http://www.davegranlund.com/cartoons/wp-content/uploads/color-Kodak-bankruptcy.jpg

“You Press the Button, We Do the Rest.” It has been a long time since we heard such a slogan. Kodak, once a billion dollar company, is now worth only a couple hundred millions. What’s the reason behind its failure?

When George Eastman was still alive, he had made many brave moves such as shifting his company from developing black and white films to making color films. During that time, color film was inferior to black and white and Kodak was already in the lead of doing black and white. However, his enterprise mindset and his enthusiastic attitude for changes allowed the company to gain a place at the top of the photography industry. After his part away, Kodak management team was never the same.

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I think that because Kodak began as a film developer, many CEOs wanted to stick to original business plan, that is to sell only film cameras. They were ignorant to the disruptive digital technology. Furthermore, Kodak made a cliché mistake; it didn’t ask the right question. Instead of focusing more on the business that it was in, sharing memories, Kodak instead focused on selling more products. If its valued proposition is to let people share memories, Kodak should do whatever it takes to keep up with new photography technologies and inventions. In the blog, it is mentioned that Kodak purchased a chemical business for $5.1B because it wanted to develop chemically treated photo paper. (Another attempt to stick to film photography> huge mistake)

Today I think Kodak has learned its billion-dollar lesson. Just around last month, the company has released it newest product, a 360-degree sport camera, which is integrated with all kind of technologies. However, Kodak’s newly adapted strategy might have been a bit too late.

Source:

http://smallbiztrends.com

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2012/01/18/how-kodak-failed/3/

http://www.gurufocus.com/term/NCAV_real/FRA:KODN/Net%2BCurrent%2BAsset%2BValue%2B%2528per%2Bshare%2529/Eastman%2BKodak%2BCo

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkotter/2012/05/02/barriers-to-change-the-real-reason-behind-the-kodak-downfall/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/avidan/2013/08/20/the-death-of-scale-is-kodaks-failure-an-omen-of-things-to-come-for-corporate-america/

Unlike social enterprise, United Nations only handles problems at the surface. It’s an intergovernmental organization that establishes peace and security between countries and deal mostly with emergency situations.

Social entrepreneurs try to come up with innovations that address issues like educational opportunities, children health, housing, clean water, and climate change. However, they do not just fix the problems; they try to come up with methods that people could use so that they can solve the problem themselves in the future (finding the roots of the problem).

Social enterprise is a type of impact investment. It creates benefits more than just financial returns. Consider a situation in which a person wants to open a restaurant. Is it better to lend him money or is it better to equip him with proper business knowledge? Perhaps it’s better to go with the first one. However, the second option ought to be more efficient in the long term. If the man has the money but not the right business mind, he is more likely to face failure and be in debt. If he were provided with some business foundations, he would manage his restaurant better and is likely to succeed. Furthermore, the man could even teach his friends the business skills he learned so that they can open their own restaurants in the future. In this case, social entrepreneurs would do both but the money that they would lend out is not just a giveaway. It would come from a smart system like microfinance. Every decision is based on values that it would bring, be it environmental, social, or sustainability. This is why social enterprise differs from United Nations and should be highly recognized.

I’m really interested and looking forward to the Arc Initiative program that Sauder offers.

Source:
http://skollworldforum.org/about/what-is-social-entrepreneurship/
http://www.socialenterprisecanada.ca/learn/nav/whatisasocialenterprise.html

When I have to pay as much as a grand for just one way ticket, I expect a decent service. I want to share my experience with Air Canada which I believe is pretty similar to Peter Milobar’s.

Earlier this year, my flight had been canceled so I had to contact the call center. It took me an hour and a half to reach the agent. Not only did I have to wait for so long, but also the employee that finally picked up turned out to be quite rude and disrespectful.

