...-GREENMANTRA TECHNOLOGIES It has always been globally debated, the issues caused by plastic to the environment and human beings. A complete solution that can harness both issues was not tracked down.The breakthrough invention was on 2010 when Greenmantra an Ontario-based company came up with a solution to this global issue. A process which uses relatively low- cost to convert plastics into high-value refined products such as wax, greases, and lubricating oils. Its technology has awarded them Canada’s most Innovative Company of 2010 in the clean tech sector. It is the first company to synthesize waxes from recycled plastics. According to the CEO of Greenmantra technologies Mr. Pushkar Kumar, his early environment and the technological advance led him to this innovation and break through recycling process. He said, “I grew up in India, where I witnessed a world with almost no recycling or waste utilization. It seemed as if plastics were piling up everywhere, but nobody could find a use for them. Knowing that plastics contain hydrocarbons, I wanted to find a way to recover the energy within them, but to do so in an environmentally friendly way. After years of experimentation and development, Greenmantra’s innovative depolymerization process can finally put to good use the millions and millions of tons of disposed plastics found around the world”.(Stoneburgh,2013) Mr. Kumar is a metallurgical, chemical engineer and a MBA holder who is been working on this plastic conversion process...
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...Saint Paul Elementary School is committed to helping all students develop the world-class skills and life and career characteristics of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate. In fulfilling the school's mission "to educate our children through meaningful learning experiences in a safe and nurturing environment,” the school community purposely and consistently provides an academically stimulating environment where all children recognize and achieve excellence. At SPES, we live out our mantra, “Learning Is Our Task, Excellence Is Our Goal.” Collectively, Saint Paul Elementary school team invests in our children's future by investing in themselves. Professional development opportunities are offered through a myriad...
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...Platinum as an investment option With the volatility in the stock markets and recent recession on the minds of the investors, alternative investments have assumed great importance. Investing where money will be safe is the new mantra. Obviously, commodities have become the new investment option knowing the great Indian fascination for the metal; gold and silver have been invested in widely. But today, the prices of gold have also skyrocketed. Silver is not as much preferred as gold. So, an alternative to gold has to be searched. Is platinum a viable alternative? Today, platinum is known as rich man’s gold. Will it appeal to the common man? Platinum is inherently, costlier than gold. Compared to gold, platinum responds very differently to economic stimuli. Past history reveals that the price of platinum runs in a similar curve as gold, palladium and silver and platinum has always led the bullish sentiment in the markets with palladium. The only downside is the volatility. Historically, platinum has been more volatile than gold or silver. In a strong bull run, platinum/gold spread widens considerably, sometimes reaching figures of about more than $150-$200 occasionally in the last twenty years. It is a fact that in time of extended economic boom, platinum tends to outperform gold and silver but during period of recession, platinum is not such a strong performer. It has been observed that investment in gold increases, maybe due to the psychological attachment of the investors to...
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...December 8, 2014 Case Review HOW the best indian companies drive performance by investing in people Leadership Practices vary across cultures. This case study from the Harvard Business Review highlights the ways leaders of high performing Indian companies focus their time and energies. The findings are based on interviews of 105 leaders from 98 of the largest Indian-based companies across various fields. The finding of the study are very stark and intriguing. Unlike the CEOs of Western companies, who often claim that cleverness at the top coupled with skills in financial markets, mergers or dealing making is a key determinant of success, Indian leaders point to the motivation of their people, their biggest assets. The Indian managers/CEOs invest in their employees and give importance to their quality, skill improvements, retention etc. The Leadership style of Indian CEOs find echo in the words of Mr. S. Ramdorai, the former head of Tata Consultancy Services, when he said of his company’s success,“It’s all about human capital at the end of the day.”. The authors of the case also find that Indian business leaders emphasize upon the social mission of their work. According to them Indian business leaders regard Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as a key part of social mission and employee motivation. Achieving CSR targets is monitored regularly by 40% of Indian companies while only 17% of US companies report regularly paying attention to this goal. Most of the western...
