Month: November 2010

Categories
Business Ethics Entrepreneurship

Social entrepreneur Scott Griffiths


A social entrepreneur is the one who recognizes a social problem and organize resources to achieve a change that is beneficial for the society through innovation. Scott Griffiths is the one. Recently, he was selected as CEO of the Year in the ‘social entrepreneur’ category.

Zipcar has helped change urban life by providing instant affordable mobility in 14 major metropolitan areas, 220 college campuses in the United States, United Kingdom and Canda. He tried to make the business “do well by doing good”. Using fuel efficient cars only, they charge for car sharing services at a cheap price. Through a highly innovative operation system, Zipcar achieves the goal of sustainability by making the most efficient use of resources. Since each Zipcar removes 15 personally owned vehicles from the road, Zipcar helps reduce congestion, ease parking demands and lower a community’s overall carbon footprint. Scott has been CEO since 2003 and has made Zipcar to be the world’s biggest car share company successfully.

Reference:
http://www.voxy.co.nz/business/zipcar-ceo-wins-social-entrepreneur-ceo-year-award/26/70643

Categories
Marketing Strategies&Tactics

Goodbye Bush, says Veet in cheeky ad


Some quick facts before you read the post:
Veet is a hair removal product for woman.
Bush is a slang word for hair.
“Goodbye Bush” was an interesting ad of Veet just after Obama took over Bush’s position of the US president. This short ad informed customers what its products do and capitalized the hottest political issue at the same time. The ad commented on the fact that Obama would be taking over power after George Bush, and demonstrated “Yes ladies, our product will remove your unwanted hair.”As Brand Strategy magazine said, “We love this ad we got sent, which comes from Veet.” This creative ad was a huge marketing success. It went viral. The minute this ad went out, scans of it started to be spread widely around the internet. This ad was really cheeky but people loved it so they shared it. It’s easy to get into people’s mind even for a long period of time. How many times do you read a dirty slang term in newspaper? When I look for a hair removal product, my mind would probably jump to Veet. That’s a brand recognition due to its fantastic marketing.
Reference:
http://brandstrategy.wordpress.com/2009/01/21/goodbye-bush-says-veet-in-cheeky-ad/

Categories
Human Resource Management Strategies&Tactics

Bad tactics? Bad strategies?

Jaguar-Land Rover, which is now owned by Indian company Tata Motors, is trying to capitalize on the emerging automobile markets such as China. However, it faces a human resource management problem——the company is having trouble to move its talented managers and their team to China to facilitate the achievement of the company’s objective in Chinese market expansion.

Jaguar’s human resources director Des Thurlby tries to pursuade the managers to work abroad by telling the link the job oversea to future reward and recognition——failing to move overseas would not rule a candidate out of a board position, but promotion was far more likely if an employee had worked overseas. Though the strategy itself follows positive organisational culture that motivates by rewarding and takes care of workers’ personal growth, they are still reluctant to move out. If it does not work within the time allowed, I believe it would be wise for him to either improve the tactics to the strategy (for example, giving them tangible short-term “well-specified” reward and recognition if this is more likely to be attractive), or change another strategy (perhaps it’s more feasible to hire local managers).

References:
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/71593,business,jaguar-staff-told-to-move-to-china-or-risk-promotion
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/8134971/Jaguar-tells-managers-relocate-to-China-or-risk-promotion.html

Categories
Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship——Turning Technologies

Established by Mike Broderick in 2002, Turning Technologies has become a global leading company in the Audience Response Industry. Over half of the U.S. colleges and universities are using Turning Technologies’ response solutions on campus. It grew exponentially, 3707.9% from 2004 to 2007. I was astonished by its speed wealth creation resulted from not only the entrepreneur’s investment but also his vision of changing the phase of the industry by innovating new products continuously.

As the entrepreneur, Mike Broderick has been dedicated in creating innovation throughout the company. As he said in the video(see below), the only way to compete in the global market place is to be the smartest and “have the best”. And that comes from smart people who are able to take the real risks and do incredible things. I think having the will to take risks and to lead the industry through innovation, rather than to simply copy, are great entrepreneurial characteristics that can lead to huge success. This can generate new demand, and thus avoid increasing fierce competition in the existing market.

Video:

References:
http://www.turningtechnologies.com/company/
http://www.turningtechnologies.com/company/history/

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