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.

Week 10

There is one specific page that is one of our reader's favorite, which is restaurant review. Usually I will contact with the restaurant owner and go to the store with our reporter and try the food. This is one of my favorite time because I get to try the best dish that the chef makes for us to report.

Usually those restaurant will end up putting advertisement in our newspaper.

I found out that if the restaurant has been reported, the business grows up a lot. It is like a product is been proven by an expert. The chance people read the report and visit the restaurant is really high. I personally like to read restaurant review because it usually comes pictures and their commend on the food. I think this is really a smart way to promote their restaurant and our newspaper as well.

week 9

From this month, our PR person proposes a project.

The purpose is to increase the interaction between the readers, customer and the newspaper.

We will organize an activity every month and open to the readers to participate.

This way, our customer will have chance to promote their business directly to the reader, and the reader will have direct information from our customer.

I think it is a good idea to promote our newspaper and our customer's business as well. Really impressive work!!

Week 8

Our newspaper has being published for about one and a half year, and we are going to remodel our website. Today our IT person came to the office and we had a talk.

I will be the one design the website layout and he will take care of the coding part.

I am really excited because this website is going to be popular if we well promote it through our newspaper.

For inspiration, I visit many websites. TW Yahoo is my favorite because it is full of information, however it is not complicated and messy. User friendly and clear navigation is the key.

Week 6 & 7

After newspaper has been released to the public, I am usually the least busy person in the group.

What I usually do at this time is looking for inspiration for the next layout design.

Because we are free newspaper, our income mostly comes from advertising.

So besides art editor, I am also sales.

My boss was working for World Journal for 26 years and is very experienced.

He shows me how to deal with customer and how to communicate with them.

We have to treat ourselves as helper who tries to help customer's business.

Also, we are business consultant who is able to give customer advice how to run their business.

We are looking for win-win relationship.

By doing sales, I have chance to know different kind of business including restaurant, dentist, real estate, insurance...etc. It is good for me because the experience help me on communication and skill of dealing different people and situation.

At the beginning, it is hard for me to talk to a stranger and convince him to put advertise on our newspaper. Practice really helps me on build up confidence. The trick is that the better I know our product, the better the presentation will perform.

Week 5

Since we are bi-weekly newspaper, the newspaper is printed every other week.

This week is the printing week, which means I will be crazy busy.

I have to do the final editing and make sure that everything goes right.

Even a picture is not light enough, or a word spelling wrong will not be acceptable.

Sometimes layout design is ready to print, a update news just suddenly comes out and the whole layout design has to be re-adjusted.

One thing I like in this critical time is that I get a chance to talk to the person who works at printing place. Usually printing a proven newspaper takes 40 minutes and I have nothing to do but wait until it is done. While waiting, I talk to Louise who is the one taking care of our newspaper every time. He is experienced at printing industry, and I usually learn something from him.

He told me how they put different page in printing order, and how they bind the pages all together which is based on the even or odd number.

This is like a break time during this busy period, and I enjoy it.

Chapter 10 & 11 ideas

Chapter 10: High-Performance project team

To build a high-performance project team, a positive team environment is required.

Ground rules that describe the work patterns and values of the team.

• This is important to the team members what to do and how to work in the group.

A team identity built on commitment to a shared goal.

• It is tough to unit each individual's mind together. So communicate the goal with group members and have them involved in defining and planning the project will stronger their sense of ownership for the project.
• Always have goals appeared in any time will enhance the memory and keep the goals in mind.
• Get to know group members and show respect and trust to them will tighten the relationship of each member.

The ability to listen.

• Listen to others opinion is a way to show respect. Meanwhile, you watch and learn from someone else' idea or experience.
  

The ability to effectively manage meetings.

• A meeting says anything, it is a beginning, and also a finish. It demonstrated all the characteristics of a high-performance team and produce a result that is beyond what any team members working individually could achieve.

Chapter 11: Clear Communication

Communication is the foundation of relationships.

A person with good communication often time has a good relationship with others, and it applies to any situation: in a family, in a working field, friendship...It is not just vital but also essential skill everyone should learn.

