First nations disputes with the Canadian government date back many decades, and these disputes have mostly affected BC businesses in the political external aspect of the PEST analysis. The article titled “B.C Premier urges cooperation, not more litigation, as government and natives reach “new fork in road””, talks about how a recent court ruling confirmed that aboriginal title exists, meaning that First Nations people are legal owners of certain land. As a result, businesses will have no access to natural resources that are located within First Nations land, which will probably increase their costs in the cost structure of their business model as they will have to import some of their key resources from other places. Additionally, First Nations people are requesting that revenue sharing with them is increased. This would therefore change the tax structure of BC, which could negatively impact businesses as they could be forced to pay more taxes to help provide “economic certainty for everyone”, which would impact their cost structures and revenue streams.

This article also relates to another news article that I recently read titled “Atleo to lead talks between B.C, First Nations”, as it talks about how Premier Christy Clark has recently appointed national aboriginal leader Shawn Atleo as a First Nations representative that will lead talks between the government, business community and First Nations people of British Columbia. In this news article, we can see that even more progress has been made on improving the relationship between the First Nations people and the BC government, since these aboriginal people now have Atleo to officially represent their interests. As the relationship between First Nations people and the government improves, however, businesses throughout British Columbia will have to prepare for the possibility of more restrictions being imposed favouring aboriginal people and their territory over business operations.

Optional reading article source: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Premier+urges+cooperation+more+litigation+government+natives+reach+fork+road/10194776/story.html#__federated=1

News article source: http://www.leaderpost.com/technology/Atleo+lead+talks+between+First+Nations/10337143/story.html#__federated=1

Image source: http://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/news/canada/2014/06/26/supreme_court_grants_land_title_to_bc_first_nation_in_landmark_case/vcn5c1214jpg_1.jpg.size.xxlarge.promo.jpg

The external blog post titled “Why You Don’t Want to Give Financial Information to All of Your Investors” explains how the funding opportunities for startups have increased dramatically in recent years. It talks about how nowadays, startups get funded not only by big venture capitalists, but also by small investors through crowdsourcing and other methods. While this makes it easier for startups to raise capital, it also means that startups are now funded my countless small investors that in many cases are not trustworthy.  Therefore, it is important that startups don’t share their financial performance data with all of their investors but instead only with big investors, as they risk unethical and dishonest small investors leaking this data to other companies or competitors by doing this.

While public companies are forced to declare a quarterly financial report to their investors four times per year, startups that get funded by venture capitalists are not public and therefore can choose how often and what financial data to report to their VC investors, since their financial reports don’t have to comply with GAAP. This poses big questions for startups: how much access to delicate financial performance data should be given to small, sometimes non-trustworthy investors? How often should this data be reported to these investors? In my opinion, finding a balance is crucial. Giving too much detailed financial performance data to small investors raises the risk of the data leaking out, whereas giving these small investors too little financial data might cause them to feel uncomfortable investing in the business as they can’t really know how the business is doing.

In fact, a promising solution would be to report this delicate financial performance information to only big investors that have more than a certain amount of money invested or a certain percentage of the company’s shares, as these are the investors that most likely care about the wellbeing of the company and act on the company’s best interest.

External blog post source: http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2014/11/09/why-you-dont-want-to-give-financial-information-to-all-of-your-investors/

Image source: http://www.moneylife.in/site/userimage/image/dishonest.jpg

Everyone knows it: Apple has grown into a tremendous company throughout the past 10 years that is at the forefront of innovation and a leader in the technology industry. While many say that the massive size and past success of the company are the biggest obstacles that it will encounter moving forward, it is important to note that its size and past success are also pathways to sealing better deals and having success when launching a new product or service for the company.

In James Lau’s blog post titled “Apple is entering the payments market?” he describes how Apple has recently launched a revolutionary NFC payments method. While other competitors like Google have launched similar payment methods in the past such as Google Wallet, Apple Pay has a significant advantage over all of these other services because of a crucial difference: the wide adoptability of Apple Pay among major banks and countless well-known retailers. Apple, through its market leadership and reputation as a company that has the potential to revolutionize whole industries, was able to form partnerships with some of the most important banks and retailers in order to support the use of Apple Pay, and this wide adoptability has made Apple Pay a very attractive value proposition and point of difference for people looking to buy a new phone. While other tech companies might have released other NFC payment methods in the past, the barrier that most have not been able to overcome is this wide adoptability that Apple has been able to achieve through its innovative reputation, size, and market leadership.

