Pulmonary Edema Lungs

Pulmonary Edema Lungs Outline of pulmonary edema: Pulmonary edema is the inflammation of the lungs that occurs due to the excessive accumulation of fluids in the lungs (alveoli) which results in poor exchange of gases which can cause dyspnea and finally respiratory and cardiac failure. Symptoms: The common symptoms of pulmonary edema include Dyspnea i.e. difficulty in breathing, shortness of breath, noisy and labored respirations rales, blood in cough, restlessness, anxiety, palor (paleness of skin). Diagnosis: It can be diagnosed by physical examination and knowing the patients medical history. By checking the wheezing sounds that are whistling or musical sound that can be heard without a stethoscope and inspiratory crackling sound that can be heard at the end of deep breath with the help of stethoscope and the characteristic third sound of the heart which can be seen in the cases of cardiogenic pulmonary edema patients. Apart from those general blood tests like liver enzymes, electrolytes, complete blood count etc. is done than a final confirmation is made by the X-ray of the lungs. Pulmonary Edema is a disease that affects the heart finally and begins in the lungs. Due to the inadequate pumping of the left ventricle, fluid accumulates in the spaces outside the blood vessels in the tissues of the lungs. It leads to a complication of heart disorders, sometimes acting as the first sign of coronary heart disease, and most commonly associated with congestive heart failure. It can be chronic or develop suddenly and quickly become life threatening. As large amounts of fluid suddenly shift from the pulmonary blood vessels to the lungs then pulmonary edema becomes life-threatening. When the heart begins to fail, the veins going through the lungs build up pressure and in turn the lungs pressure begins to rise which results in the building up of fluid being pushed into the alveoli. This fluid interrupts our normal oxygen flow through the lungs. Results and symptoms of pulmonary edema: Pulmonary edema occurs due to excessive accumulation of fluids and foam into the alveoli of the lungs when the pulmonary blood vessels are engorged. It can often be associated with congestive heart failure. It begins primarily with the building up of fluids in the microscopic alveoli of the lungs causing poor respiratory exchange resulting in Dyspnea with noisy and labored respirations. Rales which are powdery or gravelly sounds can be heard with stethoscope and some patients even cough up blood-tinged sputum. It occurs when the heart becomes damaged or weakened; as a result unable to pump blood to all the parts of the body, typically beginning with the left heart failure as a consequence of the damaged left ventricle which leads to backing up of the blood first in the pulmonary vessels and finally in systemic vessels. As a consequence blood fluids are forced into the body tissues due to increased pressure in the vessels causing a swelling known as edema. If it occurs in the alveoli of the lungs it is termed as pulmonary edema. Finally it can lead to congestive heart failure. Shortness of breath; Difficulty in breathing: Diseases like pulmonary edema leads to shortness of breath or difficulty in breathing which is known as Dyspnea which occurs due to poor respiratory exchange in the lungs. It causes labored and noisy respirations often associated with powdery or gravely sounds known as rales when checked with the stethoscope. Dyspnea is not a primary illness but a condition brought about by a number of medical, traumatic and environmental causes. It can be related to Lung diseases, heart conditions, allergic reactions, CO poisoning, etc. In most cases it occurs when a disease has caused some kind of direct interference with either the flow of air into and out of the lungs or with the exchange of gases within the lungs. In typical dyspnea, as in the case of asthma the problem causing interference originates in the lungs itself. Dyspnea can be classified into acute dyspnea with sudden onset can be caused by anaphylactic shock, cardiac arrhythmias trauma, etc. and chronic dyspnea which can be caused by Asthma, Bronchitis, COPD, Neuromuscular disorders, etc. Air hunger or feeling of drowning, Grunting of gurgling sounds with breathing, Wheezing As a sign of congestive heart failure the patient would wish to remain in a seated or semi-reclined position which allows less labored respiration. The patient should be kept calm to conserve body heat. These oxygen hungry patients will accept oxygen therapy without difficulty. In severe lung diseases like an Asthma attack, the small bronchioles becomes narrower due to the contraction of the smooth muscles that make up the airway apart from the overproduction of thick mucus leading to the restriction of airflow. The airflow is restricted in mainly in one direction such as, during inhalation, the expansion of lungs exerts an outward force resulting in the increase in the diameter of the airway, allowing air to flow into the lungs. During exhalation the opposite occurs resulting in the trapping of the stale air into the lungs which requires forceful exhalation of air by the patient, producing the characteristic wheezing sound associated with asthma. Wheezing sounds are whistling or musical sounds that can be heard without a stethoscope. Gurgling is caused often due to a foreign object, or blood and other fluids in the trachea. It