(This is a continuation of Can Business Avoid the Environmental Crisis)

My beliefs were swayed a bit after James Tansey, a researcher in sustainability, came in to our class to talk about it.

Right now it is quite prevalent that companies are seizing advantage of the environmental “crisis” by introducing green products and being environmentally friendly in production. If this trend continues, which I feel it might as no matter what happens as population grows, everything else will need to as well (businesses, food supply, transportation, amount of homes), businesses will all have to find a certain way in which they can reduce their environmental footprint of the earth. Most consumers will start to avoid companies that are not taking these steps as they feel personally if they purchase from them they will be effectively harming the environmental.

To end off, businesses are going to have to adapt to this trend in order to be profitable or somewhat successful in the future.

*interesting fact learned* – Cows are the most inefficient source of meat and are the most harmful to the ozone layer due to the release of methane.

Last year Old Spice release a commercial featuring Isiah Mustafa. It was aired on television and on Old Spice’s YouTube channel. The video is the most viewed advertisement on you tube with over 37 million views. Adweek reported that the success of the advertisement resulted in a  107% jump in sales. The commercial’s concept and theme was carried over into the next two Old Spice advertisement releases. However, after the last one was released it was quite apparent that the idea of the “Old Spice Guy” was getting old. I was impressed to see that Old Spice actually changed the structure of the its following commercials. I thought they may try and use the idea till it was bone dry. This is an example of constant innovation.

With the success they have had imitators. Dairy Queen ripped off the idea completely with advertisements featuring “The Dairy Queen Guy“, a person who follows the exact same traits of Isiah Mustafa. I feel Dairy Queen receives too much praise for its new line of commercials which are just mirror copies of Old Spice’s adverts.

Regardless of copycats, Old Spice has immortalized itself as one of the premier advertising companies of the 21st century.

In Patrick Pascal’s blog post, The decline of the consoles, he discusses the decreasing profits generated by video game consoles, mainly Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Nintendo Wii.

Taken from: http://media.industrygamers.com/news/5018/ai_140.jpg

One thing that I would like to argue with  is his statement,  “The revenue from gaming companies is not dependent on the sales of the consoles itself, but is more dependent on services (like x-box live) and the sales of games and accessories.” While this does hold merit as Microsoft does make a large number of its revenue from offering add-ons such as Xbox live I wouldn’t consider its main form of income. I feel the reason Patrick has come to this conclusion is that the recent income from consoles has been declining. In actuality console companies do make substantial amounts from the physical sale of the console, but come in spurts. On release, a new game system will skyrocket revenue. It has been five years to this day since the PS3 came out and just under five years since any new gaming console has been released. When new consoles are released by the three big powers (Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony) they become the main source of income.

When students talk about innovation, a key part of an entrepreneur, they generally think about the technological advances within the last ten to fifteen years and identify with the ones who have made those advancements. Yet one of the greatest entrepreneurs ever, 6th in “Small Business on msnbc.com”  Top 10 Entrepreneurs, was from nearly a hundred years ago. Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor company, is this entrepreneur.

  Henry Ford started his famous auto mobile manufacturing company in 1903 with $28,000 in capital. By 1908 Ford’s innovative mind (trait 3 from QuickMBA’s Definition of an Entrepreneur) produced the innovative Model-T, a powerful, affordable, and left steering-wheel car. This car forged the way for all automotive sales since. Five years after its debut nearly 250,000 were sold with each year returning over 100% gains from the previous. This event made Henry Ford fit the first two traits of an entrepreneur, speed and amount of wealth creation, defined by QuickMBA.

There is always risk when starting a business, but Henry Ford took it head on. With his innovative, profitable mind he was able to create one of the most profitable lines of cars ever and in turn a fortune 500 company.

Henry Ford is the definition of entrepreneur.

The NFL is already very profitable, but NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is looking for it to become even more. He is considering an expansion in to European countries.

Every year a few teams take the journey to Europe to play a friendly against another NFL team. The events are extremely popular with sell out crowds. The Commissioner hopes to have more games and create  permanent franchise there.

If the NFL does expand to Europe:

1)  United States fans will find it harder to follow their favourite team when playing in Europe due to the time difference.

2) Teams cost of travel will increase if they travel to England during the season multiple times.

3) If a franchise is set up in Europe, that team will have to travel to the United States every second week (most likely). Making it hard for European fans to follow games.

4) Europe already has soccer as its major sport and American football has no chance of debunking that.