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Like what Peter said, I think that Air Canada must greatly improve its customer service in order to sustain its customers’ loyalty. Even though Air Canada is the national airline and pretty much dominates the country’s airline business, it is facing more and more low cost competitors. Some American-based airlines are even now considering landing in the Canadian cities. More customers’ complaints could be observed online through http://whyaircanadasucks.com

I think that one way the company could resolve these issues is by creating a survey for clients to provide their satisfaction feedback. Furthermore, I think that organizational culture and human resource management should be paid more attention to. Air Canada must somehow make employees feel more enthusiastic and feel like working. The company might want to reduce their employees’ working hours, create a more comfortable atmosphere, and or integrate long working hours with frequent short breaks. To reduce the phone pick up time, they might need to hire more employees. These solutions come with a higher cost. But like Zappos, they would be proven useful in the long run.

Peter Milobar’s blog:
https://blogs.ubc.ca/petermilobar/
Source:
http://whyaircanadasucks.com
http://globalnews.ca/news/1483295/new-ultra-low-cost-air-carrier-jetlines-aims-for-spring-launch/

A clean hydroelectric dam sounds pretty promising. Hopefully it would provide 1,100 megawatts of capacity and produce about 5,100 gigawatt hours of electricity each year, enough to power 450,000 homes in B.C. Unfortunately, it comes with a price.

Site C Clean Energy project is planned to be constructed along the Peace River of northern British Columbia. It is predicted that the dam would flood 83 kilometers of the Peace River Valley. Farmland, wildlife habitat, and archaeological sites in the area would be destroyed. Furthermore, these lands have been homes to the First Nation people for hundreds of years. Constructing a dam would affect their livings and change their ways of life.

In my opinion, the dam’s benefits outweigh the negative ones. The project would not only provide cheaper hydroelectricity for the nearby gas, oil, and mining industries, but it would also create thousands of jobs for both natives and non-natives. These are some of the positive externalities that the dam would bring to the region. However, it is also a threat to many agricultural and fisheries related industry. The destruction of forests and water habitat would cause these businesses to produce less and therefore lose profits or even get shut down.

I feel like the Native people are being taken advantage of. If the dam is going to be proceeded, government should provide them with some compensation such as building them new permanent residences and providing subsidies. B.C.’s population is growing and a renewable source of energy will be very needed in the future. I think that Site C can indeed be a win-win situation.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/First+Nation+chiefs+stage+Site+showdown/10215965/story.html#ixzz3FQZzcPfw

https://www.sitecproject.com

Link to Izabella Shalygina’s blog:

e-cigarettes: for and against

Izabella’s blog has inspired me to look up more on electronic cigarettes. Tobacco addiction has long been our world’s major problem. People who smoke are risking themselves everyday with many negative health impacts such as stroke, heart disease, and lung cancer. As a result, a new market for electronic cigarettes began to emerge hoping to target all the current and potential smokers.

Euromonitor estimated that the retail sales value of e-cigs was around $2.5 billion worldwide for 2013. By 2017, Bloomberg Industries predict that sales will exceed $10 billion and by 2047, it will surpass traditional cigarettes. The popularity of these devices lies in the younger generation because they come with different flavours like chocolate, strawberry or caramel. They are so varied that consumers can even choose to customize their own nicotine level. For example, people who try to switch from traditional cigarettes to e-cigs can choose to start with higher level of nicotine and eventually buy ones that are nicotine-free.

I disagree with Isabella that “e-cigs are just smokers’ toys”. I think that if people are capable of following their customized schedule, (eg. lowering nicotine level every week) they can actually use these vaporizers as a tool to help them quit. In addition, e-cigs smokers are not exposed to the burning paper in which they would inhale if they smoke the traditional cigarettes. This mean that they have lower risk of getting lung cancer  because there is no CO2 emitted. E-cigs are good in the long run because it doesn’t produce any harmful effects to the third party. Even though they are not the best solution, I think it is definitely an alternative that we should reconsider.

Source:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/agoodman/2013/12/05/e-cigarettes-are-smoking-hot-4-ways-to-approach-them/

On September 24 2014, Blackberry Passport was sold out within 6 hours of its release and within 10 hours on Amazon’s. Apparently, 200,000 orders are still on pending.

