Business Start-Up from Scratch Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Business Start-Up from Scratch - Essay Example Smart thinking should be employed in order to have potential for growth (Marinel 5). Factors to consider when starting There are various factors to consider before starting a business. One factor is the area of expertise and knowledge. The entrepreneurs must come together and evaluate the level of expertise in providing the good or service they intend to market through their business. For a business to be successful, the business partners must have some experience in the field in which they want to invest. Many businesses fail due to lack of knowledge. The exposure could come from employment in other companies or organizations offering similar products or services. The knowledge should be reinforced by research into the prospects of the product faring well in the market to avoid frustrations. Every niche of a business requires a specific set of skills and, therefore, some require more expertise than others. The knowledge should be coupled with the desire to succeed. Many starters fai l in business due to diminishing passion once they face hardships. The people who want to start the company must, therefore, have a culmination of passion if the business is to take off the ground (Marinel 5). The second factor to consider is the market and demand for the product. Before investing in the product, it would be necessary to determine how much of the product will be sold in certain duration. This is a crucial marker for projecting the profitability. The main reason for starting a business is to make a profit and profit involves sale volumes. The product should be sold in areas where its demand is felt. Some products do well in the local market while others would do well in the international market. Extensive research should be done in order to determine the area in which the product will have enough demand to sustain the development of the business. The target customers should also be established. This helps in demarcating the market into various segments based on facto rs such as the lifestyle, age, and income. Accuracy in determining a market segment is essential to facilitate the recouping of the initial cost as well as driving the business forward. This becomes facilitated by the products ability to satisfy a need in the market. The product launch should also be timely in order to develop a customer base (Longenecker 28). Competition should be the next factor to consider. The entrepreneurs should be able to determine the level of competition they expect when entering the market. This is critical in determining whether they have a competitive advantage against the already established would be competitors. The competitive advantage receives creation if the customers perceive the product to be of superior quality than the others in the market. The product concept should be judged on the opportunity, for business it creates. A brilliant concept does not necessarily imply a fantastic investment opportunity (Longenecker 29). Technology of making the product should also be considered. With time, technological advances evolve in production of many goods in the market. Technological aspect makes a key factor in increasing the competitive advantage by being able to produce higher units of the product, and increasing the cost effectiveness. Once the product to be marketed has been determined, the investors should evaluate their technology to determine if it will help them satisfy the demand effectively, and whether it will reduce

Impact of Rent Seeking

Impact of Rent Seeking What is rent seeking and what problems may it cause for society? Rent seeking is a concept which was being labelled by Anne Krueger in 1974 (Tullock, 1998). This term has been widely defined as the â€Å"political activity of individuals and groups who devote scarce resources to the pursuit of monopoly rights granted by governments† (Mitchell Munger, 1991, p. 525). From the above definitions, it has been supported by the knowledge that rent is an entirely excess payment that might be equivalent or above to the resources and helped to increase the earning power of the resource as gains are often concealed (Parker, 1996). Regarding this, it will be consider as problematic for society as, broadly, many rent-seeking activities are connected and worked closely with the government or economic structures that make a huge influence on society as a whole. As it can be expected, many theorists and social, economic and political commentators have been worked together and recognised that there are numerous problems attached to this particular system. As such, there are needs for discussion over the problem and evaluation on their relevance to society today. In this essay, it will first illustrate the concept of rent-seeking in addition with some examples in real life. Secondly, it will assess different potential problems that may cause for society by identifying issues that directly related to the negative effect which has imposed on national and international economies in similarly before evaluating them critically. Lastly, it will be summarising with a view that the problems which have identified and the importance of rent seeking that have imposed a significant impact on society and welfare and costs incurred in society must be addressed in relation to such behaviours carrying out onwards. According to the concept of rent seeking, it is not a new system or activities exist in nowadays instead it has been developed throughout past. This type of activities would be able to exist in everywhere or anytime as long as there are individuals or groups which have the power to use their resources as a tool to monopolize their market or the status, and from this they gain benefits from it but without paying back to society. Rent is a source of income that there are payments made to the owner in order to use the possession for e.g. a house, a building or anything that the borrower wants to use it but they do not have the ability or want to own the assets permanently (Smith, 2001). To illustrate this concept more precisely, there is a good example from the China economic structure. Tak-wing and Yongping (2009) has researched the economic situation of China over a period of time, and which how the rent seeking exists and leads to social conflict and problems. In China, coals are bei ng