When capitalism is to be talked about, this image appears in people’s mind that capitalists suck every blood out of every opportunity with their claws waving. The tone of this image is dark and ruthless, which reflects the fact that the core of capitalism is profit-centered.

No matter whether this conception is right or not, it can’t go on like this forever. The image of business should be “friendly” to be sustainable. By “friendly”, I mean, business is a tool that has power to make a better world via connecting all stakeholders’ interest rather than just shareholders’, according to Ed Freeman’s stakeholder theory.

However, where should we start? How about starting from within an enterprise, particularly, employees? Without doubt, employees are also, in a way, primary stakeholders. By asking what they need and how these needs can be achieved, HR managers can gradually structure sort of blueprint in their minds. This mind-project will finally be put into practice, for example, a reward system.

As we all know, investments in human capital are highly uncertain. Nevertheless, as long as can you make the efforts worth it, the return is a promising future for your corporation, more than just manpower competitive advantage in the short term. It’s a long-term vision with high risk and high return. On the whole, it’s worth it to spend your money on HR.

Sources:

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/09/16/like-it-or-not-millennials-will-change-the-workplace/

http://raywilliams.ca/

Image:

http://www.google.com

When we talk about brand, there are many relevant concepts that jumps out, particularly, brand awareness.

What is it? Well, it is brand awareness that makes your products stand out and promotes your products-related commodities, such as T-shirts. Once your brand takes root in consumers’ minds, it can invisibly help you to broaden your company’s revenue streams.

Let’s say, a sports company has a really good reputation; they plan to produce some awesome energetic drink. On every bottle, there will be their famous logo. Since they already own a strong brand, how can customers not give it a try? In this case, how can brand not be deemed as a competitive advantage? Realistic examples, in the soft drink industry, the brands Pepsi and Coca Cola, sell their featured derivatives well, thanks to customers’ loyalty to their logos.

Briefly, the value of a brand is invisible when internally generated, but is revealed when another company wishes to acquire it.This means the value of a brand can be estimated and may appear on the balance sheet. In a word, brand has intangible value that can be transferred into tangible profits. Therefore, logo matters!

Linked with Teddy’s blog:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/teddybusinessblog/2014/10/05/the-power-of-branding/

Sources:

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ehost/detail/detail?sid=21677f42-dc6e-4c60-b88f-24b5fc092640%40sessionmgr4001&vid=0&hid=4201&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=bth&AN=96695134

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21614153-sometimes-you-see-brands-balance-sheet-sometimes-you-dont-untouchable-intangibles

http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/swot/

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/1034345684

http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/pest/

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21614153-sometimes-you-see-brands-balance-sheet-sometimes-you-dont-untouchable-intangibles

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brand-recognition.asp

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brandawareness.asp

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brandequity.asp

Images:

www.google.com

 “ Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.”

－Bill Brayton, Ashoka

In 2006, TOMS founder, Blake Mycoskie, saw children in a village in Argentina who didn’t have adequate shoes to protect their feet. Wanting to help, he created TOMS Shoes.
This is a for-profit company, but driven primarily by a social objective. At the same time that the company was born, a program named One for One® also came into existence. In the beginning, they matched every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes for a child in need. As TOMS has grown, the One for One® program has expanded from only providing shoes to also sight restorations and water to the need. With every bag of coffee purchased, TOMS provides one week of clean water to a person in need. Also, TOMS has helped restore sight to over 250,000 people and created jobs for communities in Haiti. The map below shows the communities being served by the program in the world so far:

For social entrepreneurships such as TOMS, profit is the means to sustain in both economic and social ways.All the facts mentioned above tell a truth that social entrepreneurships produce a good result: to make a better world. Undoubtedly, this approach has more influential power to expand the total pool of both economic and social value compared with traditional charity delivered by non-profits. In fact, social entrepreneurship creates shared value. At the same time, the social efforts it makes will result in keeping this kind of business sustainable. In a word, what’s most important is that social entrepreneurship can make this world better.

Sources:

http://www.waterhealth.com/sites/default/files/Harvard_Buiness_Review_Shared_Value.pdf

http://www.toms.ca/one-for-one-en

Images:

http://www.toms.ca/one-for-one-en

http://www.google.com

－The cooperation between business managers and IT

The importance of managers in a business doesn’t need to be emphasized, because we all know that clearly as crystal. However, what needs to be stressed is the significance of IT to a business and why it matters for managers to communicate effectively with the IT division.

