One of my favourite classes in Commerce 101 was the discussion on “People, Culture and Teams”.  It was amazing to discover how taking time to create a set of values that represent the corporation could maximize employees’ behaviour at such a big extent that workers are motivated to do their jobs for no money at all. And even more impressive to understand the responsibility that managers have on completing this task.

Organizational Culture is an extremely important component of a successful firm since it shows the people in it the path to go over and how to do it.

In this sense, it is possible to understand that a firm, corporation or organization cannot move in relation to the manager and sub-managers constant instructions, but that its employees feelings, thoughts and beliefs as well as these forces’ outputs such as the behavior and habits should be built based on the atmosphere in the corporation. This atmosphere (the organizational culture) is to be equally distributed among all workers, managers and leaders; this due to the importance of not only knowing what to achieve (maximize profit) but also the great relevance of being conscious on HOW to get there.

It is always a good time to reconsider the ways that a firm is using to achieve its goals. Although it might be hard to change the culture within the enterprise, the greater satisfaction in clients and employees is worth it.

The means by which each firm works towards its goals should be strictly tied to what the company stands for and, the people is what ultimately builds any company. Therefore, the time spent in creating an organizational culture is time spent in creating the organization and workers an identity that will allow people to aim for shared goals, have an established path and not to rely on what they are constantly told to do but to rely on that internalized motivation of the organizational culture. Cause at the end just like Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do” and this applies for sure to companies as well.

One of the most amazing things that Commerce 101 gave me throughout this term was passion for business. And there was one topic in especial that brought a unique motivation for me to go beyond just learning about business and this is The Arc Initiative. In this blog post I will connect the goals and incentives for Arc Initiative to a Business environment of Sustainability and Shared Value.

Arc Initiative brings more than help… it plants hope for development through knowledge.

In order for a business to be sustainable and to create shared value is crucial to involve all three: social, environmental and economic aspects in the behavior that the firm has. In this sense, Arc Initiative acts like a non-profit enterprise in which students, alumni and professors create a corporation of volunteers focused on creating shared value for those in developing countries by teaching basic business concepts that facilitate and improve the success of their businesses.

I believe that this meaningful feedback that these people in developing countries acquire from Arc allows them to see what their strengths and weaknesses are. At the same time, it gives them the opportunity to take in consideration the world around them and to consider better and smarter ways of making use of the environment for their benefit but without harming it.

Arc inspired me since the beginning: to become an agent of change through passion for business.

At the end Arc gives the knowledge and then lets that knowledge work and make difference. To help the world change, business matters. Ultimately, disruptive innovations and great ideas often come from those who have to learn to be creative with less and therefore, giving them the incentive of knowing that they can do better and by showing them the path is creating a great bridge between different nations.

After reading Richard Lee’s blog post: “Companies Want Intrapreneurs” I remembered how much my brother told me how important for him, as the CEO of his company, was the active participation of his team to achieve all short and long term goals. I can now make the connections between these two dots and realize that Ben (my brother) aims to promote an intrapreneurial attitude among his team. I think Richard has a point when he mentions that companies are to keep up with new technologies which are merely new mechanisms to improve the production chain of a good and to improve given services.

Nowadays, it is essential to get every worker to be part of the constant innovation process that every enterprise goes through.

  The reason I agree with this mindset is because I believe that sometimes being a CEO or a manager it is more difficult to see what really is happening in the production chain or in the handing out of a service. It is absolutely necessary to hear from everybody in the company, to promote their critical thinking towards how things could be improved in the ongoing process. A job should be more than just following instructions… Even in different company’s structures: narrow structures such as banks where there are just certain tasks to be done or in broad structures like technological companies; it is important to promote the intrapreneurial mindset among all members of any organization because at the end the people are the organization; therefore, they are the only ones who can improve it.

I believe that goals are better accomplished with different enterprises working in a synergy. Also, I also strongly believe in the positive impact that different views bring to the creation of the solution for a problem. Thus, given the considerable contrasts between nations regarding wealth and cultures, these different views help to generate greater global changes.

