Education Indexes in Pakistan - 2218 Words

Introduction Education is considered as the cheapest defense of a nation. It plays an important role in political stability, economic development and social progress of a nation. It brings political stability when people realize their national rights and duties and because of this a good environment is created for implementation of policies. Almost 65 years have past since independence in 1947 and more than 23 policies and actions have been introduced but the education sector is still waiting for its solution. According to UN Human Development Report Pakistan’s Literacy rate for 2008-09 is 54%. The primary completion rate given by Date Center of UNESCO is 33.8% in females and 44.17% in males. The constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan says, â€Å"The state of Pakistan shall remove illiteracy and provide free and compulsory secondary education within minimum possible period.† There are some root causes behind the flaws present in the education system of Pakistan. Following are they discussed: Multiple System of Education: Today equal system of education is not available in Pakistan. The system has been manipulated in such a way for the last 65 years that elite class has been facilitated to hold the governance of the nation. This has created social division and conflict. The multi-tier education system can be highlighted in the following categories: Cambridge Education System: This foreign education system has proved to be exclusively for the children of the elite class soShow MoreRelatedMy Family History : Pakistan1030 Words   |  5 Pagesenvironment where I grew up was Islamabad, a capital city of Pakistan. All the parts of my background make the person that I am. Pakistan is the first region of South Asia to receive the full impact of Islam and developed Islamic identity. Pakistan geography is the mixture of South Asia, Central Asia, and West Asia. While interviewing my mother, she told me about my family’s heritage history, which involves my culture, language, education and religion. Having a clear understanding of my family backgroundRead MoreWomens Academic Leadership Developing Countries2160 Words   |  9 PagesWomen in Academic Leadership in Developing Countries This world has seen many great women leaders in politics, business and society, the likes of Angela Merkel of Germany, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Sonia Gandhi of India, to Wangari Maathai of Kenya to name just a few (Lewis 2015). The leadership of these women in their respective fields is seen as an integral part of the universal goals of equality, development and peace of our world and societies. Global policies and programs developed throughRead MoreSocial And Cultural Values On Economic Development1764 Words   |  8 Pagesproperly? Economic development is a very complex and varied term and many researchers say that it is a very difficult term to express by a single percentage or variable as it depends on numerous environmental factors. However, we have four basic pointer indexes of economic development - According to investopedia, GDP, GNP, NPI, and PPP. GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is a measure of national income and national expenditure produce in a particular country. GNP (G ross National Product) is GDP of a country inRead MoreAmartya Sens Capability Approach and Its Application in the Hdrs2229 Words   |  9 Pagesdevelopment has been measured solely by economic indexes, such as accumulation of capital, utilization of international investment, GDP per capita, and many more. Such figures allow easy evaluation and comparison across borders, but fail to account for other less easily quantifiable factors that might also influence development. Recent studies on development look beyond purely financial measures like free choice, medical care availability, education, equality or political freedom. Amartya Sen,Read MoreAnalysis of Telenor Pakistan12870 Words   |  52 PagesTABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: 3 Awards and Accolades 4 Vision Values 4 Our Vision 5 Corporate responsibility 5 Emergency Response Program 6 Khuddar Pakistan 7 Fund-raising Initiatives 7 Telenor brand 9 Macro environment in telecom sector 10 Monopoly, a thing from the past 10 Privatization and Liberalization 10 Cut-throat Competition 11 Choice: 11 Good quality 12 Accessibility 12 Prices 12 Improves and maintain standard 12 Stimulate growth 12 Rapidly ExpandingRead MoreThe World Has Become Global Village Because of It Revolution3311 Words   |  14 Pagesknowledge. E-learning applications and processes include Web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual education opportunities and digital collaboration. Content is delivered via the Internet, intranet/extranet, audio or video tape, satellite TV, and CD-ROM. It can be self-paced or instructor-led and includes media in the form of text, image, animation, streaming video and audio. In Pakistan Virtual University is the good example E-learning. Online Health care Many online care centers designed toRead MoreFactors that Influenced the Malaysian Stock Market Index2688 Words   |  11 Pagesthe aid from the variables of GNP, inflation, interest rate, money supply and exchange rate as well by using the monthly data from the year 1985 to 1996. The result showed that, there is a positive relationship between all the five stock price indexes and the growth in output and negative relationship to the aggregate price level (Mukherjee and Yu, 1997). In spite all this, Akbar et al., (2012) revealed the existence relationship between the stock market index and the set of macroeconomic variablesRead MoreRise of Brics Economy and Its Impact on Global Stock Markets9547 Words   |  39 Pagesversions of the BRIC index are now negative year-to-date for 2011. This weakness occurs despite a pretty consistent downtrend in the U.S. dollar, as the Fed tries to keep a lid on U.S. interest rates. Thus, the performance of the BRIC stock indexes is really worse than it appears when adjusted for the declining U.S. dollar, which is a boost to the emerging market stocks (Timing Cube, 2011). As an example of the wide rate differentials between the BRIC countries and the U.S., consider thatRead MoreInflation Cause, Effects and Remedies11309 Words   |  46 Pagestypical consumers overall spending is spent on specific goods and services, and weights the average prices of those items accordingly. Those weighted average prices are combined to calculate the overall price. To better relate price changes over time, indexes typically choose a base year price and assign it a value of 100. Index prices in subsequent years are then expressed in relation to the base year price.[11] Inflation measures are often modified over time, either for the relative weight of goodsRead MoreInflation Cause, Effects and Remedies11320 Words   |  46 Pagestypical consumers overall spending is spent on specific goods and services, and weights the average prices of those items accordingly. Those weighted average prices are combined to calculate the overall price. To better relate price changes over time, indexes typically choose a base year price and assign it a value of 100. Index prices in subsequent years are then expressed in relation to the base year price.[11] Inflation measures are often modified over time, either for the relative weight of goods

Oedipus-a Tragic Hero - 706 Words

Running head: Oedipus-A Tragic Hero Research Paper ENGL 102: Literature and Composition) Fall 2015 Melinda Meeds L26683811 APA Outline Thesis: In Sophocles’ â€Å"Oedipus†, Oedipus is exemplified as a tragic hero according to Aristotle’s definition because his story appeals to the reader’s humanity in the way he maintains his strengths after inadvertently causing his own downfall. I. Oedipus A. The noble birth. B. Describe Oedipus’ character. II. Tragedy A. Describe what a tragedy is. B. Describe the tragedies Oedipus has faced. III. A tragic hero A. Describe what makes Oedipus a tragic hero. B. Describe how Oedipus handles life after the pitfalls he has faced. Oedipus-A Tragic Hero†¦show more content†¦949-986). Boston, MA: Pearson. Knox, B. M. (1998). Hero. In Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles tragic hero and his time (1st ed., p. 4). New Haven, NY: Yale University Press. Reeves, C. H. (1952). The Aristotelian Concept of the Tragic Hero. The American Journal of Philology, 73(2), 172–188. http://doi.org/10.2307/291812 Vernant, J.-P., DuBois, P. (1978). Ambiguity and Reversal: On the Enigmatic Structure of Oedipus Rex. New Literary History, 9(3), 475–501. http://doi.org/10.2307/468451 Wilson, J. P. (1997). The hero and the city: An interpretation of Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus. Ann Arbor, MI: University of MichiganShow MoreRelatedOedipus As A Tragic Hero1506 Words   |  7 PagesA true hero does not merely wear a cape, but this individual possesses admirable characteristics. A hero inspires the people around him and he is honorable. Heroes influential individuals from fairytale stories and myths of a real-life hero. Yet, none of these influential people are perfect. The tragic hero is clearly defined by Aristotle as being a person of admirable character, yet completely human with noticeable flaws. Moreover, this individual is not exempt from suffering. In Sophocles’ tragicRead MoreIs Oedipus A Tragic Hero?1167 Words   |  5 Pages2014 Is Oedipus a tragic hero? Aristotle, Ancient Greek philosopher whom did a lot of philosophizing, he believed in a logical reality. Aristotle’s objective was to come up with a universal process of reasoning that would allow man to learn every imaginable thing about reality. The initial process involved describing objects based on their characteristics, states of being and actions. Aristotle once said A man doesn t become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall†. Oedipus was a mythicalRead MoreOedipus the Tragic Hero1390 Words   |  6 PagesOedipus; The Tragic Hero In the Fourth Century BC, a famous philosopher named Aristotle wrote about the qualities that a tragic hero must possess. Ever since that time, there have been many examples of tragic heroes in literature. None of those characters, however, display the tragic hero traits quite as well as Oedipus, the main character from the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Oedipus is, without a doubt, the absolute quintessence of a tragic hero. His example shines as clear as a sunny summerRead MoreOedipus As A Tragic Hero1724 Words   |  7 Pagesstory of Oedipus, Oedipus is considered a â€Å"Tragic Hero† because of the tragic fate and effect that he had upon his life. My definition of a tragedy is a great loss that has a unhappy ending to which concluded me to state that Oedipus falls under that category. Throughout the book, Oedipus is leading himself to his own destruction when trying to find the killer of the late King Laios. So when a journal article I found published by The John Hopk ins University Press stated that a â€Å"tragic hero is a manRead MoreOedipus, A Tragic Hero1648 Words   |  7 Pages Oedipus, a Tragic Hero Bob Livingston Liberty University â€Æ' Sophocles presented the world with Oedipus around 2500 years ago. Never-the-less, the story remains among the most riveting of all time. He was, in fact, a man that was driven by a very high internal moral standard. It was that internal moral standard that ultimately entwined him in a sequence of events and circumstances that placed him in the spousal relationship with his mother. Oedipus, in fact, can truly be regarded as a tragic heroRead MoreOedipus a Tragic Hero1516 Words   |  7 PagesOedipus A Tragic Hero English 102 Literature and Composition Summer B 2011 Terry Garofolo 22816762 APA Sophocles presented the world with Oedipus around 2500 years ago. Never-the-less, the story remains among the most riveting of all time. Unfortunately, today when we hear the mention of the name Oedipus we place negative connotations around it. Oedipus, after all, had an unnatural sexual relationship with his own mother! In actuality, however, this relationship emerged entirely innocentlyRead MoreOedipus As A Tragic Hero1094 Words   |  5 PagesIn the play Oedipus the King, Oedipus struggles to accept the truth and lets his temper over power him. He can be displayed as a tragic hero. His refusal to accept the truth led to Oedipus’ down fall. A tragic hero, as defined by Aristotle, â€Å"is a literary character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction.† Sophocles’ Oedipus exemplifies Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero. In the play, Oedipus unknowingly has cursed the entire town of Thebes. He was cursedRead MoreOedipus, a Tragic Hero?2158 Words   |  9 PagesOedipus, a Tragic Hero? Elizabeth Howell English 102- B33 Professor Katie Robinson Liberty University October 12, 2012 Oedipus, a Tragic Hero? Thesis: Using Aristotle’s five different descriptions of a tragic hero, we will show that Oedipus in Oedipus the King is in fact a tragic hero and how his decisions led to his downfall. Outline: I. Introduction and Thesis Statement II. Is the character of noble birth? A. King of Thebes B. Real father was king III. Though the tragic heroRead MoreOedipus, A Tragic Hero1832 Words   |  8 Pagesmany others will likely fade away. Oedipus Rex is a tragic tale set in Ancient Greece. Greek thinker, Aristotle, said there were certain elements that would make a person qualified as a â€Å"tragic hero.† (Adade-Ywboah, Ahenkora Amankwah, 2012). We think of heroes being larger than life, possessing impeccable honor, integrity, strong leadership and having the higher moral ground. However, tragic heroes are different; they are imperfect and will inevitably face a tragic downfall. Per Aristotle, there areRead MoreOedipus the Tragic Hero754 Words   |  4 PagesIn the play Oedipus the King we identify the classic tragic hero. The character Oedipus Rex plays the role of the tragic hero perfectly. He shows the three main characteristics being talented and of noble birth, possessing a tragic flaw that causes the downfall and pain of everyone, and the recognition of responsibility. Oedipus’s first characteristic of being a tragic hero is being talented and of noble birth. Oedipus was talented because during his journey to runaway form his curse, the oracle

Analysis Of Sb 314 Direct Filing Of Juveniles Essay

SB 314: Direct Filing of Juveniles Overview of the Social Problem You would think that we would want to help protect and serve the youth of our country, but that is not always the case. We are trying more and more youth as adults each day for non-violent crimes when we should be trying to help them rehabilitate. Florida has to be the worst when it comes to youth offenders being tried in adult court and sentenced to prison. â€Å"Today approximately 7,000 youth under the age of 18 are held in adult jails on any given day, and one in 10 youth incarcerated in the United States are admitted to an adult prison or jail (Schubert et al. 2010). The social problem is not just the fact that youth are tried as an adult, it also has to do with the overrepresentation of black male youth in adult prisons. The history of the juvenile justice system came into play because young people who were accused of a crime were imprisoned with adults. They made the juvenile justice system because they thought that they should deal with youth separate from adults because of their lack of maturity to grasp what they have done wrong. â€Å"In many jurisdictions, African-American youth were overrepresented in felony charges filed in adult courts compared to their percentage in the felony arrest population; this was most evident in charges for drug and public order offenses† (Juszkiewics, J., Schindler, M, 2001). These have always been a differential difference in the treatment of African American males and

