Week3: The Entrepreneurship in Poland

Today, I would like to talk about success, success stories and successful people.
The entrepreneurship is still not well defined. We can say it consists of 3 main components: innovativeness, risk-taking, and pro-activeness. I would like to introduce two successful entrepreneurs Donald Trump & Robert Kiyosaki and their point of view on the topic.

In this presentation I would like to focus on Polish successful entrepreneurs. Due to the transformation process, Poland is still not as well developed country in Europe. However, it is possible to single out some entrepreneurial activities that can be described as a real success.

First case I would like to describe is an online auction and a shopping website allegro.pl. It was created in 1999. We could say it was patterned after worldwide Ebay. Although Ebay was available on polish market, it wasn’t popular enough. This created an opportunity which was well taken by two open-minded entrepreneurs Arjan Bakker and Tomasz Dudziak.

They started their business in a small basement. As there was no other website like that, they were able to develop the network of clients. More customers meant the greater range of goods that can be bought there. That led to a competitive advantage. No fees at the beginning of existence and low costs of delivery made allegro.pl competitive to Ebay in UK or US.

The second case is an hypertonic drink called ‘Tiger’. It was brought to the market in 2003 by Foodcare Sp. z o.o. At that time ‘Redbull’ was already a quite recognisable brand. However, the entrepreneurs noticed that its price was high considering average incomes in Poland. Setting price of Tiger slightly higher than its marginal cost allowed to create a competitive advantage and to catch a significant market share. Its price, three or four times lower than the price of the main competitor, attracted also the big group of students that started to use the energy drink as a substitution of coffee.

I love to hear business success stories especially, Polish ones as I am a patriot! Please share the stories you know, maybe it is your own story

Week 3: Virtual Travels with Google

All of us know Google from their tools which we use every day e.g. this blog, our school email, online docs, their social portal, their maps, street view, browser, analytics, mobile operating system, various device and of course a search engine...  I’m sure it’s not all, there’s much, much more... I would be very happy to hear about what other Google tools you use?

It’s a bit scary that potentially they may know everything about us... but you can relax, it’s not the topic of my presentation for this term! I’d like to write about something else, a new Google service I discovered lately. It’s a part of Street View and is called Business Photos. Have you heard of it?

Google Business Photos Add [4]

It’s started with Goggle Maps. Thanks to them you could have seen almost any place in the world from the bird's eye view. You still can, but their functionality was significantly expanded since then. Later there was Street View that allowed us to take a walk along a street in a selected city and country in almost any location in the world... I’m sure you’ve tried it!

Now Google is photographing the businesses placed out of doors – in those streets. The service is called Google Business Photos...

Google ran a survey during NYC Restaurant Week and claimed the new service helped increase online reservations rate in restaurants and hotels at 20% and click through tare at 30%. I have no opinion about the Google survey but it’s surely useful to see a restaurant or a hotel remotely, before you even get there and check if you like it.  

Example indoors view and arrow allowing to move forward [3]

But how to photograph so many restaurants, hotels, museums, shops and much, much more? Sending a car was in this case impossible. So they are cooperating with local photographers – so called “Google Recommended Photographers”. You can imagine that they have popped up like mushrooms all over the world.  

The photos made by these photographers are visible is google searches, in the business profile on Google+ and of course in Google Maps and Street View. Thanks to that you can walk into a company during your Street View walk... Doesn’t it sound immersive?  

Google search result – possibility to see the company interiors 

But that is not all it offers – except the professional photographers – people like us can take such interactive photos and place them on maps... You need a new Nexus phone dedicated mobile app. Everyone can be a pro now! :) And the more people use the app and publish their photos from various interesting places, the more we will be  able to see!

Page allowing to publish your own “street-view like” photos [5]

Personally I use such tools when choosing the next holiday location, planning a journey or  dinner with friends. Ability to see what the places really look like is very important. And the additional possibility to take a walk in almost any direction is priceless. I found it useful especially when planning visiting new places – these virtual travels let me make sure I choose a good place. There is of course a room for disappointment, but in my opinion it’s much smaller, then in a traditional scenario.

And what do you think about the possibility to see so many places virtually?

Do you find the aforementioned Google tools useful? Or do you think Google will soon rule the world?

Do you find the new services, including Business Photos useful?

Sources

[1] http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/15/google-has-rebuilt-maps-from-ground-up-ipad-version-coming-this-summer/

[2] https://www.google.pl/maps/

[3] http://panoramica360.pl/portfolio-item/cube-center/

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMWxBpM-MSA

[5] http://maps.google.com/maps/about/contribute/photosphere/

[6] http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/maps.google.pl/pl/pl/maps/about/assets/partners/businessview/casestudies-nyc.pdf

Week 3: Are you gay?

Satisfaction with Life Index - Europe

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index

This picture visualizes the level of satisfaction with life in Europe . To see the visualization of the whole world, click on the link below:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/World_happiness.png

In the year of 2006, Poland was ranked on the 99th place in the Satisfaction with Life Index ranking. To illustrate the situation, the picture below shows 9 countries ranked before Poland and top 10 best countries.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index

Many of us born in the 1990s are not satisfied with their life in Poland and plan to go abroad in search of a better tomorrow. But is life in Poland really bad? It seems so...

Let's look at the latest research results. I encourage you to visit the website below and familiarize yourself with an interesting piece of reality presented in the graph.

Source: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/life-satisfaction/

Did any of you fill the questionnaire for the OECD? If not, I really recommend  filling it out. On the main page there is an instruction how to do this. As you can see, Poland in the ranking is almost at the end.

Link is here: http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org

?? My question goes out to each one of you and your families and every person you know. 

What really makes us think about our country so bad ?? 

It's not "them" who puts our country in rankings like this almost at the end, but it is us who does that. When you check the ranking of the site such as OECD you actually take this information as a fact the site itself has just created your opinion, you start to believe that "living in this country sucks". I think it is connected with our mentality and before we start changing something physically, we need to change our minds to feel motivated enough to make a physical step forward, this simple rule applies to every situation on micro and macro level of our lives. 

Let's try to do something which is not taught in our schools. Compare to others , draw your own conclusions. Let us admire the people better than ourselves and try to aim at becoming even better human beings, as individuals and as a nation.

Gay - The term was originally used to refer to feelings of being "carefree", "happy", or "bright and showy". Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay

?? So I ask you again, are you gay living in Poland :-) ??

PS Switzerland being in the 1st place in the OECD ranking is the most gay country in the world.