“The future belongs to those who give the next generation reasons to hope.”
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
(found on the back of a Daimler Sustainability report)
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Happy 50th Anniversary for LEGO! Hearing or reading the name LEGO always brings up good memories and puts a smile on my face! During my childhood LEGO was my favourite toy! I could literally play all day with it! Yesterday was the official 50th anniversary of LEGO.
From a business perspective LEGO is a text-book example of a company that successfully transformed itself for the 21st century. Late 90s LEGO seemed to have had its best time. However it managed to blend in and fully adapt internet in its business model. Resulting in the fact that you now can first build your very own artwork online and have it delivered at your house in the famous interlocking bricks!
Furthermore, if you do a really good work in making your own LEGO artwork it can even be put in mass production by LEGO and put up in stores worldwide. LEGO gives you royalties of 5%, which in turn can make you a good living. Building and ordering LEGO bricks online now accounts for 10% of sales. So still loads of potential especially if you take in account the long tail. Building and ordering your very own LEGO artwork online is basically an unlimited supply of LEGO artwork variety.
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What’s on the agenda for this week. Last week was dominated by macroeconomic news and off-course large financials recording their 2007 Q4 earnings. This will continue with over 100 S&P500 companies (amongst others Microsoft, Apple, General Motors, Ford, DuPont en Bank of America) recording their annual and/or 2007Q4 results but there is more in store this week and from another front namely international political economic news:
EU on Green: The European Commission unveils a comprehensive energy policy on Wednesday January 23rd in an effort to limit carbon emissions, increase energy security and shield economies from volatile fuel prices. It will include targets to reduce greenhouse gases, beefed up carbon trading and incentives for clean coal, biofuels, renewables and other sorts of greenery. Background articles here (The Economist) and here (IHT).
The World Economic Forum: Davos, will again welcome the World Economic Forum for its 38th annual meeting. It officially focuses on collaborative innovation, but the hottest topics behind the scenes will more likely focus around the credit crunch and the prospects for the world economy. On Thursday there will be the most prominent public meeting of the forum with ECB-president Jean-Claude Trichet, American minister of Finance Henry Paulson and leaders of leading American merchant banks. They will address the threat of any wider impact and implications of the credit crunch. Digital footage can be found here.
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2007 has been an eventful year for me with lots of “grand” turning points in my life! Some of the highlights are that I graduated for my Master’s which implies that I am not a student any more after many incredible years! Started with my first job and had wonderful encounters during my holiday in South-America! In addition my family and friends are by and large well and happy! What more can I wish right?
I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and I wish you a kick-ass’ingly amazing, loving, healthy and inspiring 2008. May your dreams come true in the new year, may the world be a little bit better at the end of 2008, may you have lots of joy and happiness in your life.
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” (Aesop)
“There are two ways to lead your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” (Einstein)
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I love BusinessWeek. Since two weeks or so, BusinessWeek has enhanced its webpage with introducing a new functionality: Company Insight Centre!
I must admit it really gets insight companies! You can lookup a wealth of endless information regarding companies, industries, and business people. Ranging from a complete financial data set of 350,000 companies, industry and sector performance, organisation structures, executive pays etc.
I truly love the functionality “financial ratios” within the section “financials” for any company. It not only displays the actual ratio for a specific company but it even plots a specific company ratio upon the related industry performance.
Checkout the financial ratios of Google (GOOG) and its relative performance against industry competitors. Thus, thanks to BW, in a blink of an eye you can get a well rounded indication of any company performance!
What do you get if the American giant Coca-Cola and the French beauty brand L’Oreal team-up? Uuhh…Think think hard… a health-and-beauty beverage called Lumae…?
L’Oreal and Coca Cola are working on developing a nutraceutical drink that will hit the market in 2008. Lumae is a tea-based drink and is “expected to contain ingredients that will help women care for their skin’ and targets ‘active, influential, image-conscious women over the age of 25 who embrace health and wellness”.
This move is quite comprehensible for Coke I think; diversify its product range with healthier products but for L’Oreal, what’s in it for them? When I think of L’Oreal I think of moisturisers, face creams, anti-aging, skin creams, etc. Will the woman who like to drink L’Oreal stand-up? I’ve strong doubts by this drink. Source: Bevnet’s report.
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Always wondered how Amazon’s supply chain looks liked? At least I did! Business week has published in today’s top stories a photo report on how Amazon is processing the holiday season demand! Quite interesting stuff, it suprised me how many things are still handled manually.
Hi guys and gals,
Guess what? I am still alive for all whom where worrying. Finally I managed myself to have a break and update my blog. Last few weeks you could find me in class and a lot of the time outside class hours I could easily have been in three places at once. But as the physical realities of the world make that impossible, I wasn’t.
I’ve been trying to make ‘focus’ and ‘prioritisation’ my watchwords, so I’m concentrating on only doing the things that really interest me, and the things where I think are most beneficial both in financial and social terms. The plan is not to over commit, so I can make sure that I do whatever I’m doing well, and that I’m getting a good balance between academics and non-academics. This was the hardest challenge, balancing my academic and social calendar, when starting five weeks ago with my international Master programme “ICT in Business”. I’m already doing better now although, sometimes it’s still tempting when friends are ringing to go on outings every night! Next week I also start picking up my sporty activities! yeah! Alright, got to go now.
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