The Globe and Mail recently reported that the American tradition of Black Friday is starting to “Sweep North”. I say it’s about time. American retailers make millions if not billions from Black Friday, it’s about time Canadians get a piece of that pie. The reason Canadian retailers need to adopt this practice is because Canadians living near the American border will frequently just drive down for Black Friday. They’re probably not celebrating American Thanksgiving so it’s not hard for them to head down and reap the rewards of all the sales while Canadian retailers are left out in the cold. Why not just have Canadians shop in their own country and have Canadian retailers reap the profits? Seemed like a simple idea to me that benefits everyone. Overall Canadian retailers need to know their market and be able to adapt to it, this is an excellent step.

Regards,

Keanan

My classmate Li Ming recently opined that Aakash the $35 tablet would go the same way as the Tata Nano and would sell quickly at first and then fail. “As stated in class Tata did not remain popular in India for long” was a quote of hers. I however greatly disagree with her and lean more to agree with the original blogger, Priscilla. There is a substantial difference between cars and tablet computers in my opinion. The other other thing that I feel is strongly working in Aakash’s favour is that the west would be really open to an extremely cheap tablet. My mother was very frugal when i was growing up and often was unwilling to get me any of the latest gadgets. With a 35 dollar tablet i could easily get it myself! While Aakash might not have the prestige feeling of the iPad, it is still a very functional and a very cheap tablet. Overall I agree with Li Ming that Aakash must be careful not to go the way of Tata, it would be relatively simple to ensure its success.

Regards,

Keanan

The Harvard Business Review blog is an excellent place to keep up on what’s new in the world of business without having to sit through the politics and economics that The Economist, Globe and Mail, and CNN Money make you sift through. The other day I stumbled upon The Products Chinese Consumers Want the other day and it is a fantastic explanation of how to continue the continued revenue growth of companies entering China. The gist of it is that most of the growth in China over the past decade has been from first time consumers, but now that is starting to dwindle in the major cities. Now you have to start focusing your attention on some of the lesser known and poorer cities that the Chinese government is targeting for growth such as Chengdu. Corporations now have to compete with many competitors now and convince Chinese consumers to trade up. There is still much room for growth, you just have to work for it. If you’re ever looking for some quick summaries of business information, I again must highly recommend the Harvard Business Review’s blog.                   

Regards,

Keanan 

My classmate Intishar recently wrote and interesting post about how he felt that recycling was over-hyped and that we should focus more on reusing. While everyone can agree that reusing is a very important step, I have absolutely no problem with the media’s emphasis on recycling instead. Recycling mainly focuses on things that cannot be reused, especially plastic bottles. Plastic bottles if reused can cause serious health threats, which are easily avoided if you recycle them instead. The other issue I felt his blog post had was his suggested alternatives for recycling. The “3 R’s”, reduce, reuse, and recycle, i all about doing all three. Overall recycling should be stressed because it is the last step of this conservation strategy. First you reduce your waste, then you reuse what you can, and finally recycle the rest. Seems fine to me.

Regards,

Keanan

Everyone and their mother seems to have a smart phone these days, foursquare knows this and is tapping into it. foursquare is a mobile app designed to let you “check in” at different hot spots and also check where your friends are hanging out. But the beauty of foursquare and why I believe that it is a entrepreneurial company is that it saw the opportunity and went for it. I saw that there was demand for a creative way of telling people where you are and took advantage of it. foursquare is quickly going from a small gimmicky app to a major social networking tool. With 10million registered users and 3 million check ins per day, it’s clear the foursquare is growing fast. The only criteria for being an entrepreneurial company it doesn’t meet is that it hasn’t figured out a way of monetizing its service yet. But with smartphone expected to become “the most commonly used devices in the world by 2012”, once they do they will be rewarded heavily for all the hard work that was put into making foursquare a reality.

