Recently, I read a blog from Xinxhe,Li about “Just to be what you want to be“. In respond to her blog, I have the following comment:

Pike Place Fish Market has a strong organizational culture. In my opinion, A strong organizational culture will create different opportunity for growth. When there is a strong organizational culture, the employee will get motivated, willing to working for the company not only by Money,the benefits will finally goes to company. Pike Place Fish Market shows us a enthusiastic spirit every single day when they are doing the fish-selling. From the customer orders to throwing fish with each others, the owner,employee and customers seems like they are enjoying what they are doing.  John Yokoyama, the owner of the company built a set of values with his employee especially he provide empowerment to his employee. He made them to design what they want to do.This provide a lot freedom when they are working in a competitive environment.

Initially, the fish market was a tough place for anyone to work and it employed most people who has drug addict background. At the beginning, John doesn’t know much about the importance of culture to his business. Unfortunately, his company was in bankrupt in 1986. He was introduced to Jim Berguist who provide a business coaching service. With Jim’s help, John expand his critical thinking on business purpose to be able play in a bigger game. He committed himself to make a difference in the quality of life for all customers. He turns the fish market to a enjoyable place to work.

From:

http://www.pikeplacefish.com/

Yesterday, Microsoft debut its first 3D printing apps for Windows system. 3D printing seems like a new technology for everyone. From my analysis, 3D printer is the start of a new industrial revolution.  The industrial revolution improved our transportation system and the way that we manufacture our product. In the future, we will no longer need to shop in the mall, build item in the factories. The material that we need is a 3D printing apps,3D printer and printing materials.

As the start of 2013, President Obama shows up his support on 3D printing. Right now,the 3D printer is infancy because people need to pay a high cost on buying the printer. With the support with Federal government, the U.S 3D printer company MakerBot announced its idea on putting 3D printer in every school in America. This will allow the student getting the skills that they need for tomorrow’s engineer or designer. It is still in the early stage of this revolution,however, the 3D printing has already translated into a real-world project for out next generations. For information technology workers, it will create job opportunities because it require high skills on using the program. The reality is no one can guarantee 3D printer will bring third industrial revolution but it means a shift of thinking to us, it encourage us to have creative thinking and devote for the global economy.

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/will-3d-printers-in-schools-jumpstart-the-third-industrial-revolution

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/makerbot-academy-a-progress-report-on-education-initiative-to-put-makerbot-replicator-2-desktop-3d-printers-in-schools-in-america-2013-11-15?reflink=MW_news_stmp

No matter it is Google doc or Microsoft office, Have you used both of it for your assignments? For me, I found Microsoft office is a way better than Google Doc because I don’t need any internet access to finish my work even I need to pay an expensive price for this software. Over to last few years, Microsoft has generated a large amount of cash from sales of its office software. However, Microsoft suddenly offer their users a real time document editing-Office web Apps for free last week.

What bring Google and Microsoft into making these office money into cloud service? When the Google doc first offered in 2006, it was just a curiosity threat to Microsoft because Cloud based service is not common at that time. The increasing popular of cloud based service make Google doc become extremely useful for the users. It made Google Docs become a legitimate threat to Microsoft. However, Google doc still lack of some Microsoft office’s advanced feature but it is simple to use than office. In the future, Microsoft is still a huge player in this business because a recorded has shown Microsoft has 90% market share.

If we change our thinking, we focus on cloud based service. Everything will changes

Google has found over 120 million user is using its Google doc service while Microsoft has only 50 million user is using it office web apps. Google seems can afford to give away software for free but Microsoft can’t. Apparently, Google makes money off its productivity by selling web ads. They keeps their users become more closer by offering this free service. In the other side, office sales are about a third Microsoft total annual revenue, it is hard to make it free and difficult to beat Google doc. From the conclusion, It shows that Google doc and office have it own advantage and disadvantage,respectively. They both are facing the business challenges each other.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/13/technology/enterprise/microsoft-office-google-docs/index.html?iid=SF_BN_River

Recently, I read Fang, Songyi’s blog about BitAssets. In respond to his blog,I want to comment as follows:

In the last post, we talked about the general idea of Bitcoin. The increasing demand for bitcoin attract people’s attention on becoming the next generation of payment method. However, from my analysis, it shows that Bitcoin will never replace any currencies. Firstly, the reason that why virtual currencies replace cash because they cannot provide a secure feeling to the public. The exchange rate for virtual currencies swing a lot day by day. It goes up 500% today but it can be ended up as a recycle paper tommorow. Secondly, there is no government regulation on this sort of currency. It is totally decided by the market and the issuer. When there is any problem on your currency, no one will take up the responsibilies. For example, If your currency is stolen by a hacker, you cannot track it back because the account is all annoymous. When the company of issuer shut down, your money will become nothing. It is not profitable for the virtual currencies to expand to become fully convertible, compare to government currencies. Facebook creadit shows us a good example.