is believed that cardiac murmurs are associated with the possibility of heart failure which is not correct as in about 50 % of the heart failure cases there is no murmur observed. Still a cardiologist should take note seriously if any murmur is present in the patient. In the diagnosis of heart failure Gallop rhythm (one can imagine the sounds of hooves of horse smoothly running at full speed) is very typical and significant. SOB with lying down, you may need to sleep with you head propped: The affects of the body position of a person sometimes gives an idea about the underlying disorder causing dyspnea. For example in platypnea, that is dyspnea while sitting gives indications of a liver disease. The worse type of Dyspnea is when the patient is lying down and suffering from shortness of breath, which is associated with heart disease or paralysis of the diaphragm. It is called as orthopnea. Another type of dyspnea is PND (Paroxysmal nocturnal dyspnea) which occurs during sleep forcing the patient to wake up gasping for breath; usually relieving the patient if he / she sit up or stands. It may indicate the dysfunctioning of the left ventricle of the heart, narrowing of the mitral valve or hypertension. If a patient is suffering from orthopnea he sleeps with the head propped up. Cough: It is an annoying symptom which can occur as a result of many causes such as pulmonary edema, tuberculosis, Bronchitis, Asthma, etc. Anxiety: Factors like excessive worry, nervousness, instability, nausea, etc. are the major symptoms of anxiety. Restlessness: It can be caused by a number of factors such as anxiety, nervousness, insomnia, hyperactivity, etc. Excessive sweating: Sweating is due to the presence of sweat glands under our skin, which is controlled by the sympathetic nervous system of our body and whenever our body temperature rises sweating is stimulated. Thus, it controls the body temperature. Emotional stress also stimulates sweating. Palor or pale coloration or cyanosis of the parts will also take place during any respiratory or cardiac attack. Sympathetic over stimulation leads to symptoms like palor, sweating, and tachycardia during heart failure. Additional symptoms with progression of the disease: Nasal flaring: It is an indication of breathing difficulty caused by the enlargement of the nostril opening during breathing; as a result the total airway resistance is reduced. Inability to speak: The patient may not be able to speak due to pulmonary obstruction or cardiac failure. Decrease in levels of awareness: the level of awareness or consciousness of the patient will also go down during any respiratory or cardiac attack.

Competition vs Collaboration

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

A Murderers Journey Through The Works Of Dostoyevsky And Poe :: essays research papers fc

A Murderer's Journey Through The Works of Dostoyevsky and Poe Some people believe that most murderers have a mental illness which causes them to commit their crime. This belief is strongly disagreed with by the authors Edgar Allan Poe and Fyodor Dostoevsky. Crime and Punishment, â€Å"The Tell-Tale Heart†, â€Å"The Black Cat†,and â€Å"The Cask of Amontillado† are very similar in this contradiction. Each murderer takes a specific journey that has been illustrated in each case. The psychological make-up of each murderer shows that he is a normal person up to the point at which something compels him to commit this horrible crime, and after that his conscience usually leads to his own downfall. Before the murder has been committed the character is a regular human being. In most cases the characters that end up carrying through with this crime are above average people. Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment is "... quite an extraordinarily handsome young man..." (Crime and Punishment, pg.21) Raskolnikov is a very gifted university student, with a very good talent for figuring people out. Raskolinikov takes great pride and care for his family. On receiving a letter from his mother ...he quickly raised the letter to his lips and kissed it; then he spent a long time poring over the handwriting on the envelope, over the small, slanting handwriting, so familiar and dear to him, of his mother who had once taught him to read and write. (Crime and Punishment, pg.47) Raskolnikov's mother, who taught him how to read and write did this job quite well. This resulted in a very gifted and brilliant university student. This point is illustrated throughout the novel from the planning and carrying out of the murder, to interactions with the police. The narrator from the short story "The Black Cat" describes his "tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of his companions." ("The Black Cat", pg.390) He is quite a regular human being who is "...especially fond of animals..." ("The Black Cat", pg.390) The narrator also has a great wife whom he describes as being quite similar to himself, which shows that he must be quite normal if a good woman chooses to marry him. Much alike is the narrator from the short story "The Tell-Tale Heart". Again this character is full of love. The victim of his crime had done no wrong and for that the narrator "...loved the old man." ("The Tell-Tale Heart", pg.384) The narrator shows the same brilliance in planning the crime that Raskolnikov exhibits. People with great intelligence, great lives, possessions and friends must be normal people.

