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In conversation with the author of Reversing Diabetes in 21 Days, Dr Nandita Shah

Posted on by Penguin India

Dr Nandita Shah is the founder of Sanctuary for Health and Reconnection to Animals and Nature (SHARAN) and has thirty-six years of experience in treating patients. In her new book, Reversing Diabetes in 21 Days: A Nutrition-Based Approach to Diabetes and Related Problems, based on her revolutionary diabetes reversal programme, the renowned homeopath elaborately breaks down the real cause of diabetes using scientific evidence and intelligently outlines a routine that will not just prevent the disease but also reverse it.
Here’s an interview with the esteemed author:
1. Why did you choose diabetes and not any other disease to write about?
Although my goal as a doctor is to help people live a life without medicines, no matter which illness they suffer from, there are several reasons why I chose to write about diabetes. Firstly, the incidence of this hormonal problem has exploded in India. Unlike 50 years ago, today, almost every family has a member with diabetes and it is affecting even younger age groups. I have seen children aged 14 with type II diabetes!
Unlike in the case of heart disease and cancer, or autoimmune diseases, nobody is fearful of diabetes. Most people would be willing to give healthy food a chance! Also, in the case of diabetes the progress can be tracked very easily with a glucometer and results are tangible within just days or weeks. This motivates the patient to continue and get even higher results.

2. Tell us about the most remarkable success story of your revolutionary diabetes reversal programme.
If you had asked me this even five years ago, I may have been able to tell you something. But now, I see or hear of people reversing diabetes everyday. I’ve seen people on multiple medications and insulin get free of most of these medications as well as the insulin, during our 21 day health retreats. The joy and freedom that they experience after years of being dependent on medicines is remarkable! And it’s not just that, there’s also the cost involved. One of my patients who after many years got free of medicines for diabetes and high blood pressure, was taking medicines worth Rs 17,000 each month! Imagine the amount of money that can be saved just by making simple lifestyle changes and eating delicious food.
3. What other diseases are you planning to write about?
Actually all diseases can be cured by adopting similar principles. Today, I’m seeing a lot of patients with cancer. This is much more complex, because of the sheer fear involved and multiple causative factors. However, it’s very rewarding when patients are able to trust and see their cancers, including metastasis, recede, simply by following the principles of natural healing. I think this would be my next step because of the number of people that could be benefited. Like diabetes just a few years ago, today the number of cases of cancer is exploding.
4. Does your book address anything about homeopathy?

No, not really. My goal today is to help people become their own best doctors. I consider homeopathy to be a very serious and difficult art of healing. It requires a lot of studying, understanding, and yet it can be quite subjective, making it difficult for the layperson to use it successfully.
After years of homeopathic teaching and practice, today I, myself, rarely use homeopathy. If just changing our diet and lifestyle can make such big inroads into healing, why bother with anything else?  What I like best is that with this method patients can take their health into their own hands, where it belongs.  Besides, you can’t solve a problem without removing the cause and the cause of disease is never lack of medication (not even homeopathic medications).
True reversal means being healthy without any medicines.
5. How long did it take you to research and come up with the step-by-step plan to reverse diabetes?

I have to admit that this approach to reversing diabetes is not original. There are many doctors in the world who are using this method to help their patients reverse diabetes. My introduction to this method came from Dr Neal Barnard first and then others like Dr Gabriel Cousens. I could understand it easily because I had already been working with natural healing methods with myself and with my patients. Since the results are almost guaranteed, it’s very motivating both for the doctor as well as the patient. I’ve been following this lifestyle for more than 15 years now and advising it to my patients. The learning is never complete. I’m always learning something new from the best teacher in the world, Nature.
Interspersed with testimonials, stories and real-life experiences of past participants, this book will show you that type 2 diabetes and many cases of type 1 diabetes are indeed reversible!

 
 

Everybody Loves a Good Drought (20th anniversary edition), An Excerpt

Posted on by Penguin India


Palagummi Sainath has been a journalist and reporter for thirty-seven years and has covered rural India full time for twenty-five of those. His book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought, is the established classic on rural poverty in India. Twenty years after publication, it remains unsurpassed in the scope and depth of reportage, providing an intimate view of the daily struggles of the poor and the efforts, often ludicrous, made to uplift them.

