Monthly Archives: October 2014

Last week the Federal Court of Appeal granted the Gitxaala Nation approval to apply for a judicial review of the Northern Gateway pipeline. The Gitxaala are arguing that their rights were not considered when the Northern Gateway pipeline was granted approval. The proposed pipeline would send huge tankers through the indigenous harvesting territory. Indigenous nations tend to be extremely protective of their sacred land, and for such reasons rarely let companies infringe on their territory. Indeed, it is tribes such as the Gitxaala or the Tsilhogoti’n, as mentioned in readings, that are major external factors that impact companies such as Enbridge.

Enbridge has been fighting for the approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline since the mid 2000s but to this day still has severe opposition. The proposed pipeline would cost between $5.5-6.5 Billion USD and would generate billions of dollars of revenue for Enbridge and the First Nations tribes along the route. In an effort to help persuade the different tribes to sign on they have offered numerous different incentives for them. Incentives such as, agreeing to hire aboriginals to be 15% of their total labor force, and offering the tribes a 10% total equity stake in the pipeline over the next 30 years. However, such incentives are still not enough to purswade the Gitxaala. Infact the Gitxaala just recently evicted railway, logging, and sport industries off their property.  They claim that the Tsilhoqot’in v. British Columbia legal case, the case we were supposed to read for class, gave them confidence in their decisions. This goes to show how native tribes are banding together in an effort to prevent industries from profiting off of them. Going forward Enbridge and other companies trying to accomplish similar goals will have to take greater steps if they want to negotiate with the first nations tribes. Mere cash incentives have proven not to be enough motivation for the natives to sign off. For the companies to have the greatest success rate they need to learn more about their way of life and fully appreciate their culture and the land more than they previously have.

Sources

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gitxsan-first-nation-evicting-rail-logging-sport-fishing-interests-1.2703664

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/There+will+pipeline/10122968/story.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/gitxaala-first-nation-granted-leave-to-appeal-northern-gateway-pipeline-1.2779604

Earlier this week Yahoo announced that they are the lead investor and financier of the social network Snapchat. After making over $9-Billion USD on the IPO of the chinese E-commerce website Alibaba, Yahoo hopes to invest in the tech start up Snapchat. Snapchat is a social network that allows users to send pictures and videos to each other and have them delete after a small amount of time. After being launched in July 2011 Snapchat has grown to become one of the most widely used social networks.

After turning down offers from Google, and Facebook, Snapchat has seemingly agreed to partner with Yahoo for an apparent $10-billion USD evaluation. This offer is more than three times the valuation that Facebook offered Snapchat late last year. However, to some this price seems to be quite high considering that Snapchat has yet to make any profit. The struggle that Snapchat is having is that they need to find a way to earn a profit off the nearly 700 million Snapchats that are sent daily. In February 2007 Youtube was purchased by Google for the price of $1.65-Billion dollars. At the time that Youtube was purchased they had yet to make any profit. Last year alone Google made $5.6-Billion dollars off of Youtube add revenue alone. Proving that although the company was not profitable at the time of purchase there was revenue to be made.

If Yahoo does purchase Snapchat for $10-Billion dollars Yahoo will need to figure out how they could profit off of the millions of users that the app generates on a daily basis or else they run the risk of sinking billions of investor’s dollars into a failing business model.

Sources

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/yahoo-said-close-to-investing-in-snapchat-at-10-billion-value/article20917778/

http://mashable.com/2014/10/03/yahoo-investing-in-snapchat/

In Andrew Killas’ blog he talked about how Apple has made profits through entering and engineering new markets, in addition he went on to speak about how Apple has the potential to help the watch industry expand to a new target audience and grow as a whole. Although I agree with what Andrew is saying, I plan on analyzing Apple’s usual product strategy.

October 23, 2001 Apple revolutionized the music industry with the release of their first line of iPods. Although there were similar products in the market at the time, Apple reengineered what was existing and created a masterpiece. To this day Apple’s iPod is still leading the music playing industry.  This same concept of reengineering a product could be seen with not only their iPods, but with their computers, and with their iPhones. They enter a market that was previously existing and proceed to better their competition. So in relation to the idea that Andrew was developing, Apple is continuing its prevailing market strategy once again by redesigning and improving the everyday watch.

Apple’s strategy has consistently proven to be profitable for them, which is why I believe that the release of the IWatch will be a revolutionary product, just like the iPod was thirteen years ago.

Andrew’s Blog

https://blogs.ubc.ca/andrewkillas/