4 key ways to manage your word-of-mouth image

Author of “The Conversation Company” discusses ways the news media industry can grow business by effectively managing customer experience, conversation, content, and collaboration.

Word-of-mouth is the most effective communication form in the world. 

Information coming from people or sources we trust has the highest influence on our perception of brands, people, and companies. The paradox is that we all acknowledge the power of conversations, but we are not managing it. Because of that, we create a bunch of unused conversation potential.

If you look at the print business, there are two types of conversations that can be helpful. First, there are conversations about advertising. They increase reach for your clients. Second, there is word-of-mouth about the content you deliver. Both can help to grow business.

Four elements help manage word-of-mouth: delivering a great customer experience, managing the conversations, delivering conversation-worthy content, and collaborating on a structural level with your audience.

1. Customer experience: The basis of positive conversations about your company is very simple: offer strong products and decent customer service. These two drive conversations.

If you do them well, conversations will boost business. If you perform even a little below expectations, conversations will decrease business. This is the foundation of a “conversation company.”

Then there is the challenge of integrating online and offline customer experience. Far too few companies supplement their traditional offline customer service channels with the new online possibilities offered by social media.

At the end of 2010, just 6.5% of companies offered online services to their customers. The “conversation company” believes in a total philosophy toward customer experience. The role of social media within this philosophy is to allow a company to react in real time to people’s problems and complaints. 

Companies like KLM and Best Buy (with Twelpforce) demonstrate perfectly how this fits into the overall picture. Other companies, such as Dell, build mission control centres. These centres are covered 24/7 by staff who answer online questions from customers and prospects. 

No conversation is left without a response; everyone is helped. 

I am waiting for the majority of journalists to open up to the crowd. The moment journalists join in and answer critical questions from readers, their emotional bond will increase, leading to positive conversations.

2. Conversation: The “conversation company” manages online conversations in three stages: observing, facilitating, and participating. 

It starts simply by listening to consumer conversations, adding a few relevant comments where necessary. At the same time, the company prepares its content in such a way that it can be shared easily with other interested parties. Clever companies combine these online conversations with their offline activities. 

3. Content: Companies should no longer be concerned with the planning of one-off advertising campaigns, but rather with the global planning and management of their content. 

Your company must learn to think like the publisher of a newspaper. And when you are in the print business, that can’t be that hard, can it? The newspaper with the most interesting content is the newspaper that is read the most. 

Good content is the ideal way to increase your reach.

4. Collaboration: To optimise conversation potential, companies should collaborate structurally with their customers. This increases the average level of consumer commitment.

It is possible to be fairly creative with this. 4food, a successful hamburger outlet in Manhattan, draws up a new menu every day with the help of its own customers. Using tablets left on the tables, diners can put together their own recipes for the “perfect” hamburger. 

Every new concept is displayed for other customers and best-selling burgers are promoted via Twitter and Facebook. For each burger sold, the recipe-maker receives US$0.25. 

In a similar vein, Procter & Gamble has developed vocalpoint, a community in which 350,000 mothers help develop new product ideas for the P&G brand. These mothers are also the first users of the new products during the development phase, so they can provide feedback regarding possible problems/weaknesses before the product is finally launched. 

Perhaps the print industry should consider working with co-creation of the news. This could be very interesting for regional news, for instance. Use citizen journalism as an opportunity, not as a threat.

by Steven Van Belleghem 

INCLUDING HR PRACTICES IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

HUMAN CAPITAL is the basic unit of any organization and it is critical to an organization’s success so the HR focus must be more strategic in the new knowledge-based economy (K-economy) era. This knowledge based economy includes corporate governance and corporate governance is about ensuring ethics in corporate management so that business can be run with a social up gradation of the society and it also ensures transparency to the internal(i.e. employees and employers) and external society(i.e. customers and shareholders). But still corporate governance does not includes HR practices in it and if some HR practices are included in corporate governance it can help organizations to run smoothly .HR practices included in corporate governance will help in creating a value in the corporate to achieve excellence in their business and not competing with others and thus making their organization more successful.

