Weekly Idea for Entrepreneurs Chapter 1

Capitalism and enterprise are about haing a dynamic economy and innovation, but ultimately, they rest on the actions of businesspeople who assume and accept the benefits and risks of an initiative. It is people acting as leanders, organizers, and motivators who are the central figures of modenn economic activity. Most entrepreneurs strive to make a productive, useful contribution to their society while creating wealth for shareholders and themselves. Profit maximization, however, is not the only goal of these creaive business people, who else value independence and leadership challenges.
There are four types of entrepreneurship.
1. incremental venture. The founding and management of a routine business exhibiting modest novelty.
2.innovative venture. The initiation and operation of a business based on an innovation
3.inmitative venture. the indentification and imitation of a novel business or venture
4.rent-seeking venture. the founding of a business that utilizes standards, regulations, and laws to share in some of the value of an existing enterprise.
Four steps to starting a business.
1.The funding team or individual has the necessary skills or acquires them.
2.The team members identify the opporunity that attracts them and matches their skills. They create a solution to match the opportunity.
3.They acquire (or possess) the financial and physical resources necessary to launch the business by locating investors and partners.
4.They complete an arrangement or contract with their partners, with investors, and within the founder team to launch the business and share the ownership and wealth created.

Internship- week 10

I learned four levels of subordinate maturity, matched with their most appropriate leadership style. very immature subordinates, low to moderate maturity subordinates, moderate to high maturity subordinats and high maturity subordinates. The last one are independent, motivated, and highly skilled. They are best handled with a delegating style and need neither task direction nor the emotional apron strings that relationship oriented behaviors provide. In the very beginning, I had trouble acting managerial in my role as this small insurance agency-despite having only one employee. By learning slowly shifting the balance between task and relationship oriented behaviors, I am able to nudge subordinates toward higher maturity levels. I also negotiate a behavioral shift with subordiantes, finanally immature subordinats can be found at every level. Anyone can slip up when moving into unfamiliar jobs, even in senior levels of management.

Internship-Week 9

I learned from MBA about leadership. THere is four basic combinations or leadership styles exist. The situational leadership model takes a "how to" approach in arguing that effective leadership requires the right combination of task-oriented behavior and relationship-oriented behavior with subordinates. Four basic combinations are telling, selling participating and delegating. The leadership between Sammy and I are more like participating style, it is a more collaborative and emotional leadership style focusing on consultation, coaching and supportivenness. Little or no task direction is provided. Sammy does everything she needs to do, and after having trained a month, she knew what her job is.
The real trick is to match the appropriate behavioral style to the maturity level of the subordinate. Maturity consists of both 1. job readiness (level of skills and experience) and 2. pyschological willingness (level of self respect, confidence and motivation). As the subordinate's maturity level incerases, leader should become less task-oriented. Conversely, relationship oriented behaviors should increase up to moderate levels of subordinate maturity and then slowly decline.

Project Management- Chapter 11 Ideas

Project team members have four major communication needs: responsibility, coordination, status and authorization.
Whether you are assigning work to an individual performer or to a vendor, these following basic rules should be observed:
1. Explain the deliverables.
2. Be clear about the level of effort expected and the due dates.
3. If you know of any obstacles they can expect or special information they'll need, make sure they know it too.
4. Hand out work assignments personally, allowing plenty of time for questions and discussions.
Then kickoff meeting really kicks me off. I like this subject too. A kickoff meeting usually marks the beginning of the execution phase of a project. By this time, the staement of work and project plan have been approved and the team is assembled. It is an opportunity to celebrate initiation of the project.
Project status meeting. A good project status meeting meets a lot of communication needs within the project team. status meetings give the project manager an opportunity to
1. increase team cohesion
2. keep the team informed about project developments from sources external to the team
3. identify potential problems or share solutions to common problems
4. ensure the team understands the progress of the project and works together to determine any neccesary changes to the project plan.
5. make sure that the entire team shares the responsibility of meeting all the project objectives.
In additon to the basic rules for running an effective meeting, the following guidelines are useful for running a project status meeting:
1. be prepared
2. including all the related members
3. use the meeting to disseminate decisions made by management or customers.
4. using the open task report, get the status of every task that should have been started or completed since the last status meetings
5. take advantage of the fact that the entire team is availabale to consider ehat action needs to be taken on any problems
6. don't try to solve problesm that are too big for the meeting or that don't include everyone present.
7. review the readiness for future takes on the OTR.
8. review project logs.

Project Management- Chapter 10 Ideas

After having read Chapter 10, I like the framework for building high-performance team. They break the components of a strong project team into trhee areas that work together in the same way that an arch works to support a bridge. Teamwork arch shares the same properties as a structual arch:
1. A strong team requires each of the individual components.
2. The strength of the arch lies in the way the pieces work together.
3. Weakness in one component cannot be compensated for by strength in another component.
Point A Point B
Positive Team Environment Collaborative Problem Solving
Ground rules Continuous learning
Team Identity Conflict Management
Listening skills Decision Modes
Meeting Management Problem analysis
A positive team enviroment, collaborative problem solving capability and leadership, these are the three primary components of a high performance team.

Project Management-Chapter 9 Ideas

This Chapter taught me about balancing the trade-off among cost, schedule and quality. Good project management does deliver more for less, but there are still limits. Three most common porject constraints are time, money and resource. Three levels of balancing a porject: project, business and enterprose.
There are many ways to balance projects as there are projects:
1. reestimate the project , you will either positive, negative and best application possible impacts.
2. changing task assignments to take advantage of schedule float. it involves moving people to critical path tasks from tasks that are ont on the critical path in order to reduce the duration of the critical path.
3. add people to the project. it can either increase the numer of tasks that can be done at the same time or increase the number of people working on each task.
4. increase productivity by using experts from within the firm
5. increase productivity by using experts from outside the firm
6. outsourcing the entire project or a significant portion of it. this method carves out a portion of the project and handing it to an external firm to manage and complete. It is especially attractive if this portiion of project requires specialized skills not posessed by internal workers.
7. crashing the schedule. It can emply any of the alternatives listed in this chapter to reduce the duration of critical path tasks, but it takes the extra step of producing acost/schedule trade off table.
8. working overtime. The easiest way to add more labor to a project is not to add more people, but to increase their working hours.
Balancing at the business case level
1. reduce the product scope. it will be to reduce the functionality of the end product.
2. fixed phase scheduling. the project phases are apportioned from the top down and scheduled according to the required completion date.. At the end of each phase, the scope of the project is reevraluated to fit the remaining schedule.
3. fast tracking. it involves overlapping rasks that are traditionally done in sequence.
4. phased product delivery. Information systems composed of several subsystems.
5. do it twice- quickly and correcly
6. change the profit requirement. If your project needs to cost less in order to be competitively priced, this method recommends reducing the profit margin.
Balancing at the enterprise level
1. oursourcing allows you to purse more porjects with the same number of people
2. phased product delivery means tat more projects can be run at the same time
3. shifting work to the customer on several projects will free up enough people to purse one or two additional projects.
4. reducing product scope on several projects requires cost /benefit trade-off analysis among projects
5. using prodctivity tools can be a strategic decision to improve productivity across projects.