seen as highly regulated and controlled goods by the government. But, after reforming, the power to own these goods are being spread to a certain extent which they make use of this act to obtain the support their policy. Therefore, it could be shown that the concept of rent seeking could be exist in any forms over industry or society and transformed from time to time. Having a detailed definition of rent seeking, it will take a deep investigation into this concept by assessing the problems for society that are widely associated with it. To begin, rent seeking could be related to the practice of all pay auctions in society which, according to Anderson et al (1997, p. 2), are the pursuit of economic allocations for a specific prize that is founded on the basis of costly activities. Tullock (1998) has outlined the all pay auctions could caused lots of problems especially the monopolies. Although there are possibilities that waste could be avoided in some circumstances, he suggested an example that is when a weak democratic government is unable and have difficult to control the bidding process, thus ensuring that profits disperse (Tullock, 1998), which could cause a detrimental effect to society. The above argument is highly believable and trustful as it draws upon the power of the monopolies while opposing to the power of those who controlling the au ctions, which is out of proportion in different kind of cases. For this reason, there is no protection being offered for society as a whole. In fact, the above particular example has shown that wastage levels are enhanced where rent seeking occurs. With the evidence offered by Anderson et al (1997), they gave a warning that those individuals or agents who are losing out in the auction are financially worse off eventually as they do not receive any compensation for their trouble. Moreover, Kreuger (1974) stated firmly that the money spent on real resources give a consequence in the rise of annual welfare costs while it is specifically regarding to price and quality controls, which were 7% of GNP in India. In the same way, when there is intensification of economic controls related to rent seeking activity directly, the numbers of corruption has been increased as a result (Kreuger, 1974). This type of corruption can undermine the economic security of society as a whole and make the wel fare costs become worsen, thus it is giving assurance to the notion that the system is not beneficiary to society unless there are controls held in place. Furthermore, the activities of rent seeking may lead to the transitional gains trap exist in society. With reference to Tullock (1975), through the capitalisation of rental flows into fixed assets which provide a one-off benefit instead of a continuing increased rate of return, the transitional gains gap is the appearance of unprofitability in this government aid programs. This is a fairly straightforward concept but is also the one that is highly difficult to solve for society, as the benefits that are afforded companies under this condition do not pass downwards to the population, instead securing capital losses should the rent be abolished. What is more, there is an ongoing social waste linked with this phenomenon (Del Rosal, 2011). Tullock (1975) defended that under this situation, progressing reform is impossible and therefore the companies benefitting are under no risk of losing out. Certainly, this giving support to Munger’s (2006) argued that the existing system  "forecloses good competition† but the process is problematic for society undoubtedly beyond loss of competition. Lastly, the rent seeking activity may cause the problems of the balance of rent seeking between societies as it is importance of this activity. In this particular point, it is perceived as significant in encouraging processes of development (Khan Sundaram, 2000) and it has been recognised that to give support on the emergence of various economies during their development phase. Regardless of the fact that the shifts in supply and demand curves have been proved as a positive rent seeking (Tollison, 1982), the induced government action by artificial mean to acquire rents has really undermined any potential benefits. On the contrary, the existence of rent seeking can also be severely imposing harm to growth, thus this giving the policymakers with a paradox that has been observed in the developing nations in Asia, most of which experienced widespread rent seeking during the 1990s onwards (Khan Sundaram, 2000). From this specific example, it behaves according to the standard of the theo retical principle that economic growth performing badly, thus putting the poorest into a situation that is even deeper into poverty while the organised and beneficial groups employed the state power to increase their own economic benefits directly (Pasour, 1987). Indeed, Tullock (1967) has noted that there are extensive welfare costs being attached with the implementation of all procedures that related to the rent seeking of monopolies and tariffs, and the application of this principle onto this example shows that social costs not only retard the process of growth but can actually reverse it and lead to the shrinking of the economy through a remarkable losses. Therefore for the effect, the problematic dilemma that exist between the harm and good to developing nations in particular cause an attention of the damaging nature of rent seeking. To conclude, the above problems of rent seeking undoubtedly have imposed an impact on society which attached wastage in every instance and hindered the growth and competition. All pay auctions may leads to corruption and intensify the wastage that was produced throughout the process. Also, the transitional gap and the balancing of the importance and damage of rent seeking for economies brought problematic to society as the former did not benefits to the society and the latter needs to make one’s choice over the good and harm. Under all the possible problems that may cause from this activity, action from the government must be balanced continually in long term if issues like the waste caused by monopolies and tariffs are to be solved. Even though it is approved that Tullock is right in that as rent seeking deep-rooted into economic culture, thus reform is impossible and there are solutions that the government should solved over such problem in order to prevent further economic damage.

