Author Archives: Bianca Siregar

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.

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

Starbucks dress code policy

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.

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

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

RE: Marketing in Digital Age by Stella Cho

Stella has successfully analyses in her blog post how marketing has become an integral part in social media during this digital age. Brand has been benefited by information and technology in terms of marketing. Social networking sites (SNS) has provided access for company to understand the market demand as well as getting closer to the customer in general. This post interests me because I can directly relate to my personal experience; there are multiple times that I remember of wanting to buy beauty products after I watched make-up tutorial in YouTube.

In YouTube videos, twitter or even Instagram post, I often notice how the person who post the feed oftenly being endorsed by certain brands. For instance, Bethany Motha,a young youtuber has been maintaining partnership with Target. In the beginning of her video, she often announces the giving away deal for the week, for watchers who comment or re-tweeet her post, they will have a chance to own the product.

Betahany giving away Target lunch bags from Target

Another example, in Jaclyn Hill‘s channel I constantly noticed how she promotes and give recommendation to products that she uses on her beauty tutorial. In addition, she also inform watchers the detail of the product( including the brand, the type even serial number). Even though the purpose of the tutorial is essentially to explain how to apply make up, in a way these channels also provides watchers or customer about product reviews or product recommendations.

Jaclyn Hill explains how to use the beauty product while also giving recommendations

Through these examples, I conclude that company’s should take more advantage on the benefit of social media especially YouTube as mouth-to-mouth( direct) advertising in fact is more effective and targeted more than large billboards or expensive TV commercials. We also see how company’s who partner up with these individuals understand how important it is to market their brand to consumers, through consumers.

One sold, one give

Image source: http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/blake-mycoskie

TOMS is a new social business which take pride on their ultimate policy; for each shoes purchased,customers are helping to donate a pair for children who doesn’t have shoes. TOMS trademark product is standard,light weight slipped on shoes in varieties of colour. This article, examines of how TOMS has successfully captured market attention by their value. In the first three months of their operation, TOMS sold 10,000 pairs and their product ended up being sold in Nordstorm, one of America’s biggest department store.

TOMS is a epitome of business which is created shared value to the market. Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS was well aware of how innovation and business could help and create bigger impact to the society, not only by gaining profit or simply giving out charity Mycoskie built supportive industry cluster through the promotion itself, we can see how TOMS expand the total pool of economic and social value for world community.

Personally, I see TOMS’ product is not appealing; the model is very simple, casual and it does not have any special features. However, it is interesting how customers buying decision are more driven by the value and not the product itself.We can see value that TOMS offers make it very popular and stands out among other more established shoes line.

It dramatically heightened my awareness. Yes, I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that poor children around the world often went barefoot, but now, for the first time, I saw the real effects of being shoeless: the blisters, the sores, the infections- Blake Mycoskie

Through the quote, we see how Myscoskie focused on what the society needs instead of focusing on creating a business which could make profit. In the end, Mycoskie not only creating a profitable business but also sustain the health of the children of the world in the long term.

H&M collaboration projects

Image source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3943479/Donatella-Versace-launches-new-collection-at-HM.html

As one of world leading multinational retail clothing company, H&M has successfully maintained its sales and performance through out the years of operation.H&M is well known for its fast updated design for men, woman, as well as kids. What makes H&M highly demanded by the society is their relative low price, modernize style which satisfied the needs and wants of the targeted market.

What differs H&M from its competitor such as ZARA and Gap is they have seasonal guest designer collaborations. Each year, H&M managed to collaborate with high-end designers such as Karl Lagerfeld, Versace,Lanvin, Alexander Wang, and many more.In this partnership, the designers will release their design which manufactured by H&M themselves. The products ranging from hand bags, to coat. The price will be higher than usual H&M product, but a lot more cheaper than the original price of the brand itself. However, through out the years, collaborations product has been highly demanded by the market, often customers used to line up outside the stores on the day that product is released.

As a H&M consumer, I think the collaboration not only add value to H&M but also helps customer to purchase high end branded product with lower price And for H&M, a good number of customers benefit from buying high-end design at a reasonable price, also, creating this kind of excitement to customers greatly boosts the sales and profit for H&M. Highly-brand conscious customer will tend to expect more and more designer product and therefore helps H&M to keep their sales high. Since the number of each item in this collection is limited that makes this product line also be valuable, precious and collectable.

First Nation issues- Free Port Indonesia

It was until the end of todays class, I couldn’t come up with first nation issues on my own. But when Mr. Jackes mentions about how first nations issue reminds me of home, I suddenly remember about the Freeport mining and decided to create a post regarding this issue.