                    In simpler terms, corporate governance is formal system of accountability of senior management to corporate stakeholders. Corporate governance includes company accountability to shareholders and other stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, customers and local community.

Corporate governance is concerned primarily with holding balance between economic and social goals and between individual and community goals.

Corporate governance is:

1. A relationship among stakeholders used to determine and control the strategic direction and performance of organizations.

2. Concerned with identifying ways to ensure that decisions are made effectively.

3. used in corporations to establish order between firm’s owners and its top level managers.

Some HR practices that can be included in corporate governance are:

       1. HR SHARED SERVICES   The HR Shared Services initiative is one part of the corporate services review that will transform the way Human Resources, Financial and Materiel administrative services are provided across the Public Service in order to:

Enhance enterprise decision-making;

Improve internal service delivery; and

Reduce operating costs

THUS  HR SHARED SERVICES WILL HELP IN MAINTAINING THE RECORDS OF EMPLOYEES AND ALL FINANCIAL TRANCPERANCY WHICH IS REQUIRED IN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE.

 

Entrepreneurship and Higher Education

Stimulating innovative and growth-oriented entrepreneurship is a key economic and societal challenge to which universities and colleges have much to contribute. This paper examines the role that higher education institutions are currently playing through teaching entrepreneurship and transferring knowledge and innovation to enterprises and discusses how they should develop this role in the future. The key issues, approaches and trends are analyzed in order to have a better understanding of the role of entrepreneurship in the higher education.

Entrepreneurship education seeks to provide students with the knowledge, skills and motivation to encourage entrepreneurial success in a variety of settings. Variations of entrepreneurship education are offered at all levels of schooling from K-12 schools through graduate university programs.

It should come as no surprise that many people in higher education eschew the notion of entrepreneurship. For some, the very word conjures up the specter of a for-profit motive, about which they are suspicious and disapproving. While there remains skepticism about what the Kauffman Foundation Panel on Entrepreneurship Curriculum in Higher Education defined in his very reputed report as the “transformation of an innovation into a sustainable enterprise that generates value…” Entrepreneurship and market-driven innovation, however, have become more prevalent in higher education over the past decade and a half.

Apparently, entrepreneurship engagement is a rapidly expanding and evolving aspect of higher education that requires proper support and development. Authors stress the need to expand existing entrepreneurship efforts and introduce more creative and effective approaches. It will provide inspiration for those in higher education seeking to expand and improve their entrepreneurship teaching and knowledge-transfer activities.

Key words: entrepreneurship, knowledge-transfer activities, enterprising behaviors

Communication Skills in Organizational Performance

Communication is a valuable skill and in many ways is an art form. If you possess strong linguistic skills, this will go far in effectively helping you communicate in both your personal and professional lives. Being able to successfully communicate in the workplace is a prime qualification many employers actively look for when hiring new staff.

Lack of effective communication may lead to misunderstandings, lack of information, decrease in employees’ performance, decrease in company’s turnover, as a result ineffective or poor communication is frustrating for employees, and becomes a source of a conflict. Managers' inability to clearly express their thoughts, ideas and demands leads to employees' inability to perform work well, according to the company’s demands. Such a situation may take place when an employee is not truly aware of what is requested of them. This decreases the satisfaction an employee gets from the job.

Providing concrete tools to help managers and HR professionals create an organization culture that encourages accountability through leadership training conferences for increasing organizational communication skills for every employee.

Your organization's upward communication includes the interaction of employee with their managers. Your employees need a direction. Make sure your managers meet their employees at least once a month to listen to their concerns. It need not be a formal interaction; it can be a casual chit-chat about how things are going. These management and staff meetings are the best way to gather feedback. Most important then is to act on the feedback.

To ensure effective communication in a successful business, every employee must participate in basic organizational communication skills starting with developing listening skills, speaking skills and designing an effective questioning and feedback sharing mechanism. Whether its internal or external communications, you need a communications plan to ensure that your employees work as a single team to achieve goals.