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...Business & Management (SL) IA: Commentary on: How will Trollbeads increase their market share? Candidate Name: Nina Halkier-Kaufmann Candidate Number: Total word Count: 1413 Contents Page Written commentary……………………………………………………...Page 3-7 Introduction…………………………………………………….…..………Page 3 Subtitle 1: Trollbeads Mission and Vision statement……………………...Page 3-4 Subtitle 2: SWOT analyze......…………………………..........................….Page 4-5 Subtitle 3:Trollbeads “shop in shop” rollout………..…………….…......…Page 5-6 Conclusion:……………………………………………………..…………..Page 6-7 Supporting documents…………………………...………..………..………Page 8 - Bibliography………………………………………………………………..Page Written Commentary Introduction What are Trollbeads? Trollbeads is a part of Danish Design inheritance, which is known for its functionality and quality. The story about Trollbeads started in 1976 in Denmark. Trollbeads jewelry is made from sterling silver, Italian glass, freshwater pearls and other treasurable stones. Each glass bead is handmade and two Trollbeads are never completely alike. The first bead was a small bead decorated with no less than 6 faces. It was designed by Søren "Silversmith" Nielsen and sold from his father’s jewelry shop in central Copenhagen. The idea of Trollbeads Is by following three simple steps: Collect your own unique bracelet or necklace by adding a lock and beads to a chain and decide which story you want...
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...Five Founders Inc recently asked me who I thought were the 5 most interesting startup founders of the last 30 years. How do you decide who's the most interesting? The best test seemed to be influence: who are the 5 who've influenced me most? Who do I use as examples when I'm talking to companies we fund? Who do I find myself quoting? 1. Steve Jobs I'd guess Steve is the most influential founder not just for me but for most people you could ask. A lot of startup culture is Apple culture. He was the original young founder. And while the concept of "insanely great" already existed in the arts, it was a novel idea to introduce into a company in the 1980s. More remarkable still, he's stayed interesting for 30 years. People await new Apple products the way they'd await new books by a popular novelist. Steve may not literally design them, but they wouldn't happen if he weren't CEO. Steve is clever and driven, but so are a lot of people in the Valley. What makes him unique is his sense of design. Before him, most companies treated design as a frivolous extra. Apple's competitors now know better. 2. TJ Rodgers TJ Rodgers isn't as famous as Steve Jobs, but he may be the best writer among Silicon Valley CEOs. I've probably learned more from him about the startup way of thinking than from anyone else. Not so much from specific things he's written as by reconstructing the mind that produced them: brutally candid; aggressively garbage-collecting outdated ideas; and yet...
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...read all the time – none zero. Investing requires a broad knowledge. My children think I’m a book with a couple of legs sticking out” - - Charles Munger I had been trying to get this in order but it never seemed to end. I am not a bookworm who reads a new book every week. I would rather go back to my old library and read any of the books or a chapter from a book rather then read something new. I must have read all these books at least twice some even up to 10 times (arbitrary figure since I did not count). Ihave tried writing a bit about the top 12 books. Why 12? The answer is one book in a month for about a year to read these pieces of experience. They should be read like a text book of English literature rather then a novel. As usual relevant sections need to be underlined highlighted so that it facilitates as a quick reference later on. The books listed are not in the order of my personal liking but I just kept putting them as they came to mind. Peter Lynch: “If one could tell the future by looking at Balance Sheets then Accountants and Mathematicians would have been the richest people in the world”. 1) One up on Wall Street – John Rothchild Lynch teaches the power to use the common sense which is the most uncommon thing in the world. The book is very well written with references to events and situations that make investing so easy. Some people try and do the unusual things that are why they miss doing the usual ones is the mantra that reverberates throughout the...
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...HRM-742 Business Management & Organizational Behaviour Assignment # 2 (Case study 4.1, page-97) Submitted by- PUNEET AHLUWALIA DATE- 09/06/2011 Question # 1 Why does Conestoga-Rovers and associates and other companies try to create a positive work environment? Answer – Conestoga-rovers and other companies try to create a positive work environment because it is very important not only for the employees but for the whole company. A positive work environment facilitates a feeling of cooperation, teamwork and joy among the staff. The working environment affects our sense of well-being, health and motivation to go in to work. It is both an employer’s responsibility, and in his/her interest, to ensure that employees work in a positive atmosphere because conditions at work can either maximize or minimize productivity and cause or prevent stress and fatigue, it also helps to recruit top talent because everyone wants to work at a good place where he/she can enjoy working and gets an opportunity to grow both professionally and socially. On the other hand if the working conditions are negative at the workplace it will not only affect the employees mentally and physically but it will also affect the company profits very badly and no employer would like to get into that kind of situation. A positive work environment is also very necessary to build trust amongst the employees and the employer. It encourages the employees to perform at their best. A positive work environment...
