The Relationship Between America and England free essay sample

When the provinces at last flourished, Britain ventured back and requested no cash from them through charges or obligation, in spite of the fact that its local residents paid expenses routinely. In any case, through the span of the French and Indian War, Britain piled on a gigantic unpaid liability, and in light of the fact that the underlying battling occurred in North America, shielding the American grounds from the French, Britain felt it legitimate and important to solicit charges from the developing country. These incorporated the Stamp Act In 1765 and the Revenue Act of 1767. Nonetheless, the provinces responded violently.After the Stamp Act required the settlements to pay extra for all paper merchandise, Hated Stamp kid's shows showed up in provincial papers that delineated the British seal as a skull and cross-bones. This image of death spoke to how undermined the provinces felt by the choking charge. It likewise propelled the Stamp Act Resolutions of 1765, a reaction from the settlements to the crown that clarified their dismay at being liable to charges on which they had no state. We will compose a custom paper test on The Relationship Between America and England or on the other hand any comparative subject explicitly for you Don't WasteYour Time Recruit WRITER Just 13.90/page The Resolutions requested the cancelation of the Stamp Act and the annulment of some other demonstrations limiting American trade In any way.The Acts, an endeavor to stay away from frontier outrage by using outer tomahawks to raise income, attempted to disclose to the need of British assessments: it is practical theta income ought to be raised, in your Majestys territories in America, for making an increasingly certain and sufficient arrangement for settling the charge of the organization of Justice, and the help of common government And towards further settling the costs of safeguarding, ensuring, and making sure about the said domains ( Revenue Act). In any case, the settlements responded adversely. Massachusetts specifically circled a letter attempting to make solidarity among the settlements concerning the British expenses, which incorporated the content, This House further re of supposition, that their constituents, thinking about their neighborhood conditions, can't, by any chance, be spoken to in the Parliament; and that it will perpetually be impracticable, that they ought to be similarly spoken to there, and thusly, not under any condition; being isolated by an expanse of a thousand groups (Massachusetts Circulation Letter).Where beforehand the provinces requested a cancelation of all duties, this archive shows that they later arrived at the resolution that British burdening was unavoidable and that American interest in the British parliament was near conceivable, and turned into an undiscovered contention for American freedom. Previously, the states depended on Britain monetarily; subsequently, they thought that it was Im possible to stand British power over American accounts. In addition, the war likewise mistreatment. Prior to the French and Indian War, the British government managed America, yet because of the separation between them, America started framing its own nearby governments.These were significantly more majority rule than their British partners. As America developed and experienced battles that tested the whole country, they felt the requirement for a more grounded focal force on their own mainland. Along these lines, the noticeable legislator Benjamin Franklin proposed the Albany Plan of Union, composing It is suggested that modest application be made for a demonstration of Parliament of Great Britain, by uprightness of which one general government might be shaped in America, including all the said states, inside and under which government every settlement may hold its current constitution (Benjamin Franklin). This arrangement was dismissed by the individual states for proposing too frail an administration and dismissed by the British crown for proposing too solid a legislature, an immediate irreconcilable situation that was beforehand nonexistent. Its creator later reflected, On reflection it presently appears to be plausible, that if the prior Plan or something like it, had been embraced and conveyed into Execution, the r esulting Separation of the Colonies from the Mother Country may not all that before long have occurred. .. (Benjamin Franklin), demonstrating how significant this political conflict ended up being. There was likewise much British enactment that enraged the pioneers similarly as the British tax assessment. In 1765, Britain passed the Quartering Act, which expected settlers to invite British fighters into their homes and furnish them with food and housing insofar as was vital. The pioneers despised this since it constrained them to take care of everything for the fighters housing, and they declined to listen.In reaction, the British crown suspended the New York Assembly, saying, In request accordingly to uphold, inside the said region of New York, the providing of his Majestys troops with the necessaries and in the way required by the said demonstrations of parliament. .. Be it instituted. That from and after. .. [October l, 1767,] It will not be legitimate .. . (Parliament Suspends he New York Assembly).Around this time, pilgrim papers republished Benjamin Franklins acclaimed Join or Die political animation, which cautions the provinces that in the event that they don't gather as one, they will be squashed by a domineering force from abroad. These occasions show the deteriorating British authority over American states and the bit by bit moving pioneer want for autonomy from the crown and a focal American capacity to oversee themselves. All in all, the French and Indian War was a significant impetus in moving the connection among America and Britain both strategically and financially.