Key words: leadership training conferences, organizational communication skills

US software firms want Obama to make China deliver

U.S. software companies still have not seen a big jump in sales to China nearly a year after the Obama administration trumpeted new commitments from Beijing to crack down on use of pirated software, a U.S. industry official said on Tuesday.
"What I hear from people on the ground is that they had hoped and had expected to see more progress in terms of increased sales in China and that does not appear to have been realized," Robert Holleyman, president of the Business Software Alliance, told Reuters.
Heading into the next U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting at the end of November, the industry wants U.S. officials to insist China fulfill its existing commitments rather than press Beijing for new promises.
"The existing commitments, if fully implemented, should dramatically increase the sales of legal software and begin to close the gap," Holleyman said.
"I think right now, we just want to say 'let's see results' from the commitments that have been made."
The software group has been battling for years to increase sales in China, where it estimates that about 78 percent of the business software now in use is pirated.
It includes many of the biggest names in the U.S. industry such as Adobe, Apple, Intel, Intuit, Microsoft and Symantec.
One of the fastest things China could do to improve trade relations with the United States is to "take products that are being used every single day as tools of production and convert those into legal" goods, Holleyman said.
Last year, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and then-Commerce Secretary Gary Locke put China's software legalization commitments at the top of their list of outcomes for the December joint commission meeting. They touted a private sector estimate that cutting piracy rates in China by 50 percent would boots sales of legal software by about $4 billion.

CHINA'S PROMISES
Driving the point home, Kirk said the United States expected to see "concrete and measurable results, including increased purchase and use of legal software," as a result of the promises China made in 2010 and previous years.
Locke has since become U.S. ambassador to China. Kirk will be accompanied by newly confirmed Commerce Secretary John Bryson at this year's joint commission meeting in China.
China's commitments included establishing software asset management systems to encourage government agencies to use more legal software, allocating money for government agencies to buy legal software and creating a pilot program with 30 major state-owned enterprises to promote use of legal software.
However, by at least one measure the piracy problem in China has become worse over the past year.
"China has now moved into the lead as the largest market for new PCs in the world. It actually exceeded the U.S. for the first time ... (But) China unfortunately is not even close to being the largest market for legal software," Holleyman said.
He estimated sales of legal packaged software for new PCs in China still run only about $2 billion a year, compared with roughly $30 billion annually in the United States.
Given its rank now as the world's largest PC market, sales of legal software in China should be substantially the same as in the United States, Holleyman said.
"Our strong preference would be to get these issues resolved through the bilateral discussions, looking at the ones coming up through the JCCT," Holleyman said.
If that is unsuccessful, the U.S. government has other options that could include a World Trade Organization case or the use of its own trade laws, Holleyman said.

Timeline: Pakistan spot-fixing scandal

Timeline of the Pakistan corruption scandal which resulted in former test captain Salman Butt and pace bowler Mohammad Asif being found guilty of corruption in a British criminal court on Tuesday. A third player, Mohammad Amir, pleaded guilty before the start of the trial.

August 29 2010 - Police confiscate the trio's mobile phones after allegations in The News of the World that they had arranged for deliberate no-balls to be bowled in the fourth test against England at Lord's. Their agent, Mazhar Majeed, is arrested and released on bail.

August 30 - Pakistan slump to the heaviest defeat in their test history, losing the series 3-1. Manager Yawar Saeed says the one-day series, involving two Twenty20 matches and five one-day internationals, will go ahead.

September 1 - BoomBoom, official kit suppliers to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), announce they have suspended their commercial relationship with Amir and are reviewing their position with the board.

September  2 - Saeed tells reporters before a warmup match against Somerset at Taunton that Butt, Amir and Asif will take no further part in the tour. The decision is welcomed by England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chairman Giles Clarke. The three players attend a meeting at the Pakistan High Commission in London. High Commissioner Wajid Shamsul Hasan tells reporters the trio had maintained their innocence but had asked the PCB to pull them out of the remainder of the tour because of the "mental torture" they had undergone.