As a project manager, strong communication skills will make the project achieve the goal easier and maybe sooner. Project tam members have clear message what they are doing and what their responsibility is. Regular meeting setup will keep team members on track and ensure that all the details are discussed. This is also a way to increase team cohesion since a status meeting is the only time the entire team gathers together and share information and solutions.

Reflection: Strengthen Others 2

Now think of a time when you felt powerless, weak, and insignificant as a result of something a leader said or did. What specifically did he or she do?

As a designer, I have always heard "oh the design should be easy for you, shouldn't take too much time." "why should I pay that much for a design? There is no actual cost."

Design, it is not like a actual product which people can see the process and the cost, so many people take it as granted. When people see a piece of paper with a logo on it, they only think it is just a patterned paper. Most people don't see how much time a designer take to come up a idea and make it to a design. Designer did spend time, mental strength and physical energy. So I am really disappointed every time when people underestimate design.

My ex-boss was not an art major person, just like anyone else who don't really appreciate design. Every time he assigned me to design something, he always added a sentence at last "i think this is easy for you, shouldn't take too much time, right?" If I took a little bit longer, then he suggested me to copy someone else' design and made a little change to it. I was totally speechless. Every design is unique and creative, and it is worthless to the designer.

In the US or in Europe, design is to be respected, and they attach great importance to creativity and innovation. This is what we all need to work on.!

Reflection: Strengthen Others 1

Think of a time when, as a direct result of something a leader said or did, you felt personally powerful and capable. Write down the actions the leader took that contributed to your feeling powerful, strong, capable, and effective - the master of your own experience. Be as specific as you can.

I watched the video clip of the speech made by Steve Jobs in Standford's graduation in 2009, and I was inspired by him a lot. He said: "Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did."

We spend the 2/3 of our life time working, why don't we choose what we love to do? Most people do what they don't really like to do because of money issue, timing, or no choice, so they complain, being upset, and being miserable at work, which doesn't help their life be easier or better. Maybe it is true that not everyone is lucky to find a job they love, but we can choose to work with positive mood, maybe eventually we will love what we do. If things can't be changed, then accept them.

Maybe the thing you are interested in doing doesn't make as much money as something else, but the enjoyment is not what you might get if you have no passion on it. If you love your job, the problem is not a problem anymore because it will be taken care of itself. If you haven't fount what you like to do yet, just try any possibility and never lose faith!

Chapter 9 ideas

A project contains three elements: cost, schedule, and quality, each one is equally important to another. How to balance between each of them is a skill that a PM needs to learn.

A number of ways of balancing the project at the project level:

1. Reestimate the project.
2. Change task assignments to take advantage of schedule float.
3. Add people to the project.
4. Increase productivity by using experts from within the firm.
5. Increase productivity by using experts from outside the firm.
6. Outsourcing the entire project or a significant portion of it.
7. Crashing the schedule.
8. Working overtime

For me, I will rather working overtime than adding more people to the project. The same people working on the same project have more understanding both to the project and each other. There are fewer distractions in the workplace. Unless the new people are familiar with the project, it will end up wasting more time on training and practicing, it is not an efficiency way to make the project better.

I will avoid outsourcing the entire project or a significant portion of it. Every project is different from each other, and there is always something can be learned from. Time-wise this might be a way to solve the problem temporary, but for long-term, it might damage the company's capacity and image.

Chapter 7&8 ideas

Chapter 7

In this chapter, the term "resources" means the people, equipment, and raw materials that go into the project. The cost of a project needs to be clearly listed out at the beginning in order to control the project from over spending. If the cost estimates approximately accurate to what a project really needs, the work would go smoothly and complete on time.

Gantt charts and time-scaled networks are two useful tools to calculating the schedule of the work. The chart shows clearly the work breakdown and the schedule of each work. Participants are able to follow the process without being lost.

Chapter 8

Make the estimate more accurately, estimator must be experienced with the work. We learned that risk can be reduced by learning from the past. Even though every project is not exactly the same to one another, experienced estimator can make better estimate based on past performance data.

There are several estimating methods.

1. Apportioning. This method is to begin with a total project estimate, then assigns a percentage to each of the phases and tasks of the project. This technique is usually used in conjunction with phased estimating.
2. Parametric estimates. This method is to use a basic unit of work, and then multiple the size to the entire project. This is usually based on historical data, and the estimator must develop a solid parametric formula.
3. Bottom-up estimating. This one estimate from the detailed tasks and roll-up. It is the most accurate than other methods, however, it takes most effort and time.