History of the Computer :: essays research papers

In this report, you’ll about the components and history regarding the computer. A computer is a devise that processes, organize, and calculate, displays information. It can communicate with other computers all over the world. The most powerful computer can perform 10s of billion of calculations per second. People use computers for business, track inventories, and use bar codes, personal home use and other things. Computers can produce information, numbers, images, sounds and movies. Embedded computers control devices such as remote controls. Lets talk about the essential parts of the computer. First you have your outside units like your printer, monitors, modem, floppy disk drive, CD ROM drive, scanner, speakers and keyboard. These things are called peripherals. Printers come in inkjet, laser and thermal. Lasers are much faster than inkjets. The monitor is the television like unit where you observe text and images. Modems permit us to connect to the Internet, which is a global communication network. Modems come in many different speeds. Some are 14.4k, 56k these uses a phone line, cable modem (in only large cities, an internet setup that uses a cable line) and many more. Floppy disk drives are drives where you insert a disk to save progress or install programs from .CD ROMs are compact disk that can read only memory. Scanners are flatbed devises that you can look at pictures at more closely. Speakers allow us to here the sounds coming from the computer. The keyboard is an input unit that produces data bits. Inside the computer you have processors (CPU), Ram, semiconductor, hard disk, the bus and the operating system. Central Processing Units (CPU) a microprocessor that is, a single piece of silicon containing millions of electrical components. It’s input device or memory is communicated through the bus to the CPU, which is the part of the computer that translates commands and runs programs. Ram is the physical memory of a computer. You can use it to run programs that require memory to load. The semiconductor is the silicone object used for computer inner circuit components. The Bus it the flat cable of numerous wires that joins in with components in the computer. For Example: connection to the CPU to the hard disk. The hard disk is where the machine stores data and programs. When a computer is turned on it searches it memory it is called the operating system. Windows 98 and Mac are forms of operating system.

Catastrophe Model of Construction Dispute Negotiation Behavior

The construction industry is apparently one of the major sectors of Hong Kong construction economy, and as Kenneth and Sai (2006) noted, buildings, the result of construction industry’s activities, are part of the built environment in which several human activities occur.As a result of the heavy reliance on team work and collaboration, construction activities are often prone to conflict, although it is apparent that this could also be obtainable in other organizational settings. Infact, these authors opine that the traditional construction contracting methods in several countries creates adversarial tendencies in the project team, which tend to foster conflict and thus conflicting behaviors in construction activities.It is a known fact that one of the primary indicators of construction success is the timely completion and delivery of the project. However, for any construction project to be completed and delivered as scheduled, a cooperative working environment is vital.In this light, Harmon (2003) suggested that the characteristic adversarial relationship and lack of a cooperative environment of construction organizational settings constitute one of the major factors that affect timely completion of construction projects.Because of the apparent importance of conflict management in construction, as well as in some other organizational settings, several scholarly works exist on conflict, conflict behaviors and conflict management. The term conflict has been severally defined, from different perspectives, even within construction literatures, as a result, several different understandings of conflict behaviors, and by extension conflict management styles, have been proffered.Kenneth and Sai (2006) argued, however, that the numerous construction literatures on conflict have essentially focused on conflict causes, prevention and management within a contractual and/or legal context. They suggested that equal importance should be accorded the human factors invol ved in conflicts, since according to them, conflicts is ‘stemmed and handled’ by the people involved, thus the role played by human factors, especially behavior, should be considered an integral part of conflict management.It is this call that this paper intends to heed. This paper intends to look at construction conflict from the behavioral perspectives using Rene Thom's Catastrophe Theory.   It has been suggested that continuous changes in human behaviors often display a discontinuous lapse.In this light, it has been argued that the catastrophe theory provides a ‘grounded approach for modeling conflict behavior in construction’ (Kenneth and Sai, 2006 p.439). This paper emphasizes the human factor in conflict by examining behaviors in response to conflict, known as conflict behavior; it then attempts to use a model of the catastrophe theory to explain construction conflict behaviors.ConflictConflict is a natural outcome of the interrelationships between individuals and groups. As a result, it is a very common and general phenomenon that can hardly be conceptualized in a simple definition. The interaction between individuals and groups brings to the fore, individual differences in goals, objectives or perspectives.The tension created by these differences, when identified by the parties involved is usually the cause of conflict. Several authors have offered different definitions or concepts of what constitute conflicts (Allred, 2000), however, there is hardly any definition that completely subsumes the entirety of conflicts from both the individual or organizational context.For example, Rahim et al (2000) positing that conflict is borne out of human interactions explain that conflicts begins when one individual ‘perceives that his/her goals, attitudes, values or beliefs’ are not compatible with that of the other’s (Rahim et al., 2000 p. 9). Here conflict is defined from the context of individual relations.Examinin g conflict from an organization context, Roloff (1987) argue that conflict begins when members of a team/organization engage in activities that are considered incompatible with those of colleagues within â€Å"their network, members of other collectivities, or unaffiliated individuals who utilize the services or products of the organization† (Roloff, 1987 p.496 quoted in Rahim, 2002).

