Steven’s post from last week calls attention to The Body Shop, a business which is especially interesting to examine not only in light of what we’ve learned about corporate social responsibility and traditional entrepreneurship, but also in light of our class today about social entrepreneurship.

Steven highlights the ways in which The Body Shop’s founder, Anita Roddick, was an entrepreneur, but in ways that remind me of the social enterprises we discussed today. Although The Body Shop certainly is an entrepreneurial venture, it likes to strongly emphasize its CSR to the extent that, as I found while perusing its website, it sometimes almost portrays itself as a social enterprise. The website quotes Roddick, “The business of business should not just be about money, it should be about responsibility. It should be about public good, not private greed.” Notably, she calls for “public good” as business’s goal instead of “private greed,” thus seeming to place greater importance on societal change than on maximizing profit. Were this The Body Shop’s mission statement, The Body Shop might be classified as a social enterprise rather than a traditional business, making the company an intriguing one to consider when thinking about the definitions of traditional and social entrepreneurship.

Founded in 1982, Adobe Systems is a software company that exhibits the four primary characteristics that define an entrepreneurial venture:

1. Amount of wealth creation: Adobe generated $943 million in profits in 2010.

2. Speed of wealth creation: Adobe took off rapidly, releasing PostScript a year after its inception and Illustrator five years after its inception, both of which are still in extremely wide use today.

3. Risk: Founders John Warnock and Charles Geschke sustained a significant amount of risk by forming a new company in the volatile technology industry.

Entertainment retailer HMV has announced that they will be closing their flagship Robson store and replacing it with another downtown store 80 to 90 percent smaller. This comes as a result of the growing trend of consumers acquiring media such as music and movies online, coupled with high rent.

James Smerdon of Colliers International estimates that the rent of the 50,000 square foot downtown store is around $60 to $80 per square foot, which equates to a sizable cost of around $3.5 million in rent. HMV Canada’s total sales in 2011 are (on a pro-forma basis) around $357 million, which means an average of around $3 million sales in each of the 121 Canadian stores. Of course, the giant Robson store would be expected to have sales well above this average. But this $3 million still gives an idea of how difficult it has been for the flagship store to break even when compared to the $3.5 million fixed cost of rent.

Other stores in downtown Vancouver of comparable size are few, and include much more diversified retailers such as The Bay. In hindsight, it’s perhaps surprising that a massive store selling music and movies – a market long known to have gone digital – wasn’t closed sooner.

Coca-Cola’s new white cans, part of the company’s “Arctic Home” marketing campaign in support of polar bears, hit shelves today and will remain there for the holiday season. This is a fascinating move for Coke because it “has spent billions of dollars over the years” branding its iconic cans as red. What made Coke decide to risk this, as well as likely a significant amount of redesign and marketing costs?

Coke is trying to continue to participate in the ever-growing sustainability trend, probably hoping to gain a short-term sales boost as well as strengthening its brand for the long-term. Matt Scheckner from AdvertisingWeek noted that this campaign allows Coke to connect customers’ head, heart, and wallet.

Katie Bayne, Coke’s president of sparkling beverages, claimed that what “big, iconic brands can and should do is point out things that matter.” What struck me is that she said brands such as Coke “should” raise awareness about ethical or sustainability issues. This resonates with what Green to Gold authors Andrew Winston and Dan Etsy (Etsy, perhaps not coincidentally, sits on Coke’s Environmental Advisory Board) wrote – that consumers are increasingly “expecting” companies to take initiative in regards to social issues.

Ann’s post on Chrysler’s struggle with inventory turnover highlights the inventory problems the company was facing in late 2006, with many unsold 2006 models at a time of year when automakers should be making room for next year’s models. Chrysler’s days supply was 82 days in 2006, while Toyota’s days supply was a far superior 28 days. Chrysler suffered from poor demand forecasting, which led it to make too much inventory for a low demand.

Curious about how Chrysler is doing now, I found a graph of its more recent days supply data from its third quarter financial report. From this graph, it appears that its average days supply is in the high 60s for 2011 so far.

I also wondered about how Toyota is now performing. According to its 2011 financial report, its cost of products sold in 2011 was ¥15,985,78 million, while its inventory of finished goods was ¥715,272 million. This amounts to an inventory turnover of around 22, so if my calculations are correct, its days supply is an incredible 16 days, a highly significant improvement from 2006. Though Chrysler had shortened its days supply over the past five years, perhaps it needs to take a cue from Toyota to improve even more.

The eight-month-old web retailer Moda Operandi is capitalizing on an untapped market segment of consumers who want pieces fresh off the runway.

