Capital goods

2006-05-08T02:50:00.000-07:00

I am in the capital goods industry for the last 10 months.

I am in my last 10 days here and probably in the industry.

I am ashamed to tell you that I don't know what 'capital goods' means.

Not many here know either,yet we are India's largest in the field.

So today I googled it and found a spectrum of definitions that left me all the more indeterminate about the exact meaning of it.

But I know now that Capital goods are not consumer goods.

One website defines capital goods as the 'raw materials used to produce goods'.

Tomato ketchup is a consumer good and is a product of the FMCG ( fast-moving-consumer-goods for those who know the acronym but not the expansion) industry. However, it is used to make burgers and the like to produce 'other goods'.

So would that make it part of capital goods? Is Unilever suddenly a competitor?

Notwithstanding, definitions are very confining as they attempt to provide not just a rigid but even a restrictive structure to the understanding of concepts. Business models need to maintain fluid boundaries, we can't state that we are a capital goods company to the exclusion of producing anything else. Businesses need to keep including and excluding activities and definitions to maintain their main business the main business.

Is the purpose of business to enable shareholders to make money? I find a rather contrarian view more attractive - I believe that that the purpose of business is to invest in the future.

Whether that future is redefined by technology, public policy or convenience, it is withheld in the tomorrow.

So as long as tomorrow exists, there is little reason for the business to go bust.

And if tomorrow exists not, there is little meaning in running the business at all.

For the others..

2006-05-05T05:09:00.000-07:00

Not that you'd be half as concerned as I am about myself..
but this is for the things that happen around me..yes.. a separate blog for my opinions on things, thoughts and trivia..

this is for all that happens udhar, where I exist not..
A pelican drowned in an oil slick, so what do I have to say about it..
or Robert Peary was the first man at the north pole..so why the hell should I say something..
or the fact that your organisation has the worst HR practices..what am I going to scream and to whom about it...

So as you see, it doesn't matter.. not a drab of honey, or a drop of whisky.. but I'm still going to talk and balk about it.

for no apparent reason other than satiating my ability to think, to analyse, to create excellent mediocrity and to provide a conclusive flow of thought to an obvious absence of decision and conclusion.

see that - using 'conclusion' in two forms twice.. an absolute mediocrity.

I'm about to leave my non-ergonomic sthana for an Indian-designed-Japanese-automobile-corporation's right-of-the-middle seat.

Now I've left.

Udhar

Capital goods

For the others..