Michelle Lee's Blog

With the ever increasing presence of Disneylands in most major continents in the world, and the indoctrination of the Disney image towards a new generation of youths in the form of teen-pop idols (such as the ‘Hannah Montana’ series and ‘The Jonas Brothers’), there’s plenty of reason to believe that the Disney company has indeed become more a profit-centric entrepreneurial company compared to the simple animations firm it once started out as with Walt Disney.

But putting these statements aside, there are also some better things that the company has done in the past. Whilst

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

Facebook is no longer just a tool for networking, it’s also a convenient way for employers to check on data of potential employee candidates – data of which isn’t found on the standard resume. It’s fascinating how with a simple click of a few buttons, an employer can check photos to see how often you’re caught haphazardly drunk on camera, or look at wallposts to see whether you’re behind on mortgage payments.

The recruitment process now, with the use of online background checks, is all the more difficult to be accepted through. The more times your name comes up in a Google search, the less privacy you have. The less privacy, the higher the chances that something nasty may show up on an image search – like one airport security guard who was fired for Twittering plans about (jokingly) blowing the airport up.

Background checks are becoming increasingly popular, and whilst it still requires the applicant’s consent, turning down a background check won’t help with your employment chances.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/jobs/10search.html?ref=technology

British Airways has always established itself as a ‘Premium Airline’, with quality staff, somewhat more cushioned seating, LCD screened entertainment sets as well as other perks. But recently, upon Willie Walsh’s new management there’s been multiple strikes, walk-outs and picketing on the streets from BA staff. Basically, staff are fed up of being treated with a bland Theory X expectation: offer wages slightly above the industry average, and the staff will do their job more effectivley.

But this was not the case in BA, as accounts from staff tell of verbal abuse and harassment from senior managers, poor rest hours in between flight shifts, many redundancies and forced pay cuts. Walsh is a controversial manager in the sense that despite being able to generate some profits for BA to kep the shareholders content, there is still the underlying fact that if he continues to allow the company to mistreat staff, this will hinder business relations, lead to increased labour turnover and maybe at one point, he will no longer have the quality staff he needs to keep the premium BA brand image up to standards, which may lead to a lack of customers and sales revenue.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/oct/10/unite-talks-british-airways-cabin-crew

The world eyes the Chinese Yuan and it’s acclaimed ‘dirty float’ in the currency markets. The US has repeatedly attempted to persuade the Chinese government to appreciate the Yuan’s value, but time and time again, China has turned around and said statements along the lines of ‘there is no such manipulation of the Yuan’, and as this article states, China blames “rich nations” specifically for ‘low interest rate’ policies which have triggered currency market problems (most likely due to the Hot-Money effect), in turn affecting developing countries.

The ‘Price-Bubble’ issue has thus emerged as a potential problem in the future – where investors chasing higher interest rates in emerging economies begin to buy the currencies of these countries, hence making the currency appreciate in value and causing exports of emerging economies to be less price competitive over time, as well as an appreciation in their property markets.

However, unlike developed countries, the population growth of emerging economies like the BRIC’s (Brazil, Russia, India and China) is growing at an increasingly exponential rate, and business is still booming within the regions of Asia and even Middle East, whom have arguably not suffered as severely during the recession. Thus it is questionable to ask whether it is really a ‘Global recession’ or merely a ‘Western recession’.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11508918

…or at least that’s what most of the pessimistic news from the Guardian is indicating.

But of course, an economic recession brings about much needed reflection as well; for instance, after British Airway’s unionised labour strike, and the shutdown of businesses such as Woolworths as well as many smaller firms, has caused many of the surviving firms and companies to evaluate reasons as to why some other competitors didn’t fare so well.

Failure to employ Contingency Planning is a commonly brought up reason for business’ failure, failure to plan ahead is planning to fail in many cases. Budgets could have been adjusted for the recession, stock scaled back.

A slowing housing market due to consumer gloom admist all the uncertainty. With low interest rates of 0.5% and a radical reform in government to a joint-coalition, it is no wonder that the atmosphere in the UK is somewhat more dreary than usual in present times. Consumer confidence is going to be impacted for an elongated period, and the longer this lack of confidence, the harder it will be for the country to increase consumption and overall business momentum.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/oct/04/housebuilding-slumps-after-year-recovery