Business and Money Tips

By: Ziyad Jawabra During the press conference to announce NOKIA being acquired by Microsoft, Nokia CEO ended his speech saying this “we didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow, we lost”. Upon saying that, all his management team, himself included, teared sadly. Nokia has been a respectable company. They did not do anything wrong in their business, however, the world changed too fast. Their opponents were too powerful. They missed out on learning, they missed out on changing, and thus they lost the opportunity at hand to make it big. Not only did they miss the opportunity to earn big money, they lost their chance of survival. The message of this story is, if you don’t change, you shall be removed from the competition. It’s not wrong if you don’t want to learn new things. However, if your thoughts and mindset cannot catch up with time, you will be eliminated. Conclusion: 1.      The advantage you have yesterday, will be replaced by the trends of tomorrow. You don’t have to

Latest news this week: Samsung's 3rd quarter 2014 sales and profits plunged by more than 60% from the previous year, and has basically given up all the gains the company made in 2012 and 2013.   The rate of Samsung's drop is exactly the same as Nokia in 2009: its sales and profits drop by more than half when the overall market size is growing at least 30% annually. According to Samsung, its market share for smartphones now stands at less than 24%, compared to 35% in 2013.  Samsung attributed the drop in business to the onslaught of cheap smartphones from China (like Xiaomi and Lenovo) and the success of Apple's iPhone 6 on the higher end of smartphones.    So is it true that your competitors take away your business?    We know that even if you half your price, you may still not able to beat your competitor.  (read  here  for explanation) The fact is if you look at the models introduced by Samsung in 2013 and 2014: they are all  iterations, that is, incremental improve

Whether you are in business, employment, student or just a home-maker, you'll probably realize that there is no safety in safe strategies .  In the part, people could just specialize in one skill, work for a good employer for life, save some money, and see their retirement nest egg grows into a level that they can live comfortably for many years.   Today one skill is not sufficient, and your savings may not be enough after paying for your house mortgage, and our Prime Minister said that we have to work till 67.     In business, even if your product is good and well accepted, your company can lose out to competitors very quickly.  Who would have predicted that Nokia, whose market share was 40% in 2009, can only managed 4% market share today?  In employment, many so-called experienced people are now being replaced by younger people whose drive and wide skills base are much sought after.  Those in leadership positions in 'established' organizations too saw their positions

How people think: if you have been having 3 boys in a row, you will think that your chance of a girl the next round will be high.  Truth is that the gender of your next child has nothing to do with the gender of the previous child.  This is because each sex has an equal probability independent of the last one .  The failure to recognize this is called ' Gambler's Fallacy ', which reflects how people make mistake in their decisions by mistaking that the past will predict the future . Anyone that try to foretell your fortune for 2014 will end up being wrong most of the time, simply because they base their prediction on the past. We all know the failures of companies like HTC, Nokia and Blackberry: they produce their products based on past demand and end up with excessive stocks. The truth is that everything that happen today is made up of many factors happening not just now, but in the past .   There is no one single factor that we can attribute to any success of fail