What Went Wrong at Xerox?

There were a number of things that went wrong at the retail powerhouse Xerox. It could have been the lack of management, poor working conditions, or the personal relationships within. It all started when Steven Jobs left the Xerox resarch centre to co-found the current powerhouse Apple. But, that was not the only place where it started. Xerox lost its leadershp position for photocopiers to Canon. After many tries to reconstruct the company, many sales representatives quit and joined other firms, and had taken valuable product knowledge along. Despite Xerox's success, they seemed to struggle in human resources in bringing technologies into the global market. To add to Xerox's downfall, they were facing a downgrade of bonds to the Brazilian economy by failing to hedge against currency rates. Rick Thoman, who was brought in, was made the CEO. He wanted to restructure Xerox's global sales division, but Dolan, the president of Xerox disagreed. Therefore, Xerox's downfall included personal conflicts, negative relationships, and the lack of human resources.

Firms find new ways to solve old problems

Peter Klaptchuk was always interested in the ability of ozone gas to destroy bacteria and its resulting odours, and is now among a growing group in Saskatchewan that has recognized an opportunity and embraced innovation. He developed the "Ozonator" which is a machine that shreds bio-hazarodous waste. When the entire process is complete, the volume of the waste is reduced by up to 90%. According to Klaptchuk, the Ozonator provides zero emissions, is easy to use, and inexpensive to operate. Another great innovator is Bill Kidd. His father, worked in a Saskatchewan Research Council, and they had projects to improve dugout water for residents. They used a coagulant to settle out an entire dugout, but found it expensive and harmful to creatures or heavy rain stirring the water up again. Even though engineers said it couldn't be done, Kidd worked at it while continuing to run his business. After a year, Kidd had developed a prototype and a couple of years after that, had hundreds of water treatment units in farming households. Now, Tec-Water Supplies (B. Kidd's company) has teamed up with Sun Dale resort to test its larger Floc System 100, it allows small communities to use surface water rather than ground water. With the help from government funding, they were able to perform field tests and many bore research to increase the quality and efficiency of this system. He teamed up with Cheryl Bechard and Jeremy Erdmann started Check-It Monitoring. These starters of this company started a computer hardware system to monitor energy consumption in many homes and buildings to reduce excess energy usage and to save more. Their steps to improving energy efficiency and to solve old problems will surely benefit and give good long term side affects to the community and the future.

Joseph Nguyen
Deepak Jaswal
Patrick Acosta

Best Buy Busts A Move

Summary
- This blog is about how the leading consumers-electronic chain, Best Buy is selling Segways, Brammo electric motorcycles, and other plug-in bikes to drive sales at its stores. Some retailing giants are trying to invade Best Buy's turf such as Wal-Mart, and Home Depot. Wal-Mart is starting to sell Iphones, while Home Depot is starting to sell HDTV's. But the question is still in the air, "Should Best Buy box itself in." In my opinion, there is no problem with selling Segways, and electric motorcycles, however, do you start stocking up on spare auto parts, and bike shorts? Best Buy cannot be a all catch retailer like Wal-Mart or Amazon.com, but why roll when you can rock? It's way too early for Best Buy to begin abandoning its consumer-electronics stronghold. There are too many phones, laptops, and fancy televisions for the company to sell itself short.

Connections
- The reason why I chose this blog is because Best Buy is a retailing giant which sells lots of things such as video games to TV's. Also, due to the fact that we are learning about retailing, and what a retailer is. As well as, how a retail store does different marketing strategies for its business to boom such as selling plug in bikes, and segways which can come in very handy.

Personal Reflection
- My personal reflection would be when I was watching the news. This took place in the US and I was shocked and amazed at what I had heard. You always hear funny things about marketing and how it is done. Anyways, I was watching the news and this car dealership had this marketing strategy that was insane. I could not stop laughing. There strategy was if you buy a car you get a gun. I can't specify what type of gun, but this was the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.

Article:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/07/08/best-buy-busts-a-move.aspx