Standard Flowchart Symbols and Their Usage Essay Sample free essay sample

Stream graphs are the perfect charts for outwardly stand foring concern systems. For outline. on the off chance that you have to demo the progression of a custom-request strategy through grouped areas inside your association. you can use a stream graph. This paper gives a visual portrayal of essential stream outline images and their proposed utilization in pass oning the development of a very much created site. each piece great as their correlativity in creating on the web instructional endeavors. A run of the mill stream diagram from more seasoned Computer Science content version may hold the undermentioned sorts of images: * Start and terminal images. spoken to as capsules. ovals or adjusted square shapes. ordinarily joining the word â€Å"Start† or â€Å"End† . or on the other hand another expression flagging the beginning or terminal of a system. for example, â€Å"submit enquiry† or â€Å"receive product† . * Arrows. demoing what’s called †Å"flow of control† in registering machine logical order. A pointer originating from one image and stoping at another image means stream base on ballss to the image the pointer focuses to. * Processing stairss. spoken to as square shapes. Models: â€Å"Add 1 to X† ; â€Å"replace distinguished part† ; â€Å"save changes† or comparative. * Input/Output. spoken to as a parallelogram. Models: Get Ten from the client ; show X. * Conditional ( or assurance ) . spoken to as a precious stone ( jewel ) . These ordinarily contain a Yes/No request or True/False preliminary. This image is distant from everyone else in that it has two pointers coming out of it. ordinarily from the base point and right point. one coordinating to Yes or True. also, one comparing to No or False. The pointers ought to ever be named. Beyond what two pointers can be utilized. in any case, this is generally an unmistakable list that a mind boggling assurance is being taken. in which example it might require to be tousled more remote. or then again supplanted with the â€Å"pre-characterized process† image. * A figure of different images that have less cosmopolitan money. for example, * A Document spoke to as a square shape with a wavy base ; * A Manual information spoke to by a square shape. with the top unpredictably slanting up from left to redress. An outline is mean information section from a signifier ; * A Manual activity spoke to by a trapezoid with the longest equal side highest. to represent an activity or settlement to treat that can just be made physically. * A Data File spoke to by a chamber Stream graphs may fuse different images. for example, associations. typically spoke to as circles. to represent meeting waies in the stream diagram. Circles will hold more than one pointer coming into them however only one going out. Some stream outlines may simply hold a bolt point to another pointer on the other hand. These are utile to represent an iterative strategy ( in Computer Science this is known as a cringle ) . A cringle may. for delineation. comprise of an association where control first enters. treating stairss. a restrictive with one pointer go excursion the cringle. what's more, one making a trip back to the association. Off-page associations are every now and again used to mean an association with a ( bit of a ) strategy hung on another sheet or screen. A stream graph is portrayed as â€Å"cross-functional† when the page is partitioned into various â€Å"lanes† delineating the control of various hierarchical outline units. An image glancing in a curious â€Å"lane† is inside the control of that hierarchical unit. This strategy permits the investigator to turn up the obligation for executing an activity or doing an assurance right. leting the connection between various authoritative units with obligation over an individual method. Standard Flowchart Symbols Stream diagrams utilize specific structures to represent various kinds of activities or stairss in a methodology. Lines and bolts show the arrangement of these stairss. what's more, the connections between them. Work process formsWorkflow connections are the place work is finished by various segments in a fixed succession. This implies one segment needs to finish its occupation before work can go on in another segment. The turn of events and care of these work process connections is extremely of import for chiefs since they are reliant on the originating before nations for their ain work. also, capable to chiefs and laborers at various stages further down the link. Review Flowchart ShapesThe follow structures is comparable with the fundamental stream diagram images however are extraordinarily utilized in the review stream graph. The Flowchart Symbols and Their UseProcedure speaks to a measure in your strategy. Predefined strategy demonstrate a lot of stairss that consolidate to make a sub-process that is characterized somewhere else. oftentimes on another page of a similar drawing. Choice shows a point where the aftereffect of an assurance directs the accompanying measure. There can be different outcomes. be that as it may, often there are simply two †yes and no. Terminal focuses demonstrates the beginning and stoping purposes of a technique. Information Shape Indicates that data is coming into the method from outside. or on the other hand go forthing the strategy. Postpone structure Represents a holding up period where no action is finished. In Process Mapping. holds are as often as possible of import as they may result in adding to the expense of the product or only confining its creation. Database structure Use this structure for a measure that results in data being put away. Measure speaks to an individual measure inside a technique. what's more, regularly contains the name of a particular activity. Page images allude to single website pages. which may or may non join various components. Record images speak to those informations components that exist freely of navigational belongingss outside of that page. e. g. . sound sounds. film cartridge holders. or on the other hand a versatile papers document ( PDF ) . An assurance point shows a grouping in the methodology at which the terminal client picks an alternative. I. e. . a â€Å"yes-no† . or on the other hand â€Å"true-false† reaction. thus regions to various pieces of the stream outline. Bolts and connecting lines graph the legitimate designed development through the class. skilled to the picks made at assurance or activity focuses inside the methodology. The information/activity image speaks to a client reaction that coordinates the class stream starting there onwards. I. e. . an on-line preliminary. or then again survey signifier. Speaks to the pick made by the client from correspondingly sole alternatives. e. g. . a student taking among various exercise programs. Restrictive picker is like the contingent development aside from that the client has the alternative to take from a figure of waies that will bring through the mentioned conditions. e. g. . the results of a chase motor appeal. Pages that divide at least one normal features. what's more, are practically unclear