Monthly Archives: November 2014

James Altucher is an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, bestselling author, and podcaster.(http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/james-altucher-wall-streets-keeper-of-the-pain-11172011.html)

The business blog I truly want to recommend is James Altucher’ blog: Ideas of a World Out of Balance. His blog contains his life experiences of starting up businesses as well as advice for small firms.

In one post, Altucher told about how he created a financial website step by step with the right  ideas and strategies, some of which have been discussed in the Comm 101 class. For example, he pointed out the importance of “making a business that you would use”, i.e. thinking carefully about the value proposition of a product or service to cater to the market’s needs. Also, he mentioned that “when you start a website, you have to bring people from a trusted site to your site to build up the trust in your site.” This can be linked with the concept of positioning: if a business is not the first one to enter a particular industry, then it should create some links between itself and those well-known ones.

What I found quite helpful is that Altucher is an entrepreneur who dares to try different things and learn from his own success and failures. As a result, we can see how basic business concepts are applied in real life and learn from his experiences. Another thing that I appreciate is that he also writes down stories about his daily life, which make his blogs entertaining and interesting to read.

There is no denying that the UN fund have made a difference in many parts of the world. However, only giving out money is far from enough in terms of a business’ success and a country’s prosperousness in the long run. It is hard to have a permanent impact in most of the industries by providing limited amount of fund and other resource.

This is the reason why the Arc and social enterprise are needed. By creating innovation that benefits underprivileged communities, social entrepreneurs are devoted to tackle major social issues with a scarcity of resource. And the ARC initiative helps small businesses with their strategies and focus by sharing business toolkits. These achievements are what the UN cannot accomplish by providing funds.

Furthermore, the UN fund and the ARC and social enterprise focus on different types of people and have different objectives.The UN fund may be used to tackle urgent problems, for example providing food and accommodations to refugees. As a result, small businesses and people who can make a living on their own do not benefit much from it. What the ARC and social enterprise do is focusing on supporting a particular group first, thus benefiting the whole community in the long-term.

In a nutshell, the ARC and social enterprise focus more on a long-term benefit and support people that the UN fund cannot reach. Personally, it is such type of effort that can  benefit the communities and people as a whole.

Organizational culture is essential for a company to execute its key activities.

Top firms exalt workers, find competitive edge:

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/nov/09/top-firms-exalt-workers-find-competitive-edge/

The article is about the special organizational culture of Zeeto Media and SAS Institute. Their strategies are different from those of Zappos, and every firm should have its own organizational culture. Here is the summary of three principles that I think companies should follow when creating organizational culture.

1. Treat employees equally. Tony Hsieh, Zappos’ CEO, shares a big office with his employers, and Google’s managers greet their new employees warmly. With the feeling of being respected, employees are more likely to get inspired and develop a sense of belonging to their companies.

2.Create benefit shared by all the employees. The strategy many companies apply now is rewarding their employees for the achievements they have accomplished. Employers provide paid leave for managers and bonus for extra sales, and strategies as such do motivate employees. However, what companies like Zappos, Google and Tesla do is create common benefit for everyone even before they produce products and services. With these benefit beforehand, the value of employees themselves are acknowledged. A combination of both common benefit and rewarding system can inspire employees to the fullest.

3. Do not only focus on short-term profit. Benefits like free meals, holding parties and other services definitely add extra cost to a company. But employee dissatisfaction and high turnover are all potential cost.Spending proper amount of money on creating organizational culture enables a company to reduce internal conflicts and develop a long-term strategy.

Following these three principles, companies can achieve a great start in creating organizational culture and gain long-term payoff from that.

The initial blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/estebanflores/2014/10/05/silicon-valley-giant-hewlett-packard-to-split-in-two/

The giant in Silicon Valley, Hewlett-Packard (HP), is going to split into two public traded companies, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.

The initial blog addressed that this move will allow each of the two companies to adopt a focused strategy and benefit HP as a whole. It also pointed out that HP will be able to put more effort into its hardware and service division and suffer less from the loss in the PC market. I agree with the idea that the move is beneficial to HP, but have my own opinions on the strategies the two companies are going to take.

Personally, the PC and printers division should apply a focused strategy and minimize its cost. Since companies like Apple and Lenovo have occupied the PC market, it is hard for HP to win the battle by new technology immediately. If it still wants to keep the division, dropping the price to attract customers may be a better option in the short run.

However, the target scope of the hardware and service division is broader since it covers almost all the aspects in technical support. Compared to the PC market, HP also have more opportunities in the computer services industry. Therefore, a more differentiation strategy is needed to develop the strength and keep its uniqueness.

Looking back on Apple’s success several years ago, it was disruptive innovation that made it the industry leader. With the move of splitting into two companies, HP should also put more effort into innovation to smooth the way for the long-term war.

Apple Watch vs. Swiss Watch

In Zhenting Du’s blog, he argues that the Apple Watch will challenge the Swiss Watch since the practical value of iWatch outweighs the collection value of luxury watches. I agree with his idea and want to talk more about why Apple can win the battle as well as how can the Swiss Watch industry react to the challenge.

Apple has a reason for developing the watch division while recogonizing the dominate role of the Swiss Watch in the industry. Considering the value proposition of iWatch, it not only shows accurate time, but also allows customers to check emails, messages and make phone calls on this garget. By introducing a new, technical lifestyle to its customers, iWatch can reach a larger market and attract more potential customers. Additionally, being the leader among technology companies, Apple has a great strength in developing electronic products. Its another strength is that Apple has been well known for its fashion tastes and has a lot of loyal fans. The relative cheaper price and cute outlook also cater to customers’ needs.

Although the Swiss Watch is a symbol of class and status, the whole industry cannot only depend on collectors. With the launch of iWatch, customers will expect more on watches, thus challenging the Swiss Watch industry. Facing the external threat, it should keep developing its strength of being a status symbol but also cooperate with other technology firms and develop smart watches to expand value proposition and attract customers in the meanwhile.