With over than a billion uses around the world, a virtual currenct such as facebook creadit could use as many real curriencies for exchanging goods and service online.However, Facebook abandoned this creadit program because they found out a confusion with other currecies used inside facebook apps. Facebook feel there is a diffculty to control the flow of payment. For the government, it is hard to record all the transaction with virtual currency for tax purpose. Therefore, they won’t accept it as offical currency for trades.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/virtual-currencies-won-t-replace-cash-central-bank-says-1.2425237

Have you heard about what Bitcoin is? First of all, Let me tell you what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is a virtual currency launched five years ago. Basically, A bitcoin is like a retail gift card. Each bitcoin is worth a certain amount of money with a series number and bitcoin address. With that bitcoin address, you can buy and sell your bitcoin. Bitcoin is a currency which its value flucuates and the value of a bitcoin may not be the same value as a bitcoin tommorow. It is risky for investors because it can be either goes up 100% or decrease 100%. The advantage of investing Bitcoin is no one can steal it whitout authorization trades. The disadvatage is Bitcoin isn’t backed by any central bank or any government, people must trade on specific exchange plantform privately.

Currently, a growing number of merchants accept bitcoin as payment because the transaction costs associated with bitcoin are lower than creadit card/debit card. One Bitcoin is now worth $430 USD, nearly doubling the start of november and up from $15 at the begining of 2013. The increaseing in bitcoin price shows a increasing demand for bitcoin around the World. People are willing to use it for trading real good and service like barter economy. Compared to traditional electric currency, Bitcoin has a limtied/fixed issue volume in the market. This is why Bitcoin worth more than other birtual currency.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/bitcoin-virtual-currency-hitting-the-mainstream-1.1312022

Shares of New Tech IPO-Twitter went on sale to the public on the lat Thursday. It means Twitter has officially transfer from a private company to public company. Twitter set its share price as $26 per share for it’s IPO(initial public offering). This price values Twitter at approximately $18 billion market capitalization which is also the most highly anticipated IPO since Facebook in 2012. The IPO from Twitter is expecting to raise about $1.8 billion from the public before its expenses. The company offer 70 million shares to the market and provide another option to buy another 11 million shares. Assume all the shares are sold, Twitter will totally raise $2.09 billion.

In the first day on the stock market, Twitter soar about 72% to $44.9 per share. Does it worth $44 per share? From my analysis, I don’t think it worth that much because Twitter has never turned a profit since it was founded in 7 years ago. The investor forgot that when the market opened. The reason why Twitter climb up 72% is because theeir temper expectation and passion and the encouragement from investment bank. When the investor realize it doesn’t worth this price, Twitter will start going down. Most analysis don’t expect Twitter to be profitable until 2015.

To be more profitable, Twitter should consider it s marketing problem. As we can see, consumer marketing will become a big proportion of investment from twitter if they want their active user members to grow more. In fact, The twitter;s user growth has slow down in the United states(Just 53 million from the US,compared to 179 million from facebook). Twitter can try to attract different audience by promoting different content that easy to follow on a popular culture.

From: http://news.yahoo.com/twitter-ipo-live-busy-morning-twitter-debut-140811323–finance.html

http://news.yahoo.com/dazzling-twitter-debut-sends-stock-soaring-73-pct-222550230–finance.html

According to the financial report, The smartphone maker Blackberry lost approximately a billion dollars in its second quarter. Its revenue was down around 50% compared with the same period last year. Those financial result shows that the hardware environment are really competitive right now as Blackberry seems to fail in this game. The T-mobile from the states has announced that they will never sell any Blackberry product in the future.In addition, a Toronto-based FairFax financial holding suggest to buyout Blackberry with 4.7 Billion last week and Blackberry seems to agree on this deal. Does BlackBerry has any opportunity to recover back to its golden age?

From my research, it shows that Blackberry has already failed in the competition with Apple or Samsung. The reason is Blackberry is really late in the game and they cannot make an efficient decision. When the first iPhone came out, it marks a historical change on the development of technology. Blackberry is still producing their key-pad smartphone to the public while people start to think about change to a touch-pad phone. If BlackBerry realized this early and change their marketing strategy, It could avoid the situation happened right bow which is a buyout plan from other company. In the other side, After Samsung enter the smartphone market, Blackberry just found out that smartphone is a trending market on the mobility market. However, when they start to produce their Blackberry Z10, which is a touch-pad smart phone from Blackberry. Apple’s iPhone is already in its fourth generation and Samsung is on its third generation. Both of Apple and Samsung has already reserve around 70% market shares in the market. Blackberry has been isolated. Nowadays, Blackberry is not facing the challenges from Apple and Samsung, it also faces the challenges from Google and Microsoft. Microsoft just bought Nokia to expand its development on smartphone market. However, The overall health of Blackberry is not really bleak even they are losing in their investment. The BlackBerry has no debt and certain amount of cash flow. The most valuable part is its operation system, which has approximately 72 million subscribers. The best way for Blackberry is selling its company to Fairfax or keep innovating its product to attract more users. Otherwise, it is the end of Blackberry.

