Michelle Lee's Blog

Social entrepreneurs come in all forms – Drew Dudley is a unique Canadian example. His realization on his true ideals of being an entrepreneur came in an epiphany after the loss of a close friend, where he realized that although on a sheet of paper, he was more likely to be considered the more ‘qualified’ of the two, but after witnessing his entire community mourning his friend, he realized that his friend had mattered more to most due to the amount of change he was able to place back into his community.

With this ideal in mind, and now the Founder and Chief Catalyst of Nuance Leadership Inc., Drew currently works with dozens of universities, colleges, high schools, charities and other organizations across the globe to empower young people to increase their leadership capacity. He delivers hundreds of workshops and lectures each year, and has most notably participated in the TEDxToronto conference selected him to be one of only 12 speakers at the conference.

Businesses that aim to provide the unique service of empowering and motivating people to perform at their highest levels is certainly a rarity – one of which Drew Dudley successfully provides.

http://nuanceleadership.ca/about/drew-dudley/

Established in 1993 by Malaysian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes (whom previously as auditor of Virgin Atlantic), the previously failing government-funded commercial airline was transformed into a highly successful PLC budget airliner by 2002, having launched multiple routes between South East Asian countries with fares priced as low as RM 1 (US $0.27). AirAsia flies to routes as far as London in the UK and even Abu Dhabi within the United Arab Emirates, whilst still being able to cover business costs.

Fernandes adopted a ‘cut-rate air service’, which he believed would save many Malaysians time and money, especially in a tight economy of which only 6% of the population had ever travelled in a plane. Adopting a ‘buy-on-board’ marketing strategy not too dissimilar from Ryanair’s, where additional meals and drinks have to be paid for separately from the airfare, AirAsia was able to attract many lower-income Malaysians onto his planes, half of which were first-time flyers.

The airline has so far won multiple awards, both in terms of excellence in budget-aviation service and in terms of entrepreneurship. After his successful venture with AirAsia, Fernandes went on with multiple other ventures, such as the ‘Lotus F1’ team, the ‘Tune’ Hotels Chain in Asia which also adapts a ‘no-frills’ concept; all whilst maintaining the success of his airline.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11647205

Class 15 had us all discussing the real notion behind ‘Market Research’ and justifying why it was important for a business – as well as distinguishing between the different types of market research there is (Quantitative, Qualitative, Primary, Secondary).

But that does not mean that products still can’t be subjected to errors in spite of all this probing research in the playing field that is the actual market.

Take coke for instance, which in 1985, launched a new campaign for a new coke taste, their slogan being: “The best has been made better”. As stated in the article, Coke decided to create a sweeter tasting version of the original coke – which it had been using for 99 years. The company had conducted extensive market research (“millions” the article quotes), including tastings for customers, questionnaires and other forms of market research.

However, after 3 months after the launch of this new coke the product was scraped, Coke admitting to miscalculating market research that had not predicted consumers were already brand loyal to the original tasting coke, and classified the 99 year old product as ‘the one and only’ Coke to buy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/working_lunch/3200236.stm

Export led growth has always been a key factor in increasing a country’s economic growth and overall GDP – but now after the deterioration of the United State’s economy, President Obama has taken a stance and has told countries exporting to the US (specifically China and Japan) to stop ‘relying on exports to the United States for growth’.

China responded with a neutral and politically sound ‘maybe’.

The strain between the US and China has been worsened further by the Yuan’s tied rate with the US dollar, or a ‘dirty float’. This is caused by China’s buying and selling of the US dollar to manipulate it’s value on the currency market.

But the point that President Obama emphasized was that the US “did not want to lose the opportunity to create new jobs back home”, and in order to do that, international exports have to decrease in order to give way for domestic production and jobs – an arguably difficult aspect to change when for many years the US economy has grown use to increased consumption of overseas goods.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11748433

India’s pretty well known for curry, and it’s equally well known for its ‘Roti’ and other bread specialties in many parts of the world.

But within recent times, in little bakeries such as this one, India’s been facing a lot of problems of its own in terms of maintaining a quality supply chain and preserving the grains needed to produce staplegoods like bread.

There’s been a wide variety of reasons, a significant one being the seasonal monsoon weather which wrecks havoc over suppliers, not only damaging crops, but the physical infrastructure needed to maintain the supply chain such as machines and buildings.

It’s also due to lack of proper infrastructure to facilitate the grain industry properly, just looking at the video one would notice the thin polyester bags being loosely sealed with a threading machine and sweating backs of workings running to and from along thin wooden planks in attempts to carry the bags to the transport trucks. About 5-7% of costs could be saved if tattered punctured carrying bags like these were scraped and replaced with better quality ones.

Whilst there has been some improvements such as the gigantic grain storage tanks provided by government, there’s still a long way to go before there’s enough of such infrastructure to provide for the 1 billion people in the country.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10924612