Christopher Meloni published his insights about setting up a business with best friends on his Blog, which made me reflect on our class 18.

In class 18, there were several successful former students graduated from Sauder who established their own business in different fields. One of them was in California and trying to develop their business with his best friend- a science student graduated from UBC. This has grabbed my attention since I have heard several cases in which best friends break up because of money issue. Considering your personal relationship and feelings, it’s truly a dilemma to work or not work with your partner. Then how can we successfully handle this?

Christopher Meloni states that before being enthusiastic of running a business, you should determine three things: what’s your goal? Who is the priority? Will you still run it if they are not your partners?

Since you will spend much time working together, I really agree with Christopher that you should schedule some time separating from each other to think about problems and what you can do. Negotiation is essential and you still need to decide who is the decision maker.

What are they trying to do? ———to give us a better life.

   United Nations (UN) targets on a less conflicts and less suffering world with equality.

People from some of the developing countries suffer from starving, sanitation, and poverty problems. The UN provides them with funding to help them walk out of the bad situations. Furthermore, the UN also assists their governments in setting or amending policies in order to maintain steady socities.

However, the UN is such a huge organization that needs to bring benefits to so many countries, so it would be really difficult for them to maintain the benefits they created for the countries or regions. This is the reason for the emergence of the social enterprises. Social enterprises can go on resolving the detailed problems after the UN has established the framework. For example, the UN provides adequate money for Bangladesh to control the flood and improve the sanitation; people in Bangladesh would still be struggling in how to use the money since they are lack of technology as well as knowledge. Finally they may fail in taking the chance to make a better life. So it is up to Arc or Social enterprises setting all the details for the problem. Social enterprises are required to exist because they can provide strategies and assistance to people in those countries and lead them adapt to the changes of their countries and contribute to the developments of their countries.

The well-funded United Nations paves the way for the further development of the Social enterprises that focus more on changing the world in an innovative and detailed way, what the UN is doing is  “teaching a man to fish; feeding him for a lifetime.” rather than “giving a man a fish; feeding him for a day.”

“Sauder School of Business.” About Arc. Web. 9 Nov. 2014. <http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/Global_Reach/ARC_Initiative/About_ARC>.http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/United_Nations.aspx

Look around you; look around the supermarket or the grocery store, whenever you pick up a product how much chances you can see a MADE IN CHINA on it?

I’d say at least 40% among all products.

Canada has signed a reciprocal currency deal in order to fostering the easier trade between Canada and China—the easier usage of the Canadian dollar and Chinese RMB.

What came up on your mind when you see this?

I have lived in China for 18 years, in my perspective, I cannot even remember any products in the market is made in Canada. China, the potential wide-range developing market, is definitely worth the efforts on increasing the export. Increasing export gives the advantage of spreading risks and makes more profits for the company. The world market is more diverse than one as the saying “do not keep your eggs in one basket”. If there is a recession in one market, at least you still have back-up strengths. People are paying more and more attention on the world market because the diversity of the world market allows more demands and offers more opportunities to make money. Here is an example in China: the food security has always being concerned by all of the people living in China and aroused a heated debate. Some American companies already took the opportunity and joined the Chinese market by claiming they have pure milk and powdered milk of really good quality. The result shows that American farmers are selling off all the milk their cows can produce at record-high prices, even though the high prices of those imported products, they really sold well in China. Business is all about seeking chances and taking them.

Hence, Canada should learn from the previous trade prototype between America and China and step into this huge market for itself.

I would like to reflect on my individual assignment2 which did not get an expected grade last week. After our TA gave feedback to this assignment and I reread my business recommendations, I think there are several improvements needed to be aware of.

First, to write a good recommendation, the first thing to do is to identify the main problem while using other points to fix it. For example, the problem of whether the company should shut down the skateboard department or not. In this case, I calculated the break-even point for the skateboard and figured out it is losing money every year. However, I do not think it’s going to worth the cost of closing it, but I rushed in ending this to fit all the information in one page where the table for the assets can be less important. I should have addressed the main problem at first and draw the outline of what leads to it. There are more aspects that I need to take into consideration before I made the conclusion.

Another problem of my recommendation would be the connection between the business tool and the content. I only made a few connections while demonstrating my recommendations. I should demonstrate what those charts are for. To make the problem really clear, which means to make the problem more easy to understand and visible, I should use more multiple tools to illustrate the problem. Like the SWOT, why is the SWOT helpful for analyzing the problem?