From

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/don-pittis-who-would-want-to-buy-a-blackberry-1.1330202

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

China recently launches its new free trade zone in Shanghai, China as a major step for their economic experimentation. It means that China might has its intention to upgrade its economic structure from socialism to capitalism. It has been reported that 25 Chinese and foreign companies were grants to start their branch in the zone. The goal of zone is to encourage foreign investment, upgrade its financial service in 18 sectors in the country’s tightly regulated service industry such as shipping, law and engineering or medical institutions. Generally speaking, Shanghai is trying to surpass HongKong by setting up a similar economic structure in Mainland China.

What does it mean by Chinese government set up a free trade zone in Shanghai? From my analysis, China is trying to expand its economics development to surpass United States. Moreover, China will remove the Great Wall restriction on the foreign website such as Facebook or YouTube. People is not allowed to access Facebook,twitter or other foreign website in the past.It displayed Chinese government seems prepared to release some controls to put its all effort to promote its free trade zone as a International finance center to compete New york City, London and Hong Kong. I personally China is going to set up its free trade zone in every province if the Shanghai free trade zone is determined to be an successful example. Now, The Chinese community is enjoying the business opportunity offered by the internet. Only revolution will make them become better and better. In the coming days, the Shanghai free trade zone will aim to prove itself as a transformative model for China’s economic structure and inspires of the rest of communism countries such as North Korea.

A man is walking in front of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone.

From http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1320509/china-launches-its-first-free-trade-zone-shanghai

Recently, Apple has revealed its new product iPhone 5s to the public. The people around the World are getting excited on its new security function which is a fingerprint scanner. The new iPhone 5s seems provide a more secure options to protect privacy from their users. However, Did the user think about where will their fingerprint goes? Apple’s database or the NSA (National Security Agency)?

So far, Apple hasn’t declare any official statement regarding this concern. Yesterday, while everyone is concerning about USA government shut itself down and put approximately 800000 people out of work, a hacker organization released a video statement to claim a relationship between AuthenTec, which developed the iPhone 5S fingerprint scanner and U.S government. The AuthenTec Company is used to produce to wireless equipment or electric system for US government in defense or commercial sector. Is that legit and ethics for Apple to collect fingerprint from their users?

From my analysis, it shows that Apple should not store any fingerprint in its database because this will violate the business ethics and destroy its brand value. If the public found out Apple has any intention to forward its fingerprints database to the third-party, the result will become barrier for Apple to increase its brand value and decrease its brand image. People will avoid its product because of the scandal. As a international cooperation, Apple has the responsibilities to protect all their client information and not leak to other parties.It doesn’t say that Apple will use the fingerprint for NSA to spy on someone but it is not hard to believe that NSA would collect each fingerprint data from every iPhone 5S. Apple should be aware on those problem and declared their official statement as soon as possible.

Picture From Patrick McGuire

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-iphones-fingerprint-scanner-has-shady-government-ties-anonymous-says

Business Ethics is one of the controversial topic in the business world. It is also a great guidelines for diverse business activities. In short, business ethics reflects the status of behavior from an company. It can be manifested into different aspects such as Marketing or Human resource Management.I personally think the business ethics will gradually become important in our business world in the future. The reason that why I would say this because of the highly competitive business environment between enterprises or firms. In the light, business ethics changes their business mode.

Nowadays, the firms is not just maximizing their income profit, they are taking up their social responsibilities. Be Respectful on business ethics is only survival way for the companies in the business world. Ignore the ethics or violate the law will damage the right of consumers and lose the confidence from the public. The main idea of business ethics is surrounding the relationship between enterprises and stakeholder. It also involves a company’s management principal and ethics perspective. For example, the most common problem about business ethics is the relationship between Employer and their employees. Some company will push their employees to work in order to maximize profit.

However, they ignored their employees’ feeling. The employee is the soul of a company. A company cannot run really well without creating a pleasant work environment. Different research stated that the company maintains a good relationships with their employees by respecting the ethics will increase their productivity and contribute the growth in annual revenue.

Pictures from :http://business-ethics.com/2013/09/06/1132-sustainability-progress-more-words-than-action/