...Week 3 Gore-Tex Case Study 1. Explain what happened to the Gore-Tex brand after the patent expired. What activity can firms use to try to maintain any advantage developed during the patent protection phase? When the original patent expired, Gore-Tex lost all rights to their invention. This allowed other companies to make similar products at a lower price. They now have many competitors. To maintain the advantage, Gore-Tex needs to use their packaging to continue identifying themselves as the superior creator of this type of products. They need to continue selling their brand by placing their labels in highly visible locations. 2. List some of the wide range of products where the Gore-Tex fabric has been applied. “Today the organisation divides its products into four main groupings: medical products; fabric products; electronic products; and industrial products.” (Trott 99) * Medical- implants, vascular grafts, dental implants, and patches * Electronics- cabling used in telecommunication, aerospace, medical industries * Fabrics: waterproof and laminates for backpacks, raingear, coats, gloves, and shoes Reference: Trott, Paul. Innovation Management and New Product Development, 4th Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions. <vbk:9781256085539#outline(8.12.7.1)>. 3. It seems that Gore Associates is heavily oriented towards technology; what are some of the dangers of being too heavily focused on technology? Many times, being too focused...
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...Case: Creative Jobs at W. L. Gore Professor Doyle Young Regarding the case of ‘Creative Jobs at W. L. Gore’, husband and wife Bill and Vieve Gore founded W. L. Gore & Associates; the basic principle for work at Gore is teamwork, there are no managers, there are just teams of employees assigned to work on opportunities. Once hired the employee is given a “sponsor”, the sponsor is someone who is committed to the sponsored employee success and provides the employee with learning opportunities, getting him or her involved in a particular project or helps the employee build relationships with others in the company. After getting adjusted a new employee is expected to balance autonomy in how they work with the responsibility for meeting team goals. (McGraw-Hill Companies, (2011), Fundamentals of HRM Fourth Edition, New York, NY, pages 119-120) Gore creates an environment in which each employee owns his or her own destiny and makes an individual commitment to the success of the company. It's an exciting and stimulating atmosphere because employees have the freedom to work in businesses or on projects that they are extremely passionate about. That passion pays off in business results. (All Answers Ltd., (2003-2016), Study of W. L. Gore, England and Wales, http://www.ukessays.co.uk/essays/management/study-of-wl-gore.php) Some strengthens you acquire working around teams would be that since you were hired based off your talents, skills and knowledge and not to fill a specific...
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...Inconvenient Truth succeeds in making an emotional, and more importantly, a moral case for reducing global warming. I am on Al Gore's side when it comes to the importance of raising awareness about global warming and on the fact that we should act forcefully to change the destructive influence humanity is having on the Earth's environment. The documentary is directed by Davis Guggenheim, an American director and producer, and features former United States Vice President Al Gore. Gore is also an author, businessperson, and environmental activist. He has been involved with environmental issues since 1976, when he was a freshman congressman. This documentary is set to educate, warn and raise international public awareness among viewers about global warming. It also states different solutions to fix this problem. Gore succeeds in doing so by presenting a comprehensive slide show containing real scientific statistics. He appeals to every individual by showing before and after images of our natural habitat, discussing a good number of graphs and diagrams. Quotes from Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, and Winston Churchill underscore Gore's message of taking action, particularly when Gore quotes Churchill who said: "The era of procrastination of half- measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences." A good example Gore gives to induce fear in the viewers is the possibility of the collapse of a major ice...