might be rearranged as an adjusted corner square shape. for example, an online preliminary or input signifier. Notes give supportive comments or records. e. g. indicating the area where a lacking new page/procedure will suit into the navigational stream development. or then again notes for explicit crew individuals for more distant turn of events. Stream notices and stream nations are images for reclaimable successions. for example, signing in with a particular client Idaho and watchword to come in the class or to start an online test. The stream notice image goes about as an intermediary for the stream nation succession in the diagram in each situation in which it is rehashed. Stream nation is utilized as a stream nation. it paperss developments that partition comparative segments/rehashed stairss inside that stream. what's more, requires the use of the undermentioned two images: section and issue focuses. Leave point finishes up the subprogram. for example, when the best possible client Idaho and watchword are checked. also, paperss where the client reenters the maestro stream outline. Passage point paperss the topographic point inside the maestro stream graph where the method strays into a subprogram. Notice is utilized as an associating moment that the stream graph requires using more than one page. or on the other hand al ludes to a convoluted subprogram that would be difficult to fuse on the central stream outline page. On-page notice Indicates that the accompanying or old measure is somewhere else on the stream diagram. It is unconventionally utile for large stream diagrams. Off-page notice Use the a lot of hyperlinks between two pages of a stream graph or between a sub-process structure and a different stream outline page that shows the stairss in that sub-process. Flowchart Shapes The inside decorators can snap this multi-shape to put to any of the undermentioned structures: Data. Archive. Choice. or on the other hand Process. Any content you type onto the structure. or then again data you add to its Shape Data. stays with the structure. Archive Represents a measure that outcomes in a papers. Procedure Flowchart Drawing Guide-linesThere is no 1 right way to build up a stream graph. in any case, the undermentioned rules give a general development to follow. regardless of whether it’s of the general class navigational methodology. or on the other hand at the hand-off stage to the different crew individuals to grow progressively expound mediation. 1. Get down with a straightforward one-line portrayal or rubric of the method being flowcharted. e. g. . â€Å"How to†¦Ã¢â‚¬  2. Utilizing a top-down chain of importance. start with a terminal image. calling this trigger occasion. e. g. . â€Å"User gets to class database†¦Ã¢â‚¬  3. Associate each back to back activity measure in the legitimate grouping of occasions. 4. Reference expound data through notes or associations. 5. Finish the technique to consummation. meant by a named terminal end image. e. g. . â€Å"exit class. † A very much created practical stream diagram made in the plan stage can rescue long stretches of lazy work power cut by guaranting the development. sequencing and ramifying assurance focuses in a registering machine based instructional arrangement. b

EverString

EverString INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi, today we are in San Mateo with EverString and Vincent. Vincent, who are you and what do you do?Vincent: Hey, how are you doing?Martin: Good!Vincent: Welcome to the Silicon Valley.Martin: Thank you very much. What are you doing at EverString?Vincent: Im one of the Co-Founder and CEO of EverString and what the whole company is doing is the predictive analytics, helping sales and marketing teams to predict whos their next customers.Martin: Great.Martin: And what did you do before you started this company?Vincent: When I started this company, I was mostly working in finance. So I started with my career in J.P. Morgan as an investment banker. So, over there my main job was analyzing public stock and then to decide which stock we should privatize. Later on, I moved to a private equity firm, called Summit Partners that was based here in Palo Alto. In my job again, it was to analyze companies, so I was analyzing around 25-30.000 companies in about two and a half years and this is kind of merely my experience before EverString.Martin: And how did you come up with this idea of creating EverString?Vincent: Thats a good question. So, I was originally mathematics major and when I was working in finance in J.P. Morgan I applied a lot of analytic skills on the analyzing public stocks. So this is all fine, and then, when I go to Summit, I realize for a human being its very difficult to analyze 10s of thousands of private companies and there is not too much information, its not public traded, theres no revenue information. So, then I have the idea of is it possible to use national language processing to analyze companies for me, so that I do not need to go visit their website every day. And all I wanted it to do is for 10s of thousands of companies, and if youre looking at the whole US, there are in total 5 million companies that have a website, I wanted to know which company is growing, which company is more interesting, which company fits the Summit In vestment criteria. So, I started to do codings inside of the Summit and then do some trials and it works very well. And this really triggers me to think Hey, theres actually a new space to really apply the big data, the text mining, especially analyzing the unstructured data and to help business make better decisions.Martin: But still, there you analyze the companies which are growing etc., then, what is the leap towards marketing?Vincent: Thats a good question. So, when EverString was first founded, we actually focused a lot on financial institutions, so helping venture capital, private equity, investing banks and even hedge fund. So we almost turn ourselves into an algorithm trading hedge fund. And its in about last year, I got a call from one CMO and then he was the one of the friend of friend and he heard about us and asking is it possible we apply a machine learning and natural language processing engine into their company and help him to analyze his leads, which is our company , too. Initially, that surprises us because we have never been to the space. And then we did a very smart trial, we were really starting to analyze. Because to us, analyzing company and analyzing leads its actually the same thing. So we did a trial and it actually worked very well. It actually converts about 300% more conversions than the benchmark. And after that, this really opened door for us, for all of us, which back then we were all bunch of mathematicians and neural network PhDs. So once we see the work and the variable for the marketing sales team, and we realize that the market is even bigger than the financial institutions, so were starting to now go all way into the space.Martin: So now youre only focusing on the marketing set, right?Vincent: Thats right.Martin: Ok, great. How do you manage your productivity of a daily day?Vincent: My productivity actually varies a lot in different stages of the company. Early days, when we were at the seed round stage, there were not too many of us, in total we had about 10 people. So, I was basically doing, my main focus back then was focusing on algorithm design, focus on the backend architect and to focus more on getting the beta customers. But now, after Series A, our company is significantly larger, we hired 12 people in last month. And also now that we have 35 people in total and it’s much bigger team right now and we expect it to grow, like double in the size very soon. So in this case, my day was terrible. I now manage my day, I follow very strict discipline, so I get up close to 5:30am every day. I go to the gym every day just to make sure that I was well energized for the day. Then Ill finish everything, go to the office in around 7-7:30am and before everybody arrives, so from 7:30am to 9am I try to focus a lot on product review, product design and making sure all the algorithms are in good track. And then, during the day from 9am oclock to 5pm oclock, some time is not actually my time. My time is divid ed by everybody and everybody put calendar invite to my calendar. So I was mostly stay in sales meetings, marketing meetings, product reviews, algorithm reviews, backend engineering, update calls, that kind of things. And from 5pm oclock things start to cool down a little bit, Im starting to get back my time again. And then grab dinner and then go back to do reply to email and finishing the day.Martin: Ok, great. And how do you keep focus on all of the day? Because I can imagine if you have 10 open items that you need to work on. How do you focus at the specific item a certain time?Vincent: Thats a good question. I did a couple of things. One is: every month, I will write down what my top priorities are. Ill list 5 priorities to do for the whole month. And then, once I start to break it into the weekly priorities and then, this is all I have to achieve and I assure it with the top executive team in EverString. So, they all know what I will be focusing my time on. And then every day I will write down today there are three things that I must focus on and everything else is not as important as those things. Because I find out a lot of the CEOs that their mode was, what I call it, interruptive tribal. So, they are sitting there, solving issues, putting out fires everywhere. This is very tough for an young company, so we have to be really focused, so thats why I make sure I only focus on the right things. I do some meditations, and I think meditation helps a lot to, that people focus on the fundamental issues. And that fundamental issues, I ask myself every day, I ask most of the team members here, too, why we are doing EverString and why we are here. Most of the teams we hire are really top stars in all kind of industries. And then, there is no point joining a startup, so this is a question I ask myself here, why we are here doing EverString, so that really helps me to focus on what Im supposed to do.Martin: And how do you manage your team? Do you also know that t hey have some kind of 4-5 top priorities over month, are they communicated between the executive team?Vincent: Because Im a big fan of planning and I started doing my own planning for a total, like 15 years now, so since I go to high school. I plan my day every day. This is the culture that I set up in the company and I was wishing that everyone, in our weekly meetings, everybody will list down: here are the top 3 things that Ill be focusing on. And 60% of their time will be focusing on top priorities. That moved the company to the next level. 40% of the time are putting out fires, solving issues, there are a lot of unexpected things coming up. Not everybody was used to that in particular, engineer, scientist, they are not born in a world where you have so many things. But gradually, I think, after working with me for some time I think they are starting to getting used to those. We use a lot of tools internally, as well, the collaboration tools, the goal setting tools that get every body into the same page.Martin: Ok. Can you recommend a goal setting tool for example?Vincent: Yeah, so we use Asana. Were hoping everybody, theres a section everybody are putting their weekly goals, and then we will review their goals. So thats a very helpful. And Trello is another helpful tool. Trello is much easier, you can put your week into different days and everybody could review what people are supposed to do during the days. And we are building product, we use Hackpad. Its an online writing pad where people could collaborate. This is also very helpful for your team to do things and making sure people are on the same page.Martin: Ok, great.BUSINESS MODEL OF EVERSTRINGMartin: Vincent, lets talk briefly about your business model. How does it currently work?Vincent: Well, our business model is actually, if you think about it in high level, its actually very easy. We take a look at our clients customers and we find a look-like, and thats it. The biggest pain points that I find w hen I was talking with a lot of CMOs, they were like Today I know we have a lot of revenues, our revenue will grow. But if you ask them Who are your ideal customers?, this is the question where most of the CMOs dont have a clear answer. And when I ask them Who are the leads that you dont want to talk to? they are like I dont have a clear answer. So, our fundamental goal in EverString is really to use data science to help you understand who are your ideal customers and bring you more of them. So, this is kind of the general high level concept. In terms of the way how it works, its we plug in our engine inside of their CRM, marketing automation and all the internal lead capturing tools they had been using. We first analyze who are your ideal customers and who are the bad leads that you dont want to talk to. But, all the information we have is just a company name or url. This is the same thing when I was back in the finance part of the world is, back then I would have a whole list of 3 0.000 company names, and I have to do all their analysis to come up with among them 30.000 who shall I talk to. So, the same thing. Once we have that, and then we started to crawl the web, and it would focus a lot on analyzing unstructured context. So we have the technology built internally to turn the whole webpage into mathematical signals. A webpage is unstructured, a mathematical signal is structured. So, theres a lot of work internally that were doing there. Thats why, in the space that we are able to generate our features, that are around 50 times more than all our competitors. So, our predictive accuracy is much higher as well. This is generally how we had been doing in building the model. Once the model is built, and then we apply the model to do a lot of things. So we apply the model to tell to sales team, every day, when all of the leads come to the website, what are the leads you should focus on. And also try to grab more leads into the funnel, whether its upper funnel or the lower funnel. So this is generally what we are