   Philip Wong’s posts named “The design of the Blackberry Passport” demonstrated a  really good analysis about the strength and main goal of the Blackberry Company.

   He wrote on the topic of the new innovative product of the Blackberry Company—The Blackberry Passport. It catered the customer segments by improving and revamping their “using experience” and helped the company rebuild their value proposition among all of their customers.Depending on the external research, I think Philip made a really good analysis about this new launched product. Although Apple successfully became the limelight in the end of the September, blackberry also made a sound. The blackberry company believes that the Passport has its distinct advantages than other smartphones.

   For example, its secure system (which what the Blackberry is famous for) and its redesigned keyboard. They used a comparison with Apple’s product: when you want to type a message to your friend, do you feel bothered if there’s a virtual keyboard blocked all your view? The answer is definitely “yes” for me. So the utilization of the physical keyboard actually increased the efficiency of typing and provided a better experience for their customers.

   Recently, a conflict between the first nation and the BC Hydro’s $8-billion Site C hydroelectric megaproject in the north of BC has become a public concerned issue for the province and the federal government.
According to “First Nation chiefs to stage Site C showdown”, the problem mainly lies to building the dams would cause the flood of 83 kilometers of the Peace River Valley, which lead to the environmental damages and impacts on fishing, hunting or other activities in first nation area. But with the increasing population and the increasing utilization of the energy by mining companies, the society requires a relatively clean energy resource to maintain our sustainability.
Under such circumstance, how the first nation, who claims “B.C. is Indian land”, affect the organization’s business model? As far as I am concerned, this external impact for the BC Hydro will highly restrict the possibilities of taking any actions for the megaproject. While on the contrary, they will quickly shift their business more on rather small projects that setting up the system with fewer effects for nature, for example, a group of windmills or the solar systems. This external impact directly links to their future strategies and leads the company to change their primary focus in this region-at least for a couple of years before the wild use of the clean energy inevitable.

 Cited to http://www.vancouversun.com/news/First+Nation+chiefs+stage+Site+showdown/10215965/story.html in the addtional readings.

        Came from Vanessa’s blog post:

Will retail shift to being completely online.

   Vanessa pointed out that the “market changing” for many companies, especially companies like Staples and Blockbuster which are experiencing silent changes in their market strategies. Blockbuster has gone completely online and Staples is following its pace.

This marketing adjustment results in the shutdown of numerous branches of these companies. I think Vanessa’s suggestion about turning their stories into many backrooms can be undoubtedly valuable in their future development. Online shopping allows people to participate in a more convenient lifestyle and to broaden their possibilities of choosing products, but that also brings the heavy burden of the expensive transition fees. Due to the high expenses of the famous companies, online shopping clients nowadays are more willing to choose the relatively small companies to deliver goods. Customers’ privacy and security have become legitimate concerns for many of them. In addition to this point, it can relate themselves more with the transit advantages when they truly identify the needs of the customers. They can be more effective if they develop their own approach of delivering or cooperate with a company that can benefit their customers in a further way. This can resolve the problem of shipping the goods to their customers and uncertainty of the product during the delivery.

In com101 Class 6 we spent plenty of time talking about the marketing strategy, specifically we took Dell as a successful example. Dell changed its marketing strategy and tried to avoid being stuck by a wide range of competitors and focus on creating values and delivering solutions for its customers. This allowed them to cut the cost of the middleman and therefore earn more profits. More significantly, it was able to directly understand the market demand so it could fast react to the flexibility of the marketplace.

Indeed, the graph above illustrates that Dell has been through a rapid and dramatic increase since 90’. Especially after 94’, its revenue increased 21790 in short 5 years, which was more than 7 times greater than that of the last five years. Also, its inventory remarkably declined because of this shift of its marketing strategy as it provided Dell with high efficiency as well as quick returns to the investors. Dell transformed to a $12 billion company in just 13 years. The success of Dell Company points out the marketing problems of other companies that existed for many years.

