TED Community » Gurinder Ahluwalia

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Innovation, Marketing, Political Marketing & fine arts are my passions. I can come up with entirely new concept, tool or idea at a lightening speed.

An idea worth spreading

Pray or else.....Fear should be made a criminal offence. No one should be made allowed to be afraid, fear any one or any thing. It is the fear that makes life meaningless. India had long been governed by the powerful people and institution that live by fear. Belief in God has also been linked to fear. Pray or else..? Let us stop being afraid of our Gods and take them on while we are here. Ask them to make things better for us Indians or leave us to our own devices. In order to progress and live happily we need to stand up and face. I travel 240 kms four days a week to work. I may die in a car crash but i am certainly not afraid. Old civilizations used to revere the Sun god. But if we examine it closely we would find that countries around the equator have not been blessed by the Sun god with wealth and success. People should be penalized for being afraid of living.

Talk to me about

Fine arts & aesthetics, Marketing Strategy, Innovations, Political Marketing 7Campaign advertising, SME marketing, New ideas & disruptive thinking

People don't know that I'm good at

Public speaking & inventing a better way to market the products/services.

My TED Story

I am life's daily wager. I wonder, fear, regret, & enjoy every day. I assist the SMEs to win competitive marketing battles with innovative strategic & tactical approach. GSA is a Strategic Marketing & Communications Consultant with extensive hands on experience in the industry, consulting & academics. I assist SMEs to reengineer their marketing & communication plans to build competencies that enable an organization find, retain & strengthen the market share. He has successfully contributed to the strengthening of the marketing function of a diverse range of companies across varied domains through strategizing their plans ranging from international marketing to brand positioning. He has served at senior levels in media (GM), education (Director/Professor) & consulting (Principal consultant). GSA has earned MBA from UBS, Punjab University, Chandigarh & MJMC (Mass Communications) from Punjabi University, Patiala.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +13.10 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Conversation: What are you doing ? how can i help?

  May 21 2012: Hi Debra, Have you been reading E M Hemingway's fiction like Fiesta, Snows of Kilimanjaro, Old man & the sea, For who he bell tolls etc. He was a truly happy, successful & inspiring person. You are a Hemingway Hero, happy, brave & a winner.

• A comment on Conversation: What Goals Do You Want To Accomplish But Have Never Been Able To Accomplish?

  May 18 2012: I plan to write a marketing book that could teach few relevant lessons to students in developing country. Most places bschools follow Philip Kotler's texts without realizing that they bring out a b2c perspective largely. Developing economies' engine of growth are large number of b2b companies and Kotler's texts do not offer any help in mastering it. I m looking for an endowment/grant so that i could achieve my goal for benefit of students pursuing MBA.

• A reply on Conversation: New world order is gravitating towards democratic system of governance but overwhelming number of corporations follow top down approach ?

  May 18 2012: Thanks a lot Tom for your illuminating comments. Rise of China is a boon for a billion plus humanity who would be saved from the horrendous poverty, whereas a democratic India is nowhere near providing food on the table of half a billion people. What good is democracy if we have unrestrained corporate greed in India where an individual can get arrested for not paying a $20 credit card debt and a big companies own billions in unpaid taxes to the government besides adding to the NPAs of nationalized banks.Free market economy has taken away little security that employees had in terms of labor laws thus making companies throw out people to cut costs despite their family's salary bill keeps on increasing every year. I am not sure how India would be able to handle the challenges of the future.

• A reply on Conversation: New world order is gravitating towards democratic system of governance but overwhelming number of corporations follow top down approach ?

  May 18 2012: Pat, Thanks for your comments, let me try to answer. Everyone may not look for self interest all the time. Well most of us ct selfishly majority of the times. A good team player is supposed to pass the ball and be a playmaker. But i agree that most of the times we all watch our personal self interest.
  
  I am not objecting to pursuance of self interest of large companies as it is normal wealth creation. Walmart is a great retail company that we all are proud of but if Walmart promoters in the face of competition abandon their core business and get into say a b2b turf like machines tool business or paper & pulp. What happens to the team that is passionate about working with a b2c domain. Unrelated diversification by promoter family brings serious dangers upon professionals who have picked up a particular kind of skills & attitude. I am against unrelated diversification for objective of creating wealth for the promoter family alone.
  
