Bill Fisher mentioned in his blog that “as it moves more assuredly onto the global stage, China will need both a new generation of dreamers and new dreams, especially in business.”

I totally agree on what Bill Fisher said on his blog. From the image above, we can see that Chinese  GDP growth rate is gradually slowing down. This is a inevitable situation. If we see China as a company, China is using cost leading strategy. It highly relies on exporting cheap labours and products. However, cost leading strategy provides a low marginal profit. It can only help a company or a country grow to a certain extend. For further growth, the company or country must develop a point of difference which cultivated by dream and innovation.

Therefore, I will suggest that the Chinese government should capitalize on technology development and establish policy that encourages business. At same time, the Chinese government should also open the Chinese market for foreign investment and embrace free trading. All these will help the Chinese economic growth.

Link to the blogs: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/11/china-needs-a-new-generation-of-dreamers-and-new-dreams/

Pictures are from https://www.google.ca/

Aiming to conquer the Canadian retail market, Target opened its first store in Canada in 2013. However, things did not turn out to be like Target’s plan.

“We definitely were slammed,” said John Morioka, senior vice-president of merchandising at Target Canada. “We thought there would be an initial bump. The bump has not levelled off to the degree that we thought.”

One reason why Target has bad performance in Canadian market is that being a retailer with cost leading strategy, Target fails to compete against its rivals in Canada in price—more specifically, Walmart.

Another reason is that Target misjudged the competition in Canada. Its American rival, Walmart, has been in Canadian market for a decent amount of time and Walmart has established early advantage over Target and high buyer power in local suppliers. Using its buyer power, Walmart manipulates the local supplier to its advantage. As a result, Target confronts difficulty getting products from local supplierS and has many empty shelves.

Through the analysis of the situation, I suggest that in stead of expanding, Target should first improve its operation system in Canada—specifically, the supply chain. A successful operation system  is necessary for a retail business to grow.

Pictures are from https://www.google.ca/

Kodak, an 131-year old technology company, was buried alive in the emergence of digital camera. Interestingly, Kodak was the first company who invented the digital camera. Instead of capitalizing its new invention, digital camera, Kodak forged the opportunity of having first mover advantage and focused on increasing sales on its existing products.

Steve Sasson, the Kodak engineer who invented the first digital camera in 1975, characterized the initial corporate response to his invention this way:”But it was filmless photography, so management’s reaction was, ‘that’s cute—but don’t tell anyone about it.”   ——-via The New York Times (5/2/2008)

The administrator of Kodak narrowed his vision on increasing the company’s short-term profit and isolated technology advancement from the equation of success. Kodak’s story has taught many technology company a lesson. If a technology company fails to innovate and advance, it will be buried quickly in the ever-changing technology industry.

Pictures are from https://www.google.ca/

Founded in 1994, HaiDiLao Hot Pot has dominated the Chinese hot pot restaurant market. Its CEO Yong Wang growed the company from one restaurant to a hot pot chain with 82 restaurants all over China today. The company is generating more than 3 billions RMB(500 million dollar)each year.

What differentiates HaiDiLao from its competitors is not its product but its staff.  Influenced by his personal experience, Yong Wang highly valuates staff’s work ethos. Yong Wang hires people who are from village and gives them wage as much as the starting wage for college students. He creates a fair working environment which gives every employee a chance to be manager as long as they work hard enough. All the staff in HaiDiLao embraces the working environment and believe that working hard will lead to success. As a result, all the staff in HaiDiLao committee to high quality services.

HaiDiLao is an great example of unification of people, culture and team. It demonstrates the stakeholder theory that only by benefiting all the people concerned can great success be cultivated.

Pictures are from https://www.google.ca/

Ten tree is an clothing company launched by the university students of the Western of Ontario. Ten tree has innovated the business model of the fashion industry. Instead of focusing on cost and design, Ten tree attract customers with its unique promotion—planting ten tree for every items sold.
This refer to the new type of emerging business we mentioned in class—social entrepreneur. As the environmental issues become serious, people’s concern over environment grows and their buying habits change as well. Ten tree’s founder observed the trend in the changing consumer’s behavior and rewrite the rule of selling cloths.
Although planting ten trees will impose an additional cost, it brings a positive and green image to the company and appeals to modern consumer’s desire. Tentree’s model brings a win-win-win result. The company is earning money, the consumers feel good about what they purchase and the environment is benefited as well.
However, I will suggest that the company should capitalize its differentiation by being more transparent on the process of planting tree. The company should allow the customers tracking where the trees are planted and quantify the benefit of that ten tree.

