Digital Britain Trends

It is well known that nations are changing, but UK population seems to be changing faster. We should be thinking in the gaps created by these facts. Let's see some facts:

• In 2005, almost half of children aged 8 to 11 - and far higher proportions among older children - owned their own mobile phone.
• More than 40% of the adult population has bought something online in the last 12 months.
• 57% of the British households had an Internet connection.
• In 2007 people aged 65 outstrip those aged under 16 for the first time in UK.
• The fertility rate is still below the necessary to keep the population steady.
• Immigration has helped the population to continue rise !
• 500 UK citizens a day left Great Britain to leave abroad.
• Almost the same number of jobs were performed by women as men in 2006.
• More students are taking jobs and the average student's income from work more than doubled from £822 to £1,821 between 1999 and 2005.
• The fever for healthier lifestyle is still strong.

These figures show to marketers and companies huge market opportunities for innovations.

There are massive gaps, for example in Internet security to avoid electronic fraud transactions and data steal for both sides: companies and customers. This sector needs marketing qualified professionals urgently.

What about the media and advertising industry ? How to adapt the old media for this new reality with high level of immigrants and digital UK population ?

This is just to think about. If you have any comments, please let me know.

Cheers !

Fabio Oliveira

Book:

Permanent Innovation

The Essential Guide to the Strategies, Principles, and Practices of Successful Innovators
by Langdon Morris

Overview

Innovation is the process of creating new ideas and turning them into new business value.

Permanent Innovation is the process of doing it continuously, by developing an organizational culture that embraces innovation as a core value, practices innovation as a core methodology, and produces innovation as a consistent output.

In his book, Morris (2006) emphasize the needs for innovation. If we think about companies such as AT&T, IBM and Bank of America we will see that these companies had lost SBUs, Market share or in the AT&T case, takeover. These companies have something in common: They did not know to create innovative products and services for the extremelly changeable and dynamic modern market.

Morris (2006) suggests that Innovation is an ongoing process and must be adopted as a habit for companies and professionals. The author gives to us several examples of innovative ideas, how to cope with ideas, how to create a innovative environment inside the companies and the most important: What is the Senior Manager's role in this process ?

Innovation is not an eventual task. The company should has a culture of innovation. According to Morris (2006) in order to be innovative, organisations must define process and best practices (KPIs) and to adopt frequent measures. Then the company can reach high performance.

In fact, it is not so simple like stated above, but you can learn more reading the book !

The author has innovated in the distribution method. You can free download the book. Please find the link below and enjoy yourself. The download happens in a drop of a hat. Believe me !

http://www.innovationlabs.com

If you want to have access to articles and books about innovation, please let me know ! I am looking forward to receive some comments about my posts.

Cheers !

Fabio Oliveira

MBA in Marketing

Fundacao Getulio Vargas - Brazil

MSc Strategic Marketing

The University of Hertforshire - UK

Plan, think, Act !

I know, it seems a jargon ! Although, I have seen people failing down in personal, profissional and academic tasks or just spending more than the necessary time doing something without to think about the reasons of the failures.

In order to improve the overcomes we should have a "natural stratetic thinking" . Companies such as Sainsbury's emphasize in trainning sections for all employees, even for the temporary workers, one single orientation: " THINK, PLAN, THINK, ACT ! It seems really simple, but the majority of people do not do it and they spend company's time and money reducing productivity and profits.

The steps for thinking strategically are:

- To analyse the current situation.

- To think and to set up objectives.

- To establish the necessary actions to be adopted in order to achieve the objectives.

- To rethink about the actions and assessing possible alternative for improving the outcomes and to reduce timming.

- Plan ! What means to determine When, Where, Why, What, Who and How to do the tasks.

- Act !

The most successful people are naturally Strategists ! Think about it ! You can apply this concept in the most basic daily tasks, for instance: cooking or shopping ! You can practice this during all the time and to improve your personal finance, your job productivity and efficiency or just earn more time to have some fun !

If you are a leader in your company I would suggest to you paying more attention in your team and ask yourself: Does my team is thinking strategically ? Do are we doing our best ? Do are we saving time and efforts ? What should we be doing better or differently ?

If you have some interest in this subject, please let me know...

Cheers !

