Social Networking: Changing the way we communicate and do business.

This paper reviews the value of social networking and the impact it can have on small and large businesses. The paper also reviews the Social Networking Business Plan and the power of recommender networks. Examples are given of inbound and outbound marketing techniques. Social Networking is an integral part of inbound marketing. A synopsis of the evolving demographic of social networkers is presented to add clarity and show potential for social networking websites and tools.social networking, business, Facebook, The Social Network Business Plan, Social Networking Strategy, social networking demographics, inbound marketing, outbound marketing, advertising in the 21st century

Banking on Shared Value: How Banks Profit by Rethinking Their Purpose

This paper articulates a new role for banks in society using the lens of shared value. It is intended to help bank leaders, their partners, and industry regulators seize opportunities to create financial value while addressing unmet social and environmental needs at scale. The concepts included here apply across different types of banking, across different bank sizes, and across developed and emerging economies alike, although their implementation will naturally differ based on context

The Role of Supply Chain Resource Orchestration and Supply Chain Knowledge in Improving Product Launch Performance in Emerging Markets

As mature markets become more saturated, managers increasingly recognize the value of emerging markets as the next horizon for future growth opportunities. Launching products into these markets is extremely risky, as they are characterized by weak supply chain institutional environments -- i.e. lack of physical supply chain infrastructure and scarcity of supply chain market intermediaries. Literature points to the need to acquire country specific resources and knowledge in order to improve performance in these countries. However, improvement in product launch performance may lie with a firm’s ability to orchestrate its acquired supply chain resources (i.e. create and leverage supply chain capabilities to generate customer value). Further, performance of a product launch may also depend on what type of supply chain knowledge (customer or supply knowledge) is accumulated about the market. In this dissertation, these ideas are examined by collecting data from industry professionals who have been involved in a product launch in an emerging market

Shared Value in Emerging Markets: How Multinational Corporations Are Redefining Business Strategies to Reach Poor or Vulnerable Populations

This report illuminates the enormous opportunities in emerging markets for companies to drive competitive advantage and sustainable impact at scale. It identifies how over 30 companies across multiple sectors and geographies design and measure business strategies that also improve the lives of underserved individuals

The future of Earth observation in hydrology

In just the past 5 years, the field of Earth observation has progressed beyond the offerings of conventional space-agency-based platforms to include a plethora of sensing opportunities afforded by CubeSats, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and smartphone technologies that are being embraced by both for-profit companies and individual researchers. Over the previous decades, space agency efforts have brought forth well-known and immensely useful satellites such as the Landsat series and the Gravity Research and Climate Experiment (GRACE) system, with costs typically of the order of 1 billion dollars per satellite and with concept-to-launch timelines of the order of 2 decades (for new missions). More recently, the proliferation of smart-phones has helped to miniaturize sensors and energy requirements, facilitating advances in the use of CubeSats that can be launched by the dozens, while providing ultra-high (3-5 m) resolution sensing of the Earth on a daily basis. Start-up companies that did not exist a decade ago now operate more satellites in orbit than any space agency, and at costs that are a mere fraction of traditional satellite missions. With these advances come new space-borne measurements, such as real-time high-definition video for tracking air pollution, storm-cell development, flood propagation, precipitation monitoring, or even for constructing digital surfaces using structure-from-motion techniques. Closer to the surface, measurements from small unmanned drones and tethered balloons have mapped snow depths, floods, and estimated evaporation at sub-metre resolutions, pushing back on spatio-temporal constraints and delivering new process insights. At ground level, precipitation has been measured using signal attenuation between antennae mounted on cell phone towers, while the proliferation of mobile devices has enabled citizen scientists to catalogue photos of environmental conditions, estimate daily average temperatures from battery state, and sense other hydrologically important variables such as channel depths using commercially available wireless devices. Global internet access is being pursued via high-altitude balloons, solar planes, and hundreds of planned satellite launches, providing a means to exploit the "internet of things" as an entirely new measurement domain. Such global access will enable real-time collection of data from billions of smartphones or from remote research platforms. This future will produce petabytes of data that can only be accessed via cloud storage and will require new analytical approaches to interpret. The extent to which today's hydrologic models can usefully ingest such massive data volumes is unclear. Nor is it clear whether this deluge of data will be usefully exploited, either because the measurements are superfluous, inconsistent, not accurate enough, or simply because we lack the capacity to process and analyse them. What is apparent is that the tools and techniques afforded by this array of novel and game-changing sensing platforms present our community with a unique opportunity to develop new insights that advance fundamental aspects of the hydrological sciences. To accomplish this will require more than just an application of the technology: in some cases, it will demand a radical rethink on how we utilize and exploit these new observing systems

HealthCare Partners: Building on a Foundation of Global Risk Management to Achieve Accountable Care

Describes the progress of a medical group and independent practice association in forming an accountable care organization by working with insurers as part of the Brookings-Dartmouth ACO Pilot Program. Lists lessons learned and elements of success

Brand molecule theory: An exploratory study of a telecommunication company’s events

Over the past decade or so, events have become key elements in strategic marketing initiatives with event marketing or, as it is sometimes known, live or experiential marketing, dominating some promotional budgets. The aims of these initiatives are not only to drive sales, but also to increase brand awareness, loyalty and image. Brands provide the basis for differentiation between competitive offerings and are often conceived in terms of the consumer’s perspective or that of the brand owner; other definitions refer to purpose or characteristics. A traditional perspective therefore is of a brand created by the marketer but Grant (2006) suggests that brands are built up of a number of interconnected cultural ideas, which he conceives as a brand molecule. The brand therefore develops from the reception and enculturation of the associated aspects of the brand and is therefore a co-creation between marketer, audience and wider society. Grant gives the example of 501 s - Levi’s flagship brand which rather than the intended 15-19 year old target audience became associated with men in middle age through the ‘Jeremy Clarkson effect’. This exploratory study considers events as an integrated element of the business activity of O2, a leading UK mobile ’phone provider. Seven semi-structured interviews were undertaken with employees in the organisation’s Events and Sponsorship Team. These showed that the cultural ideas associated with their events and sponsorship related not only conventionally to the organisation’s brand values but also to the employees’ own cultural perspectives and experiences. Grant, J. (2006). The brand innovation manifesto. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Norton Healthcare: A Strong Payer-Provider Partnership for the Journey to Accountable Care

Examines the progress of an integrated healthcare delivery system in forming an accountable care organization with payer partners as part of the Brookings-Dartmouth ACO Pilot Program, including a focus on performance measurement and reporting

Social Networking and Business Performance: The case of Selected Entrepreneurs in Ota, Nigeria

This research study examined the nature of relationship between social networking and business performance using selected entrepreneurs in Ota, Nigeria as respondents. The specific objectives of the study are; (i) to ascertain the extent to which social media networks are used by entrepreneurs (ii)to find out the purpose for which those sites were visited (iii) to determine the effect of electronic networking on sales turnover and (iv) to identify the effect of physical networking on business efficiency. The study used survey research method with structured questionnaire that was distributed among the sampled respondents. The findings of the study revealed that Facebook and twitter were the mostly visited social network by the entrepreneurs for business purposes. The result further revealed that electronic social network has significant effect on sales turnover. Physical social network such as trade associations was also found having a significant effect on business efficiency. Based on these findings, conclusion was drawn and relevant recommendations were made