Regards,

Keanan

Will Berlusconi ever learn? As the Italian Bond rate nears the 7% “danger zone” he seems unphased as usual. He shrugged off questions about it at the G-20 saying “Italy doesn’t feel the crisis” and it is “a passing fashion.” Really?! Italy is the third largest economy in Europe. It is too big to bail out. If Italy fails, Europe fails… That’s kind of a big deal. Even problems in the much smaller Greece could easily thrust the world into another massive recession. Italy’s economy is nearly 3times larger than Greece, Ireland, and Portugal combined. 7% isn’t necessarily a bailout trigger, but it did prompt bailouts of Portugal and Ireland. And through all this Berlusconi shrugs it off. He is the biggest obstruction to getting Italy back on the right track. He faces a vote of confidence on Nov 7th, hopefully the Italians realize what is at stake.

Regards,

Keanan

For years world powers have been fighting a war away from the public view, a currency war. The dollar, euro, pound and Chinese yuan are the contenders. But the west is growing increasing angry at the Chinese government’s policy of keeping the yuan undervalued in order to increase exports. While China is taking steps towards having the yuan at correctly valued rates, the Senate has felt it’s not enough. This bill that has yet to be approved by the Republican controlled House, would red flag nations which “purposely keep its currency undervalued” and if said nations don’t make a significant effort to change this policy then tariffs kick in. This bill also prevents the US government from buying goods from that nation and OPIC (the Overseas Private Investment Corporation which is the US trade promotion agency) from investing in that nation. China blasts this bill saying that it will incite a trade war and “harms bilateral economic and trade cooperation”. Obama is currently not backing it, worried that it could be slapped down by the World Trade Organization. Is this the right way of getting China to play fair? Probably not, but it’s a start.

Regard,

Keanan

Under the current system every government is roughly treated as a “stakeholder” and is given a little bit of say. Everything that changes is through gradual evolution rather than hard and fast autocratic changes. But this system is under attack, particularly by the Chinese and the Russians. The Economist article “The Plaything of Powerful Nations” describes how the these two nations are calling for the United Nations to take over control of the internet from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. They also want the UN to give more say to individual governments. To me this just seems like a greedy power grab by authoritarian regimes who seek to continually censor their people. The current system definitely needs and overhaul to survive, but putting it in the hands of an ineffective UN agency who would just differ to governments is not the answer. The stakeholder model ensures that effectively people rule the internet with government being on the outside looking in. If this were to change innovation and information sharing would plummet. Update the current system, but keep everything in the hands of the people

Regards,

Keanan

While I anticipate that everyone is going around finding articles to be condemn corporations for their corrupt practices or praise them for their ethical decisions. I thought it would be more useful to find something that would help someone who was faced with the awful position of their company behaving unethically and illegally. The article “Quit Over Ethics? Here’s What to Tell Job Interviewers” describes a situation where an accountant is at a firm that encourages “creative accounting” and had to quit due to the obvious moral implications of lying or “cooking the books.” The columnist then tells them ways of being able to tell an interviewer that you quit due to ethical reasons. Obviously telling an interviewer that you X-company cheats or engages in illegal activities, without substantial proof, just makes you look like a liar and a troublemaker. Which is not the best impression to make. The columnist suggests just saying that you parted ways over philosophical differences on how to manage a company. Simple and yet subtlety gets the point across that all ways not well. Anyways I hope anyone who is faced with this problem finds this article useful. \

Regards,

Keanan

In the article Detroit is Still Stuck in the 1950’s the Globe and Mail describes a the US automakers as being stuck in time and producing cars that don’t coincide with consumer needs. I mainly objected to this article because it’s circa 2005. Detroit has come a long way since then. Just a few days ago The Big Three and Obama agreed to a new fuel efficiency deal which will require that the average fuel economy of the their product lines be 54.5 miles per gallon (or 23.2 Km per liter). The big three have recognized that they can no longer ignore fuel efficiency and focus solely on trucks. They are adapting. Recently while other car makers were struggling, even during a recession The Big Three have been posting strong growth. Overall what I’m getting at is the Detroit of today and the Detroit of 2005 are two very different places.

Regards,

Keanan