Trends And Aspects Of Policing Models - 776 Words

Trends in Policing Models Due to the ever-changing political climate and needs of the community, policing models frequently change (McElvain, Kposowa, Gray 2012, 1). During the periods of enactment, numerous policing models served specific purposes but would quickly become outdated due to research or differing approaches to problem solving. Researchers McElvan, Kposowa, and Gray introduce a number of past policing models that have become outdated. Introduced around the mid-1900s the Professional model sought to fight corruption within the police culture and asked officers to gather facts and nothing more. The effectiveness of the strategy was based upon crime statistics and response times to calls (Ibid, 1). Over the years, policing models have gone through periods of evolution and reform, leading to the establishment of numerous modes by either law enforcement agencies or universities. In time, the Professional model was transformed by public criticism of the police being out of to uch with the public they were serving. The new model required a different approach-one that humanized police officers. Beginning in the 1980’s, Community Policing, heavily relying upon a partnership from law enforcement agencies and public partnership, grew in popularity. The researchers theorize the policing initiative was developed to strengthen community relations, specifically those with underprivileged minority communities. The idea was to re-humanize the police force from theShow MoreRelatedOrganizational Management and Operations Paper1690 Words   |  7 PagesGregory Baugh * Criminal Justice Trends Paper * The Policing component is only one part of the criminal justice system (triad of justice) that includes Policing, Courts, and Corrections, and it is the primary tier that generates criminal arrests, prosecutions, restraints, criminal activity, and protects the peace. * This paper will review the policing function of the criminal justice system and will identify, compare, and contrast the policing function at the local, state, and federalRead MoreCrime Rates And Gathering Intelligence Information866 Words   |  4 Pagesof Literature Reforming Police Models Within the progressive social climate where community needs are important and the political atmosphere is ever changing, policing modes have adapted over time to meet the demands (McElvain, Kposowa, Gray 2012, 1). Throughout history numerous policing methods designed to serve a specific purpose, have been instated. In the United States, the emplaced policing strategies have undergone various reforms to conform to current trends of the community and crime ratesRead More Future of Policing Essay1518 Words   |  7 PagesFuture of Policing   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The future of policing is fairly clear in what direction it is heading. It has been slowly reforming to meet the needs of the people, reduce crime, and make policing more efficient. Some of the reforms that will probably take place in the future include, better educated police officers and police managers, consolidation of police departments to save on money and resources, upgraded technology, race and gender equality, better testing techniques to recruit and promoteRead MoreFuture of Policing1538 Words   |  7 PagesThe future of policing is fairly clear in what direction it is heading. It has been slowly reforming to meet the needs of the people, reduce crime, and make policing more efficient. Some of the reforms that will probably take place in the future include, better educated police officers and police managers, consolidation of police departments to save on money and resources, upgraded technology, race and gender equality, better testing techniques t o recruit and promote within the department, andRead MorePolice Departments : Police And Problem Oriented Policing936 Words   |  4 PagesTo start off, there are trends and techniques that police departments implement in order to minimize crime as much as possible. The two most common techniques used by police officers are community-oriented police and problem-oriented policing. This paper will describe the both methods and highlight the pros and cons of each. In continuation, community oriented policing is defined as, Community policing is a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use ofRead MoreThe Problem Oriented Policing Model1597 Words   |  7 Pagesfirst to establish a MET in London, that too 17 divisions. Since 1829 many different policing models have been developed in the 19th/20thC such as preventative policing and zero tolerance policing for many reasons such as; changes in the demand for police and changes in the patterns of crime. The two models that will be examined in this essay are Intelligence-Led policing and Problem-Oriented policing. Both these models are different from each other as they use different methods and techniques when itRead More Evolution of the Police Officer Essays1570 Words   |  7 Pagesarsenal of technologies to protect and serve their communities. The next interesting aspect that has changed, is the equipment used in policing, more specifically, the patrol car. Technological advancement has made law enforcement progress in a few short decades, from chasing criminals on horseback, to high speed chases on faster and more advance vehicles. The first recorded use of an automobile used for policing was an electrically powered wagon in 1899 (Patrascu). It was basically a means of transportingRead MoreComparison Contrast: Community Policing vs. Traditional Policing1623 Words   |  7 PagesPolicing in the United States has taken on many different forms and facets in the past 50 years. Although, various modes models of policing styles continue to be introduced, two main aspects of law enforcement have remained constant, (traditional policing community oriented- policing). There are so many different facets, trends, and new emerging technologies in the wide world of law enforcement. First, we will outline a brief history of the or igins and evolvement of policing. Special attentionRead MoreEffective Reduction Of Crime And Quality Of Life Abatement1574 Words   |  7 Pagescollection and analysis of criminal intelligence data which in turn assists commanders in developing effective strategies and tactics to combat crime. The effective reduction of crime and quality of life abatement is of prime importance in the COMPSTAT model is and is one of the four core principles in the COMPSTAT paradigm. This essay will examine the impact that the implementation of COMPSTAT has had. In doing so it will determine what changes in strategy, structure and operations have taken place asRead MoreEssay On Trends And Issues In Alberta1129 Words   |  5 PagesTrends and Issues in Alberta Alberta is an extraordinary province, and Alberta’s police are facing extraordinary problems. Police are challenged with increased crime rates, staffing, and diversified populations. The government of Alberta declared an astonishing 9% unemployment rate as of late 2016. Increased crime has a historical correlation with economic crisis, which is consistent with Alberta currently. (â€Å"Economic crises may trigger rises in crime†, 2017) believed that societies undergoing economic

Disability Case Study Essay Example For Students

Disability Case Study Essay Disability Issues in the Public Workplace Eloise, a supervisor at the Federal Administration Agency (FAA), was faced with trying to ensure productivity when one of her workers became ill, and was not maintaining her level of work. Brenda, who had been a computer programmer for the Management Information Systems Support Division of the FAA for nine years, was diagnosed with breast cancer in January of 1991. She left work immediately to have an operation and to start treatments. Brenda was supposed to return to work after the medical procedure so Eloise reached out to her in February. Brenda stated that she did not feel up to it, that she would continue to use her sick leave and would return in March. Seeing that Brenda would not be back in the near future, Eloise asked the other workers in the office to pitch in and help pick up the slack in work due to her absence. To entice one employee to pitch in, she upgraded his work status from a GS7 to a GS9 (which is what Brendas status was) until Brenda returned. In March, Brenda could not return to work on her scheduled date and had her medical leave extended until she became better accustomed to the chemotherapy treatments. Brenda returned to work on April 1st. She was apparently not up to speed and could not handle the work that was assigned to her. In addition, she stated that she needed some accommodations in order to stay at work. These accommodations included rest hours during the workday and the need to leave work early on certain days. Eloise allowed these accommodations. When Brenda started taking breaks and putting her feet up on her desk to relax, the other workers didnt seem to mind, and they would even try to be quiet around her. Brenda felt like the other workers had changed their attitude towards her and freeze up when she came into the room. Eloise tried to explain that it would be natural for the others to feel uncomfortable around her and recommended that Brenda speak to Employee Counseling. Brenda refused and soon thereafter started to call in sick again. Even with Brendas return, the other workers still had to continue doing her work. The worker that Eloise upgraded to a GS9 was returned to GS7 upon Brendas return. He refused to do Brendas work unless he was reinstated to GS9 status. When Brenda was at work, she didnt meet her deadlines and resentment started to grow in the office. There were resentments because Brenda didnt look sick and the other workers felt that she was just taking advantage of the situation. During the summer, Brendas attendance became spotty and tensions grew even higher because of her push-backed deadlines. Productivity began to suffer because of these missed deadlines and the overworking of the other employees. Brenda was out of sick time and the other employees even donated their leave time (25 days) to her through the Voluntary Leave Transfer Program. By October, Brenda had reached the end of her sick leave benefits and had finished her course of treatment, but she continued to miss work. Eloise called the personnel officer to get some advice. The real problems that exist in this case in our viewpoint are the approach Eloise has taken to managing Brendas absence in relationship to the other employees in the office and her one on one handling of Brendas initial return to work after treatment of her illness. Eloise has taken a piecemeal approach in her attempt to make up for the loss of Brendas productivity during her absence and then her reintegration into the office workforce on her return. .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c , .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c .postImageUrl , .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c , .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c:hover , .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c:visited , .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c:active { border:0!important; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c:active , .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u80ca2aa3683e9ab12037622e4c0a4e7c:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Hedda Gabbler Argumentative Essay Upon first being informed by one of her subordinates, Brenda, that she would be out of work due to a diagnosis of breast cancer, Eloise, the supervisor in charge of her section took a very humanistic and natural approach to Brendas situation. General statements of consolation and support by Brenda upon her learning of Eloises health crisis ranged from Im so sorry . dont worry about anything . dont worry about a thing here . whatever you want to a statement she made to her two weeks after .

