Tragically indeed, Hurricane Sandy has brought great grief to many families. Moreover, it has also disrupted operational aspects of many Upper East Side businesses.

Lorraine Woellert, a reporter for Bloomberg.com, wrote an article entitled “Industrial Production in U.S. Drops 0.4% on Sandy Effect” about the aftermath of the hurricane. In her article, Woellert analyses the effects of the hurricane. Its evident that operations and productions has slowed down. Railroads were disrupted, motor vehicles production were affected, and thus revenue has taken a hit.

The proceeding step is, nevertheless, to figure how to salvage and amend the lost inventory turnover. Whether it was a substantial impact, whether price should be increased, or whether workers should be laid off, etc. are probably some of the questions that the UES businesses had to question. Although hurricane Sandy impact might not require the latter measures, those are some examples of the vast amount of concerns a company’s operation department should consider when an unpredictable natural disaster comes across.

Usually, there is no alternative besides incurring the damages. Its the reaction, whether positive or negative, to the disasters that distinguish prominent businesses.

Tony J Wang has a blog named “Philosopher 2.0“. In his blog, Wang claims that he graduated from Stanford University in 2007, that he studied philosophy and economics, and that he wrote his honors thesis within the Ethics in Society program. He currently works for Blueprint Research & Design, in which he works for the strategy consulting firm in the field of philanthropy.

In his article “Charity vs Business: The Business Case“, Wang gives insight to investors that seek to invest their wealth and wish to be part of a good impact. He clearly highlights “the million dollar question’ as ‘which one [charity or business] generates more social impact per $”.

He than continues to provide information regarding why:

1 Charity is (Always) Limited
2 Charity is (Often) Inefficient
3 Charity (and Aid) is Often Insulting and Harmful (video in support bellow)

This three points clearly showcase charity under a very disadvantageous light. Although charity might have good intention at heart, its does not always generate more social impact than business.

Lastly, Wang contrast charity to his 4th point, Business (if Successful) Scales. Wang concludes with the notion that due to raising social entrepreneurs, investing in businesses are generally more effective than nonprofits.

Ryan Ho is a fellow classmates in my Business Fundamental course. He also has a blog, ‘Ryan’s Blog‘, in which he also blogs about how our world is intertwined with business concepts.

In his article “Infographics: New Form of Data Representation“, Ho talks about how companies such as Visual.ly provide insight into “fascinating advancement in information display”. He continues to associate this renown approach to technology usage to the business fields of MIS and BTM. It’s clear how using infographics helps a company’s information become drastically more appealing and lasting compared to the old fashioned spreadsheet methods. Ho also insight-fully points out how using infographics could position the keen companies with a point of difference that appeals to the contemporary raise of technological preference.

In another note, the introduction of infographics is an example of a potential entrepreneurial change. A change that serves to innovate the current methods businesses could build a relationship with their customers and the public. It could, in fact, provide a vast range of opportunities. It could provide information that showcase a company’s desires to become more sustainable.

This infographics bellow showcase how Smart Grid are sustainable, through a medium that is economically inexpensive.

ZARA has completely revolutionized my world. During my lecture on October 25th and my assigned readings, I learned a vast range of information about this Spanish chain store.

“Zara offers the latest trends in international fashion in an environment of thought-out design’ and offers women’s, men’s and children’s clothing and accessories at affordable prices”, are the words of Youlookfab.com’s article, “Zara: affordable exclusivity” by Angie. In my own words, ZARA is able to provide high-end couture to a market that would otherwise not be capable to possess.

In my lecture, I learned about ZARA’s inventory turnover, in which the Spanish company is able to introduce a new style every two weeks. During a brief discussion with Professor Talmar Milne, I learned that ZARA flies two airplanes per month to Vancouver in order to keep up with the astounding inventory turnover.

What ultimately captivated my interest, is ZARA’s ability to refrain from being a top trend setter and wait for until the trend has proven to become a ‘fad’. ZARA then uses takes this information and provides this trend. As the trend keep changes so does its stores’ inventor. To me, this was revolutionary.

Additional Readings

http://thirdeyesight.in/articles/ImagesFashion_Zara_Part_I.pdf

http://search.proquest.com/docview/940866553?accountid=14656

Guy Kawasaki has a blog named “How to Change the World“. Its sub-title describes his blog as A practical blog for impractical people. Kawasaki blogs about a variety of insightful topics that “impractical” or rather inquisitive people would be interested in.

A particular blog post entitled, “Raising Money: What Not to Say and What Not to Believe #OfficeandGuyK” provides great insight to entrepreneurs that are hoping to find support for their ventures. He has a “Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs” and a “Top Ten Lies of Investors”. To entrepreneurs, Kawasaki’s articles could be very fundamental to their success. Kawasaki clearly points out that in order to enhance their entrepreneurial efforts, one does not need a great quantity of monetary funds.

