Monthly Archives: November 2014

If the United Nations was fully funded why would we need the Arc or social enterprise?

The United Nation has been the world leader organization which help to solve global issues for the last half  of century. They are well know for their assistant in providing help or to cure world’s problem in different side of the world. The Millennium Development Goals has been the UN target for this past years, and we see some progress but still not significantly. Most of the time, United Nation acts as a helper or a donator to a problem. Whereas, the Arc or social enterprise allows people to help themselves,by learning the tools which could help them to fix the issues in society.

Image source: http://mbanogmat.com/a-guide-to-social-entrepreneurship/

Both United Nation and Arc or Social enterprise are equally significant to the never-ending world issues. In a way, United Nation helps to solve problem in the shorter time frame; they recognize the issues , open a forum, and try to negotiate on how to solve the issues by the organization that are already embodied in their organization (such as UNICEF,WHO, ILO,etc). Whereas, Social entrepreneur will see a problem, try to come up with solution, and create business or strategy that could solve the issues themselves. In longer term, the social enterprise not only helping people to solve a problem but also allows for those who practices it to develop themselves as a community as well as the individuals. Social Enterprise is also more focus, more targeted,often they operate in the location that are having issues or problem.In addition, Social enterprise also helps people to generate profit, and most importantly creating social environmental and cultural value while meeting a community needs that the traditional marketplace does not.

Even though the UN was fully funded, the world still needs to have social entrepreneurship in order for people to engage in their society, solve the problem, and allows to individuals and community to grow and maintain sustainability  for the future.

RE: Swatch the Second Watch by Atsushi Yamamoto

Atsushi’s blog post on Swatch unique disruptive innovation reminds me to the 14th Lecture where we discussed about Innovation and Entrepreneurship. His post immediately drew my attention where he explained how Swatch was competing with Seiko, a Japanese watch maker. Swatch has successfully create a business which target uncultivated spot in the market through its innovative and fresh new image product. Today we can see how Swatch has been very popular and dominant in the market,even more than Seiko.

As Atsushi mentions “The disruptive innovation does not have to be from a entirely competitor, and that the old industry leader can be disruptor through a change in strategies”, I see how Seiko has actually contributed  to Swatch success. Without the competition that they have, Swatch would not be able to understand what the market needs at that time after war. Swatch then see and seize the opportunity to create a product which  have a contemporary, fashionable style and also,which is cheap to make, priced at the low-end rather than compete in the range between premium and luxury that Swiss watches more comfortably occupied. This is one the reason why Swatch is distinguished between other more prestigious Swiss-Swatch maker.

This post has effectively analyze how Swatch’s disruptive innovation has contributed to the long-run business’ successes as well as its position facing the competition with the new released Apple watch, iWatch. I also remember in Lecture 18th  where Amielle Lake made the whole class repeat her sentence “My greed is bigger than my pride”.Swatch has decisively change his product and business type and ended up being one of the most succesful watch company in the world.

Image source: http://magazine.wsj.com/features/behind-the-brand/time-bandit/

 

Extra source: http://magazine.wsj.com/features/behind-the-brand/time-bandit/

 

Starbucks dress code policy

starbucks barista

Image source: http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/29/news/companies/starbucks-barista-tips/

This article explains how Starbucks has just released a policy which prohibit barista to wear engagement ring during working hours. The policy was released based on food safety policy ; wearing hand attributes such as watch or rings could affect the quality and the safety of food and beverages.

Starbucks is well known for its excellent product quality and customer service; they promise to remake the drink when the drink is not satisfying its customer;

Starbucks tells customers: “Your drink should be perfect, every time. If not, let us know and we‘ll make it right.” 

We should also be aware that barista play a very crucial role in maintaining Starbucks success. Baristas  are the heart and soul of a Starbucks. Barista affect and, even to an extent, control the quality of production, customer service, innovation and the many other facets affecting business success.

Even though the rules has just been released, theres been a lot of ongoing public opinion disagreeing on this policy.  In twitter we can see #boycottstarbucks as one of trending topic of the day, tweets from Baristas and barista’s family concerning this issue.

Starbucks’ purpose of releasing this issues is understandable; as one of the leading coffee shop in the world, Starbucks always want to improve customer satisfaction and maintain the quality of the coffee itself . However,when it comes to ‘controlling’ personal preferences of its employee, we could see that this approach could also bring several disadvantage for the business both in short and long term.