Later in the day, the ICC release a statement saying the three players had been suspended under its anti-corruption code and face possible life bans.

September  3 - The three are questioned separately by London police. ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat tells a news conference at Lord's that the sport faces its worst crisis since the 2000 match-fixing scandal which resulted in life bans for international captains Hansie Cronje (South Africa), Salim Malik (Pakistan) and Mohammad Azharuddin (India).

September  4 - The News of the World quotes Pakistan opener Yasir Hameed as saying match-fixing was rife in the team. Hameed denies ever speaking to the Sunday tabloid. The newspaper also says a fourth, unidentified Pakistan player is being investigated.

September  5 - Hameed attends a meeting at the Pakistan High Commission and afterward issues a statement saying he was duped into speaking to The News of the World.

September  10 - Butt, Amir and Asif return home after agreeing to return to England if requested to help with the police investigation.

September  14 - Police interview Pakistan pace bowler Wahab Riaz.

September  18 - Lorgat issues a statement saying an investigation had been launched into the scoring pattern in Pakistan's innings in the third one-day international at the Oval on the previous day. Pakistan had won by 23 runs.

September  20 - The ECB threaten legal action against PCB chairman Ijaz Butt after he suggests the England team had been bribed to lose at the Oval. Riaz and England batsman Jonathan Trott clash in the nets before play begins in the fourth one-day match at Lord's.

September  23 - ECB say they will start immediate legal proceedings against Ijaz Butt unless he gives a "full and unreserved apology" for his allegations. Butt withdrew his allegations six days later.

February 4 - Britain's Crown Prosecution Service charge Salman Butt, Asif, Amir and Majeed with conspiracy to obtain and accept corrupt payments and with conspiracy to cheat.

February 5 - Three-man ICC tribunal finds Salman Butt, Amir and Asif guilty of corruption. Butt is banned for 10 years, with five suspended, Asif for seven, with two suspended, and Amir for five.

November 1 - Butt and Asif found guilty at Southwark Crown Court in London of "conspiracy to cheat" and "conspiracy to accept corrupt payments" for fixing part of a test match. It is later revealed Amir pleaded guilty before the start of the trial.

Nokia slips from 1 to 3 in smartphone sales

Apple and Samsung Electronics ended struggling Nokia's 15-year reign at the top of the smartphone sales rankings in the second quarter, researchers said on Friday.

Nokia has dominated the smartphone market ever since its 1996 launch of the Communicator model, but competition from its two nearest rivals and a slump in its own sales sent it straight from first to third place in the three months to June as growth in the sector starts to slow.

Apple sold a record 20.3 million iPhones in the quarter despite the fact that its iPhone 4 model is now more than a year old. Usually success of smartphone models does not last so long.

Apple unveiled its sales last week, but on Friday analysts also estimated Samsung sold 19 million smartphones in the quarter, well ahead of Nokia's 16.7 million as it was able to benefit from booming demand with smartphones using Google's Android software. "Samsung's Galaxy portfolio has proven popular, especially the high-tier S2 Android model," said Neil Mawston, analyst at Strategy Analytics."

Strategy Analytics estimated smartphone market volume grew 76 percent from a year ago in the second quarter. ABI Research was somewhat more cautious estimating market grew 62 percent.

China could overtake US economy by 2030: World Bank

Hong Kong: China could overtake the United States as the world's largest economy if it maintains annual growth of eight per cent over the next 20 years, the World Bank's chief economist said Wednesday.

China, which last year overtook Japan as the number-two economy, has already set a growth target of eight per cent for 2011, and is aiming for seven per cent a year from 2011 to 2015.

"China may become the largest economy in the world by 2030," Justin Lin told an economic forum on China development in Hong Kong, saying its economic size may then be twice as large as the US, measured by purchasing power parity.

He said China has been the world's fastest growing nation over the past two decades and grew at a "miracle" annual growth rate of 10.4 percent between 1990-2010, a sharp contrast to the performance of other transitional economies.