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...In 2006, former senator Al Gore created an academy award winning documentary on global warming entitled “An Inconvenient Truth” . The movie earned several awards including an academy award for best documentary and gore later received a noble peace prize. The movie discussed several different topics of great concern to global warming; such as permafrost, climbs in temperature, extinction of species, drought, and fatigue to name a few. Four writers in five different articles discussed the three topics of greenhouse gases, climate change, and causes of global warming. These writers are writer and scholar Bill McKibben in “Think Again: Climate Change” and “How Close to catastrophe”; William J. Broad, writer for the New York Times in “From a Rapt audience, a call to cool the hype”; writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Kevin O’Brien, in “Global Warming? I won’t be losing any sleep over it”; and Alan Zarembo, staff writer for the the Los Angeles Times, in “Game over on global warming?” All though the articles explain some different topics from one another, only one of them disagree with gore on the causes for global warming being humans, they all agree that there will be impacts to the environment, and all of them believe that greenhouse gases are one of the primary causes for global warming. First, all the articles discussed about who was to blame for the raising temperatures of the planet. The issue may be serious but O’Brien states that is just the media using another topic of...
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...increasing up and down movements), the atmospheric levels are on a constant increase. These patterns are cyclical in nature because in the spring, when the northern hemisphere is facing the sun (the northern hemisphere being where the largest amount of vegetation is located), the plant life absorbs the majority of the CO2 levels, reducing the levels of CO2 in the air. In the fall, when the northern hemisphere is facing away from the sun, the CO2 is released into the air, increasing the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Evidence of an increasing atmospheric temperature is everywhere; Mount Kilimanjaro has virtually no snow covering its peaks and the polar ice caps are reducing in size at, as researchers would put it, at “extraordinary rates”. As Gore showed in his presentation, over the past 1000 years, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are directly correlated with the atmospheric temperatures. In Antarctica, the same has been shown in research going back as far as...
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...movements at work and incite us to act. Although there is a general trend in our societies towards an awareness of ecological issues, concrete action is still too little, too slow—which constitutes in some ways the creed of the movie: It's too late to be a pessimist". Find out more details on the movie and about the events around the world for the premiere in the extended.Foundations and Idea behind Home Although famous for its Earth from Above pictures, this is the first movie by French photographer Yann Arthus Bertrand. He got the idea of making it moved by the impact Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth had since its release. "When I invited Al Gore to show his film, An Inconvenient Truth, to the French Parliament, I realized just how much impact a movie could have, even more than a TV program. I saw how moved the audience was—to tears in some cases—and I said to myself that a feature film was an excellent way of reaching people," he said in an interview at the press release brochure. Great Prismatic springs at the Yellowstone Park, United States. ©Film "Home", a coproduction by Elzevir Films/Europacorp. A movie from above Following his tradition of aerial photography, Arthus Bertrand set off to make a movie entirely shot from above. Why is a movie from above necessary? Producer Denis Carot explains in the same release: "I was convinced that the idea of shooting a movie entirely from up in the sky, without...
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...overall), which were expected to have an impact on the final results. After counting the overseas absentee ballots, Bush's lead over Gore increased to 930 votes in Florida. Bush picked up 1,380 of them and Gore received 750 votes. Democrats sued Seminole County Canvassing Board for including certain absentee ballots in the vote totals that did not satisfy the legal requirement that the person requesting the absentee ballot provide the elector's registration number on their application. Although the Democrats could make a valid legal argument for challenging these ballots (and thereby likely stopping Bush from padding his vote lead), this move left the impression among many that Al Gore was a hypocrite. The Bush team dropped its lawsuit intended to force Florida counties to reconsider overseas military ballots that were rejected for technical reasons. Presumably, they wanted to avoid criticisms of hypocrisy similar to those made against Al Gore. On November 27th, Another lawsuit arose. Apparently, Republican volunteers in Seminole County corrected mistakes made by overseas ballot applicants that should have made those ballots invalid. This lawsuit sought to throw out 4,700 of these ballots. This case was moved to the state court in Leon County, which was also hearing Gore's certification challenges. On December 6th, two state absentee ballot cases took place in Tallahassee. Democrats claimed Republicans tampered with application forms, and removed them...