Here’s an excerpt from the new introduction to this critically acclaimed work.

———————————-

One of the first things people who have read Everybody Loves a Good Drought ask me is: ‘How did you come to give this book its name?’ I didn’t. I just grabbed the idea from Ramji Lakhan. He was a peasant activist who organized agricultural labourers to fight for their rights in Palamu (then in Bihar, now in Jharkhand).
‘We have a great drought going here,’ he told me. ‘The big people are making much money out of it. And the Block Development Officer (BDO) has gone to harvest the Third Crop.’

I was mystified. ‘I know of the kharif crop, harvested in autumn after the rainy season. And I know of the rabi, sown in winter and harvested in spring. But what is this Third Crop?’
‘Drought relief,’ said Ramji. He’d been hoping I would ask. ‘The money that comes in as relief makes the powerful richer than they were. It’s quite a good business. We like a good drought here.’

He called the BDO the BTDO, or Block The Development Officer. ‘No work takes place unless he gets his cut.’ But he did not use the term Third Crop in English. He said teesri fasl. And that remains the title of the Hindi edition of this book.

Another common question: ‘Have things changed in these districts since you wrote this book?’ Yes. Not always for the better, though. The women stone-quarry workers of Pudukkottai, who drew inspiration from their strength as a collective, changed their world for the better. For many others living in the regions the book’s stories come from, things got a lot worse. For a reason Ramji Lakhan understood very well even back then: growing inequality.

An India was emerging where new inequalities were feeding into old ones. Not by accident, but driven by human agency. Even in the year 2000, according to Credit Suisse’s Global Wealth Databook, the top 1 percent of the Indian population held 36.8 percent of the total household wealth. By 2016, their share had risen to 58.4 percent, far ahead of their counterparts in the United States, whose share of wealth in their nation was 42.1 percent.

That also means the top 1 percent of Indians held a greater share of wealth that year within our nation than the top 1 percent of Americans ever did within their own. The same year, the Databook shows, the bottom 10 percent of Indians saw their share fall from 0.1 to -0.7 percent––suggesting that many millions whose assets were far lower than their liabilities were sinking further into debt.

The next two deciles, just above the -0.7 group, recorded shares of 0.2 and 0.5 per cent, respectively. Club those three together and it means the bottom 30 percent of the Indian population own next to nothing.
In the year 2000, Forbes listed nine Indians who were dollar billionaires. In 2011–12, when our Socio Economic and Caste Census found that the main breadwinner in 75 percent of rural households take home less than Rs 5000 a month, Forbes said we had fifty-five dollar billionaires. This year, India logged 101 dollar billionaires in the Forbes 2017 list. We now rank number four in the world in that distinguished line-up. But we also rank 131 in the United Nations Human Development Index.

This is where we needed the media to ‘signal the weakness in society’. Instead, they celebrated this inequality. Unique success stories, and those on super celebrities, took centre stage. And we focused on how wonderful we were. A small part of the population surely did very well. Clinging to our delusions meant trashing the integrity of the data we gathered on ourselves. We did this with poverty numbers. We do it with farm suicide data.


 

Yes, You Do Need Friends at Work.

Posted on by Penguin India

Dr. Annie McKee is an advisor to leaders of Fortune 500 companies, governments and NGOs around the globe. Her book, How To Be Happy At Work will deepen our understanding of what it means to be truly fulfilled and effective at work and provides clear, practical advice and instruction for how to get there—no matter what job you have.
Here’s an excerpt.
In this chapter, I will show that having friends at work is critical. When we feel cared for—even loved, as one does in a friendship—and when we belong to a group that matters to us, we are generous with our time and talents because we’re committed to people, not just the job or the company. You will also read about how to build the foundations for friendships in the workplace and how you can improve your relationships at work.
If you like the people you work with, you probably also like your job and your company. If you don’t like them, or if relationships are tense or disrespectful, chances are you don’t look forward to getting up every day to go to work. And it isn’t just that it makes us happy to belong and to have friends. Good relationships lead to good outcomes. This is just as true at work as it is in our families, neighborhoods, and tribes.Unfortunately, that’s not what we’ve learned along the way.