It is possible to provide stronger bridges by tackling different aspects through different agents of change.

My point is that with enterprises, peoples and agents of change it is possible to better tackle distinct aspects of the problem. Thus, no matter how fully funded The United Nations can be, its roles could be incremented and empowered with innovative methods. In social entrepreneurship there is not enough… and innovation is the most important tool that comes along new thoughts, people, and cultures.

So, yes! The Arc Initiative and any other social enterprise are welcomed even if The United Nations were fully funded. Needed societies do not take any help as enough. The contribution from Arc, for example, is unique. Coming from a developing country, I am aware of the creativity that poor Peruvian entrepreneurs aim to acquire in order to be successful with the little things they have, Arc in this context would be the supplier of business tools that this people would benefit from in order to build an improved path for carrying on their business.

Just like the job that The United Nations develops is essential, Arc’s Initiative impact is also unique and positive.

This ambitious, strategic and resourceful mission that Arc has only entails one of the various tasks that The United Nations develops. In this sense, Arc would be maximizing its mission. As the Porter Generic Strategies mention, when focusing on various things it is more difficult to excel in all tasks; therefore, having social enterprises going after what The United Nations also aims to achieve is great!

Comment on my classmates blog  The Rising Star: How Did Xiaomi Doubled Their Revenue?

I found JaeSeung Lee’s blog post very inspirational. After reading I wondered how a company could become so successful in such a short period of time. How can a business model be shaped so well that it can increase the company’s profit in such little time? JaeSeung describes how Xiaomi Inc. point of differentiation from such big competitors such as Apple and Samsung is its marketing strategy. I then decided to do some research about this company and what was behind its creation. In this sense, I can now comment on Xiaomi’s Inc. ladder to success. Lei Jun, its funder and CEO, focused on targeting a market that aims for very technological items at a low cost but also provides the ability to customize these products’ software according to users preferences. The low price are definitely points of differentiation as JaeSeung mentions with competitors such as Apple; and, in addition to this, the ability to modify the software provides an interesting value propositions for all users who have not yet found their needs fulfilled with current products.

This is one of Xiaomi successful items that have meet many customer’s unsatisfied desires like modifying their mobile software.

Probably the most interesting thing that I found while reading this blog was resemblance to the success of Apple Inc. and even more fascinating was to discover that Lei Jung idea for developing Xiaomi Inc. is related to Steve Job’s career with Apple. “Many Chinese consumers have come to idolize the Apple brand, and Xiaomi has been there to provide a similar product at a much cheaper price,” he said, and so that is basically what he does with Xiaomi.

He was basically inspired by Steve Jobs to develop his emporium.

It is amazing how it is possible to innovate not just by creating new products but also by reinventing already existing business to fit different markets. This in addition to JaeSeung’s mention on Xiaomi’s Inc. reduced costs allowed Lei Jun to find himself with a potential product which has escalated a long way in a short time.

Love Relationships in Business

It was interesting to discover that it is often not enough to perform a good job for clients but to establish what Hilary Topper calls in his blog as a love language towards clients. Throughout Comm 101, we have talked about ways of retaining customers and were challenged to find ways of evaluating clients’ happiness in order to maximize it.

The experience with a client has to go beyond receiving a good service. It has to reach that client’s expectations in treatment as well.

In these tasks, my general response was usually “measure clients’ satisfaction by handing out surveys to later improve weak areas”. However, after ready Hilary’s blog I now gained a new perspective.

This new approach is getting to know the client. It can be very surprising to acknowledge that just by figuring out how your client likes to be treated and likes to treat others can retention by more than 50% in some cases. This mindset that every client expects to obtain it what Hilary calls a love language since it represents what makes a relationship last.

To know how customers like to be served is a hard task to complete, definitely harder than my original idea of handing out surveys to all customers asking how they liked the service or good. However, it is possible to connect these two dots and use these surveys in order to create customer profiles, these profiles would be the recipe on how to elaborate a lasting relationship between the firm and employees.

This Blog Post was based on Hilary’s Toper publication in her blog website.