Project Management- Chapter 8 Ideas

I have learned three golden rules for all projects in this Chapter. These rules emphasize the appropriate attitude toward estimation. First, have the right people make the estimates. Three factors define who the right people are: 1. The estimators must be experienced with the work they are estimating. No matter which techniques are used, estimating is always based on an understanding of the work to be done.2. The people who will actually perform the work should also be involved in estimating it. They will have the best grasp of their own limitations. They will know, for example, just how much time their schedule will allow them to work on this project.
3. The estimators must understand the goals and techniques of estimating. Even when people understand the task at hand, they should not be allowed to estimate their own work until they learn both how to estimate and the goal of estimating.
Second, base the estimate on experience. Even though no two projects are alike, there are often enough similarities that perfomance data frompast projects are useful in estimating future ones. Professional estimators constantly use new performance data to refine their estimating models.
Third, don't negotiate the estimate-negotiate the equilibrium. There are effective ways of countering attempts to meddle with an estimate. Dickering over cost or schedule alone throws the entire estimate out of equilibrium. While no estimate will go unchallenged, the proper defense is to demonstrate how the estimat eis tied to the product specification and work breakdown structure. When estimates are developed correctly, they can be reduced only by changing the product or the productivity of the workers.

Project Management-Chapter 7 Ideas

In this Chapter, I learned tasks that can be performed at the same time are known as concurrent tasks. There are two basic rules when graphing task relationships with a network diagram. 1. define task relationships only between work package. Even though a project might have hundreds of work package and several levels of summary tasks, keep the sequence constrsints at the work package level. Summary tasks are simmply groups of work packages, so it wouldn't make sense to put a task relationship between a summary task and its work package. 2. Task relationships should reflect only sequence constraints between work packages, not resource constraints. Changing a network diagram becuase of resource constraints is the most common error in building network diagrams. The fact that there aren't enought people or other resources to work on multiple tasks at the same time is irrelevant. Regardless of resources, the tasks will still have to be performed in the same order.
I also learned five steps of planning: planning, identify task relationships, estimate work packages, calculate an initial schedule, and assign and level resources.

OB-Reflection Strengthen Others Scenarios 2

Think of a time when you felt powerless, weak, and insignificant as a resulte of somthing a leader said or did. What specifically did he or she do?

I was once very disappointed by my previous employer. He ran a financial company, and I was his assistant. I answered all the incoming phone calls for him and managed his daily schedule, very heavy work load. In addition, he was a kind of boss who never gave out nice compliments, and I always saw him being mad and unsatisfied with employees, and it seemed no one could make him happy. I worked for him about eight months, and I was like living in hell. One thing that happened later encouraged me leaving his company. I had one big car accident due to tight work study schedule and not enough rest. My left eye's pupil was injured seriously, and I needed to have surgery. Then I asked him for three days off, he was angry and not allowed. I was very upset and depressed about what he had done, then I decided to quit.

OB-Reflection Strengthen Others Scenarios 1

Scenarios 1:
Thinking of a time when, as a direct result of something a leader said or did, you felt personally powerful and capable. write down the actions the leader took that contributed to your feeling powerful, strong, capable. and effective - the master of your own experence. Be as specific as you can.

The leader's name is Orison Swett Marden, he was an American writer associated with the New Thought Moverment. He also held a degree in medicine and a successful hotel owner. He once had a quote, which I personally felt powerful and capable, and I really want to share this. He said:" The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment, it is not in luck or chance, or help of others, it is in yourself alone." The first time I read this was from my son's camp flyers, then I am so wondering who he is, and what he had experienced made him quoting this, then I went to internet and search his informaiton. Orison Marden was born in Thornton Gore, New Hampshire to Lewis and Martha Marden. When he was three years old, his mother died at the age of 22, leaving Orison and his two sisters to the care of their father, a farmer, hunter and trapper. When Orison was seven years old, his father died from injuries incurred while in the wood, and the children were shuttled from one gardian to another, with Orison working as a hired boy to earn his keep. All the tragedies didn't beat him down, he set out to improve himself and his life circumstances. He persevered in advancing himself and graduated from Boston University in 1871. He later graduated from Harvard with MD and LL B later. Then he created the New Thought Movement., he focused on the subjects of success, the cultivation of will-power, and positive thinking. Marden believed that our thoughts influence our lives and our life circumstances. I couldn't completely understand what he really meant when I read his quote for the first time, then time by time, little by little, now I knew what he exactly would like to express. The biggest war field is in people's mind. What you are becoming is more important than what you are accomplishing. We always struggle for higher level life, but we fairly think what we are really in need. A positive mental attitude makes my life happier.

