There’s always a secret to everything, including the success of every big companies. As international businesses become even easier and more common, businesses started to take more risks in going global, but what exactly make an international business successful?

The key to the success itself relies on the knowledge that the business got. Not just the basic knowledge about how a business operates, but also about the culture of the country that the business operates. Culture varies between different countries, there might be some similarities between the countries that you are operating in, but you can almost find differences in each and every country that you’ve involved yourself with.

In order to be accepted by the people in a certain country, you have to fit in with their ‘certain’ culture, for example, in some countries gender is still a big and sensitive issue, there are some countries that still perceive women as that of a lower level than men. A simple information about that country can also be a big thing if you want to do your business there. For example, some countries such as China and Japan give see gifts as a formal way of settling or doing a business, but in Western cultures, they tend to associate gifts with the word ‘bribe’.

Most businesses have their peaks and troughs, a period where everything is busy and where everything is not. There are a few businesses that rely on the-so-called ‘busy period”s profit to cover up the rest of the quite period. Usually those businesses have to strive to do their best in order to get the maximum amount of profit to survive throughout the year, it’s a tough business for most of the people.

Most businesses have their busiest time during holiday, a certain holiday such as christmas works the best for some businesses, all usually depends on what type of business you are in or what products are you selling.

Making a maximum amount of profit, means cutting costs. Costs can be reduced by using resources as efficiently as possible, not wasting any but not paying extras. Which might have brought questions to some people? How’d they manage to do that?

Years of experience help businesses to devise staffing, cashflow and stock plans that help them cope with whatever the peak times throw at them, so most businesses are already prepared even long before their peak time.

But as these businesses seek for the cheapest costs, that means that they are trying to get rid off the costs that they deemed as unnecessary for their short term goal, which is to maximize their profit at least by the end of their peak period. But Does that affect anything at all? the quality of their business? How about the employees’ motivation? or customers services? loyalty?

Tal Dehtiar, the owner of an Oakville shoe company called Oliberte, clearly knows what he is doing. As the world’s first certified fair trade shoe company, Oliberte has provided tons of job opportunities to the people of Africa. Not only has this country provided a good deal of payment for the workers, Dehtiar also offered child care, medical care and bought picnic tables where employees could eat during lunch breaks.

Customers can not only benefit from the chance of owning a stylish leather shoes worth of $150, but also from knowing that they’ve contributed to helping the Africans through job, not aid.

The International Fair Trade Association has more than believe that the company has “concern for the social, economic and environmental well-being of marginalized small producers”and that Oliberte don’t “maximize profit at their expense.”

“We want to give people a different way to look at Africa,” Dehtiar said. “Our ad features a swimmer, skier and a boxer and we want people to see Africa not with pity. They should see these African sports ambassadors as a symbol of African empowerment.”

Overall, it’s one great of a business strategy, never thought of, which could be an excellent example of first-mover advantage businesses. Oliberte has not only made a good ‘social image’ in the eyes of the customers, but also a good brand awareness.

References:

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/11/08/oakville_shoe_company_olibert_is_first_in_the_world_to_get_fair_trade_certification.html

As a developing country experiencing a drastically rapid industrial growth, it is inevitable for China to suffer environmentally. Beijing, being the most polluted city in China, has experienced air pollution 40 times higher than the World Health Organization’s safety limit in January. A study by the American National Academy of Sciences stated that with the current air condition in northern China, life expectancy decreases, on average, by at least 5 years per person.

Taking an action for cleaning up China’s polluted air is a huge challenge for China, especially with their current way of doing things. In China, corruption happens within the top ranks of the Communist Party, the corruptors are commonly known as the ‘mayors’ that run the country. The ‘mayors’ tend to ignored the environmental edicts issued in Beijing for the sake of their businesses. As social pressures increases, threatening the rule of the Communist Party, China has no other choice but to take an immediate action.

Google along with Microsoft, both as the leading search engine companies, have decided to agree measures to block abuse images. Both have decided to work together in making a new software that will prevent searches for child abuse imagery or any possible searches that could lead to such inappropriate imagery.

“As important, we will soon roll out these changes in more than 150 languages, so the impact will be truly global.” – Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

As social awareness for the said issue arises, demands from society also increases, which resulted to an add up pressure to global, big companies such as Google and Microsoft. It is, of course, a big and daring move coming out from both companies. And since most illegal abuse images are hidden on peer-to-peer networks, both companies had to take a drastic measure, involving the National Crime Agency and other organizations similar to that to help in the work of finding both the sources and the creators of child abuse images.

It’s a lot of work for them, and a huge responsibility since both of the companies have to bear with high society expectations, both direct and indirect.

What has gone wrong with HP? That’s the question that we all would very much like to know. The answer actually varies depending on how a person sees the situation, a lot of people actually blame the past CEOs for the downfall of the company- although it’s not entirely wrong to say that, but blaming the entire problem on the CEOs is not exactly the perfect way to address the issue.

Over the years of progressing under the different CEOs (Carly F., Mark Hurd, Leo Apotheker), HP had changed into a mass production, profits-aiming business that rather than focusing on the pursue of creativity and innovation, focuses on minimizing costs and expenditures.

Years of inconsistencies, and the always changing CEOs has left the employees feeling both demotivated and unappreciated, which obviously clashed with their own beliefs of “making the employees one of their top priorities.”

The HP now has, indeed, gone far away from their HP way, back in 1990s, which probably is the main cause of their downfall- They are just too far away from their original motives.