Peer blog post source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/jameslau/2014/11/03/apple-is-entering-the-e-payment-market/

Image source: http://fortunedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/apple-sep2014-event-09.png?w=1024

In Arisha Shory’s blog post titled “A Change in the Music Industry” she describes how the music industry has evolved from CDs to music downloading to music streaming. Music streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora have adopted a subscription base business model in which customers pay a relatively cheap monthly fee in exchange for access to a vast music library that includes almost every song. Additionally, customers can stream all of these songs through any of their devices with internet connection, and streaming songs doesn’t take up precious memory space from these devices. Given all of these advantages that streaming music has over downloading it or buying CDs, it is no surprise that music streaming has become the next way of doing business in the music industry.

Perhaps the clearest indication of the music industry’s shift towards music streaming is Apple’s whopping $3 billion purchase of Beats Electronics and Beats Music. Apple has always competed against other music retailers through its iTunes music service, which allows users to purchase songs from its music library and download them to each of their devices. However, Apple’s acquisition of Beats Music earlier this year made it evident that Apple felt that it was falling behind other competitors such as Spotify by not adopting the music streaming business model. With Beats Music now under Apple’s ownership, Apple will probably seek to combine the music streaming functionality of Beats Music with the ease of use and intuitiveness of iTunes, and with it regain its leadership in the music industry once again.

Peer blog post source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/arishashory/2014/11/07/a-change-in-the-music-industry/

Image source: http://i0.wp.com/codigo.lisabn.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/17/2014/10/Beats-Music-app.jpg?resize=640%2C360

In recent years, many companies such as Foxconn have started using automated robots in their manufacturing processes in order to boost productivity, lower costs, and eliminate the risk of human error. In fact, 59% of companies report using some sort of robotic technology as of 2014. As the adoption rate of automated robots and other technologies such as 3D printing continue to rise, one can expect a company’s structure to change dramatically in the coming years. While many companies currently have a manufacturing workforce, this workforce could be replaced by the use of robots in the near future.

The elimination of the manufacturing human workforce from companies has some advantages and disadvantages. By having robots do the manufacturing, a company could manufacture its products anywhere without having to worry about the wage rate and skill set of its human manufacturing workforce. Therefore, many companies could shift production from China to their target market, possibly eliminating the need for a distributor and lowering transportation costs. Since robots produce the products more rapidly, this could also allow companies to produce on demand, which would lower inventory costs. However, while the full adoption of robotic technology might be beneficial for companies, it is not beneficial for society as a whole. By laying off their manufacturing workforce, companies would cause unemployment to skyrocket and a decrease in consumer spending that could cause many countries’ economies to suffer. Even though there would be a rise in the demand of high-skilled engineers that are able to operate and program these robots, this would not be enough to offset the negative consequences of this massive layoff of low skilled workers. Therefore, Foxconn and other companies must ask themselves: is the wide scale adoption of this robotic technology really worth it?

Article Source: http://www.onlinetmd.com/manufacturing-advanced-robotics-pwc-the-manufacturing-institute-101514.aspx#.VGBcgYe4now

Image Source: http://cdn.manzanamagica.com/wp-content/uploads/robot-automatizado.png

New tech startup companies often find it is extremely difficult to compete against their bigger, well established competitors. This is due to the fact that it can be difficult for these startups to attract the most talented employees and acquire high-profile customers that help make their products well-known. To counter this hiring difficulty, tech startups nowadays offer countless perks to employees that help differentiate them from their bigger competitors, giving talented employees a reason to work for them as opposed to industry-leading firms. However, while these perks may attract a talented workforce, it is even more important that startups focus on building a solid corporate culture within the company. This is because a strong corporate culture gives employees a sense of inclusion within the company and helps them remain motivated in the long run, which are things that perks don’t really do. Perks basically attract talented employees, but a corporate culture is crucial in retaining them in the long run.

Tech startups are also adopting a creative strategy to compete against industry-leaders by making their products more well known: selling their new products and services to other startups for cheaper and more affordable prices. By giving other low-budget tech startups access to its products, a startup hopes that these startups will succeed and grow into widely known companies that use their products and eventually motivate other powerful companies to use them too. While this surely lowers the profit margins of these tech startups, they are willing to face lower profit figures in the short run as they know that they can obtain very promising results in the long run by doing this. Tech startups are therefore a crucial customer segment of other tech startups these days, and this collaborative strategy between startups is a creative way that is helping them compete against industry leading firms such as Apple, Google and Microsoft in the competitive tech industry.

article source: http://fortune.com/2014/10/17/hireart-free-recruiting-startup-perks/

image source: http://www.gainingresults.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/company-culture.jpg

