Nicolas Buse's Blog

Anastasia Rezac’s blog Betting the House raises the question that is Nike’s endorsements of sports team taking a gamble? My answer to this question is a 100% NO. College football is a 2 Billion industry, which provides a goldmine for anyone involved because of the popularity of it in the United States. Nike’s only option in the college market is to sponsor college teams because it can’t sponsor the Andrew Luck’s, Lamichael James’s and Trent Richardson’s due in part to the amateurism rules put in place that prevent players from making money while in college. Nike is the official supplier of uniforms and equipment for 83 NCAA Division 1. While Nike supplies the uniforms and equipment to the Universities for free, they are making money off any paraphernalia that is bought buy fans. This is why the Nike Pro Combat series can only help them because they are already supplying the University and in today’s day and age people want something new and flashy and the Nike Pro Combat Series provides that. If it wasn’t a successful initiative then Nike would have ended it when it started in 2009. NIKE CANNOT LOSE BY CREATING THE NIKE PRO COMBAT UNIFORMS.

Hearing about NBA players going on tour while their season is currently on lockout isn’t news to me, it’s just really disappointing. The latest news provided to me was through Matt Lundy’s blog titled Google Plus: Unlikely Winners in the NBA lockout. Google announced that Lebron James, Dwayne Wade, Carmelo Anthony and Chris Paul will be going on a 4 game tour with Google to promote Google +. These players shouldn’t be going on tour, they should be in a board room with the NBA owners trying to get a deal together and save the 2011/2012 NBA season. By not trying to get a deal done, they are affecting the lower salary NBA players that aren’t receiving pay checks because there is no collective bargaining agreement as well as stadium workers as there are no games being played and therefor no work for them to do. I am as much to blame as anyone else for these tour’s going on because I still wear the products which is contributing to this madness.

To go to University or not to go, that is the question millions of soon to be high school graduates ask themselves each day. James Li gave insight into this question in his blog post Opportunity Cost. Well he did a good job analyzing and finding information in order to advise both students and parents in this decision, however he only looks at how much a Harvard grad would make in the first 10 years of his career, which would leave the Harvard grad at the approximate age of 32 and the average American Citizen works till they are approximately 67. This gives the Harvard grad 45 years of working at at least $75,504 as they will probably be promoted to better paid positions.

Therefore the Harvard Grad would make (75,504 x 45)=$3,397,680

Meanwhile the average worker who doesn’t go to college will make 42,000 a year for 49 years assuming he starts working at 18 and retires at age 67.

Therefore the worker who didn’t go to college would make (42,000 x 49)=$2,058,000

That is a difference of (3,397.680-2,058,000-335,040)= $1,004,640

335,040= opportunity cost of University

The Harvard grad will make at least $1,004,640 more than the worker who doesn’t go to University, which to me sounds like a good enough reason to get a University Education.

The country of Brazil is fining Chevron Corp. $28 million US for the damages caused from the November 7 rupture in a well of the coast of Brazil. The spill has now “slowed to a residual flow” from the 200 to 330 barrels it was releasing when the well first ruptured. Brazilian officials have estimated that over 5,000 barrels of oil have been released, compared to Chevrons estimate of around 2,4000 barrels. Either way, this spill is not even close to the disaster that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico, which was releasing on average 3,000 barrels a day.

Since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, there have been 16 oil spills including the one that Chevron is being fined for. Clearly these oil companies are not learning from past spills as they continue to occur and damage the environment that so many people need in order to make a living. Hopefully these spills will push governments to impose better policies and guidelines in regards to drilling and shipping oil or larger fines because clearly these companies are willing to pay the fines as long as they can continue do what they have done in the past.

