Xiaowei Lin's blog

After reading the definition for entrepreneurship, the first company that comes to my mind is the Apple Inc.. Apple is a multinational company that sells personal computers, electronic devices and software, founded in 1976. The first entrepreneurial characteristic that Apple possesses is innovation. Apple has created the innovative idea of personal computer, the iMac. It’s well-known for its simple design and the new system, which attracts a large group of customers. It opens up a new market among the traditional PC market. Apple also has many other innovative products such as iPod and the recent iPad. While creating such innovative products, Apple has to undergo many risks. It’s difficult for people to understand and accept these innovative products. However, Apple eventually turns out to be successful. For example, the launch of iPad a little earlier this year, has been such a great success. Apple has sold over 3 million iPad in less than three months. From April to June, iPad has brought $2.17 billion to Apple. This demonstrates the amount and speed of wealth creation, which is another entrepreneurial characteristic of Apple.

Sources: http://www.doxtop.com/browse/e5ab3c6b/apple-ipad-trends-and-statistics.aspx

Since Apple’s Ipad has come out, it has been a great success and has established its leading position in the tablet device market. Now, more and more competitors have appeared, for example, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab with Android system, RIM’s Blackberry Playbook. As Ipad has already positioned itself in the market, the competitors must create some new features in order to success in the tablet market. For example, the Blackberry’s Playbook has positioned itself as a business tablet. It’s a device with “true multitasking, high performance multimedia, and advanced security features”. RIM is expecting that people in business will make a good use of it with all its business apps and it’s called “BlackBerry Enterprise Server”. These new competitors in tablet market have created some distinct features that are different from Apple’s Ipad. This strategy may help them enter the market successfully.  

Sources: http://www.lanewsmonitor.com/news/RIM-Playbook-Is-Business-Tablet—iPad—Android-Tablets-Can-Rest-Easy-1286110331/

http://www.usanewsweek.com/news/Major-News-Outlets-Court-RIM-PlayBook–Samsung-Galaxy-Tab-1286803875/

Everyday, people broadcast a lot of information on the internet, using social networks, like twitter, face book, etc. Businesses are now beginning to use online social networks as a way to advertise themselves and communicate with customers. It’s definitely a chance to bring more revenue to businesses because it is instant and convenient. I find an article called “Social Media Strategy: Nissan Juke Facebook Promotion”. According to the article, Nissan has currently joined Facebook. They hire people to work on promoting and advertising their products on Facebook. They hire two people to drive their “new Juke automobile” around America, and they will post their experience on Facebook. This is a very innovative and creative way of advertising using social networking. “It’s so different than traditional advertising,” they say in the article. This might bring revenue to Nissan because the posting on Facebook can let the customers know the real experience of using the car and help the company build up good reputation. However, they should consider what percent of people actually trust the information online. Moreover, they might receive negative feedbacks on Facebook.

Nowadays, more and more businesses are using social networking to promote their product. If they can wisely manage it, they will get profit from it. However, they should also be able to undertake the risks that it might bring to them.

Source: http://www.onlinesocialmedia.net/20101011/social-media-strategy-nissan-juke-facebook-promotion/

From class 6, we learned about the importance of positioning. It’s important to be the first one entering the market because it builds up the reputation and it often leads to great success. For example, the McDonalds was the first who created the idea of fast food restaurant. Their efficiency in producing food for customers immediately leads to their great success.  They attract a lot of customers because of their reputation. Now they have restaurants all over the world and they are still in the leading position, although they have many competitors that came after them.

There are many thical issues regarding advertising to children. These advertisments usually used vivid colours, cartoon characters and many other elemetns to attract childern’s attention. Children learn from what they see around them and they can be greatly influenced by these advertisements. They might not understand the negative effects of those products, for example, video games. Children can be negatively influenced by the violence scenes in the video games, but they might not aware of that. Also, many advertisements are targeting directly to children, such as candies, games, and toys. However, it’s the parents who are actually paying for these items, not the children. Therefore if they are using this kind of strategy, it’s not ethical. In a word, business should not advertise directly to children without the consent of their parents.

Just read a news article from financial post.com, which talks about green energy issues of Canadian industry. In the article, it mentions the difficulties in getting the green projects work. Most private company would not want to take the risk to invest in using renewable energy, because they might have to wait for twenty years to actually get the payback from it. I think they should look in a long term regarding this issue. The fuels might be used up very shortly; they may not even last for twenty years. If they do not start working on renewable energy right now, it’ll be too late once the fuels are used up. Both the government and companies should cooperate and pay an effort for a clean environment.