According to Seth’s blogs entrepreneurs use innovation in order to generate impact. He tries to emphasize that it important to engage with the user, the audience and the market when trying to innovate. Seth also explains that entrepreneurship is bringing a product that people never thought they could use it or wanted it or knew about it and make a difference.  At the end of his blog he states something really noteworthy: “Don’t tell me what you invented. Tell me about who you changed.

Personally, I think his last statement was the most important thing in his blog. Entrepreneurs always think innovation is the right thing to do but sometimes failed to understand that is not what you invent is whom are you going to change. If through innovation the company is changing someone, then they are being more efficient.

Ashish J. Takkar, an entrepreneur borne in Uganda. He is the founder and CEO of Mara Group, which is a pan African conglomerate that works in 26 countries and employs around 7,000 people.  The company focuses on technology, real estate, manufacturing and financial services grossing more than $ 100 million in annual revenues. It is admirable how he started everything from scratch, his first started when he was 15 by selling computers to his schoolmates and friends.  The World Entrepreneurship Forum in Singapore announced him as the world youngest entrepreneur of the year. 

It is interesting how there are still people wanting to create their own business even though there are a lot of risks involved. In my perspective, creating a business is important since you provide jobs to people. In today’s world there is a lot of unemployment and it is beneficial for the world to see people that are still striving to create their own business.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2012/06/18/young-successful-and-african-ashish-thakkar-ceo-of-mara-group/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2013/11/12/african-millionaire-is-named-worlds-young-entrepreneur-of-the-year/

Nowadays, some companies that are emerging are starting to creating share value, an example is GlaxoSmithKline in Thailand.  The article talks about how the company is making a priority to raise the access of medicine and bring pricing line with gross national income. This is a very attention-grabbing article since in class we were talking about how companies are starting to create share value. The company started increasing the access of medicine by creating partnerships with the Red Cross and Royal Thai Army to provide deliver, sanitary supplies and doctors for rural areas.

The Royal Army provides medical and sanitary supplies to areas that have suffered from floods in 2011 and conflict zones in the south.

The Red Cross provide health education and vaccines to these under privileged that are suffering with illnesses that may lead to death.

In my opinion, creating share value is one of the most important things in a company. A business should not only create high profits by selling expensive goods, they should create a way in which they are making profit and also helping the community.

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/gsk-thailand-medicine-bank-creating-shared-value

I’ve recently found an article, which talks about how employees that are happy tend to be more productive. There has been a lot of study that demonstrates how employee’s satisfaction/perception leads to company success. The article shows a couple of tips on how to motivate and make happy employees by creating incentives in order to keep them focused on their work. Here are some tips that the article mentions:

Bonuses: Create a financial incentive in order to reward great performances.

Amenities: A gym, a cafeteria or a day care centre will make employees happier.Perks: Create office casual days, half days, office parties and activities outside of the office.

Positive Recognition: Recognize one of your workers in public for his or her achievements. Try to recognize them.

Education: Pay for additional education will make the company workforce more skilled.

Motivating and making employees happy are key factors for a company success. It also helps the company create corporate culture.  It is very interesting how the article talks about Zappo’s strategies to make employees happy since we talked about the company in class.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickhull/2013/05/23/motivation-mystery-how-to-keep-employees-productive/

Pranav Malhotra’s blog discusses about Matos, a business that makes shoes for men. The company is considered a social enterprise. Personally, I think this blog is very important and thought provoking. It is amazing how many people are now trying to create companies that can be favourable to our world. In this case Matos is creating shoes that are animal friendly and eco-friendly. The company is also helping unprivileged children by providing them with a learning kit for every sold product.

Thanks to these types of companies our world could become a better place. In the same way, it will be a better place since skilled managers are designing products in order to benefit everyone and also to benefit themselves by creating strategies to increase their selling segment.

According to Liz Costa’s blog, invention is about locating the itch and finding a technique to scratch it. There are many inventions that have been placed thanks to someone who filled up the gap of one product that was needed. Personally, I find this blog interesting since there are many entrepreneurs who are trying to create new products that can fulfil the world needs. I was recently reading an article about Giatec Scientific Inc; this company has developed a way to detect corrosion or concrete cancer with one of their new products called: iCOR. It is a very unique idea brought by the company, however, Giatec Scientific Inc is not the only company bringing up innovation/invention. As Liz blog says entrepreneurship nowadays is finding what is missing and satisfying that gap. 