However from this policy, Starbucks is dealing with the freedom and personal preferences of its employee. This might affect the perception of how Starbucks treats their the employee. In short term, this policy will affect the organizational behaviour , worker motivation which certainly will have impact on the quality of service and product to the customer. All in all, I recommend Starbucks to reevaluate the policy and  reconsider how this policy could affect the customer perception and purchasing power.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelzarrell/starbucks-has-banned-employees-wearing-engagement-rings-and

RE: You might not need a mobile carrier by 2020 by David Goldman

This article predicts how in in 2020, people might not longer need or use cellular connection. This is cause by the widespread availability of Wi-fi which allows people to obtain connection; now calls and text message could be sent through Wi-fi connection. Google contributed to this change by launching the Wi-Fi balloons; these balloons are powered by solar panel,constantly circle the earth, and beaming internet access to world below with 3G-Speed. This project aimed to provide internet access to 2/3 of world population who currently cant get online. This particular articles further helps me stretch out the idea how this change could affect businesses in terms of marketing, operations as well financially.

Firstly, the availability of Wi-Fi will certainly affect the cell phone companies in the long run. People will no longer the access and in the future their service might no longer necessary. Surely, this will create big loss for phone companies as they will gradually loosing customer and will be experiencing loss in profit. However, for other businesses this could be seen as an opportunity to decrease marketing cost , as more and more advertisement available the general price of advertisement will decrease eventually. For operational activity, it will also get easier for firm to deliver product to customer as delivering service will become more trackable, clear and faster through the access of internet.

In general, this allows better, faster transactions for business,economics activity will increase. Companies will be better in improving their product with the  developed technology available and thus productivity will increase making business to become more economic efficient.

For society, I think Google is actually helping the entire world society to benefited from this project. For education, Google allows more kids to access information , decreasing cost of education. In longer term, this allows to produce more educated and skillful work force which also will helps to decreases rate of unemployment,improve business, as well as life quality in general

Not only highlighting the importance of  connection, this article further makes me think how it could effect purchasing power of customer. With stronger Wi-Fi connection people will become more and consumptive. However, in the other hand fraud or the level of cyber crime will increase.

All in all, this article has allowed me to explore how information and technology are highly involved in business and analyze how this innovation not only helping business to grow but also how it is creating benefiting society in general.

Walgreens Stock Plumet

Image Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/69c41626-ba2a-11e1-aa8d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3HzJV0WOE

Image Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/69c41626-ba2a-11e1-aa8d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3HzJV0WOE

Walgreen, one of the America’s three largest drugstore chains have been battling to move its headquarters out of Illannoy,USA. Walgreens was planning  to buy the remaining stake of  its alliance,Boots after bought  45% of the stake back in 2012. This is a tough decision: if Walgreens decided to move its headquarter to the UK, it will have to experience tax inversion. This problem has brought several controversies which involved many stakeholders including Walgreen’s investors, US politicians, as well as the wall street. The article can be found here

Tax inversion happens when a company buy foreign company, move abroad and benefited from lower tax rate. In long term, it will be beneficial for Walgreens: a Wall Street analysts calculated, Walgreens could save billions of dollars over the next five years . However, many politicians in the US feel that this shows unpatriotic actions to avoid  taxes by going overseas.

In addition, this decision also  disappoint investors because in the long term the savings that would have been generated by an inversion far outweighed the short-term impact of negative publicity and the costs related to restructuring a deal, reflected through the financial statement . In the same time, Wall street is very concern about this decision. Walgreens decided to stay in the US and  it turned out that Walgreens’ stock prices by plummet by 15%.

We can see how firm’s decision highly affect stakeholders involved in the market. There are high risk decisions that  should be evaluated in order to minimize loss through this change. If the price of stock continues to fall, Walgreens will be more unattractive to the investors and therefore worsen its popularity in the future.

This case also reminds me one of my previous post where I explore  Tim Hortons buying Burger King and how it affects the business canvas model in the future.  I strongly believe, In the long run, partnership should be able to help company to expand its market, reach economies of scale as well as improve its capital investment.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/69c41626-ba2a-11e1-aa8d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3HzJV0WOE

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/69c41626-ba2a-11e1-aa8d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3HzJV0WOE