When I ask people, “Do you need to be friends with people at work?” they usually hesitate. Then they rattle off reasons why it’s a bad idea: “I’ve got to keep a distance or I won’t be able to have the tough conversations,” “I might get in trouble,” or “You’ve got to have clear boundaries.” A few come right out and say that it’s dangerous to have friends at work.
Something funny happens, though, when I ask people to describe what they do want in their relationships at work:
“I have to like the people I work with.”
“I want to be myself at work without being afraid that people will shut me out or shut me down.”
“I can’t take risks with people I don’t trust, or when I know they don’t care about me.”
“I want to have fun at work. Sharing a laugh helps me deal with stress.”
Clearly, there’s a disconnect. We think we should have relationships that are distant, polite, and guarded. But we want much more than that. We want to feel safe to be ourselves, we want to enjoy one another, and we want to like people at work. We also want them to like us.
This seems like common sense to me—why wouldn’t we want warm and friendly relationships with people we spend so much time with? Moreover, if we don’t like people (or they don’t like us),  it’s going to be hard to find common ground, making it even harder to work through disagreements and conflict. If we suspect that someone’s out for themselves or trying to take advantage of us, we’re not likely to share our ideas or resources. Instead, we will be on guard and hesitant to collaborate. This is not a recipe for success—a lesson David McWilliams learned early in his career.

A Dream Within a Dream

Posted on by Penguin India

Edgar Allan Poe, the great American writer, editor, and literary critic is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. His poem, A Dream Within A Dream conveys an important message about human life slipping away, trickling like sand.
Here’s the poem.
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
—-
Beautiful isn’t it?

Monetize Your Expertise

Posted on by Penguin India

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant and professional speaker who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. In her book, Entrepreneurial You she shares the stories of entrepreneurs of all kinds—from consultants and coaches to podcasters, bloggers and online marketers—who have generated six- and seven-figure incomes. It shows you how you can liberate yourself financially and shape your own career destiny.
 
Some professionals may hesitate to monetize because they fear the audience reaction. Indeed, people who are used to getting something for free may well rebel once you ask them to start paying. That’s what happened to Andrew Warner. A successful entrepreneur, Warner and his brother built a multimillion-dollar online greeting card business. “I felt like I was invincible,” he recalls, and assumed his next venture, a foray into online invitations, would be an even bigger hit. But it didn’t work out that way. “I ended up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on this idea that really didn’t turn into gold. It turned into mud,” he says.
Looking for answers, he decided to reach out to other business owners: “I said, ‘I want to learn from as many entrepreneurs as I can how to build a business and never make this mistake again.’” He recorded the interviews on Skype and, in 2008, launched Mixergy, a website and video podcast where he compiled them. For a couple of years, he offered them all for free. But eventually, Warner was devoting so much time to the enterprise—including hiring a staff to help him with editing and doing pre-interviews of his guests—that he decided to start charging $25 per month for access.
As soon as he did, he heard about it. “People were posting publicly that I shouldn’t be charging, and people were emailing me and saying ‘What are you doing?’” he recalls. The feedback stung. “I felt hurt that my audience didn’t like me as much.” But charging an access fee enabled him to keep investing the time in creating the site, which now contains more than twelve hundred interviews. “If you do something that matters, some people are going to dislike you,” he says. “Some people are going to disagree with you. It’s not an indication that you’re on the wrong track.”
Try This:

As you start psyching yourself up to monetize, it’s worth considering the following:

  • Get clear on what it costs you to share your work with others. Are there recording or editing expenses? Website hosting fees? The cost of your time? The first step is to understand what you’re already putting in, so you can determine what break even (and beyond) would look like.
  • Think about various pricing models. Can you continue to offer some material for free, for those who genuinely can’t pay, while offering exclusive paid content to your super-fans?
  • Brace for criticism. You’ll inevitably face some blowback, but don’t take the outliers too seriously. If 90 percent of your audience is upset, you may want to reconsider. But if three people send you churlish emails, try to put it out of your head.

ICE with Very Unusual Spirits, An Excerpt

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A devotee of Sai Baba of Shirdi, Ruzbeh N. Bharucha is one of the most influential spiritual writers of our times. His new book, ‘ICE with Very Unusual Spirits’ is about Irashaw Cawas Engineer (Ice), a world-renowned painter of Divinity, who turns his back on his Master and spirituality after the death of his young children. The book is derived from the sages and is about the wisdom of life and living, and understanding, accepting and seeking a higher purpose.

