Nike is the leading brand in sportswear, and that for years now.

What makes Nike so special, and why would people rather buy their products than Adidas, Puma, etc ?

Nike shares the point of parity with its competitors to sell sportswear equipment . But what matters in the case of Nike is the points of difference .

What is important about Nike`s strategy first of all is its presence in all sports. we see Nike in football, basketball , tennis ,etc. this allows the brand to expand its audience. If you take the case of Asics for example , eventhough a growing sportswear company, is only focused on running shoes, therefore limiting its market target opportunities.

Nike also has this point of difference in technology . Nike has come up with a lot of innovative sportswear. NikeID is one of characteristics that builds Nike`s point of difference : with Nike ID , the customer  can change the color of the “swoosh” , the overlay , the tongue of the shoes, etc’

Another proof that Nike knows how to combine sport and technology is the Nike+Ipod which is a device which measures and records the distance and pace of a walk or run. Its a small transmitter tuck in a shoe and connected with a receiver plugged in the Ipod of the athlete .

Sources :

http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/information/nike-ipod.htm

www.nike.com

http://www.nike.com/us/en_us/c/nikeid

(http://www.wired.com/business/2013/11/facebook-snapchat/)

I found this article really interesting because it shows relations because fast growing and already huge companies.

Snapchat keeps on expanding, the article talks about “around 350 million photo uploads per day”, showing how this little 20-person company has grown in only 3 years .

Facebook on the other side, is a settled company, with more than a billion users around the world and huge revenues. Facebook already bought Instagram when it felt that it could be a huge-profit generator.             

We see there how relatively small businesses are being surrounded by huge companies as soon as they start to grow .

It`s also interesting to see how Snapchat refused a $ 3 billion offer from Facebook, probably a proposition they never thought they would get a few years back then.

But Snapchat`s reaction is not common, usually small businesses get swallowed by big companies, who rather than leaving the company develop and maybe become a serious competitor, prefer spending millions/billions .

(https://blogs.ubc.ca/namdo/2013/11/12/intense-leadership-style/)

I read this interesting article that Nam linked to his post .

However, I do not agree with Nam and the article in general . Yelling can be seen as a “manly” feature, showing passion and high expectations, as Nam noticed .

But for me, it`s not the best way to get the most of an employee. People don`t react the same way to yellings, and it is often that yellings don`t have such a positive effect .An employee that gets screamed at by his boss is usually intimidated or even scared. It can make him feel uncomfortable, and affect his productivity the other way around : as he feels threatened, his work can be negatively affected .

Using the example of Alex Ferguson is a bit too simplistic : a football coach doesn`t have the same relation a boss has with his employees. A football manager is closer to his players, whilst the manager of a company can not sacrifice his time talking individually to every single employees of the company, and doesn`t have a strong relationship with them .

Rather than screaming at them to get their attention , managers should try and exerce referent power to their employees, treat them with respect and stay ethical .

A social enterprise is an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being, rather than maximising profits for external shareholders.

Nowadays, social entreprises are more and more present. We will here talk about BetterWorldBooks.

This for-profit organization was created in 2002 by three student of Notre-Dame Business School. Following the path of multiple social enterprise, who give one product to people in need whenever a product is bought, BWB does it with books ( One for One concept ) .

As soon as a customer buys a books, another one is donated to a non-profit literacy program. This highlights the key role of social enterprises in making the world a better place to live in. This company generates profit on one hand and manages to help fight illiteracy on the other .

But BWB does even more than this : the company also donates about seven percent of its net revenue to libraries and nonprofit literacy programs. To date, the company has donated over $15 million under this program. add to that the 10,000,000 books donated.

BetterWorldBooks is a successful company that manages to keep in mind that not everyone can afford its products and knows about the power of books , who can help people out of poverty and have a proper education.

Source :

http://www.betterworldbooks.com

http://www.bcorporation.net/community/better-world-books

George is one of the most successful Sauder Alumni .

For this businessman , the passion for entrepreneurship grew really fast , as he started his first project while studying at UBC . As he even said, he was so eager to start his own business(es) that he dropped out of college , during his last year !

Everything started with Sandwich Tree , of chain of restaurants he created with comrades that grew fast and had about 100 franchises across Canada before it all came crashing down in the recession of the early ’80s.

However, this wasn`t enough to crush Geroge`s ambitions, on the contrary this first taste of entrepreneurship motivated him even more .

As the years passed, George was involved in more and more businesses, one of which was Blenz Coffee. He was former President of Blenz Coffee from 2007 to 2012, using his expertise to grow the franchise to more than 100 locations around the world.

Conscious of the potential of Internet, Geore Moen quickly took advantge of social medias, and still does as much as possible in order to increase his influence. He is one of the most followed Canadian business man on Twitter, with more than 120,000 followers.

Source :

http://www.georgemoen.com

https://twitter.com/georgemoen