Month: November 2012

According to The Globe and Mail, the boom of “low-fat soft serve frozen yogurt” has recently built a huge Canadian presence. While Pinkberry, Menchies, and Yogen Fruz are the big 3 contenders now, the Yogen Fruz chain is currently undergoing expansion, but under a new brand name, ‘Yogurty’s’. From attending class, I have developed this correlation that the more established and recognized your brand name is, the greater the success of your business. However, this does not apply to all cases.

Yogen Fruz, has sacrificed their well-known brand name as they start from scratch. Why would a company wish to revisit their ever-so-difficult start-up stage when they are already established?  The CEO decided that in order to compete with other chains, they had to clear their 1980’s image of being a “blended fruit” chain, to attract a new customer database.

Having spent my summer vacation working at Marble Slab Creamery, I will admit that I was an active follower of what I thought was Marble Slab’s biggest rivalries – Coldstone Creamery. Now, however, I caution Marble Slab about the exploding yogurt frenzy as frozen yogurt chains now occupy substantial market power in the industry of frozen treats.

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After having two classes of learning what social entrepreneurship is, in my opinion, it is something that is still difficult to be taught. Hearing about it is just scratching the surface. Becoming social entrepreneurs involves transformative action to empower learning of new skills and strategies to tackle the next economic, social, and cultural issues of society.

On that note, it was interesting to read about how SFU’s Beedie School of Business takes a unique hands-on approach in brining concept to reality – an approach which UBC students, such as myself, would also find worthy of my time. Essentially, they have created this program that offers  students interested in a social venture idea the “support and structure” needed to take their first steps as social entrepreneurs. Students are assigned mentors and are paired up with individuals who have experience launching start-up companies.

While I am uninformed whether or not UBC’s Sauder School of Business currently has a similar “accelerator” program in place, Sauder still has a handful of graduates who have continued on to become successful social entrepreneurs!

Further Reading 

In today’s day and age, it can be a difficult task trying to decode a business’s underlying intentions when it comes to being “green”. To an average consumer, it seems that nearly every company wants to go-green these days. More and more companies are taking immediate action to reduce their carbon footprints.  For example, one of the easist steps a business can take to reduce their environmental impact is to begin using electronic formats of invoices, quotas, etc. to reduce using excess paper. At the same time, “greenwashing” is arising as well.

While I support many companies that are environmentally cautious, I cannot help but to wonder what a CEO  expects to gain from adopting an eco-friendly policy. Do CEOs adopt a green policy because they feel that it is their social responsibility to create a better world for the future generations? Or is their “green” efforts only a medium through which a company can capture a greater audience’s attention – in such case, a company’s “green” efforts are driven by another type of “green” – money.

Further Reading:

http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/21/branson-khosla-doerr-technology-green-billionaires.html

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/22882532/ns/today-today_home_and_garden/t/how-can-you-tell-if-its-really-green/#.UKphFqn3C2w

While having just a few hours of sleep before my 8am Comm class, my attention span was at an all-time low. However, when Wade Larson, Vice President of UrtheCast described UrtheCast’s platform as “…Google Earth…on steroids”, I was suddenly hit by my own version of Hurricane Sandy – my “eye” began to open, my brain was flooding with questions, and I was moving offshore to find some answers.

As Wane began to elaborate on UrtheCast’s “mashup” between YouTube and Google Earth, I began to see how HD live-video streaming could be the game-changer for a large potential audience – benefiting educators, humanitarians, and environmental organizations. Being an Earth and Ocean Sciences student myself, I can imagine the power of this tool in enriching the classroom learning experience.

In my long-run forecast, I see a huge potential for revenue generation through contracts involving news stations and the media; still, I have doubts about the initial success of this company. With that said, UrtheCast has incorporated the necessary components to prosper – they have the first-mover advantage and are allowing for their technology to be a social media outlet as well, appealing to our generation of social media addicts!

Video link

Having recently subscribed to Groupon during the summer, I was intrigued by the concept behind these newly emerging “deal-of-the-day” businesses – specifically, the profit-maximization strategy behind consumers carrying out online payments, but redeeming their purchases in real-world stores.

According to an article by TechCruch, “Groupon has been able to grow high-margin revenues faster than almost any other company in the history of the Internet”. The question I pondered on while reading through this article was, “Why are these deal-of-the-day ecommerce business models so successful?

After thinking for some time, I have come to the following conclusion: this branch of e-commerce has no inventory, low overhead, well, relatively low overhead, and a highly attractive commodity that is appealing to a wide audience of consumers. High rewards are coming at a cheap price tag for Groupon, and so I am not surprised that other firms are quickly diving into the daily deals industry with hopes of reaping the same rewards.

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