A patent filing shows Samsung Electronics Co. is working on a device it calls sports glasses in a possible response to Google’s internet-connected eyewear. I think that now the brand proposition will better explain this situation. Though Google designed and posted its product of eyeglass first, Sumsang actually the one that filed the patent form, so Sumsang will have more opportunities to introduce this new technological invention and broad its market. Sumsang enjoys more advantages through applying the patent and also it can lead consumers away from its competitors because they will have a brand loyalty of consumers.

However, if Sumsang can do better on its product differentiation, it can earn more consumers. Since now the products in Google and Sumsang looks quite similar, Sumsang should strive to find their unique selling points or create innovative technical accessories that allow connections between them. A great example mentioned is that it can equip with a touch control or it can directly connect to the mobile Internet that works as a smartphone.

No matter what they do, I reckon that the final goal is to let consumer remember its product and grow interests and desires on it.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/samsung-files-patent-for-google-glass-like-specs-1.2251484

Since Canada is doing well in creating shared value and cross-sector collaboration, companies will have more opportunities to become successful and make more profits in Canada. In our lecture, creating shared value means that a successful company shares its experience or some of their information to help others solve big problems. Other start-up businesses can improve their efficiencies and effectiveness by learning from its strengths. For example, I.B.M. is working with almost 2,000 cities in the world to pull data from many city agencies. One of their works is to predict weather conditions and its impact. This behaviour can prevent thousands of people from natural disasters.

The personal business will finally turn to be the social business, because everything the company does will have an influence to the society. Hundreds of well-known companies are now striving to do some contributions to the whole society. I strong agree with the statement what this article mentioned, “It is time for organizations to step up and take the necessary risks associated with adopting shared value.” It is not only the right thing we should do, but also the competitive advantage we will enjoy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/angela-simo-brown/canada-social-programs_b_4145329.html

Three weeks ago, Yahoo Inc. chief executive Marissa Mayer grabbed attentions of hundreds of advertising executives who snapped pictures as she sat down for an interview with journalist Charlie Rose.

The question is that should Yahoo try to forge closer ties with advertisers and add the advertisements in their apps in order to earn profits? As a Yahoo user, I strongly agree with what Mayer said, “consumers come first”. However, Twitter did the opposite thing in their financial markets and it want to convince other companies big and small to spend on its service. Almost 90% of Twitter’s revenue comes from its advertisement sales. Most investors of Twitter would probably even base their investments on understanding this advertising apparatus.

Back to the original problem, I still recommend the Mayer follow the rules of business ethics. Advertisements will not only disturb the reading, but also make Yahoo lose its’ users loyalty. Adding more advertisements is detrimental to its customers, though the company and advertisers can take advantages of it. Currently, I think Mayer is making the right decision to keep the app ad-free. However, on the grounds of consequences, can the corporate executive in fact support this action for a long time?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/yahoos-marissa-mayer-has-advertisers-attention-but-can-she-get-their-dollars/article14858305/

Recently, Nokia has unveiled its first phablets –extra-large phones – as well as its first tablet computer. It might be the last major event before Nokia completes the sale of its hardware unit, because Microsoft agreed to buy its business in early 2014.

From a consumer’s perspective, I felt confused about their purposes of designing the big phones because Sumsang had already done it before and its big touching screen help Sumsang earn customers’ loyalty to the brand. Thinking about the market shares, this behavior will be have more benefits on Microsoft Company, since it only has a few shares of tablet market.

Based on the passage, Nokia and Microsoft keep the tablet model cheaper to target at the shoppers on a budget and emerging markets. I think that because it positions itself as a cheaper consumer-targeted device, so it will be hard for Nokia to earn great profits in the short run, especially when it faces risks of bankruptcy. On the other side, there may be a lot of people in Asha developing markets also offering low-price mass-market handsets and tablets. Though it has greater demand with lower price, extremely competitive markets in Asha will not help them to be more profitable.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24608498

Peer-to-peerservice is offering information that let people rent or lend their things they want to share, such as cars, home kitchens, and even their pets. However, there are usually more difficult to operate well than it supposed to be, because older people feel harder to get access to the Internet, so they cannot enjoy in this kind of service. Another example is that people do not prefer to borrow things, because they seldom use it for some objective reasons. Some people are not willing to share stuffs, because they feel that they pay for it every month and just lend the things out for one day has many uncertainties.

