This blog post by Ben Thurman of The Guardian offers an interesting look into how the lives of women in Ethiopia are changing as more opportunities are opened to them. He tells of Memuna, “one of many women in the Bale Eco-region that have benefited from micro loans”. Through these social enterprise ventures, women like Memuna are now being given a sense of independence and the ability to pursue their own business interests.
Startups are known for high failure rates. However, startups can also experience huge success. For example, in Suzanne’s blog post, she wrote about Snapchat’s recent rejection of Facebook’s $3 billion offer to purchase the app. For an app that was only launched in 2011, the success Snapchat has experienced has been tremendous. In fact, according to Suzanne’s post, there may be “a correlation between decline in teen [Facebook] users and an increase in Snapchat users”.
In an article by USA Today, some interesting statistics and insights on a common consequence of unmotivated employees – faking illness on sick days – were discussed along with examples of excuses actual employees have made.
As mentioned in a blog post by The Guardian, the latest in cloud computing is not for everyone and businesses should not be jumping ship so quickly as this may not necessarily lead to benefits.
The main issue observed is that some businesses see the cloud as the IT solution, however, it has to be integrated into the business effectively for maximum benefit to the firm.
Morgan Stanley recently announced the establishment of the “Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing” aiming to work on driving capital towards investments that promote sustainable economic growth. As stated in this press release by CSRwire, the Institute will focus on financial products/solutions, thought leadership, and strategic partnerships with public, private, and non-profit sectors.
At long last, Blackberry Messenger has arrived for Android and iOS. After the unsuccessful attempt to launch last September, Blackberry now seems ready to go ahead with a second launch. However, with Blackberry’s recent issues, will this do more harm or good given that one of the reasons people still buy Blackberry is because of BBM?
Earlier today, another public firm, TW Telecom, became another victim of the highly anticipated Twitter IPO (Initial Public Offering). Following the case of investors buying Tweeter shares because of the similarity of its ticker (TWTRQ) to Twitter’s (TWTR), TW Telecom, which trades under the ticker “TWTC”, saw a sudden rise today in the value of its stock from “from $30 to $300 in less than a minute” and forced the NASDAQ to cancel trades.
After years of lagging behind companies like Apple and Google, Blackberry may soon be looking to break up the company.
In an article by Bloomberg, concerns that “Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. (FFH) may be unable to line up funding or partners for a $4.7 billion buyout” have made breaking up the company a much more attractive option in Blackberry’s current situation. This would let interested parties bid for the parts of Blackberry that they are most interested in such as patents and enterprise network.
An example of a firm’s attempt to climb the industry ladder, Walmart has been trying to gain strength in the e-commerce market through efforts such as “building a series of fulfilment centers for online orders” and concentrating resources on mobile app development. However, Walmart faces significant obstacles, in particular, competition from a current industry leader – Amazon.
Apple is known as a dominating phone manufacturer in the industry. However, this blog post by a COMM 101 classmate, Laura, explores how despite Apple’s success, it seems to have failed to have the same dominance in the Chinese market – losing out to local handset provider, Xiaomi, by 0.2%.
Recently, it seems that Apple has realized this as well and is now attempting to become more aggressive in China.