Their business model involves an online Trunk Show, just days after a designer’s show, in which members – which currently number around 50,000 – can pre-order any piece from the collection. The designer produces the pieces to order and delivers them to Moda Operandi, which packages them and ships them to the customer.

Although this supply chain involves an intermediate step between supplier and consumer, it does involve the consumer placing orders which are fulfilled directly by the designer. This is advantageous because it allows consumers access to pieces which may have never been produced otherwise; and many pieces which do end up being sold in stores have their design “edited” to be more accessible, or are only sold in common sizes. Thus Moda Operandi provides a solution to a problem which has plagued both designers and consumers.

By offering their service online, Moda Operandi is jumping onto an e-commerce fashion bandwagon which is likely to grow. This medium is rich with opportunities such as Moda Operandi’s partnership with Vogue; now vogue.com‘s runway photos link to Moda Operandi’s site.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt commented this week that Google+ will not be able to beat Facebook at Facebook’s own game – so Google is trying to “find a new problem and do that much better” than Facebook.

But so far, it seems that Google+ is playing a similar game as Facebook, with undeniable similarities in its structure and layout and perhaps even its early strategy, “tracing a path similar to Facebook’s initial growth — building excitement in a core group of early adopters,” according to Michael Nardis, head of the research organization YouGov. Google’s tactic was to implement an initial invite-only phase, creating an exclusivity that helped build hype, though this also meant that invitees often found a social network that had few people to socialize with.

Still, after around three months of operation, Google+ boasts 50 million users. It does have unique features to tout above Facebook, such as “Circles” instead of a friends list and “Hangouts” for group video chat, something that other services such as Skype charge for. And Google+ is continuing to move forward; it opened to the public on September 20 and has introduced circle sharing to help ameliorate the problem for Facebook users of rebuilding a contacts list.

A study from Babson College has found no correlation between the performance of a new business and whether a business plan was written prior to its launch. This may be surprising to some, though others do contend that a full business plan is unnecessary, such as the author of this blog post from The Small Business Blog.

However, this study is far from an indication that business plans are never beneficial. Abusiness plan has a multitude of uses for circumstances other than beginning a business, such as while managing, growing, or exiting one. In addition, the study acknowledges that a business plan could be a good idea if the entrepreneur needs to raise a significant amount of capital, which is not an uncommon situation – though another study from the University of Maryland contends that business plans do not influence the decisions of venture capitalists.

It is important to note, however, that the studies may be flawed for various reasons, including their fairly narrow data samples – in the Babson College study, only 116 ventures, all of which were begun by Babson College alums, and in the University of Maryland study, 700 dot-com business plans during the Internet bubble.

American retail giant Target has been undergoing tough times as of late, with flat same-store sales and its share price down 14% this year.

These problems are caused by various troubles, including the threat of growing competition in the fast-fashion arena from stores such as Kohl’s and JCPenney. It has also become increasingly apparent that Target’s wages and employee benefits are eerily similar to its less-trendy, oft-criticized rival Wal-Mart. And Target has been hurt by its e-commerce blunders, including broken hyperlinks on the launch day of its revamped site and the recent crash from the overwhelming demand for its Missoni line, mistakes which are incredibly disappointing from, and damaging to, such a large retailer.

However, Target has high hopes; it aims to boost its revenue by 48% to $100 billion by 2017 with strategites including improving its e-commerce and Canadian expansion. It plans to open around 130 stores in Canada in 2013, and expansion into Canada may be a smart move due to the lack of competitors here like Kohl’s and JCPenney. But Target should also rectify problems in its treatment of employees – if not for ethics in and of itself, then to polish its fading image, before its name is as tarnished as Wal-Mart’s.

Amazon’s upcoming version of its e-book reader Kindle, a tablet computer which will run the Android operating system, may be ready to challenge the Apple iPad.

The Amazon Kindle 3, the predecessor of the upcoming Kindle

Research In Motion and Hewlett-Packard have previously failed to dethrone the iPad with their PlayBook and TouchPad respectively. But the Kindle has its advantages, such a large audience to market to at the Amazon store and Amazon’s existing relationships with media and publishing companies, which will make it easy for users to access e-books and media. The Kindle is speculated to be priced barely above the cost of production, perhaps allowing it to fill a niche for cheaper tablets. And even if the hardware itself is not profitable, Amazon can gain revenue through the sale of e-books and media.

In addition, Apple’s distribution network in China has been unable to keep up with demand; Apple is lagging far behind its goals in opening stores in China. Some say that this may be an opening for Android tablets and smartphones.

However, the Kindle will need to be carefully positioned to make it clear to customers that it is no longer only an e-book reader; otherwise it may fall victim of the free-ride trap.