Food Counter 3

Briefly describe your plan for executing your business plan after you receive the resources.

l1st phase

lIncorporation à Establish communication infrastructure & Operations à Website à Client

Describe your venture’s plans to act as an adaptive organization.

l Agile management

l   Constantly review product, services, tech & info.

l   Pricing strategy to stay competitive 

 l Opportunity of partnership.

Describe the key business processes used by your venture.

lEarly preparation of project resources
     Clear objectives, principles, milestone, confidence

lVendor relationship approach strategy
     Verify, market study, response

lConsistency of scope definition
     Agile development, monitoring

lGo slow to go fast
     Lesson learnt, trust, capability, capacity

lCustomer Oriented
     Social needs.

Food Counter 2

Describe the customer and the target segment you have identified.

lfocused on two target customer groups (particularly women):

lProfessional who chronically overweight:

ltried numerous diet programs that fail.

lknowledgeable of most of the popular diet plans and are seeking a program that will impact on their weight gain. 

lhighly motivated to find a solution but have experienced a sense of isolation. 

lcraving a community approach to their weight problem. 

lwant a system that will sustain them after they leave the treatment facility.

lProfessional who are facing adult-onset or health issue (obesity-heart-iabetes):

lThis group is highly motivated to make the lifestyle changes that will improve the quality of their lives. 

llooking for a program that will tailor the fitness regimen around their health concerns but won't sacrifice results.

Both groups have incomes that exceed $50,000 a year and are college educated.

Develop a positioning statement using the template in Figure 11.4.
FC provides easy to use online calorie calculator tool with interactive journal and health report. Unlike other Calorie Counter, we allow customization with qualified health consultants/ ersonal doctor services with wide and strong shared database with restauranters. 


How will your venture sell its product and develop customer relationships?

lCore branding element

lSocial and Mobile Tech

lPartnership/ Collaboration networking.

lword of mouth. 

Food Counter

What is your mantra?
Make your life count!!

What is your business model?

lExpertise in providing health care services and products

lSuperior software paradigm - Online Calorie calculator tool application with interactive journal and health report.

lUsing technology, FC tool can reach a large number of customers with minimal costs.

lFreemium business model – Web 2.0

loffering basic Web services for free to attract consumers.

lwhile charging a premium for advanced features.

What is your competitive advantage?

lUsers Simply plug in food online search with nutritional information.

lThere are numerous calorie-counting websites, not all of them are complete and comprehensive resources for everything you need to meet your:

lcalorie goals,

lboost your nutrition,

lshare and read health-minded tips and get all the updates and news on foods

lFC – one stop to provide you with all the guidance and support for a healthy lifestyle that make your life count.

lFC will customize according to each individual need with a database shared with:

lHealth consultant or your own personal doctor.

lRestauranters/ Participating food operators.

lIt has a built-in intuitive nature that quickly identifies which foods you will like, which recipes you might love to cook and its strong emphasis on community will put you in touch with other like-minded health enthusiasts.

lFC keep track your exercise, managing weight and networking with others. 

Complete your SWOT Analysis

What is your strategy?

lExternal marketing message of FC is that Food Calorie tracking is enjoyable and easier to commit to using social and mobile tech.

lThe message of “Make your life count" is illustrated with images and language that furthers this idea.

lInternal positioning goal for the CF staff is to develop tool to guide customers achieve social results as they are pursuing their fitness health goals. This also influences staff to stay healthy.

lMeasurable results from this strategy are based on

lusers feedback & referrals brought in,

lcustomer loyalty/attrition rate,

land the attendance rates of web-users.

lPricing/ Promotion strategy - introductory

Reflection on Chapter 4: Creating a Strategy

A strategy can be viewed as a plan that integrates a firm's goals and actions into a cohesive whole that draws effectively on its resources and capabilities.
To form a strategy, you must know your goal, analyze the market, develop SWOT analysis.

S: one's strength
W: one's weakness
O: Opportunity to act your mission and goal
T: Treats in its competitive environment

There is a Chinese sentence: 知己知彼, 百戰百勝
The concept is the same, to know your competitors as well as yourself, and win always.
So, before plan a strategy, study yourself and your enemy is the way to victor. 


A good strategy design can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage.

Reflection Chap 5

This chapter focus on Innovation, which is a change in the thought process for doing something, or the useful application of new inventions or discoveries

How do we innovate? The book says: Creativity leads to invention and thus to innovation.
Creative thinking is a core competency of most new ventures, and entrepreneurs strive to have creative people on their team.
This concept reminds me of Apple Inc, which is the World's Number One Innovative Company, three years in a row according to BusinessWeek's 2007 list of the world's 50 most innovative companies. And iPod driving Apple to Number One Innovative Company. IPod combines outstanding design, easy-to-use interface, superb performance, and an experience like no other.

When we say Innovative product, it must has produced economic value in the marketplace, or it is just a piece of product in the shopping mall. So how do we know the market demand? What's the sources of innovation? Besides research laboratories, universities, and independent inventors, ultimate customer is another possibly important source.  
Developing an understanding of what customers value may be a far more useful exercise than merely asking them to submit their own solutions. The process of innovation begins with identifying the outcomes customers want to achieve; it ends in the creation of items they will buy.


Here are elements of an attractive innovation strategy:
1. Well-defined customer
2. Key customer benefit that is measurable in dollars
3. Short period until economic payback and positive cash flow
4. High benefit-to-price ratio for he customer
5. Proprietary advantage that can be maintained or defended
6. Core competencies required to exploit the new technology are present or available to the new venture
7. Access to the necessary resources

personnel strategic planning

Vision:
Experience the beauty, and the difference of the world

Mission:
Travel around the world

SWOC:
Strength: Personality (Passion, brave and open mind), friends from different countries
Weakness: Financial burden, poor-time
Opportunity: Study abroad, work oversea.
Challenge: family, culture, physical issue.

Strategies:
1. Make friends from all over the world (either online, or through friend)
2. Study different country's culture (by reading a book, or watch travel TV show)
3. Work at the field (Flight attendant, or in travel agency)
4. Regular Exercise to keep self flexible.

Week 11

I have been curious about PR, about what they do and what their importance in a corporation.

So I talked to my new PR and here is what I learn from her:

The first thing a PR do is brainstorming, and then write out working schedule.

Working schedule includes two major things: Logistic and Media.

Event logistic means contacting with third party when there is a conference event. Including reserve an event place, table and stage set up, music setting, event performance...PR has to make sure the product presents in the best state.

Media is another part that PR needs to handle. PR will write the press release, they work with media, however, they are not journalist.

After everything has been listed out, manpower planning is the next step.

Usually the whole project takes one month or less.

Besides product event planning, enhancing corporate image is another job a PR handles. This can be divided into two part: external communication and internal communication.

A role a PR plays is like a bridge between employer and employee and all the stakeholders. A good PR will smooth the relationships among the corporate, and make the corporate image stronger as well.

For our newspaper, News for Chinese, the first thing she does is to enhance the visibility in bay area. She tries to let as many people know about our newspaper as possible. She organized several activities for readers to participate and tried to expose in every media gathering.

In this talk, she is confidence and clear what she is doing. I believe her experience and ability will bring our newspaper to a different level.