Not long ago, Blackberry limited was still a dead company. Its revenue was on decline and had never climbed back up since Apple and Samsung have released their smartphones. John Chen, the new CEO, stepped up just in time to flip the company around. Blackberry Passport is indeed his trump card.

With the former CEO, Blackberry had no clear generic strategy. It tried to capture a broad range of customers but possessed neither cost leadership nor product differentiation. As for the Passport, Blackberry chooses to focus only people in the business realm. The new model is replaced with a bigger screen so that customers can easily view emails, messages, and even work with the spreadsheet. A physical touchscreen keyboard panel attached at the bottom is said to reduce the typing time and typos by 74%. Other specs include a 2.2 GHz quad-core processor and 3GB of RAM. With these new transformations, the cost only starts at $599 which is still a lot cheaper than Samsung galaxy and iPhone.

By using the focus strategy, I think Blackberry is heading towards the right direction. Even though its market might be narrower, it will get a high degree of customer loyalty. Knowing this, Blackberry will then be able to charge its loyal customers with a higher price in the future. It’s quite interesting to see concepts learned in class being used in real world situation.

Sauderites, I would like to pass on Westergren’s words to you. “Entrepreneurship in general requires naiveté. Were you not naive, it could be so daunting that you would either not try it in the first place or you’d give up if you began to see things getting difficult.”

When I was going through business articles the other day, Pandora, an Internet radio service, has caught my eyes. Pandora is a company that streams music and provides recommendations to its users. Their music playlists are often found to be very favorable and accurate to each individual’s preference. This is because Pandora uses real humans to compose them. The system is known as the Musical Genome project and is introduced by Tim Westergren, a musician and the founder of the company.

The way it works is that Pandora hires trained musicologists to sit down at a computer and identify 450 unique characteristics of each song and use this information to insert into a complex algorithm song by song. The process is too difficult and time consuming. No entrepreneurs would have thought of starting such a business in the 2000s when technology could pretty much do everything. However, Westergren ignored all those criticism and therefore kept failing with what he did.

Back then, investors didn’t believe in him because they thought using real musicians would be slow and stupid. However, after so many struggles and after pushing his idea 348 times to investors, Westergren finally found the support. As Pandora’s customers grew, its users database grew allowing the system to be more accurate. Today, Pandora gains its place at the top of music streaming industry with more than 250 million subscribers.

In my opinion, Westergren’s ignorance was the reason for his success. I believe that many businesses that had failed earlier could’ve achieved the same success if they hadn’t given up so early in the game. Remember, your idea might sound crazy and get rejected several times, but it might be the actual one needed. So keep pursuing, one day at a time, and you might find yourself to be the next Pandora!

: )

http://www.pandora.com/about/mgp

http://www.fastcolabs.com/3028215/will-pandora-survive-the-streaming-music-boom

I believe that the idea of sustainability is something that every business should keep in mind aside from the sole purpose of making only profit. One role model company that I would like to share in this article is Patagonia.

During the holiday season of 2012, while most retailers tried to promote their sales as much as possible, Patagonia, in contrast, encouraged their consumers to buy less. On it’s website, the advertisement said, “…we ask our customers not to buy from us what you don’t need or can’t really use. Everything we make–everything anyone makes–costs the planet more than it gives back.”

To make the earth even greener,  Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the company, decided that his clothing products would be made from 100% organic cotton when realizing that industrial grown cotton would hurt the environment. Even though his plan didn’t work out very well since organic cotton industry was not common during the 1990s, he still kept pursuing it until the company earned back its revenue.

Furthermore, Patagonia annually donates 1% of its sales to the environmental non-profits. I think that Patagonia’s mindsets are very admirable and ethical and that other businesses should also consider following them. Patagonia’s marketing strategy on ‘buying less’ didn’t only reflect the company’s good heart, but also contradictorily attracted more buyers!

Thanks to
http://www.fastcoexist.com/1681023/how-patagonia-makes-more-money-by-trying-to-make-less
and
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/doing-well-by-doing-good-why-patagonia-makes-a-profit-naturally.html

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