11/19/12

The Growing of Blizzard Entertainment

It is always hard to start a company, and so was Blizzard which now is the largest game company in the world because their magnificent accomplish in WOW and Warcraft. Mike Morhaime and Allen Adham start the company. People thinks that they are crazy to leave the good pay job and start to design the computer games, and eventually that turns out to be the right choice. (The video record twenty years of Blizzard Entertainment.)

The start money was borrowed from relatives and it was only $10000, and the company last on that for next two years. The company only starts with 15 people to design some simple games and the games suddenly become popular, and after that they design to make something large which people do not have to play video game alone and there will be a platform to gather all the players together online so that they could play with each other. It is the original thought about the game World and Warcraft.

Asa perspective from the business, the risk of doing that is huge. There is no people have done that before so they do not know hoe they gonna react, and based on that it is a very large game, the time spent on that game will be huge. They just use their instinct to create this game, and they successes.

11/19/12

Company Culture: Smiling Service

In china Mobile Communications Corporation (China Mobile), clerks are encouraged to have “smiling service” to all consumers, which means that no matter how ridiculous the consumers are or no matter what consumers say they must simile when they are providing a service. It is sounds like a very good strategy to improve consumers’ satisfactions and consumers’ services because of the magic power of smiling, but instead of just “smiling services”, the clerks are more likely to be forced to smile in order to get good salary. For example, my friend used to complain about his girlfriend who smiles more to her consumers instead of him, and he found out that if people are forced to smile for a very long time, they must not smile some other time to relax their nerves.

Although “smiling service” may make consumers feel comfortable, I start to question if that is a healthy competition to employees. The company force you to smile when you do not want, which seems a little cruel to me. I also heard that some of employees have to smile like 12 hours a day to get nice record. Company service need to be provided with patience and with the belief that “consumers are right all the time”, but employees need to feel happy about doing that instead of setting a strict and unhealthy rule about service. The service need to be improved, but not by forcing the employees, and I am sure that there is a better way of doing this.

11/19/12

Ten years of China under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao

The ten yearsunder Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao is a magnificent ten years. The past ten years under Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao has been calledthe “golden age”.

Chinese people has been through a lot difficulties and successes.  In 2003, SARS breaks out in China. The authorities initially react by covering up the crisis, before the World Health Organisation issues global alert. Unity of people helps Chinese pass through the diseases. In 2008, an enormous earthquake in Sichuan kills over 70,000 people. The Chinese army had been sent to Sichuan to help rescue people and help them rebuilt the city after the terrible earthquake.

However, China made a progress on economic growth. The size of China’s economy has quadrupled, the country’s roads, railways and skyscrapers are the envy of the world, and the standard of life in the Chinese countryside has radically improved.

 

The party congress to select new leaders will be held on November 8, and is overdue and highly anticipated because it will see Hu Jintao step down after 10 years as party boss and China’s leader, to be replaced by Xi Jinping.

People hope that China can keep the growth rate in the next decade, and at the same time, China need to enforce the policy changing in order to maintain the sustainable development.

 

11/15/12

From “One for One Movement” to Intangible Social Enterprise

One for One Movement is that every pair of Toms shoes purchased will deliver a pair of shoes to children who need them. Toms shoes is a typical social enterprise, and Toms shoes as been noted as successful model of social entrepreneurship. What they do is more like raising a donation through products, and there are some other way of social enterprise like hiring disable people who other people will not hire. Also the business that hiring the jobless people to build houses for homeless people is typical social entrepreneur.

Although the social enterprise is determined by special agency, I am thinking that social enterprise’s definition can be more than just some donation and hiring jobless people. Sometimes  enterprise is helping to provide a new chain of circle of the business to organize the current and available resources together to create a new business. The new successful business will not only provide jobs, but also it improve the production of its raw material suppliers, and encourage the flow in the currency, which would eventually lead to growth in economy, and improvement in people’s living standards. It is like a Domino effect to encourage the economy to boom.

Some enterprise may not seem like a social enterprise, but they do provide opportunity, sustainability and stability to the society, and some of effects are not obvious enough to see, but I do think there are some intangible effects. Almost all the business provide the jobs to people. Some of the business pull other business. Although those business cannot be called as social enterprise, they provide benefits to society.

 

11/15/12

Cash Flow Circle of Appnovation

In the class presentation, our guest said that the company currently was passing some hard time, which reminds me about the cash flow circle of business.

Urthecast get a partnership with RSC, and its revenue mainly comes from the web advertising, application platform sales, media content sales and earth observation sales. Although, from Porter’s five industry forces perspectives, the company have exclusive comparative advantage compared to other companies, the company also has the cost leadership, the buyers’ powers are not weak, and the threat from new entrant would be very low, the company is under huge risk because the cash flow circle of the company is too long.

Usually company purchase the raw materials, get the inventory, and sell the inventories and get the cash to purchase raw materials again. (The cash flow circle of normal business can be seen clearly from the diagram above. )First, the company like Appnovation involves huge money investment to do the purchase which is that agreement in this case. On the other hand, the time spent on getting the agreement and turn that into sales takes an extremely long time, so the cash flow circle is too long for a company especially when they reached the deadline of agreement. If they cannot get fresh cash flow during the none-profit period. The company might go bankrupt.