Fabio Oliveira

Assignment I - Practising Marketing in Uncertainty

Hello guys,

here I am again, trying to exchange some ideas with you all. This assignment is about a company operating in an uncertainty country with a high level of environmental dependency. We have to identify the key aspects below:

Take an organisation which is, by its nature, involved in green issues and in politically unstable countries.

How the company should develop a marketing strategy or adapt their strategy to possible issues in terms of unpredictable political situations, changes in legislation and natural disasters as appropriate.

I developed my writing as described below:

1. I have chosen to write about a company called Natura - www.natura.com.br one of the market leader in Brazil and Latin America. They are extremely dependent of Amazon biodiversity to be used as raw material for developing cosmetics products.

2. They are working with extremely poor families in remotes areas of Brazil, in order to grow plants and herbs.

3.They are trying to sell products in international markets such as Paris, Argentina and Colombia. Alhtough, they are still dependent of Brazil's biodiversity.

In my text I tried to answer the follow questions :

- What if Brazilian government decides to control the biodiversity exploration and to change the regulations about working with poor communities, then creating a barrier for Natura to access raw materials ?

- How should Natura being working in order to reduce the Brazilian's biodiversity dependency ?

- What kind of actions I would suggest to Natura ?

I've not used any model such as PEST analysis in the assignment, but in fact, I've made an analysis of all these aspects in order to develop the assignment. The work is short, just 1500 words, then it is better to focus in answering the questions.

I've used a Innovation Framework Pentatlhon by Goffin and Mitchell (2005) in order to analyse the current company situation and to come up with some innovative ideas...it's works !

Again, if you have a different point of view, please let me know.

Bibliography

Books

CRAVENS, D.W and PIERCY, N. (2003) “Strategic Marketing”. 7th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.

KOTLER, P. and KELLER, K.L. (2006) “Marketing Management” 12th Ed. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.

MELDRUM, M. (2000) “Marketing Management: A relationship marketing perspective”. Cranfield School of Management. Great Britain: Palgrave.

ROOME, N. (1998) “Sustainability Strategies for Industry: The Future of Corporate Practice”. Washington,D.C: Island Press

ULRICH, P. and SARASIN, C. (1995) “Facing Public Interest – The ethical challenge to business policy and corporate communications.” Netherlands: Kluer Academic Publishers.

WEICK. K.E and SUTCLIFFE, K.M. (2001) “Managing the Unexpected – Assuring high performance in an age of complexity” California: Jossey-Bass.

Journal Articles

Shapiro, B.P. (1988) ‘What the hell is market-oriented’, Harvard Business Review, November-December, pp. 119-125.

Smith, N.C. and Ward, H. (2007) ‘Corporate Social Responsibility at a crossroads ?’ Business Strategy Review, pp. 17-21.


Web Sites and Reports

DataMonitor (2006) Market Review – The Food Industry [Online] URL: http://dbic.datamonitor.com/companies/ [Accessed 20/02/07].
DataMonitor (2006) Brazil Country Profile [Online] URL: http://dbic.datamonitor.com/countries/country/?gid=Brazil [Accessed 20/02/07].
IBGE (2003) Trabalho Infantil (Infantile Work) [Online] URL: http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/condicaodevida/trabalho_infantil/trabinf2001.pdf [Accessed 05/03/07].
Natura Web Site (2007) [Online] URL: http://www.natura.net [Accessed 21/02/07].

Sistema Sul Ambiental Brasil (2007) – Deforestation in Amazon report. [Online] URL: http://www.sulambiental.com.br/notamb-desmamazonia.htm [Accessed 27/02/07].

45 Million at risk on both sides of Atlantic

Around 12% of Internet users in the UK have been the victims of online fraud, according to government-backed research (DataMonitor:2007). The figures were broken down to show that during 2006, 6% of all Internet users (1.7 million people) had suffered fraud whilst shopping online, 5% experienced another form of general online fraud, and 4% had been subject to bank account or credit card fraud as a result of activity online.

Now, we are facing another threat, at this time the problem is to buy in stores, any of them, paying with debit or credit cards. British authorities last week launched an inquiry into how computer hackers who targeted the cut-price fashion retailer TK Maxx were able to steal information from more than 45 million credit and debit card holders on both sides of the Atlantic (The Guardian:2007).