So what I reckon is that the value proposition of this collaborative economy is to help people in needs match the people with the product or service. It seems that it is a good idea to make the market work more efficiently and reduce the wasted materials or spaces. Nevertheless, I still consider that it takes time for people to accommodate with this lifestyle and grow interests in the engagement. The most important thing the owners need to realize that they need to find the right target of people through marketing research and then do more advertising on it.

link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23963516

From the picture above,  Mr. Alexander, the founder in Maine Mead Works, had gained a lot of profits from making mead drinks. Now I get interested about how he could get profits from various drinks in the market without bankruptcy. As Mr. Alexander said, “people came back to what was good once.” From this sentence, I could see that even though mead drinks have encountered explosion in the past years, but once they tried it and got obsessed on it, they will continue to drink it. So the elasticity of mead is pretty low which is good for suppliers. It also means that people who like mead very much will response inactively to the little increasing price of mead.

Also, the second point is how can Mr. Alexander spread the idea of mead. Some of them do not understand what the mead is made from and have no idea about its tastes. Hence, the channels of distribution is most important for this business. I reckon that they should do more advertising mobile and physically, such as pop up windows and ads in the public transportations.

The following link to the passage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24184527

We could see that Blackberry decided to reduce 4500 jobs in the following days. It seems pathetic for most of employee because they faced huge troubles. BlackBerry have to compete with Apple and Sumsang brand in the smartphone wars, however, it failed the war that make them lose huge percentage of market shares and it is continuing losing.

The value proposition for BlackBerry is its own BlackBerry 10 operating system that differs from Android and IOS system. Nevertheless, now the value of it and the cash they owned have fallen to a lower value that might hardly attract more customers to keep loyalty to it. Also, people’s preferences are changing to touching screen, so if BlackBerry started to invest on invent touching screen, it will not only increasing their cost largely during this hard time, but also make them harder to compete with Apple and Sumsang without experience before. People always think their unique selling point is their full keyboard. If they change it, their patents will not have any values.

As for me, it is better to separate Blackberry into parts and sell their patents individually, since most investors would like to buy their softwares instead of hardwares.

link: http://www.cbc.ca/news/does-blackberry-have-a-future-1.1862945

Though the number of financial fraud cases in 2013 is the same as that of last year, the total value of these cases in 2013 had risen to £1868,548 this year.

Due to the increasing values, analysts found that most of them are dominated by the embezzlement and tax fraud.

Fraudulent statement would more likely to occur in people who understand the operation steps of financial statement.

The government should consolidate its management and policy, but commercial banks should regulate themselves rather than risk all to increase their bank balances. It would be such a potential uncertainty that allowed professional criminals to take advantage of it. As what we discussed in the class, fraudulent financial reporting might result from greed of businessmen and weak internal controls. This case is exactly the example of lack of effective supervision and documentation.

Other than these reasons, there might be inefficient external evaluations or lack of third-party evaluations for these companies. As a result, no matter which reason each case belongs to, the losses will not only affect the honest investors and private sectors, but also the costs of government.  As what said in the passage, “a severe punishment regime should be proposed soon.”

link to the passage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23179763

On this Thursday, Twitter announced that it wanted to raise $1bn by listing on the US stock markets, making it the biggest initial public offering (IPO) from a technology since Facebook went public in May 2012.

I was thinking that how could Twitter let its revenue up to $1bn with its selling shares, because it did not make any profits and even lost &275 million. The only idea is to add more advertisement in order to increase their earnings. However, this behavior would largely arise the disagreement from users, because they may feel their experience would be disrupted and get annoyed by the Pop-up windows.  As the data indicated, there are more than 65 percent of Twitter’s advertising revenue was generated from mobile devices, so that if they ruined the customer relationship and thus reduce the brand value, they will again keep losing a lot from their revenues.

From the nine building blocks of business model generation, I consider that Twitter has more than one group of customers, so it should think carefully before any decision-making. It seems that this decision could make large profits in the short run, but it will lost in the long run.

The following link to the passage is http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24392336