Internship Week 8

This week, Sammie and I continued working on our impression management. We were not only focusing on how we were dressed up, but also we watched out our words and behaviors closely and carefully, and we always pointed out what we had done best and reminded each other the bad part. We tried to listen to customers' every single word, and being a good listener. We dressed up in a right way and showed our attention to what customer said, and we got amazing compliments from customers. Meanwhile, we started sharing our background, educational and life experience, create the good qualities imagine you want to be prsent, very possiitive messages, clearly express our thoughts and ideas, and little by little, we built up great relationship with our customers, and we felt stronger support from them. I and Sammie serously started to be aware of how we communicate with our body language, keep smile on our face always, open our mind and making warm welcomed eye contact can really drug your customers. We are happy to use what I learned from MBA to help our business.

internship week 7

I and Sammie used dressing very casually in the office since we don't think how important our apperance will affect the business. However, this week OB taught us about impression management, which means how to dress proprate becomes very important in our career success. People perceive others by impressions. When you are in an appointment, especially the first time interview, people always judge you by the first impression which may related to your appearance, the way you talk and how you are dressed. If you leave great impression to customers, you may close the deal sucessfully and easily. So how to creat good presonal strategy in impression management to help your business. I learned be yourselfe in good way, self promote, self presentation, etc. I and Sammie decided to practice this in my office, and we kindly dressed up formally everyday, and on the first day, we didn't feel well since the suits were not comfortable at all and the skirts were made us crazy. However, we felt the walk-in customer really treated us diffrently, more respectful than before. They were more polite and serious on the deal. We felt it works.

Internship-week6

WBS is the thing I learn recently from MBA course. WBS means work breakdown structure. Because a good WBS is easy to read, people often assume that it is also easy to write. This, however, is a false assumption, I used to deliver poor WBS before. But now I am trying to use what I learn to write accurate WBS, and it is really useful in planning, communicating and tracking the project. I and Sammy are really happy about the results. We followed those three criteria for a successful WBS. First, the WBS must be broken down starting at the top. we even put very little small things into WBS. Second, work packages must add up to the summary task. We used to omit necessary tasks, but now we are trying to avoid this problem by taking extra care when adding up the products of all the work packages below any summary task. Third, Each summary task and work package must be named as an activity that produces a product, giving each task a descriptive name that includes a stron very-the activity-and a strong noun. I and Sammy applied those rules to our work, and we find wer are in absolut control of our each project, break the project into small, meaningful, manageable units of work.

Internship-week5

In this week, I and Sammy kept working on those customers who had accident and were eager for our help. By helping them through the accident process, we learned a lot about claim. It will be a lot easier for our future related work. Each accident we got, we considered as a project, and we become project manager. First, we have an conversation with customer and get to know when and where the accident happened, and how it happened, and what do the customer think about the accident, which means who bears the fault from his/her point of view. Then we take the other party's information from cusotmers. After that, we start contacting with the other party's insurance company on the accident if the accident was not our insured's fault per our insured's opinion. Otherwise, we help our insured repairing their car. Customer's satisfaction is our project's goal. Based on this goal, we are very patient. Even when customer are very upset, we can calm them down little by little. We met some difficulties especially if there was dispute. We can't make everyone happy, but I know we tried our best. And we got pay-back. One of customer agree to buy life insurance with us. It works when we use what I learned from book.

Internship-Week4

On this week, I and Sammy really focused on the claim handling. We always got cusotmer's complain about their bad claims experience. Meanwhile, we were actually very frustrated when we heard the customer reporting their either car or home accident. In fact, it is part of our service. We need to correct our philosophy first in order to help our customer. So I had conversation with Sammy, and I think we should get rid of our frustration first, slip into client's shoes. Their car got hit, and their house has damage, and they had to face it even it was not their fault. If we can comfort customers and try to solve their problems, we will not only reinforce our relationship with customer but also might getting more business and referrals. So the first accident has been reported to office, we tried our best and gave out enough patient to cusotmers to go through step by step with them. After it is almost finished, we called cusotmer for his rating, he gave us very nice compliments. He indicated he would love to stick with us whenever he needs insurance, and we also cross sell life insurance to him, and he said he would consider it seriously. I think it should be one of the effective marketing methods. We will continue to work with our customer on their claims.

Project Management- Chapter 6 Ideas

To me, the hardest part of making a work breakdown structure is getting started. The WBS includes so much that it can appear over whelming. A good way to begin is to review the work you have already done during project definition and risk management.
Name all the tasks required to produce deliverables. For example, if a WBS in a landscaping project lists lawn or shrubs, we need ot add verbs to each task name. the next steop is to break down each task into the lower level, detaled tasks required to produce the procuct. This sounds easy. right? don't be deceived. Breaking down the WBS can be the most difficult step in the planning process, becuase it is where the detailed process for building the product is defined. for example, a high level task may seem easy to understand, but upon breaking it down, the project manager may find that he is unable to list all the detailed tasks required to complete it. At this point, it is time to inveite more team members, with diverse skills, into the planning process.
A WBS is especially difficult to create when I have a new project ground. I usually spent lots lots of time planning the project and most of that time is spent on the WBS. That is usually a lot longer than I oringinally intended. But by spending the time to get a detailed strategy worked out, I can see I could actually save a lot of time.

Project Management- Chapter 5 ideas

I read Chapter 5, and I had some ideas to share. There are basically five categories of classic risk response strategies: accepting, avoiding, contigency plans, transferring and mitigating the risk.

1. accepting risk, it means you understand the risk, its consequences and probability, and you choose to do nothing about it. If the risk occurs, the project team will react.

2. avoid the risk. we can always avoid the risk by choosing not to do part of the project or by choosing a lower-risk option for meeting project objectives. This deletion of part of the project culd affect more than the project-the busienss risk could also be affected.

3.contingency plans. Monitor a risk by choosing some predictive indicatior to watch as the project nears the risk point. Contingency plans are alternative courses of action prepared before the risk even occurs. It is second plan, and it can be looked on as a kind of insurance and , like insurance policeis, then can be very expensive.

4. transfer the risk. even though paying for insurance may be expensive, assuming all the risks yourself could cost a great deal more. More large projects purchase insurance for a variety of risks, ranging from theft to fire. Effectively transferred risk to the insurance company is used by a lot of cases.

5.mitigate the risk. it is jargon for work hard at reducing the risk. it covers nearly all the actions the project team can take to overcome risks from the project enviroment.

Project Management - Chapter 4 ideas

The communication is very important to a project manager. So how will communicaiton take place? There are now myriad ways to stay in constant communication. Internet and intranet technologies allow more people to shre information simultaneously. Status reports are now posted on project web sites, and videoconferencing enables project teams to be spread around the world and still meet face to face. But with all these otions, the question still remains the same, what is the best way to get the information delivered? one thing is certain: technology doesn't have all the answers. Putting a project's status on a web site. for instance, doesen't ensure that the right people will see it. we need to consider the audience and its specific communication needs. For example, becuase high level executives are ususally very busy, trying to meet with them weekly- or sending them a lengthy report - may not be realistice. A communication plan is formally accepted as part of the project rules or is just a guide for the project manager, the important thing is that communication has been thoughtfully planned, not left to chance.

