Business perspectives – by Maria Candela Hackel

Addception

I could not resist commenting on Samar Bose’s blog post. I also came across this new marketing innovation, however due to a different company called SeamBI.

Now a days adds are a common pain to many technology users. Consumers are forced to watch at least a few seconds of an add in order to watch the initial episode or youtube video clicked on. This leads to the association of advertising being annoying and unwanted. A connotation corporations should not be creating.

On the other hand potential costumers don’t mind creative advertising that interacts with their environment. One of these ideas is retroactive product placement. Where product placement can be added digitally even after the creation of the movie/series/music video.

Through this technique, many spectators may unconsciously relate to their favourite media, making positive connections between the product advertised and the televised image.

Just to give you a little taste of what retroactive product placement is, here is an example:

Sustainable agricultural food production, will we get there?

Many studies have proven that if resources were to be allocated fairly the human population would not have to experience hunger. However one in nine people still go through the everyday struggle of attempting to nourish themselves.

Thus I would like to agree with Kushal Kundanmal’s opinion. Aquaponics may have the potential to become a revolutionary break through in terms of agricultural farming.

However realistically putting this agricultural method into action will be a long-term process. It is unlikely that current agricultural food producers would be willing to give up their current equipment and food production methods to invest into a more sustainable alternative. The agricultural industry in western societies is already a heavily subsidized industry. Therefore switching would cause huge investments without gaining larger profits.

Not to mention the fact that the human population is too large to solely rely on Aquaponics. Thus if the agricultural industry is aiming to become more sustainable, in addition to acquiring new equipment large quantities of money also need to be invested into the R&D. In order to develop more sustainable methods on which, the agricultural industry can become dependant on. To producers the marginal cost would be higher than the benefit.

Nevertheless the human population ethically does not have the right to continue destroying the earth’s biodiversity and resources. It is likely that the human population will feel the consequences of their actions once it is too late.

We’re destroying our planet (By Mario Sanchez Nevado)

Sustaining innovation – 4G on planes

Article here

Today more than every people are dependant on constantly being connected. The western youth has been raised in an environment where social media is a must. The average adult who has smoothly adapted to the disruptive innovation of the internet, would also struggle to avoid this invention due to either business or personal reasons.

Therefore the sustaining innovation of either offering wifi or 4G connection, during flights, would be a huge success in terms of technological advancement.

For example the norwegian airline “Norwegian” is already a step ahead and offers free on-board wifi. To me this just provides proof that this sustaining innovation has large potential.

Even though such a project involves huge investments, for the network provider AT&T, it is an innovation with a bright future. Not to mention that it will most likely be offered as a premium service, when the project is initiated, in order to aggregate the investments and furthermore to make profits.

However it I expect this service, once it has been in action for enough years, to also be offered with a freemium option. I would imagine that in the future basic phone contracts will include 4G connection on planes however, in order to increase the amount of data available, the costumer will be asked to pay a higher price.

Norwegian passengers using the free wifi on-board.

A tiny bit of home

This post as special value to me, since I graduated High School in Denmark and Carlsberg is one of the Danish leading beer brands in the industry.

However this article is a perfect example of how external factors may affect a successful business. In this case the value of a domestic currency has had an effect on the profits made by the beer brewer, Carlsberg.

Carlsberg is strongly focused on Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia. Therefore Carlsberg is forced to operate in economies with different domestic currencies, specially in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Foreign currencies are not the only external macro-economic factor affecting Carlsberg. Inflation and current phase of the business cycle, in which the national economy is currently operating in, as also has a huge influence on consumer spendings.

These fluctuations in revenue, create uncertainty to the business. I personally recommend to expand further, possibly targeting North and South America, in order to decrease such profit fluctuations (even further). Overall, Carlsberg is an extremely successful corporation with huge potential, therefore I have no doubt of their success if this project is planned thoroughly.

Two points of view, no solution

Link: here

Due to the nature of the industry in which, Taseko operates it has few substitutional raw materials, thus it is highly reliant on rich potential mining sites. Like in this case the potential copper-gold mine project had an approximate value of $1.1billion. Thus there is no doubt that Taseko will experience repercussions in terms of supply shortages and profit losses.

The external factor limiting Taseko is the First Nation government who has a completely different perspective on the factors that they value. To them the environment is their habitat space and they have a clear understanding of how destructing cultural/heritage landscape is irrecuperable. A perspective that should be more valued by Taseko, instead of being intensively profit-driven.

Solution:
Both parties should have the same common goal in vision; improving the relation between aboriginal groups and large-scale corporations, considering the environment. This could only be achieved through compromise. My personal opinion is to give Taseko up to two years to edit and improve their mine proposal in terms of becoming less harmful to the environment. On the other hand once this has taken place, First Nation should take into consideration the effort and honest work put into the proposal and thus agree to give part of the area fought for.

The site of Taseko’s proposed new propensity mine

When corporations deal with Ethics

Based on the following article: here

The issue for Chiquita is to not have gotten much recognition for their ethical behavior. Even though they have worked hard on creating more environmentally friendly production processes, instead of being rewarded, they now face boycotting threats and lawsuits. Leading to great losses, difficult to prevent in the short-run. This, understandably demotivates competitors in the same industry to follow Chiquita‘s footsteps in becoming a more ethical multinational corporation. Consequentially this would lead the industry as a whole to slow or no changes to become more sustainable, threatening the environment.

Furthermore Chiquita‘s decisions have also had an effect on the living conditions of Canadians dependent on the oil industry, decreasing their quality of life as they now earn less income. In this case Chiquita has managed to please environmentalists keen on blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, prioritizing the environment and future generations over the living conditions of current citizens.

Unlike other multinational corporations Chiquita‘s primary motivation to clear and improve their corporate image is due to their fairly immoral history. This may be an acceptable reason to take such drastic actions however, should it be their primary reason? Should the primary reasons not be the consequences on stakeholders and the well-being of the environment?