China should give a warm welcome to more companies like Volcafe to invest in Yunnan and other parts of the countries. Although some parts of the country have already become very modernized, the rural area on border is still undeveloped, valuable resources have not been used effectively.

Food companies like Volcafe can provide financial aid and technology support to farmers, as a result, the companies can receive better quality raw materials at a more acceptable and competitive price, farmers’ income will greatly rise , they will be able to invest more to enhance their production and therefore get rid of poverty. This is a great example of CSR of business.

In addition, my analysis shows that the next great opportunity for business in China is the farmland. After the 20 years’ rapid development, China has built a comprehensive manufacturing industry, people’s income has greatly increased. Manufacturing will not be as profitable as before in China. While on the other hand, people’s demand for better life standard, to be more specific, their demand for high quality food will rise, therefore firms should invest their money into the farmland, work closely with farmers. Together they can create a profitable new agriculture.

Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/90156bac-5e8f-11e4-b81d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3Id7Gr1TK

Microsoft has always been a monopoly in office software market. Although google and apple both have similar products, they still can’t provide something that can replace Microsoft Office, some of Office’s core function like solver still remain exclusive. What’s more, Office still has the control of general documents formats, such as .doc and .ppt.

To me, I am one of the subscription customers of Office 365, Microsoft’s offer infuriates us. Because we feel that part of our subscription fee is paid for free products and services. But on the other hand, to those without full subscription, this is quite a sweet offer. By providing free Office mobile apps, Microsoft can attract new consumers and implement price discrimination among its customer segment, divide customers into different groups, each charged with the highest acceptable price to maximize profit.

In addition, I doubt the effectiveness of this predatory monopolistic strategy. Because it is so inconvenient to use office app on small-sized devices such as smartphones and small tablets. My analysis shows that a discount on Surface would have better outcome because once consumers purchase a Microsoft hardware, they will automatically stick to Microsoft software. Microsoft should create a whole ecosystem including hardware of all size, software with all purpose and online cloud services, build great customer loyalty to maintain its monopolistic power in IT market.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/11/06/microsoft-gives-away-office-365-mobile-apps-in-a-bid-for-more-users/?KEYWORDS=Shira+Ovide

I totally agree with Darren’s opinion. As a Chinese student, I always pay great attention to Jack Ma’s company, Alibaba. Not only because I spend hundreds of dollars shopping on Taobao.com, also because Jack himself is a great model for a commerce student to learn from.

This smart businessman, the richest person in China, Jack Ma, failed to pass Gaokao, the Chinese college entrance examination when he graduated from high school. His first job was an English teacher, his first business was a small translation agency. However he sensitively smelled the trend of IT revolution and grabbed this chance, founded his great Alibaba empire.

My analysis shows that Ma’s success comes from these elements:

1. Sensitive to chance and trend. This is the most important skill that an entrepreneur should have. It helps you grab opportunity and avoid threats. It’s pretty similar to SWOT analysis skill.

2. Strong leadership. Ma is good at building and creating organizational culture, like Darren mentioned, in Ali, people have “the sense of purpose and a belief that anything is possible”.

3. Global view. Ma always try to push his business global and keeps learning from foreign rivals.

4. Braveness ,hardworking and innovation spirit. In Chinese culture, people are conservative. Therefore being brave and being the pioneer means a lot to a businessman. Of course all of above must be built on the foundation of hard work.

Source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/winghongtong/2014/09/24/hangzhou-the-alibaba-hub-that-minted-thousands-of-internet-millionaires/

The last sentence of Tim’s post clarifies his opinion, ‘Swiss watch is indeed a classic watch brand, but nowadays, it is practical utility that counts.’ I partly agree with his idea. Admittedly, apple watch has more utilities than classical Swiss Watches,  it can function as a mini smartphone on your wrist while Swiss Watches only keep time. However, my analysis shows that swiss watch will never be replaced, for the reason that swiss watches are greatly differentiated from other rival products, including those Japanese watches that has almost the same appearance with them. Swiss watches not only represents the owners’ status, it also indicates the owners’ attitudes. By wearing Swiss watches, people try to show their respect to traditional hand-make production. On the contrary, apple watch represents geek spirit of enthusiasm to new technology.

According to apple’s keynote, the price of apple watch starts at $349 (Apple, 2014), which is way cheaper than swiss watches that cost thousands dollars, such a gap between price clearly place apple watch and swiss watches at two different customer segments, therefore I hold the idea that apple watch will bring very small affect on the sale of traditional swiss watches.

Source: https://blogs.ubc.ca/timdu/2014/09/28/apple-watch-vs-swiss-watch/

Bibliography

Apple Inc. September 2014 Special Event 09 09 2014. 09 11 2014

http://www.apple.com/live/2014-sept-event/

My comment on Twitter is Paying Executives Not to Flee the Struggling Company (external blog)

According to the author Kevin Montgomery, Twitter is trying to stop managers from leaving the company by paying them money. 

However, the money paid only plays the role of Aspirin, but not a surgery. The defections can be prevented in short run, but the extra cost will probably leads to a serious long-run crisis.

Because the real problem is, people are losing confidence in their CEO, Costolo. My analysis shows that Costolo’s solution will make the problem worse, because people is going to have even less confidence in him. And this unequal treatment will infuriate other managers, make even more people lose their loyalty to Twitter.