Names, card numbers and personal data were stolen - and in the US, social security numbers - over a 17-month period and covering transactions dating as far back as December 2002. The firm said it did not know how many of the cardholders affected were shoppers at TK Maxx's 210 stores in Britain and Ireland, although more of them were likely to be American. Canadian shoppers have also been affected. The company disclosed in January that it had a problem but suggested the volume of information stolen was not on a large scale.

The fact is: Who is responsible for these information ? Are the companies prepared to tackle with this problem ? As a marketer, the concern is about misleading promisses and to cope with this kind of problem. Nevertheless, the general media did not broadcast this kind of problem, (probable in order do not create panic) with no doubts this kind of problem can affect TK Maxx's credibility as a brand and company. Moreover, this kind of problem, can affect the way people pay when shopping.

According Peter Drucker (2002), there is 07 opportunities to create Innovation: Unexpected Occurrences, Incongruities, Process Needs, Industry and Market Changes, Demographic Changes, Changes in perception and New Knowledge. I would say that the IT industry has a great opportunity here. Don't you think !

Well, as a consumer I would like to say: Let's pray !

If you are interested to know more about this topic, please be my guest:

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2047193,00.html

http://dbic.datamonitor.com/news/article/?pid=C66B6786-AB87-43F3-B419-42AB0ECF5AA7&type=CommentWire

http://dbic.datamonitor.com/news/article/?pid=40A83C2E-9728-46D0-B9D4-47B8918B92F2&type=NewsWire

http://dbic.datamonitor.com/news/article/?pid=C66B6786-AB87-43F3-B419-42AB0ECF5AA7&type=CommentWire

Segurança Digital: Mais uma barreira quebrada ! (Pelos Bandidos virtuais)

Olá meus amigos,

aqui na Inglaterra, as empresas (melhor a TKMax um dos maiores varejistas do Reino Unido) está sofrendo com mais uma dor de cabeça. Descobriram no mês passado que desde 2005, hackers (prefiro dizer: Bandidos virtuais) roubaram dados de cartões de crédito e de débito de mais de 45 milhões de clientes da rede de lojas espalhadas pelo mundo sem que a empresa descobrisse ! É isso mesmo, dá para acreditar ? Nos EUA eles conseguiram roubar até Security Numbers ( registro equivalente ao nosso CPF).

Nas turmas de mestrado em Business aqui na Europa, esta é uma discussão frequente dentro das salas de aula. Como conseguir proteger dados de clientes dentro de empresas de maneira a garantir a confidencialidade das informações ? A resposta é um grande e agudo ponto de interrogação.

As Fraudes na Internet estão crescendo muito aqui no Reino Unido e as empresas ainda estão em um processo de adaptações e implantações de sistemas que venham a ajudar controlar este tipo de crime. No entanto, especialistas garantem que empresas podem ter os dados dos clientes roubados sem saber que isto está acontendo.

De acordo com o DataMonitor (2007) 12% dos usuários de Internet no Reino Unido são vítimas de algum tipo de fraude, porção que representa 3,8 milhões de usuários, já que o número de Internautas no Reino Unido é estimado em 29 milhões de pessoas.

Voltando ao problema das empresas, não sou um especialista no assunto Tecnologia da Informação, mas trabalhei em empresa que detinha muita informação confidencial de clientes, e que não possuia nenhum tipo de processo ou métodos de controle de acesso destas informações por parte de funcionários. Não posso generalizar, mas desconfio que muitas empresas de médio porte não possuem nenhum tipo de barreira tecnologica ou processual para controlar este tipo de fraude.

Para nós, como consumidores, só nos resta torcer para que nada nos aconteça, já que mesmo tomando os cuidados pessoais quando navegamos pela Internet não estamos seguros ! Parece que a solução é voltarmos há alguns anos atrás quando não tinhamos cartão de crédito, computadores pessoais e tudo só se pagava no dinheiro. Pelo menos, os bandidos falsificavam somente o dinheiro não é mesmo... (sei que não era tão simples assim ...:-))

Quem tiver interesse, pode visitar a página em inglês para explorar mais o tema:

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2047193,00.html

Cheers !