The Character of Shakespeares Macbeth Essay -- GCSE English Literatur

Macbeth:   A Question of Character       The play Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, is a portrait of one man, Macbeth, showing how he changes. Although we are presented with his deterioration from good to evil, we can see his human side throughout the play, which makes it a tragedy. It is the shortest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and has a very fast pace. Once Macbeth’s ambition has ‘set the ball rolling’, events happen quickly in the play as it gathers momentum. The themes of Macbeth are ambition, effects of evil, and violence, shown mainly by the language of the play, as in Shakespeare’s time plays were performed in daylight with very few props. Ambition is something that everyone can identify with, and Macbeth is a compelling study of how ambition can destroy a person, so the audience is interested in Macbeth’s character.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Our first impression of Macbeth is of a heroic, famous, popular man who is well liked by the king - Duncan refers to Macbeth as ‘noble Macbeth’.(Act 1 Scene 2 L67) Macbeth is tempted by two sources of external evil - the witches and his wife. However, he was already ambitious, and the women only magnified this by making his ambitions seem like they could be reality. The war hero becomes a murderer and then dies a shameful and violent death. Shakespeare creates an atmosphere of evil and darkness mainly through his language, although scenes containing violent actions or the witches are often played in darkness. Shakespeare uses poetry (verse) as opposed to prose, as poetry often contains more metaphors and imagery, which he uses to create a feeling of darkness and evil. The language gives an insight into the character of Macbeth - we see his ruthlessness and cruelty, but also fear, doubt and som... ...ess, 1995.   Page Cooper, The Mystery of Witchcraft, London, 1617. Epstein, Norrie, The Friendly Shakepeare, New York, Viking Publishing, 1993. Harbage, Alfred, Macbeth, Middlesex England, Penguin Publishing, 1956. Magill, Masterplots- Volume 6, New Jersey, Salem Press, 1949. Staunten, Howard, The Complet Illustrated Shakespeare, New York, Park Lane Publishing, 1979. Gove, Philip Babcock. Webster’s Third International Dictionary.   Springfield, Mass: G. & C. Merriam, 1967    Johnson, Samuel.   The Plays of William Shakespeare.   London: J & R Tonson, 1788    Jorgensen, Paul A.   Our Naked Frailties.   Los Angeles: U of CA, 1971.    Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. New York: Penguin Books, 1987.    Van Doren, Mark.   Shakespeare. NY: Doubleday, 1939.    Watkins, Ronald.   The Theology of Macbeth.   Oxford: Oxford University, 1964.   

Music Censorship Essays -- essays research papers

Marilyn Manson, The Beatles, NWA, Garth Brooks, and the king, Elvis, What do all these people have in common? Well, yes, they are all musical groups, but there is something more. Marilyn Manson is a heavy metal group who worships Satan, the Beatles were one of the greatest Rock N’ Roll bands of all time, and NWA was a hard-core rap group from the 80’s. Garth Brooks is a country singer and greatest selling performer of all time, and well, Elvis is the king of Rock N’ Roll. So what do they all have in common? All of these artists have or had songs with indecent or obscene lyrics.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Since the dawn of musical expression, there have been people trying to stop or hinder the constitutional right to listen and enjoy music of all forms. There were ordinary, everyday people during the infancy of Rock N’ Roll in the 1960’s who made it their mission in life to stop so-called â€Å"obscene† music like the Beatles song â€Å"Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds,† from polluting our airwaves and minds. These groups succeeded in banning some songs from the radio, but most of their actions were for naught, because there was no real punishment for radio stations playing those songs labeled â€Å"obscene.† By 1985, many people wanted to cleanse the music industry of its â€Å"indecent† music, so the most prominent group in the history of music censorship was started: The Parents’ Music Resource Center (PMRC)-(A Brief†¦). This was just the first of many groups who made it their business to decide what the America n Population should or should not listen to. These censorship groups have also been able to get government money in order to fight, lie, and bribe their way to censoring music. The PMRC and other organizations have also convinced government organizations like the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) to regulate what music is played on the radio. Places like Target, Disc Jockey, and other local record stores are also forced to label music that the PMRC and other censorship groups find obscene (A Brief†¦)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Who is to say that what is obscene to someone might not be seen as obscene to another person? This question, as well as many others, brought forth many anti-censorship organizations who fight to give the people of America the right to listen to whatever music they want to, indecent or not. The First Amendment from anyone who tries to cen... ...ment and all the music censorship organizations to deny musicians and the public our constitutional rights? And why do we pay millions of our tax dollars to try and undermine what our whole country was built upon over two hundred years ago? We must acknowledge that ratings systems of any kind can do and result in censorship. And we all must fight to preserve free speech for everyone regardless of whether or not we agree with the message. (National Campaign†¦) When politicians and religious leaders call for censorship because they personally find the message objectionable, or you wonder why you should join the fight against music censorship, please consider this quote be Martin Niemoeller, a Lutheran pastor who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938. He said, In Germany, the Nazi’s came for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.