As time goes by, IT grows faster and larger. Its influence is expanding far beyond the IT industry. Nearly all the large-scale institutions have their own independent IT department. Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Sloan economist and digital-business expert, once said“ IT is revolutionizing innovation. ” Undoubtedly, innovation is a key factor leading to success in business. In this way, IT plays an undeniably crucial role, especially, as the global economy develops, contemporary business is dealing with enormous numbers that couldn’t be imagined in the past when business was limited within certain regions. What’s more, IT not only can help a business to deal with mass statistics, but also to get access into insights if you know how to analyze numbers.

 “Data integration was the real challenge.”

－ Mr. Isson, Monster Worldwide Inc.’s global vice-president of predictive analytics and business intelligence

Now I come down to the relationship between managers and IT. The standard of evaluating a manager’s success is how well they do to encourage all employees to cooperate as a team.The motivation of a good manager is power, the influence of stimulating staff to realize the whole organizational objectives. Hence, it’s managers’ responsibility to communicate effectively with the IT division. After all, what produces perfect performance is seamless collaboration, which needs efforts from both directions.

Sources:

http://hbr.org/2003/01/power-is-the-great-motivator/ar/1

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/it-innovation-brynjolfsson-article/

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-questions-non-techie-managers-should-ask-about-it-projects/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology

Image:

https://www.google.ca/

Innovation means a new idea, device or process. It is innovation that keeps improving the quality of human life. Within this broad concept, there is another specific term which describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market. Then, it relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors. This isdisruptive innovation, a term   coined by Clayton Christensen.

Naturally, I associate this term with The Apple Watch, which will be released in 2015. I think it as an example of disruptive innovation, and my analysis tells me it has huge market potential. Accordingly, it can be superbly profitable. Why? Here are my reasons:

(Image from Geogle.com )

Firstly, compared to the existing high-end watches, such as Breguet, the price of the iwatch is far cheaper, which is estimated around $ 350. In spite of charging a lower price to their target customers at the bottom of the market, Apple will achieve great profitability by increasing the sales of its product.

Secondly, compared with other smart watches, for instance, Samsung Gear series. The Apple Watch has some competitive advantages. For example, it has “ Digital Touch”, which allows you to send messages to loved ones who also wear Apple Watches. It is not only a function but also a brilliant marketing strategy that can encourage people to buy the iwatches. The strategy is also the same rationale behind the idea of Messages to iphone. In addition, the Apple Watch supports NFC payments providing paying convenience to consumers.All in all, the disruptor is Apple Watch. In constast, the disruptees are traditional watches. Will Apple Watch eventually displace the established competitors? Let’s see!

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_innovation

http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/

http://www.breguet.com/

http://www.apple.com/ca/watch/

http://www.gizmag.com/apple-watch-vs-samsung-gear-s/33960/

Linked with Loren Steffy’s blog: http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorensteffy/

“ Saudi Arabia’s announcement declared that it had no plans to slow production.”

As we know, Saudi Arabia is the largest crude oil producer in the world. It means Saudi Arabia has the power to manipulate, or say, at least influence the world oil price (After all, there are competitors such as other OPEC producers). If Saudi Arabia doesn’t reduce its production, then the supply of oil will not go down. The final result is the present situation where supply exceeds demand won’t be changed, thus, the decrease in the oil price.

“ The Saudis appear willing to allow prices to keep sliding, because they can still gain profits from oil at as little as $30 a barrel, at the same time, to grab a larger share of the global market.”

Thanks to the Saudis’ inherently competitive advantage, specifically, the access to high-grade natural resources and the low cost production structure.

His blogs attracts me because recently the world oil price has been the hot topic, and he explains what he thinks very clearly. Even people like me who barely know any about oil can get his points.