Twitter needs a positive organizational culture to help it get through the hard time. The money paid to leaving managers should be spend on better staff welfare, financial encouragement to new ideas and a better leadership.  Twitter’s owners should also consider to hire a new CEO who can gather people by using his own personal charm, not shareholders’ money.

Source: http://valleywag.gawker.com/twitter-is-paying-executives-not-to-flee-the-struggling-1656117135/+aleksanderchan

A business has to trade with the external world to make profit, thus external factors can have great impacts on a company’s business model. I’d like to take the First Nation issue as an example to analysis its impacts on the hydroelectric business in Canada.

The BC Hydro’s $8-billion Site C hydroelectric megaproject meets with opposition from the First Nation people in B.C (O’NEIL).

We can see First Nation people’s opposition on the project as an industry force, because it actually block the company’s access to its supply of input, so it can’t get the key resources needed by its key activities and value proposition. What’s more, B.C. have to bear the losses of delaying its project.

First Nation issue can also create regulatory trend and societal&cultural trend. The company may be forced by the government to improve their ways of production to reduce the damage to environment in aborigines region and may also face negative comments and lawsuit from advocators of aborigines and environmentalist. These factors can affect the cost structure by  increasing the company’s production, advertising and legal cost.

Considering the First Nation group is only a small part of the whole economy and is relatively isolated, plus B.C. Hydro’s product has high necessity and small elasticity of demand. My analysis shows that the First Nation issue will not significantly cause macro economic or market force that can greatly affect demand for the company goods and services very.

Bibliography

O’NEIL, PETER. First Nation chiefs to stage Site C showdown. 18 09 2014. 6 10 2014 <http://www.vancouversun.com/news/First+Nation+chiefs+stage+Site+showdown/10215965/story.html>.

Chinese businesses are going online, trying to enhance their productivity. According to the author. China now has the most smartphone users in the world, so my analysis shows that, businesses should not be satisfied by only, going online, they should also go mobile. With the rapid growth of smartphone and tablet users, Internet is no longer only accessible on computers, consumers are spending more time with their smart devices, going mobile will provide more chance for consumers to know your business,to  get access to you and to send you feedback after they used your products and services. 

Company with a informative website or mobile app will have a great advantage over its rivals who has a formalism website, because they help you capture your potential consumers’ spare moments, for example the two minutes’ time when they wait for a bus. Consumers can also receive more information about the products and services from the website and they can also receive some helpful self-service.

What’s more, going online or going mobile cut companies’ cost of hiring too many telephone operators, a server can deal with hundreds of customers at a same time, never make mistakes and requires no salary.

source: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21608639-chinese-business-has-been-slow-embrace-internet-it-does-productivity-should?fsrc=email_to_a_friend

This article uses so many data to show us the value of warehouses. This inspire me to think about a question, what is the purpose of building warehouses? The answer is, to keep the companies’ inventories. Then what is the real value of inventories? Only just some goods that are waiting for sale or a part of asset on the balance sheet? Of course not, my analysis shows that well located inventories can help companies attract potential customers in this Internet ear.

Imagine you need a watch for tomorrow’s exam or a sinus rinser when you have a allergy. You searched on Amazon and it says the nearest seller is thousands kilometers away, you’ll probably spend half of a day to buy it in downtown instead of buying it online. In this way, online sellers lose a lot of chances to make a deal. 

So it is a great idea to have a company provide small amount storages and delivery service for those online sellers to help them spread their inventories to meet potential demand in different areas, this actually shorten the distance from sellers to consumers.

Source: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21610288-rise-e-commerce-has-set-boom-market-warehouses-stores-value?fsrc=email_to_a_friend

This article introduce us the profit earning mechanism in the elevator industry. People usually think that the biggest proportion of profit of a manufacturer is the sale of their products, but lift producers show us another great source of income, the maintenance of products.

Maintenance of products generates a great amount of profit because the marginal cost is small, mostly the labour cost of and the production cost of spare parts. However, it needs a huge network of technicians if your products are globally sold. This creates a significant enter barrier for the industry, help producers hold the domination situation.

In my opinion, in order to create more profit, lift producers should make use of their existing huge and well spread service network, extent their business into new areas such as temperature and humid control or other smart electronic control system for buildings.

Source: http://www.economist.com/news/business/21573568-things-are-looking-up-liftmakers-top-floor-please

The article talks about Japanese motor companies’s innovation on new diesel engines. What they have done is just a good example of how Stakeholder Theory works. Consumers’ demand for high fuel efficiency cars encourages manufactures to develop better engines, the new engines burn less diesel, so they help consumers save money on fuel. The shareholders and financier will be attracted to invest more for the production of such a efficiency engine, so the new engines can probably help relieve the inflationary pressure caused by fuel price and can also protect the environment by reducing the gas emission because there will be more of them. Realizing the positive effects comes from the new technology, governments will try to encourage the production and consumption of high efficiency engines by offering subsidies or tax cut, therefore a virtuous circle is formed. More importantly, the company gets more profit from their more competitive products.In this case, almost all the skateholders have their own benefit from the innovation of diesel engine. All these benefits come from Mazda leader’s decision of developing high-efficiency diesel engines. This is how should a businessman fulfilling his own social responsibility, he managed to get all stakeholders work together toward better benefits. Think about if Mazda’s manager decided to devote their researching power to develop a more powerful but less efficiency engine for few racing fans, things will be totally different.

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/07/diesels