Risk Management in Project Management The Eagle Boys

Question: Describe about the Risk Management in Project Management for The Eagle Boys. Answer: Introduction The following assignment is going to focus on the Australian enterprise Eagle Boys for accomplishing the aim of the project, which is to establish a risk management plan. In time of preparing the risk management plan, the assignment is going to consider the risk management design set by the standard of Australian and New Zealand. Overview of Eagle Boys Eagle boys are known to be one of the leading fast food chains of Australia that specializes in selling pizza. Therefore, the enterprise is fundamentally a private company in the field of restaurant service with annual revenue of $8.27 million according to the year 2015 (eagleboys.com.au 2016). Currently, the enterprise runs its business with near about 8000 employees in 350 outlets nationally. Internal stakeholders and their concerns regarding risk management Internal stakeholders Concerns regarding risk management Employees (in house support office staffs, team members) Increase self awareness, monitor own flaws and communicate with other stakeholders about the identified problems Investors or shareholders, Individual franchise owners Monitor risks by assessing risks with the management and engage in more effective investment Suppliers To verify every time supplying orders to the company, do background check and market research Management Conduct frequent risk assessment programs, monitor employee activity, stay conscious about external market trend, form applicable strategies Table 1: Internal stakeholders (Source: As created by author) External stakeholders and their concerns regarding risk management External stakeholders Concerns regarding risk management Customers Prior to become customers it is customers would stay well-informed about the company, should stay aware of any news regarding the company and would pass feedbacks FSANZ (Food Standard Australian New Zealand) and Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Council Make frequent survey on the company and extend their hands for any consultation, investigate whether the company is obeying all the standards or not Media channels Stay well aware, provide information about any upcoming enterprise in the same sector Table 2: External stakeholders (Source: As created by author) Review of Eagle Boys risk in terms of Political Political unrest in the nation and frequent policy change give birth to social, economic and cultural unrest. For Eagle Boys, risk would arise when they could not find support from the existing political parties and their policies. For example, sudden change in taxation policy or monetary policy would not be easy for the company to accept. Economic Sudden recession or downfall in the GDP rate in Australia would be a potential cause of risk for Eagle Boys, as it will increase suppliers demand, which will lead to high cost production. Social Emergence of any social and cultural struggle between the migrants and the aboriginals would be harmful, as this would largely affect on the consistent business operations for Eagle Boys Legal Change regarding the food business policies set by FSANZ would bring risk for the current organizational culture of Eagle Boys. The newly founded regulations may not found befitting for the organizational purpose of the company Technical If the rate of technological advancement would decrease in Australia, the enterprise has to increase the number of employees all of a sudden, which will not prove cost effective Environmental Any environmental hazard will bring potential damage on the outlets. It will thereafter open the way for huge investment for repairing or establishing new ones. Moreover, climatic calamity could harm farming activity, which will reduce the number of suppliers. Strength and weakness of Eagle Boys risk management practices Strength They keep records of previous risks and issues and compare them with any currently recognized risk They use resolution planning process and QA deliverables of vendor Frequent risk assessment meetings Weakness No use of Traceability matrix No procedures for test Lack of the activity of ramping up the inputs regarding test and no employee engagement in decision making process Outline of the following particulars in terms risk management plan Considering the strength and weakness of Eagle Boys risk management practice, a convenient plan would be, the company should use Traceability matrix and include their employees in the decision making process. Success factor Employee engagement in the decision-making will help to get new ideas and at the same time will support the employees to increase their self-awareness. A positive interaction between the employee and management will take place Goals and objectives Goal of the plan will be to acquire employee opinions and valid information about the recognized risks. Therefore, the objective will be to make proper use of Traceability matrix and to have employee engagement in risk assessment. Techniques used to research risks Brainstorming Checklist analysis (Hopkin 2014) Diagramming techniques Assumption technique Use of risk assessment matrix Risks Frequency of occurrence Consequences Environmental hazard Occasional Critical Recession Likely Critical Political uncertainty Unlikely Moderate Cultural unrest Unlikely Marginal Emergence of any new rival Definite Moderate Internal hazard Likely Marginal Table 3: Risk assessment matrix (Source: As created by author) Prioritizing risks for treatment Risks Risk value Prioritization New rival group High Do first Recession Medium Do last Lack of suppliers Serious Do second Political problem Low Avoid Internal hazards Serious Do first Table 4: Risk prioritization (Source: As created by author) Selection of two risks and options for treating them Two pivotal risks Options for treatment Internal conflict (employee conflict, discrimination, production hazard) The most convenient way to mitigate this risk would be to formulate a special team of managers whose responsibility would be to only monitor the employee performances. Moreover, the company could also try to implement a suggestion or feedback box for the employees (McNeil et al. 2015). Emergence of rival group The best possible way to avoid this risk would be to implement new attracting policies for the customers like, lucrative discount, gift voucher, one to one offer and loyalty card. Table 5: Risk mitigation (Source: As created by author) Action plan One risk Required action Responsible person Time line Monitoring process Communication Internal conflict Implement of a new management team Director of operations One month Frequent visit to the work or production floor and evaluate employee feedbacks (Pritchard and PMP 2014) Communication with CEO and other authorial figures Table 6: Action plan (Source: As created by author) Required documentation To implement the risk management plan, the following documents will be required A list enlisting previous hazards and their mitigation procedure A list comprising working record and performance matrix of exiting individual employee A document holding thorough market research (Sadgrove 2016) Recent data regarding suppliers and customers demand Process for implementing and monitoring proposed plan For implementing proposed plan, initially the entire management will coordinate with shareholders and then plan for the risk assessment meetings. Thereafter, the management will need to flow down the information to each section of employees in the company (Sadgrove 2016). Through the integration process, required changes will be accumulated. Finally, a review and re-measurement process will be exercised to monitor the proposed plan. Process to evaluate success Keep track of time to time results Meetings among management, employees and shareholder in every two months Statistical analysis and bench mark report Customer feedback Insurance available to Eagle Boys Property insurance Insurance on business interruption Products liability insurance Insurance on machinery breakdown (eastwestinsurance.com.au 2016) It is note in this context that for Eagle boys, some of the most convenient insurances are only provided by the East and West Insurance Brokers from Australia. References Eagle boys. 2016.About us. [online] Available at: https://www.eagleboys.com.au/corporate/about-us [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]. East West Insurance Brokers. 2016.Restaurant Insurance Brisbane - Cafe Restaurant | EWIB. [online] Available at: https://www.eastwestinsurance.com.au/cafe-restaurant-insurance/?gclid=Cj0KEQiA6_TBBRDInaPjhcelt5oBEiQApPeTF-d_59m3bjBJGHgFpinc_2gfgZ6f6G5jozTBjij0KA8aAp_48P8HAQ [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]. Hopkin, P., 2014.Fundamentals of risk management: understanding, evaluating and implementing effective risk management. Kogan Page Publishers. McNeil, A.J., Frey, R. and Embrechts, P., 2015.Quantitative risk management: Concepts, techniques and tools. Princeton university press. Pritchard, C.L. and PMP, P.R., 2014.Risk management: concepts and guidance. CRC Press. Sadgrove, K., 2016.The complete guide to business risk management. Routledge.

Cultural Pluralism free essay sample

Cultural Pluralism is a term used when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities, and their values and practices are accepted by the wider culture provided they are consistent with the laws and values of the wider society. In my neighborhood, (Brooklyn, East Flat bush) there are many people from different races, culture and creed. I am surrounded by Indians, Asians, Latinos, Russians, African Americans, West Indians and Jews and we all co-exist with each other. Native Americans and the Amish are both superior examples of how cultural pluralism works. The Native Americans continue to reside on their isolated reservations and speak their traditional language without being a bother to dominating society. The Amish also maintain their customary life style organized around farming and keep their customs separate from the dominances as well. It can be a problem not to understand another culture, especially, in New York City where we live in a society that is rapidly changing. We will write a custom essay sample on Cultural Pluralism or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The City has increasingly brought people of various cultures, to interact closer with each other. This interaction can be either positive or negative depending on the level of sensitivity and respect people have for other cultural groups. One cultural group may believe that their culture and traditions are better than the other persons culture and may even seek to convince you or to impose their beliefs on you. Especially when it comes to religious and political beliefs. The negative side to all this is that each culture has their own beliefs, traditions and values that could pose a problem on someone else who do not share those values or traditions. Disagreements over whats right or wrong and lack f communication because of language barriers could arise. But with an open mind, we could all turn this toa positive and learn from each others culture. For example, something as basic as cooking rice, each culture have their own way of cooking a rice dish. The may prepare rice and beans different toga Hispanics or a West Indians. Is there a right way or wrong way of cooking rice? Not really. But we can all learn from each other and come to realize that hey, this is delicious maybe we can try to cook this way once in a while and integrate it in our own mix. Now a moral absolutist believes that there are universal laws that governs and draws a line between right and wrong. For example a moral absolutist may say that its wrong to take a life so therefore, having an abortion is morally wrong regardless of the beliefs and goals of a culture that engages in these practices. Lying, for instance, would always be immoral, even if done to promote some other good (e. g. , saving a life). Then theres the ethical relativist who believes that whatever is right in someones moral frame work is right to them. One advantage of ethical relativism is that it allows for a wide variety of cultures and practices. It also allows people to adapt ethically as the culture, knowledge, and technology change in society. The disadvantage of ethical relativism is that truth, right and wrong, and Justice are all relative. Just because a group of people think that something is right does not make it so. Slavery is a good example of this. Two hundred years ago in America, slavery was the norm and morally acceptable.

Why Diversity Matters free essay sample

Diversity is commonly defined by basic attributes such as gender, skin color, nationality, and sexual orientation. However diversity in terms of world views is much more important and relevant than these external labels. Having a class of people with different opinions on how to change the world and what their purpose would be in it is extremely valuable to me. If one were to look at me one would assume I was another white, athletic female with a boring suburban background. But take the time to know me, and you will find a girl born in a foreign country, who has Christian beliefs mixed with liberal views, and also two uvulas. It is more important to me to be exposed to people with different world views, who can challenge or encourage my own, than to have 20% of my class be Asian and 30% African-American and 4.2% percent Pacific Islander. A student’s background is valuable because his different experiences have molded his views and priorities. We will write a custom essay sample on Why Diversity Matters or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page But simple, exterior characteristics should not be over-prioritized to use as the basis for class decisions. A class of 100% suburban Caucasians might lack a diversity of world views, but neither is diversity assured by admitting quotas of students of particular races or genders. Spending my formative college years surrounded by people who all agree on their interpretation of a controversial text and cannot add anything new to a discussion would be a waste, of time, money and resources. I seek a liberal arts education with peers who force me to defend my opinions because theirs are different. My classmates’ diversity of ideas and outlooks will broaden my own view of the world. College is about â€Å"leaving the nest†, learning independent of the shelter and confines of home, and assessing the values and lessons learned in youth. Joining a class of people who have grown up with different values and perspectives, who have formed different views of how the world should develop, and the role they expect to play in that development, creates the diversity that is optimal for a liberal arts education.

The Trail Of Tears Essays - Cherokee Nation, Cherokee, John Ross

The Trail of Tears "We are now about to take our leave and kind farewell to our native land, the country that Great Spirit gave our Fathers, we are on the eve of leaving that country that gave us birth? it is with sorrow we are forced by the white man to quit the scenes of our childhood?we bid farewell to it and all we hold dear." This is the way that Cherokee Vice Chief Charles Hicks described, in 1838, the emotions that must have been felt after the mistreatment and the abuse that was wrought upon the Cherokee Indians. It was a trail of blood, a trail of death, but ultimately it was known as the "Trail of Tears". In this history of the Cherokee Nation we are trying, but without success, to be as unbiased as possible. It's the War of 1812. Andrew Jackson is mounting up forces against the Pro-British faction of the Creek Indians. The United States appealed for Cherokee support for aid in war against Tukumsa and another Indian known as Red Sticks. The Cherokee Nation replied with six to eight hundred of their best warriors. It was this war were the Indians fought side by side with Jackson. After a treaty in 1814 was forced on the Creek Indians, the Cherokees filed claims for there lose. There was no promise that their claims would be acknowledged. This would bring on the biggest betrayal on the Cherokee Indians, Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson demanded the session of twenty-three million acres of land to the United States. The Cherokee Nation, however, owned Four million acres of this land. The Cherokees protested again to Indian agent Jonathan Meigs in the War Department. Once again their former ally called these claims "Cherokee intrigue". Andrew Jackson then suggested with troops already in the field that this would be the perfect time to remove Cherokees as well as Creeks out of Tennessee. The Indian Removal Act was introduced by Andrew Jackson and was passed by Congress in 1830. This act was to force the Indians west of the Mississippi River. This was largely carried out by General Winfield Scott and his army of approximantly seven thousand troops, in May of 1838. When the army arrived in New Echota Georgia thousand of Cherokee Indians would be rounded up with dragnets and penned up in wooden stockades. By June 5, 1838 it was estimated that only 200 Cherokee had escaped. There were between fifteen to se venteen thousand Cherokee held in these crude jails, where they would await their long brutal journey west. This route from Georgia through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and finally ending in Oklahoma, would later be referred by Cherokees as Nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi, or "the trail on which they Cried". The journey on which the Indians traveled would bring many deaths due to starvation, droughts and disease. There were two main ways of travel, by land and river. River travel was difficult if not impossible because low river levels due to the drought. All in all it took 645 wagons, 5000 horses and oxen and river vessels used primarily for the ill. Grant Foreman, Dean of Indian Historians, recorded this appalling period. He stated that the weather was extremely hot, there was a drought, and water was scarce and there were suffocating clouds of dust mixed with the oxygen. He also stated that at least three but, up to five people died per day on the trail. By the end of June 1838 two to three hundred Indians were sick. On June 17, 1838 General Charles Floyd of the Georgia militia wrote to Governor Gilmen of New Echota that they were convinced that there were no longer any Cherokee in Georgia. This would hold true that they succeeded in removing the Cherokee from the state, but not compl etely from the east. This would bring on a great supporter of the Cherokee people, a white man by the name of John Ross. John Ross campaigned heavily for the Cherokees. Ross was part of the immigration management committee. Ross persuaded General Scott to approve a budget for the captive Indians of Seventeen cents per Indian per day. This was double the amount figured by congress. This money was

The eNotes Blog How to Mark National PunctuationDay

How to Mark National PunctuationDay Attention, grammarphiles: today is National Punctuation Day! Commemorated every September 24th, National Punctuation Day is the only holiday in existence to celebrate the wonderful, squiggly world of punctuation marks. In a world where punctuation is rapidly in decline, thanks to texting and trendy writers (ahem, ee cummings and James Frey), this day serves to remind us that a semicolon is not a surgical procedure, nor is an ellipsis the moment when the moon moves in front of the sun. Wondering how you can mark this happy day? Unfortunately, NPD isnt a public holiday (yet). However, there are a few of ways to show your appreciation for all things punctuation-y. The organizers behind National Punctuation Day hold an annual competition. This year, in honor of the 2012 presidential election, they ask their constituents to elect one punctuation mark as president: The rules: Write one paragraph with a maximum of three sentences using the following 13 punctuation marks to explain which should be â€Å"presidential,† and why: apostrophe, brackets, colon, comma, dash, ellipsis, exclamation point, hyphen, parentheses, period, question mark, quotation mark, and semicolon. You may use a punctuation mark more than once, and there is no word limit. Multiple entries are permitted. So much for my dark horse vote for the interpunct. Its uses are gravely underrated, if you ask me. Cast your ballot for one of the other hopefuls by visiting the National Punctuation Day website  and submitting your thoughts. The New Yorkers Questioningly column is also partnering with NPD for its latest competition. In its post Punctuation Nation, Questioningly asks its readers to devise a brand new punctuation mark. The constraints are that it must be made from a combination of two already existing punctuation marks, like the interrobang, for instance (?! or sometimes †½). The column suggests, maybe there should be a ,? mark, which indicates slowness and confusion, or a /\, which indicates disingenuous differentiation between two otherwise similar elements. (What?!) Anyway, you get it. To enter, tweet your suggestion, followed by the hashtag #tnyquestion. You can view all of the current submissions to the contest here. And if both of those competitions fail you, what else is there to do but sulk at home and bake food in the shape of punctuation marks, right? Yup, National Punctuation Day has a recipe for that. Bonus Fun: Havent had your fill yet? What a punc you are. This puzzle should set you straight Insert the proper punctuation in this sentence necessary to make it correct: James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher Got it yet? Check your answer here. (No peeking!)