Image source: http://www.tribunnews.com/bisnis/2014/10/08/banyak-faktor-kecelakaan-pt-freeport-indonesia-tak-dapat-penghargaan

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc is one of biggest gold producer in a world. This US company has one of its branch located in Papua,Jaya Pura, Indonesia. This Company exploited Gold, Coper, Nickel, and Uranium in the High Mountain of Cartenz. The product of the mining is transported around the world.

Since the company was first operated in 1967, there has been massive issues regarding environmental,cultural and sustainability in surroundings mining area. In addition, recently, there has been rumour saying that Freeport wants to extend their contract for another 20 years after the 40 years of operation in Indonesia. Even though the deal between Indonesian government and the Free port management has not been resolved, a lot of controversy has been going on especially in social media such as twitter.

One of the biggest issue that considered is the quality of life of the worker; several local news recorded, there has been numerous deadly accident. Not only this year, in May 2013 another accident killed 28 employees all at once. Most of the accident caused by the burial of workers in the construction sites due to the collapsed of underground mine . In addition,this mining site is well known as one of the hardest mining operation in the world. Even from the building process of the construction site itself, Free port has to exploit large part of mangrove forests around Cartenz mountain.

Looking from financial point of view, Freeport has been successful and prosperous. In 2013, the company sold 4 billion pounds of copper at an average realized price of about $3.28 per pound. It generated $13.4 billion in revenues from the sale of copper, over $1.5 billion from gold mining and nearly $1.2 billion from its molybdenum operations. Forbes added “It holds a 90.64% interest in these mining operations with the balance held by the Indonesian government” This means, Indonesia government only owns less then 10% from the total revenue of the production in the country. This amount remain questionable and unaccepted by Indonesians since the operation itself has brought damages on the environment and the threat the availability of natural resources for the future generation.

Even though The Freeport has paid 20 million us dollars during 1998-2004 to secure the reserve, the amount of externalities of this operations is far beyond what the company paid.I have question the business ethics of a large company such as Freeport and consider their responsibility of operating in other country. First, the mining site is located in Papua, one of biggest island in Indonesia that still populated with 255 indigenous tribe who still live under the old tradition system. Secondly, there has been massive environmental destruction and ecosystem in the surrounding areas. In this case,I believe not extending the partnership with Free Port is the best choice. In short term, government will be able to at least try to evaluate and recover the damages after years of operation. In long term, this will allows the local tribe to maximize their natural resources,maintain environment sustainability and therefore have better quality of life for the future generations .

Site C project, is it worth it?

Site C Clean Energy Project is a long term construction project by Canadian government to build dam on the Peace river,BC. The dam is expected to be a source of electrical power which would generate more than 400,000 homes. Purposely, this project was launched in order to satisfy growing energy demand in the future, according to what has been projected by the BC hydro Forecast.Nonetheless, this project has brought several controversy as the project will not only effect the natural ecosystem and biodiversity, but also the culture and practices of the residential area.

Even though the project will helps to manage sustainable energy in the future, the building process of the dam will create externalities to the surrounding area.The construction process of the project will result in the flooding over 100 kilometres of the river valley, which included wild life habitats, heritages sites and agricultural lands.. During that certain period, the project construction will exterminate all economics activity such as;farming, fishing and hunting. In the short run, this negative externalities of production of the Dam should be considered since this will effect directly to the populations day to day living. I strongly urge, the Site C project and estimate the total lost created by this event, and therefore further steps of this project could be considered closely as this will impact a lot of stakeholders in the same time- for long term.

In other hand, this project will also create several advantages. Vancouver sun quoted”Site C represents a significant economic boost for B.C. Construction would contribute $3.2 billion to our GDP and generate about 33,000 jobs.”Even though this might not create advantages for the infected area, this will help the general economical performance of BC and therefore, it actually creating benefits for BC in the long run. This advantages should again be take in consideration to determine whether this project should be launched in upcoming 2015.

Looking at the disadvantages and advantages, I encourage the C plan to further work with the BC government to accurately measure and estimate the total loss of this project. In addition, this estimation could be exposed to media in order for surrounding population to recognize the pros and cons of this issue. Both short and long term should be considered closely, since both will affect the quality of life, economical, and cultural life of population of BC.

References

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/site-c-or-lng-pick-one-say-b-c-first-nations-1.2776481

https://www.bchydro.com/energy-in-bc/projects/site_c.html