  Smart voters & good democracies are utopia. India has been a democracy for 65 years but most citizens are afraid of police and slow moving judicial system. Companies in India do not allow for FDI as they lack competence to face global companies. I visited China for first time in 2006, i am impressed by the progress they have made. Democracy could wait till all citizens can get employment in their own country.
  
  Hope you would have got some clarity about reference to 'my experience'. Well in India we have wealthy promoters of decaying companies. How? It is the promoters who don't mind bleeding their own company to fill their personal coffers. Once they have milked the company they move to another one leaving professionals stranded in dying industries.

• A reply on Conversation: Optimism and Pessimism: The Impact of Outlook on Outcome

  May 18 2012: Hi Kathryn, Consumer profile is central to a good marketing strategy, therefore we spend our lifetime in trying to study basic personality types & evolution of personality of consumers. An optimist is generally someone who would believe in what others have to offer & be the first to try new product. A pessimist would remain a prisoner of post purchase dissonance and would require more effort to be convinced into buying products. Risk taking ability of a person depend upon both external & internal factors. An optimist being a believer would take more risk than a pessimist. But it does not mean that a pessimist is n economic buyer. A pessimist requires intensive selling effort and therefore is a expensive proposition for sellers. Pessimists take time to adjust to change & whereas an optimist would love to experiment. Team play requires that most of the participants trust each other and work toward common goal which is difficult for a pessimist. Hope this answers your inquiry.Thanks for asking.

• A comment on Talk: Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story

  May 17 2012: A thriller beings with a bang followed by some homilies & ending on a cathartic note. Thanks Andrew.

• A reply on Conversation: New world order is gravitating towards democratic system of governance but overwhelming number of corporations follow top down approach ?

  May 17 2012: Thanks Feyisayo, i pray that your views may come true in 21century itself.

• A reply on Conversation: New world order is gravitating towards democratic system of governance but overwhelming number of corporations follow top down approach ?

  May 17 2012: Pat Thanks for your views. Let me share why i seek clarification of this topic. There are large number of profit seeking entrepreneurs who have no loyalty to their own company except how much money they can make out of that. Such promoters have no regard for the team that risk their career by seeking employment in such companies. India, where i live, is characterized by large number of large & mid size companies controlled by the promoter family. There are many other places worldwide that have family owned enterprises. Most of the times in such companies the decision making is restricted to family alone and the executives have no say in decisions that are equally critical to their profession & career. A top down company would survive longtime due to protection offered by governments. My experience of working with such companies is quite discouraging.

• A reply on Conversation: How randomness of a photon particle in a two slit experiment could explain the phenomena of Consciousness and Decision-Making

  May 17 2012: Murshid your views are too presumptive. Are you a neuro-scientist or a doctor to speak on the subject with such authority? If so i would agree with you completely as i am a Marketing Professor not a scientist. I have also known that living & non-living matter are two different entities & incomparable. I am fairly imaginative person but such juxtaposition looks too far fetched flight of imagination.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Can we question the great thinkers of the past, will people even allow this? To change someone's mind is ALMOST impossible.

  May 16 2012: It is a generally accepted paradigm that each succeeding generation is superior than the preceding one. Genes mutate for the better. Therefore it is healthy & natural to question the past. Wisdom is the preserve of humanity, not heavens. And new theses are nothing but synthesis of the preexisting knowledge. Therefore it is advisable to stop at a reasonable point in past to avoid unnecessary confusion. Knowledge like humans & other material substances grow old and replaced. To get clarity on the subject please read Jean baulliard's works. Baudrillard says,"The Illusion of the End -When ice freezes, all the excrement rises to the surface. And so, when the dialectic was frozen, all the sacred excrement of the dialectic came to the surface. When the future is deep-frozen – and, indeed, even the present – we shall see all the excrement come up from the past.
  The problem then becomes one of waste. It is not just material substances, including nuclear ones, which pose a waste problem but also the defunct ideologies, bygone utopias, dead concepts and fossilized ideas which continue to pollute our mental space. Historical and intellectual refuse pose an even more serious problem than industrial waste. Who will rid us of the sedimentation of centuries of stupidity? As for history – that living lump of waste, that dying monster which, like the corpse in Ionesco, continues to swell after it has died – how are we to be rid of it? (Baudrillard 1994, p.26)