Kraft Foods Group’s once successful product J-E-L-L-O has seen declining sales lately, and this is due to the fact that the brand has lost positioning power in the mind of consumers. While J-E-L-L-O was once seen as a fun food that was directed at families, the latest marketing efforts have been directed at adults, and this has caused the brand to fade from family’s radars in recent years. Dessert consumption has also decreased a lot as people’s eating habits have changed, and this is also affecting J-E-L-L-O negatively because of the fact that the product is positioned as a dessert food in the mind of customers. Since people now a days prefer to eat snacks because of the fact that they don’t take time to prepare and are more time-efficient, Kraft Foods must embark in a mission to position J-E-L-L-O strongly as a snack product in the minds of its original customer target segment –families- once again. This is extremely hard, as there are a lot of snack brands out there that are already strongly positioned in consumer’s minds. To succeed in the snack industry, J-E-L-L-O will therefore have to try and differentiate itself from other brands by exploiting its “fun” factor or acknowledging that it is not the number one snack brand out there.

Article Source: http://adage.com/article/news/kraft-launches-campaign-revive-jell-o/243616/

Image Source: http://www.americansweets.co.uk/ekmps/shops/statesidecandy/images/american-kraft-strawberry-banana-jello-bigger-6oz-pack-11288-p.jpg

When companies become big, they often start diversifying their product line and service offerings. Hewlett-Packard, for example, sells PCs, printers, high-end business/corporate hardware, and service operations. This is not always ideal though, as addressing completely different customer segments can be a hard task for a single company to manage. As a result, Hewlett-Packard plans to split the company into two different companies later this week: one that sells PCs and printers and another one that sells corporate hardware and services operations. The advantage of doing this is that each of the two separate companies would be able to adopt a focus strategy that better addresses and focuses in on their respective customer segments, which are families and people that need personal computers/printers and businesses that need business hardware and services. This would be beneficial for HP since the company has struggled with its PC business in recent years due to the shift towards mobile computing in tablets and smartphones, while the corporate services market is a market that has grown at a much faster pace. Therefore, a specific company that adopts a low cost or differentiation focus strategy directed towards offering hardware and services to businesses would allow HP to position itself a lot better towards future growth in this corporate services industry. Basically, this business-oriented company’s management would now be able to focus all of its energy on the more profitable business of offering hardware and services to businesses while not having to worry about managing a declining PC business.

Article Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/05/us-hp-restructuring-idUSKCN0HU0QY20141005

Image Source: http://betanews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/hp_split.jpg

Car companies constantly compete in the technological space, and they do this by continually incorporating new technology into their cars in order to differentiate them from competitors’ products. Tesla, which is an innovative car company that is known for selling cars that come loaded with the latest tech, plans to do this by announcing the incorporation of automated driving into its cars on an October 9^th special event, but it is not the only car company with this in mind. Many luxury car manufacturers such as Audi and Mercedes-Benz have already joined the race towards automated driving after realizing that it is the next logical step in the car industry. However, while automated driving might be a strong point of difference among car companies today, it wouldn’t be surprising for it to turn into a point of parity among these same companies in the near future. This is because as all car manufacturers scramble to incorporate automated driving into their cars to avoid being left behind on this new market opportunity, this new technology will stop being a characteristic that differentiates one car over another and will become a set standard that a luxury car must have in consumer’s minds.

Article Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-03/tesla-said-to-add-popular-automated-driving-functions.html

Image Source: http://www.athenna.com/bosch-automated-driving/athenna/web_design/teoria-de-design/

Facebook recently sparked a lot of controversy after it was revealed that it performed an “emotion manipulation” study on January 2012 that consisted of altering the newsfeeds of 689,000 people in order to change their emotions. While it is not surprising that Facebook wants to better understand how its users react to certain information presented to them in their newsfeeds, it is extremely unethical that a firm as big and with as many users as Facebook abuses of its users’ privacy without their consent. In fact, it was discovered that Facebook added a short statement involving “research” to its user agreement about four months after performing this study. One of Facebook’s arguments is that its employees reviewed the studies that it was performing at the time. However, this most likely didn’t help because even if corporate executives know that their company’s actions are unethical, most don’t act according to their gut feeling of “social responsibility”. Instead, they often chose to ignore the issue because it is in their company’s best interest and because they can lose their jobs otherwise.

Facebook has to change the way it conducts its experiments if it wants to reassure its users that their data and privacy are safe and well respected. It should do this by being more transparent with its users in the company’s user agreement about the experiments it conducts in the future and the purpose that they will serve in improving the overall Facebook user experience.

Source of Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-klitzman-md/why-facebook-needs-to-fol_b_5557862.html