The economist however warned expansion may be hampered by a weak global recovery from the financial crisis and urged the country to deal with domestic challenges such as addressing its increasing income inequality.

He also said global warming may pose a "real challenge" to China's long-term sustainability, but urged China -- the world's biggest polluter -- to seize the opportunity and instead turn itself into a new leader in green technology.

"It's necessary for China to continue its growth. These are challenges for China but they are also opportunities for China," said Lin, who assumed the World Bank post since 2008.

China has unveiled ambitious programmes to develop clean energy and shut down factories that fail to meet emissions targets, aiming to reduce its carbon intensity by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 based on 2005 levels.

China's economy grew 10.3 percent in 2010, marking the fastest annual pace since the onset of the global crisis.

Unlike other countries struggling to spur growth, Beijing has been trying to slow its economy and stem a flood of liquidity that is fanning inflation and driving up property prices.

Hyundai Accent relaunched at a price of Rs 501,900

Chennai: Country's second largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Wednesday announced the launch of its upgraded midsize sedan "Accent Executive 2011 edition".
  
The exteriors of the new edition Accent Executive comes with a chrome finish front grille. The body coloured sideline molding is equipped with chrome inserts. Besides the car also has a new chrome garnish over license plate, a Hyundai Motor India statement said.
 
"The Accent 2011 edition comes with elegant styling which makes it more sophisticated and desirable. It is our continuous effort to gauge changing customer preferences and keep introducing new features in our products.We are confident that with the new styling the Accent 2011 edition will become even more popular", Hyundai Motor India Director Sales and Marketing Arvind Saxena said.
  
The new edition Accent Executive is priced at Rs 5.01 lakh (ex-showroom New Delhi), it said.
  
The Accent launched in 1999 is also available with alternate fuel options such as CNG and LPG.The Korean car maker has sold over three lakh units in the overseas market.
 
Currently, Hyundai Motor India exports its cars to over 115 countries.At their Sriperumbudur facility near Chennai it manufactures seven models -- the Santro, i10 and i20, Accent, Verna Transform, Sonata Transform and the popular SUV Santa Fe.

Snapshot of an Apple flash crash

Something happened to Apple's (AAPL) share price Thursday afternoon that has investors still scratching their heads.

The stock, which had been sailing along near its all-time high of $360 a share, started to drop at about 1 p.m. Then, at 1:39, it collapsed, falling from $355 to $349 in the space of four minutes.
In all, $10 billion got shaved off Apple's market capitalization before the stock began to recover.
Except for the surprisingly short iPhone lines at Verizon stores Thursday, there didn't seem to be any news behind the sell off.

"The selling is not normal just for negative news," wrote Bullish Cross' Andy Zaky in an e-mail. "There was a huge spike where dollars were being skipped in the selling. I saw Apple tick from $351.70 to $349.00 within seconds.  There's something else.  The selling was not normal.  That's for sure.  It wasn't orderly. Take a look for yourself."

The chart, Zaky suggests, bears a strikingly resemblance to the flash crash of May 6, 2010. But that event shook the entire market. This one belonged to Apple.

UPDATE: Stock Tic Toc is attributing the flash crash to rumors that Steve Jobs is back in the hospital. Funny, he was reportedly sighted on the Apple campus last week with a big smile and a spring in his step. And just yesterday, two different people tweeted that he was eating lunch near them at an Indian restaurant in Mountain View. See here and here.

India, Indonesia to set $20 bn bilateral trade target

New Delhi: India and Indonesia aim to strengthen bilateral economic ties setting a USD 20 billion trade target for 2015 and to begin negotiations for a Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA).

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who begins his India visit January 25, will be seeking greater Indian investments in rail and port construction, palm oil, food processing and other areas, a senior Indonesian diplomat said here on Friday.

A 400-member trade delegation from Indonesia has timed its visit with that of Yudhoyono, Indonesian Ambassador Lt Gen (retd) Andi M Ghalib said at a press meet.

