Gathering information is extremely important to a company, and Netflix has recently released one of their ingenious ways in which they find out what movies or TV shows they should acquire for their subscribers. What Netflix revealed is that by searching other streaming sites and torrent sites on the web, they are to see which movies and TV shows are popular. They then acquire some of these popular shows and movies, stream them back to their subscribers, and hopefully acquire even more subscribers.

This is quite creative of Netflix as they have managed to use their own competition’s data against them, and put said data to good use.

Netflix is increasing at a rapid rate and their rate of $8 a month for unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows seems almost too good to be true. Netflix is an example of a company that has taken advantage of technology and there seems to be no stopping them as their growth over the past few years has been astounding.

While torrent downloads have been decreasing, Netflix subscribing has gone up, and analysts predict that Netflix’s valuation will continue rising upwards.

Source:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/10/10/pirate-raid-22/

A recent article by The Business Insider provides a very insightful and indepth look into how to get better and grade performance. Performance management is always a challenging part of a business as there are lots of challenges and uncertainty surrounding how to evaluate others.

The article explains how there are five essential realities to regarding performance review such as:

1. people are compensated depending on the budget

2. performance will always be distributed differently throughout groups

3. people generally believe that they are “above average”

4. groups think that their group is better than other groups

5. measurements are relative, not absolute

The article then talks about how groups should be split depending on roles, individuals and managers should work together to set goals, groups shouldn’t compete against one another, people should know how they’re being rated and rewarded, team-building is important, and stick to a system once you’ve set it.

I believe that this article is useful and is applicable to many different groups or people whether at school, in the workplace, or in any other setting that requires performance review. If you’re interested at all in how people are evaluated, this article is worth a look.

Source:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-better-at-grading-performance-2013-11

Coffee is an extremely popular drink with the Coffee Association of Canada finding that 65% of Canadians drink coffee on a daily basis. There are tons of different coffee shops such as Starbucks, McDonalds, Blenz Coffee, Bean Around the World, Cafe Artigiano, and Tim Hortons. The coffee business is challenging and competitive.

Due to recent sales not being up to par, Tim Hortons has decided to come up with a new blend of dark roast coffee. Tim Hortons has been selling coffee for several years now, however, they have been struggling to keep up as they have not had much growth in their sales compared to big names like Starbucks and McDonalds.

In the comments of the articles, it appears that Tim Hortons is in trouble. The general consensus about Tim Hortons coffee is that it tastes like dishwater, with bad lids and cups compared to other coffee places. People prefer the growing competitor in the market, McDonalds, due to the taste, quality, and price of their coffee.

With the coffee business in fierce competition and no room for error, Tim Hortons will have to think of something bold and make some changes or continue to lose sales.

Tim Horton’s new dark roast coffee

Sources:

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/10/28/tim-hortons-dark-roast-coffee/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/tim-hortons-tests-dark-roast-coffee-to-woo-consumers-1.2254414

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh

What makes Zappos different from other companies? Exceptional customer service, and a radical company culture. Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh argues that company culture for Zappos is more important than customer service. Prior to working at Zappos, Hsieh owned a business called LinkExchange which was relatively successful. However, Hsieh decided to sell the company and go on to other ventures as he claimed that LinkExchange got boring and lost its culture.

Hsieh wanted his job to be fun, so he started Zappos, a company whose main goal isn’t to sell shoes, but to deliver happiness. Zappos priority is company culture as Tony believes that good company culture leads to the positioning of the brand as well as exceptional customer service. Through an intensive interviewing and training process, Zappos find it’s employees by asking questions like, “On a scale of 1-10, how weird are you?” and offering potential employees money to leave to find people who truly want to work at Zappos and fit in with the company culture. Zappos is a fun place to work at and provides lots of benefits and perks for their employees, which is probably why people enjoy working there and believe in the brand.

Sources:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/zappos-ceo-company-culture-is-higher-priority-than-customer-service/59245

http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/17/zappos-culture-coach-how-squishy-stuff-like-culture-took-us-to-a-billion-dollars-in-revenue/

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of-culture/

Recently I read Meggie (Jiayi) Liu’s article “Best Company to Work For” and found that it was an interesting read on Google’s organizational culture.