Project Management- Chapter 3 ideas

Running projects requires a lot of attention to detail so this quality is no surprise. As I assign project tasks, I expect that they be performed well and with the proper attetion to detail so that we aren't presenting the customer with an error filled deliverable. I went trhough that process once with a business analyst and a frustrated customer and I never want to go there again. I did come out of that project with a lessons learned however - peer review every deliverable possible. Repeated submissions of documents with typos can make a customer uneasy and cause them to lose confidence in the team's ability to deliver quality on anything.
It is important for team members to be able to stand in front of the customer and provide updates when needed. Team members are expected to make periodic presentations to the customer or executive management. They are also expected to hold discussions with them at key points throughtout the project and it is important that they can conduct themselves in a way that will instill confidence in the team's ability to deliver on the engagement.

Project Management-Chapter 2 ideas

What qualities do we seek in our project team members? I have to admit, this is a tough one for me. Not because I don't have opinion - but becuase I rarely get to choose. As project managers we are often working in a matrixed organizations and we can identify what we need, but rarely do we get to indicate who we will get.
We often suggest who I want, but we all know how well that works out. Resources are usually overcommitted as it is and chances are the ones you want are the best and probably not all available at the same time to grace your project and help create a super team.
So, even if we don't always get to choose who is on our project teams, there are certianly still qualities we look for right? if those qulities aren't present and they become an issue on the project, we are likely to seek a personnel change - so it is nice to go into an engagement knowing what you need.

Project Management- Chapter 1 ideas

Project management is a discipline- a set of methods, therories and techniques that have evolved to manage the complexities of work that is unique and temporary. Even as the discipline continues to evolve, it can claim a proven track record. Millions of projets around the globe routinely rely on the concepts found in this and other project management books.
Project management techniques cover a range of topics:
1. communicating with team members and stakeholders from project conception trhough completion
2. estimating the effort, cost, and the time will take to deliver a project, and evaluating whether the beefits of the project will justify the forecasted costs
3.rapidly building cohesive project teams that are highly productive even though team members have not worked together before
4.coordinating the actions of a diverse workforce, assembled specifically for a project, to achieve the goal for the lease pollisble expense and in a resonable time frame.
5. accounting for progress and prodctivity to provide accurate forecasts of project completion dates and budget amounts.
6. managing the varying staffing needs that result from constantly running multiple projects concurrently, all of which share a common pool of personnel.

ProjectManagement-HomeworkAssignment

The project I would like to do is helping USA students, retirnees and the people interested in doing business with Chinese, in China to learn Chinese by going to China and immerse themselves in Chinese culture. As the whole world can see, China is the most dynamic country on not only economy, but all the other fields. Learning Chinese and understanding their culture will become trend. I named my company Ear3 Inc, and I certainly will be the project manager. Obviously, I will be the only one working for this company at present. But I do have so many sources to use, and I definitely need outside help to finish the processing. Cost, schedule and quality are the three primary variables of a project. My focus is delivering high quality on time and under budget. My goals are building up website within a short time, having contract with one picked Chinese University, and marketing my website.
Planning is very important step, and it usually puts together the details of how to meet my project's goals, given the constrains. Common estimating and scheduling techniques will help me lay out who will help me do the work, when it will be accomplished, and how much it will cost.

Internship-Week3

My internship starts from this week. I talked to my district manager Marte and his assitant Robert, and I also had conversation with my assistant Sammy about my internship. They all indicated they would support me 100%. I worked about 10 hours a day, from 8:00 am to 6:00pm, so it is total about 50 hours this week. The major task I started this week was having Sammy pulled out all the coming renewal customers from our data base, and I picked 25 of them, who I think is good and potential clients. All of them have auto policies with me, but they might need to increase their coverage. It was very nice for most of them to hear my calls since they know I was caring about their business, only a few had complains towards company's high rate. So my chanllenges are that I can't make sale to them, but I have to listen to their complaints. Company's rate is the thing that is really out of my control. I can't do anything to change the rate for clients, even I would love to . Customers don't understand this, and they think mostly like I am the one that can offer them whatever price they feel comfortable. However, most of my calls to my cusomters was sucessful, some of them increased their liability coverage, and some of them promised they would consider their life insurance with me. What I learned this week is communicating with your clients is the most important way to keep their business. I need to be more patient and more understandable.

OB-homeworkassignment1

I most admire person is Mandela, the leader of South Africa. South Africa team just won the game competing with France yesterday in Soccer World Cup. It was great game. And coincidently, I just watched a movie about Mandela on my way flying back from China last month, and I love that movie too. It talked about how Mandela led the South Africa Soccor team defeated England team and gained their Championship in world cup after a long time down. He is an amazing leader. He is courageous first, secondly because of his strengths, and thirdly becuase he had a vision.
Leaders were seen to be courageous in terms of saying and doing what they believed in despite the consequnses and the opionion of the crowd. They chanllenge the stautus quo. Because of Mandela's strength, not physcially, but mentally, he led the country going through the governing transition smoothier. It looked like one of his natural charactors. This strength manifested itself in his belief and valuses, vision and determination to carry out this vision, also influence and reassure his followers. In other words, the good leader has making decision skills. Mandela were described as vsionaries with a passion and determination to follow a vision that they could articulate clearly. He showed strength and was far ranging.

Project Management Week 1

The spring program was over, and now i am back for summer section. Still with so much interests, I would like to learn more about MBA. However, it will be tougher, so many courses registered in summer, I hope I have enough time and energy to handle it. Project management is the discipline of planning, organizing and managing resources to bring about the successful completion of specific project goals and objectives. It is sometimes conflated with program management, however technically a program is actrually a higher level construct: a group of related and somehow interdependent projects.
Once you have planned your project, turn your attention to developing severals that will enable you to be successful. Goals should be SMART- specific, measurable, agreed upon, realistic and time based. Specific-well defined, clear to anyone that has a basic knowledge of the project. Measurable-know if the goal is obtainable and how far away completion is, know when it has been achieved. Agree Upon-agreement with all th stakeholders what the goals should be. Ralistic-within the availability of resources, knowledge and time. Time based-enough time to achieve the goal, not too much time, which can affect project performance. I think my goal is very SMART.