Yudhoyono will be the chief guest at the Republic Day parade this year, 61 years after Indonesia's first president Sukarno was the chief guest at India's first R-Day celebrations in 1950.

Ghalib said that Indonesia and India surpassed the USD 10 billion target they had set for bilateral trade in 2010, up from USD 4 billion in 2005. Total trade last year touched USD 12 billion.

The new target of USD 20 billion is set for 2015. In years to come India will be the largest trading partner of Indonesia, the envoy said.

Fighting terrorism will also be high on the agenda during the bilateral talks with focus on eliminating terror funding. An extradition treaty is being worked out and a protocol to curb movement of contraband drugs is also on the anvil, Ghalib said.

Among the new areas to explore cooperation will be energy. A 1980 pact on nuclear energy lapsed as it could not be enforced. Both sides are presently working out measures to cooperate in this field, he added.

Highlighting the strong cultural interaction between the two countries, Ghalib said Indian films, particularly Hindi movies, are very popular in Indonesia.

Emphasising on tourism, the envoy pointed out that Indonesia offers visa-on-arrival facility to Indians although India does not have such an arrangement in place for Indonesians.

Yudhoyono's visit underscores the strategic relationship between the two countries that have had ancient ties, now revived in the contemporary context as leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Ghalib said.

"You are our forefathers," he told media, recalling that all faiths in Indonesia - Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam - had come from India.

The Indonesians have kept alive the tradition of Ramayana and Mahabharata as part of the common cultural heritage.

Punjab traders stop veggie exports to Pakistan

Indian traders in Amritsar on Friday stopped sending trucks laden with tomatoes and other vegetables to Pakistan.

Virtually showing discontent over Pakistan's decision to stop sending onions to India via land and rail route, nearly 70 trucks of tomatoes, potatoes, chili and ginger were stopped by the traders near the Attari-Wagah border.

Around 30 Amritsar-based exporters have unanimously taken this decision.

"If they cannot send onions at this crisis situation, then we should also snap our trade with them. We are not concerned about the loses. The Pakistan government has not given any satisfactory reason for their sudden move," Maninder Singh, one of the traders in the action said Friday.

Pakistan's commerce ministry ruled Jan 4 that onions cannot be taken out of the country by the land route, which virtually meant a ban on its export to India since its shipment and air delivery would take more time and cost more.

India was receiving around 50 truck-loads of onions a day from Pakistan since Dec 5. The consignments were mainly coming to India from Pakistan's Sindh province. Pakistan has now said it is facing a shortage of onions itself.

"India is one of the main exporters of vegetables to Pakistan and majority of this trade is done by land route. We will not resume sending vegetables till they start sending onions through the Attari border," said another trader.

Read more at: http://profit.ndtv.com/news/show/punjab-traders-stop-veggie-exports-to-pakistan-134924?cp

