Published on March 30, 2017
The Tata Best Practices Programme achieved a milestone: it conducted the 100th EDGE webinar for the Tata group on March 29, 2017. Harish Bhat, Brand Custodian, Tata Sons, discussed the concept of ‘The Curious Marketer’, with more than 170 employees from 25 Tata companies attending this centenarian event.
EDGE webinars have climbed from strength to strength in the two years since its launch, with presentations from 24 Tata companies and 15 non-Tata entities. Illustrious presenters within and outside the group include Tata Steel, TCS, Tata Power, Tata Chemicals, JLR, Titan, IHCL, Tata Motors, Tata Communications, Rallis, Tata Technologies, Tata Global Beverages, Bain & Co., Deloitte, Ernst & Young, ASQ, APQC, KPMG and Goldman Sachs, to name a few. The focus of the webinars has been to share best practices on a variety of topics relevant to Tata companies including Customer Centricity, Supply Chain, Project Management, GST, Competitive Intelligence, Risk Management, Strategy, Knowledge Management, and many more.
EDGE Webinar: The Curious Marketer by Mr Bhat
S Padmanabhan, Chairman of the Governing Council, Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG), introduced the webinar. Thanking Mr Bhat and past presenters from Tata companies as well as the organisers within TBExG for their contribution, Mr Padmanabhan said that this milestone was the result of a consistent, scalable and repeatable process, and it created huge interest and pull from Tata companies to share their best practices.
Mr Bhat started the webinar by highlighting three distinctive features of great brands: differentiated products and services, consumer insights and consumer research. It is in the third category of consumer research that he classified ‘curiosity’ as one of the key components. Mr Bhat then went on to give many examples of the aspects that marketers can be curious about. One of the examples he talked about was Steve Jobs’ curiosity for calligraphy, which he utilised in designing the first of Apple products. It was due to this differentiation that the brand went on to achieve great heights. Taking a Tata company’s example, he explained how the curiosity of Founder Jamshetji Tata while on a picnic at the Mumbai pier, led to the foundation of Tata Power, one of the biggest power companies in India. He also spoke at length about Titan’s founder, Xerxes Desai’s curious mind, which led the company to develop many contemporary products, enabling it to capture the imagination of its consumers.
In closing, Mr Bhat encouraged participants to develop a habit of curiosity and provided a set of 7 enablers. They are:
- Be aware that you do not know it all
- Ask questions
- Listen extensively, without judgement
- Observe consumers with a keen eye
- Seek new experiences, meet new people
- Embrace the unexpected
- Read, read, read
At the end of the webinar, the participants got a chance to interact with Mr Bhat and ask some very interesting questions like how curiosity can be harnessed by company and individuals to make disruptive breaks.
Going forward
Continuing its quest of accelerating the sharing and learning of best practices within the Tata group, TBExG will continue to achieve greater milestones and create more value for Tata companies. The focus will be to include an even more diverse range of topics, and widen the reach of the medium to include even more Tata employees. To cater to companies based outside of India, the timing of the webinars will be changed to 2 pm to 3 pm IST.
Details of upcoming webinars are available on the EDGE portal, accessible through your company's intranet, www.tatabex.com and www.tataworld.com. In case you wish to know more about any company’s best practice through EDGE webinars, please write to Bilal Ahmad at bahmad@tata.com.
About Tata Best Practices Programme
The Tata group has been a pioneer in various industry sectors, and the processes and innovative practices followed at several Tata companies are considered to be industry benchmarks. To accelerate the excellence journey and democratise the sharing and learning within the group, Tata Business Excellence Group (TBExG) conceptualised the Tata Best Practices Programme. This programme enables the cross pollination of best practices that exist within as well as outside the Tata group through various means such as the EDGE portal and app, Learning Missions, benchmarking studies, EDGE webinars, workshops and the TBEM Assessment process.