Strategy Chapter 9 (3)

What business is it in?
the value chain and integration helps to answer the question
Value Chain is easy understand concepts. Integration has forward and backward, When a company operates in ares further down the value chain it is said be forwardly integrated toward the consumer. If a business operates in ares closer to the raw materials, then the company is said to be backwardly integrated. Integration also has vertical and horizontal. Company that participate at many levels of the value chain is called vertcially integrated, If its competitior at the same level in the value chaine, it is called horizontal integration,
Strategy is a big picture, thre levels of strategy Funcitonal strategy, Business strategy and corpate strategy.
Functional strategy is those operational methods and value adding activities that management chooses for its business.
Business strategy is those battle plans used ot fight the competition in the industry that a company currently participtes in. They are on a highter level than functional strategies, but there is obviously an overlap between bow a company opertes and how it cometes.
Corporte stategy looks at the whole gamut of business opportunities.

Strategy Chapter 9 (2)

Mission Statement is the thing I really like to know when I reach out a new company. It is actually a company speak about their goals. A mission statement should be a short and concise statement of goals and priorities. Unfortunately they are often long, bland, and tedious documents. When senior executives return from expensive executive programs from one of the top ten shcolls, frequenttly they forma a mission statement task force or hri a consutant for this purpose. The exercise has a lagre element of keeeping up with the Joneses, if a company incorporates a mission staement in its annual report, then all of its competitors go off to cook up theris. The shortest statement I really like is GOT Milk?

Strategy Chapter 9 (1)

Strategy is a long term approach to implementing a firm's business plans to achieve its business objectives.
Business conditons are always changing, so it is a good practice to priodically step back and take a hard look at your business strategy and how you are implementing it. The prime aim of a business stategy is to provide superior value, differentiation, and core competencies for an organization. The paper provides an insight into the mission, goals, and objectives of business strategy. Forming a successful busienss strategy involves creating a first-rate competitive strategy, business must develop a plan that addresses ways to compete in their respecive markets. Seven S model is very useful: Structure, systems, style, staff, skills, strategy and superordiante goals.

Economics Chapter 8 (3)

A country analysis is four steo process that attempts to organize all available economic, social, political, and geographic data for strategy developement.
1. analyze past performance
2. Identify the country's strategy
3.analyze a country's context
4. Make a prediction Based on steps 1, 2 and 3

Economics Chapter 8 (2)

Competitive Market Structure
In addition to elasticity of demand, the competitive environment drives supply, demand and prices. The greater the competition in a given market, the more sensitive the market price is to changes in suply and demand. Four basice market structure:
Pure Monopoly, If there is only one seller with a unique roduct, then the seller is said to have a pure monopoly,
Oligopoly. When ther are only a few suppliers for a product for which there are few substitutes, then what prevails is sna oligopoly. with only a few competitors, prices can be maintained at high levels if the producers choose not to compete on rice. If not, the market plyers can engage in price wars that can push prices down.
Monopolistic Competition. In a market where there are many producers with products that can be differentiates, monopolistic competition can occur.
Pure Competition. In pure competition there are many competitiors selling a similar, substituable product. Marketing does not affect the price producers can get.

Economics Chapter 8 (1)

Two kinds: Micoreconomics or Macroeconomics. Micro deals with the supply and demand equation of individuals, families, companies, or industries. this branch of economics that analyzes the market behavior of individual consumers and firms in an attempt to understan the decision making process of firms and households. It is concerned with the interaction betweeen individual buyers and sellers and the factors that influence the choices made by nuyers and sellers.. in particular, microeconomics focuses on patterns of supply and demand and the dertmination of price an doutput in individual marktets.
Macro concerns itself with the economies of cities, countries, or the world. Mircro is less glamorous than macro but is a little more practival. this branch examines economy wide phenomena such as changes in unemployment, national income, rate of growth, gross domestic products, inflation and price levels.

Operations Chapter 7 (3)

Operations classes takes the concept of standards a bit further and deal with ttheissue of quality, which is vital to america's competitiveness. What is quality, anyway? quality only means that the product or service meets the standards set by either the manufacturer or the onsumer. quality does not necessarily mean a flawless product or service, nor does it mean the most expensive product in its class like a rols royce. Quality products perform as expectedMudane things such as paper clips could be considered of high quality if ther are not rusted and hold paper together well.
There are three important quality gurus whose prescriptions are touted as the cure ofr america's torubled manufacturing.

Operations Chapter 7 (2)

The CRM cycle is customer relationship management, encompasses five functions:
Product developement----research, concept development
Sales---ordering, cross-selling, leads, forecasing, bidding and quoting
Superior Customer Experience-personaliztion, service, queue management
Rentention and win back customers-loyalty programs, outbound efforts
Targeting and Marketing-Promotions, pricing, segmentation, behavior modeling, customer scoring, analytics

Operations Chapter 7 (1)

The six m's capacity
Methods---Have you chose the best method of accomplishing the operational task? are the machine placed in the most efficient factory-floor configuration.
Materials---Are the materials you need available and of good quality? do you have the capability to purchase efficiently, store, and distribute the materials when needed by the production process
Manpower---do you have well trained and productive workers and managers to accomplish your production goals? are your workers sufficiently trained to operate any new technology that you may acquire?
Machinery--do you have the right tools for the job? do your machines meet your needs: capabilites, speed, reliability, technology?
Money--Is the cash to fund production availabel as needed? is the investment in facotries, equipment andinventories justified in light of the entire organizations's priorities, capatbilites, and other opportunities?
Messages-- do you have a system for sharing accurate and timely information among all members of the production team-people and machines?