Lilis Love Triangle essays

Lili's Love Triangle essays Narrator: They started off as 5 college buddies, who went their separate ways after college. Shaft played by Keith is married to Lili who is played by Linh. Tony who is played by Colin is going out with Lauren played by Fern, and Kenny, Tonys brother, played by Lam who proceeds with school to his Ph.D in medicine and this story will be narrated by me, Nancy. Well two years later Shaft becomes a gangster, because of a drug addiction. Lili is cheating on Shaft with Tony, Kenny is diagnosed with a heart disease, and Tony and Lauren had broken up, but Lauren still loves him. This scene starts in the hospital where Tony and Lili visits Kenny. Kenny: I hope so. Well I gotta get some rest, so close the door on your way out. Tony: Do you wanna stay over tonight? ll just have to call my husband and tell him Im going to stay at my sisters house. Narrator: Later that night, Lauren goes to Lili and Shafts house. Shaft: (Answers the door) Lauren! What a surprise! How you been? Lauren: Oh Im fine Shaft. Is Lili here? Shaft: No, shes at her sisters....did you need to talk to her? Lauren: Actually, I came to see you. Shaft: (Questioned) Really?!? What did you need? t really know how to tell this-but Lili is cheating on you... with Tony. I saw them going into his apartment. Shaft: (angrily) I think you should leave now! Shaft: Just leave! I'll handle it myself. Narrator: Lauren leaves, Shaft stays up until Lili comes home. Narrator: Now its morning at Tonys apartment. Lili is getting ready to leave. Lili: I gotta get home, before (says sarcastically) my darling husband says something. ...

Get the Facts of the Burj Khalifa

Get the Facts of the Burj Khalifa At 828 meters in length (2,717 feet) and 164 floors, Burj Dubai/Burj Khalifa was the tallest building in the world as of January 2010. Taipei 101, the Taipei Financial Center in the Taiwanese capital, was from 2004 to 2010 the worlds tallest skyscraper, at 509.2 meters, or 1,671 ft. The Burj easily exceeds that height. Before their destruction in 2001, the World Trade Centers Twin Towers in Manhattan were 417 meters (1,368 ft) and 415 meters (1,362 ft) tall. Burj Dubai/Burj Khalifa was dedicated on Jan. 4, 2010.Cost of the Burj: $1.5 billion, part of downtown Dubais $20 billion redevelopment program.The name of the tower was changed from Burj Dubai to Burj Khalifa at the last minute in honor of Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, ruler of Abu Dhabi, and in recognition of Abu Dhabi providing Dubai $10 billion in December 2009 to bail out Dubais bankrupt sovereign wealth fund.Construction began on Sept. 21, 2004.More than 12,000 people will occupy the buildings 6 million square feet. Residential apartments number 1,044.Special amenities include a 15,000 square foot fitness facility, a cigar club, the highest mosque in the world (on the 158th floor), the highest observation deck in the world (on the 124th floor) and the highest swimming pool in the world (on the 76th floor), as well as the first Armani Hotel in the world.The Burj is expected to consume 946,000 liters (or 250,000 gallons) of water a day.Electricity consumption is expected to peak at 50 MVA or the equivalent of 500,000 100-watt bulbs burning simultaneously. The Burj has 54 elevators. They can speed up to 65km an hour (40 mph)The equivalent of 100,000 elephants worth of concrete was used during construction.31,400 metric tons of steel rebar used in the structure.28,261 glass cladding panels cover the exterior of the tower, each panel cut by hand and installed by Chinese cladding specialists.12,000 workers were employed at the site at peak construction. Three workers died while working on the site.The number of underground parking spaces at the Burj: 3,000.The lead contractor was South Korea-based Samsung, along with Belgiums Besix and the UAEs Arabtec.The building was designed by Chicagos Skidmore, Owings Merrill and developed by Dubais Emaar Properties.The buildings structural engineer is William F. Baker, who on July 11, 2009, became the first American to win the Fritz Leonhardt Prize For Achievement In Structural Engineering.

Multinational Business in the Chinese Economy Research Paper - 1

Multinational Business in the Chinese Economy - Research Paper Example The persistence poverty level, especially in Northern Shaanxi and other parts of China, is due to economic disparities. The income disparity has been the key issues in China; thus, here is the need to widen the geographical income gaps, avoid industrial clusters and improve infrastructures, which are barriers to economic growth in the interior geographical locations of China. Dimensions of Distance The distance matters for multinational business because of varied issues. First, the cultural distance is one of the matters for successful business performance and economic growth of China. Differences in language are one of the cultural issues impacting the economic and geographical locations of the multinational companies. The language barrier is still a problem for companies carrying out business activities overseas. This is because the Chinese have their language, which they use in the country, and it is difficult for foreigners to understand. Moreover, different ethnicities and poor social network communication are attributes of cultural distance. Lack of effective and well-developed social networks may hinder the successful business performance of multinational companies. China has many industries, some of which are multinational companies located within the economy. However, due to poor infrastructure development, especially roads and the communication network, many of them are unable to meet their demanding goals because of lack of connective ethnic or social networks. Ghemawat argues that an economy’s cultural attributes such as ethnicity, social norms, different languages or national identity on consumer products matter a lot in business activities.  This is because religious beliefs, ethnicity, language or social norms are capable of creating distance between two economies (Ghemawat 140). Secondly, the administration distance is another matter for multinational business. Historical and political organizations being shared by more than one country may create an impact on multinational business. Ghemawat points out that government policies, political hostility, lack of shared or political connections and institution weakness are among the attributes creating administrative distance (140). These attributes may impact the effective business performance of multinational companies. China is one of the emerging economies that have made efforts to improve the economic growth. However, an administrative distance is still a matter towards becoming a fully developed nation. For instance, individual government policies including environmental, trade and other policies create a barrier for successful multinational business. Thirdly, geographical distances matter for multinational business. This is through creating barriers towards successful business performance because of increased transportation costs, bulk ratio issues and losses encountered in the transportation of fragile or perishable commodities in a long distance. Geographical d istance is not a matter of how far is the place in terms of miles or kilometers – other attributes contribute to geographical distance. These include the physical scene of the nation, topography, access to waterways as well as transportation and communication infrastructures. These are among the attributes that have impacted the effective business performance of the multinational business in the Chinese economy.

Kinesiology Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Kinesiology - Research Paper Example Once the cause is identified, the bad feelings associated with emotional stress can be eliminated. An approach approved to the management of emotional stress is kinesiology. Through the technique of Emotional Stress Relief (ESR), a victim of emotional stress can quickly achieve calmness, clearly thinking and effective functioning in stressful, traumatic or high-pressure situations (Hoffman, 2008). If applied with the guidance of a health care professional, Emotional Stress Relief (ESR) is an effective kinesiology technique to achieve calmness, clear thinking and optimal functioning in an emotionally stressed person. This paper discusses the effective use of ESR to manage the signs and symptoms of emotional stress, including fight and flight responses to situations, paralysis responses, fear, and uncontrolled anger. If applied with professional guidance, ESR has numerous benefits for emotionally stressed persons. The benefits of ESR to the reader are numerous. Mainly, ESR releases muscle tension, increases flexibility, and improves the energy levels, accompanied by simple pain relief (Wilmore et al., 2006). ESR has also been proved to result in improved posture and breathing as well as the relaxation of muscles such as jaw muscles. By extension, the relaxation of muscles may help in attainment of migraine relief. Overall, ESR has the potential to improve and maintain an individual’s health in general. Importantly, ESR improves self-esteem and confidence and reduces mood swings. Besides, the technique stabilizes emotions, making it an effective stress management method. It also improves the diet to help a tress person’s food intake meet the body’s unique needs. The kinesiology approach to stress management entails the use of body muscles and movements (Wolf et al., 2006). It focuses on addressing emotional stress as a whole-body phenomenon. Kinesiology has the advantage o f being versatile, thus universally applicable. In

Equity and Trusts Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Equity and Trusts - Essay Example 500 or part of it. The equitibility of the words â€Å"†¦ I regard the money in the account as much yours as mine† by Brian shall be construed with reference to the conduct of parties. A trust is a binding agreement between a testator and the trustee for the benefit of the beneficiary. Accordingly, for there to exist a valid trust, three certainties must be present. The â€Å"certainty of words† which reveals the intention of the testator, certainty of â€Å"subject matter† (property bequeathed) which in this case is the money and the â€Å"certainty of objects† (the intended beneficiary) as upheld byâ€Å"Lord Langdale MR† as he was then in â€Å"Knight V Knight (1840).† Besides, Lindley L J in â€Å"Re Hamilton [1895]†stated that the intention of the testator in every wording or disposition should as a rule of prudent practice is construed on the merits of each case. Whereas the current case presents quite a problematic and conf licting loyalty in the application of equity and trust, it can be regarded as a constructive trust. According to Lord Denning in â€Å"Hussey v Palmer (1972)† this is a trust imposed upon by the Court whenever justice, conscience or good objective judgment demands it to be vested in the beneficiary. From conduct of parties, Brian had the intention to create a valid constructive trust. ... It’s also correct that Premafacie, the words themselves are not sufficient enough to create a valid trust but coupled with Brian’s conduct, there is a manifestation of that intention by his assurance to Amanda. For example, in the case of Paul v Constance (1977), money was placed into the account â€Å"sole name of Constance.† As it were assurances were made to Mr. Paul that the money in the account was jointly owned. Paul argued that based on that construction, it was sufficient that the wording created a joint ownership of the account. It was held that the conduct of the parties created an intention of joint ownership. Similarly in â€Å"Re Vandervell’s Trust (No 2) (1974)†, the money in the settlement was used in purchasing shares. This was done in exercise of a prevailing option for the intended beneficiary. The Court held that the conduct of these parties where upon they used the money to pay dividends into the intended settlement was sufficien t evidence of the intention to create a valid trust although no specific words were used. Therefore, in the current case, although it’s difficult to state the words in the phrase â€Å"†¦ I regard the money in the account as much yours as mine† as sufficient to create a valid trust, it’s also correct from the above case law that this wording coupled with the conduct of Brian created a valid constructive trust as sufficient certainty for that requisite intention . I advise Amanda to institute an equitable claim on the above basis because equity â€Å"looks at the intent rather than the form.† It’s the spirit behind the conduct of the parties which is important rather than the form of the statement. She will first seek an injunction to maintain the statusquo until the Court decides discretionary

Water Management in Yellow River Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Water Management in Yellow River - Essay Example The water resources in China are inefficiently used, over-allocated and coarsely polluted by industrial and human waste to the extent of killing sections of large rivers like the Yellow River (Ma, 1999). In addition, there is vast over-pumping and unsustainable consumption of groundwater resources; lakes are covered in pools of waste; numerous aquatic species have been extinct, with a host of other adverse direct impacts on the health of the ecosystem and humans widespread in the country. China is home to sixteen of the twenty most polluted cities worldwide; ensuring that all major watersheds of the nation suffer from extensive pollution. Desertification, as a result of too much ground and surface water withdrawal, is increasingly dominating the Northern region of China; a region hugely dependent on the Yellow River (Ma, 1999). The social issue facing the region involves handling of the disposal of wastes by local residents as well local industries. The densely populated regions resu lt in mass production of waste products which are inappropriately dumped into the river. These problems not only pose a huge threat to the political stability of the country but it is also a huge threat to the country’s economic development. The government is spending substantial amounts of money on health care issues as a result of major disease outbreaks in the heavily polluted areas of the country (Boyle, 2007). According to Eng and Ma (2006), major companies are calling off their business ventures due to water concerns as well as augmenting internal conflicts over the quality and allocation of water resources. These events have resulted in new political pressures on the regional and central governments to tighten their fight with the current water management problems. A 2005 Chinese Government report revealed that fifty thousand environmentally related protests occurred, most of which revolved around