However, their combined new strategy also has drawbacks, which should be aware of before running their company in the future. They should continuously analyze the shortages and take action. First of all, what is likewise the most important one is their poor customer service comparing with their “big dreams” in eliminating the retailers. The withdrawal of their retailers straightly leads to the limit of choices and limit of customer experience. Clients are used to testing and trying the products in person to see if they truly want them. With the development of the technology, creating 3D models on the Internet can be a really convenient way to solve the problem. These 3D models need to be exactly the same with the products and provide the customers with a Full-circle Appraisal of the products on the Internet in order to improve their on-line shopping experiences and to win a better patent among customers. The second weakness is that although they can exclude the retailer employees, they should not rush to do it. Why? Their relatively new way of marketing needs more customer services to help people to purchase their products and to get used to this buying experience.

References:

Magretta, J. (n.d.). The Power of Virtual Integration: An Interview with Dell Computer’s Michael Dell. Retrieved from http://hbr.org/1998/03/the-power-of-virtual-integration-an-interview-with-dell-computers-michael-dell/ar/1

What is the strength and weaknesses of Dell? (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_strength_and_weaknesses_of_Dell

see the original site I created for this blog at http://blogs.ubc.ca/hugelessonfornokia/

To modern technology industrials and companies arena, the keystone of the success of a company is not simply relying on their innovations anymore, but their marketing strategy and their fast reacts to the unpredictable global marketplace. After reading the article “Why Nokia’s marketing strategy failed” by Peter Sandeen, I could not help myself thinking about the differences between two companies that have gone diverging situations—Nokia and Apple.

Nokia, the pioneer in the telecommunication and innovative technologies, had been bought by Microsoft for preventing them from bankrupting. According to all the research that I did for them, their failure could primarily blame the uncertainty of their goals or, in another word; they did not identify their value propositions correctly. Thought back ten years ago, Nokia was the limelight among all the mobile devices; my dream was to have a latest model of Nokia rather than iPhones.

The recession of Nokia can track back to that they fail to “communicate” with their consumers and convey the messages and reasons why they need the buy Nokia’s products instead of others’. This was a huge lesson that Nokia cannot afford. In contrast, Apple focuses on building their value propositions; they take the whole Apple families as a whole and provide a number of great reasons for customers to purchase their products. They eliminated all the unimportant opportunities to concentrate on their customer’s satisfaction. Taking iPad as an example, 32% of their users use it constantly while 42% users saying that they use it at least once a day. The high level engagement of the customers in the Apple stores and Apple devices provides Apple with much higher consumer loyalty.

According to these articles, I figured out that value proposition is just as important as the soul of a human. A company needs to do it correctly in order to attract their clients continuously. Most companies chose to do it in a singular way which means they only choose one area that they can be the “best” to beat all the competitors. However, missing the boat in evaluating themselves can directly lead to failures.

References:

Deng, J. (2013, September 23). Apple’s value proposition. Retrieved from http://blogs.ubc.ca/junyuandeng/2013/09/29/apples-value-proposition/

Sandeen, P. (n.d.). Why Nokia’s Marketing Strategy Failed. Retrieved from http://www.petersandeen.com/nokia-marketing-strategy-fails/

Business ethics and the “London Whale”

 BY    JiaJing ( Katherine) Shen

    

   Business ethics can be characterized as the moral standard of responsible decision making. In my point of view, I think business ethics can be related to the “London Whale” trading debacle. Depending on the news from September 2013, London Whale had caused 6 billion lost in a bank named JPMorgan Chase. This huge loss was mainly due to their wrong judgment on the small trader who worked for the chief investment unit.

How important is the Business Ethics to YOU?? 

What if it is not helping you make more money? then? 

 

I think one of the most important qualities for a businessman who has a high set of ethics is that they should be a good leader which not only means they should have the ability to handle normal business activities but they can also solved the potential risks exist in the operation of the company. Also the records showed that PMorgan’s chief investment officer has hidden their unprofitable investments to minimize losses. This obeyed the principle of honest in running a company as well as they failed to create a comprehensive company information system. The honesty of a company is significant because their managers need to make the decisions depend on the company’s real situation and they can also earn a better reputation even they made mistakes. All these disabilities in achieving the high set of ethics led to their crush with huge losses and ruined their reputation.

References:

picture:　http://lexicon.ft.com/term?term=London-whale

others: Isidore, C. and James O. (2013, September 19). JPMorgan fined $920 million in ‘London Whale’ trading loss. Retrieved from http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/19/investing/jpmorgan-london-whale-fine/

New York Time. (2013, January 19). Lessons from the London Whale. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/opinion/sunday/lessons-from-the-london-whale.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A14%22%7D&_r=2&