain is important for any organisation and our products are backbone to any industry.What is your opinion on devices changing the world and how is it changing organisations?The devices division is something that I am not in charge of. But yes the world is becoming connected with various devices. Be it cars, be it machines in the factory or you homes. This intelligence in the industrial world is converging rapidly with the consumer world. The whole human machine interface topic is fascinating. All buildings today have intelligent power management systems, these machines need connectivity that ensures data to be captured and transferred. We are doing a lot of work in the world of mobility and linking it to industrial automation. Certainly I am head of one division many a time we share cross functionalities across divisions. There is a clear role in how our lives will change with this convergence. businessworldonline (at) gmail (dot) com
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Music has often been used as a metaphor in management education to illustrate complex concepts of how people interact and, by extension, how businesses work. Take the experiments of Roger Nierenberg, the orchestra conductor who uses orchestral music to reflect back to managers and leaders certain key truths about how groups work.Nierenberg’s Music Paradigm places managers among orchestra musicians, where they witness Nierenberg put the orchestra through its paces. Throughout, Nierenberg explores different styles of leadership and organisational dynamics - the reactions of the musicians, the unity of the entire group, and the music - being the evidence for the conclusions he reaches.Although this experiment successfully highlights the important aspects of leadership – decision-making, action, restraint, direction, and communication – overall it remains intrinsically based on a highly structured and rigid networked organisation paradigm; the music is on the paper and the musicians may not veer from it at all – the musical number is the same every time.As the world gets more complicated we are naturally looking for new ways of organising business: the interactions between different employees, departments, and partners. Old approaches have to give way to new – what is needed now is an organisation that is more organic, holistic and innovative. In essence we need a new tune to dance to - a new paradigm - and flamenco offers the perfect lens through which to envision such an organisation.Flamenco was born in Andalucia at the start of the 19th century. Starting out as an individual art form, it quickly gained a collectivist dimension. The singers sing the guiding melodies, always inviting the audience to join in; the dancers provoke others to dance; the instruments, although perpetually in solo, work toward the greater unison that emerges naturally. It is music, a lifestyle, which holds at its centre the soul and a willingness to be alive. Romantic and mystical, flamenco concerns itself with pain, loneliness, love and death. It is raw, uninhibited humanity.So what links might there be between it and modern organisation theory? Strange as it may seem some of the characteristics of flamenco when separated from romanticism and mysticism make plentiful sense if applied to ideas of organising the modern workplace.A central defining characteristic of flamenco is re-creation within a structure. Certain rhythms and tones determine the musical movements, certain steps guide the dancing, certain keys govern the singing, but instrumentalists, dancers and singers can improvise constantly around these themes. The structure is respected, but it is never allowed to hinder the creative urge – it nurtures it.The same can be applied to an organisation. Successful organisations today are those that nurture creativity in their people. Google is a good example of this. Creative staffs at Google are given the opportunity to spend one day every week working on personal projects. They are encouraged to do this. Called Google Labs, this nurturing of creativity led to Google Maps and Google Goggle being developed. These Labs are a key part of this multi-billion dollar company’s future business. Another characteristic of Flamenco is the natural tendency toward trusting intuition rather than reason. Flamenco is a culture that is based on emotion and instinct. Master instrumentalists do not need to think about what their next notes will be; they can follow through with the notes intuitively. Group performances are enhanced and realised through the intuition of the individual musicians who feel, rather than know, where the music is going: this feeds into the whole, creating a more polished and mostly ecstatic unity.Greater unity and purpose is also an outcome for organisations that develop their employees through training and then trust them enough to make intuitive decisions. These ‘learning organisations’ master decision-making and therefore master innovation, such is the trust they have in intuition that all resources are confidently put behind the decisions made. Steve Jobs swore by the power of intuition, saying that it had a major impact on his work. No need to discuss his intuitive role in rebuilding Apple.Another key link is in the passion. Flamenco communicates strong, uninhibited feelings. It affects somebody in getting through to them. It is not in the first place interested in beautiful sounds or movements; strength