I agree completely with Ernest Fung’s blog post questioning the credibility of the “Occupy” movements. They have become lost in translation and no one knows what they want anymore. I truly believe the original Occupy Wall Street movement had positive intentions and had intelligent revolutionaries directing every move, but it has evolved into a circus with no real motives.

The original Occupy leaders had a vision for a reform but it is being compromised by the sceptical motives of the people actually at the Occupy movements. The death of a woman in Occupy Vancouver lead to the ultimate demise of the protest movement in Vancouver. The woman died of an apparent drug overdose which seriously undermines the credibility of the protestors. This overdose was the second overdose in under a week at the Occupy Vancouver tent city.

Many of the protestors have claimed they are not homeowners and are unemployed. OF course there are many who are taxpaying citizens, but those who are not, are undermining the entire protest.

The multiple incidents lead to a BC Supreme Court injunctions which have disbanded the tent city constructed at Vancouver Art Gallery. The Occupy movements have lost all credibility and need to realize they are not getting any of the changes they are hoping for.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/14/anti-occupy-wall-street-p_n_1092494.html

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Occupy+Vancouver+protesters+abandon+tent+city+plans/5756761/story.html

David Booth’s blog post regarding Apples supreme innovation is an excellent read and really made me interested in how Apple became so innovative. The late Steve Jobs credited Apple’s tremendous innovation to the well-balanced, intelligent people Apple employs.

“I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.” – 1994

I believe that a well balanced life with many interests and pursuits combined with intelligence and intellect is the most important factor associated with success and Apple has exemplifies these viewpoints.

Through Apple’s market leading innovation they exceed expectations set for them year in and year out. 20.34 million iPhones were sold in the spring quarter of 2011, representing a 142 percent unit growth from the previous spring quarter. Also during this quarter 9.25 million iPads were sold, which is a 183 percent increase from the year previous. In total Apple recorded 28.75 billion dollars of revenue and 7.31 billion dollars in profit.

http://appleinnovation.blogspot.com/

https://blogs.ubc.ca/davidbooth/2011/11/20/apples-supply-chain/

We have been told about Direct Business Model and I was interested in learning more because, at first, I did not see how this would be successful. I looked into Dell Computer’s business model and I came away with a new understanding.

Michael Dell wanted Dell Computers to offer customers a customer-centric philosophy that would serve them with respect. He also wanted to cut costs, improve delivery time, all while maintaining supreme customer service. This combination, before Dell, was almost an impossible combination and Michael Dell had to innovate to make it possible.

He quickly established the “direct model”, which he owes almost completely to his success in the computer industry. The direct model improved efficiency by removing all intermediaries thereby allowing the company to speak directly to the customers which allowed Dell to customize orders according to the customers needs. The direct model can also be attributed to the lower costs Dell can offer because they do not have the operational costs competitors may have.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/15477-dell-finally-improving-its-business-model

Artificial intelligence is the future of technology and this article shows Google’s pursuits to dominate the search engine market. Google spends $2.84 billion last year on research and development, with artificial intelligence being one of the main focuses.

Google prides themselves on being the best search engine on the internet and they are using artificial intelligence to further expand on their already dominant market share. Google Instant is a new search tool which uses AI to guess what a person is searching for as they type keywords into the search box. Google has estimated that Google Instant saves users two to five seconds per search. The time saved will increase users on Google and therefore increase advertising revenue.

Speech recognition is a major concentration of Google’s artificial intelligence research. Speech recognition is growing fast in the mobile search engines and their research proves that more people chose to search when they can via speech recognition.

I believe research and development of artificial intelligence is an important aspect of not only Google but all companies with the resources to do so. Speech recognition and other aspects of artificial intelligence will lead to many inventions that will better our quality of life.

FUBU is an influential company for entrepreneurs across the world and defines the saying “rags to riches”. Daymond John had a dream to create FUBU into one of the worlds most iconic clothing brands of all time. Growing up in the influential hip-hop community of Hollis, Queens; Daymond knew he needed to associate his clothing with the rising hip-hop scene around him.

Daymond started making tie-top hats for himself and his friends and realized the massive void in the market for clothing for Hispanic and African American men. His tie-top hats became a success in the neighbourhood and he quickly knew he needed to seize the opportunity he had in front of him and he established FUBU.

FUBU was absorbing almost all of Daymond’s time and money and Daymond knew he had to take a risk if he wanted FUBU to expand any further. The house he and his mother collectively owned was mortgaged and he quit his full-time job serving tables at Red Lobster so Daymond could begin to focus all of his attention on expanding the FUBU brand.

Daymond knew the importance of FUBU’s connection with hip-hop and he was able to convince LL Cool J to promote FUBU in videos and interviews. This was a huge break for FUBU and it quickly expanded into a nationally prominent company, recording annual sales of $350 million sales.

ttp://www.daymondjohn.com/about/

Twitter has taken over the social media world din the past year or two with everyone, from Lindsey Lohan to Barack Obama, “tweeting” about their day to day activities. What no one knew is that Twitter is a world of information if put into the right hands.

It had been previously used to gauge public mood, and also to predict box office sales. Johan Bollen a computational social scientist of Indiana University-Bloomington was able to do the astonishing. He used Twitter to predict the changes to the Dow Jones industrial Average with an accuracy of 86.7%.  

Bollen used a massive Google database to see how words are commonly used to express emotions. He then scanned 9.8 million tweets from 2.7 million tweeters between February and December 2008, selected the tweets that expressed emotions. He then analyzed the inputs and was amazed by the results. He analyzed twitters “mood” on important days such as the American presidential election as well as Thanksgiving. Anxiety was high the day before the election and happiness and calmness was apparent on Thanksgiving. He noticed that there was a direct correlation between calmness and the rises and falls of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. He then used a machine learning algorithm to predict whether the stock market would go up or down with the emotional data. The results were 86.7 percent accurate.

This is an incredible finding in the social media and I believe there will be an increased amount of attention focused on findings like these.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/twitter-crystal-ball/

I came across an article talking about companies “greenwashing” their products to appear more sustainable and environmentally friendly than they really are. Green products are the rage of the 21^st century and marketers are capitalizing on the demand for products that are deemed environmentally conscious.

Dasani bottled water is a classic example of a “greenwashed” product. Even though the bottle has been made from organic materials that can be broken down easier than their traditional plastic this product is far from green. The sustainable way to drink water is to use a reusable water bottle filled with tap water, however, when consumers see the words “green”, “environmentally friendly” and “sustainable” plastered all over products they do not take the time to think about whether or not these words carry any validity.

As consumers, we need to be able to differentiate between whose products are actually sustainable and whose are just trying to use this issue of environmental sustainability to purely turn a profit. By supporting truly green initiatives we as consumers will be able to weed out those falsely posing their products and help sustain those who are making a difference.

Here is a video describing how Dasani’s Plant Bottle is using greenwashing to market itself.