World History: The Worst Dictator of Them All

I will be comparing and contrasting three dictators, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. These three men are considered to be the world’s mass murdering dictator and I would like to investigate which one of them is the worst one of them all. Hitler who was Fuhrer for Germany is infamous for his doings in World War II and his killing of Jewish people. Then there is Stalin who caused the great terror in USSR and used cunning schemes to achieve his goals and was a key person during the Cold War. Finally there is Mao Zedong the great Chinese revolutionist who fought against the Chinese Nationalist Party and changed China in many ways using many social and economic policies. I will be judging â€Å"worst dictator† by the amount of death, social and economic problems caused during their rule and will also consider the rise to their power as a basis to judge these three dictators. I will be giving worst dictator to whoever has the most death and worst social and economic problems considering their position. In the social and economic problems caused it will be mainly be the leader create talking about policies and whether or not it was successful or not. I will also take in the consideration of propaganda used by dictators to influence the people’s trust. Firstly, Mao Zedong the President of the People’s Republic China or formerly known Chairman of the People’s Republic China started out to be a mere librarian working in a Chinese college. He then joins the Chinese communist party that rebels against the existing ruling Nationalist party in China, the KMT. Mao led his rebels across china fighting and running away from the KMT. However in October 1st of 1949 he creates the People’s Republic of China and turns China into communist. Many Chinese liked and followed him due to his status as legendary revolutionist who bettered the poor and fought for the people who could not fight. In 1958, he sets out to do the Great Leap Forward, which was simply put a 5-year plan type of scheme where the goal was to modernize China radically. This reformation involved large agricultural communes and about 75,000 farmers, these communes did their own collective farms and families. Following Marxist principles all wages were equally shared amongst the families in the commune. Each family also received a small strip of land. However by 1962 this reformation stopped due to Soviet Union could not afford to back up China and this failure caused Mao to resign from his post as Chairman of PRC. Many had died of starvation and about 50 million died at this point. Even though he resigned Mao was openly still playing politics, in 1966 he would start an initiative called the Great Cultural Revolution.Ap World History Units 1-3 Study Guide This involved in the Chinese government allowing critics of the government to openly speak out against the government and China. This was totally against what Mao had installed when he was Chairman, he took away all forms of freedom of speech and had installed many Marxist ideas that were implied by Soviet Union. After the critics finished criticizing the government and Mao, he gathered up college students and made them attack the critics. Proclaiming that these student body were the Red Guard, who had a responsibility to protect China, Mao started ordering unexplainable orders. During this time there was a politician by the name of Liu Shiaoqi who had notions of wage differentiation and freedom of speech. Mao gave out orders such as banning education, never to consider intellectuals as superiors, and killed roughly around 78 million Chinese people by this time (including Tibet incident). However this was all indirect killing. He then gave almost all his power to the Gang of Four who caused many troubles and the Chinese public despised them. Everyone liked Mao even though he killed so many people and caused so many disturbances. His image as great revolutionary leader is still believed today by many Chinese people and much of his wrongdoings is erased from Chinese history. Mao Zedong’s points are his mass murder of his own people and destruction of class system, which caused many problems, while rising to power his cunning ideas and tactics are admirable, and he always fought for the peasants at all times which is considered as a good thing. Even though he killed many people all these killings were accidental or more like unplanned. He also had a cult of personality, which still exists today. Next is Josef Stalin the General secretary of the Central Committee of the communist Party. This man succeeded Lenin who was the leader of USSR and first ever man to successfully implement communism into a country and was considered a Great revolutionist. He rose to power from his position as a secretary of the party to Leader of USSR by using Lenin’s cult of personality and pretending to be number one disciple. He would team up with his opponents who wanted his position against one main army then change up his teams. In this way he would always be on the winning side and his opponents never considered him a big threat, in this way he tricked and conned his way to become one of the most ruthless leaders USSR has ever seen. After his consolidation of power he soon worked on getting rid of all opponents and all future opponents. He first got rid of Leon Trotsky who was Lenin’s second in command to Mexico. Then one by one he got rid of all intellectuals in USSR. Soon he was the only one in USSR with any proper intellect. This purge of Intellectuals depleted USSR’s brainpower completely. After getting rid of the brainpower in USSR he started to