This plan is a poor one, and the costs would greatly outweigh any benefit. It would make much more sense to base a NFL team out of Canada instead of Europe.

Article used: http://celebpromoter.com/roger-goodell-nfl-london-britain/

Going green, reducing footprints and being eco-friendly are all terms that are becoming more and more common in the world of business. Most companies feel in order to survive they must adapt to the trend of becoming a earth friendly business. Starbucks, Ford, and Subway have all adapted  their business models to accommodate this popular issue.

With all this movement it must be asked, are businesses going to have to permanently change in order to survive? Or, can this just be waited out instead of modifying a companies business model?

I personally believe that as this eco trend becomes more and more common, less and less people will actually acknowledge the steps companies are taking to be eco-friendly many will just assume that most have made the switch. While this may not be true if a company is constantly exposed as severely harming the environment.

I have never been a true believer in the global environmental problem that so many are claiming as a crisis. The effects we have on the world is far less than many global warming activists claim. Yet I still feel that going green is beneficial, just not as much as some think.

In Alex Mascott’s post, Taking Africa by Alcohol, he discusses Johnnie Walker’s decision to move to Africa. He showed the labeling system for quality from red, being the lowest, to blue, and than King George V at the top. What surprised me is that he did not consider the ethical portion of marketing in Africa. Though Johnnie Walker is making it’s red label affordable for lower class citizens, the real target is criminalized groups and people of wealth.

I feel as though Johnnie Walker might become the official alcohol of the criminal and rebel gangs in Africa. Now that has a certain appeal to some people but in the large picture, most will think negatively of label.

This expansion could lead to a decrease in sales of Johnnie Walker else where in the world as some don’t want to have any association to criminal gangs. The main target, wealthy citizens who afford the top of the line Scotchs,  won’t  want to  drink the same alcohol as criminals in Africa.

Johnnie Walker should carefully consider its expansion; debate the ethical issues and  weigh the profit expectation to the cost they may succumb too due to this ethical choice.

Yesterday in Commerce we had a special guest speaker, Andrew Burton-Jones. He told our class about the IT field in business and how being efficient with technology in your business can boost it to the sky.

It’s only a matter of time before all businesses becomes infused with technology which poses the question, when will the computer-geeks take over the business men/women of the world?

With technology advancing, business people will adapt. More and more business students are taking IT courses. Students are utilizing a new program starting at UBC called BUCS. BUCS gives students an opportunity to major in both Business and Computer Science. I feel this is one of the most valuable programs available at UBC. With the knowledge of business and the ability to combine computer science, future entrepreneurs will have endless possibilities.

So to answer the question, businessmen and businesswomen will never be replaced by computer-geeks but infact will become one themselves. In order to survive in business one must have the ability to use all resources present, including knowledge of other fields.

In this past week I’ve seen numerous things stolen, my friends bikes, my bike and even my floor mates laptop. Whats most shocking is the fact that his laptop was in his LOCKED room. The intruder came in through the window and snatched the laptop and took off. Laptop’s contents are often more valuable then the piece of technology itself. A software company has picked up on this developing trend and have posed a solution or at least an aid for technology owners. 

LoJack, a company directed towards security of automobiles has now expanded into the security and recovery of laptops and desktops. The software can locate, lock and delete sensitive files, while alerting the recovery-center at LoJack who will track your laptop down for you. Many company’s have even started integrating their systems with LoJack including Acer, Dell, and Gateway. LoJack itself is very hard to remove as  it is imprinted on BIOS chip. A thief could go as far as to replace the hard-drive and LoJack would still work.

So if you’re worried about the increase in thefts don’t fear just install LoJack.

I was reading through Schumpeter’s blog on The Economist and I came across something quite interesting.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is the world’s biggest producer of computers. Recently with the stiff competition  of hardware in the IT field HP decided to switch battles. Instead of spending more money to keep up with innovative, high-tech hardware HP spent $10.3 billion on a software firm, Autonomy. The software market provides larger profits and Autonomy has really targeted a direct market. Autonomy produces software that sifts through unstructured data such as email, and documents. This software is very useful for large businesses and corporations.

This move is bold. HP had just spent $1.2 billion to expand to the highly competitive but profitable cell phone market, by buying palm. They had little luck with the expansion but the OS system designed for the phones is widely recognized for quality and performance. HP hopes to keep the OS but if unable it will sell it along with the rest of their assets. This will be a huge change to the computer industry and will give another company to claim the top the title selling computer brand.