Here’s an excerpt from the book.
Why is he called Ice?’ his wife asked.
‘Apparently, at the boarding school where he studied, children had to write their initials on all their possessions—bags, clothes, etc.—to avoid misplacing them. His real name is Irashaw Cawas Engineer, thus I.C.E. Since then, he’s known by his initials. He signs off on his paintings as ICE too.’
‘What is he doing here? Wasn’t he in New York or somewhere abroad? I have a bad feeling, Ashish. It’s not going to be good with him living next door, you mark my words. This man brings doom with him.’
‘Don’t say this, Maya. It was this man’s painting of Lords Ganesh, Krishna, Jesus, and Hanumanji and Sai Baba playing together as kids with a small baby girl that helped you get through  your pregnancy. You yourself told me that if it weren’t for that painting, you would never have wanted to be a mother and undergone eight months of bed rest . . .’
‘Bed imprisonment, Ashish! All you men are dogs . . . ’
‘Breathe, sweetheart. Yes, bed imprisonment . . . and you used to bless Ice every day. Remember, when you went into depression after hearing about the accident and the death of his kids?’
‘I know, but he was a different man back then. This man here is a ghost of him. Trust me, Ashish, he walks with death itself. Why the hell did you help him get this flat adjacent to ours?’
‘What did you want me to do? Imran called me up saying Ice wanted to shift here. I couldn’t refuse him. He has stood by me through thick and thin.’
‘Imran I understand, but why do you feel so much for Ice?’
Ashish looked at his wife. By God, she was beautiful. He could never understand why she had agreed to marry him; she had every affluent man waiting in line to marry her. During those days he had no money, not much of a career, in fact nothing going for him. It had taken them years to get settled. But Maya had never complained. The only thing missing in their marriage was physical intimacy. Fortunately, he wasn’t too keen on getting into the sack himself and often thought that his disinterest in sex was probably the reason why she had married him. But she loved him and took care of him and their child, and yes, she had her issues and she could drive him up the wall, but he loved her in spite of everything.
‘Okay, I am going to tell you something I haven’t shared with you. Remember, how much I wanted to be a father? For whatever reason, you weren’t keen on getting pregnant. I know you love me, but there are certain areas in your life that you don’t share with me. Anyway, nine years ago, I had met Imran at his house for dinner and we had drunk a bit too much and during our conversation, I had mentioned that it would be a miracle if you ever agreed to become a mother. Ten days later, he came home and gifted you that painting. You fell in love with it and then slowly, over time, decided to be a mother.’
‘So?’
‘It seems Imran told Ice about our conversation and a week later, Ice presented him the painting to be given to “that neurotic woman and her daft husband who want a kid”. Do you know how expensive this painting is now? All our savings, investments and gold put together won’t be worth as much. If we were to sell it today, we would be able to buy this or any other house like this in the city. Ice gave it to us because he wanted his friend’s friend to be at peace. Come on, Maya, who would do such a thing for strangers? People don’t even help their families nowadays and here is a man who gifted us a painting that could have fetched him enough to live lavishly for a long time. Ice used to be a workaholic back then but he still took time to paint the portrait for us. Even now, whenever Ice has an exhibition, his paintings are sold out even before they are displayed. I am indebted to Ice for life. He had as much a role in Ayesha’s birth as you and I. And haven’t you noticed one thing? Look at the girl in the painting. Doesn’t Ayesha look like her?’
Maya looked at the painting. There was no doubt that the girl in the painting was a spitting image of Ayesha. Nobody could deny the similarity. It was as though Ayesha had posed for the painting herself. Damn that Ice! She looked down from the drawing room window. Ice was standing with a cigarette between his lips. He had lost a lot of weight. A huge black dog with tan stripes lay next to him. Both needed a haircut. Ice was wearing a pair of jeans and a light-blue T-shirt, both of which were soiled with paint. People stared at him. Passers-by turned around to get a better look. They recognized him but didn’t dare approach him for an autograph. He was temperamental, to put it politely. On good days, Ice would chat and laugh for a long time; on the  not-so-good days, it was rumoured that he had broken many a journalist’s camera and phone. Even now, he didn’t pay attention to anybody. He just stood there and smoked. After a while, he looked up, straight at her, and Maya felt her blood turn cold. This man was trouble. She just knew it.