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorensteffy/2014/10/30/falling-crude-prices-reveal-the-flaw-of-energy-independence/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorensteffy/2014/10/16/cheap-oil-the-kingdom-strikes-back/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorensteffy/2014/11/04/oil-below-80-the-first-shoes-drop/

Image:

http://www.google.com

Aboriginal society is an essential external element to the commercial development in Canada. On the one hand, it can promote Canada’s economics prosperously, on the other hand, it can also hold back the pace of its development, what’s worse, it may lead to awful social problems beyond the economic area if something goes wrong in the relationship between two parties, which may even stop the development. As a result, in either way, this issue can’t be ignored, and the government should take it seriously and strategically.

If two sides can eventually agree on a treaty after further talks, it will mean that a vast number of resources can be exploited, such as, land, mining and fossil oil.Those raw materials are the perquisites to the growth of the national economics.What’s more, it will mean short-distance transportation expenses, lower taxes, self-contained convenience and so on(compared with import).In a word, it means lower cost.If we take one step further logically, it can mean higher profits.

But, the government’s responsibility is not only to care about the economics, it should focus on the whole society including Aboriginal society. In this way, the talks between two sides should include the topics like that how to protect the rights of Aboriginal people, how to improve their communities and so on and so forth. Also, only in this way, an agreement can be reached.

Sources:
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Premier+urges+cooperation+more+litigation+government+natives+reach+fork+road/10194776/story.html
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/First+Nation+chiefs+stage+Site+showdown/10215965/story.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/background-the-indian-act-1.1056988
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/metro/Unilateral+park+declared+Tsilhqot+includes+Prosperity+mine/10192766/story.html

As topic shown above, S.F. Express starts developing its one-stop cold chain service in China. This is a local brand in China as a delivery company, which has been developing in a rapid pace since it was founded in 1993. It now has stores covering 9 countries.

Although S.F. Express’s rate is higher than other competitors, they are still known as one of the most popular, reliable and renowned delivery company by the consumers in China. In order to ensure the quality of the product they deliver, such as seafood and medicine, they provide one-stop cold chain service. Under this service, items are being delivered under the circumstances of high technological equipment and high supervision. In contrast, other companies take cost-saving before superior service.

Cold chain is a temperature-controlled supply chain. It is very important to know that an unbroken cold chain is an uninterrupted series of storage and distribution activities, which maintains a given temperature range. As a result, within this business model, high-cost supervision is extremely important to the operation progress, which can not be cut.

In fact, China is a large undeveloped cold chain market, and is with lots of potential consumers and market demand. Viewing this point, we can understand that this is an external opportunity to S.F. Express. Also, they themselves have strong internal strengths, for example, the network infrastructure, strong financial base and operational experience in the field of logistics. Consequentially, all these make S.F. Express’s cold chain service stand out the market, playing a leading role in this profitable industry.

Sources:
http://www.sf-express.com/cn/sc/
http://www.zgswcn.com/2014/0927/502529.shtml
http://blog.learnatchina.com/20140926454267.html

http://hbr.org/2006/12/strategy-and-society-the-link-between-competitive-advantage-and-corporate-social-responsibility/ar/1

“Social responsibility”sounds equally to”Non-profit”,and profit is what business seeks for,but in my view,no profit(I mean,money)doesn’t mean no returns.Money is kind of tangible returns,by undertaking social responsibility there comes lots of intangible returns,like reputation,which is definitely crucial to business,moreover,in the long term,these intangible assets will gradually be transferred into tangible assets,how can it not be good strategy!In this way,business needs to build itself well-known in a good way by taking social responsibility,also target customers exist in the whole society,plus vast potential customers,that’s what we all know.
The whole society is interdependent,business needs more citizens being interested in it,so it can’t take the social responsibility as none of its business.Social responsibility is abstract,which can be manipulated in various concrete methods,if business can realize it in a beneficial way,it can also fulfill the interest of business(owners or whatsoever stakeholders).
Based on the free-enterprise,private-property society,it is business(businessmen)’s freedom to choose undertake the social responsibility or not.There shouldn’t be any social pressure to be put on business,forcing them to do so.And if they choose to undertake the social responsibility,no matter what the true purpose is,they can’t be blamed practically doing fraud or deception thing,because after all they are doing good deeds to the whole society,sometimes,effect or say consequences are more important.We should see the bright side,the good results.As to the problem that businessmen may not know how to solve the huge social issues related to their business,I think,no any institution can promise 100% know clearly how to solve them,and they are not only the problems should be settled down by business,the whole society should figure it out together,which absolutely includes the business role.