I consider Apple to be an entrepreneurial company because they embody many of the
characteristics that define entrepreneurship. In the past 10 years they have changed the way we listen to music, enjoy our leisure time and conduct business. The creation of the iPod in the early part of the past decade revolutionized the music industry as they took control of the market for Mp3’s and similar devices. Fast forward to today and they have created the tablet market with the iPad as well as the market for smartphone with the numerous versions of the iPhone. This innovation and creation of new markets has generated substantial wealth in the past 5-10 years when most people doubted that the product that started it all, the iPod, would never amount to anything and yet today it has changed the world.

The Keystone XL pipeline has become a hot topic in the US and Canada over the past few months. The pipeline would carry oil from the oil sands in Alberta, Canada, to refineries in Houston, Texas and Port Arthur, Texas. It is a 7 Billion dollar project that would not only create jobs in the US, but also increase trade between Canada and the US.

Just like anything ese that has to do with transporting or obtaining oil, this pipeline project has to deal with ethics. On the environmentalist side you have the always present potential for disaster that destroys the environment, the opinion that the money spent on the pipeline could be used to research and find new ways of obtaining environmentally friendly energy sources and the amount of energy that is used to extract the “dirty” oil from the oil sands. On the other side, this pipeline will create thousands of jobs in the US and Canada, increase trade between the two countries and will decrease the dependency that the US has on the Middle East. No matter what way the State Department votes, they will vote against people’s opinions of right and wrong.

Plans for the Keystone Pipeline

Pro Video on the Keystone XL Pipeline

Con Video on Keystone XL Pipeline

Over the past 2 years, Europe has been dealing with the bankruptcies of numerous countries that are part of the European Union (countries in Europe that are part of the economic and monetary union). This time they are dealing with the potential bankruptcy of Greece that could pull the rest of the European Union down with it. The regular European Union Summit that was scheduled for October 18 has been postponed now till the 23rd to allow the leaders of the European Union time to finalize their strategy that can solve this debt crisis.

It seems to me that bankruptcies and bailout packages have become a common occurrence in the news ever since the 2008 banking collapse that started the recession that is in the United States today. I guess the question that needs to be asked is what is this all going to lead up to.  In an ideal world the bailout plans would work and life would go back to how it is, but if this were an ideal world than none of this would have ever happened. My prediction is that their will be a world currency within the next 10 years and everyone’s debt will be wiped.

The main topics in class 6 were brand positioning and value proposition. In that class we discussed Netflix’s decision to split up their service into Netflix (the streaming portion of their video service) and Qwikster (the DVD by mail portion of their service) and charge $8 a month for one service or $16 a month for both services. Today they chose to reverse that decision and keep both services together. After the release of this decision, Netflix’s stock rose after having lost almost two thirds in the past 3 months.

When I initially heard about this split in class I thought it would be a good idea because of the extra revenue it would generate from the people that would buy both services considering how much cheaper it is than renting video’s from a video rental store. However, after reading the article I learnt that by splitting up the services, people who want both services would have a separate bill for each, which is a major turnoff for consumers. The decision is a quick fix because they never actually separated the services, so no new infrastructure was ever created.

See Article: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/netflix-abandons-plan-to-rent-dvds-on-qwikster/?ref=business

Last Wednesday, one of the the world most visionary entrepreneurs and  Apple’s co-founder’s died at age 56. Steve Jobs man that introduced the Apple computer, iPod, iPhone, and iPad to the world died peacefully today according to a Family Statement. He has had health problems over the past few years and was able to survive a case of pancreatic cancer, but his health took a turn for the worst this past year and he resigned from his position of CEO in late august.

Steve Jobs with the iPhone 4

It was the Apple II computer that made Apple successful and when Steve Jobs was fired in 1885 they went on a downtrend until they boought NeXT and in 1997. The creation of the iPod, iPhone and iPad really cemented Steve Job’s legacy and Apple’s place as a leader in technology.

To me the future of Apple lies in the hands of current CEO Tim Cook and how well he is able to carry out Job’s vision along with creating his own vision to coincide with what Job’s has already done. The last time Apple was without Job’s at the helm the company struggled which’s makes a person wonder, will it be the same this time around.