Comparative Advantages and Disadvantages

With China being a market of more than 1. 3 billion people, competition for this newly emerging market Is rich. The following brands are omitting In the Chinese market. 1. 3 National comparative advantage The theory of comparative advantage propagated by the classical economist David Richard proposes that a country attractiveness to foreign investment is determined by its inherent natural factors such as land, natural resources, labor, and the size of the local population.Michael Porter's Diamond of National Advantage extends the theory to propose that a nation can create new advanced factor endowments such as skilled labor, a strong technology and knowledge base, government support, and ultra. Kicker uses Porter's model here to determine the national comparative advantage. 1. 3. 1 Factor conditions China can offer quality products because of its comparatively cheap labor. China has become the location of choice for global manufacturing. This is usually attributed to its low wages.Ch inese factory workers today earn 50 cents to $2 an hour and often work long shifts, getting minimal time off for weekends and holidays. [Prosperity, 2005] Competitive Labor: China's workers are not Just inexpensive but literate, hard irking, already reasonably skilled and desperate to be trained. There is also a sizable and growing cadre of university-educated technologists and professionals. For example, China is now graduating 330,000 engineers and scientists annually, as compared with 398,622 for the United States [Prosperity, 2005].Abundant resources: Apart from competent and cheap human resources, China also boasts of huge natural resources. All the raw materials required for producing Kicker are easily available in China at very competitive prices. 1. 3. 2 Demand Conditions The demand for car audio is increasing rapidly in China, as already noted in a previous chapter. The demand has increased steadily, however, not from Kicker's current target market, which is the higher inco me earning group.The demand for Kicker products will stagnate if it does not lower its price to suit the needs of the upcoming middle class group. Growing market populations: China offers a huge market population of 1. 3 billion people. As seen earlier, the middle class car purchasing group, which is Kicker's new target group, is increasing phenomenally wing to national growth. 1. 3. 3 Related and Supporting Industries Kicker sources most of its raw materials from China, who are suppliers of global standard raw materials.Kicker can benefit from the existence of its support industries in China. 1. 3. 4 Firm Strategy, Structure, and Rivalry Kicker is not a single player in the market. This is good because the existence of competition ensures that there is sufficient motivation for product innovation. It also indicates that the demand for foreign car audio exists in the market and has the potential to expand. All the factors together indicate that the time is ripe for Kicker to begin i ts operations in China. . 3. 5 Government attitude towards FED / foreign firms The biggest advantage for China is its open policies on foreign direct investments. China is attracting multinational companies by improving relevant policies to attract multinationals to invest in China [China's Absorption of Foreign Investment, n. D. ]. The efforts are paying off well, as indicated earlier, the phenomenal increase of over 142% in foreign direct investment from 1999 to 2003.