What happens next? Find out in ‘ICE With Very Unusual Spirits.’

Assessing the Prototypes

Posted on by Penguin India

Jennifer Riel is a strategic adviser to senior leaders at a number of Fortune 500 companies. Her book, Creating Great Choices is an insightful and instructive blend of storytelling, theory and hands-on advice to help any leader or manager facing a tough choice. The book includes fresh stories of successful integrative thinkers that will demystify the process of creative problem solving, as well as practical tools and exercises to help readers engage with the ideas. 
 
Storytelling converts a possibility into a narrative— a tale of events that proceeds over time and has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A story lets you explain what happens within the possibility— the plot points of your new and better world. Narrative is an effective way to capture and explain a new idea because humans are naturally drawn to stories; stories are the way people have learned and shared critical information since our ancestors were crouched around a campfire.
Using stories lets you engage deeply with ideas, because you can fully picture the possibility in your mind’s eye. Once you do that, you will be able to communicate that picture to others. As screenwriting teacher Robert McKee puts it, “If you can harness imagination and the principles of a well- told story, then you get people rising to their feet amid thunderous applause instead of yawning and ignoring you.”
Our friend Claudia Kotchka, former head of design at P&G, is a master storyteller. To illustrate the impact of human- centered design to her peers at the sometimes- rigid consumer goods giant, she would tell a story about Altoids. Yes, the curiously strong mint introduced in the 1780s and now owned by Wrigley. Kotchka would illustrate the special appeal of Altoids by describing the process of looking at the cheerful metallic box with its nostalgic typeface and then opening the tin, hearing the liner paper crinkle, smelling the wafting scent of peppermint oil, and seeing the uneven little mints, seemingly hand-made, lying haphazardly within.
Kotchka would go on to describe what Altoids would look like if they’d been developed through P&G’s structured, rigorous, and highly reliable processes: perfect, uniform mints in a simple plastic container with a slightly garish sticker on the front. The “waste” of the liner paper and the expensive metal box would be eliminated. The “imperfection” of the varied mints would be remedied. The understated label design would be “livened up.” And voilà, all the distinctiveness of Altoids would disappear— along with the brand’s intense consumer loyalty and price premium.
Kotchka called her imaginary new product Proctoids, after the irreverent nickname sometimes applied to P&G employees. Her vivid and funny story hit home with audiences inside P&G and out, illustrating her point more clearly than reams of data on failed innovations.
Try This
Think back to the invention of the iPod. Craft a short narrative that would explain the core of the idea and the way it works to create new value for users and for Apple. Try the same for one of the possibilities you generated in chapter 7.
For each of your possibilities, think about the story you could tell about it, focusing on how each possibility would be experienced by real people. The story needn’t be long or obsessively detailed. The objective of the narrative should always be to help you, and others, understand the core value of the possibility.

 

Marketing

Posted on by Penguin India

Jeffrey Bussgang is a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and professor at Harvard Business School. In his book, Entering StartUpLand you seek your ideal entry point into this popular, cutting-edge organizational paradigm. It is a practical, step-by-step guide that provides an insider’s analysis of various start-up roles and responsibilities. You’ll gain insight into how successful startups operate and learn to assess which ones you might want to join–or emulate.
 