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...Because of the online-age, the interest in brand communities has boomed. Companies have begun to realize that consumers can co-create value, co-create competitive strategy and collaborate in the firm’s innovation process. So customers are not anymore separate and exogenous to the firm but on the contrary they should be included in the companies’ actions. One way to include customers and create collective value is to invest in brand community. Brand community is a community that is formed around some good or service and the brand is the one that keeps the community together and is the reason for it. Brand communities exist in the minds of people and there is shared understanding within the members. One of the most researched brand communities is Harley-Davidson. Other brand communities mentioned in the articles are for example Jeep, Apple Newton, Lomo and Holga, and Mini Cooper. Brand communities differ by many ways, some communities are closer to a company, some are more far away, in some communities members participate a lot and in some less, and the level on how much the company participates in the community differs a lot. Also the amount how much consumers can co-create value and collaborate in the firm’s innovation process differs between firms and communities. McAlexander’s et al. (2002) view on brand communities emphasizes the view of different kinds of relationships within a brand community. They state that “a brand community from a customer experiential perspective...
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...Many Shades of Gray: The Goldman Sachs Standard Are there ethics in big business? Or does big business answer to a different power? This can be a rather gray area. The problem to be investigated is the Goldman Sachs Standard and the ethics (or lack thereof) that exist in the company. The original market strategy was to provide loans for small businesses and then sell these loans as commercial paper. (Jennings, 2012) In the 1920s, this became a tough market in which to make a profit. So, to borrow a phrase, when the going gets tough, the tough change strategies. In the late 1920s, Goldman changed its investment strategy to layered investments. This strategy involves creating a company and then personally purchasing a large amount of the shares. Goldman would generally purchase approximately 90 percent of these shares. The public, unaware of the original purchase, only saw a profitable company so they eagerly purchased not only the remaining initial shares, but also purchased shares sold by Goldman at a higher rate. Goldman would also purchase some of these to artificially inflate the market even further. This enabled Goldman to make money off of the secondary sales. Goldman was lying to its clients because the company it created was not truly as profitable as the inflated share price would indicate. It was fully aware of this and continued to layer additional companies into the strategy that would appear successful only as long as the market continued to grow....
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...How Failure Breeds Success Even heard of Choglit? How about OK Soda or Surge? Long after ‘New Coke’ became nearly synonymous with innovation failure, these products joined Coca-Cola Co.’s graveyard of beverage busts. Given that history, failure hardly seems like a subject CEO E, Neville Isdell would want to trot out in front of investors. But Isdell did just that, deliberately airing the topic at Coke’s annual meeting in April. “You will see some failures,” he told the crowd. “As we take more risks, this is something we must accept as part of the regeneration process.” Warning Coke investors that the company might experience some flops is a little like warning Atlantans they might experience afternoon thunderstorms in July. But Isdell thinks it’s vital. He wants Coke to take bigger risks, and to do the, he knows he needs to convince employees and shareholders that he will tolerate the failures that will inevitably result. That’s the only way to change Coke’s traditionally risk averse culture. And given the importance of this goal, there’s no podium too big for sending the signal. While few CEOs are as candid about the potential for failure as Isdell, many are wrestling with the same problem, trying to get their organizations to cozy up to the risk-taking that innovation requires. A warning: it’s not going to be an easy shift. After years of cost-cutting initiatives and growing job insecurity, most employees don’t exactly feel like putting themselves on the line. Add to...