However, he does acknowledge that at some point, financial support and funding is essential for any entrepreneurial venture to take place. That is why he has provided such lists. So that entrepreneur know what not to say and how to recognized hollow responses from investors.

Lastly, he concludes with the remark that “the bottom line is this is one of the cheapest times to be an entrepreneur, so go into your garage and start prototyping“.

Have you ever dreamed of being rich? a millionaire? a billionaire?

Imagine for the duration of your reading throughout this post, that you have just incurred a financial windfall.

According to Stanely M. Tepner in his article “Dealing With Financial Windfalls”, “a financial windfall is any distribution of financial assets that leaves the recipient with dramatically greater liquid wealth than they had been accustomed to managing before the distribution.”

Tepner continues to raise very interesting insight regarding what the recipient of a financial windfall might undergo. Usually the recipient is very overwhelmed by the sudden increase in wealth. In turn, they seek the service of financial advisers.

“In becoming [their] advisor, we strive to educate, coordinate, evaluate and then allocate as we create and deploy a comprehensive financial plan for our client“, this is what Tepner states as his role as an adviser.

However, what caught my interest are the whereabouts of the wealth until the recipient evaluates and decide what to do.

The wealth is encouraged to take advantage of its Time Value of the Money. That is, to invest the wealth in a trust fund, savings account, bond, etc. until a well-thought-out plan is developed.

Gaby Herbert is a fellow classmates in my Business Fundamental course. She also has a blog, ‘Gaby Herbert’s COMM 101 Blog‘, in which she also blogs about how our world is intertwined with business concepts.

In her article “GETTING INTO YOUR AUDIENCE’S BRAAAAAAAINS“, Herbert talks about how Heart and Stroke Foundation cleverly captivates the attention of the youth audience who are quick to dismiss CPR as an important skill. She explains that by ‘tricking’ the audience into believing that the promo is some sort of movie trailer, the foundation is able to provide important information. Ultimately, Herbert emphasizes that the usage of different marketing strategies to target different audience is a very valuable skill. See for yourself.

Moreover, Herbert’s article not only teaches the importance of carefully planning marketing ads, but also serves as an example of its own lesson. The most noticeable point of difference that convinced me to blog about her article is the clever implementation of a video. Although it is not uncommon for blogs to have video’s embedded, not many, if any, of the other bloggers have figured how to embed them. This small detail turns Herbert’s blog into something more and different.
It’s smart ‘marketing’.

You would think that warfare is ceasing – at least in magnitude – but that would be a total misconception. Warfare might not exists in the form of medieval sword fights; nonetheless, it is still very much alive. It’s alive in the world of business.

And what could serve as a better example than the two smartphone giants –
Apple and Samsung? The iPhone 5 and the Galaxy S III, the latter giant’s flagship respectively, are the main competitors.

Apple, the ‘king of  marketing’, established its lead by being the first to introduce its revolutionary device – the iPhone. Surprisingly not, after 5 generation later, the Cupertino based company is still regarded as the best, which explains Samsung’s latest bold marketing move.

Samsung’s latest “The Next Big Thing is Already Here” campaign passive-aggressively makes fun of the iPhone5. By ridiculing the iPhone5 updates as ‘non-innovative’ and contrasting them as the point of differences of the Galaxy S III, Samsung is able to successfully turn Apple’s edge against them and create a point of reference for themselves.

Samsung certainly gained attention, but will this be a positive move?

Take a look at the campaigns’ photo ad (left) and video (bellow) and leave a comment!

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about ‘marketing’?
Billboards ads, random pictures outside your favorite store, or maybe you would think about..

What you’re currently looking at is RISE’s in-process revamp logo published on their Facebook webpage. RISE is a local Vancouver clothing line that uses donated clothing to create ‘runway quality’ clothing with the ultimate hopes to revolutionize the market’s brand consumption mentality.

The Ubyssey reveals the inception of this marvelous entrepreneurship in their article, “UBC marketing student’s clothing line rises from the ashes“,

So what does RISE has to do with marketing?

 RISE demonstrates the positioning theory of marketing like no other. This consists of Point of Reference (P.o.R.), Point of Parity (P.o.P.), and Point of Difference (P.o.D.), which all together offer what is known as a Value Proposition.

The contemporary, trendy, innovative-seeking clothing market describes RISE’s P.o.R. Its capacity to produce high-end couture gives the entrepreneur company its P.o.P. Lastly, by using thrift (donated clothing), RISE makes its brand standout with a unique P.o.D.

So once again, What is it [marketing] all about? Well, I say marketing is all about winning customers by adequately captivating their interest with a unique standpoint.