Can they really work like Google workers?

Is it absolutely neccessary to keep employees happy if a company wants to maximize profit? Through examing Zappo’s corporate culture, it seems that a positive, and relaxed work environment directly correlates to the productivity and growth of a company. Therefore, it is tempting for one to conclude that Zappo’s culture should be an model for other companies. In Cole Christiansen’s post: “An Offiice Revolution” he argues that having a positive work environment is crucial for a company’s success. To substantiate his point, he brought up the example of Google which is renowned for its informal and flexible work environment. However, evidences suggest that Zappo and Google’s work environments are not universially suitable. Management theorist Jim Collin argues that corporate culture is unique to each company and that it would be detrimental for a company to copy another’s culture. For example, Foxconn, the world’s largst electronic manufacture, is famous for having a rigid,military like corportate culture. However, it seems unfeasible and undisrable for foxconn to liberalized its work environment since the nature of the company’s business relies on precision and worker compliance.

Reference:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/meb5337/blogs/meg_barnetts_presidential_leadership_academy_blog/2012/03/ball-pits-free-meals-cokes.html

http://www.wikisummaries.org/Built_to_Last

https://blogs.ubc.ca/colechristiansen/2013/11/15/an-office-revolution/

Photo Reference:

1) http://cdn.macworld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Foxconn-still-in-negotiations-for-Sharp-stake-despite-Samsung-deal-macworld-australia.jpg

One of retailers’ biggest marketing concerns is how to target as many potential customers as possible with its marketing campaign. Traditionally, promotions can never target every single potential customers since each customers have unique needs. This inherent flaw in traditional pricing is about to end as supermarkets such as Safeway and Metro are introducing individualized pricing strategy. Under this new marketing strategy, retailers are sending out personalized coupons to their customers via mobile apps. This is done through by tracking an enomrous amount of data regarding customers’ purchasing patterns and analyzing them with complex computer algorithms. For example, “Dunnhumby tracks more than 1 billion items purchased each week”and use computer softwares to analyze these data to predict the customer’s wants to create persoanlized coupons. The idea of personalized pricing is a perfect example of the intersect of two different business disciplines: marketing and management information systems. The use of MIS helps gather and analyze the data which is later to create different marketing tactics. However,the individualized pricing strategy has only improved Safeway’s revenue by 1% sinces its implementation, demonstrating the inefficiency that plauges most MIS undertakings.

Reference:

1) http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-14/2014-outlook-supermarkets-offer-personalized-pricing

Photo Reference:

1) http://cdn8.triplepundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Safeway-logo.jpg

planet v.s. farmers?

Renowned Management theorist Michael Porter and Mark Kramer introduced the idea of Creating Shared Value, CSV, as a integrative strategic alternative to the established practice of corporate social responsibility. Porter and Kramer argue that traditional corporate responsibility programs pursue social benefits at the expanse of profit which is undesirable and unsustainable for profit-driven organizations. They argue that creating shared value with the community will allow companies to incorporate social responsibilities into a company’s core business, eliminating the conflict between the two. On an abstract level, CSV seems like a good idea, however, as David Aaker, suggest in his blog post, the broad scope of CSV approach makes it hard to evaluate the impact that each business decisions has. Furthermore, in addition to the difficulty of evaluation, CSV is also hard to implement as different aspects of social agendas often contradict. This is shown in 2009 Bodyshop incident in which they are criticized for sourcing palm oil from Daabon, which has been accused of force eviction of peasants off their farmland. Bodyshop’s pursue of eco-friendly products creates a conflict with their need for social responsibility towards farmers. This demonstrates that CSV is problematic in its implementation.

