Volvo is one of the biggest and most well known automobile manufactures in the world. It is especially famous for its high quality and function. Geely is a small private enterprise located in ZheJiang province in China. However, such a small enterprise purchased 100% share of Volvo automobile from Ford in 2010. It was one of the most important moments of Chinese automobile industry.

As Japan has Toyota, Germany has BWM and Benz, U.S has GM, China’s automobile industry is able to be lead to the world by Volvo. China then can expand its market worldwide, which is capable of being more successful in the future strategically. Also, both Volvo and Geely will benefit more from attracting more consumers domestically since it is a nominally a Chinese brand. Chinese consumers of course will be willing to buy a domestic brand car rather than cars from other country. It is a chance to Geely, as well as to Volvo. Geely is able to expand its market through Volve’s international influence and advanced technology, while Volvo can convert its loss to profits through China’s big market. The big problem is that how are they going to corporate well with each other so that maximized the profits.

Picture: http://www.themotorreport.com.au/50081/ford-and-geely-announce-volvo-sale

Website：http://wenku.baidu.com/view/90b2e3be960590c69ec376a7.html

Social entrepreneurship is the recognition of a social problem and the uses of entrepreneurship principle to organize, create and manage a social adventure to achieve a desired social change. Lots of social enterprises are set up to help people all around the world in various aspects. One Acre Fund is one of the Forbes top 30 social enterprises, which is established by Andrew Youn. The One Acre Fund’s headquarter is located in Bungoma, Kenya. Basically, it makes low-interest loans and provides agricultural education to East African farmers so that they know how to farm more efficiently.

As we all know, Africa is facing severe food crisis. People in Africa usually spend the majority of their money on food. Even so, lots of family is not able to feed every single member, which results in the death of children. Therefore, Andrew Youn thought about setting up a social enterprise to help these people in Africa. Basically, the One Acre Fund imparts African more efficient agricultural education to help them grow more. Andrew Youn provides corn insurance and promises that they will double their profits in one season. In 2011, they’ve grown 75,000 families, and they dream of growing more than 130,000 in the future. This is an excellent organization that helps people around the world get rid of starvation. The question is how are they going to make the organization more sustainable?

URL: http://www.oneacrefund.org

Picture:https://twitter.com/OneAcreFund

I read Vanessa Song’s Blog and her opinion about Urthecast. I found it was attractive. Therefore, I wrote comments on Urthecast according to her opinion and my own thoughts.

“By developing the first high-definition streaming video platform of Earth, UrtheCast plans to change the way we view the world.”According to the UrtheCast, it providing the launch installation and maintenance of the cameras. Basically, UrtheCast will benefit from Earth observation data sales, media content sales, application platform sales, as well as web advertising

It is used to record live video directly from space has never been done before. Consumers are able to see the most part of the world by live video and high-resolution pictures through these two cameras from the space.

UrtheCast is approximately getting totally 100-120 million dollars per year from the variety of aspects. And it is a market filled with opportunities since the demand for UrtheCast getting higher. The main problem they are facing is that they have to raise enough money by persuading investors to put money on them. But they cannot make any money until 2013, which will definitely make their life become very tough. It’s going to be like “making money or being bankrupt” next year. How are they going to raise enough funds? This is the biggest problem they have to deal with before they go to “strike gold”.

Picture: http://www.techshout.com/internet/2012/26/urthecast-plans-to-broadcast-the-earth-in-hd/

Blog: http://www.urthecast.com

UrtheCast: “View the Earth in a New Way”

I was reading Liu, Rae’s blog. I found it was pretty interesting. Thus, I would like to make comments on her blog and Energyaware based on what I learnt.

Energyaware is a company that focuses on selling software, hardware products. One of the products that they are producing is the power tab, which is used to measure how much electricity you are using at home and how much it costs you. Basically, it tells how much electricity you are using for each electrical equipment, and how much electricity you are wasting even if you switch all the equipment. In which case, it can actually save a lot of money for consumers.

Energy aware technology in-home display is a new (oligopoly) market, which means it does not have too many firms yet. The only main competitor of Energyaware is a company called Onzo. It is not really competitive to expand market to the highly demanded countries (the countries with high electricity fee). However, it is said that consumers could not buy the power tab from any retail stores or online, which would push some consumers away. I would recommend them to provide a way for consumers to buy the products directly online or set up retail stores if they have enough fund. Energyaware is aim at developing to a million dollar company in four years, which is reasonable if they can expand the market well. How are they going to develop their advantage and avoid their disadvantage? This is the main problem they will be facing in the next 4 years.

url:http://www.energy-aware.com/our-customers/

where are you headed after Graduation–Thoughts after hearing Janice Cheam