YEONJU MAH's Blog

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  YEONJU MAH 7:14 pm on November 10, 2014 Permalink | Reply  

  As the Business World Changes, Strategies Need to Be Changed As Well – The Fall of Competitive Advantage 

  

  In Philip Monagan’s Blog, my fellow student brought up an interesting topic that I believe also goes well with what we, 1st year Sauder students, have leant in Class 14: Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Philip made a relevance between the reaction given by several businesses to the change in the distribution and consumption in the music industry in the last few decades and the emergence of the notion, Transient Advantages, coined by an associate professor at the Columbia Business School, Rita Gunther McGrath. In a Harvard Business Review article written by Rita Gunther McGrath, McGrath worries how;

  “For too long the business world has been obsessed with the notion of building a sustainable competitive advantage.”

  McGrath believes the notion of a sustainable competitive advantage is no longer valid due to expansion of globalization, digital disruptions and so on. Instead of pursuing the traditional marketing strategy of seeking to build a “sustainable” advantage by coming up with an unique innovation that is not easily duplicable or surpassable by competitors, McGrath believes current and potential businesses need to make innovation a routine capability, rather than to pursue it in fits and starts.

  “Organizations need to build up temporary or transient advantages where they seize opportunities, exploit them, and then move on quickly when they’ve exhausted the opportunity.”

  I do agree with McGrath’s points seeing myself living in the world where people long for continuous surprises and innovations. In response, IT companies have squeezed their brain to come up with “newness”, such as smartphones, ipads, Google Watch and so on. I believe it is important for us, as business students and potential future entrepreneurs, to develop skills to fast catch the changing trend in the business world and to readily implement new strategies that better suit the needs of contemporary world.

  References:

  McGrath, Rita Gunther. “Transient Advantage.” Harvard Business Review. N.p., June 2013. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.

  Olofson, Cathy. “Making the Shift from Sustainable to Transient Advantage.”INNOSIGHT. N.p., Aug. 2013. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.

  Monagan, Philip. “Philip Monagan’s Blog.” Philip Monagans Blog. N.p., 3 Oct. 2014. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.

   

   

   

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  YEONJU MAH 1:00 am on November 7, 2014 Permalink | Reply  

  Want Employees to Stay and Work for Your Company? Answer: Make Them Feel Home 

  In class, we learnt about organizational culture and were given a chance to define the term in our own words; I defined it as,

  the environment within the company that employees and the company build together forming incentives and loyalty.

  Of course, the limitation on number of words we use on Pulsepress did not allow me to further elaborate the definition to the extent I would’ve liked to. Now given a space, I would like to add on more of my thoughts. I believe, an organizational culture is not something necessarily the company itself sets upon and “provides” to its employees with. For instance, though it is true that it is the company that offers medical services and bonuses, it is an interaction between the company and the employees that creates and sustains the atmosphere of the workplace.

  An organization culture existing in Zappos, an online shoe and clothing shop, is an excellent example of how such notion works and the kinds of influences it brings to the firm. In an interview, Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, thinks back of the time when he himself did not like working in his own company.

  “I, myself, was dreading getting out of bed in the morning to go to my own company.. I started thinking if I felt this way, I wondered how all of my employees felt.”

  Based on the lessons he learnt in earlier years, Hsieh firmly emphasizes the importance of company culture and providing perfect customer service and customer experience

  “We went from no sales in 1999, to 2008 being the first year we hit $1 billion in merchandise sales. We’re doing several times that today, and the No. 1 driver of that growth is through repeat customers and word of mouth,”

  I believe that there is an infinite benefits of creating a positive organizational culture and that human resource management plays a critical role in doing so. The significance of employees’ relationship with a firm need not to be underestimated thinking that the employees are the first channel where the whole customer service of a firm starts.

  Reference:

  Jackson, Cheryl V. “Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh on the Value of Company Culture.”Blue Sky Innovation. N.p., 23 May 2013. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

  Jacobs, Alexandra. “Happy Feet – The New Yorker.” The New Yorker. N.p., 14 Sept. 2009. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

   
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  YEONJU MAH 10:35 pm on November 5, 2014 Permalink | Reply  

  Social Network 

  

  These days, as I open my Facebook and start to scroll down the Newsfeed, instead of seeing photos of familiar faces, tens of advertisements that I would not be willing to spend my time on reading fill my screen.

  Yes, it has not been a pleasant experience. However, reading the article: Why an Ad-Free, No Cost Social Network is Unsustainable, made me think in a different way of viewing the relationship of the advertisement I get when I am on a particular website and the management of the business that runs the website. Taking the developed technologies for granted, I- who strictly have believed in a quote “no pain no gain”- have not seriously thought about what I paid to these social-network companies in exchange of the services that I get every day.

  “Collectively we seem to have bought into the reality of the digital age: If you’re not paying for a product you’re using, you are the product.”

  This makes me wonder, about the issues that has been so concerning for the past few years: where did our privacy vanish? Some people have been criticizing companies and businesses for collecting and exploiting their clients’ information, and of course exposure of personal information without consent is illegal – but have not people giving a consent to the company to use their personal information of getting access to the services? When we signed up an account to get a service in a website or to download an app, we always encounter a huge paragraph of contract or a small box to check in to further process. By clicking “I agree” button, we actually have been agreeing to share part of our information. I, and I believe many other users theses days, have been underestimating what we are signing for.

  The article also mentioned about an USA Public Benefit Corporation, Ello, that challenges such process of sharing clients’ information in exchange of providing them with services.

  “Virtually every other social network is run by advertisers. Behind the scenes they employ armies of ad salesmen and data miners to record every move you make. Data about you is then auctioned off to advertisers and data brokers. You’re the product that’s being bought and sold”

  Reading the article again reminded me of the fact that nothing is free in this world. Instead of merely grumbling about how I get enormous number of advertisements everyday, I at least now now those advertisements, being the major revenue streams of a business, are the fuel of the companies to run and to provide me with the services that I chose to get.

  Reference:

  Pearson, Mia. “Why an Ad-free, No-cost Social Network Is Unsustainable.” The Globe and Mail. N.p., 30 Oct. 2014. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

  https://ello.co/wtf/post/about