Finance Chapter 6 (3)

There are three key elements to the process of financial management:
1. Financial planning
Management need to ensure that enough funding is available at the right time to meet the needs of the business. In the short term, funding may be needed to invest in equipment and stocks, pay employees and fund sales made on credit. In the medium and long term, funding may be required for significant additions to the productive capacity of the business or to make acquistions.
2. Financial Control
Financial control is acritically important activity to help the business ensure that the business is meeting its objectives. Finacial control addresses questions such as: are assets being used efficiently? are the businessess assets secure? do management act in the best interest of shareholders and in accordance with business rules?
3 Financial decision making
The key aspects of financial decision making relate to investment, financing and dividends.
investments must be financed in some way-however there are always financing alternatives that can be considered. For example, it is possible to raise fiance from selling new shares, borrowing from banks or taking credit from suppliers

Finance Chapter 6 (2)

Financial Management can be defined as:
The management of the finances of a buisiness/organisation in order to achieve financial objectives
Taking a commerical busienss as the msot common organisational structure, the key objectives of financial mamagement would be to:
*create wealth for the business
*generate cash, and
*provide an adequate returnon investment bearing in mind the risks that the business is taking and the resources invested

Finance Chapter 6 (1)

Whether you intends to be a finance specialist or a management generlist, corporate finance and financial markets are an integral part of the vocabulary of business. The Finance is the foundation in corporate and finacnial markets that support every business funcion, For specialists, the broad of elecives in the finance major, offered by faculty who are themselves continually advancing the frontiers of thought, givies structure and intensity to training and preparing.

Quantitative Analysis Chapt 5(3)

Cumulative Distribution Functions is a cuulative view of probability distribution, It takes a probability mass funciton, such as a bell curve. The common question is asked what is the prbability that the outcome is less than or equal to that value? the normal curve tells you what the probability is for a given outcome. The cumulative distribution function (cdf)completely decribeds the prbability distribution of a real valued random variable. A CDF captures the range of possible outcomes of many valued uncertain quantities. CDF plots display exactly the sme iformation as do histograms. The difference is that the histogram values are summed as the fluorescence intensity increases, thus, the CDF begins at 0% and ends at 100%. CDF plots are extremely useful for quickly finding the fluorescence of a distribution corresponding to any given percentile. The sample plot below shows how to find the numbes.

Quantitative Analysis Chapt 5(2)

Regression is the study of relationships among variables, a principal purpose of which is to predict, or estimate the value of one variable fromknown or assumed values of other variables related to it.
Variable of inerest: to make predictions or estimates we must idendify the effective predictors of the variable of interest: which variables are important indicators and can be measured at the least cost, which carry only a little informaiton, and which are redundant. Predicting the future: predicting a change over time or extrapolating from present conditons to furture conditions is not the function of regression analysis. To make estimate of the future, use time series analysis.
Linear regression models are used in a variety of business situations to determine relationships between variables that analysts believe intuitively to be related. Regresson analysis involves gathering sufficient data to dtermine the relationship between the variables.
Multiple regression: where there are two or more predictors, multiple regression analysis is employed.

Quantitative Analysis Chapt 5(1)

A cash flow statement is one of the most important financial statements for a project or business. The statement can be as simple as a one page analysis or may involve several schedules that feed information into a central statement. a cash flow statement is a listing of the flows of cash into and out of the business or project. Think of it as my checking account at the bank. Deposits are the cash inflow and withdrawals are the cash outflows. The balance in my checking account is my net cah flow at specific point in time. It is listing of cash flows that occurred during the past accouting period. A projection of future flows of cash is called a cash flow budget. it is not only concerned with the amount of the cash flows but also the timing of the flows. many cash flows are construected with multiple time periods. It may list monthly cash inflows and outflows over a year's time. it not only projects the cash balance remain at the end of the year but also the cash balance for each month. working capital is an important part of a cash flow analysis. it is defined as the amount of money needed to facilitate business operations and transactions, and is calculated as current assets less current liabilities. Computing the amount of working capital giges you a quick analysis of the liquidity of the business over the future accounting period. if working capital appears to be sufficient, developing a cash flow budget may be not critical, But if working capital appers to be insufficient, a cash flow budget may highlight liuidity problems that may occur during the coming year.

Orgnanization Behavior Chapter 4 (3)

The leadership VCM Model proposes that vision, commitment and management skills are three characters in leader's personal profile. To understand an organization, we have to consider all of its components. Organization are networks of related parts. six elements define organizations, stategy, plicies and procedures, organizaional structures, systems, climate, and culture.
Strategy. it describes an explicit or implicit plan for success in the marketplace.
Plicies and procedures. Policies are formal rules that , in all but small companies, are captured in a handbookd while procedures are the obervable ways in which a company conducts business,
Organizaitona structures. It is a frequent subject of discussion in corporate meetins and is also an important tool for managing organizaional behavor. Most company use some mix of structures to accomplish their goals. Line and staff employees can be organized along the following lines: functional, product, customer, geographic, divisonal, matrix and amorphous. Funcitonal form divids work by tasks, such as advertising, accounting, finance and sales, services. Divisions are independent businesses operating under the umbrella of a parent corporation. Matrix structure departs from the principle of unity of command. The matrix is common in buiness involved in large and comlex projects tht require highly specialized skills. Amorphous structure is no formal struture at all. it is free bird, highly motivated and productive managers create and dissovle reporting relationships as the task at hand requires. Hybrid are compsed of a mix of operational structures.
Systems. Each organization develops systems for allocating, controlling and monitoring money, things and people. it fall into one of six categories: money, object, people allocation, control and monitoring. future anticipation, people reward and incentives, integrative.
Climate. Refers to the emotional state of an organization's members.
Culture. It is the mix of behaviors, thoughts, beliefs symbols and artifacts that are conveyed to people throughout an organization over time.
These six elements dynamically affect one another. each element interacts with the enviroment as a business strives toward its goals.

Organizaitonal behavior Chapter 4(2)

Motivation, it is so important to everyone for doing everything, it is an elusive animal that all organizations want to capture. Motivation = expectation of work will lead to performance x expectation performance will lead to reward x value of reward. Behavior is motivated by the urge to satify needs, motivation will be enhanced by maximizing the motivators or satisfiers on the job and minimizing the dissatisfiers or maintence factors. A promotion or an award can be a satifier, Maintenance fators don't necessarily bring hapiness, but they are expected. A safe place to work and a living wge are typical maintenance factors. employee motivation is a function of meeting an emplyee's hierarchy of needs. The hyerarchy is frequently depicted as a pyramid. The need for food and water is at the bottom of the pyramid, followed by the need for safty, the need to belong, and the need for status, while self-actualization needs are seen as the highest order of needs, the need for achievement, the need of power, and the need for affiliation. Just like discipline children, we give them what they want, but they need to follow your order and do what they need to do.