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...living species at a rate that has not taken place on this planet since the disappearance of the dinosaurs so many tens of millions of years ago” (Gore). This is very shocking and unimaginable because without animals we neither the Earth won't be able to survive. Al Gore was preparing this speech very much, since he thought through the details about where it would take it's place or to what will make him look convincing and more trustworthy for his audience. He chose to preform it in Washington DC “at a first green university”, and he begins with thanking all the significant people who are there listening to him. Even through there is more young adults than “high positioned" people listening to his speech, there is at that moment most of our “next generation” science students that he wanted to inspire from beginning of their careers. Through his speech, he mentions that “soon 120 countries will have a meeting in Berlin” (Gore) where he will show that other countries are starting to deal with this problem all over the world too. A rhetorical situation in Lloyd Bitzer's essay "The Rhetorical Situation" is defined as: “as a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations presenting an actual or potential exigence which can be completely or partially removed if discourse introduced into the situation, .” (Bitzer 6). So in this case the rhetorical situation is the problem in the climate change that we, as humans that live on this...
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...In 2006, former senator Al Gore created an academy award winning documentary on global warming entitled “An Inconvenient Truth” . The movie earned several awards including an academy award for best documentary and gore later received a noble peace prize. The movie discussed several different topics of great concern to global warming; such as permafrost, climbs in temperature, extinction of species, drought, and fatigue to name a few. Four writers in five different articles discussed the three topics of greenhouse gases, climate change, and causes of global warming. These writers are writer and scholar Bill McKibben in “Think Again: Climate Change” and “How Close to catastrophe”; William J. Broad, writer for the New York Times in “From a Rapt audience, a call to cool the hype”; writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Kevin O’Brien, in “Global Warming? I won’t be losing any sleep over it”; and Alan Zarembo, staff writer for the the Los Angeles Times, in “Game over on global warming?” All though the articles explain some different topics from one another, only one of them disagree with gore on the causes for global warming being humans, they all agree that there will be impacts to the environment, and all of them believe that greenhouse gases are one of the primary causes for global warming. First, all the articles discussed about who was to blame for the raising temperatures of the planet. The issue may be serious but O’Brien states that is just the media using another topic...
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...Dennis 1 Synopsis Decisions are made every day. The choices people make are often swayed one way or another by outside forces or by those that frame decisions and their choices. Nudge focuses on decisions and how they are made. Half of Nudge covers decisions and how their choices are framed and how we as people can better understand why choices are set up the way they are, how to make an optimal decision, and how to nudge others toward making optimal decisions. The second half of Nudge illustrates how the same concepts and principles can be used, are being used, should be used, and how to better utilize them to nudge public policy. Thaler and Sunstein (2009, p. 6) detail two terms that must be explained in order to understand the points made throughout the book. The first, ‘nudge’ is “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.” They go on to say “To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid. Nudges are not mandates.” The second term used throughout Nudge is ‘choice architect’ (Thaler & Sunstein, 2009, p. 3), defined by the authors as someone that “has the responsibility for organizing the context in which people make decisions.” Choice architects arrange choices for other people and nudge others toward making decisions that will be at the optimum benefit. A choice architect will favor one option over another and take...
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...of the United States of America. George W. Bush is the oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush was elected president in the 2000 general election, and became the second US president whose father had held the same office. Bush did not get into office without some scandal and controversy because On December 8, 2000, the Supreme Court of Florida ordered that the Circuit Court of Leon County tabulate by hand 9,000 ballots in Miami-Dade County. It also ordered the inclusion in the certified vote totals of 215 votes identified in Palm Beach County and 168 votes identified in Miami-Dade County for Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., and Senator Joseph Lieberman, Democratic Candidates for President and Vice President. The Supreme Court noted that petitioner, Governor George W. Bush asserted that the net gain for Vice President Gore in Palm Beach County was 176 votes, and directed the Circuit Court to resolve that dispute on remand. The court further held that relief would require manual recounts in all Florida counties where so-called “under votes”...
