The U.S. companies are falling behind on innovation comparing to other companies. However, they still have a clear and desperate goal, which is to create more than $250 billion in new revenue. There are more than one solution to solve this.

First of all, make innovation part of the job. Employees are requested to bring up new ideas in certain time limit. It means in this case, the company are paying the employees to come up with ideas. Either think, or being laid off. However, this will not work very well because workers are not willing to this, which will lead to lots of bad ideas. Another way to increase innovation is to encourage workers with better chance of promotion or more working benefits.

Thirdly, when workers cannot innovate, cutting cost can be a helpful way. Obviously, cutting cost can also bring more profit to the company as innovation does. This can be achieved easily through some small changes to the company such as cutting off advertisement cost when there are stable customers.

http://www.cioinsight.com/it-management/innovation/slideshows/u.s.-companies-falling-behind-on-innovation.html/

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/innovative-sustainable-business-models

http://www.seec.schulich.yorku.ca/ContentResources/LibraryFiles/innovations.jpg

There are many benefits of outsourcing including less production cost and being more focus on key activities. However, as seen in the Sears example, outsourcing is seemingly bringing some bad influences as well.

Sears laid off 245 workers because it planned on outsourcing and focus more on its core retail business. Outsourcing can effectively improve the status of company and helps bringing profits for the company but this act is not so thoughtful to the local workers. The demand for local workers shrinks as more companies are outsourcing. Other than leaving number of workers under unemployment, the employees will also be demoralised as they do not have a guaranteed job. It makes the workers less productive and decrease the working efficiency.

On the other hand, companies use less money to hire the outsourcing workers but those workers are sometimes unqualified for the job. Those outsourcing workers apply the job with fake qualifications that match the requirement of the company. In the meantime, they are not monitored by the managerial class. The only outcome is the decrease in productivity.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7152.html

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/08/20/sears-canada-layoffs-india/

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/insiders-say-canada-scammed-by-foreign-worker-industry-1.1358803

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/1996/December/outsourcing.asp

As discussed  in class, people prefer “decentralized” structure. However, I prefer “centralized” structure more due to the few reasons stated below.

First of all, centralized structure provides motivation for employees to work harder. Also, In the centralized structure, the top management class earns much more than the top management class in the decentralized class as the profits are distributed to smaller management class in a centralized company. Employees have the intention to work harder to get promoted.

Secondly, working process can be more efficient. Each class in the company is under a higher class. In most of the time, people have to listen to orders. They cannot really provide opinions and choose not to follow instructions. Therefore, the whole progress will be efficient as orders are delivered from class to class without questions.

Thirdly, people working in a centralized company has a more stable job status. Each class is comparatively smaller than the class in a decentralized company. It means fewer people are responsible for the job in each class. This makes the job less replaceable and it leads to a smaller chance for a company to lay off the employees in each level of the hierarchy.

Online resources such as twitter, instagram and facebook, are used for advertising by many big companies. This is a great new way to make the brand well-known to people around the world in the fastest speed. This is a way to achieve such a big while beneficial effect because internet is used by the mass public. Most importantly, this is a free service! What else can be better than free advertisements for your company? As we can all see in the daily lives, people are mostly using social networking applications that can be downloaded to your phone when they have free time. This phenomena is especially obvious in UBC as free internet coverage is placed all over the campus. This shows the importance of how internet is influencing our lives nowadays. If network system suddenly breaks down one day that can never be repaired, all advertisements have to go back to the old generation system, the whole business industry will slow down and may get even worse than the old generations as we already lost the old business techniques that our previous generations used to have. We are not only using social network, we are now relying on it.

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/16-examples-of-huge-brands-using-twitter-for-business/

http://press.emerson.edu/imc/files/2011/12/social-network.jpg

Making money should not be the only goal of a business. We also need to take care of sustainability, which is the combination of environment, economics, and social. To achieve this goal, creation of shared value (CSV) can be applied to this.

Social enterprise is a great way to work on. Different from traditional charity, social enterprise is more than just giving out money. It gains reputation from giving out money to the need. This satisfies the social part, which means to contribute to the society.

When we discussed about Lululemon in class, our group found that the company focuses on six key wastes produced during the production process. This is not seriously restricted by the government. When the company is doing this, it certainly raise the brand image of the company. Also, this is a great example contributing to the environmental part of sustainability.