Organizational Behavior Chapter 4 (1)

OB teaches how to deal with human challenges in the workplace. Human challenges include follow the rules, sexism, racial, prejudice, etc... Three steps to solve the OB problems: problem definition, analysis and action planning. Pay attention to the cause of the problem, not the problem itself, find out the gap. Problem has three levels: within or between certian people, within or between grops, within the whole organization. , each level had to successfully solve it. Find most important problem and solve them first as priority is the source problems. Eliminate the source, eliminate the symptoms. Second, analysis. after defining the gaps and using causal chains, we link the problems to their causes, try to understand the causes. As in a marketing lan, there are many possible avenues for action available to achieve a sucessful resolution to a problem. Third, action planinng. set specific goals, define activites, resources needed, responsibilities, set a timetable for action, forecast outcomes, develop contingencies, formulate a detaled plan of action in time sequence, implement, supervise execution and evaluate based on goals in step one.

Ten day MBA Chapter 3 (financial statement)

Financial Statements include three big parts:
the balance sheet, the income statement and the statement of cash flows.
The balance sheet
It presents the assets owned by the company, the liabilities owed to others, and theaccumulatedinvestment of its owners. The balance sheet is the foundation for all accounting records, and it includes assets(cash, inventory, customers receivables, equipment, buildings), liabilities (bank debt,amounts owed to suppliers, prepaid accounts, taxes owed and wages owed to employees) and owner's equity(common stock, additional paid, retained earnings)
Assets = liabilities + owner's equity
Some concepts I am not familiar with, such as
Liquidity: it means the ability of an asset to be converted to cash. Current liquidity includes cash, accounts receivable from customers and inventory. Long-term liquidity includes property, machine, equipment.
Working capital: current assets -current liabilies = net working capital
Owner's equity
The income statement, shows the flow of activity and transcations over specific period. There are revenues from sales and expenses relation to those revenues. When revenues and expenses are properly matched using accrual accounting, the difference is income.
Gross Margin=sales-the direct cost of the goods or services sold
Beginning inventory + newe purchases - ending inventory = cost of goods sold
Assets=liabilities+Owner's Equity
CA+NCA=CL+NCL+OE
NCA=CL+NCL+OE

Ten day MBA Chapter 3 (1)

I think accounting is the core of the business, sales make the company grow, and good accounting makes the company stay healthy. That is how important accounting is. All of your business activities are recorded, summarized and analyzed through accounting. We do business is for profit, and how much money does your company make? what does company own? and how much does your company owe others? how well did your company's operations perform? how does the company get the cash to fund itself? everything must eventually measured in dollars, and that is accounting coming from.
Accounting has many rules. Accounting's governing rules are called Generally accepted accodunting principles, GAAP. Before we enter into rules, we need familiar with concepts first.
1.The Entity. The whole business, or seperate individul unit.
2.Cash basis versus accrual accounting. Very small business can get all the accounting informaiton they need from registered checking account. Cah accounting tells you when and how much cash changed hands, but it doesn't try to match the costs of conducting business with their related sales. However, most big size companies use the accsdrual accounting method. accrual accounting recongnizes the financial effect of an activity when the activity takes place without regard to the movement of cash. Allocation and matching.
3.Transaction definition and objecgtivity. Accounting records only completed sales and have quantifiable"monetary value. Accountants have an objecitivity rule to guide them. There must be reasonable andverifiable evidence to support the transaction, such as contract.
4.Accounting conservation and historical costs. When companies incur losses that are probable and that can reasonaly be estimated, accountants record them, even if the losses have not actually been realized. when gains are expected, accsountants postpone recording them until they are actually realized. Accounting conservatism governs the preparation of financial statements. when in doubt, be conservative. Accounting records contain only measurable and verifiable properties, debts, sales and costs.
5.Going concern, Consistency concept, materiality.

Ten day MBA Chapter 2 (1)

This Chapeter is talking about business rules, which also called ethics. We know the collapese of Enron, Worldcom and other companys not too long ago. This chapter is intentd to make us awre of the importance of ethical implications in business decisions. Like you play a game with many people, and you need to follow the game rule if you want to stay, otherwise, you are out and punished. Many rules involved, including environmental issue, do your products carry potential hazard or toxic or pollution to the community? violate the human and animal rights? Corporte restrucuring, do your have any rules about layoff your employees? Employee privacy issues, do you give your employee regular health check, such aids and drug testing? what will you do if you find out the employee use the drugs? it should be included in company's policy or compliance book. Diversity issues, when you hire people, do you pay attention to the rece, ethnicity, gener and sexual orientaion?Any sexual harassement policy in your company's book? Conduct of multinational corportions, such as bribery, and other issues-antitrust actions, predatory pricing, insider trading. Those are all social responsibility approach related. There is core in the relations among the owner, the managers, the employees, the customers, suppliers, and local communities, even stakeholders, and it is rules. When it is very small start-up business, it seems talking about ethics is useless, but when the company starts hiring people and expanding, it starts really making sense. Relativism has four forms:
Navie ralativism, role relativism, social group relativism and cultural relativism. Many variables affect behavior that an outsider cannot possibly be privy to all the elements that went into making a decision.
Role relativism, Public roles call for a special morality that we separate from the individual making the choices.
Social relativism is akin to naive relativism.
Cultural relativism, there is no universal moral code by which to judge another society's moral code by which to judge another society's moral and ethical standards.
Stakeholder analysis give the guide to solve ethical dilemmas, including the harms and benefits, rights and responsibilities.

Ten day MBA Chapter 1 (6)

Economics. It actually talks about accouting. fixed cost or variable. The cost of materials and labor are variable costs, and fixed cost is such as rent or salary within a relevant range. Total costs are fixed plus variable cost. Break even is the point at which the fixed costs are recovered fromthe sale of goods but no profit is made. In this subject, I learned how to calculate the break even unit volume (dollar sales) and target volume (dollar sales), and how to get the payback periord on my investment? initial investment/annual profit?