Factors of Career Choice

career choice Contents 1. Introduction 1. 1Role 1. 2Objective and Subjective Constraints 1. 3Key Theories of Occupational Choice 1. 3. 1Developmental Theory 1. 3. 2Structural Theory 1. 3. 3RIASEC Model 2. Factors of Occupational Choice 2. 1Family and Class 2. 2Neighbourhood and Peer Group 2. 3School and Education 2. 4Race 2. 5Gender 2. 5. 1Horizontal and Vertical Segregation 2. 5. 2Pay 2. 5. 3Hours Worked 2. 5. 4Orientations to Work 3. Solution of Constraints and Obstacles to Occupational Choices 4. Conclusion 5. References 1. Introduction â€Å"The occupational choice debate is concerned with the degree of choice individuals have over their eventual occupation. † (Module Handbook) The process of occupational choice is â€Å"psychologically based and examines the way in which the individual develops and passes through a series of stages during which the self-concept grows as abilities, aptitudes and interests develop. † (Watson T. J. 2008) This assignment is attempting the factors that may prevent or affect people’s occupational choices and how we can overcome them. . 1Role Role plays an important part in human-being, it can influence a person’s behaviour and decision making. Role may be achieved or ascribed. â€Å"The concept of an achieved and ascribed role is important in occupation choice. † (Module Handbook) Stark (2007) states that â€Å"An achieved role is a position that a person assumes voluntarily which reflects personal skills, abilities, and effort. An ascrib ed role is a position assigned to individuals or groups without regard for merit but because of certain traits beyond their control. (wikipedia) An achieved role can be changed and gained through putting efforts by a person, e. g. educational qualifications. On the other hands, an ascribed role is unchangeable. This role is assigned to you by your parents or family, e. g. height, gender, rich or poor, status, etc. The role of a person can influence one’s occupational choice. In general, people who have advantages in their ascribed role, it perceived to have advantages in their career path or development as well. Some people can act as model, and some cannot, because of the height of a person. Fortunately, people’s achieved role can break this normal pattern. If people can put efforts and reach to higher educational level, they can also earn the opportunity on their career development and work as middle or top level management in a company. People cannot change fundamental elements but can change their path through their effort. Thus, people’s achieved and ascribed role can alter the decision when they are making decision on occupational choice. 1. 2Objective and Subjective Constraints If we wish to product a model or theory which identifies the various factors that influence the individual’s occupational choice, we must consider both objective and subjective constraints. The individual has certain tangible resources such as cash, skills, knowledge or physique, which are objective constraints. The individual has certain intangible minds of motives, interests and expectations, such as to achieve power or gain job satisfaction, which all are subjective constraints. These are psychological factors of personal achievement. 1. 3Key Theories of Occupational Choice . 3. 1Developmental Theory Eli Ginzberg (1951) defines â€Å"an individual never reaches the ultimate decision at single moment in time but through a series of decisions over [time]. † (module handbook) It is the Developmental Theory of occupational choice. â€Å"E. Ginzberg looks at occupational choice as a cumulative process of decision making, taking place in three stages closely linked to tho se of emotional and intellectual development. Fantasy choice is followed by a period tentative choice, then finally there is a period of realistic choice. † (White S. 968) People’s occupational choice do not occur only at the moment on the decision making, but â€Å"is an extended process which may begin as early as ten or twelve and continue well beyond the choice of a first job. † (White S. 1968) Fantasy choice is occurring at the age between 6-11 when the children have no ideas about the real-life situation, all things are fantastic and delivered to them by their parents. When the children grow at the age of 11-17, the knowledge of the real world increases, they aware of themselves and the outside environment, and they makes tentative choice on the basis of their own interests. . 3. 2Structural Theory The structural theory is that the entry points of the occupational structure are impacting on ambition of people. According to Keil et al, they include family ba ckground and value, neighbourhood and peer group, school and education, gender and race. 1. 3. 3RIASEC Model Holland (1973/1985) developed a psychological approach â€Å"to identify people’s occupational preferences and helps fit a person’s choices and organizational characteristics. † (module handbook) It is referred to as RIASEC. RIASEC indicates Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, Conventional. By the research of Taiwan’s high school students, we found that â€Å"the R type is a very typical male-oriented type of career† and â€Å"girls, on the other hand, were more interested in the A-type fields and tended to choose artistic fields as their careers. † (Tien H. L. , Wang Y. F. and Liu L. C. 2009) 2. Factors and Obstacles affecting Occupational Choice People do not enter the occupational structure with equal opportunities. There are many factors and obstacles that can influence the choice-making on occupation of people, we are now focus on the factors in structural theory, including family and class, neighbourhood and peer group, school and education, race and gender. 