implements plan to modernize USSR. His goal was to be able to stand side by side against the Capitalist nations. To achieve these goals he used death camps called Gulags to maintain a rigid control over all counterrevolutionary actions. Then killed the kulak, landlords who owned farm property, and then killed any peasants have any success. In this way Stalin created a mass famine, which killed 23,000,000 people. Unlike Mao, he did this on purpose due to his fear of counterrevolutionaries and opposition to his power. While Stalin boasted that USSR was having successful economic situations during the Great depression in America parts of Ukraine did not have food and many died. After this incident, he acted a major part in ending the World War II. They defeated the Nazis who invaded European country. However Stalin ordered Russian army to stay put in the country they had just liberated from the Nazis. In this way he was able to procure Satellite states. In the Tehran and Yalta meetings amongst the Big Three, he was able to argue equally amongst Churchill and Roosevelt. In this way he was allowed to keep satellite states however the next American president and Stalin did not get along as well. Eventually Cold war started and Stalin implemented mass production of arms. He died on 1953. Even though his methods were harsh he was able to modernize USSR into a world power that was at one point equal to America. Stalin is still considered as a hero amongst some Russians, this is mainly due to history books in Russia do not talk about Stalin’s misdeeds. His misguided methods were very harsh however it produced results, which Stalin sought for. His mass murder of 23,000,000 people was done on purpose unlike Mao, which makes him a very scary man. Stalin’s personality was one of a calculative and methodical almost like a serial killer. He wanted to satisfy his own goals, which was to be better than the Capitalist nation, mainly America. Stalin’s points are that he killed many people during the modernization of USSR, his cunning methods when he was rising to power, his method to spread communism by using satellite states, and he also made USSR into a Super Power. His successor Nikita had to use De-Stalinization due to Stabilize USSR and make sure it was a safer place to be in. Finally, Adolf Hitler the most famous mass murder and mastermind behind World War II. His genocide of Jewish people is famous amongst all people. He was a painter in Vienna before he formed the Nazi party. He looked for rich patrons to support his work but the Jewish patrons, most patron are Jewish. However they all rejected him and his hatred towards Jewish people started to grow. He then joins a political party and later on forms the Nazi party. He becomes the leader of this party and leads the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. He was arrested in this event and then held at prison for 5 years. He wrote his book â€Å"Mein Kampf † and starts to scheme political methods to get his revenge on the Jews. His pride as Germans started rising and he became very Nationalistic after the Great depression which caused the Germany to fall down with America due to the huge debts owed by Germany given out by America. This was to pay war reparations to other countries, from World War I. Hitler saw this as a sign of weakness on America’s part and started to do special speeches to the German people using carefully rehearsed speeches. In this way the Nazi party was elected to German Reichstag. Soon Hitler massed enough influence to become Chancellor of Germany and switched took over instead for democracy he becomes the Dictator of Germany and creates a one party state. Soon he felt compelled to take back what was rightfully German and took back Rhineland. Then soon took Austria, next came Czechoslovakia and then the other European nations started to feel threatened and attacked Germany. This was the start to World War II however before all this when Hitler was just the President of Germany he used his SS to destroy and harass all Jewish people and objects. He used terms as sub-human and started the mass genocide of Jews in Europe, this lead to about twelve million Jews dead. Hitler was a very nationalistic person and could not be considered sane considering the fact that he took revenge by climbing to the top most position in Germany which he used to say he was against and then killing twelve million innocent Jews are serial killer kind of actions. His points are his sudden rise to power and he was just plain crazy. As a dictator he was just crazy compared to the other two dictators. I think the worst dictator goes to Mao Zedong, due to mass murder of seventy-eight million people and being a former intellectual but still destroying all beings proclaiming to be intelligent is beyond comprehension. Even though he wanted to modernize China and help out the peasants and make everyone equal, there is no point in destroying the education system and making a group of people suffer just to make another group happy. Also the fact that he was a former librarian just makes it all the worse he should have realized the value in having intelligent people. Unlike Hitler who was crazy I think Mao Zedong as he became older became senile and dumb which is why he started the Great Cultural Revolution. Also even though his actions before becoming Chairman of China was very calculative after he became Chairman of China he seems to lack importance to life. He does not care about how many people die just for his policies to work. Which just shows a crazy person or a sick person’s mind. However I believe he just turned senile and slowly lost his edge.