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...the environmental pitfalls of incinerating and landfilling waste, while also sheltering MMT and the end users from regulatory oversight due to the recycling nature of the process. The company had also been aggressive in its external relations with both government and industry. Haney, with the assistance of Washington lobbyist Peter Knight, had been successful in gaining the attention of government officials all the way to Vice President Gore. The company also successfully leveraged its relationships with industry giants such as Lockheed Martin, Rollins, Fluor Daniel, Westinghouse SEG, Hoescht Celanese, and DuPont to establish its three commercial start-ups: two in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (M4 Environmental LP/Commerce Park and MMT Tennessee/Bear Creek Road), and one in Bay City, Texas with Hoechst. These strategic elements created media attention and investor enthusiasm that drove the stock price up roughly 100% through the year 1995. What were the challenges and uncertainties/risks facing commercialization in 1995? What will you do in case of being Bill Haney or Chris Nagel? TECHNOLOGICAL RISKS – The bench-scale technology had been proven at the company’s R&D facility in Fall...
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...Rachel’s points out that the reason there is so much suffering is because, the population keeps booming at a faster rate and this adds to the overuse of scarce depletable and environmentally hazardous resources. In line with that in his film, An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore also attributes the increase in global warming to population explosion, which he projected to reach over 9 billion by the year 2050. Rachel’s argues that our decision of having or not having children creates horizons of possibilities that have practical consequences, and these consequences will affect us our entire life time because, parenting has no exist hatch. He adds on to say that our cultural customs of what we think is reasonable restrain our ability to reason critically when it comes to making the decision regarding...
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...SECRET LANGUAGE of • HOW LEADERS INSPIRE ACTION THROUGH NARRATIVE The LEADERSHIP STEPHEN DENNING John Wiley & Sons, Inc. More Praise for The Secret Language of Leadership “Out of the morass of strategies leaders are given to transform organizations, Denning plucks a powerful one—storytelling— and shows how and why it works.” —Dorothy Leonard, William J. Abernathy Professor of Business, Emerita, Harvard Business School, and author, Deep Smarts: How to Cultivate and Transfer Enduring Business Wisdom “The Secret Language of Leadership shows why narrative intelligence is central to transformational leadership and how to harness its power.” —Carol Pearson, director, James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership, University of Maryland, and coauthor, The Hero and the Outlaw “The Secret Language of Leadership is not only the best analysis I have seen of how and why leaders succeed or fail, it’s highly readable, as well as downright practical. It should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in engaging a company with big ideas who understands that leaders live and die by the quality of what they say.” —Richard Stone, story analytics master, i.d.e.a.s “A primary role of leaders is to create and maintain meaning for their organizations. Denning clearly demonstrates that meaningmaking comes from stories well told.” —Thomas Davenport, President’s Distinguished Professor of I.T. and Management, Babson College, and author, The Attention Economy “Steve...
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...ago and the foundation which was laid in a Houston town is now almost a $100 billion a year corporation. Top ten in the Fortune 500 list it runs in the same league as International Business Machines Corp. and AT&T Corp. Like all Multi National Corps. Enron has subsidiaries in India, China Philippines, a water company in Britain, pulp mills in Canada and gas pipelines across North America and South America. But the real power lies in the Houston area where it is the leading supplier for electricity and natural gas. As it rose to power it had plans to enter the fiber-optic cable, TV advertising time and wood pulp and steel market. Further, it also had political interest in the nation and like all MNC's lobbied behind its candidates in this case being Bush, who is now President. This seemed to pave the way for Enron's success and put it in a prime position for pulling the strings of power. Now, however, suddenly the power dynamics have changed. From being the top Corporation in the US and the world it is now fighting to retain its stock value. Assets have been pledged to the bank, creditors are scrambling for blood and company lawyers planned to file for bankruptcy. Most of the customers that Enron boasted off have long gone. From the point of creating power it has come down to the mercies of those in power. The company had approximately 21,000 employees all in dire straits as their future and savings was in the Enron stocks. With the employees mutual fund and investment companies...
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