Week 4

From this week, we got two new colleagues. One is our sales, another is PR.

From what I know, Public Relations (or PR) is a field concerned with maintaining public image for high-profile people, commercial businesses and organizations, non-profit associations or programs. Usually PR people need to be highly active between the organization and the public. They have to pay attention to the trends and provide ideas. Sounds like an interesting field for me.

I am looking forward to see how this new colleague will help our newspaper.

Week 3

Every two weeks, we have newspaper been published. During these two weeks, I usually work on putting news and article into design and layout it before print. Every issue is one project for me, and I appreciate each project that inspires me on new design.

Besides design and layout the paper, I also deal with printing factory. This is also the last step of the project, which is to get a prove print for final checking if everything goes perfectly right. To be honest, I am stressful of being the person who gives the proven to the project that is ready to print. I will have to take the responsibility if the newspaper get something wrong when publishing.

In order to solve the problem, I make a checking list to make sure the date is correct, the picture is right, the font is in shape...This really helps me on decreasing errors.

Chapter 5&6 ideas

Chaper 5

Everything that has not been happened contains risk. How do we prevent the risk from happening?

First step is to identify the risks.
There are several ways to get information, ask stakeholders or learn from the past. It is true that the project may be varied by different stakeholders involved, however, the past project is certainly able to give some ideas for present not to repeat the same mistake.

Second step is to analyze and prioritize the risks.
Once the risk is defined, we need to figure out the consequence of the risks in terms of cost, schedule and possible damage to the project.
Ex. If the possibility of raining tomorrow is 50%, it might be traffic due to the rain, and I might be stuck on the traffic and might be late for work.

The third step is to develop response plans. If we know the risk might happen, and we know the consequence of the risk, we now have to do the response plan.
Ex. If it is raining tomorrow, it will be traffic. In order not to stuck in the traffic and late for work, I will leave from home earlier, or go another way that might be less traffic.

Chapter 6

Work breakdown structure. (WBS) It is a technique to break down a project into small pieces for better executing and managing. Before the WBS, we need to identify all the tasks in a project. Once the WBS made, every participants will know his or her role and focus on it. So, how to make a good WBS is really important.

Getting started on a work breakdown structure is always the hardest part. Sometimes the beginning doesn't plan well may effect the following steps.

There is a key concept I see it is really important: planning for quality.
A famous example that just happened lately is Toyota vehicle recall. Either short-term impact on stock prices or long term impact on fixing customer opinions and damage to brand equity, it is uncountable for the quality mistake.

Assignment 1b (week1-2)

Here are my learning outcomes:

1. Learn Adobe InDesign which is the professional design/layout program that has become the industry standard in print publishing. I will be able to use the program with no problem on making newspaper layout and design.

2. Other than doing art editing, I will also deal with printing matter. Get to know what the printing process is and how newspaper is distributed.

3. I will have to learn how to deal with customers. Familiar with our newspaper and able to present it to the customers. Whenever the customers have questions, I will be able to reply and give feedback.

4. Practice writing. It will be helpful if I can write, because a lot of time I need to fix text to match the layout.

5. Read magazine and other newspaper that will inspire me on design. As an art editor, being creative and with a highly developed visual sense is important.

6. Pay attention to the trend. I will learn website design since E-paper is getting popular. Flash and Dreamweaver are two programs I will be learning. Hopefully I will be able to make my personal website with flash on it.

Assignment 1a (week1-2)

Company's Goal and Vision

I am currently working for a local Chinese newspaper called News for Chinese. It is a start-up company with only a couple people working as full time and about five people working as part time. The office locates in Redwood City, and this is where our newspaper started to distribute-Peninsula. For long time in bay area, even though there are a few small printing media ups and downs, Sing Tao and World Journal newspaper have monopolized the Chinese market. In this circumstance, we come out to give both readers another choice of reading a newspaper and all kinds of business another place to advertise themselves. Our goal is to provide Chinese local-based news, information of life, technology, education, and politics. We try to give the local reader the closest living information, therefore, our vision is to become the most popular local Chinese newspaper in bay area.