Negligence in Sports Injuries Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Negligence in Sports Injuries - Essay Example Where sporting events are concerned, the finding of negligence is complicated by the volenti non fit injuria principle, whereby the underlying premise is that those who participate in sports knowing the risks that may exist5, are in effect, consenting to a breach of duty of care and hence negligence claims may not hold good6. For example, in the case of Woolridge v Sumner7 where a spectator was injured, it was held to be the result of an error of judgment rather than negligence. It was also held that liability could be established only when it could be shown that there had been a reckless disregard for the safety of the spectator/s. The notion of "reckless disregard" as laid out by Lord Diplock is inherently based upon the premise that a player acts negligently when he foresees risks and yet proceeds with his actions despite the risk. Reckless disregard thus involves a breach of not only the duty of care owed to prevent a claim of negligence, but also a duty of skill. Thus, in the case of Woolridge, for example, Lord Diplock clarified that when a participant was aware of his lack of skill to perform a sporting feat and the risk his lack of skill might pose to spectators, he would be guilty of negligence to the spectator, if he still goes ahead and performs the act in question8. As a result, while negligence implies the owing of a duty of care, reckless disregard implies the owing of a duty of care and a duty of skill. Reckless disregard is in essence, negligence applied within a sporting context, with a higher threshold to allow for the inherent risks in sports which players voluntarily assume under the volenti fit non injura principle. Reed, in analyzing the judgment rendered in the case of R v Barnes9 has explained how, within the context of sports, reckless disregard occurs when a player inflicts harm or injury maliciously10. A defendant who is "reckless" is one who is able to foresee that there is a risk for bodily harm occurring through his actions and yet, chooses to ignore the risk and continue with the offending act. "Recklessness implies a greater degree of culpability or wrongdoing than negligence" because recklessness amounts to willfully exposing another person to harm and causing injury, rather than it occurring as a result of

Differences between Quantitative and Qualitative Research Essay Example for Free

Differences between Quantitative and Qualitative Research Essay Quantitative research – is a formal, objective, systematic research which bases on precise figures. While conducting such kind of research, an investigator collects and analyzes data and statistics. The main purposes of applying quantitative method of research are: description of variables; examination of relationship among variables; determination of cause-and-effect interactions between variables (Burns Grove,2005). Qualitative research – in contrast to quantitative, is a kind of research which mainly concentrates on observations, questionnaires, reports and other ways of subjective investigations. The key features of qualitative research are: focus on meanings, perspectives and understandings; emphasis on process; inductive analysis, and grounded theory (Woods, 2006). The basic differences between quantitative and qualitative research lie in methods and instruments they apply, types of data they collect and generate, in their main perspectives. The instruments used in quantitative research are strict about extracting information and dividing it into categories. Quantitative methods are highly structured and include various surveys, questionnaires, and structured observations. In qualitative research, more flexible and frequentative instruments are applied. Qualitative methods, unlike quantitative ones, are semi-structured. To these methods belong interview, focus group, questionnaire, and participant observation. Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative, operates with numerical data. Qualitative research, as a rule, uses textual data (Mack, Woodsong, et al., 2005). The most important feature which differentiates one research from another is flexibility. Usually, the procedure of quantitative research is prescribed in advance. Therefore, it excludes any unforeseen changes during the process of research. For instance, the questions in quantitative research are well thought-out, concrete, and closed. Moreover, the order of questions is also fixed. In such a way, quantitative research, due to its inflexibility, makes meaningful contribution to common investigation. The stages of qualitative research may be changed during the research procedure. The questions in qualitative research are mostly open. It enables the participants to give more reasonable answers and sometimes, even to go into detail. Therefore, spontaneity became a distinctive feature of qualitative research, which made the process of research less formal (Mack, Woodsong, et al., 2005). References Burns, N., Grove, S.K. (2005). The practice of nursing research: conduct, critique, and utilization (5th Ed.). St. Louis, Elsevier Saunders. Retrieved from http://www.researchproposalsforhealthprofessionals.com/definition_of_quantitative_resea.htm Mack, N., Woodsong, C., MacQueen, M. K., Guest, G., Namey, E. (2005). Qualitative research methods: A data collector’s field guide. Retrieved from http://www.fhi360.org/nr/rdonlyres/emgox4xpcoyrysqspsgy5ww6mq7v4e44etd6toiejyxalhbmk5sdnef7fqlr3q6hlwa2ttj5524xbn/datacollectorguideenrh.pdf Woods, P. (2006). Qualitative research. Retrieved from http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/qualitative%20methods%202/qualrshm.htm