Reference:

1) http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/06/creating-shared-value-vs-lever/

 2) http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/13/body-shop-colombia-evictions

Photo Reference:

1) http://www.beautybulletin.com/images/stories/whats_news/green_peace.jpg

One of the most pressing problems that plagues start-ups is to generate profit. Many tech startups have enormous user bases but are actually losing money. A good example of this would be Twitter. Despite a 1 billion dollars IPO, twitter is revealed to have “lost $79.4 million on about $317 million in sales in 2012”. This failures of tech start ups like Twitter to generate profit demonstrate a down fall in the idea of the lean start up. The concept of a lean start up address the issue meeting the needs of customers. It, however, does not address the problem of generating income. For example, Tech start ups like Twitter did an amazing job addressing the customers’ need to share information but, so far, it hasn’t generated any profit for the company. Therefore, it is very exciting when online scrapbooking platform, Pinterest, announced its strategy to monetize its services. In the Fortune article, Pinterest has announced various mechanism that has strong revenue generating potential such as “promoted pins” and “real-time data software”. Pinterest’s monetization strategy showed great potential for revenue, setting it apart from other unprofitable startups.

Reference:

1) http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/03/technology/social/twitter-ipo/

2) http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/11/14/pinterest-plots-its-monetization-strategy/

Picture reference:

1) http://www.jeffbullas.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/pinterest-logo.png

how to make this healthy?

A recent study by the Institute of Medicine has indicated that Americans are consuming too much salt and sugar. Fearful of “the possibility of more regulation” several companies including Mcdonald’s, Subway, and Dunkin’ have come together to form the “Healthy Menus R&D Collaborative” that tries to reduce salt, sugar and carbohydrate in their food products. However, the principle of this collaborative to find a way to make food healthier without compromising the taste of the product. These companies are particular reluctant to push out products with labels such as “diet” or “low sodium”. This concern is rooted in the idea of brand positioning. These fast food companies are afraid that if they alter their food products to focus on health, they will lose their points of parity as fast consumers often associates healthiness with “bad taste”. This is one of the main reasons why the Collaborative puts so much emphasis on gradual reduction of unhealthy ingredients in their food instead of a fast “cold turkey” solution of reform.

Reference:

1) http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-14/2014-outlook-fast-food-chains-inch-toward-healthiness#r=hpt-ls

2) http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2013/Sodium-Intake-in-Populations-Assessment-of-Evidence/Report-Brief051413.aspx

Picture Reference:

1) http://www.slicktext.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/YUMMY-FAST-FOOD-fast-food-33414472-1680-1050.jpg

A response to Peter Chen’s blog post about “Phoneblok”

Motorola’s Project Ara

I believe that the value proposition of Phoneblok is definitely a “billion dollar idea” because in a world where smart phones designs are becoming increasingly homogeneous, customers desire products that are unique to themselves. Furthermore, the idea of a phone that can be cheaply customized is strategically brilliant. According to Porter’s generic strategy, a product can succeed by employing either a cost leadership strategy or product differentiation strategy. However, the ability to have low cost and efficient customization will effectively incorporate the best aspects of all four strategies. The low cost of the “blok” components mean that the phone will be accessible to a wide range of customers, the customization aspects of Phoneblok will allow the phone to deliver the exact product that the customer wants. In Peter’s post, he mentioned that Phoneblok is merely a concept and it is far from reality. However, it has been reported that Motorola has been working on the idea for a while with its “project Ara” and that it will team up with the “creators of phoneblok” to make this customizable phone a reality.

reference:

1) http://www.policymic.com/articles/70953/motorola-teams-up-with-phoneblok-for-project-ara-the-ultimate-phone-platform

2) https://blogs.ubc.ca/peterchen604/2013/09/19/phonebloks/

Picture Reference:

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2013/10/ara1blogpost.jpg

As a university student I often wonder: is it worth it to go to university? While high school students who decide to join the work force instead of attending a post secondary education are generating income, university students are spending a significant amount of money for an education. According to the Financial Post, tuition cost in canada averages to $5,266 a year and average student will incur approximately $2,7000 dollars in student debt. Despite the obvious short term financial disadvantage, however, researches have been shown that a post secondary degree is a sound investment in the long run. This is affirmed by Iglika Ivanova, an economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, who states that the premium for a bachelor degree is 40 percents for male workers and 51 percent for female worker. Furthermore, it can be argued that a college degree increase employment security as the unemployment of college graduates are much lower compare to the US national average, 3.9 percent, and 7.5 percent respectively. Moreover, since predictions suggest that over 35% of new jobs in the coming decade will require a post-secondary degree, it is fair to assume that a bachelor degree will strengthen job prospects.

