Working as a team, especially in such a diverse community as Sauder is always a challenge. Honestly, many people pray to get into good team to escape the need to drag the whole team along and doing all the work on your own. Luckily this was not the case for my team.

Suprisingly team worked as a watch. Of course there were minor glitches, however none of them were too serious to bother. The meetings were regular and the work was thorough and yeildful. All the team members performed differenty of all stages of project due to personal factors. Some were more efficient at one stage, others- later.

Probably the most comprehensive task was to find the meeting time that would fit everybody. Planning meetings last year was much easier, however now everyone has various extracurriculars, work, homework, more courses etc.

However we always eventually managed to find time to meet. A few meetings did not happen and we had to work online in the facebook group.

Overall this team was quite efficient and I believe is a good example of a well-balanced team that manages to produce higher overall level of efficiency than every separate memeber of the group would on their own.

Ever wanted to amaze your customers?
Looking for a way to make the world speak about you?
Want to make something fun and viral?

Yeah. Just put  a giant LV box in the middle of Red Square in Moscow, Russia.

This thing looks kind of weird, and the fact that such a company as LV has put it on the main square in one of the most LV buying cities in the world makes it even weirder.

Im not sure if I have to mention this, but the box has driven russians nuts.

However, was LV at all wrong?

Lets analyze simple facts:
LV has a brand presense on the major cities’ main square.
And this happens during Christmas rush.
And everyone is talking about LV.
All around the world, really. All of a sudden everyone is talking about LV.

Im just curious to look at LVs selling graph in Russia for November-December of 2013.

After all this looks like one crazy PR stunt that may end up in HUGE sales for LV. 

A week ago i got struck by the marketing genius of this company and these guys.

When we think about marketing research we usually get into surveys, analysis, market 1segmentation and all the other expensive and complicated techniques that are used to determine what the people want and what they expect.

All of those complicated techniques can be made on the kickstarter-the crowdfunding platform. It is now widely known and people like to use it. Therefore these guys, by just posting their ideas there know straight away how much people value their idea. This “how much” actually being a monetary equvivalent, something that traditional marketing research techniques rarely manage to do.

At the same time producers receive pre-orders. So without spending a penny (theoretically) they already know their demand, responsiveness of customers to changes in design, price (campaigns on KS are customizable after they reach initial goal).

Considering most “donators” are actually connected to KS through Facebook or Google+ it appears possible to track who are the companys’ customers. So the companies can actually go and see who bided instead of making a survey or an educated guess of who the customer really is.

So as I said- welcome to 21th century! Some things become horribly complicated, and some, like marketing research, may appear to be too easy.

As I like to say- welcome to the 21st century!

Nowadays not only the robots from sci-fi movies become real, but also it becomes insanely easy to create your own business.

I am not talking about the legal way- this is deffinetely long and hard, filled with paperwork procedure and never it takes only few hours to set up.

However if you choose to go illegal (like most of start ups do) you will yourself in the presense of vast choice on how to actually start a business.

One of them is to advertise your products through instagram. This article talks about the convinience of using instagram to advertise products, and weirdly enough- they do get sold.

However what this blog post does not mention is how to find appropriate buyers on instagram. My friend is actually selling clothes of instagram page without any physical shop, which pretty much allows her to keep her costs at zero. What she does to find customers is really easy. The main products that are sold on the page are fashion-luxury brand clothes, watches etc. As there is really defined group of customers, she goes on surfing instagram pages of celebrities, fashion desginers, fashion bloggers and other instagram shops. There she pretty much follows all the people she finds there.

Such a method has proven to generate a stream of customers, and as the costs of the shop are zero and she doesnt need to keep any inventory she is able to offer a huge range of products to interest even more customers.

As my fellow classmate has recently pointed out phoneblocks are dangerously close to reshaping the global smartphone market, creating possibly a shock wave higher and stronger than the one Apples’ first Iphone has once created.

It is striking me how technologically saturated our present is. 3D printers, Spherical cameras (check this out, pretty cool example of how an individual may threaten to reshape the whole camera market). The same concept works for phoneblocks, and I expect this new format of phone to come out as soon as possible.

For the past 5 years the smartphone market was in the deep stagnation. Stagnation of ideas, to be correct. Producers were making their phones smaller and smaller, and now they are back on trend of making them enourmous (just look at the new Samsung Note).
Also, no one has really come up with anything interesting since Iphone 1. Our smarthphones are still touch-screen machines that can somewhat substitute computers.

As for the marketing, I think that Murat is missing a something when he says “but do you want to have the same phone for a decade?”. We have to realize that phone market is being ruled by producers. Steve Jobs did not do a market research when creating an Iphone. He just came up with idea of the phone, and kept feeding it to the whole world for over a decade. This market work more as stated in this joke:
Apple: “**ck you. You’ll take what we give you.”

I cant see why this concept wont apply to the phoneblock.

Only few years ago the streets of my home-town were cowered with various billboards advertising all sorts of alcoholic beverages as well as tobacco products. Considering the well-know financial ability of big tobacco and alcohol selling companies it is not hard to imagine how much of the actual available advertising space was filled with their adverts.