Go back and revise the plan. Back to my dream business, I asked myself many question, imagine I start up my canvass painting business. Is my product marketable(profitable)? who is my target customer and market? Should I target another segment? what distribution chanel should I use? what price should I set?

Ten day MBA Chapter 1 (5)

Fifth: Development of the marketing mix. It talks about the relationship between product, place, promotion and price.
Product. Picking product or services are always the priorty in all the busienss. How does my product fit with my other products? how will I differential my product? and how does the product life cycle affect my plans, then differentiation, it might be due to features, fit , styling, reliability, packaging, sizes, service and brand naming.
Place. It means target markt, I have to choose an appropriate channel to fit with the product and the intended buyers. I learned I can use exclusive, selective or mass or intensive according to the size of my target market. After that, I can choose the channels of distribution, product specifics, need for control, and margin desired.
Promotion. We say sale. the promotion mission is inform about my product, prompt a need message, provide compelling message solve a need message, motivate action, increase usage, and reinforce brand or image, special promotions. Promotion is usually by advertising, personal selling, sales promotion(coupons, rebates, refunds, samples, premium, contests and sweepstakes and trade-directed sales promotions), public relations and publicity, direct selling.
Price. many ways to figure out your price, cost plus, perceived value to the consumer, skimming, penetration, the quality relationship, meet competition, meet profit goals based on the size of the market.

Ten day MBA Chapter 1 (4)

Forth, Distribution Analysis. This is critical! the choice of channel influences the price, and of course, the profit margins you will gain. There are many ways my product will reach the consumer, by mail order catalogs, internet ads. Commonly used channel intermediaries to the consumer are wholesalers, distributors, sales rep, sales forces, retailers. How do I set up the retail price, whosaler price and the manufator's price? For example, my canvas painting is $150 as retail price, so percent markup on selling price will be 50/150=0.33, then the distribution wholesale price should be 150*(1-0.33)=96, 96*(1-0.09)=87.36 So who has the power in the channels? it really depends what stage the products are. The new thing is about internet sell, from commerce, content, customer care and convert leads. I am still amazed by internet, and it must be a tech revolution to the world, it totally changed everybody's life and the business pattern. Now we see so many online store, and some people dreams to have their own online store. Internet definitely becomes one of main distribution source. Internet sale is powerful.

Ten day MBA Chapter 1 (3)

Third step: Analysis of company versus the competition. After step 2, I am thinking I might be able to beat my competition by designing a beautiful marketing plan. What is my products advatnages? what things do I do well? what are my weakness? how can my company capitalize on its strengths or exploit your competitors' weaknesses? SWOT(strengths, weakness, opportunities and treats. I found two competitors on google search,
http://www.wholesaleartsframes.com/, I found they are not only sell canvass paintings, but also frames, stretch bars, canvas, even canvas stretch machine, canvas plier, portraits, plexi glass and backing, artists paints and brushes, pencils, prestels, crayons, document tube... etc. They almost provide all the products canvass paintings related. full product lines are their advantage, and they are on the top of google search list. Advertising is good too.
http://www.oilpaintingsgallery.com/ , their website are fairly attractive, lowest price for highest quality paintings, 50% less than retail price, the only website that delivers huge framed paintings. they also list their own popular artist. They have special customer orders, and they clearly declare that they are only online art website to offer 90 days money back guarantee for all the orders.
At this time, I don't know what their market share in this canvas painting industry. My sense is larger company can produce more cheaply per unit because they can spread their cost over more units. A smaller company cannot afford to spend as much on either research or more effecient equipment because their sales cannot support it. The company wholesaleartsframes has wide breadth of line on their products, and oilpaintingsgallery has depth of line. so they cleverly use the blocking strategy to prevent competitors from gaining access to the channels of distribution. That is how they positioned themself in the market.

Ten day MBA Chapter 1 (2)

Second, I learned market analysis, which is to evaluate market sizes and trends, even your competitive and regulatory environment by asking three important questions, 1. what is the relevant market? I learned only marketable products makes money, not makable products. 2. where is the product in its product life cycle? PLC has four stages: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. and what are the key competitive factors in the industry (quality, price, advertising, research and developement, service)?
I always think to have my own wholesale business, and my dreamed business is selling paintings. My target cusotmer should be those between 25-50, who has high income, luxury life style, male or female. so what is my relevant market? Target, walmart, bed&beyond, arron brothers, joanne's fabric probably controls most shares, so I think it is not marketable. I can only sell to those big chain store, which is very difficult for a startup to enter into. With huge competitions and competitive, I don't think it is marketable unless I create something unique and new to this market. Who should I focusing and what market I should focus?

Ten day MBA Chapter 1 (1)

It talks about Marketing, which is the most important topic from my point of view. Marketing is a special blend of art and science. There is a gread deal to be learned under this Chapter. I learned 7 steps.

First, consumer analysis. No consumer, no business, no profit. consumer are god in business. I need to know what consumers needs, where the customers are, who are they? and why they needs my products. Uncover the potential market, identify the specific customers and target them are the beginning. Buyers many times are different from users. Determing the buyer as well as user provides the essential intitial insights to create a marketing plan. Then what is the buying process? I always doubt about marketing research, and I don't know how to do the market research. buying process is critical. awareness (I might need something), information serach (consumer reports), evaluate alternatives(is it best for me), purchase(big sale), evalute (did I make mistake). Research report turned out to be the more important than others, before we start the research, we need to know: what specific question do I need to answered? and how am I going to use the information? those are tow essential quesitions to start up. Once we found out it is doable, we need to degment the market, including Geographic, demographic(age, sex, income, marital status, family life cycle, education, ocupation, religion and race....) psychographic(life style and perosnality) and behavioral (usage, purhcase occasion, brand loyalty...) Learned to use the criteria to evaluate possible marketing segaments, measurability, accessibilty, substantiality, profitability, compatibility, effectiveness, defendability...

my first MBA day

Today is the first day I went back shool for my MBA program. It is amazing feelings. After so many years non-stop working, I feel I am so lucky that I can have chance to go back school and learn things, especially helps my career deifinitely. I can't wait! The teachers are wonderful with much experience and understanding.