doing.Martin: Do you only tell Ok, you should focus on these leads or do you already tell some kind of story or some kind of pitch that you could use? If you see potential lead, went to a conference, and assuming that the company did not have this information before, than you could either pitch Ok, he was on the conference, maybe you can use this as our pitch for making the contact.Vincent: Yes, this is something thats important, that we have built a prototype, but we havent put into the product environment, this is in the product roadmap. Not only helping our clients to know who to talk to, but also help them to engage with them.Martin: I understand.Martin: Lets talk briefly about the corporate strategy. Can you tell us a little bit more about general overview of the product strategy going forward?Vincent: The industry we are in is a very early stage industry. In general, people call it predictive analytics, but its just very muc h like a buzz word. Its like people lets call it big data, people call it Hadoop in the early day. People call social network, its just buzz word. But, in reality what were doing is just use data science to help specifically the marketing team, that the main generation people, the inside sales team, the lead qualification team to do better on their jobs. Right now there are a few players like us that are in the space that are even early stage. And then what most of the people are doing is building the model. This is where we are right now. So, in the future, what you can imagine is, once the model is built, there are a lot of places where you could apply the model, to help them to do better lead scoring, to help generating better leads, and there are a few more things that it could help them further. So, for us, its no different. We are constantly exploring new applications that could be built based on a model we apply to the clients. So, right now we have built a few very interesti ng applications, so we are working with our clients on those, so we havent announced that yet, but very soon well be letting the world know that the superpower of the model and once it applied in the right way, whole business efficiency and your revenue will have a big boost.MARKET TRENDSMartin: Can you tell us a little bit about industry structure or the market structure in general and maybe some trends you have identified?Vincent: Yeah, sure. The way how I think about the industry is in three parts. It is data, insights, and action. If you look at three parts. So, in the general, what I call the marketing or the sales intelligent space or the sales enablement space, there are a lot of data providers. They focus on generating proprietary data and then feed it to the right customer or to the modelers like us. Then you have the middle part which is the insights, like us, like some other players that, what we focus on is building predictive model and integrating the third party data, the first party data to do a good job on telling what our audience will look like. And then theres the action part where you have the CRM, you have the marketing automation and you have the DSP-SSP part of the world that helps you to really engage with the client. So this is what I see the ecosystem of the market, but definitely the trend that I would see those three parts will come closer and closer to really even become one place. This is a very interesting trend that Ive seen happening a little bit in the market, its too early in the games, but definitely in 5-10 years down the line you will see some players that are able to handle all three things at the same time and provide end to end solutions.Martin: Ok. And what would be your estimated forecast, do you rather think that the data companies will integrate all of the other steps or do you really think that they would just organically try to build something similar?Vincent: Yeah, I think all the three parts of the industry has the potential and ambition to take over the whole industry.This is just generally true for most of the industries, so on the lower stream people wanted to go up stream, the data vendors where I see theyve starting to build models, theyre starting to even go more and more into the action part. And similarly for the people, the marketing automation, the CRM provider, they try to go a little bit backwards as well. Everybody might have a chance to win, but to me, I feel like the eventual winner, it really depends on how good you understand the real work flow of your clients and how strong team you have. Its easy to say we do predictive analytics, but its actually very hard to do it. A lot of the people that I know just basically uses Excel sheet to do some simple logistic regression, where you can do it and I can do it, its very easy. But for us, in day-one that we hire our PhDs in Stanford that focus on neural network, and they are analyzing about 10s of billions of data points they bu ild on models. So, these are the people that its very hard to get and its very hard to make them work as a team. So, we will see who will eventually win the game.Martin: Lets take a step back and talk briefly about machine learning. How does machine learning work basically for somebody who has never done it before?Vincent: You mean, for first time entrepreneur interested in space?Martin: Yes, right, for example, if Im an entrepreneur and Im interested in doing some kind of machine learning startup. What should I know, how the basic machine learning world works?Vincent: I think the basic concept of machine learning is very, very simple. It has two parts. You understand the past and you try to use this to predict the future. So, the past and the future. In the technical terms, the way how we understand the past is by building a model. We call that training set. So, we need some of the data that tells me a little bit about your past so I have to build a model of. Second thing is what w e call the evaluation. Its very important to know how good the performance was for this model. We need sort of evaluation data set to test how well the model could perform. I think for a first time entrepreneur, engineers or anyone interested to come to the space, definitely try to go watch the Andrew Ngs lecture about machine learning. Andrew Ng is famous professor in Stanford. He does the whole Coursera videos on machine learning, I think this is very helpful for people that doesnt know the space, and the other thing is more to understand where you want to apply the machine learning. Ive seen, when I was back in finance, so when I was an investor myself, Ive seen numerous companies that claimed they do machine learning. Its more like a typical failure example, you have a technology and you look for a solution. Most of the cases that doesnt work. So, Ive seen companies apply machine learning to industries that would never make any money, or to industries that are not growing, so th is is also, I think its one of the lessons that Ive learned in a hard way, as well, to really first think about what is the solution you want it to solve rather than think Im just going to run a machine learning company. I feel that might be a little bit tough.Martin: Sure. Ok, great.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM VINCENT YANG In San Mateo (CA), we meet the Co-founder and CEO of EverString, Vincent Yang. He shares his story how he came up with the idea and founded his company, how the current business model works, as well as Vincent provides some advice for young entrepreneurs.The transcript of the interview is provided below.INTRODUCTIONMartin: Hi, today we are in San Mateo with EverString and Vincent. Vincent, who are you and what do you do?Vincent: Hey, how are you doing?Martin: Good!Vincent: Welcome to the Silicon Valley.Martin: Thank you very much. What are you doing at EverString?Vincent: Im one of the Co-Founder and CEO of EverString and what the whole company is doing is the predictive analytics, helping sales and marketing teams to predict whos their next customers.Martin: Great.Martin: And what did you do before you started this company?Vincent: When I started this company, I was mostly working in finance. So I started with my career in J.P. Morgan as an investment banker. So, over there my main job was analyzing public stock and then to decide which stock we should privatize. Later on, I moved to a private equity firm, called Summit Partners that was based here in Palo Alto. In my job again, it was to analyze companies, so I was analyzing around 25-30.000 companies in about two and a half years and this is kind of merely my experience before EverString.Martin: And how did you come up with this idea of creating EverString?Vincent: Thats a good question. So, I was originally mathematics major and when I was working in finance in J.P. Morgan I applied a lot of analytic skills on the analyzing public stocks. So this is all fine, and then, when I go to Summit, I realize for a human being its very difficult to analyze 10s of thousands of private companies and there is not too much information, its not public traded, theres no revenue information. So, then I have the idea of is it possible to use national language processing to analyze companies for me, so that I do not need to g o visit their website every day. And all I wanted it to do is for 10s of thousands of companies, and if youre looking at the whole US, there are in total 5 million companies that have a website, I wanted to know which company is growing, which company is more interesting, which company fits the Summit Investment criteria. So, I started to do codings inside of the Summit and then do some trials and it works very well. And this really triggers me to think Hey, theres actually a new space to really apply the big data, the text mining, especially analyzing the unstructured data and to help business make better decisions.Martin: But still, there you analyze the companies which are growing etc., then, what is the leap towards marketing?Vincent: Thats a good question. So, when EverString was first founded, we actually focused a lot on financial institutions, so helping venture capital, private equity, investing banks and even hedge fund. So we almost turn ourselves into an algorithm tradin g hedge fund. And its in about last year, I got a call from one CMO and then he was the one of the friend of friend and he heard about us and asking is it possible we apply a machine learning and natural language processing engine into their company and help him to analyze his leads, which is our company, too. Initially, that surprises us because we have never been to the space. And then we did a very smart trial, we were really starting to analyze. Because to us, analyzing company and analyzing leads its actually the same thing. So we did a trial and it actually worked very well. It actually converts about 300% more conversions than the benchmark. And after that, this really opened door for us, for all of us, which back then we were all bunch of mathematicians and neural network PhDs. So once we see the work and the variable for the marketing sales team, and we realize that the market is even bigger than the financial institutions, so were starting to now go all way into the space. Martin: So now youre only focusing on the marketing set, right?Vincent: Thats right.Martin: Ok, great. How do you manage your productivity of a daily day?Vincent: My productivity actually varies a lot in different stages of the company. Early days, when we were at the seed round stage, there were not too many of us, in total we had about 10 people. So, I was basically doing, my main focus back then was focusing on algorithm design, focus on the backend architect and to focus more on getting the beta customers. But now, after Series A, our company is significantly larger, we hired 12 people in last month. And also now that we have 35 people in total and it’s much bigger team right now and we expect it to grow, like double in the size very soon. So in this case, my day was terrible. I now manage my day, I follow very strict discipline, so I get up close to 5:30am every day. I go to the gym every day just to make sure that I was well energized for the day. Then Ill finish everything, go to the office in around 7-7:30am and before everybody arrives, so from 7:30am to 9am I try to focus a lot on product review, product design and making sure all the algorithms are in good track. And then, during the day from 9am oclock to 5pm oclock, some time is not actually my time. My time is divided by everybody and everybody put calendar invite to my calendar. So I was mostly stay in sales meetings, marketing meetings, product reviews, algorithm reviews, backend engineering, update calls, that kind of things. And from 5pm oclock things start to cool down a little bit, Im starting to get back my time again. And then grab dinner and then go back to do reply to email and finishing the day.Martin: Ok, great. And how do you keep focus on all of the day? Because I can imagine if you have 10 open items that you need to work on. How do you focus at the specific item a certain time?Vincent: Thats a good question. I did a couple of things. One is: every month, I will write down what m y top priorities are. Ill list 5 priorities to do for the whole month. And then, once I start to break it into the weekly priorities and then, this is all I have to achieve and I assure it with the top executive team in EverString. So, they all know what I will be focusing my time on. And then every day I will write down today there are three things that I must focus on and everything else is not as important as those things. Because I find out a lot of the CEOs that their mode was, what I call it, interruptive tribal. So, they are sitting there, solving issues, putting out fires everywhere. This is very tough for an young company, so we have to be really focused, so thats why I make sure I only focus on the right things. I do some meditations, and I think meditation helps a lot to, that people focus on the fundamental issues. And that fundamental issues, I ask myself every day, I ask most of the team members here, too, why we are doing EverString and why we are here. Most of the te ams we hire are really top stars in all kind of industries. And then, there is no point joining a startup, so this is a question I ask myself here, why we are here doing EverString, so that really helps me to focus on what Im supposed to do.Martin: And how do you manage your team? Do you also know that they have some kind of 4-5 top priorities over month, are they communicated between the executive team?Vincent: Because Im a big fan of planning and I started doing my own planning for a total, like 15 years now, so since I go to high school. I plan my day every day. This is the culture that I set up in the company and I was wishing that everyone, in our weekly meetings, everybody will list down: here are the top 3 things that Ill be focusing on. And 60% of their time will be focusing on top priorities. That moved the company to the next level. 