What makes Google unique than other companies is that they monitor their employees’ well beings very intently. They have two unique divisions in their HR department:

1. People Operations: in which their goal is to find, grow, and keep employees.

2. The PiLab: where a bunch of social scientists try to figure out how to maximize happiness for their employees

Google also highlights points such as workplace diversity in their company as well as the unique culture within Google and reward those who come up with new innovations. They also have a wealth of different benefits and perks for their employees such as:

• free breakfast, lunch, and dinner around the clock

• lots of recreational activities to do while not working on the job

• free medical care

• free travel insurance

• vacation time for new parents

• free legal advice

• subsidies for further education

The main reason for Google’s success is that they realize that it’s just as important to treat people well, if not more important than making profits.

The many settings of Google’s workplace

Sources:

“Best Company To Work For”

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/best-companies/

http://www.google.ca/about/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/working-at-google_n_2526889.html

http://www.google.com/about/jobs/teams/people-operations/

In COMM 101, we recently talked about social entrepreneurship and shared value. Social entrepreneurship is becoming more and more popular today as people try to not only make profits, but to tackle social problems with creative and innovative solutions.

At McGill, a not for profit consulting program had 90 applications for only 12 slots. In business schools such as McGill, UVic, and York, students are being educated about the benefits of social entrepreneurship and how it all works. Social entrepreneurship programs involve volunteer and community work, as well as working with non-profit companies to  provide students with real life experience on social entrepreneurship. There is also talk of social intrapreneurs as well, a new concept where these intrapreneurs work with companies to promote socially responsible change.By educating students about social entrepreneurship, they are motivated to look at problems from a social and environmental perspective, not just an economics perspective.

Being social entrepreneurs is an important goal for the business students of today. As said in the article, “For business students, tackling a societal challenge through sound business practices, community involvement and volunteerism is very interesting and an excellent learning opportunity.”

Source:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/business-education/commerce-beyond-the-profit-motive/article15274613/

When I went to the movies the other day, there was a Coca-Cola ad that talked about how Coca-Cola was trying to be healthier by offering low and no-calorie beverages. This ad was interesting to me so I decided to find out more.

Recently, Coca-Cola has come up with a new marketing campaign that focuses on being healthy and to overcome the obesity challenge that our world is facing today.

In my opinion, it’s not a bad initiative, as Coca-Cola has good intentions by encouraging people to work out and live a healthier lifestyle, but the general response from the public so far seems to be rather negative.

Most people don’t really understand why an unhealthy drink company like Coca-Cola is promoting healthy living as it doesn’t really make sense to them. Drinks like a can of Coke contain 39g of sugar, and diet Coke contains aspartame and other chemicals which are unhealthy for you.

Coca-Cola deserves some credit for trying to rebrand their image and coming up with different marketing, but they might have to think of something else as their campaign to promote active, health living doesn’t seem to be very successful so far.

Source:

http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/coca-cola-s-anti-obesity-campaign-aims-world-moving/244077/

Recently, a Japanese fast food chain called Yoshinoya was considering growing food 100 km away from the damaged Fukushima power plant. Is this a good idea?

Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the surrounding area has been considered extremely dangerous for people, let alone crops; however, Yoshinoya claims that their food will be safe.

In a poll in the article, about 83% of people said that they’ll be worried about eating food grown 100 km away from Fukushima, so if the company decides to go through with this it might actually cause them to lose money instead of making profits.

Sure, it might be profitable for Yoshinoya to build farms in an area with lots of land and low competition, but if there are indeed any health issues related with their food, the cost will be high and the reputation of the company will be damaged.

In my opinion, this could be a violation of business ethics. While it is the social responsibility of a business to increase its profits, Yoshinoya should definitely think this decision through as growing food near a radioactive zone could be considered unethical and distasteful.

On September 30th, 2013, Interbrand listed their annual list of the best global brands, and for the first time ever, Apple was listed as the No.1 brand in the world.

But what exactly is it that makes Apple so successful? It’s true that they generate lots of revenue, but they weren’t the first to come out with computers or smartphones.  No, the key to Apple’s success lies in their brand.

Apple has built up this image for themselves as an innovative company that provides quality, simple electronics  for anyone to use. For example, in one of their recent advertisements, Apple showed people from different parts of the world using the iPhone.

However, not everybody likes Apple, in the comments section of the article, there are people saying things like, Apple is so overrated, all they do is sell over hyped and overpriced products. In today’s society, people are becoming more and more aware of the products that they are buying, and might not think Apple is the best.

With technology giants like Google and Samsung increasing in their brand value, only time will tell if Apple can continue maintaining their image, or risk losing their position as the No.1 brand.

Source:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/apple-surpasses-coke-as-world-s-best-brand-1.1873259