Competition vs Collaboration

Competition vs Collaboration Competition versus Collaboration Studying so much about collaboration within and outside the organization made me curious about the competition element. So I tried to find out where does the competition lies when we are talking about Collaboration.Christiansen (2000) says that for creativity and innovation, it is important to consider whether collaboration or competition is valuable. Although there are some downsides with collaboration like: collaborative group working independently, resistance dispute, ownership problems, Time pressure in members and their activities, etc.. Despite having such downsides competition is beaten by collaboration. Furthermore, competition among individuals within an organization, in idea generation, forces people to shutdown. Who wins and who looses is based on the rules of the game which includes individuals competencies and other factors. Whereas in the innovation-process, creativity nourishes with new ideas from a variety of sources. In competition individuals hold back information. Furthermore, the individual might not have a clear picture about the problem in-hand or reduce creative thinking or might not give enough time to think about the solution. Thus, increasing the possibility that the outcome is not a best solution or a best idea. Whereas in collaboration, individuals will be synergistically working together towards their objective. Collaboration is an important part of the innovation stages of selecting the ideas, development and commercializing an idea. In case where competition is outside the organization Nagel (2001) says that Wealth is created by competition and innovation plays a centre role in competition. And innovation is a key which comprises collaboration among competitors. Innovative companies collaborate externally though joint ventures, alliances or less structured forms of networking. Some innovative companies value internal and external competition, not being cut-throat competition with high secrecy or fierce, only to stimulate higher performance in competing projects where the losing teams are happy to support the winning team on their way forward. In such a company, with a positive competitive culture, to lose is not equal to losing face or missing out on the next potential promotion. In companies that believe in collaboration, people cannot help but to collaborate (Mayle 2006).This concept can be seen apprentin the Ripple Effect (IDEO 2009) project model from IDEO where different organizations collaborate to provide inspiration, deign and business support to entrepreneurs in development of new offering. I have attached a video below showing how companies are collaborating to provide clean drinking water for the poor The Ripple Effect in India, by IDEO and Acumen Fund from IDEO on Vimeo. Reference: Christiansen J. A., 2000 Competitive Innovation Management: Techniques to Improve Innovation Performance, Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan IDEO 2009, Ripple Effect: Access to safe drinking water for Acumen fund and The Bill Melinda Gates foundation [Online], Available:http://www.ideo.com/work/item/ripple-effect-access-to-safe-drinking-water/ Mayle D. 2006, Managing innovation and change, Publisher: SAGE Nagel S. 2001, Handbook of Policy Creativity: Creativity at the cutting edge Publisher: Nova Publishers, Social Media and Networks In the last few years, the number of users accessing the internet is expanding and an exponential rate. Users looking for any kind of information are searching the internet. Organizations are shifting or starting businesses online spending a lot of many to get traffic to their site. But with the hype of internet and web 2.0, these companies are using the internet to market and advertise their products and services through social media channels like facebook, twitter, youtube etc. It is the most low cost promotion method available today. Now a day marketers are using social media as their primary advertising platform as it is able to capture mass audiences. Its somewhat similar to TV advertising . In our business plan this social media and networks is playing an important part in advertisement. Companies are more concerned about their social graph ranks about products and services then how Google ranks them. The social media channels are creating content for the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) to work for the companies social media strategy. The content creation strategy should be aligned with the social media strategy to drive users towards taking action ( PR News 2009) There are three kinds of people who doubt the efficiency of social media. * Who are unaware about social media. * Who are interested in it but do not have knowledge to use it * Who doubts the social media strategy could benefit the business or their website(Jue et al. 2009) Social media should be included in the brand strategy because it will help consumers in the adoption process, laid out by Rogers (1962), which are (1) awareness, (2) interest, (3) evaluation, (4) trial, and (5) adoption, by spreading the awareness of the brand and answering the questions about the benefits the brand will provide. Social media will communicate the brand at all emotional levels. Furthermore, feedback will help in improving and evolving the brand. Bauknecht (2005) says people are believing and trusting more on peer recommendations than an advertisement. According to Warner (2008) social media networking might be just waste of time because the amounts of time individuals are spending on it. According to a survey, there is an estimated cost of  £6.5 billion per annum for loss in productivity and high bandwidth usage Britains social media fanatics spent like 12 hours per week on social media websites wasting value time. Young generations are also spending so much time on it. It was already hard to get the video game generation to focus on their studies. Lets see how much time it takes to spend on social media I am not a blogger or a social media fan. I did not have a Facebook account. I belonged to the category who doubted that social media could not benefit the business as advertising does. Now for me realizing the potential of social media was a huge eye-opener. I cant imagine how I could be ignoring it even after noticing all the online websites and other friends are on some kind of social media. However, after attending the Presentation of Chris Ramsbottom, former student of LUMS, and listening to his experiences regarding convincing the top managed about the importance of social media made me realize that I am not the only one. Now I have almost all the major social media channels and to expand my knowledge further regarding social media, I just got a book The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success 2009 by Lon Safko, David Brake and a digital copy of Social Media Marketing for Dummies 2009 by Shiv Singh. Also an iPhone to keep in touch with the social media networks However, it is important to understand how to utilize social media effectively by clarifying what actually is required from the social media either increasing sales or brand awareness of products or services. It will avoid wasting valuable time. Reference: Bauknecht K., Prà ¶ll B. and Werthner H. 2005, E-commerce and web technologies: 6th international conference, EC-Web Publisher: Springer Science Business Perez S. 2008, Real People Dont Have Time for Social Media [online], Available: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/real_people_dont_have_time_for_social_media.php PR News 2009, SEO SEM 3.0: Demystifying Social Media Optimization to Bring Consumers to You, PR News, April 27, http://www.proquest.com.ezproxy.lancs.ac.uk/ (accessed December 13, 2009). Jue A.L. , Marr J.A. and Kassotakis M.E. 2009, Social Media at Work: How Networking Tools Propel Organizational Performance , Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Rogers, Everett M. (1962). Diffusion of Innovations. Glencoe: Free Press. Warner B. 2008, Times Online : Is social networking a waste of time[Online], Available: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3536749.ec Mass Production I have been absent from the working log for quite sometime. Was really busy in group meetings, presentations and assignments etc. just finished my toughest assignment for SAP which is due day after tomorrow. Im relaxed now and having a cup of tea and startedwriting my learning log again Mass Production Honestly when I saw the week 6 questions I thought mass production will be boring and just time consuming, there would be nothing interesting about it except the word mass production but after seeing a clip of Charlie Chaplin at the time of lecture actually started my interest. I was fascinated to find out how industrial revolution began and how change actually happened. Most of the people live their lives and dont bother to look at the history like how we, as people, got to current situation. How we, as people progressed. It made me feel proud how we as human beings progressed through passage of time. The Industrial Revolution consisted a period from 18th to the 19th century where changes on manufacturing, transport and agriculture had an enormous effect on social, cultural and economic conditions first starting in UK. UK is the place, in the 18 century, where first manufacturing operations were specifically designed to reduce production costs by specialized labour and the use of machines appeared (britannica.com). Then afterwards spread to Europe, North America, and eventually the world. It was interesting to read about Model T a model of car produced by the Ford Motor Company between 1909-27, first car to be successfully mass-produced on an assembly line. I was a little bit curious what is the significance of the letter T. Just noticed it is 20th letter of the alphabet. So Model T is THE MODEL OF THE 20TH CENTURY. (Babylon dictionary) The main characteristics of MODEL T is the Standardization which lead to economies of scale during production, Division of Task which led to higher productivity. Specialism which lead to easy training of new workers in different departments Payment procedure, more parts produced the more money earned, led to overcoming the problem of high labour turnover Concentration where specialist making the decision instead of Workers Interest to read more about Model T and suggestion from Mary on The limits of Fordism led me to a paper onThe Rise and Decline of Fordism and the Sea-Change in the Technological Advantage of Nations 2004 by Andrew Tylecote and Giovanna Vertova, who states that in the manufacturing industry there are 3 functions Design Manufacture process of turning inputs into outputs co-ordination management The larger the firms became, under Fordism production, the more co-ordination was required; the faster technology and products changed and the pace of change was steadily accelerating, the more design was required. It is to be noted that Fordist production methods was actually derived from the transformation of previous organization of production notably Taylorism. It was actually Taylor in his Bethlehem Steel plant where craftsmen were subordinated directly to engineers who allocated tasks to workers. Fordism production, in Kaplinskys words, had distinct spheres. Photobucket Mass production system of Fordism was marvellously efficient and the model can be valued by the concept of transformation mechanisation which has 3 stages referred by Coombs (1983). Stage 1: The dedicated machine tool, lower labour cost and higher production Stage 2: The assembly line of continuous flow mechanical moving of materials between different stages of transformation. What Fordism lacked was the 3rd stage i.e. Control mechanisation which is the substitution of machines for the human brain in the direction and supervision of the productive process.What was needed, for control mechanisation, was machine intelligence and that was the next techno-economic paradigm development of ICT. Later on flexible form of mechanisation was made possible by Computer-aided manufacturing. Computer aided manufacturing which later on joined with computer aided design. The use of ICT in the process of coordination was increasingly recognized which led the development and diffusion of internet. Coming from a family business of clothes manufacturing, for me I understood perfectly about the boredom the workers experience for constant doing the repetitive work in mass production.Even after the policy of wages were based according to the amount of output a worker does i.e. wages paid for each item of work they do, the motivation increases but eventually comes down and the element of boredom re-appears. By looking at the theory of the law of Diminishing Marginal Productivity of labour (sometimes called the law of diminishing returns). It states that the increase in output due to units increase in labour working hours will eventually decline.(Jacques, Ian 2006) Which means if a worker is working 10 hours in a day ,His efficiency in the 1st hour will be higher than the 2nd hour. 2nd hour skill of production is more than the 3rd hour. In his last hour that is in the 10th hour his efficiency will be very very low .It may be zero or negative. Which was apparent in the case of Charlie Chaplin in the MODERN TIMES movie clip, that was seen in the class, when he lost his mind after repetitive working of loooooog hours and his productivity became negative In the book Mathematics for Economics and Business by Jacques, Ian gives an exmple: In the simplest case output, Q, is assumed to be a function of labour, L, and capital, K. Moreover, in the short run the input K can be assumed to be fixed, so Q is then only a function of one input L. (This is not a valid assumption in the long run and in general Q must be regarded as a function of at least two inputs. Methods for handling this situation are considered in the next chapter.) The variable L is usually measured in terms of the number of workers or possibly in terms of the number of worker hours. We define the marginal product of labour,MPL, by dQ = MPL dL Between 0 and L0 the curve bends upwards, becoming progressively steeper, and so the slope function, MPL, increases. Mathematically, this means that the slope of MPL is positive: that is, d(MPL ) > 0 dQ Now MPL is itself the derivative of Q with respect to L, so we can use the notation for the second derivative and write this as d2Q - > 0 dL2 Similarly, if L exceeds the threshold value of L0, then Figure 4.17 shows that the product curve bends downwards and the slope decreases. In this region, the slope of the slope function is negative, so that d2Q dL2 The law of diminishing returns states that this must happen eventually: that is, d2Q dL2 for sufficiently large L. Conclusion: To increase the productivity of a labourer and to reduce the cost of production. Reducing working hours of a shift is necessary. References: Andrew Tylecote and Giovanna Vertova 2004, The Rise and Decline of Fordism and the Sea-Change in the Technological Advantage of Nations www.giovannavertova.it/WP06.pdf britannica.com http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/368270/mass-production Babylon dictionary http://dictionary.babylon.com Jacques, Ian 2006, Mathematics for Economics and Business, Pearson Education UK, p. 268-271 http://lib.myilibrary.com.ezproxy.lancs.ac.uk/Browse/open.aspID=60204loc=Cover Kaplinsky (1984) Fordial Organisation Of Factory Production, p. 24 Perez Coombs. (1983). Structural Change and Assimilation of New Technologies in the Economic and Social Systems, Futures, 15(5): 357-375. disruptive technology It is a term which Christensen described as a new technology in this book the innovators dilemma by categorizing new technology into 2 categories: Sustaining technology incrementing improvements in an existing established technology Disruptive technology new technology, may not be perfect but appealing to a limited audience. Has initially little value and does not create attention among the dominate players in the industry. Disruptive technology usually targets new areas within the current industry with a new approach and could dominate an existing market. I will give 2 examples of disruptive technologies. Firstly, in my technology module, I found cloud computing a very disruptive technology. Its potential value cannot be ignored or denied. There were number of phases involved in the evolution of cloud computing, which include application service provision (ASP) and Software as a Service (SaaS) (Velte et al. 2009). In 2006, Amazon launched a commercial web service called Elastic Compute cloud (EC2) allowing small companies and individuals to renting I.T. infrastructure and computing power to run their own computer applications (LaMonica 2006). Cloud computing service is risk free and Easy to use. One does not have to buy anything or invest hugely into it. The technology is flexible; adjusting to the companys requirements and also easily scalable; fulfilling the needs of the companys growing demands. Just imagine in an industry where customers, had to pay upfront for a technology for which they may get 20-30% use, could use this cloud computing technology model and pay only for what is used and when it is used. It can be seen that the barriers to the entry of customers, around cost and complexity, are going to come down so dramatically that the cloud is going to open up much more usages of IT for small medium businesses. Emerging markets can be seen in countries, where just the cost and complexity have been barriers. Developing countries like Brazil rushing, China, India and beyond are going to end up using the technology in ways they have never been able to use it before and in ways we have never seen before. The second disruptive technology I found was the Google announcement of Google Navigation Map product for FREE, which was one of the innovation searches in our workshops. This product is used by connecting to the internet to Google cloud computing technology providing all the services of a traditional Sat. Nav and much more. By looking at the stock market of Garmin, one of the leading companies of navigation system providers in the GPS industry, we could actually see the market reaction to such a disruptive technology in just a couple of days from announcement, last year, in October 2009. TomTom and other companies are also affected. This product is targeted to price sensitive customers with offering excellent features and capabilities for FREE. With good understanding of the term disruptive innovation and disruptive technology, broadered my view of anticipating whether any new technology, i came accross, will prove disruptive or not. References: * Christensen C.M. 1997, The innovators dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail, Publisher: Harvard Business Press * Gurley B., Google Redefines Disruption: The Less Than Free Business Model [Online],Available: http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/10/29/google-redefines-disruption-the-%E2%80%9Cless-than-free%E2%80%9D-business-model/ [Accessed December 1, 2009 ] * LaMonica M. 2006, Amazon servers, starting at 10 cents an hour [Online], Available: http://news.cnet.com/Amazon-servers,-starting-at-10-cents-an-hour/2100-1038_3-6109202.html [Accessed December 1, 2009 ] * Velte T., Velte A. and Elsenpeter R. 2009, Cloud Computing: A Practical Approach, Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional disruptive innovation The term Disruptive innovation is thought up by Clayton Christensen, who describes the term as a process by which a product or service application starts from the bottom of the market and manoeuvres up in the market displacing established competitors. (christensen, 2009) I read an interesting book The innovators guide to growth: putting disruptive innovation to work by Scott. It describes the disruptive innovation theory: the market consists of customers some of which are at a high end, very demanding, and willing to buy high-performance, expensive products. While others are low end and satisfied with simple and inexpensive products. Customers lives are not changing as fast as most organization or companies are innovating. These fast innovating companies end up producing goods, sustaining innovations, that are too good, too expensive and sometimes too inconvenient for many customers. The disconnect between the capabilities of a product and the customers ability to use them opens up an opportunity for innovators who brings to a market a disruptive innovation that is simple, convenient, accessible and affordable. Thus, changing the game of the market. The disruptive innovations can be