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...Devry University: Entrepreneurial Finance December 05, 2010 The Entrepreneurial Story of Steve Jobs The Start of Apple Anusree Banerjee Table of Contents Executive summary 3 Pre-foundation partnership 4 Initial bootstrapping 4 Angel investors 4 Initial public offering 5 Success mantra 6 Appendices 8 Venture Capitalists tell their story: Arthur Rock on Steve Jobs 8 Preliminary confidential offering memorandum 9 Bibliography 10 Executive summary This report highlights the start of the entrepreneurial journey of Steve Jobs – the founder of Apple. The Apple journey started off as a partnership. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had been friends for some time, having met in 1971, when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. Jobs managed to interest Wozniak in assembling a machine and selling it. They bootstrapped for the first product – Apple I. Mike Markkula was the first angel investor who showed belief in the product and the team. Markkula had made his fortune as a marketing manager at Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, retiring at age 32. In 1977, Steve Jobs met with Markkula and convinced him that personal computers were an exciting opportunity. Markkula invested $250,000 in Apple for a one-third stake in the company and served as president from 1981-83. With Mike’s guidance and funding Apple ceased to be a partnership and was incorporated on April 1, 1976. Apple investors had a traditional exit...
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...University in 1995, with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. During 1994-1995, he started pizza business and started sell in the university dormitory After graduation, he worked for a Oracle Software company only for a year (1995-1996). Cofounded Link Exchange in 1996 He cofounded LinkExchange with his Harvard roommate Shanjay Madan. It was an Internet advertising company Sold LinkExchange $265 billion to Microsoft.. The reason he sold the company was he did not enjoy coming to the work anymore. Joined Zappos 1999 He joined Zappos as an investor and advisor. Swinmurn who founded Zappos, left the company in 2006. Hsieh became a CEO until today.Became CEO 2006 They had hard time and were edge of the bankruptcy too but they still were investing the customer service. The culture-we was unable to rise funding so we weren't able to spend a lot of money on expensive marketing campaigns. As a result, we were forced to focus more on our existing customers. What we found was that the more we invested into customer service and the customer experience, the more loyal they were, and the more we grew from word of mouth. For our own customers, we've noticed many of them migrating to less expensive brands, but they're still purchasing from us, too. On any given day, about 75% of our orders come from repeat customers. “Be real and you have nothing to fear” Your culture is your brand Don’t try to be someone you are not For those new to the Zappos brand and Tony Hsieh, here’s a quick video...
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...started in the small town of American Falls in the heart of Idaho. M.B Skaggs began the renowned company from the humble begins of his father’s store that he bought with the ambition and vision of giving his clients the best in quality and to expand the business by maintaining narrow profit margins (Our story, 2014). By remaining disciplined and committed to his vision the store expanded tremendously and by 1926,428 stores were opened in 10 states. Over the years, technological advancements have forced most stores to shift to being virtual stores and while at it in an effort to improve customer relation provide delivery services for goods. Safeway Inc. has adopted the new service of delivering goods in an effort of maintaining the mantra and vision of its cofounder of providing its clients with quality be it goods or services. The institution of this service is majorly to make the store a household name in terms of writing history as being the best grocery store not only country wide but as well as across international borders. Business environments are divided into major categories i.e macro environment and microenvironment. Microenvironment involve external environment of a business that the company has little or no control over hence highly affect the company’s activities. Such factors involve statutory laws concerning the field the company is planning on venturing in. Statutory laws are an example of microenvironment factors that will affect the company’s mode...
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...www.hbr.org Studies of corporate performance reveal a growing link between certain kinds of technology investments and intensifying competitiveness. Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson Included with this full-text Harvard Business Review article: 1 Article Summary The Idea in Brief—the core idea The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work 2 Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference 11 Further Reading A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further exploration of the article’s ideas and applications Reprint R0807J Investing in the IT That Makes a Competitive Difference The Idea in Brief It’s not just you. It really is getting harder to outpace the other guys. Since the mid1990s, competition in the U.S. economy has accelerated to unprecedented levels. The engine behind this hypercompetition: IT. Thanks to powerful tools like ERP and CRM, backed by cheap networks, companies are swiftly replicating business-process innovations throughout their organizations. The firm with the best processes (order fulfillment, field installation, job closing) wins, but not for long. Rivals are striking back with their own IT-based process innovations. To gain—and keep—a competitive edge in this environment, McAfee and Brynjolfsson recommend a three-step strategy: • Deploy a consistent technology platform, rather than stitching together a jumble of legacy systems. • Innovate better ways of working...
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