Therefore, persuading new investment to stimulate the cash flow would help the company to survive from the difficult time. Also the company might work on shorter the cash flow of the company (I do not know if that is possible but it is worth a try.)

 

 

11/15/12

The power tab: the new energy solution

Sometimes people do not aware how many electricity they consumed everyday, and people always found out that the bill come from electricity company are higher than their imaginations. It is like we pay the monthly mobile phone bill, and we did not find out that we make so much phone calls in a month until we received the bill. The power tab gives a solution for people who want to control the energy using.

I have to say that power monitoring may become a trend in the future market, as people are more aware of running out of the energy, and there is a trend that the power managing will be more and more accessible in our lives, which means that we may do not need any special equipment in tracking the energy. In addition, it is a large opportunity for some country where there is no sufficient energy such as Australia.

On the other hand, the market is narrow, which is the weakness of the business because in some particular countries, they do have their own smart-meter to track energy using. For instance, in China, every house has its own electricity meter in their house. However, people still cannot track the energy at anytime or anywhere they want. Assume some people are on vocation, they might want to track energy using in their houses. In that way, the power tab might access to the mobile phone application to make that possible.

Also, in the future, the smart phone may not only be used of tracking energy, but used for tracking everything’s condition in the house.

 

10/7/12

Amazon Deal Takes Fight to Netflix

After Netflix launched an instant steaming service for its movies and TV shows at the start of 2007, it quickly developed into a company has more than 11 million consumers, but now it lose its exclusivity.

Amazon launched its own instant steaming service for its movies. Compared to Amazon racks up to more movies, Netflix’s key differentiate factor is the TV show, but some of grow  too expansive.

It is an opportunity for Amazon, based hard basis on internet selling and good reputation among consumers, and it is not hard to enter instant movie market, but it is also hard to catchup with Netflix which has already had so many loyalty consumers which may nt be changed so suddenly.

And the market focus of Amazon is more diverse which could be used as a strength or a threat to the company because diverse product may provide the company chance to attract consumers from different area, and it is like an advertisement because the new thing will be soon known by old consumers, and also it can be a threat because Netflix is more focused on single product, which makes the company considered more about better services and better quality of products.

10/7/12

Advertising world ‘transformed by social media’

The advertising industry has been transformed by social media, says David Jones, boss of global agency Havas.

The advertising industry has to be more careful because of social media, sometimes what the brand have done is not helping with buildinggood brand image but damaging the brand. For example, VISA as sponsor in Olympics.

Because of intervention from social media, advertising industry now may achieve results in good way or bad way. It is not really like old time promotion that company paid a lot and can become famous. Public may find that some advertising is annoying and have bad influence. In the Marketing mix, when marketing their products films need to create a successful mix of the right product, sold at the right price, in the right price and using the most suitable promotion. Nowadays, companies need to be more aware of “negative promotion”, and promotion itself need to be more open and public and maybe not so aggressive in the future.

In class, I saw the Pepsi advertisement that a little boy used coca cola cans to buy Pepsi, which I think might damage the brand because what we show on the advertisement should be healthy and positive.

 

 

10/7/12

The “Fight” Among Smart-phones

Formerly high-flying mobile-phone makers—HTC, Nokia, a Taiwanese firm, and Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian maker of BlackBerry devices all faced the competition brought by latest iPhone.

Nokia hope to come back with its new smart phone Phi, and because this time Nokia bets on Microsoft’s new software.

Making mobile phone has always been fast-pace business, which has strong buyers power, high supplier power, low threat of new entrants, high threat of substitute and high rivalry. Within that business, a new os in the market would be really hard especially when android and ios continues innovation.

Nokia need to seek something new and compete by approaching to lower price by using the cost leadership strategy to defend other substitutes.

Compared to Nokia,  HTC set this year’s objective to achieve stable growth. As a late start smart-phone company,  HTC has established a strong brand image and has huge amout of consumers especially in China, but it also face problem, and if it wanted to maintain market share, it would have to depend on innovation.

In conclusion, phone companies really have to innovate and provide new services, and the company fails to follow the taste of consumers would be left behind.

10/7/12

Foxconn workers strike over iPhone 5 demands

Thousands of factory workers at Foxconn went on strike Friday to protest their working conditions on the iPhone 5’s production lines.

The reason reflected to public about why they went on strike is that employees especially quality inspectors thought that the i-phone quality standard is really hard to meet. Workers felt that standard is kind of “an impossible job”, and job increase the pressure among workers. More importantly, workers’ strike is related to unfair working hours and harsh working environment.

Officially, Foxconn refused to admit that there is strike. A year earlier, Foxconn worker suicided for unfair treatment, which bring us thinking about business ethic. Companies pursue high production and interest of workers get in the way. People thought that there is always a conflict between interest of employees and employers, but it is important to find a balance between them, and ethic is the most important thing while launching a business. Foxconn supplied a lot of electronic devise company and take advantage of cheap price, and company choose Foxconn because of price, which gives Foxconn a reason to treat its employees unfairly. There are always chains of reasons, but every companies in that line should take responsibilities.