Twitter is now facing lots of threats and weakness in the market. One of their threats is the existing competition, there are a lot of more appealing programs such us Whatsapp, Line, Snapchat, Facebook etc. An example is Whatsapp, which has 300 million active users while Twitter has 218 million. Twitter has been recently loosing money due to all this new innovative programs. First of all, people who sign up for twitter don’t really get or understand the meaning of it. Moreover, users don’t really know what are they suppose to post. Furthermore, twitter has been wasting their time on facing engineering problems that were crashing the network and they haven’t concentrate on what’s more important: innovation.

Although, the company haven’t succeeded as much as they would like, they are trying to improve their revenue streams and they are also trying to develop a more appealing network. Twitter has newly introduced new features to the web; they are now showing users suggestions of movies according to other users interests. They have also bought Vine and We are Hunted and now users can watch videos in Vine and find different types of music through We are Hunted. Additionally, the social web is already aligned with Apple in order to implant their services in mobile devices.

Overall, Twitter is trying to become more appealing for people and it’s also trying to create more profit by providing new services. In my opinion Twitter has to be even more innovative and develop a better techniques in order to have a competitive advantage among others.

 A load factor is the quantity of seats an airline is able to fill. Air Canada and West Jet have been increasing their load factor over the years. In 2011 Air Canada had a load factor of 81% and it increased in 2012 by 1.7%. West yet started with a 79.7% and it increased by 3.1% in 2012.

The airlines are now applying new methods to create fuller planes and bigger profits. They are adjusting their prices according to the time of the flights and there are analyzing more their capacity management. Airlines analyze and modify the number of flights they offer in order to match demand. First, they investigate and look at regular last minute demand and leave enough room for these last-minute fliers. Unfortunately, these costumers will pay the high fares. After they have left some room for last-minute fliers, the company offers seats at different prices for people who book flights ahead of time. This is helping the company to make profit, since the airlines are charging these last-minute fliers a higher fee than other costumers. This is also helping the company’s revenue streams since the demand for last-minute flights are usually higher. The airlines are still improving their strategies to increase their load factor since they are aware that empty seats do not create revenue.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/the-science-of-filling-seats-airlines-chart-path-to-fuller-planes/article6995096/

Starbucks is trying to enter to the Chinese market by approaching consumers with new marketing strategies. One of the company’s goals is to create a rapid expansion in the country. Furthermore, they want to appeal consumers by following their culture. In order to succeed the company has created several marketing strategies.

Firstly, they have realized that Chinese people enjoy space and couches to sit down. As of right now they are re-decorating some of their stores making them bigger and also hiring local graffiti painters to give the stores a better look.

Secondly, they’ve understood that China is not a coffee-drinking nation; therefore the company is trying to increase their popularity by offering new drinks with Chinese-inspired flavours and also introducing more Chinese type food.

Lastly, the company has created new techniques to keep their employees. They’ve come to comprehend that the culture in China is totally different; Chinese parents want their children’s to be working on a company that can help them for a better future. Starbucks has created a family forum, where parents are invited to go and listen to managers who have worked their way up in their career life.

On the other hand, Starbucks is facing a lot of competition, which is a threat for success. They are competing with local companies and also with stores such us Costa Coffee and Paris Baguette. Moreover, Starbucks is identified by a western image; one of the risks they might face is loosing their brand identity by trying to go by local cultures.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324784404578142931427720970.html

On the 24th of April 2013, the Rana Plaza factory, an eight-store building collapsed in Bangladesh. Mohammed Shoel, the owner of this factory was approved to construct a five-store building, but added three more floors illegally. Mohammed was arrested with the engineers who helped him with the construction of this building. Apparently the building was in really bad conditions, which lead to the collapse of the construction and hundreds of deaths. The factory produced top international brands and it is said that there was poor working conditions; employees were paid twenty-five pounds monthly.
Primark a major retail store in the UK owned the second floor of the building. The company said they were going to pay compensation for all the victims and that they were going to provide financial aid for those injured.

Nevertheless, the big question is: Are retail stores fully aware of this? For example, Primark is known as a cheap retail store, which has been dealing with problems related with child labour. In my opinion companies like this one are aware of what is happening, but they fail to do anything about it because they are interested on meeting the consumers needs of buying cheap clothes and they also want to make profit. This retail stores often forget whether their company is being ethical or not.

http://news.sky.com/story/1084619/bangladesh-disaster-primark-payouts-for-victims