2. 1Family and Class When the children at the age of 6-17, which is in the stage of fantasy choice and tentative choice, they depend on their parents mostly. Thus, the patents’ expectations for educational achievement, beliefs and behaviors will affect the children’s future development. The Parent Socialization Model developed by Eccles and colleague (1982) has highlighted the important role parents play in the development of children’s achievement choices. The belief of parents â€Å"will then influence parenting behaviors and expectations, which, in turn, will affect child outcomes such as educational and career choices. † (Jacobs, J. E. , Chhin C. S. and Bleeker M. M. 2006) Moreover, as the family background of a person on his or her ascribed role cannot be changed, family network and status also play important role on occupational choice. The structure of a family an individual faced when he or she was growing up may affect the individual’s social skills and lead to human capital investments† and â€Å"parental education appears to have an indirect effect on children’s occupational status through children’s education. † (Tsukahara, I. 2007) Grieco (1987) shows â€Å"how this can be helpful both to the employee, wh o gains support from family members both inside and outside work and is sustained in steady employment, and for employers, whose recruitment costs are kept low and who can look to employees’ relatives to help train them and teach them to â€Å"fit in†. (Watson T. J. 2008) Even not every people will choose the same career as their parents, most people appear to have a high probability to make similar choices. Rather, parents’ education also appears to have an indirect effect on children’s occupational choices through the children’s education. For example, if the parents perceived a positive effect on the professional occupations, the children will then also have a positive effect on the professional occupations in future. 2. 2Neighbourhood and Peer Group People can enjoy social experience through the contact of neighbourhood and peer group, such as friends and teachers. As these peer groups always recognize in people’s earlier stage, such as school life, they have long-term consequences for one’s belief and value. â€Å"Teachers, parents, peers, and others may influence youths’ achievement and interests long before educational and occupational decisions are made. † (Jacabs, J. E. 2006) These peer groups can provide people social support and encouragement; however, the groups may also provide somehow of negative impact if wrong perception and information are provided. 2. 3School and Education Formal schooling operates alongside the general cultural and family socialization process. † (Watson T. J. 2008) Willis (1977) states education â€Å"as a form of preparation for the way those particular individuals will need to live with their subservient roles once they enter paid employment. † (Watson T. J. 2008) The jobs which people choose were influenced by the level of educational qualifications they achieved. The more professional of the jobs, the more skills and abilities are needed, and the more rewards (both monetary and non-monetary) can earn. On the contrast, there are more limitations on occupational choice for people who have lower educational level. 2. 4Race Race or Ethnic Discrimination is also undoubtedly playing a major role in occupational attainment. The research project conducted by Cardoso P. and Marques J. F. (2008) about The Perception of Career Barriers Inventory found that African and Afro Portuguese students score significantly higher than Euro-Portuguese students on Ethnic Discrimination. The Ethnic Discrimination â€Å"results highlight how, at the early stages of development and at crucial career decision moments, when these beliefs are structured, a negative influence on vocational behaviour development can occur. † (Cardoso P. and Marques J. F. 2008) Melamed (1995) concluded that â€Å"discrimination accounted for between 55% and 62% of the variance in the differential career success of men and women in a British sample. † (Brown D. 2002) Although the wide-spread prevalence of race discrimination in most countries, the limitations and difficulties in career choices and development of these minority groups are still high. . 5Gender Gender will be a major factor in the career choices. Due to the role conflicts between men and women, a study found that â€Å"women in Israel, Germany, the United States, and Japan assigned lower importance to the centrality of work in their lives than did men†¦.. this is the result of women’s orientation to o ther life roles, primarily because of women’s concern regarding participation in the family role. † (Brown D. 2002) By the survey report of â€Å"Third Quarter Economic Report 2010† in the section of â€Å"Labour Force Participation Rates by Sex† (www. enstatd. gov. hk), the data shows the participation rates of male employees is 68. 