Group D Skype Meeting report (9/26 Mon 7:45PM)

Group D Skype Meeting report (9/26 Mon 7:45PM)

We had very good discussion under excellent leadership of Jamie Williams who is the meeting organizer for Sept 26th. We went through the topics as ULearn suggested with A-G steps. (See ULearn BUS600 site). One of the accomplishments is that we could have a consensus with mission statement of our small business.

Mission Statement: Our business helps customers make wise purchasing decisions that influence corporations to make products and business operations choices that are socially equitable, non-environmentally damaging and support the communication in which they operate.

Grope Name: We had discussed but I believe we did not have finalized idea of our group name yet. There are some proposals in the past (via email exchange): InSight, Society Trust, Wise Choice, We Trust. My proposal here is “goForIt.com”. 

My Feedback: In today’s market, there are many kinds of rating companies for various fields and some of them are very powerful (means that has strong influence for decision making of people).  For example, financial, environmental (sometimes called green), human rights, operation transparency etc. Our group is probably more focusing on environmental side such as sustainability of products, grading of carbon emission for companies. Speaking of carbon emission, it is controversial because some can reduce carbon emission by increasing dependency on Nuclear Power Generation which generates more toxic to the earth for long term.  See the documentary movie preview: “Into Eternity”  http://www.intoeternitythemovie.com/ 

The following is a memorandum of research links group members presented recently.

1. Carbonpig
Website: http://carbonpig.com/
Submitted by: Daniel
Business segment:  products sustainability
Over view:
This site maintains a list (database) of eco-safe products for consumers. The intention is to help customers to make a decision, find a product to buy. Evaluation standard is not clearly described in the site while it said it gives a certain rating for consumers. This is an Non-profit organization (NPO).

2. Terrapass
Website: http://www.terrapass.com/business/
Submitted by: Chiori
Business segment: Carbon emission calculation and reduction
Overview:
TerraPass helps companies to demonstrate their environmental leadership by measuring, reducing and offsetting the carbon footprint of their business. TerraPass carbon offsets fund clean energy and carbon reduction projects in North America and are verified to the highest standards.(from website) It sells clean energy as "carbon offsets" in online shop: http://store.terrapass.com/store/p/53-TerraPass-carbon-offsets-1mT.html
This is not an NPO, it actually has products.

3. Energy Watch Group
Website: http://www.energywatchgroup.org/Mission.11+M5d637b1e38d.0.html
Submitted by: Kerry
Business segment: promotion for renewable clean energy
Overview:
This is an organization (NPO) run by scientists to review and evaluate various issues of current and future energy generation.

4. Corporate Responsibility Group (CRG)
Website: http://www.crguk.org/?id=8&ob=1
Submitted by: Kerry
Business segment: Ethical and Environmental responsibility for business
Overview:
Probably they provide consultation to business.
CRG is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee and run cost-effectively by a volunteer Board of experienced members. A small contracted secretariat team and a consultant programme adviser put the Board's plans into effect.(from website)

Chapter 2 Ethics - Silbiger, The 10-Days MBA

A company should grow business such a way that as it helps its customers success, it benefits the environment and society. It also means that a company should operate legally and ethically. In today’s increasingly transparent business world, HOW companies do things is just as important as WHAT they do.  These applied to the daily corporate activities such as transactions, booking, decision making, manufacturing, and treating people. How a company can win with integrity? 

Code of conduct plays an important law to achieve our goal. Defining and developing an effective code of conduct for organizations is a major interest to companies.  Here is some bullet points to the code of conduct I saw as an example:

Example of Code of Conduct from a renowned global company

• Honesty
• Trustworthiness
• Judgment
• Respect
• Courage
• Responsibility 

Non ethical examples (Not-to-do examples) of companies

• Apple:    Tenth apparent suicide at Foxconn iPhone factory in China

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/27/foxconn-suicide-tenth-iphone-china

• Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power):    TEPCO submits heavily redacted copy of Fukushima nuke accident manual

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110908p2a00m0na022000c.html


Good example for environmental and social responsibility 

• Google:    Google invests $280 million in SolarCity

http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/14/technology/google_solarcity/index.htm

Chapter 1 Marketing - Silbiger, The 10-Days MBA

Chapter 1 Marketing

Marketing Mix = 4 Ps.

Market Mix is elements of marketing plan and analysis process to identify the target market.  It should be described in Product Requirement document. 

• Product: Goods or Service
• Price: Should be set to gain revenue but be competitive in the market
• Promotion: Advertizing, PR, sales promotion (coupons etc)  - communication with customers.
• Place: market place, segment, for example, customers’ age, { consumer/enterprise/government/organization }, geographical place – sold to where?  

Example:

• Product: Data center core routers 
• Price: Must be competitive - Given in per port (1,10,100GBps) price
• Promotion: Partner Program with Resellers, Technical support, benchmark support.
• Place: World wide.  Enterprise, government, school campus, internet providers, research organizations (HPC customers – high performance computing) 

BUS600 ~ { 1st entry } My Vision and Goal

BUS600: Foundation of Business Management, Professor Tao

 I am working as a software developer in computer and networking industry over the last 10 years. My specialty is always focused on technology so that I did not really pay attention to the business of my organization. My company was a leader of high Giga technology, so that it had high chance of going to the public in early 2000s. However the top management made mistake just only one time then they (we) missed the chance to go public entirely. With my observation,  the management seemed luck of a certain knowledge regarding financial documentation so they could not file IPO in right timing.  It is OK for individual engineers to move one firm to the others to do the similar tasks continuously but I am more interested in the company organization as a whole to success and grow myself in the organization; how to survive in the market with having right knowledge and good ethics. MBA is a best place to learn. It is not only for learning but also the place for application to the real business idea of ourselves appreciated by customers.