broadly classified into two types: new-market and low-end disruptive innovations. The new-market disruptive innovation, which succeeds because they bring previous non-consumers into the market, whereas a lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at mainstream customers for whom price is more important than quality. Disruptive innovations can be generally be divided into new-market and low-end disruptive innovations. A new-market disruptive innovation is often aimed at non-consumption (i.e., consumers who would not have used the products already on the market), whereas a lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at mainstream customers for whom price is more important than quality. Low-end disruption has occurred repeatedly in retailing. Disruptive innovation will result in major changes, but they dont often rely on technological breakthroughs. In fact, many times the technologies are quite trivial. Its the Business Model the way a company organises and acts that drives disruptions. Taking the example of Wal-Mart, who opened their first discount retailer in 1962, they didnt start to sell goods that are different from their competitors, they created a new way to organize and act that allowed them to make money at low price points. So its not often the technology but is the businesses model. I read about many other models that shows the difference between disruption and sustaining innovation like the personal computer, eBay online model etc. the most interesting one is from the video games industries. Contrast the Sony PlayStation 3 product with the Nintendos Wii product. The PS3 is a technological marvel. The best game play you can find, great graphics, the blue ray disks in the player. It is aimed at the heart core gamers, the most demanding consumers in the games industry. Now Nintendo has innovated in a very different way. Instead of introducing games with better graphics Nintendo made it simpler, made it more accessible. The big innovation is the controller. Nintendo is consciously targeting the non-gamer and by doing so it has greatly expanded the market for the video games by reaching people that Sony wouldnt even think about targeting. Not winning it by doing it better but by winning it by doing it differently. (Ali Farhoomand, 2009) In the EBIN 504 innovation module understanding of the concept of disruptive innovation helped me understand more how to look at the market or industry to Spot Disruptive Innovation Opportunities which had helped me in my EBIN 503: Business Planning Module where we had a workshop for idea generation for starting a business. I also in thebook The innovators guide to growth I learned that, firstly we had to look for a market or industry where there is some kind of constraint that inhibits consumption where there is something that makes it difficult for people to solve problems in their life. Sometimes they dont have skills, sometimes they dont have money, and sometimes they cant access the solution and sometimes its just takes too long. Finding one of those barriers to consumption and see how you can obliterate it. Secondly we had to identify where people have important and unsatisfied jobs to be done. Where are problems that a customer faces that they cant adequately solve today. If we can find that frustrated customer and ease their pain we often times have the ticket to disruptive innovation. Then after we have looked for the constraint innovation and targeted that job to be done, then we think thought about how we can play the innovation game differently. With better understanding of the concept of di sruptive innovation theory, I understood its not about doing it better, its about making it simpler, cheaper, more accessible, more affordable. That is what disruption is all about. (Scott D. Anthony, 2008) References Ali Farhoomand, H. J. (2009) Nintendos Disruptive Strategy: Implications for the Video Game Industry. Feb 10, 2009, Harvard business publishing. http://harvardbusiness.org/product/nintendo-s-disruptive-strategy-implications-for-th/an/HKU814-PDF-ENG Christensen, C. (2009) Disruptive Innovation. http://www.claytonchristensen.com/disruptive_innovation.html John Bessant, J. T. (2007) Innovation and entrepreneurship John Wiley and Sons, p. 229-34, 247 Scott D. Anthony, M. W. J., Joseph V. Sinfield, Elizabeth J. Altman (2008) The innovators guide to growth: putting disruptive innovation to work, Harvard Business Press PLATFORM INNOVATION Platform in simple words means pictures of major subsystems and interfaces between these subsystems. The platform innovation is defined as one that leads to the practical application of fundamental innovations. Such innovations normally are launching pads for a new industry I read a journal Platform-Innovation drive enterprise growth. It was very fascinating to see how Platform thinking for physical products played an important role in the companys transformation of its traditional mainframe business to a Web server business. Also product platforms require accurate operational definition without which its difficult to achieve progress, but many organizations are lacking in applying this definition. New product strategy must be remodeled to capture the degree to which common architectures and subsystems will be leveraged across existing and new market applications, as well as the timing of product introductions. (Marc H Meyer ad el. 2001) In the EBIN-521 e-Technology module I have learned that the Internet has evolved from web 1.0 to and Web 2.0 to become an increasingly important platform not just for economic development, communication, educational purposes, and as an area for entertainment, but also as a place for those who wish to express their opinions and ideas freely and is now considered web as a platform which doesnt have a hard boundary Figure 1 shows a meme map of Web 2.0 that was developed at a brainstorming session during FOO Camp, a conference at OReilly Media. Its very much a work in progress, but shows the many ideas that radiate out from the Web 2.0 core. (Tim OReilly 2005) from the above figureabovewe can have an idea of Web as a platform.Web 2.0 can be conceived as blocks of principles and practices that are interconnected system of sites, where software and web applications are built upon the Web as opposed to upon the desktop. The uniqueness of web 2.0 is customers are building your business for you. (Tim OReilly 2005) Everything is platform in web 2.0 era. I found this comic very interesting. In the EBIN-521 e-Technology module and EBIN-503 Business Planning Finance Planning we are going to plan to have an open API (application programming interface) as part of our e-business. Open API is a platform innovation concept, where other developers uses Open API to come up with a new combination for an innovation, which leads to more innovation. Application Programming Interface (API) is an interface that a software program implements in order to allow other software to interact with it; much in the same way that software might implement a user interface in order to allow humans to interact with it. (Wikipedia cited: on Nov 2009).For example In September 2009 programmableweb.com announced that ithad 16 new Mashups in their Mashup Directory and 28 different APIs were used to build them in different combination (programmableweb.com 2009). At the website link provided below in the reference shows a list of API used in different meshups An an exampleof a web ping.fm (http://ping.fm/)It is a web application for Managing Social Networks. It is linked with 46 social websites like Twitter, Facebook, myspace,blogger, beboetc. You can create an account with ping.fm and link it to any social websitefrom the list of 46. And if you want to post something like any news or update you can just post once on ping.fm and it will posted to you all the LINKED services you added to your ping.fm account. Now pink.fm provides OPEN API. Byusing their opi functionality any web-developer or business organization can build their business In our business plan, we will be having an OPEN DATA API and TRANSACTION API in our eBusiness as a open platform for other developers build or develop their web-application or software , hence building their business using our platform or in other words building our business for us Reference: Make platform innovation drive enterprise growth By Marc H Meyer, Paul C Mugge, Publication title: Research Technology Management. Arlington: Jan/Feb 2001. Vol. 44, Iss. 1; pg. 25, 15 pgs Wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface#cite_note-0 John Musser 2009 28 APIs Used This Week: Open Government, Wikipedia, New York Times, and Football Nerds http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/04/28-apis-used-this-week-open-government-wikipedia-new-york-times-and-football-nerds/ Realinnovation- 2008 http://www.realinnovation.com/dictionary/Platform_Innovation-312.htm dilbert.com 2007 http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2007-09-09/ Tim OReilly Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software 2005 http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html understanding Dominant Design Dominant Design a product configuration which endures; a particular combination of product features which appears to satisfy the market and survives, without major change, for some time. (Don Bradmore 2004) Often in dominant design route there are many competitors involved each one introducing many products with special features but the firm that are able to imitate the dominant design survive while those that cannot fail. The design typically remains a standard product model for many years during which firms compete on lowering costs through process innovations. In the technology industry number of alternative design are often introduced by firms e.g. Microsoft Windows, Apple Inc. Mac OS and IBM OS2). Updated designs are introduced later incorporating incremental improvements. After sometime the architecture that becomes most accepted as the industry standard may emerge e.g. Microsoft Windows. Dominant designs might not be better than other designs in the market place; however they fulfil the key requirements. Many technologies, currently in use, struggled with similar competing products before gaining the dominant design. According to Markides and Geroski (2005) until the standard is emerging consumers are affected by issues Competition vs Collaboration Competition vs Collaboration Competition versus Collaboration Studying so much about collaboration within and outside the organization made me curious about the competition element. So I tried to find out where does the competition lies when we are talking about Collaboration.Christiansen (2000) says that for creativity and innovation, it is important to consider whether collaboration or competition is valuable. Although there are some downsides with collaboration like: collaborative group working independently, resistance dispute, ownership problems, Time pressure in members and their activities, etc.. Despite having such downsides competition is beaten by collaboration. Furthermore, competition among individuals within an organization, in idea generation, forces people to shutdown. Who wins and who looses is based on the rules of the game which includes individuals competencies and other factors. Whereas in the innovation-process, creativity nourishes with new ideas from a variety of sources. In competition individuals hold back information. Furthermore, the individual might not have a clear picture about the problem in-hand or reduce creative thinking or might not give enough time to think about the solution. Thus, increasing the possibility that the outcome is not a best solution or a best idea. Whereas in collaboration, individuals will be synergistically working together towards their objective. Collaboration is an important part of the innovation stages of selecting the ideas, development and commercializing an idea. In case where competition is outside the organization Nagel (2001) says that Wealth is created by competition and innovation plays a centre role in competition. And innovation is a key which comprises collaboration among competitors. Innovative companies collaborate externally though joint ventures, alliances or less structured forms of networking. Some innovative companies value internal and external competition, not being cut-throat competition with high secrecy or fierce, only to stimulate higher performance in competing projects where the losing teams are happy to support the winning team on their way forward. In such a company, with a positive competitive culture, to lose is not equal to losing face or missing out on the next potential promotion. In companies that believe in collaboration, people cannot help but to collaborate (Mayle 2006).This concept can be seen apprentin the Ripple Effect (IDEO 2009) project model from IDEO where different organizations collaborate to provide inspiration, deign and business support to entrepreneurs in development of new offering. I have attached a video below showing how companies are collaborating to provide clean drinking water for the poor The Ripple Effect in India, by IDEO and Acumen Fund from IDEO on Vimeo. Reference: Christiansen J. A., 2000 Competitive Innovation Management: Techniques to Improve Innovation Performance, Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan IDEO 2009, Ripple Effect: Access to safe drinking water for Acumen fund and The Bill Melinda Gates foundation [Online], Available:http://www.ideo.com/work/item/ripple-effect-access-to-safe-drinking-water/ Mayle D. 2006, Managing innovation and change, Publisher: SAGE Nagel S. 2001, Handbook of Policy Creativity: Creativity at the cutting edge Publisher: Nova Publishers, Social Media and Networks In the last few years, the number of users accessing the internet is expanding and an exponential rate. Users looking for any kind of information are searching the internet. Organizations are shifting or starting businesses online spending a lot of many to get traffic to their site. But with the hype of internet and web 2.0, these companies are using the internet to market and advertise their products and services through social media channels like facebook, twitter, youtube etc. It is the most low cost promotion method available today. Now a day marketers are using social media as their primary advertising platform as it is able to capture mass audiences. Its somewhat similar to TV advertising . In our business plan this social media and networks is playing an important part in advertisement. Companies are more concerned about their social graph ranks about products and services then how Google ranks them. The social media channels are creating content for the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) to work for the companies social media strategy. The content creation strategy should be aligned with the social media strategy to drive users towards taking action ( PR News 2009) There are three kinds of people who doubt the efficiency of social media. * Who are unaware about social media. * Who are interested in it but do not have knowledge to use it * Who doubts the social media strategy could benefit the business or their website(Jue et al. 2009) Social media should be included in the brand strategy because it will help consumers in the adoption process, laid out by Rogers (1962), which are (1) awareness, (2) interest, (3) evaluation, (4) trial, and (5) adoption, by spreading the awareness of the brand and answering the questions about the benefits the brand will provide. Social media will communicate the brand at all emotional levels. Furthermore, feedback will help in improving and evolving the brand. Bauknecht (2005) says people are believing and trusting more on peer recommendations than an advertisement. According to Warner (2008) social media networking might be just waste of time because the amounts of time individuals are spending on it. According to a survey, there is an estimated cost of  £6.5 billion per annum for loss in productivity and high bandwidth usage Britains social media fanatics spent like 12 hours per week on social media websites wasting value time. Young generations are also spending so much time on it. It was already hard to get the video game generation to focus on their studies. Lets see how much time it takes to spend on social media I am not a blogger or a social media fan. I did not have a Facebook account. I belonged to the category who doubted that social media could not benefit the business as advertising does. Now for me realizing the potential of social media was a huge eye-opener. I cant imagine how I could be ignoring it even after noticing all the online websites and other friends are on some kind of social media. However, after attending the Presentation of Chris Ramsbottom, former student of LUMS, and listening to his experiences regarding convincing the top managed about the importance of social media made me realize that I am not the only one. Now I have almost all the major social media channels and to expand my knowledge further regarding social media, I just got a book The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success 2009 by Lon Safko, David Brake and a digital copy of Social Media Marketing for Dummies 2009 by Shiv Singh. Also an iPhone to keep in touch with the social media networks However, it is important to understand how to utilize social media effectively by clarifying what actually is required from the social media either increasing sales or brand awareness of products or services. It will avoid wasting valuable time. Reference: Bauknecht K., Prà ¶ll B. and Werthner H. 2005, E-commerce and web technologies: 6th international conference, EC-Web Publisher: Springer Science Business Perez S. 2008, Real People Dont Have Time for Social Media [online], Available: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/real_people_dont_have_time_for_social_media.php PR News 2009, SEO SEM 3.0: Demystifying Social Media Optimization to Bring Consumers to You, PR News, April 27, http://www.proquest.com.ezproxy.lancs.ac.uk/ (accessed December 13, 2009). Jue A.L. , Marr J.A. and Kassotakis M.E. 2009, Social Media at Work: How Networking Tools Propel Organizational Performance , Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Rogers, Everett M. (1962). Diffusion of Innovations. Glencoe: Free Press. Warner B. 2008, Times Online : Is social networking a waste of time[Online], Available: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3536749.ec Mass Production I have been absent from the working log for quite sometime. Was really busy in group meetings, presentations and assignments etc. just finished my toughest assignment for SAP which is due day after tomorrow. Im relaxed now and having a cup of tea and startedwriting my learning log again Mass Production Honestly when I saw the week 6 questions I thought mass production will be boring and just time consuming, there would be nothing interesting about it except the word mass production but after seeing a clip of Charlie Chaplin at the time of lecture actually started my interest. I was fascinated to find out how industrial revolution began and how change actually happened. Most of the people live their lives and dont bother to look at the history like how we, as people, got to current situation. How we, as people progressed. It made me feel proud how we as human beings progressed through passage of time. The Industrial Revolution consisted a period from 18th to the 19th century where changes on manufacturing, transport and agriculture had an enormous effect on social, cultural and economic conditions first starting in UK. UK is the place, in the 18 century, where first manufacturing operations were specifically designed to reduce production costs by specialized labour and the use of machines appeared (britannica.com). Then afterwards spread to Europe, North America, and eventually the world. It was interesting to read about Model T a model of car produced by the Ford Motor Company between 1909-27, first car to be successfully mass-produced on an assembly line. I was a little bit curious what is the significance of the letter T. Just noticed it is 20th letter of the alphabet. So Model T is THE MODEL OF THE 20TH CENTURY. (Babylon dictionary) The main characteristics of MODEL T is the Standardization which lead to economies of scale during production, Division of Task which led to higher productivity. Specialism which lead to easy training of new workers in different departments Payment procedure, more parts produced the more money earned, led to overcoming the problem of high labour turnover Concentration where specialist making the decision instead of Workers Interest to read more about Model T and suggestion from Mary on The limits of Fordism led me to a paper onThe Rise and Decline of Fordism and the Sea-Change in the Technological Advantage of Nations 2004 by Andrew Tylecote and Giovanna Vertova, who states that in the manufacturing industry there are 3 functions Design Manufacture process of turning inputs into outputs co-ordination management The larger the firms became, under Fordism production, the more co-ordination was required; the faster technology and products changed and the pace of change was steadily accelerating, the more design was required. It is to be noted that Fordist production methods was actually derived from the transformation of previous organization of production notably Taylorism. It was actually Taylor in his Bethlehem Steel plant where craftsmen were subordinated directly to engineers who allocated tasks to workers. Fordism production, in Kaplinskys words, had distinct spheres. Photobucket Mass production system of Fordism was marvellously efficient and the model can be valued by the concept of transformation mechanisation which has 3 stages referred by Coombs (1983). Stage 1: The dedicated machine tool, lower labour cost and higher production Stage 2: The assembly line of continuous flow mechanical moving of materials between different stages of transformation. What Fordism lacked was the 3rd stage i.e. Control mechanisation which is the substitution of machines for the human brain in the direction and supervision of the productive process.What was needed, for control mechanisation, was machine intelligence and that was the next techno-economic paradigm development of ICT. Later on flexible form of mechanisation was made possible by Computer-aided manufacturing. Computer aided manufacturing which later on joined with computer aided design. The use of ICT in the process of coordination was increasingly recognized which led the development and diffusion of internet. Coming from a family business of clothes manufacturing, for me I understood perfectly about the boredom the workers experience for constant doing the repetitive work in mass production.Even after the policy of wages were based according to the amount of output a worker does i.e. wages paid for each item of work they do, the motivation increases but eventually comes down and the element of boredom re-appears. By looking at the theory of the law of Diminishing Marginal Productivity of labour (sometimes called the law of diminishing returns). It states that the increase in output due to units increase in labour working hours will eventually decline.