IPL-4: No takers for Ganguly, Gayle; Gambhir gets record $2.4m

Bangalore: There were no takers for former India captain Sourav Ganguly and West Indian hard-hitter Chris Gayle while Gautam Gambhir fetched a record USD 2.4 million as corporate honchos, Bollywood stars and cricket experts gathered to value players at the Indian Premier League (IPL) season four auction here Saturday.
Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan's Kolkata Knight Riders, which had been among the bottom-placed teams in the first three editions of IPL, made some smart buying to net Gambhir, big-hitter Yusuf Pathan (USD 2.1m) and South African star Jacques Kallis (USD 1.1m).
Seated eight to a table at the over 7,000 sq ft pillar-less Mysore Hall of ITC Royal Gardenia Hotel here, were the who's who of India's business, Bollywood and cricketing world. Liqour baron Vijay Mallya, his son Siddharth and Anil Kumble were representing the Royal Challengers Bangalore team while Nita Ambani was at the forefront for Mumbai Indians' bidding. Bollywood stars Shilpa Shetty and Preity Zinta were present for Rajasthan Royals and Kings XI Punjab.
The much-awaited IPL auction potboiler had a stirring start with four teams locked in a fierce battle to corner gritty Indian opener Gambhir, who led Delhi Daredevils last season.
Gambhir was at a lowest base price of $200,000, but the moment renowned auctioneer Richard Madley called Gambhir's name, it was a mad scramble for eight minutes.
An intense race followed to get him with five teams -- Kochi, Pune, Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kolkata Knight Riders -- furiously challenging each other.
In fact, it was Subroto Roy's Pune Warriors who had bid first for Gambhir, before Mumbai and Bangalore joined the fray. Kolkata entered the scene at $2 million and then pitched in aggressively to snatch Gambhir away.
Gambhir surpassed Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff, who were bankrolled by Bangalore and Chennai two years back for $1.5 million each.
Pietersen, who came as a star in the IPL second season, was valued at just $650,000 this time by Deccan Chargers.
However, the shocker at the auction was when the worst fears came true.
Ganguly, who had a nightmarish stint with KKR as captain and player, was the first to go in the unsold basket.
Interestingly, Ganguly, who was the oldest Indian player up for auction at 38 years and six months, had increased his base price from $200,000 to $400,000, which is the highest bracket reserved for marquee players in the league.
Knight Riders were clearly not interested in Ganguly as he was not retained for this season.
As Ganguly's name was called, there was a eerie silence in the room and the spotlight was on the Knight Riders' table. The KKR team think tank looked down as Ganguly's name was repeatedly called before he went unsold.
It is speculated that the former India captain might join one of the new franchisees as player-cum-mentor like Shane Warne is for Rajasthan Royals.
There was more surprise in store as Ganguly's KKR teammate Chris Gayle, who was in the USD 400,000 bracket, also met his fate.
For a time it looked as if VVS Laxman, who had also increased his base price, would too go unsold, but new team Kochi thought it wise to take the renowned Test batsman for the base price of USD 400,000.
Rahul Dravid, who had his share of trouble with Royal Challengers Bangalore, fetched a slightly higher price than his base tag of USD 400,000 with Rajasthan Royals shelling out USD 500,000 for the former India captain.
Royal Challengers did not bid for Dravid.
Australian Andrew Symonds, who had retired from international cricket, was bought by Mumbai Indians for $850,000. Symonds and Harbhajan Singh, one of the four players retained by Mumbai Indians, will now be playing for the same team. The two have been involved in some vicious on field spat after Symonds accused the Indian off-spinner of racially abusing him in the controversial Sydney Test.
New teams Pune Warriors and Kochi had some good catches. Kochi took home boy S Sreesanth for USD 900,00, VVS Laxman (USD 400,000), Rudra Pratap Singh (USD 500,000), Mahela Jayawardene (USD  1.5m) and Brendon McCullum (USD  475,000).
Pune bought Yuvraj Singh (USD 1.8m), Graeme Smith (USD  500,00) and Robin Uthappa ($2.1m).
Chennai Super Kings is the only team not to open their account in the first session.

ICC World Cup 2011 gets insured for Rs. 600 crore

Ahead of the cricket world cup this year in the Indian subcontinent, ESPN has taken insurance cover for the ICC World Cup 2011 for Rs. 600 crore.

New India Assurance will provide insurance cover against terror and adverse weather. BCCI will take additional insurance cover for all 8 Indian venues. The World Cup begins on February 19.

The 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup will be the tenth Cricket World Cup, and will be hosted by three South Asian Test cricket playing countries; India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It will take place during the months of February and March 2011, with the first match being played on 19 February 2011.

29 matches out of 49 will be played in India including one quarterfinal, semi-final and final, 12 matches in Sri Lanka including one quarterfinal and semifinal and eight matches in Bangladesh including two quarterfinals.

The tournament begins in Mirpur, Dhaka, on 19 February with the much-anticipated opener between co-hosts Bangladesh and India.

Read more at: http://profit.ndtv.com/news/show/icc-world-cup-2011-gets-insured-for-rs-600-crore-134155?cp