40% of the time are putting out fires, solving issues, there are a lot of unexpected things coming up. Not everybody was used to that in parti cular, engineer, scientist, they are not born in a world where you have so many things. But gradually, I think, after working with me for some time I think they are starting to getting used to those. We use a lot of tools internally, as well, the collaboration tools, the goal setting tools that get everybody into the same page.Martin: Ok. Can you recommend a goal setting tool for example?Vincent: Yeah, so we use Asana. Were hoping everybody, theres a section everybody are putting their weekly goals, and then we will review their goals. So thats a very helpful. And Trello is another helpful tool. Trello is much easier, you can put your week into different days and everybody could review what people are supposed to do during the days. And we are building product, we use Hackpad. Its an online writing pad where people could collaborate. This is also very helpful for your team to do things and making sure people are on the same page.Martin: Ok, great.BUSINESS MODEL OF EVERSTRINGMartin: Vincent, lets talk briefly about your business model. How does it currently work?Vincent: Well, our business model is actually, if you think about it in high level, its actually very easy. We take a look at our clients customers and we find a look-like, and thats it. The biggest pain points that I find when I was talking with a lot of CMOs, they were like Today I know we have a lot of revenues, our revenue will grow. But if you ask them Who are your ideal customers?, this is the question where most of the CMOs dont have a clear answer. And when I ask them Who are the leads that you dont want to talk to? they are like I dont have a clear answer. So, our fundamental goal in EverString is really to use data science to help you understand who are your ideal customers and bring you more of them. So, this is kind of the general high level concept. In terms of the way how it works, its we plug in our engine inside of their CRM, marketing automation and all the internal lead capturing tools they had been using. We first analyze who are your ideal customers and who are the bad leads that you dont want to talk to. But, all the information we have is just a company name or url. This is the same thing when I was back in the finance part of the world is, back then I would have a whole list of 30.000 company names, and I have to do all their analysis to come up with among them 30.000 who shall I talk to. So, the same thing. Once we have that, and then we started to crawl the web, and it would focus a lot on analyzing unstructured context. So we have the technology built internally to turn the whole webpage into mathematical signals. A webpage is unstructured, a mathematical signal is structured. So, theres a lot of work internally that were doing there. Thats why, in the space that we are able to generate our features, that are around 50 times more than all our competitors. So, our predictive accuracy is much higher as well. This is generally how we had been doing in buildi ng the model. Once the model is built, and then we apply the model to do a lot of things. So we apply the model to tell to sales team, every day, when all of the leads come to the website, what are the leads you should focus on. And also try to grab more leads into the funnel, whether its upper funnel or the lower funnel. So this is generally what we are doing.Martin: Do you only tell Ok, you should focus on these leads or do you already tell some kind of story or some kind of pitch that you could use? If you see potential lead, went to a conference, and assuming that the company did not have this information before, than you could either pitch Ok, he was on the conference, maybe you can use this as our pitch for making the contact.Vincent: Yes, this is something thats important, that we have built a prototype, but we havent put into the product environment, this is in the product roadmap. Not only helping our clients to know who to talk to, but also help them to engage with them.M artin: I understand.Martin: Lets talk briefly about the corporate strategy. Can you tell us a little bit more about general overview of the product strategy going forward?Vincent: The industry we are in is a very early stage industry. In general, people call it predictive analytics, but its just very much like a buzz word. Its like people lets call it big data, people call it Hadoop in the early day. People call social network, its just buzz word. But, in reality what were doing is just use data science to help specifically the marketing team, that the main generation people, the inside sales team, the lead qualification team to do better on their jobs. Right now there are a few players like us that are in the space that are even early stage. And then what most of the people are doing is building the model. This is where we are right now. So, in the future, what you can imagine is, once the model is built, there are a lot of places where you could apply the model, to help them to do better lead scoring, to help generating better leads, and there are a few more things that it could help them further. So, for us, its no different. We are constantly exploring new applications that could be built based on a model we apply to the clients. So, right now we have built a few very interesting applications, so we are working with our clients on those, so we havent announced that yet, but very soon well be letting the world know that the superpower of the model and once it applied in the right way, whole business efficiency and your revenue will have a big boost.MARKET TRENDSMartin: Can you tell us a little bit about industry structure or the market structure in general and maybe some trends you have identified?Vincent: Yeah, sure. The way how I think about the industry is in three parts. It is data, insights, and action. If you look at three parts. So, in the general, what I call the marketing or the sales intelligent space or the sales enablement space, there are a lot of data providers. They focus on generating proprietary data and then feed it to the right customer or to the modelers like us. Then you have the middle part which is the insights, like us, like some other players that, what we focus on is building predictive model and integrating the third party