9% and female employees is 52. 2% in the third quarter of 2010. The number of women who engaged in labour force is still lower than men. We are now analyzing the gender by three sections: horizontal and vertical segregation, pay, and hours worked. 2. 5. 1Horizontal and Vertical Segregation Horizontal segregation is the term â€Å"used to describe the tendency to discover men and women in different types of occupation. (Module Handbook) For example, by the survey of â€Å"annual percentage of male and female managers by job function†, â€Å"female managers are mainly in the functions of â€Å"personnel & training† and â€Å"conference & banqueting†, whilst management posts in the areas of â€Å"property & security†, â€Å"food & beverage†, and â€Å"control & finance† are mostly held by men† in 1999 in Hong Kong. (Ng C. W. and Pine R. 2003) By the survey report of â€Å"Women and Men in Hong Kong: Key Statistics† in the section of â€Å"Employed Persons by Industry and Sex† (www. censtatd. gov. k), the female employed persons were mainly engaged in the public administration, social and personal services sector (35. 9%), while data of the male employed persons was different, with the financing, insurance, real estate, professional and business service sector being the largest sector (18. 2%) in 2009. Vertical segregation is the term â€Å"used to describe the situation where, the higher one progresses in an organizational or professional hierarchy, the fewer the number of females one encounters. † (Module Handbook) Morrison et al. 1987) coined a term of â€Å"glass ceiling† to â€Å"describe the difficulties women face in climbing to the top of the corporate ladder. † (Ng C. W. and Pine R. 2003) Although the percentage of women who studied law and medical and health subjects is over 60%, the opportunities to promote is still obstruct by the â€Å"glass ceiling†, such as traditional value and family responsibility. (Ming Pao Newspaper) For example, by the survey of â€Å"annual percentage of male and female managers by job level†, â€Å"only 7. 2% of senior General Manager positions were held by women† in 1999 in Hong Kong. Ng C. W. and Pine R. 2003) According to the record of Hong Kong Listing Companies, there is only 9% of women in the top management level who mostly were entered by the role of family members. (Ming Pao Newspaper) By the survey report of â€Å"Women and Men in Hong Kong: Key Statistics† in the section of â€Å"Employed Persons by Occupation and Sex† (www. censtatd. gov. hk), the figures show there are 96,500 women and 229,800 men in the Managers and Administrators role, while there are 398,800 women and 149,600 men in the Clerks role. R 2. 5. 2Pay â€Å"Full-time working women earn 82. % of men’s hourly pay. † (Module Handbook) According to â€Å"Women and Men in Hong Kong: Key Statistics† in the section of â€Å"Median Monthly Employment Earnings of Employed Persons by Age Group and Sex†, the median monthly earnings of female employed persons in Hong Kong was HK$8,500 in 2009 while that for males was HK$12,000. (www. censtatd. gov. hk) By the survey of , over 70% of people indicated that Hong Kong is still have sex discrimination in career environment which men’s paid are more than women even they are on the same positions. . 5. 3Hours Worked Even the labour market participation of women has increased dramatically in many countries, the hours worked of women are still lower than men due to the different orientations to work. Hakim (1996, 2000) states that â€Å"whereas in general men prefer to work, women show a heterogeneous set of work-life orientations: some women prefer to work, others want to stay at home and almost half of them prefer to combine work and family life. † (Doorewaard H, Hendrickx J and Verschuren P. 004) The data indicated that although many women are entered or re-entered into the labour market, they are still want to have work-life balance, especially for those women who are married and have children, it is also the barrier of women in the career path both actually or in people’s traditional perceptions. 2. 5. 4Orientations to Work Orientations to work to different people are varying. People seem to be motivated to work by a mixture of options, e. g. earning money, developing their careers, gaining status, etc. According to Crompton and Harris (1998), â€Å"it is not only influenced by someone’s own choice and motivation, but also by the constraints of the situations in which one lives and works. † (Doorewaard H, Hendrickx J and Verschuren P. 2004) It can simply distinguish into three types of work orientations: job orientation, money orientation and people orientation. Watson (1994) said â€Å"life circumstances and the specific circumstances prevailing in the work situation influence what they are looking for and what they expect to get. (Martin E. 2004) Hence, orientations to work are also barriers to occupational choice if the job itself cannot fit in one’s orientation. 