(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.