.

However the situation has changed and Ukrainian government has imposed a ban on any type of outside tobacco-alcohol advertising. This has obviously caused a great frustration among producers and outside advertising space providers. Producers have lost their main mean of advertising and providers have lost a great chunk of their profits.

This prohibition act has yielded a great discussion about the ethical advertising in Ukraine. Such question as if it is ethical to use children, alcohol, elders etc have arrised.

The traditional “ethical” view on things is that “yes, it is bad to use affective images in advertising”. However i would like to dig a little bit deeper and inquire, why is such an advertising so effective?

It is mostly due to its affective nature, that we get influenced by such advertising. But doesnt that mean its is actually a good thing? People are rational agents seeking to maximize their utility, and if advertising gives them a sort of satisfaction of their need for utility…cant we just let them have it? After all, having a candy bar give you a sense of moral satisfaction is much better, than just having it fill you with calories.

Well what if I want to feel more manly?

This Marlboro add offers me a solution. And if I end up feeling more manly in the end- do I really care this ad could have been unethical?

One of stronger software developers Valve has amazed the world when they published their employees handbook

The strange thing about Valve is that it has no managers. At all. There is someone above, who rools the company, however employees are free to do whatever they want to. One who is leading project today may end up being letter-boy in the next project. (in fact it is rare for someone to be leader for 2 consecutive projects).

Salaries are also determined by democratic choice. The one, who worked more will get more.

This system is innovative and has no known analog I am aware of.

The interesting question here is would such a system work for non-software company? Logic says, that not really. Say, supermarket would probably not be able to operate without strict managment control.

However such an idea is interesting, and it would be interesting to implement it in non-software business environment to see how it works.

in the end it may appear the most effective managerial system ever invented…or the worst one.

Recent court actions that Apple undertook against Samsung may have eventually benefited the attacked one. It appears that this patent war is over, with Samsung holding a flag.

As my classmate mentions in the blog :

“According to the articles, the writer also introduces that Samsung is playing a leading role in smartphone sales; however, Apple’s market share fell slightly.” (https://blogs.ubc.ca/manning/2012/10/14/samsung-wins-reversal-of-nexus-u-s-sales-ban/)

I have to agree about “playing a leading role” part, as not only Apple’s smartphone shares fell. Samsungs’ new flagman Nexus 10 has recently sold out, in the same way it happened to iphone 5, that is now not available in stores

However, while iphone running out of stock is obvious and predictable, the insane demand on Samsungs’ new tablet is astonishing. The bell rings for Apples, as Googles’ tablets (along with Kindle) are their main opponents in this area.

It is interesting to note, that sales of Samsung products have increased after the abovementioned PR scandal, as it is noted in my classmates blog.

It is evident now that Apple is trying to regain their market share in smartphone market. This may be one of the reasons why iphone 5 was announced only 6 month after the iphone 4s, and with only minor changes to it. They have to cope with Samsungs speed, which announces new flagman phones roughly every half a year.

Back from where I come from all boys below age of 20-25 dream of becoming a businessman. Some succed, majority does not, and absolute majority only dreams, but never tries.

I personally heard the craziest ideas. One of them was smuggling cars bought in US to Ukraine, to profit from non-taxed difference. Other idea I heard was to set up a strip-club, as it is “too profitable”. Of course that strip-club would be an undercover brothel, because “well why not?”. One more idea concerned bringing iphone from Canada and selling them on-place.

Some ideas were original, like the strip-club one. Some werent even ideas:

-Lets make up something that wasnt there before!
-Well what?
-Well I dont know! We have to think about it!

Of course hours long debates never yielded anything efficient. (Well, for me they did- I ended up in business school).

Everyone back home wants to be an “enterpreneur”. But to be honest, none of those, who actually starts an enterprise actually is an enterpreneur. They are just businessmen. But when I try to explain that- people simply do not understand.
They dont understand what to be enterpreneur really is, and neither do they carry any social responsibility. They are al about “riping people off”.

It seems like underdeveloped countries like Ethiopia are performing better social-enterprise wise than relatively wealthy and quite middle-economic class Ukraine.

Khan academy,
Coursera,
free online MIT and Stanford courses.

Online education skyrockets in its development, and in 10 years many degrees may shift online. Because, lets face it- there are too many people on the earth eaher for education. While it may be fine now, quite soon being in university (especially in the top one- we all want the best, right?)  may become extremely competitive.

Such intstitutions as Phoenix university already offer people online degrees. They are cheaper, they save you time, you can work at the meantime…benefits from all around. Though- they are not recognized as well as old style campuses. But isnt it just a question of time?

Such enterprises as Khan academy are good examples of social enterprise. You can access the site from any place on the Earth, thus anyone can really be achieving their educational goals. (you will have to learn enlish and get internet first, of course).

Does future of education lie in online? It looks like certain part of it will shift online, as there is demand to meet. However old style universities wont give up their positions, infrastructure and investements for free.