3. Solution of Constraints and Obstacles to Occupational Choices It is no doubt that the work pattern and norm is constantly changing around the world, however, this change can help to overcome some of the constraints of occupational choices. The past few decades have been marked by a significant gr owth in women’s labour force participation in most countries. Although women play a stronger economic role than in the previous decades, men are usually the primary breadwinners in families. Women, who function as secondary earners, tend to have part-time and other nonstandard employment. † (Kan M. Y. 2007) Those nonstandard employments, such as part-time job, temporary jobs, psychological contract, will be more common in the future work. â€Å"The nature of formal contracts has altered, with more short-term contracts†¦.. sub-contracting and out-sourcing arrangements have become more common and are part of a set of strategic HRM options. (Westwood R. , Sparrow P. and Leung A. 2001) Furthermore, the increasing of feminine management style in both government and private companies where a more flexible and â€Å"feminine† approach to management, such as flexible work family arrangements, â€Å"Family Friendly Working Practices† in Hong Kong. This style helps women who want to balance between work and family life. Additionally, the work pattern of â€Å"10 years in employment and 10 years out† which is a flexibility approach for people who want to have a break for few years and return to work, e. . female returners who seek to re-enter the workforce after a few years of unpaid care-taking responsibilities. At the time of making occupational choice, people are still young and lack of knowledge and experience. â€Å"People make choices based on imperfect knowledge and uneven distribution of knowledge and at a young age. † (Module Handbook) To prevent in making wrong decision and lack of confidence from the students, school and teachers can arrange some experienced people to share their real experience and give more support to them. Luzzo (2000) proposes â€Å"to help students think about the role that perceived barriers play in the career planning and exploration process, and to identify effective resources and strategies for coping with such barriers. † (Cardoso P. and Marques J. F. 2008) 4. Conclusion Every people have different choices on career and different orientations to work. And, there are some subjective and objective variables affecting the process of choosing the career. People have to identify them clearly in hope to find the most suitable job for them which is fitting with their interests, intentions and abilities. owever, those obstacles can be overcome through the changing work pattern and work management. In fact, many of these trends of future work are already with us today. We are all in the moment of changing atmosphere. 5. References Brown D. (2002). â€Å"The role of work and cultural values in occupational choice, satisfaction, and success: A theoretical statement†, Journal of Counseling and Development, Vol. 80, Issue 1, PP. 48-56 Cardoso P. and Marques J. F. (2008). â€Å"Perception of career barriers: The importance of gender and ethnic variables†, International Journal for Educational & Vocational Guidance, Vol. 8, No. 1, PP. 9-61 Doorewaard H. , Hendrickx J. and Verschuren P. (2004). â€Å"Work orientations of female returners†, Work, Employment and Society, BSA Publications Ltd, Vol. 18(1), PP. 7-27 Eccles J. S. (1994). â€Å"Understanding Women’s Educational and Occupational Choices: Applying the Eccles et al. Model of Achievement-Related Choices†, Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18(1994), PP. 585-609 Jacobs, J. E. , Chhin C. S. and Bleeker M. M. (2006). â€Å"Enduring Links: Parent’s expectations and their young adult children’s gender-typed occupational choices†, Educational Research and Evaluation, Vol. 12, No. 4, PP. 395-407 Kan M. Y. (2007). Work Orientation and Wives’ Employment Career s: An Evaluation of Hakim’s Preference Theory†, Work and Occupations, Sage Publications, Vol. 34, No. 4, PP. 430-462 Martin E. (2004). â€Å"Who’s kicking whom? Employees’ orientations to work†, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Vol. 6, No. 3, PP. 182-188 Module Handbook – Management, Work and Society, University of Huddersfield, January 2011 Ng C. W. and Pine R. (2003). â€Å"Women and men in hotel management in Hong Kong: perceptions of gender and career development issues†, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 22(2003), PP. 5-102 â€Å"Third Quarter Economic Report 2010† (2010), Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Government Tien H. L. , Wang Y. F. and Liu L. C. (2009). â€Å"The Role of Career Barriers in high School Students’ Career Choice Behavior in Taiwan†, The Career Development Quarterly, Vol. 57, Issue 3, PP. 274-288 Tsukah ara, I. (2007). â€Å"The Effect of Family Background on Occupational Choice†, Labour: Review of Labour Economics & Industrial Relations, Vol. 21, Issue 4/5, PP. 871-890 Watson T. J. (2008). â€Å"Sociology, Work and Industry†, Fifth Edition, Routledge Westwood R. , Sparrow P. nd Leung A. (2001). â€Å"Challenges to the psychological contract in Hong Kong†, International Journal of Human Resources Management, 12:4, PP. 621-651 White, S. (1968). â€Å"The Process of Occupational Choice†, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 6, Issue 2, PP. 166-184 Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, [retrieved on 18 February 2011] â€Å"Women and Men in Hong Kong: Key Statistics† (2010), Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Government â€Å" †, Ming Pao Newspaper [retrieved on 15 February 2011] â€Å"70% , 3,500? †, Wen Wei Po [retrieved on 15 February 2011]