What the ‘Knight’ logo signifies
In the game of chess, the quintessential game of strategy, the Knight is the only piece that doesn’t move in a straight line. It is almost as if it makes its own rules. The game changing character of the Knight makes it an ideal icon.
Strategy is about making choices. Opting for one path means you cannot follow another. The white and grey contrast suggests the imperative of choice, trade-off to be made amid uncertainty and risk.
My logo attempts to sum up the two hallmarks of good strategy – ability to change the game by breaking rules, and the need to make trade-offs.
Profile
Mr Bhattacharya is a highly regarded business and corporate strategy consultant. He advises and works with senior management teams to help make firms competitive, and achieve rapid, sustainable and profitable growth. His work cuts across industry sectors: electronics, engineering, logistics, paints, pharmaceuticals, software, telecom and technology.
He conducts custom management development programmes for senior managers, and provides business coaching to CXOs.
He teaches Strategic Thinking and Decision Making, and Extreme Leadership in Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore. For ten years, he also taught in IIM Ahmedabad. He has taught in IIM Calcutta, and Strategy in XLRI (Xavier School of Management), Jamshedpur. He serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of American Journal of Business. He writes regularly on management and is a sought-after speaker.
CAREER. Mr Bhattacharya is a seasoned business leader with a rare breadth of perspective and world-view. He has over forty years’ experience in diverse industries in India and abroad. He has turned around loss-making businesses, created new streams of revenue and revitalised old ones. He blends conceptual rigour and rich experience with strong focus on execution.
During his corporate career he worked in large and medium sized Indian and multi-national corporations. His breadth of perspective stems from experience in many industries – consumer goods, automobiles, paints and chemicals, engineering, capital equipment, packaging, hospitality, and telecom. He served as the Chief Executive of BPL Telecom Ltd. – a telecom engineering, and networking company – before setting up his consulting practice.
CONSULTING. His consulting work is strongly anchored in research-based management theory and settled thinking. He engages deeply with clients to help them create and execute effective and innovative strategies. He guides managers to develop insight, broaden perspective, and bring to bear expansive thinking and data to make crucial business decisions.
Among his prominent clients have been Allcargo Logistics, Allergan (Pharmaceuticals), Allstate Solutions (Insurance), Bayer (Chemicals), Carborundum Universal (Abrasives and Industrial Ceramics), Hitachi, Honeywell, IBM, Mindtree, Wipro (Information Technology), Schneider Electric (Engineering), and Qualcomm (Telecom Technology).
EXPERTISE. Formulating and guiding implementation of strategies for sustainable and profitable growth is his special forte. He has advised firms on business portfolio selection, managing multi-business corporations, and designed structures for complex organisations.
He is deeply interested in decision-making. He guides them on structural and process methodologies that foster curiosity, collaboration, and innovation.
He is one of the few practitioners of Game Theory. He uses its principles in his consulting work, in establishing collaborative practices in firms, and to encourage anticipatory (strategic) thinking among senior managers.
EDUCATION. He earned a Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and Post-graduate Diploma (MBA) in Marketing and Finance from Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta.
INTERESTS. VN, as he is better known, enjoys English fiction, science and astrophysics, behavioural economics, and cognitive psychology. He is an avid golfer and played tennis. He loves high altitude trekking in the Himalayas.
He lives in Bangalore, India with his wife and Indie dog.
He can be reached at vn@vnbhattacharya.in