When I was head of Marketing at one of my startups, our sales director in Australia came to our annual sales meeting bearing a gift for me: a boomerang. He said it was because I always came back to him with answers to his questions when he was in the field chasing sales opportunities. I keep that boomerang in my office to this day and still think about how much field sales people appreciate it when the marketing team gets back to them in a timely, responsive fashion. For a marketing executive, being customer focused means paying attention to your internal customers as well as your external ones.
When entrepreneurs discuss with me the reasons they need to raise money for their startups, the focus is typically placed first on building the product and then selling it. The two most expensive functions at a startup are the product team and the sales team. Marketing profoundly affects them both: on one side, it heavily influences product design; on the other, it focuses and supports Sales. So the marketing function is like the productivity engine of the startup. When a startup has a great marketing function, the product and sales teams both look amazingly productive, and nobody knows why. Everybody typically credits the head of Sales and the head of Product, but behind the scenes, it’s Marketing that makes them look good.
Marketing, in other words, is the unsung hero of the startup.
Strangely, startups often hire marketing people too late. First they hire the team required to build the product—product managers or engineers. Then they hire one or two salespeople to sell the product. Remember the organization chart for my twelve-person startup in chapter 1 (figure 1-2)? There are zero marketing people. It’s a common mistake.
Typically, the first marketing person might get hired as employee number twenty or thirty, often after a startup hits a snag. Perhaps the sales force has become unproductive and is idling. So the startup scrambles to get a marketing function installed quickly to help. By then, though, it’s often too late. When a startup misses its sales numbers, the sales people get blamed. But the problem, typically, is not that the salespeople are incompetent; it’s that the startup lacks marketers who can generate leads and acquisitions for those salespeople. As a result, Sales is either getting bad leads or no leads at all. They’re lacking the good, competitive weapons that skilled marketers can provide, so they’re struggling to win.
That’s when the company needs Marketing. It needs Marketing to provide support for Sales.
Grab a copy of the book: Entering StartUpLand 

 

6 Statements from ‘Demonetization and Black Economy’ that are point on about demonetization

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Arun Kumar is the country’s leading authority on the black economy. In his recent book Demonetisation and the Black Economy he gives a lucid account of demonetization along with its effects on the economy.

Here are six statements by Prof Kumar which describe impacts and effects of demonetisation.






Competing on Analytics with External Processes

Posted on by Penguin India

Competing on Analytics provides the road map for becoming an analytical competitor, showing readers how to create new strategies for their organizations based on sophisticated analytics. Introducing a five-stage model of analytical competition, Davenport and Harris describe the typical behaviors, capabilities and challenges of each stage. It is the definitive guide for transforming your company’s fortunes in the age of analytics and big data.

Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of IT and Management at Babson College and a research fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. Jeanne G. Harris is on the faculty at Columbia University, where she teaches Business Analytics Management.
 
The  great  challenge  for  brand  managers  in  the  current  age,  however, is developing a closed loop of analytics describing how customers interact with a brand across multiple channels. With this information, brands can learn not only what ads and promotions customers see, but how  they  react  in  terms  of click-throughs,  conversions,  and  service. Most  companies  find  it  difficult  to  marshal  all  this  data  and  make sense of it with analytics.
One company that does do it well, however, is Disney’s Parks and Resorts business unit. The business has long been highly analytical, optimizing hotel prices, ride times, and marketing offers. Now, however, due to a “vacation management” project called MyMagic+ that cost over $1 billion and began in 2008, it is able to close the loop on how all that marketing translates into a customer experience. The ambitious goal of MyMagic+ is to provide a more magical, immersive, seamless and personal experience for every single guest. From the beginning of planning a Disney park or hotels reservation, the customer is encouraged to register and to supply an email address. The customer can plan a family trip (and, at the same time, register all family members or friends participating in the trip) with the MyDisneyExperience website or app. Disney is then able to learn what activities the customer is considering and what web pages engage different family members. Customers are also encouraged to sign up for the FastPass+ service, which offers them shorter wait times; in exchange, they share information  about  the  park  attractions,  entertainment  options,  and  even greetings from Disney characters they intend to experience.
What really closes the loop for Disney, however, is the MagicBand. Rolled out in 2013, these wristbands are typically mailed to a family before its visit starts. From the customer’s standpoint, it allows access to the park and hotel rooms, FastPass+ entry to attractions at specific times,  and   in-park and hotel purchases. It also stores photos taken with  Disney  characters,  and  allows  the  characters  to  have  personalized  interactions  with  kids.  From  Disney’s  standpoint,  it  provides  a  goldmine  of  data,  including  customer  locations,  character  interactions, purchase histories, ride patterns, and much more. If customers opt in, Disney will send personalized offers to them during their stay and after they return home.
The  scale  and  expense  of  the  MyMagic+  system  is  reflective  of the fact that the ante has been raised for competing on analytics. It may  take  a  while  for  Disney  to  recoup  its  billion-dollar  investment in this closed loop system, but the company has already seen operational benefits in being able to admit more customers to parks on busy days. There is also a belief that the system will deter customers from visiting competitor parks. Key to the ultimate value of the program, however, will be extensive analytics on how marketing and branding programs translate into actual customer activity.
Find this book:- Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning 

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