Pictures are from https://www.google.ca/

Two years ago, I met the book that brought me to business—Onward

The books was written by the ceo of Starbuck, Howard Schultz, illustrating how Starbuck overcame the crisis in 2008. Coming back to Starbuck as ceo when the company was going downward, Howard re-assured the company’s value position to the staff and the customers.
On Tuesday afternoon in February 2008, Starbucks closed all of its US stores.
A note posted on 7100 locked doors explained the reason:
“We’re taking time to perfect expresso.
Great expresso requires practice.
That’s why we’re dedicating ourselves to honing our craft”

Shutting down all US store for a afternoon brought a huge lose for the company. However, it turned out later that such action payed off. It reminds Starbucks’ staff their value of the company. Since then, Starbuck was back on its track to growth.
Starbucks’s story reminds me the business canvas. The value proposition of the company locates in the middle the canvas. It effects every other section in the canvas.
Many companies tend to forget their value proposition as they expand. Blindly pursuing profit crashes the structure of the business and eventually leads failure.

Pictures are from https://www.google.ca/

One of students in our class discussed about the Twitter IPO in his blog. He believes that Twitter’s IPO will follow the exactly same path as Facebook. He thinks that “social media companies comes from the overvaluation of intangible assets specifically the value of brand.” Regarding to Twitter’s IPO, I have a different opinion. The IPO of Facebook might have been over-valued when it went public. However, due to the experience from what happened to Facebook’s IPO, the analysts for social media companies have established a reference frame and will unlikely overvalue the IPO for Twitter again. The biggest proof for the statements above will be performance of Twitter’s IPO.

Twitter’s IPO clearly shows no trend of declining. Instead, we can see a growth due to the market demand. What’s more, due to the fact that American president Obama used Twitter to help his election campaign, Twitter has demonstrated its power on advertisement. Therefore, I will tend to believe that Twitter has good ability to attract revenue from helping other companies do advertisements.

Link:https://blogs.ubc.ca/brandonkothe/2013/10/04/will-twitter-ipo-follow-in-facebooks-footsteps/

Pictures are from https://www.google.ca/

The shutdown of America government will impose an external threat to local business. Concerning about the impact that the shutdown of America government has on economy, investors decrease the amount of money they invest and this is bad for the market. And with America being the biggest trader, Canadian business will inevitably feel the impact as well.

However, the impact of shutdown  remains small comparing the impact of failing to increasing debt ceiling.

“If the debt limit is not raised before the Treasury depletes its cash balance, it could force the Treasury to rapidly eliminate the budget deficit to stay under the debt ceiling. The fiscal pullback would amount to as much as 4.2% of GDP (annualized). The effect on quarterly growth rates (rather than levels) could be even greater. If this were allowed to occur, it could lead to a rapid downturn in economic activity if not reversed very quickly.”

The recession of US economy is going to seriously damage business activities and performance of all companies. No matter how smart a businessman is, there are always external factors like government that he/she can not control.

Citation

“GOLDMAN: If The Debt Ceiling Isn’t Raised And The Treasury Runs Out Of Cash, Then Say Goodbye To 4.2% Of GDP*.” Business Insider. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Oct. 2013. <http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-on-failure-to-raise-the-debt-ceiling-2013-10>.

“US Shutdown Is Starting to Hit Business, Says Commerce Secretary.” BBC News. BBC, 10 June 2013. Web. 08 Oct. 2013. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24419564>.

“On Monday, BlackBerry said a consortium led by Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. had signed a letter of intent to buy the company for $9 US a share in a deal valued at $4.7 billion US. ” (cbc news)
Blackberry, which was one of the most worthy Canadian company, has fallen from 83 billion in 2008 to 4.47 billion today.

(https://www.google.ca/finance)

Ken mentioned in his blog that Blackberry has given up it chance to establish a point of difference and I do not agree with that. Blackberry already has a established point of difference, which is security.

Blackberry offers a unique secure system which protects users’ information and data. Due to its security, Blackberry is the most favored cellphone among businessmen and government officers. Security differentiates Blackberry from other cellphones. Nevertheless, being pressed by the emergence of cellphone companies like Apple and Sumsang, Blackberry has shifted its focus from capitalizing its security to developing a more user-friendly interface and adding more entertaining elements. This appears to me that Blackberry fail to aware its point of difference. Blackberry’s point of difference is security and this is what its main user, businessmen and government officers, care about. The money put in developing interface and entertainment did not add value to its main users. Blackberry should wake up from blindly imitating other cellphones and emphasizes on its strength, security, again.

Citation
“CBCnews.” CBCnews. CBC/Radio Canada, n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2013. <http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/blackberry-takeover-offer-buys-company-time- 1.1865640>.

link:https://blogs.ubc.ca/yukangzhang1/