It really bothered me when Disney bought nearly all of Marvel’s heroes a few years ago. To me, it seems like a great for Disney and a bad one for comic book fans. A roster of more than 5,000 characters cost Disney $4 billion (1). Apart from Spider-Man, which is owned by Sony Corp., Disney now owns the entire Marvel Universe and can unfortunately do with it as it pleases.

Why Unfortunately? As a comic book reader when I was young, it seems wrong to me that a company associated with Hannah Montana and High School Musical now has the rights to control the paths of such important characters. Considering that super hero movies alone have the potential of making $1 billion ($1,511,757,910 in The Avenger’s case), a company like Disney might want to make these characters simpler and more relatable to specific audiences; children and teens. Don’t get me wrong; I love many Disney characters like Tarzan and Hercules. However, most of Marvel’s characters have been constructed under dark and complex roots, with complicated story lines and truly evil villains

There might be some positive aspects to Disney’s acquisition after all like more movies featuring Marvel’s beloved characters being produced. These Movies however, will have great special effects but no script, PG ratings for all audiences ruining characters and storylines that are violent by nature, and other modifications simply to make more money. The chart below how profitable recent super hero movies have been, with an average of 225.80% of profit.

With this being shown, I truly hope Disney respects Marvel’s history by attempting to improve it, not only to make large amounts of money.

(1) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125172509349072393.html

(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(2012_film)

It’s no novelty that more European football clubs have been spending their pre-seasons in Asia. The biggest clubs in the old continent have invested heavily in the promising Asian Market. However it’s the British Premier league that has delved deeper in developing a very profitable connection with its neighbor continent.

As crazy as it might sound, there are tons of Tottenham fans in Hong Kong and thousands of Liverpool fans in Jakarta who know all the words to “You’ll Never Walk Alone (1). However, behind these strange realities, a long ongoing “romantic” relationship between the league and the Asian countries has delivered enormous revenue to the clubs, organizers, investors and sponsors.

There are two factors that have paved the way to such success. First-mover advantage given that the premier league was the first foreign league to be transmitted in Asia. Also the style of English football compared to other leagues around Europe being more “dramatic and exciting” (2)

The fan base for the clubs in Asia is growing; appreciation for the sport has also improved with better campaigns from the national teams and the increase of friendly matches featuring British clubs keeps drawing more attention from the spectators. Sid Mookerjee blogged about football turning into a business where clubs have to function as true companies when hiring skilled professionals to manage and play for the club in order for it to excel. The connection between league managers, TV broadcasters and clubs with the Asian market uses the same philosophy where the sport has turned into a very profitable business.

No wonder companies like Samsung, Chang and Goldenway are sponsoring Chelsea, Everton and Swansea accordingly. This impressive partnership between the league and the Asian nation’s spectators seems like it has only begun, with much promise in future developments.

(1)(2) http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1731081-asia-and-the-epl-how-a-continent-fell-in-love-with-the-premier-league

A giant in the world of technology, Microsoft was once the biggest company in the world with market capitalization of $510 billion in 2000. According to Kurt Eichenwald’s article titled Microsoft’s Lost Decade, “Today, a single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.” What generated this colossal downfall? From lack of innovation to internal destructive ambition the company has been reduced to a mere competitor in a market, which it ruled. Programmers stopped developing products in search for improvement, but rather to beat their co-workers in a feisty fight for career development. A new management system called “stack ranking” was implemented, which compared employees and encouraged unhealthy competition.

The maintenance of windows and office and the lack of development are also said to be causes that have “frozen” Microsoft in time. It’s even been found out that Microsoft had initial projects in 1998 of developing a sort of touch pad, similar to today’s Ipad by apple, but Bill Gates himself shut down this bold proposal because he thought it didn’t look like Microsoft (2). Recent problems with some of the company’s products, including the infamous “red ring of death”, a defect in the Xbox 360’s hardware, have left the company with an even bigger market share loss.

Microsoft’s negative example should serve as a lesson to all, that no company that has reached a pinnacle of dominance over its competition will always be sovereign.

(1)(2) http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer