SangJin Lee

Computing department in Imperial College is one of the best in Europe, producing the most disciplined and talented programmers in the world, who consequently often benefit from high salary and fabulous perquisites from investment banks. Imperial college prides on this monumental achievement. However, there is lack of ambition for entrepreneurship and technological innovation among Computing Undergraduates – please correct me if I am wrong.

To this rather depressing phenomenon, I have attributed many reasons. There is, first, the omnipresence of investment banks that would like to recruit the most talented developers to advance their IT sector. Conversely, there is absolute absence of software companies in our university, when technology companies such as Apple, Amazon and IBM thrive in the 21^st century. Secondly, there is no major software company led challenges or competitions in Imperial. This I believe ultimately leads to computing undergraduates applying and joining investment banks.

To circumvent this problem and to accelerate entrepreneurship in Imperial College, Imperial Innovation has launched Imperial Digital Accelerator on January 19^th to “facilitate entrepreneurship in the digital space at Imperial College”. Imperial Digital Accelerator aims to provide funding, mentorship and legal and accounting advice. They are organizing seminars with serial entrepreneurs to provide real examples of how technological innovation and entrepreneurship proceeds to undergraduates and postgraduates.

This, however, is largely driven by the department, and naturally raises the question if there is any technology event organized by the student and for the student. If you are wondering if such an event exists, I would like to invite you to the first Imperial College Hackathon.

What is Hackathon? Hackathon is essentially the culture that built Facebook, Google and Microsoft. I am sure many of you have seen the movie “The Social Network,” and would remember the scene in which Harvard students were simultaneously binge drinking and coding. Hackathon is much similar to that. It is in an occasion for likeminded developers to gather to perform “meaningful work” as Malcom Gladwell will explain it.

Hackathon’s essence is also summarized in its first five letters. HACKA, and each letter captures one of the elements of the event.

H: Hidden Needs

A: Associational Thinking

C: Cracking code

K: Killer concept

A: Action Now

Hackathon would often happen whenever a software developer has a great idea and wants to pursue that idea with a group of talented developers. It is a common happening in Facebook, where developers would consistently drink redbull and devour burgers. Such occasions are the source of innovation and force that propels Facebook. Hackathon, however, has not been restricted to software companies; instead it has been a common event in many universities in the states and technology ventures. It has been a shame that there was no Imperial College Hackathon in the past when there are so many talented computing students.

Burying the shameful past, Imperial College Hackathon promises to be an exciting event. Imperial College has many potential candidates who could become serial entrepreneurs of the 21^st century. The future Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs could indeed be you and you may only need that nudge, a small push to excel. Hackathon can give you that small push. You may have needed a team to pursue your idea. Hackathon would provide an opportunity for you to meet the hidden talents of your department and to create your team full of A players.

As a student organized event, we offer all ideal environment that a computing undergraduate desires. We will provide you with unlimited amount of redbull, pizzas and burgers. We will provide you with great software developers for you to pursue your idea. We will provide the perfect environment for you to code.

Your idea could be nurtured with the aid of serial entrepreneurs and technology innovators in London, and it will finally be assessed by a panel of judges. The team that develops the best product would be awarded a handsome cash prize of FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS and other exclusive perquisites.

Imperial College Hackathon is destined to be a hallmark event in the history of Imperial College and you should be the first to participate in this fantastic event.

Imperial College Hackathon Board

Annabelle Mayers

Whilst many students were having a lie-in on Saturday 21^st January, the 16 students selected to participate in the 2012 Imperial Apprentice Challenge arrived at the Business school, complete with suits, laptops and determination, ready to conquer the challenges organised by the Imperial Entrepreneurs society.

The four teams, Zeus, Ipsum, Collateral and Tornado, battled for the privilege of representing Imperial in the London University Apprentice Challenge against LSE, Kings, UCL and Royal Holloway. In addition to entry into the London competition the winning team received cash and prizes from sponsors Proctor and Gamble. The weekend consisted of four challenges based on Strategy, Marketing, Sales and Product development followed by a Live final. The Judging panel consisted of guests from Ernst and Young, E-Synergy and the Imperial College business school. Adding to the pressure was the fact the team members every move was captured on film and selected scenes included in a film showing highlights of the event (to see the film search for ‘Imperial Apprentice Challenge 2012’ on YouTube.)

The first task, the Strategy challenge, required the teams to ‘Create value from nothing.’ First they had to obtain an item for free then proceed to trade the item up until they obtained items of higher value. The value created in just two hours was astounding. The winners of this demanding but fun task were Collateral (Andre, Alex, Max and Hari) who secured a gift bag containing a £110 chauffeur driven cooperate car voucher, an expensive bottle of wine and various other treats from a hotel. The total value was estimated to be over £160!

The second challenge, which provided participants with the opportunity to rest their legs, was the Marketing Challenge. Each team were assigned one of four companies – Snog frozen Yoghurts, Gatorade energy drinks, Talk mobile and Vitamin water – and had to decide upon a second company which they propose could carry our joint marketing. They had to plan a three minute Elevator pitch, as if representing the first company and persuading the second to come on board, to be presented to the Judges in the live final. The teams had to identify the target market, specify how they intend to advertise and justify why it would be mutually beneficial to both companies. This joint marketing approach has proven popular recently with, for example, companies such as McDonalds and Weight watchers forming a marketing partnership. McDonalds benefit from an improved reputation regarding the nutritional quality of their food and Weight watchers reaches a target audience far larger than it could achieve alone. A second example is the cooperation between Spotify and Lucozade. All teams were innovative in their approach to this task and pitched their ideas successfully to the Judging panel. Following the pitches the Judges scrutinized each team’s efforts and presented them with thought provoking questions.

Given a short while to recover from Saturdays challenges the teams met early on Sunday morning to commence the second day of the Imperial Apprentice Challenge. For the Sales Challenge the teams, once again, had to muster up the energy to run around the local area interacting with strangers. Given £20, each team were told to invest some or all of their money in stock from local shops or supermarkets and sell their purchases in whichever location they felt appropriate. The team which made the largest profit would win. Once again performance was impressive with the most successful team, Tornado, creating a net profit of £64 in just two hours. In the Entrepreneurial spirit team tornado acquired copies of the Financial times (which are distributed for free in the business school) and managed to sell many copies by knocking at peoples doors and selling to strangers in the street. Other interesting approaches were seen, for example, team Ipsum sold water to runners in Hyde Park and Collateral made hot chocolate in free cups from Pret a Manger using a kettle borrowed from halls and sold the warm drinks with cookies to cold Londoners.

The final most demanding task, at least in terms of time management, was the Product Development Challenge which saw each team design a new service or product to be launched by either Playboy or Ferrari. The teams were required to create a presentation outlining their innovative idea, target market, marketing strategy, financial outlook and 5 year projections. The outcome was to be presented to the audience and judging panel in the live final. Due to the nature of the companies some interesting ideas appeared in the whiteboard! Ipsum boldly pursued the idea of Playboy ‘adult toys’ whilst collateral opted for a luxurious and professional Playboy spa. Team Tornado saw great potential in exclusive Ferrari Yachts whilst Zeus envisaged Luxury Ferrari hotels.

The results of each team were an amalgamation of the outcome of the two active tasks and the judge’s opinions of the pitches and presentations. Team Tornado triumphed meaning the team members, Effie Kyrtata, Ignacio Doval, Sabrina Ghiddi and Isobel Qian will represent Imperial in the London Apprentice in late February. The Judges from Ernst and Young, E-Synergy and the Imperial Business School commented in the impressive ideas and high quality presentations made by all teams. They noted that the marking was not easy as the standard of all teams was very high. Team Collateral finished in a close second place followed by Ipsum and then Zeus.

Following the gruelling live final the participants, committee members, audience and judges had the opportunity to network over well-deserved drinks!

Paolo Strampelli

“Filing for bankruptcy…a Kodak moment” joked someone in an elevator at one of Goldman Sachs offices, according to the twitter account @GSElevator. Last Thursday morning, (ex) photographic giant Eastman Kodak Co. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Low on cash, unable to effectively sell its assets, the company hopes through this move to slash its debts and, by forcing larger technology companies to pay to use its patents, stay in business.  Kodak is now calling for a $950m bankruptcy loan, a call which seems to have been answered by the Citibank lending syndicate.

Eastman Kodak, or ‘Kodak’ as it most commonly known, was founded in 1899 by George Eastman in Rochester, New York. In 1900 it introduced to the American public the Brownie camera, the first camera to be produced and sold en-masse. Innovation and mass production were about to put the world into cars and airplanes, the American Century was unfolding, and Kodak was ready to record it. From that moment onwards, the company continued to grow: in 1976, Kodak commanded 90% of film sales and 85% of camera sales in the US. In 1975, Kodak invented the world’s first digital camera.

So, how did a company with such a glorious history find itself in such a disastrous financial condition? According to some, it was exactly that, their history, which can be held responsible. According to Robert Burley, an associate professor from Toronto’s Ryerson University, “They were a company stuck in time. Their history was so important to them, this rich century-old history when they made a lot of amazing things and a lot of money along the way. Now their history has become a liability”. Kodak actually did foresee the digital revolution coming to a certain extent, and made a number of investments in this field. However, Kodak could not figure out a business model in the digital era that produced the same returns that investors expected based on its film-based industry history. Its first digital product was a product called Photo CD, launched in 1992, which still kept film as the capture media and then digitized them and saved them on a CD through the use of specific scanners. The product was largely unsuccessful and, more importantly, resulted in Kodak being distracted by it from the digital photography revolution occurring in Silicon Valley at the time.

Signs that Kodak’s monopoly wouldn’t last forever could however already be seen through the way it handled its rivalry with Fujifilm in the eighties and early nineties. Although Japanese Fuji entered the U.S. market with lower-priced film and supplies, Kodak refused to believe that American consumers would betray its sacred brand. This lack of foresight and excessive trust in the brand led, often, to ill decision making, such as when Kodak passed on the opportunity to become the official film of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Fuji obtained the sponsorship rights and, also thanks to intensive marketing and price cutting, started taking Kodak’s market share, which increased from 10% in 1990 to 17% five years later.

Thus, as a result of lack of foresight and a series of wrong financial calls, Kodak now finds itself filing for bankruptcy. As Don Strickland, ex VP of Kodak Digital Imaging stated last week, “Kodak’s mission statement has always been to be the world leader in imaging, and as a consequence of the digital revolution there is no longer a business in imaging.”

If successful, Kodak’s move will allow it to emerge as a smaller company, with fewer employees and a change of focus to something very different to what the name Kodak symbolizes to many people. Antonio Perez, current CEO of Kodak, believes filing for bankruptcy was a necessary step on the path towards achieving this, as he stated after the move was announced: “The board of directors and the entire senior management team unanimously believe that this is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak.”

Is it, then, the end for Kodak? Probably not. After it will sell off its intellectual property assets and boost its cash position, the Rochester – based former giant will mutate into a smaller company, which will be built around printers and ink. Since being elected, Antonio Perez has steered the company away from its traditional focus on cameras. Instead, Perez believes that Kodak’s only hope is to specialize in these markets, investing in technologies that would give it an advantage over competitors in the field and allow it to get back in the game. Diversification (which in the past saved Fuji from a situation very similar to that of Kodak) could also be an important chapter in Kodak’s new business plan, with medical imagining markets and health markets some of its possible targets.

One thing we can however be sure about – Kodak will not be forgotten. Its yellow boxes of film and point-and-shoot cameras made it possible for countless millions to freeze-frame their memories forever, and allow us to remember and define what an entire century looked like. Nevertheless, even if it succeeds and another smaller company emerges from the bankruptcy proceedings, it seems unlikely there is going to ever be another ‘Kodak moment’.

Alexandru Podgurschi

Bloomberg BusinessWeek recently published an article by Larry Popelka titled “The Key to Success? Your Corporate Mission.” It investigates the particular case of the Chevrolet Volt and it is perfectly summed up by one line: “Most consumers no longer shop for products. They shop for a company.”

What makes people crave for that Ralph Lauren Polo rather than the Tommy Hilfiger shirt, the new iPad/iPhone over any Android device, that bottle of Moët & Chandon rather than Veuve Clicquot or, as the writer above argues, the Toyota Prius over a Chevrolet Volt? There are definitely enough arguments to rationalize the desire, but whether one admits it or not, an established brand makes it that much easier for a company to sell their product.

That is not to say that establishing a brand in itself is an easy task. There is a reason why most major companies have a Marketing department. It reaches well beyond the (often) cheesy ads on television and on billboards. The job these people have at hand is to create a brand identity, an image the targeted customer can identify with, an illusion that their customers are somehow part of a distinguished community that purchase those products.

The number of times one checks their phone because they heard someone else’s iPhone message alert is ever increasing, yet their owners still feel special, like they are somehow different for having an iPhone. And that is precisely what consumer goods companies try to achieve.

So how does one go about creating that identity? The simple answer is that one needs to stand out in the immense number of companies out there. But that’s a bit general and not all that useful.

First off, the name is one the most important aspects of creating a brand. Joining together the four last names of the founders might be a good idea for a law or financial services company, but unless your last names have a particularly catchy sound to it, try to avoid it. The last thing a start-up needs is people not being able to refer to it simply because they are unsure about how to pronounce its name.

The logo. The simpler it is, the better it is. Trouble is that the shorter and more basic the design brief, the harder it is to actually design one. While it can certainly change along the way, as many companies such as Starbucks, Mazda or Apple have (if you haven’t yet, please do check out Apple’s original logo), the logo should instantly scream the name of your brand. A Google search for “logo design” should offer more than enough options to suit anyone’s needs for any time and price range.

The importance of a good website cannot be underestimated. Anyone can get a decent-looking one up and running with a basic template. If your Computing friends at Imperial refuse to help, there are plenty of people out there willing to do the job for a relatively small fee. It’s one of the most common, yet easiest to avoid, aspects of a business that will get people to turn the other way. A perfunctory website suggests a shady company, and we’ve all avoided buying things off certain websites simply because they don’t inspire much confidence.

Creating a brand is no easy task. And it certainly isn’t limited to the few aspects outlined above. Some might even claim maintaining one is even harder. To the entrepreneurs out there, it is often one of the most challenging aspects of starting a business. It is often said that it is not the idea, but rather its implementation that makes a business and a good realisation of an idea can avoid becoming obsolete only if it is well promoted. It is a combination of management, marketing, accounting and innovation that makes a business thrive and establishing a brand is surely the aspect that is most easily overlooked and yet essential for a successful venture.

Serge Vasylechko

How to help the world and keep your cool with social entrepreneurship

As I was walking up towards the exit from SAF lecture theatre I saw two people approach me who asked that exact question. “Are you a gangster?” Unsurprisingly, it made a few other people turn their heads around in wonder as they were also leaving the lecture hall after a presentation on social economy.

Little did they know about what made these two strangers say this and how it could be connected to someone I had mentioned earlier – Christian Vanizette. Despite what some of my friends may say for the usual joke – this had nothing to do with my russian/ukrainian background and the tales of russian mafia wars.

As I smiled and replied “yes” the eavesdroppers drew closer towards us to try and understand what was going on. In fact, what these two strangers were referring to was a movement that originated in France about a year ago – called MakeSense. It challenges people from around the globe to help social entrepreneurs to solve some of the world’s most stressing problems by organising creative brainstorm sessions that are called ‘hold-ups’ (yes, just like the ‘robbery at a gunpoint’). When a hold up is organised, 6-15 gangsters (that is – members of this movement) come together to meet one social entrepreneur with a specific problem to solve.

The challenge could be anything from “how do I build an online community for my fair trade business” to more complex things such as “how do I scale internationally to support my microfinance charity in India” or “how do I introduce new streams of revenue for my environmental initiative in Chile”. The case is then brainstormed in a structured way so that after 2 hours we are able to come up with 100 ideas and 5 possible solutions to a given problem.

Of course, the answers are not always right, and in fact, quite often they are truly ‘out of the box’ – but what make-sensers are able to do is to give to the social entrepreneur an outsider’s perspective. By breaking down the business concept into tiny pieces, thinking creatively and reconstructing it with a different view – MakeSense gangsters give the entrepreneur an opportunity to see those crucial improvements and flaws in his/her initiative – something that is paramount to any business survival and success.

One could compare it to a super cool consulting case study or an engineering problem. Whatever you may call it, there are a couple of things that make hold-ups very special indeed. Firstly, by working with real world businesses that pursue an ethical mission to tackle an environmental or a social problem (i.e. the definition of social enterprise) one gets a sense of achievement. Then, it also teaches you to think in real business terms which, agree, most of us don’t get to do in classroom. Lastly, it introduces you to lots of ambitious and cool people who are passionate about making a difference.

As MakeSense is growing and new members are adding up, more and more hold-ups are being organized around the world. In the past 6 months it grew from a small community of around 100 gangsters based in Paris, to more than 500 from London, Vienna, Berlin, San Francisco, Shanghai and even Melbourne. The gang recently reached the hallmark of 100 organized hold ups and is growing exponentially as we speak. As I am writing this the Paris hub is leading 6 hold-ups simultaneously to help 6 unique social businesses.

So, what kind of businesses do MakeSense gangsters get involved in anyway? One of the cool new enterprises that the London MakeSense gang is planning to work with is GiveMeTap – a social business that aims to create UK’s first free water refilling network. The idea is that anyone who has bought a GiveMeTap refillable water bottle can go to the nearest cafe or restaurant which is signed up to the scheme and get a refill of clean drinkable tap water.

Truly inspiring, this business hits on multiple social problem areas at the same time. Not only it is trying to tackle the stigma around drinking tap water (despite it being safe due to Health & Safety regulations for retail environments), and unthinkable masses of landfill waste that get packed up with plastic water bottles – it also challenges our perception of water as a ‘paid for’ commodity. A lot of people today may feel too shy about asking for tap water in a restaurant as it is seen as an act of ‘cheapness’ rather than a basic right. GiveMeTap is trying to challenge that notion and save the environment at the same time. Moreover, 70% of its profits from the sale of refillable bottles go towards building sustainable water projects in Africa. Cool, isn’t it?

However, despite all this, as the founder describes it – the challenge for GiveMeTap is to be able to scale significantly enough so that there is a refillable station every 500m around big UK city hubs. It will inarguably struggle to gain a mass following unless one of the bigger retailers, such as Starbucks, will sign up to its scheme. Herein lays the challenge to solve for gangsters of MakeSense.

Another interesting business that MakeSense had previously organized a hold-up with is a microfinance startup called Emaji. Currently in its early stages of development, Emaji is building an online marketplace which will allow entrepreneurs in the developing and third world countries to sell their products directly to consumers in the west. The current issue with many market makers, especially Emaji’s main target market – craft-makers, is that they receive only a tiny profit from the products they sell in their localities, which often is not enough for sustaining their families. Drawing on their passion in entrepreneurship, the founders of Emaji plan to develop an easy-to-use ecommerce platform which will connect consumers with craft makers and their stories. The challenge posed to MakeSense gangsters was to think bold and answer this – “How can Emaji become a Facebook of Fairtrade?”. Interesting?

Still, if you feel that your greatest skill is not in strategy or marketing, but rather your crazy coder ability – there are gangsters who do just that. Earlier last week, Mike Mompi from MakeSense London gang helped organize a 2-day hackathon with Random Hacks of Kindness and MyBnk social enterprise which challenged the problem of financial illiteracy and financial inclusion. The event brought together developers, designers and financial experts who attempted to come up with new solutions on the subject of matter and tested them right away..

Quite a bunch, isn’t it? I personally think that the current status of social enterprise as a branch of entrepreneurship, or indeed as the sole way to do business, is due to grow exponentially as more and more people become empowered with technology, especially that of social networking. Increasingly, we see how Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming essential for support of large businesses and, logically, the next level up would be to build businesses which have a social aspect deeply integrated into their business concepts.

Last but not least, given the recent events of political and economic instability – the politicians often agree that the old systems need to be reformed to become more socially responsible. In fact, UK is already a leader in social innovation with said 1.7m people working in the social sector jobs and 1 in 3 startups having a social aspect in its business model.

So, if you still dream of changing the world and want to hang out and learn from social entrepreneurs – feel free to drop us a line at entrepreneurs@imperial.ac.uk. We’ll make sure to let you know about the next hold up, and more importantly – hail you as a gangster!

Nitin Nihalani

Imperial College has joined the elite list of universities participating in ‘Silicon Valley comes to the UK’ (SVC2UK), an annual event that brings successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to inspire students across the UK. Silicon Valley comes to Imperial (SVC2I), hosted by Imperial Entrepreneurs and the Department of Computing in collaboration withMIT Enterprise Forum, brought a range of speakers to our doorstep. They were welcomed by an audience of over 120, and a waiting-list of over 150.

The first of the keynote speakers was the highly experienced Angad Paul, co-founder and major shareholder of several companies, and currently CEO of the $1.5 billion Caparo Group. Soft-spoken and with calm confidence, he talked about the challenges of running his large business and shared the lessons that he had learned along the way.

Following him was the dynamic Rob Deeming of Gilt Groupe, an online shop offering luxury brands at discounted prices, which is based in the US but expanding into the UK. He spoke of his previous work, both entrepreneurial and otherwise, and taught the audience that joining a young startup is just as rewarding as starting your own, drawing on his own experiences helping Gilt Groupe grow from 30 employees to 900. He also entertained with fascinating statistics of rapid growth and critical points of website based businesses, outlining the importance of computing in solving these problems and offering these opportunities.

The session one panel discussion was moderated by George Berkowski, chairman of MIT Enterprise Forum UK, regularly involved in new ventures and startups. The panel consisted of the aforementioned keynote speakers, joined by Paul Joyce – founder of Geckoboard.com. Among many interesting discussions, they spoke of how they became entrepreneurs later in life and explained that going for it at a young age is not always the best scenario. Building experience first, even in investment banks as in Paul’s case, is important but so is keeping the entrepreneurial vision keen until the right time.

Following a short tea break, the next session began with Alastair Mitchell, founder and CEO of Huddle, a cloud-based enterprise collaboration tool. He spoke of the importance of beautiful design on top of functionality, even for something as basic as file sharing interfaces. Along with this, he talked about having strong negotiating skills and not doing any favours when sorting out a deal – even if it is with friends. He also had the name ‘Huddle’ trademarked and believed in the power of having a short catch names. It turned out to be a smart move as many companies, including Google, have tried to use the name.

Martin Varsavsky, entrepreneurial genius and currently Founder and CEO of Fon, a crowdsourced WiFi network, was the last keynote speaker of the night. His witty anecdotes and opinionated stories entertained one and all, and truly portrayed the passion of a genuine entrepreneur. He talked of his disgust when not being able to access WiFi when he felt he “deserved” it. Through this disgust he launched Fon. Being his own boss is his greatest motivator for being an entrepreneur, he explained, and said that there is no point in becoming an entrepreneur without relentless determination to solve a particular problem.

The final section of the event was a fabulous panel, with Alastair and Martin, joined by Imperial Joint Maths and Computing alumnus Omar Tayeb. He is CEO and founder of Blippar, the first in mobile advertising using augmented reality and image recognition. The fourth panelist was Reshma Sohoni, currently a Partner of famous incubator Seedcamp. This time the panel was moderated by Anthony Gell, a charismatic entrepreneur and currently Founder of LeadersIn.com, an online forum devoted to sharing the wisdom of world leaders. His questions were creative and led to many active discussions, one of which being the lessons that Steve Jobs will leave behind.

‘Silicon Valley comes to Imperial’ was one of the university stops on the larger ‘Silicon Valley comes to the UK’ tour, which originated in Oxford before moving to Cambridge and beyond. All the universities held their respective SVC2 events on Friday.

The organizers of these events and several other lucky students were invited to join other budding entrepreneurs to ‘Silicon Valley comes to Tech City’, held at Ravensbourne College. Hosted by Reid Hoffman, CEO and founder of professional social network LinkedIn, and Sherry Coutu, former CEO and angel investor, it was a day filled with several panels of the best speakers discussing the most pressing topics of entrepreneurship and innovation.

This was then followed by ‘Silicon Valley comes to the Science Museum’, an invitation only dinner for hand-picked students across the Oxbridge and London universities, who were given the opportunity to sit among and converse with these great entrepreneurial minds, and in doing so gain valuable contacts.

Silicon Valley comes to the UK has brought some of the most intelligent and creative people in the world to Imperial, and as a result we have reached a new entrepreneurial height. The message of entrepreneurship is a strong one in Imperial and, with continuous support for these events, is sure to grow.

Annabelle Mayers

If you have found time to follow the news in between episodes of Made in Chelsea and The X Factor, then you will be aware that Groupon, considered the fastest growing company ever, has recently been valued at $12.7bn. The company’s rapid global expansion and large valuation (the highest since Google was launched in 2004) imply it is a hugely successful business. However, investors question whether the company’s business model is sustainable, and suggest that internet giants Google and Facebook could prevent Groupon from dominating the social buying industry. So can Groupon maintain the position it has propelled itself into, or are its days in the spotlight over?

The idea behind Groupon is simple: bulk buying is cost effective. Groupon utilizes this truth by offering vouchers for services and products at a fraction of the retail price, providing that enough people purchase the deal. This is theoretically beneficial for all parties as the consumer saves money, the participating businesses gain new customers and Groupon generates profit by taking cuts of around 50%. It sounds ideal, but does it work in reality? Groupon has 115 million subscribers (August 2011) with 32.5 million vouchers purchased in the last quarter; the site seems popular with the public. But for small businesses, such as restaurants and beauty salons which Groupon depend heavily upon, the outcome is not always positive.  Many small businesses have been overwhelmed by the influx of customers, running out of stock or not fitting in everybody’s appointments before the vouchers expired (tragic for those who absolutely need their fake tan by Friday!) On top of this, participation is not always lucrative for businesses as discounts are so large, many of them suffer loses while bargain hunters seek the next giveaway ahead of becoming loyal repeat customers. Groupon is expected to generate $1.7bn of revenue this year which, whilst sounding impressive, in fact equates to little more than breaking even.

There is a major lack of organisation within the company due to its rapid development in such a short space of time. Initially based in Chicago, Groupon now operates in 175 North American markets and has quickly spanned the globe entering into 47 countries so far. The number of employees has soared from 39 to over 10,000. Although these figures sound impressive, they are accompanied with internal chaos. Communications within the company have been criticised and employees have complained that people in managerial roles were friends of the founder and are now not experienced enough for their current role. The lack of organisation is not restricted to employees; there are numerous reports of vouchers being sold for a business which had since been closed down and customers not receiving a promised refund. Two Imperial students had first-hand experience of Groupon’s chaotic communications when they were offered internships in China, signed a contract and were told a few days before they were due to fly that the placement was no longer possible.

The most notorious of Groupon’s mistakes was simultaneously upsetting the Chinese and Tibetan populations when they released an advertisement which made a plea for the people of Tibet – “The people of Tibet are in trouble” – before jokingly adding “but they still whip up an amazing fish curry.” Complaints came in thick and fast over Groupon light heartedly using the suffering of Tibetans in order to promote their product.

In fact the story of Groupon’s attempt to enter the Chinese market is adorned with setbacks. They stormed into a joint venture with Gaopeng in February, establishing themselves within a couple of months. China is notoriously hostile to international companies and Groupon is no exception. Now most of the international managers, oblivious to the Chinese culture, have since been removed and returned to their respective home countries. Just last week Groupon hit the rocks again for accidently linking up with a company selling counterfeit luxury watches. Many speculate that Groupon are heading downhill in the direction of other internet giants such as Yahoo and Google who failed to break into the harsh Chinese market.

In 2010 Groupon famously rejected Google’s offer to buy the company for $6bn. Fighting back from its rejection, Google has launched Google Offers – a site with a startling resemblance to Groupon. Competition is nothing new for Groupon (there are over 500 similar sites in America alone) but few pose such a significant threat to the social buying giant. Facebook has created their version which when fully established and implemented across the globe could see the end of Groupon’s time at the top. With such an extensive user base Facebook has the potential to knock Groupon off of the playing field and dominate social buying. Google and Facebook also have the advantage of not being the first to enter the market meaning they can steal the successful elements of Groupon whilst avoiding many of the mistakes.

In order to survive Groupon must be innovative. Launching ‘Groupon Now’ may have been a step in the right direction. This service harnesses the smartphone craze and opens an entirely new revenue stream. The simple interface consists of the two buttons, “I’m hungry” and “I’m bored” which use GPS to provide the user with deals for eateries and entertainment close to their location. This differs from the classic ‘daily deals’, which can be redeemed several months later, and provides an attractive option for businesses as they can increase sales during usually slow periods. Another new product, ‘Groupon Rewards,’ implemented in September in an attempt to increase -customer loyalty.

Customers who purchase multiple vouchers from a business which regularly offers Groupon deals will ‘unlock’ rewards which entitle them to further discounts. This will allow Groupon to accurately track how many people are repeat customers, how much individuals spend on average and should increase the number of purchases per user.

Groupon, one of the hottest internet start-ups, has wowed the world with its unprecedented rate of growth. Whether it will win the battle against Google and Facebook is yet to be determined. Only by addressing its fundamental errors, embracing new technologies and continuing down the innovative road they will they stand a chance in defying the odds and emerging as the rightful ruler of the Social Buying Empire.

Charles Motraghi

Alongside finance and high-tech computing, biotechnology can be thought of as one of the few sectors where Britain is still globally competitive. The British pharmaceutical industry, for example, receives 10% of global research and development funding, despite having only 3% of global sales. But this year has seen a variety of worrying developments: Pfizer, previously the country’s fourth largest investor in pharmaceutical research, announced the closure of its R&D site in Kent, resulting in the loss of 2,400 jobs; AstraZeneca continues to shed jobs, citing patent losses, as well as GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis; and start-ups complain of continual difficulties in securing venture capital. So is the UK unique in its suffering, and what successes, if any, has the year seen?

Certainly, the UK is not the only country to see job losses in this sector. In the US, the global leader of the pharmaceutical industry, Johnson & Johnson is still going through the round of huge job cuts announced in 2009, and the Swiss giants Roche and Novartis find themselves in a similar situation. In fact, the latter is planning to cut 2,000 jobs whilst setting up operations in Taizhou (intriguingly dubbed “China’s Medical City”), due to there being an emerging market and reduced labour costs. It could be argued that any present malaise among the British is one afflicting the wider western biotechnology sector, and it is not out of step with the global economy.

But to some extent, biotechnology here faces its own problems. For instance, companies and start-ups in the UK have been complaining about the difficulty of securing risk capital for years. Nearly two-fifths of biotechnology companies here have been unable to obtain any finance over the past year, with many biotechnology specialists reluctant to invest. This highlights a longstanding gap in funding for those who are about to enter promising drugs into the costly early-stage testing in humans, where approximately £10 million is needed to support the company prior to generating results which will be of interest to larger investors or pharmaceutical companies.

This has been assuaged somewhat recently by two developments: tax credits have been increased for research and development enterprises; and Richard Sykes, a former rector of Imperial College, is chairing a new venture fund aiming at new British biotechnology companies freshly spun out of academia. The Deepbridge Innovation Fund is planning to raise $250m by next year to invest in companies predominantly based in the UK, and will specifically target those with a promising drug, but without proof of relevance.

Brits might complain alongside most Europeans that the legislative and regulatory environment isn’t conducive to research. Recently, the European Court of Justice ruled that no methods to derive embryonic stem cells could be patented, setting us apart from the US and Asia. Although this does not totally condemn companies here (they can still patent their inventions abroad), there is fear that this will stifle commercial investment, and research in the area is more likely to be exploited abroad. This reflects the feelings of many plant scientists and genetic engineers, who have had trouble commercialising their publicly-funded basic research due to European regulations.

The year hasn’t been all bad, however. Some companies have seen great success in securing funding. Oxford Nanopore, for example, raised £25 million to develop its next-generation DNA sequencing technology, making it a contender to win the Genomics X Prize, awarded to the first team to sequence the human genome for under $10,000. Such an achievement would be able to revolutionise personal healthcare. Assisted by Imperial Innovations, Circassia completed a £60 million round of funding in April, to develop allergy treatments and autoimmune therapies for the treatment of conditions such as arthritis and psoriasis. Towards the high end of the biotechnology sector, Shire Pharmaceuticals continues its trend of success from last year, posting strong profits and 24% growth this quarter due to its focus on ADHD medicines for sale in America. Also, GlaxoSmithKline is investing in a research park in Stevenage, Kent, which is estimated to create 5,000 new jobs, and has proposed the creation of a new biopharmaceutical plant in the north of the country.

Should we be particularly worried about the state of biotechnology in the UK? Perhaps not. Beyond the success of the above companies, this is home to four out of ten of the world’s top universities, and eight in the top thirty. Consequently, there is a wealth of scientific talent to draw upon across the country, which continues to be attractive to those looking to set up operations here. Also, the introduction of the patent box late last year – a lower rate of tax levied on patent-related incomes – has been credited with an increase in investment in the country’s research and development base, according to GSK’s chief executive Andrew Witty. Despite the global economic downturn, the British biotechnology sector appears to be in bullish health, with many interesting projects in the pipeline.

Máximo Sanz Hernández

During the evening of Monday October 10 you were possibly one of the frustrated Imperial students that couldn’t get their BBM working. That was the day on which all BlackBerry devices lost their email and BlackBerry Messenger services. Some devices lost internet access as well, leaving many bewildered students unable to update their Facebook statuses or tweet any random thoughts. The situation stretched on, and became much more irritating when on early Tuesday morning these student BlackBerry users had no means to entertain themselves during lectures. Later that day there was an announcement by RIM stating that the issue had been resolved. This probably brought hope to those who had been yearning to have their fully functional smartphones back, however, right after that announcement the delays and outages spread worldwide. These outages would end one day later with all services being restored, but leaving many displeased users all across the world.

While the outage may have been annoying for students, it has had a large and relevant impact in many businesses, considering the large number of companies that rely on these phones to enable communication and email management amongst their employees. As much as this outage has negatively affected many people, right now there is probably no one as worried as Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, co-CEOs of RIM.

These two probably lost a lot of sleep during the past few weeks, worried with thoughts that their company is going continuously downhill, making it easier for their primary competitors (i.e. Apple and Android smartphones) to take over their niche. The year 2011 has certainly not been a good one for RIM, but BlackBerry’s decline had started much earlier. At one time, BlackBerry devices were the clear industry leaders, but ever since Apple launched the iPhone in 2007 the company has struggled to retain its market share, something that became even more evident with the release of the iPhone 4 last year. Everyone at RIM headquarters was probably hoping for 2011 to be the year they bounced back, with some new ideas in mind that could help turn the situation around. However they now find themselves in an even worse situation, caused by a combination of bad decisions and even worse luck.

Their first and biggest hope, the launch of their new tablet device, turned out to be a great failure. The PlayBook lacked the software and the functionality that most people expected, and was certainly not enough to compete against the iPad. RIM has already admitted that prices for the tablet will have to be slashed as an attempt to save the situation, since right now the device is barely selling at all.

This was the first piece of bad news that RIM got in 2011. The company was surrounded by bad publicity after the London riots that took place during the summer, in which the BBM service was used by the rioters as one of the main means to communicate. On top of this, a sharp reduction in profit and sales was announced about a month ago, which had a significant impact on the value of RIM shares. And now comes the outage, questioning the reliability of BlackBerry devices, something that had helped them build their reputation in the past few years.

Even though this hasn’t been the first BlackBerry outage, it will probably have greater consequences than any of the previous ones, and this is because of its timing. Regarding the interests of the company, there could have not been a worse moment for BlackBerry services to go down. The recently released iPhone 4S and the new Apple operative system iOS 5 present themselves as an alternative for all BlackBerry users affected by the outage.

There have already been direct revenue consequences due to compensations. RIM charges wireless carriers a monthly fee based on the number of BlackBerry users. Many analysts agree that some of those fees will have to be given back, and losses in the value of RIM shares are predicted. These short-term problems should not be the main concern around the company headquarters however; the outage has irritated many users, who are particularly displeased with how RIM has handled the situation. There was a continuous lack of information throughout the outage, and when RIM finally released an announcement saying that the problem had been fixed the situation only became worse. This has undermined BlackBerry’s reliability and the company’s credibility, and will make users are more and more tempted to switch to competing devices.

One of the main niche markets that BlackBerry could lose is large companies using BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES), a feature that allows easy management of large fleets of smartphones. Some companies are no longer satisfied with BlackBerry and are starting to consider the advantages that other companies provide. An example of this is DLA Piper, a law firm that is accelerating discussions about switching to iPhones and Android devices. As for the rest of the users, BlackBerry no longer presents the unique features that once made them so popular. The new iOS now includes iMessage, a service that allows all Apple devices to communicate. In other words, a clear and direct competitor for BBM.

There is only one hope left for RIM. They now rely on the shift to a new operating system (QNX), first used in their PlayBook. Right now, a successful transition is the only thing that can help them close the gap on Android and Apple OS. Let us hope that the company starts experiencing better luck in the future, otherwise we could be witnessing the fall of what once was an empire.