Building up reliable connection with the suppliers is the economics part of sustainability. A company needs to build up stable relationship with the suppliers to make sure they have a stable product supply to the customers. If a company fail to do this, the brand image will be greatly damaged.

http://www.gablepr.com/clientserviceresults/damage-your-brand-image-the-netflix-way/

http://sustainability.lululemon.com/manufacturing/taking-action/

Obviously, producing own production is too costly. The more efficient way is to buy contents from or build up a partner ship relationship with the production company. Buying contents is not efficient because the shows on Netflix is not going to be famous forever. No one can promise that the old movies will still be an attraction to the public. Meanwhile, we cannot sell it back to the  owner after we buy it when we find out those shows are not as popular as the others. Therefore, partnership with a) youtube and google, or b) abc and nbc are the feasible ways. We already have free access to most of the youtube videos and google. People do not have the intention to pay for watching videos on youtube and google. After all, partnership with abc and nbc becomes the most efficient way.

The company has already paid the production fee and the programmes will not be shown repeatedly on TV. Therefore, the shows will become mostly useless. If Netflix buys the video from abc and nbc, people can now watch the shows that they missed online. This cause a great advantage for both companies and is a win-win situation.

As mentioned in class, Dell earns the highest revenue per employee among all the PC industry in 2004 due to its ability on making quick response to changing customer tastes. Does it work for other companies as well? Ford brings up a good example. It figures out a new way to increase its revenue by doing something similar to what Dell did in 2004: expanding its manufacturing footprint and overhauling its production method in order to increase efficiency and flexibility. After all, the quick response to changing customer tastes is an important element for a company to work better because trends are changing from time to time. If a company is unable to catch up with the trends, customers can immediately notice this and abandon the support on that particular company. In opposite, customers always prefer companies that can catch up with the flow and lead the generation especially for company like Ford that has many strong competitors like Toyota, Honda, and Nissan. Therefore, the changes that Ford plans to make can certainly bring Ford to a brighter future as the whole action will bring Ford a better reputation for being innovative.

Citation:
http://www.bnn.ca/News/2013/10/7/Ford-aims-to-make-its-factories-more-flexible-efficient.aspx
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Dell_Logo.png
http://www.cyberwarnews.info/wp-content/gallery/officialnull/ford_official_logo.jpg

In order to become successful, a company has to have a clear concept of what its target segments are and the targeted customers’ need. A question comes up to my mind. Why does a company need a constant target segments?

As time goes on, trend changes. People have changing demands on goods and services and it is a company’s job to keep track on it. A constant target segment does not mean the company never makes any changes on its products. It is to help building an image for specific, targeted groups of customers.

However, I think the most successful companies should have changing target segments. This will provide a wider customer source and create a positive image of being innovative. Companies usually change their operating directions when they face difficulties but they seldom think of changing target segments constantly. They may have concerns on the cost of buying new equipment but this problem can easily be solved when they consider co-operating with other companies that have good company images. Changing target segments can avoid the problem of being “outdated” and being eliminated by a specific target segment of customers.

http://www.cedia.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/target-dollar-sign-300×223.jpg

Of course, Monster beverage is not a new thing to me. However, I have never thought of the story behind that little can of energy drink because it seems so normal to see this as a daily basis. How can a company give customers such an impression? Marketing is definitely the answer! They are the ones who need to work really hard on building an appropriate image for the product. How to make the product becomes part of a daily life? How to attract new customers and keep the old ones? How to win the competitors? In my opinion, a successful advertisement is not only about creating a sensation, but also making people feel comfortable with the product and willing to purchase the product as a daily basis while no other brands can make any influence on how people think of the product. Without a right customer segment, this will never work out.

Citation:

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/advertising-important-business-3606.html

Apple Investigating Worker-Abuse Charges at “iPhone C” Supplier

According to Bruce Weinstein, an American ethics consultant, people should “do no harm, make things better, respect others, be fair, and be loving” when they are making a business decision. However, reality is not always as ideal as how people want it to be. Apple supplier Jabil Circuit uses cheap labors in China. It failed to provide a comfortable working area for the employees and refused the need of overtime pay.

It can certainly boost the profit by taking away the overtime pay that the cheap labors deserved. However, that money cannot bring back the good reputation for the company when this labor violation is known by the public. The scandal has definitely bring a bad reputation to Apple as well. Some of the Apple users may turn to Samsung, Apple’s major competitor, as being an ethical person.

Thanks to marketing, Apple do not seem to have a big setback yet. However, when a company is earning so much money every year, is it so hard to be more caring about the employees, especially when most of them are less-educated or disabled and can hardly find another job?

Paczkowski, John. “Apple Investigating Worker-Abuse Charges at “iPhone C” Supplier.” Web log post. AllThingsD. N.p., 5 Sept. 2013. Web. 12 Sept. 2013.

Schachter, Harvey. “Getting down to Basics: The Business of Acting Ethically.” Web log post. The Globe and Mail. N.p., 22 Feb. 2012. Web. 12 Sept. 2013.