SWOT

As I mentioned earlier, Sing Tao and World Journal newspaper are two biggest Chinese newspapers most Chinese read in the bay area. How our newspaper is different from them is that we focus on the local news other than news from Taiwan, Hong Kong or China. Moreover, we are the only free Chinese language community newspaper with separate edition for bay area Peninsula and South/East bay, which means everyone, is available to read our newspaper without paying a cent. We are also the only full color free publication that gives reader a better enjoyment on reading. We have great resources for local news, Chinese language education, personal health, personal life style, home improvement, neighborhood get-away, and much more.

However, we are bi-weekly newspaper; the news in our newspaper might not be as updated as other daily newspapers. Also, we are new to the community, we still need time to let people recognize us and become our royal reader.

Art editor

The primary difference from the traditional newspaper is that our newspaper applies full color and designed layout. We use many pictures and colors to give readers a completely refreshing feeling on a newspaper. As a result, art editor plays an important role in the organization.

As an editor, I am responsible for illustrations and layouts in printed matter. Other than that, the job may cover:

• Making sure the most suitable graphics and photographs are used
• Discussing design and layout ideas with the editor and other colleagues, including freelance writers and proofreaders
• Producing cover designs and inside pages.
• Anticipating trends and setting the newspaper's overall visual style, including design templates.

Specialised computer software is used to design newspaper such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign. I will determine the final content of a text and I am also the one who send the final file to the printing and make sure there is no error before it comes out to the public.

Chapter 4 ideas

Before a project starts to run, there are several items need to be confirmed.
The first one is that all parties need to agree on the goals of the project. There is a guideline for participants to follow in order not to get the project out of control, and it has to be written down to prove that the project gets agreement. A success project means that it meets stakeholder expectations.

The second one is controlled scope. Before a project begins, we have no idea how much it will cost or how much ingredients will be needed. We can only predict and make an estimate quantity statement, but our prediction may go wrong sometimes. To avoid project overruns,the project rules should be made carefully.
I have a personal experience would like to share. There was one time I got a chance to design an identity system for the customer. I have no experience working as a freelancer at that time, so there was no contract signing idea in my mind. The project didn't go well because the customer keep asking for revising. I was really upset because I spent all my time just to change little of this and change little of that. It was like they can do whatever they want because there is no rule and no limit. From this bad experience I have learned that a project should make certain guidelines for stakeholders to follow and be written down. The project will turn out more productive.

The third one is management support. This is what I mentioned earlier about project rules being written. This is to make sure that every stakeholder understand the project and agree to the guideline.

Chapter 3 ideas

In chapter 3, the most important point is to identify who are our stakeholders. The reason is that stakeholders has direct or indirect stake in an organization, and they may significantly influence the success of an activity or a project. If a business organization want to success on a project, identifying stakeholders is a primary task.

So, the question is " Who are our stakeholders?"
The chapter listed out stakeholder roles by different perspectives. They can have positive or negative views regarding a given project. The point I have learned here is that the more disagreement those stakeholders have with one another, the more difficulty the project may be done with. Therefore, knowing the key stakeholders and also win their cooperation is the most challenge.

Each stakeholder is important to the project, and the customer is the most unpredictable and hard to deal with for me. In my job, I sometimes have to deal with customers when they are unsatisfied with my work. Maybe I am more professional than the customer in my field, but I am in no position to argue with them but follow their desires, because they are the one paying for it, and my salary is actually indirectly from them. If the customer doesn't satisfy with the project, then the project directly fails no matter how good the manager or project team think. The customer holds the final decision on if the project success or not.So, how to get an agreement between an organization and the customer is a skill we need to learn.

A leader who I admire

I admire Steve Jobs not only for his great achievement on today’s technology but also for his innovative and unique idea as a leader. Sure competent and determined play an important part forming a good leader. But a leader must be inspiring and imaginative as well. He/She must always pay attention to what is going on now, but also look to the future. Jobs is truly a innovator who always think out of the box.

Another key to make Job successful is that he loves what he is doing and believes in himself. “Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.” (by Steve Jobs) Even when he hires somebody, his question to those people is “Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.” They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else. In a team, it’s important that everyone unites in one mind. Being loyal is also a characteristic that a good leader should has.