Month: December 2010

Categories
Entrepreneurship Technology

Google: example of entrepreneurship

Google has become one of the biggest corporations in the world

Google is one of the biggest technological, offering a wide range of Internet-based services and products, including Gmail, Google Chrome, Android, Google Buzz, Picasa, Google Talk and even YouTube. This huge corporation is in the route to becoming the biggest innovative technological corporation in the world.

But the success comes from the vision of the entrepreneurs that founded Google: Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page. These visionaries have been able to turn what started as a small research project on search engines into a technological giant. Their values and norms are based on the importance of the workers, who are the people who make the company develop, innovate and maintain their leadership.

They have achieved a great organizational culture, in which workers are motivated intrinsically and they are, in simple words, very happy to work at Google. Brin and Page know that this is crucial for them to develop the most advanced applications and programs that finally make the corporation a world leader.

Google workers have an extremely positive working environment with all the facilities you can imagine, including cafeterias, gyms, laundry facilities, volleyball pitch, swimming pool and even massage rooms. They even allow their programmers to spend 20% of their work time on projects not related to Google. Gmail is an example of a service which was initiated as a non-related project.

Google entrepreneurs have shown the world that they can treat their employees the best way and be the world leaders in their market and probably become the most powerful corporation in the world in a few years.

Further reading: Google’s entrepreneurial spirit

Categories
Competiton Marketing

Marketing: Short-term vs Long-term

Marketing is essential in every business. It is the process of defining current and potential customers, and promoting the product accordingly to increase sales. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are the two biggest companies in the beverage industry, and their fierce competition depends greatly on their marketing strategies.

In 2008, for the Beijing Olympic Games, Coca-Cola decided to become official sponsors, taking in consideration the huge potential of the Chinese market. Coca-Cola saw this as the perfect opportunity to strongly compete in a market in which Pepsi was the clear leader.

However, during the Games, a survey concluded that 60% of the people thought that Pepsi was the official sponsor, showing that Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy had clearly failed. Additionally, respondents considered Pepsi a superior brand. Furthermore, only 10% of the respondents said that they were more likely to buy a product only for being an official Olympic sponsor.

Coca-Cola’s main error was focusing their strategy in a short-term, one-time dose of marketing, such as the Olympics campaign. On the other hand, Pepsi had designed a long-term brand-building marketing strategy in which they had managed to conquer most of the Chinese market, even years before the Games.

Pepsi's long-term strategy defeated Coca-Cola's short-term strategy in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

Further reading: Beijing Olympic sponsorship analysis

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