Category Archives: Comm 101

He’s probably not the first name you think of, or the most recent of entrepreneurs, but he’s a big name. Walt Disney.

Mr. Disney

While he went through some difficult times starting up, as most entrepreneurs do, his real breakthrough came through when he decided to make the worlds first animated feature film, Snow White.

While he spent $1.4 million, a massive amount of money back in the 1930s, he managed to make $8 million in its original theater release.

Disney had previously broken into the market with Mickey Mouse, arguably one of the most recognizable characters of all time. Even with Mickey, he was innovative and broke into scene with the world’s first animation with synchronized sound.

It was his creativity and unrelenting fearlessness that allowed him to go into these markets, and make the technological push for animated media. He had ideas for new products and went to every length to meet them, and exceed them.

With these big ideas, and steel will to follow them, it’s no wonder how Disney managed to create one of the biggest brands in the entire world, and I believe one of the most admired entrepreneurs of all time.

My friend had his newly bought iPhone4 out and had a song playing on his speakers when I pulled out my imported Japanese phone. I played the same song, but it was twice as loud. This puzzled us, because 1. my phone is an older model and 2. it’s the most basic line of phone in Japan.

My Phone

Did you know Canada released a 3G network a full 4 years after Japan?

When buying cellphones, we severely lack choices. Look at the comparison between Samsung Canada and Samsung Korea:

Canada

Korea

And the 2011 line of cell phones from Docomo in Japan:

Not only are we years behind in cell phone technology and limited in choice, we also pay the most on average per month for it!

While there have been some new entrants to the Canadian market, they have yet to make a significant impact (such as Wind Mobile with approximately 140, 000 subscribers) and still charge approximately $40 a month.

I want to see a company with innovative, ground breaking technologies that could compete in the Asian markets, and prices that even our exchange students won’t wince at.

It’s a market of 23.9 million with room to grow, and I’m tired of being years behind; can’t someone jump on this?

The new google car prototype

So I wish to talk about this exciting new advance in technology.

But it’s not just the science that is amazing, it’s the business opportunity that Google has presented themselves with. They have invested tons of money into this project, and while there may be other autonomous cars around, Google’s different ‘personalities’  and just sheer marketing power gives them a huge advantage.

What they should do is start getting car sponsorships. No doubt car makers like Lexus or BMW would love to jump on their bandwagon. The idea is worth an almost infinite amount of money, and Google being Google, they could sell it at any price. It’s certainly worth more than the billions of dollars they’ve already poured in, and I do believe, that it is without a doubt going to be a contributor to the future. Cars already parallel park by themselves, and with the amount of deaths caused by vehicles as they are now, this idea is close to priceless,but Google would be a fool not to continue to invest in it, and find partnerships with car companies.

Google should move now, however, so they gain the first movers advantage.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?src=me&ref=general

Tony Hayward, picture from Wikipedia

So who is this man, and why is he on my blog?

The real answer is that he’s a PR nightmare!

After the Gulf spill in 2006, this man was put in charge of BP in order to fix the company and to fix their awful safety record. His words ended up being hollow, as the company was sued two years later for not meeting safety standards. In that same year, eleven people were killed in a drilling rig explosion.

Safety is a basic principle that isn’t hard to understand. A workplace should provide an environment where it’s workers feel protected and accidents are minimized. A company who holds strong to business ethics, will make sure this is fulfilled or when something happens, they make drastic changes to prevent it from ever happening again.

My real point, is that it’s easy for a company to talk about changing. To talk about following ethics to simply win the public over.

How many companies simply talk about ethics to win us over? How many actually follow up? Do companies follow ethics because they want to, or because they have to? Feel free to discuss!

Links: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/market_news/article.jsp?content=D9I8J8DO2&page=1
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/19/eveningnews/main6598907.shtml

Does this look safe to you? BP explosion April 2010