” If  the United Nations was fully funded why would we need the Arc or social enterprise”?

United Nations is an  and the Arc program is an organisation designed to promote international co-operation. Many things that the UN does is to help particularly 3rd nation countries is reducing poverty. This is done by donating resources. The problem however is that this solution is not sustainable.

If certain programs such as the Arc, which promotes social enterprise to take place, this allows for a more sustainable future for local entrepreneurs if given the opportunity. As one of the article says, one of the reasons why 3rd nation countries are still in a state of poverty isn’t solely based on the lack of resources, but because of the lack of entrepreneurial skills that they have when they receive this sum of money.

Therefore programs like the Arc develop a long term solution to the problems that they face, by investing smartly, local entrepreneurs can turn around their businesses and start producing more, as a result this will create a ripple effect, as more income in one’s pocket will lead to either larger investment into the business, or consumption of other local good which will increase domestic GDP. A fully funded UN would be great, but social enterprise is still needed to teach and exchange knowledge to local entrepreneurs,.

This external blog by Gene Marks describes his opinions of Victoria Beckham’s recent award given by Management Today for  UK’ Entrepreneur of the Year. He believes that although Victoria Beckham’s traits and skills as a business woman, she lacks the single trait of what a person an entrepreneur: ‘Risk’.

What differentiates Victoria Beckham from other entrepreneurs is that she already had a lot of publicity and capital to work with. I believe that her image of ‘Posh Spice’ helped with her fashion line dramatically as she already built a reputation of being fashionable.

Personally, I agree with Marks’ opinions. After listening to Tom Dobrzanski, Jenny Duffy and Paul Davidescu’s engaging experience of how they started up their own successful careers. To me, a successful entrepreneur is to able to either believe in your business idea so much that you are willing to risk all your assets for example given ‘love money’ from close family members and relatives. By adding this factor of ‘risk’, their success typically depends on multiple attempts, suffered both failures and successes until that one ‘big break’.

Many of the most successful companies in the world are run by entrepreneurs who experienced hardship, however I believe has lead to leading innovators of the world, producing goods and services that we as consumers both need and want.

Article Link:

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20141111185212-2474348-why-victoria-beckham-is-not-a-successful-entrepreneur?trk=tod-posts-post1-ptlt

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/236433

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20141111185212-2474348-why-victoria-beckham-is-not-a-successful-entrepreneur?trk=tod-posts-post1-ptlt

The article describes AT&T’s new intention to expand its telecommunication services to Latin America by buying out the third largest wireless operator in Mexico, right after abandoning their intentions to deploy its plan for high speed in-flight internet.

Personally, I agree with this strategic business decision by AT&T. Firstly, I believe that this is a good decision by AT&T by purchasing ‘Grupo Iusacell SA’ because the company itself has already established a strong foothold within the industry as they currently have a subscription base of 8.2 million subscribers. This meaning that AT&T is going to invest less in resources for marketing and advertising to obtain customers. Instead, AT&T and dedicate its resources into technological development and research. 

Secondly, I believe that, through analysing the articles with the PEST analysis, there are more opportunities in choosing to expand in Latin America politically. Especially after the 2014 World Cup, the region is politically stable, meaning it is a safe and wise place to invest in.

Thirdly, in terms of the social aspect there is an up and coming trend of growing middle class and population, and I think that allows for a great opportunity for AT&T to invest in due to the increase of potential consumers that would be willing to purchase AT&T’s subscription base.

Finally, economically, the region is projected to increase its economic growth by 3.6% this year, and 4.1% in 2015, meaning that the economy is expanding, which I believe implies a possible increase in the consumption of goods. In today’s new digital era, telecom services are more popular than before and this will only increase in demand.

As a result, with AT&T’s strong brand image entering a fairly untapped market, especially with its capital and resources to invest in further technological advancements, there is large potential that AT&T could control a large segment of the market in Latin America.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-07/at-t-agrees-to-acquire-mexico-s-iusacell-for-2-5-billion.html

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-10/at-and-t-drops-a-plan-for-inflight-internet-access-in-2015#r=hpt-ls

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/2014-latin-americas-big-year-9629

https://blogs.ubc.ca/johnathanlam/2014/11/08/how-important-is-sustainability-to-businesses/

Whilst profit is a main objective for most firms, I do not believe that all firms have profit as their number one priority. Not including non-profitable organizations many firms do have sustainable intentions when producing products to the public.

The important idea is that for me, sustainability is a cumulative problem, if more people act towards a ‘greener future’, producers will start producing at a more green level because that now becomes the ‘social norm’. Whilst perhaps the idea of sustainability is not so much a priority for smaller firms simply due to the lack of cash flow to employ a CSO/establish more sustainable capital, for larger firms due to the large mass of production of goods that is being created, sustainability is important. As we have learnt in class, many firms in recent years often employ a CSO (Chief Sustainability Officer), whilst profits may not come in the short run due to more expensive resources/ cost of production, A CSO’s long term goal is to create a long term profitable sustainability strategy in order for the firm to be more efficient whilst it produces.

Also, some large firms create a brand image for themselves based on a sustainable value propositions such as Body Shop. As the general public becomes more aware on issues about sustainability, this might lead to a bigger change in the way firms produce their products, and as a result could lead to a bigger long term change in the future.

Article from: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/technology/microsoft-to-give-away-mobile-version-of-office-software.html?ref=business&_r=0

This article briefly describes Microsoft’s new marketing strategy to release free versions of microsoft office to mobile users. I believe that this will improve Microsoft’s intentions of increasing the use of office towards mobile users, who currently turn to free apps such as evernote.

I found this article very interesting, because as big as a company as Microsoft is, I’m surprised that it took this long to start targeting mobile device users. As more people are becoming more technologically savvy, more users are switching towards computers to portable devices such as tablets or iPads, therefore increasing usage of microsoft products wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Personally though I feel like this is just a small goal in what Microsoft’s main intentions are, which is to increase brand awareness of their product, and the potential brand loyalty obtained from all these users using office resulting in the purchase of the premium product. I could even suggest that this could increase PC sales, however this seems unlikely due to the upcoming trend of tablet usage.

However, I think that this is just a minute step to Microsoft’s long term goal as only 13% of microsoft office revenue comes from consumers (Wingfield) , with so many free substitutes to Microsoft Office, what is it that differentiates Microsoft Office from any other note-taking product? Are they trying to push tablet sales like the ‘surface’ or trying to increase PC sales? By making microsoft office free for mobile users, they leave both options possible, more people might purchase products related to microsoft like the surface, or if that trend starts to fade out the brand loyalty of microsoft might lead them to buying microsoft related computers.