(Jacques, Ian 2006) Which means if a worker is working 10 hours in a day ,His efficiency in the 1st hour will be higher than the 2nd hour. 2nd hour skill of production is more than the 3rd hour. In his last hour that is in the 10th hour his efficiency will be very very low .It may be zero or negative. Which was apparent in the case of Charlie Chaplin in the MODERN TIMES movie clip, that was seen in the class, when he lost his mind after repetitive working of loooooog hours and his productivity became negative In the book Mathematics for Economics and Business by Jacques, Ian gives an exmple: In the simplest case output, Q, is assumed to be a function of labour, L, and capital, K. Moreover, in the short run the input K can be assumed to be fixed, so Q is then only a function of one input L. (This is not a valid assumption in the long run and in general Q must be regarded as a function of at least two inputs. Methods for handling this situation are considered in the next chapter.) The variable L is usually measured in terms of the number of workers or possibly in terms of the number of worker hours. We define the marginal product of labour,MPL, by dQ = MPL dL Between 0 and L0 the curve bends upwards, becoming progressively steeper, and so the slope function, MPL, increases. Mathematically, this means that the slope of MPL is positive: that is, d(MPL ) > 0 dQ Now MPL is itself the derivative of Q with respect to L, so we can use the notation for the second derivative and write this as d2Q - > 0 dL2 Similarly, if L exceeds the threshold value of L0, then Figure 4.17 shows that the product curve bends downwards and the slope decreases. In this region, the slope of the slope function is negative, so that d2Q dL2 The law of diminishing returns states that this must happen eventually: that is, d2Q dL2 for sufficiently large L. Conclusion: To increase the productivity of a labourer and to reduce the cost of production. Reducing working hours of a shift is necessary. References: Andrew Tylecote and Giovanna Vertova 2004, The Rise and Decline of Fordism and the Sea-Change in the Technological Advantage of Nations www.giovannavertova.it/WP06.pdf britannica.com http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/368270/mass-production Babylon dictionary http://dictionary.babylon.com Jacques, Ian 2006, Mathematics for Economics and Business, Pearson Education UK, p. 268-271 http://lib.myilibrary.com.ezproxy.lancs.ac.uk/Browse/open.aspID=60204loc=Cover Kaplinsky (1984) Fordial Organisation Of Factory Production, p. 24 Perez Coombs. (1983). Structural Change and Assimilation of New Technologies in the Economic and Social Systems, Futures, 15(5): 357-375. disruptive technology It is a term which Christensen described as a new technology in this book the innovators dilemma by categorizing new technology into 2 categories: Sustaining technology incrementing improvements in an existing established technology Disruptive technology new technology, may not be perfect but appealing to a limited audience. Has initially little value and does not create attention among the dominate players in the industry. Disruptive technology usually targets new areas within the current industry with a new approach and could dominate an existing market. I will give 2 examples of disruptive technologies. Firstly, in my technology module, I found cloud computing a very disruptive technology. Its potential value cannot be ignored or denied. There were number of phases involved in the evolution of cloud computing, which include application service provision (ASP) and Software as a Service (SaaS) (Velte et al. 2009). In 2006, Amazon launched a commercial web service called Elastic Compute cloud (EC2) allowing small companies and individuals to renting I.T. infrastructure and computing power to run their own computer applications (LaMonica 2006). Cloud computing service is risk free and Easy to use. One does not have to buy anything or invest hugely into it. The technology is flexible; adjusting to the companys requirements and also easily scalable; fulfilling the needs of the companys growing demands. Just imagine in an industry where customers, had to pay upfront for a technology for which they may get 20-30% use, could use this cloud computing technology model and pay only for what is used and when it is used. It can be seen that the barriers to the entry of customers, around cost and complexity, are going to come down so dramatically that the cloud is going to open up much more usages of IT for small medium businesses. Emerging markets can be seen in countries, where just the cost and complexity have been barriers. Developing countries like Brazil rushing, China, India and beyond are going to end up using the technology in ways they have never been able to use it before and in ways we have never seen before. The second disruptive technology I found was the Google announcement of Google Navigation Map product for FREE, which was one of the innovation searches in our workshops. This product is used by connecting to the internet to Google cloud computing technology providing all the services of a traditional Sat. Nav and much more. By looking at the stock market of Garmin, one of the leading companies of navigation system providers in the GPS industry, we could actually see the market reaction to such a disruptive technology in just a couple of days from announcement, last year, in October 2009. TomTom and other companies are also affected. This product is targeted to price sensitive customers with offering excellent features and capabilities for FREE. With good understanding of the term disruptive innovation and disruptive technology, broadered my view of anticipating whether any new technology, i came accross, will prove disruptive or not. References: * Christensen C.M. 1997, The innovators dilemma: when new technologies cause great firms to fail, Publisher: Harvard Business Press * Gurley B., Google Redefines Disruption: The Less Than Free Business Model [Online],Available: http://abovethecrowd.com/2009/10/29/google-redefines-disruption-the-%E2%80%9Cless-than-free%E2%80%9D-business-model/ [Accessed December 1, 2009 ] * LaMonica M. 2006, Amazon servers, starting at 10 cents an hour [Online], Available: http://news.cnet.com/Amazon-servers,-starting-at-10-cents-an-hour/2100-1038_3-6109202.html [Accessed December 1, 2009 ] * Velte T., Velte A. and Elsenpeter R. 2009, Cloud Computing: A Practical Approach, Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional disruptive innovation The term Disruptive innovation is thought up by Clayton Christensen, who describes the term as a process by which a product or service application starts from the bottom of the market and manoeuvres up in the market displacing established competitors. (christensen, 2009) I read an interesting book The innovators guide to growth: putting disruptive innovation to work by Scott. It describes the disruptive innovation theory: the market consists of customers some of which are at a high end, very demanding, and willing to buy high-performance, expensive products. While others are low end and satisfied with simple and inexpensive products. Customers lives are not changing as fast as most organization or companies are innovating. These fast innovating companies end up producing goods, sustaining innovations, that are too good, too expensive and sometimes too inconvenient for many customers. The disconnect between the capabilities of a product and the customers ability to use them opens up an opportunity for innovators who brings to a market a disruptive innovation that is simple, convenient, accessible and affordable. Thus, changing the game of the market. The disruptive innovations can be broadly classified into two types: new-market and low-end disruptive innovations. The new-market disruptive innovation, which succeeds because they bring previous non-consumers into the market, whereas a lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at mainstream customers for whom price is more important than quality. Disruptive innovations can be generally be divided into new-market and low-end disruptive innovations. A new-market disruptive innovation is often aimed at non-consumption (i.e., consumers who would not have used the products already on the market), whereas a lower-end disruptive innovation is aimed at mainstream customers for whom price is more important than quality. Low-end disruption has occurred repeatedly in retailing. Disruptive innovation will result in major changes, but they dont often rely on technological breakthroughs. In fact, many times the technologies are quite trivial. Its the Business Model the way a company organises and acts that drives disruptions. Taking the example of Wal-Mart, who opened their first discount retailer in 1962, they didnt start to sell goods that are different from their competitors, they created a new way to organize and act that allowed them to make money at low price points. So its not often the technology but is the businesses model. I read about many other models that shows the difference between disruption and sustaining innovation like the personal computer, eBay online model etc. the most interesting one is from the video games industries. Contrast the Sony PlayStation 3 product with the Nintendos Wii product. The PS3 is a technological marvel. The best game play you can find, great graphics, the blue ray disks in the player. It is aimed at the heart core gamers, the most demanding consumers in the games industry. Now Nintendo has innovated in a very different way. Instead of introducing games with better graphics Nintendo made it simpler, made it more accessible. The big innovation is the controller. Nintendo is consciously targeting the non-gamer and by doing so it has greatly expanded the market for the video games by reaching people that Sony wouldnt even think about targeting. Not winning it by doing it better but by winning it by doing it differently. (Ali Farhoomand, 2009) In the EBIN 504 innovation module understanding of the concept of disruptive innovation helped me understand more how to look at the market or industry to Spot Disruptive Innovation Opportunities which had helped me in my EBIN 503: Business Planning Module where we had a workshop for idea generation for starting a business. I also in thebook The innovators guide to growth I learned that, firstly we had to look for a market or industry where there is some kind of constraint that inhibits consumption where there is something that makes it difficult for people to solve problems in their life. Sometimes they dont have skills, sometimes they dont have money, and sometimes they cant access the solution and sometimes its just takes too long. Finding one of those barriers to consumption and see how you can obliterate it. Secondly we had to identify where people have important and unsatisfied jobs to be done. Where are problems that a customer faces that they cant adequately solve today. If we can find that frustrated customer and ease their pain we often times have the ticket to disruptive innovation. Then after we have looked for the constraint innovation and targeted that job to be done, then we think thought about how we can play the innovation game differently. With better understanding of the concept of di sruptive innovation theory, I understood its not about doing it better, its about making it simpler, cheaper, more accessible, more affordable. That is what disruption is all about. (Scott D. Anthony, 2008) References Ali Farhoomand, H. J. (2009) Nintendos Disruptive Strategy: Implications for the Video Game Industry. Feb 10, 2009, Harvard business publishing. http://harvardbusiness.org/product/nintendo-s-disruptive-strategy-implications-for-th/an/HKU814-PDF-ENG Christensen, C. (2009) Disruptive Innovation. http://www.claytonchristensen.com/disruptive_innovation.html John Bessant, J. T. (2007) Innovation and entrepreneurship John Wiley and Sons, p. 229-34, 247 Scott D. Anthony, M. W. J., Joseph V. Sinfield, Elizabeth J. Altman (2008) The innovators guide to growth: putting disruptive innovation to work, Harvard Business Press PLATFORM INNOVATION Platform in simple words means pictures of major subsystems and interfaces between these subsystems. The platform innovation is defined as one that leads to the practical application of fundamental innovations. Such innovations normally are launching pads for a new industry I read a journal Platform-Innovation drive enterprise growth. It was very fascinating to see how Platform thinking for physical products played an important role in the companys transformation of its traditional mainframe business to a Web server business. Also product platforms require accurate operational definition without which its difficult to achieve progress, but many organizations are lacking in applying this definition. New product strategy must be remodeled to capture the degree to which common architectures and subsystems will be leveraged across existing and new market applications, as well as the timing of product introductions. (Marc H Meyer ad el. 2001) In the EBIN-521 e-Technology module I have learned that the Internet has evolved from web 1.0 to and Web 2.0 to become an increasingly important platform not just for economic development, communication, educational purposes, and as an area for entertainment, but also as a place for those who wish to express their opinions and ideas freely and is now considered web as a platform which doesnt have a hard boundary Figure 1 shows a meme map of Web 2.0 that was developed at a brainstorming session during FOO Camp, a conference at OReilly Media. Its very much a work in progress, but shows the many ideas that radiate out from the Web 2.0 core. (Tim OReilly 2005) from the above figureabovewe can have an idea of Web as a platform.Web 2.0 can be conceived as blocks of principles and practices that are interconnected system of sites, where software and web applications are built upon the Web as opposed to upon the desktop. The uniqueness of web 2.0 is customers are building your business for you. (Tim OReilly 2005) Everything is platform in web 2.0 era. I found this comic very interesting. In the EBIN-521 e-Technology module and EBIN-503 Business Planning Finance Planning we are going to plan to have an open API (application programming interface) as part of our e-business. Open API is a platform innovation concept, where other developers uses Open API to come up with a new combination for an innovation, which leads to more innovation. Application Programming Interface (API) is an interface that a software program implements in order to allow other software to interact with it; much in the same way that software might implement a user interface in order to allow humans to interact with it. (Wikipedia cited: on Nov 2009).For example In September 2009 programmableweb.com announced that ithad 16 new Mashups in their Mashup Directory and 28 different APIs were used to build them in different combination (programmableweb.com 2009). At the website link provided below in the reference shows a list of API used in different meshups An an exampleof a web ping.fm (http://ping.fm/)It is a web application for Managing Social Networks. It is linked with 46 social websites like Twitter, Facebook, myspace,blogger, beboetc. You can create an account with ping.fm and link it to any social websitefrom the list of 46. And if you want to post something like any news or update you can just post once on ping.fm and it will posted to you all the LINKED services you added to your ping.fm account. Now pink.fm provides OPEN API. Byusing their opi functionality any web-developer or business organization can build their business In our business plan, we will be having an OPEN DATA API and TRANSACTION API in our eBusiness as a open platform for other developers build or develop their web-application or software , hence building their business using our platform or in other words building our business for us Reference: Make platform innovation drive enterprise growth By Marc H Meyer, Paul C Mugge, Publication title: Research Technology Management. Arlington: Jan/Feb 2001. Vol. 44, Iss. 1; pg. 25, 15 pgs Wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface#cite_note-0 John Musser 2009 28 APIs Used This Week: Open Government, Wikipedia, New York Times, and Football Nerds http://blog.programmableweb.com/2009/10/04/28-apis-used-this-week-open-government-wikipedia-new-york-times-and-football-nerds/ Realinnovation- 2008 http://www.realinnovation.com/dictionary/Platform_Innovation-312.htm dilbert.com 2007 http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2007-09-09/ Tim OReilly Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software 2005 http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html understanding Dominant Design Dominant Design a product configuration which endures; a particular combination of product features which appears to satisfy the market and survives, without major change, for some time. (Don Bradmore 2004) Often in dominant design route there are many competitors involved each one introducing many products with special features but the firm that are able to imitate the dominant design survive while those that cannot fail. The design typically remains a standard product model for many years during which firms compete on lowering costs through process innovations. In the technology industry number of alternative design are often introduced by firms e.g. Microsoft Windows, Apple Inc. Mac OS and IBM OS2). Updated designs are introduced later incorporating incremental improvements. After sometime the architecture that becomes most accepted as the industry standard may emerge e.g. Microsoft Windows. Dominant designs might not be better than other designs in the market place; however they fulfil the key requirements. Many technologies, currently in use, struggled with similar competing products before gaining the dominant design. According to Markides and Geroski (2005) until the standard is emerging consumers are affected by issues