Monthly Archives: November 2014

United Nations, even if fully founded, can not take the place of social entrepreneurs.

UN is initially built to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations and promote social progress, better living standards and human rights. Its value proposition focuses mainly on the relation between nations, which is different from what social entrepreneurs do.

Social entrepreneurs, as individuals, solve seemingly intractable problems by finding OPPORTUNITIES which others failed to find. After all, they are entrepreneurs generating social value with STRATEGIES. They are also self-employed, which means that their brilliant ideas can be acted out as long as they want to. Like for Muhammad Yunus‘s case, he sought to solve the problem in his hometown rather than in the poorest area in the world.

UN, focusing on the poorest areas and seeking to resolute the hardest problem, sometimes overlook other less suffering but still miserable cases. It was mostly driven by social responsibility. Even if fully founded, there is no enough insight for UN to focus on EVERY problem that exists. Social entrepreneurs, with more ideas, may find better solutions to various kinds of problems that exist in our world, thus creating shared value to more people (always without sacrificing the interest of anyone).

Work Cited:

“The United Nations at a Glance” United Nations <http://www.un.org/en/aboutun/index.shtml> 2014

“What is Entrepreneurship?” <http://skollworldforum.org/about/what-is-social-entrepreneurship/> 2014

Source of Picture

http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/un/united-nations-day

http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/224158

Since long long ago, banks have been referred as “too big to fail” for basically 2 reasons. One is that it is supported by the government who will offer them bailout. The other is that banks usually have a large amount of assets.

But now, the first reason might not exist anymore, according to new global rules created by the Financial Stability Board(FSB). After judging the fairness for endlessly bailing out banks with tax payer’s money, FSB decided to let the stakeholders for the bank pay for bank’s loss.

There is some influence that the rule has on banks. First, the customer segments for the bank might change due to the fall in stability in bank. For a bank, the key activity is to keep customer’s money. When a bank is less reliable, it fails to perform its key activity well, losing customers (and their trust).

For the same reason, conservative stock buyer may stop buying bank stocks since the level of stability for banks NOW is no longer a point of differentiation.

Loosing its existing customer segments, value proposition and the reliability for performing its key activity, banks may have a hard time repositioning itself.

Work Cited

“‘To Big To Fail’ bank rules unveiled by market regulators” www.bbc.com <http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29982181>Nov 10, 2014

Source of Picture

http://www.talkmarkets.com/content/news/24-banks-fail-eu-stress-tests?post=51959

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswright/2014/11/11/one-country-one-market-making-money-from-shanghai-hong-kong-stock-connect/

It is interesting that AT&T is buying Mexican’s largest cellphone company Iusacell, hoping to go global. Though its previous target is to compete in the Europe market while buying Vodafone(British phone company).

The prime reason for going worldwide is that AT&T thinks that the global telecommunication marketplace is going to scale.

How will the market of global telecommunication system be in the future? Yet it may seem useless to most of us since it’s not related to our daily life, going global is indeed the trend of technology and development of goods. Companies in majority is always chasing to make break-throughs to make their product better, therefore keeping on using the latest technologies and ideas. AT&T’s taking over Iusacell is a great illustration of creating values for customers(to some in need).

However, as AT&T begins to use the global telecommunication system, it is also incurring higher cost. In this case, it spent $2.5 billion buying Iusacell and paying their debt. Then, the question arose, how will they break-even? And even if they can break-even, how long it would it take? At the same time, its original services is facing disruptive innovation, projecting protential lost in existing profit.

Work Cited:

“GTS|WMO” WMO <http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/www/TEM/GTS/index_en.html> 2014

“AT&T to buy Mexican Wireless Provider Iusacell for $2.5 Billion” www.nytime.com <http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/att-to-buy-mexican-wireless-provider-iusacell-for-2-5-billion/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Mergers%20&%20Acquisitions&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs&region=Body> Nov 7, 2014

Source of Picture

http://www.forbes.com/companies/att/

http://www.netscribes.com/blog/recent-investments-telecom-industry-2/

AT&T Acquires Iusacell for $2.5 Billion

Jell-O, the Perfect Snack

I totally agree with Farwah Ahmed’s point in her blog. As she stated, Jell-O lacks points of parity (specifically ready-to-eat feature) to keep itself in the competition in today’s fast-pace society. It value proposition (being fun to kids), which once leads it to success, no longer works anymore due to the lack of time to make Jell-O.

There are some other products or even companies facing the same problem as Jell-O did. McDonald is one of them. In contrast to its slogan ”I’m lovin’ it”, McDonald isn’t that much loved by customers. The fast-food restaurant which once pervaded the whole world’s eating style is now falling in same-store sales.

McDonald, I’m lovin’ it!

Same as Jell-O, its value proposition is no longer favored by customers. Nowadays people tends to have a healthy life style, which means that deep fried instant food with little vegetables like McDonald is losing its customers. Apart from that, competitions arise when healthier fast-food places like subway began to spread over the world. Facing the problem, McDonald is now providing COMPARATIVELY nutritional choices for customers to gradually get rid of its image as junk food. But is it that easy to change a LONG-EXISTING value proposition?

Nutrition Choices

Work Cited:

“No More Jell-O?|Farwah Ahmed’s Blog” <https://blogs.ubc.ca/farwahahmed/2014/09/29/no-more-jell-o/> Sep 29, 2014

“Nutrition Choices :: McDonalds.com” McDonald’s. <http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/food_quality/nutrition_choices.html> 2010-2014

“Can transparency improve McDonald’s image?” <http://www.mnn.com/money/sustainable-business-practices/blogs/can-transparency-improve-mcdonalds-image> Oct 13, 2014

“McDonald’s October Sales Fall” <http://www.businessinsider.com/mcdonalds-october-sales-fall-2014-11> Nov 10, 2014

Source of Pictures

http://www.burlapandcrystal.com/2012/02/inspire-me-with-valentines-day-2-jell-o/

http://www.mcdonalds.com/