References:

http://business.financialpost.com/2012/02/27/post-secondary-worth-the-price/

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/04/business/college-graduates-fare-well-in-jobs-market-even-through-recession.html?pagewanted=all

Reference for picture:

http://innovationandgrowth.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/unemployment.png

It has been more than a year since Facebook went public, however, the social media industry has once again gained the attention of the commercial world as Twitter releases its internal assessment of its potential share price in preparation for its initial public offering. Even though, Twitter has shown incredible growth, its revenue grew ten fold to $317 millions between 2010 and 2013, its commercial prospect remains uncertain. On one hand Twitter is still not profiting, it lost “$69 million dollars in the first six months of 2013” but it has also been shown that Twitter has strong growth potential in international market. However, good prospects do not equate to financial success, for instance the hyped online coupon business, Groupon and social gaming company, Zynga shown prominent potential but they both failed to generate sufficient revenue. Their inabilities to transform their potential into solid earning are reflected in their stock prices which have fallen to a fraction of their initial listing price. Overall Twitter’s situation is not unique as it has been shown that social media as an industry is quite volatile.

Reference:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/10/twitters-ipo

 Picture Reference:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57605984-93/twitters-ipo-filing-6-surprises/

prototype Slingshot water filtering unit

In the modern commercial world where public reputation has remarkable influence on the profitability of a company, we see a significant amount of corporations attempt to improve their public image through philanthropy. A good example of this would be Coca-Cola which has gained a bad reputation for devastating local communities by causing water shortage with its bottled water business. It has recently tried to counter that image by supporting philanthropic ventures such as the Slingshot Initiative, which was featured in the recent Businessweek article “Clean-Water Effort Combines Coke’s Know-How, Segway’s Futurism”. This article shows that Coca-Cola is trying to diminish their negative reputation through their promise to provide clean water to 150 countries by 2015. This is smart move on Coca-Cola’s part because the Slingshot initiative targets the exactly criticism that Coca-Cola is facing. As customers around the world are becoming increasingly conscious about corporations’ actions and their impact on local communities and a negative corporate reputation will affect definitely affect a company’s bottom line. Through the virtue of its charitable actions, Coca-Cola protects its profitability by associating their brands with a positive social image.

Reference:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-09-27/clean-water-effort-combines-cokes-know-how-segways-futurism#r=nav-r-story

Reference for Picture:

http://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/slingshot-inventor-dean-kamens-revolutionary-clean-water-machine

John H.Hammergren,the world’s highest paid CEO.

This week in Comm 101 we started to discuss the idea of Business Ethics and Social Responsibility of Corporations. Often when people think about ethical issues in the business realm, they think of child labour, sweat shops or morally ambiguous marketing schemes. However, one of the issues that is discussed less frequently is the matter of executive compensation. Currently many top executives in the USA receive compensations that are 231 to 380 times the amount of an average employee. The following article demonstrates that such practice is both illogical and unethical as it harms the corporation in the long run by cultivating a culture that is driven solely by numbers.
http://business-ethics.com/2012/09/29/1233-ceo-pay-time-to-retire-the-rock-star-messiah-myth/
The excessive pay is controversial due to several reasons. First, some of these generously paid CEOs have, at best, questionable performance. Second, it has been shown that the excessive compensation harms the overall morale of the corporation as it foster dissatisfaction among employees. These two phenomenons directly contradict the responsibility of executives, which is to serve the investors and lead their corporations. The following article again demonstrates the various ethical and strategic problems commonly associated with overly generous executive pay.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/07/10/8380799/
Furthermore, in the above mentioned article, it is stated that some  ways in which these compensation are given rewards the CEOs at the expense of the shareholders, such as option backdating. This again contradicts the basic responsibility of CEOs, which is to serve the investors.

Additional Reference:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/mckesson-ceo-entitled-record-159m-pension

Picture Reference:

http://binaryapi.ap.org/294733c852b7470bbc800529f7ee2115/460x.jpg