and force of expression are paramount. For organisations, perhaps, having a strong purpose for business, to change people’s lives for example, and being transparent in communication is more important than focusing solely on selling products or services. Facebook’s mission, according to the company’s mission statement, is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. No product to sell, effectively; yet, a billion dollar company. Passion precedes profit.And lastly it is about courage. In flamenco there is a strong focus on courage, lucidity and a deliberate will to live; a fight with the fatality of our limitations. This is the type of mindset that innovation emerges from. The courage to do big things is what drives their actualisation even in times of extreme limitation.Looking again at Google Labs, courage is the other great variable in the company’s brilliance. The creativity would mean nothing without it. When one of the projects being developed in the Labs seems and feels like a good idea there is no over testing its viability or over rationalising why or if it could work, the idea is simply taken to the user. If it works, great; if it doesn’t, scratch it and move on. It takes courage above all to really innovate and succeed.In summary, Flamenco is a way of living, it is multidimensional, co-created, emergent and fearless; all of these are characteristics of the holistic organisation – those that will be the successful organisations of the future. To compete in business today companies and organisations have to be made of stuff that wasn’t part of the old world of business; new stuff, soulful and dangerous, seemingly strange and out of place at first, but absolutely a winning formula for a world thriving on innovation. Take it away Paco De Lucia.(Walter Baets is Director of UCT Grad School of Business)
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Newspapers and magazines -- often referred to as the print media-- are witnessing a steady growth in their readership and circulation in India, even as they continue the downhill in the developed markets like the US and Europe. These entities in the west is gradually undergoing a fundamental change and are embracing the digital age in the next decade. Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the historically well known British newspaper, The Guardian, in an exclusive interaction with BW | Businessworld's Sachin Dave and Prasad Sangameshwaran shares why online revolution is here to stay and how global players are already benefiting from of it. In the digital age when news is available online for free of cost, and even the biggest and most crucial news are broken over social networking platforms such as Twitter or read over Flipboard, do you think the age of newspapers and print journalism is over? I think Flipboard is a simple yet interesting medium (an online news application available on Android and iOS platforms) because it is such a piece of ready formatting, very elegant and works really well for the online news without having to build a separate platform for yourself. Print is indeed declining but you have people who say that it will be of a better value if you have a presence in print, but that is not true. As the economics of print are not working out and it may take 10 years, 20 years or 30 years, but digital will overtake at some point. What is important is that we should not hold back from going digital because we are worried about damaging print, then you really do not have a shot at the future.Journalism is changing and now every organisation is essentially a media organisation that can transmit their views over the social media. Earlier, journalists would write stories and that was about it. Now there is something that I call Open Journalism that encourages participation from readers. The trick is to provide a platform to the experts to speak about their situation. Journalists need to dump the theory of self importance because there are many far more credible people out there who don’t wish to speak or in some cases are not able to speak but these people are far stronger in terms of content. There are around 34 million viewers for The Guardian online. How was the process of change and are there any lessons for growing markets like India?One of the early lessons was to realise that this was a different medium and not to just put everything that was already there in the print medium (online). In fact, we started doing verticals long before anybody knew what they were, so I think that was one of the things that we got right to spot. We were lucky to have seen two years ahead much before anyone else could regarding the scope of online journalism. At The Guardian, is there a separate way around writing news stories for the web as opposed to the ones for the print?It would be a mistake to think that digital is all about running a long draft. Reading long stories on these devices (pointing at a smartphone) is not great either, and sometimes the reader can get a bit lazy. That is when you need your product people who would say nobody is reading beyond the first 500 words. Also, people who have come from print background are bad at thinking like maybe we do not need to write a story at all, maybe we can tell it through an interactive form or a graphic because sometimes that would be more efficient.businessworldonline (at) gmail (dot) com
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