The Bank of Canada has recently announced the release of the new polymer $100 bill. This new bank notes is “secure”, “durable”, and “innovative”, which has now made it harder to counterfeit. Their future goal is to abandon paper money, as this new polymer bill is said to last “twice as long” compared to paper money and includes various of “high-tech security features”.

By only implementing the new $100 bill at the moment, I believe it’s a market strategy for the bank of Canada, as this would allow them to do further research and see the affects of this implementation. By introducing the least commonly used bill first, allows the bank of Canada to investigate in whether or not to proceed this implementation with more commonly used bills such as the $20 and $10 bills.

However, introducing the $100 bill first, business may not want to accept this new polymer bill and might find it suspicious as the currency is so big. Despite the new security checks, society aren’t familiar with the bill yet and might find difficulties identifying the security clues when it was their first time seeing such bills.

Source: BBC News Magazine

In addition, the polymer bills are recyclable, making the bank of Canada a greener business. This makes the business more ethical as the new polymer bill is claimed to be cleaner than paper bills. Therefore, this implementation would be beneficial for both users and producers.

I have recently found this blog website titled “Duct-Tape Marketing” created by John Jantsch who is a marketing consultant who was, “award(ed) winning social media publisher and best selling author Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine”. He, “trains and licenses small business marketing consultants around the world”.

I havejust read his post on, “Facebook Changes Present Interesting Business Dilemma“, I actually found Jantsch’s article on another blog called, “Blog Lovin’“. I found his post rather interesting because he discussed about the usage of Facebook. How there is now “public” and “personal” profiles. In my opinion, Facebook users have increased significantly within the last year and will continue to increase, so from here I think Businesses, celebrities, authors and experts could make use of this online tool.

As there are currently Facebook celebrity fan pages, charities, and events being posted on Facebook. Perhaps in the future, there might be a potential opportunity for firms to enter this market as there are large number of “customers? (users)”.

Overall, I found the Duct Tape Marketing blog to be inspirational as he focuses his articles on marketing which is an area I am planning to specialize in. In addition, the Blog Lovin’ blog website was also interesting as it targets many different business categories and integrates other Blogs, which I recommend and is worth reading.

From reading a blog written by my fellow classmate Maddie Erjavec. She commented on how Google is now shooting the interiors of stores and putting those photos onto Google maps. I agree with Maddie that this new Google project is a way for other business to market their business because Google is one of the biggest businesses with a extremely strong brand image.

Looking at this from Google’s prospective, I think Google has simply expanded their service line for “Street View” and took advantage of the technology they already have. By having this additional service, it would furthermore differentiate Google from other competitors and businesses. In addition, Google has also introduced “Street View Snowmobile“, which again makes Google a unique business.

From this, it doesn’t cost Google much from offering this extra service for other businesses, plus this services is voluntary for other businesses to use, so it would be costless to them.

From my own perspective, I would say that Google is offering this service voluntary is to avoid intrusion issues as stated by Maddie. I consider this to be Google’s strategy, as they often make their money in a unique way or different from usual business.

According to my classmate, Bryant Hsiao’s blog post, he said that H&M has announced their collaboration with Versace. Using Porter’s Generic Strategies, H&M would be considered “Cost Leadership” and Versace as “Focus” strategy. He stated in his blog that there might be a, “confusing image of brand” as H&M is targeting low price products and Versace is the complete opposite, by targeting high and expensive price products.

However, I disagree and see this being a positive opportunity for these two businesses. Versace and H&M already have a strong brand image and reputation, and collaboratively they could use this to their advantages. For example, they could easily develop a “combination brand names” for the new products that H&M and Versace produces.

I see this as an opportunity for H&M and Versace because I think they are spotting market gaps in their markets and building new products for it. Perhaps the product they sell here would be middled price and this allows the collaboration of the two business to have a well-rounded product life cycle.

I would consider the Lexon to be an innovative entrepreneurial company. This company was founded by René Adda 1991 and is known for its creativity in Lexon’s individual products. René Adda had showed passion in the designing industry ever since he was a young boy and has never gave up on his on this passion, which lead him to strive innovation and creativity for Lexon for 20 years (PPT).

Lexon’s target was “CREATING THE DIFFERENCE” and with such innovative development, Lexon has open 23 stores since 2010 and employs only 115 people in 37 different countries. In addition, their goal is to launch 33 new stores in China by the end of February 15th 2011.

I consider Lexon to be an entrepreneurial company because they are not only “innovative” but they are also a small company which employs only 115 in such a widely spread company. Also, I believe they are taking risks with their innovation, for example, the diagram below shows Lexon’s specific expertise:

They are the only brand who performs in these 6 key fields. Perhaps, the creative products they are coming up with may not target customers wants and needs, especially taste, as Lexon employs different designers and each customer would have different preferences. To resolve this issue, I believe Lexon would need to do detailed and specific market research.