data, the first party data to do a good job on telling what our audience will look like. And then theres the action part where you have the CRM, you have the marketing automation and you have the DSP-SSP part of the world that helps you to really engage with the client. So this is what I see the ecosystem of the market, but definitely the trend that I would see those three parts will come closer and closer to really even become one place. This is a very interesting trend that Ive seen happening a little bit in the market, its too early in the games, but definitely in 5-10 years down the line you will see some players that are able to handle all three things at the same time and provide end to end solutions.Martin: Ok. And what would be your estimated forecast, do you rather think that the data companies will integrate all of the other steps or do you really think that they would just organically try to build something similar?Vincent: Yeah, I think all the three parts of the industry has the potential and ambition to take over the whole industry.This is just generally true for most of the industries, so on the lower stream people wanted to go up stream, the data vendors where I see theyve starting to build models, theyre starting to even go more and more into the action part. And similarly for the people, the marketing automation, the CRM provider, they try to go a little bit backwards as well. Everybody might have a chance to win, but to me, I feel like the eventual winner, it really depends on how good you understand the real work flow of your clients and how strong team you have. Its easy to say we do predictive analytics, but its actually very hard to do it. A lo t of the people that I know just basically uses Excel sheet to do some simple logistic regression, where you can do it and I can do it, its very easy. But for us, in day-one that we hire our PhDs in Stanford that focus on neural network, and they are analyzing about 10s of billions of data points they build on models. So, these are the people that its very hard to get and its very hard to make them work as a team. So, we will see who will eventually win the game.Martin: Lets take a step back and talk briefly about machine learning. How does machine learning work basically for somebody who has never done it before?Vincent: You mean, for first time entrepreneur interested in space?Martin: Yes, right, for example, if Im an entrepreneur and Im interested in doing some kind of machine learning startup. What should I know, how the basic machine learning world works?Vincent: I think the basic concept of machine learning is very, very simple. It has two parts. You understand the past and yo u try to use this to predict the future. So, the past and the future. In the technical terms, the way how we understand the past is by building a model. We call that training set. So, we need some of the data that tells me a little bit about your past so I have to build a model of. Second thing is what we call the evaluation. Its very important to know how good the performance was for this model. We need sort of evaluation data set to test how well the model could perform. I think for a first time entrepreneur, engineers or anyone interested to come to the space, definitely try to go watch the Andrew Ngs lecture about machine learning. Andrew Ng is famous professor in Stanford. He does the whole Coursera videos on machine learning, I think this is very helpful for people that doesnt know the space, and the other thing is more to understand where you want to apply the machine learning. Ive seen, when I was back in finance, so when I was an investor myself, Ive seen numerous companies that claimed they do machine learning. Its more like a typical failure example, you have a technology and you look for a solution. Most of the cases that doesnt work. So, Ive seen companies apply machine learning to industries that would never make any money, or to industries that are not growing, so this is also, I think its one of the lessons that Ive learned in a hard way, as well, to really first think about what is the solution you want it to solve rather than think Im just going to run a machine learning company. I feel that might be a little bit tough.Martin: Sure. Ok, great.ADVICE TO ENTREPRENEURS FROM VINCENT YANGMartin: Lets talk briefly about your learnings and advice that you can give to first time entrepreneurs. What have you learned over the last years?Vincent: Ive learned so many, many things in a past. How do I start, so the couple of things.One is I think in hiring, I made a few mistakes in hiring. And its very, very important for first time entrepreneurs to have a really strong principle and discipline in hiring. Dont hire your best buddies in your high school, dont hire your uncles and cousins just because that you know each other for 15 years. Or dont hire people because theyre just good in interview and never do reference check. So, really have a discipline in hiring. If you hire the wrong people, this could literally kill the company. Product strategy, if that wasnt right, thats fine, you could eventually pivot, but hiring could kill a company. So hiring I think is the fundamental part.And second is really to dream big. Obviously, a lot of the people say Oh, just think big! but its actually very hard to do. When Im interviewing with so many people, now we are hiring a lot of executive, and you ask them to think big, you ask them how the industry will look like. Well, it turns out most of the people do not have the capability to think big. You do not even practice. So constantly you should ask yourself the question Right now, theres Micro soft, theres Oracle, but what are the new products that could come up that could totally disrupt Microsoft? What are the new products that could disrupt the total CRM industry? What are the new products that could disrupt whatever the traditional DSP technologies? So, these are the questions you really need to ask yourself every day as a brain exercise. Thinking big is very, very important. In the past, in the early days, we actually did not think big. We tried to see, we just narrowly focused were all into this thing so eventually weve become a big ship in a small pond. We can never go anywhere. So, we would rather be, lets find the big ocean. Even if you start as a small ship, because the ocean is so big, theres a tons of ways that you could gradually become really, really big, gigantic ship.Martin: It is very interesting what you just said, because in Europe, a lot of investors say Maybe you should start in the niche market where you could create the big market share and maybe on ce in a time later on you can move to other markets.Vincent: Obviously, you need to start small. I understand, thats definitely true. But, in my opinion, you really want to make sure that industry is big enough that could have so many different players in the space and theres so much room to grow and then there are so many modules and features you could really bring to the industry. And also, industry is old enough that you could disrupt. If you really start with very, very small, without even looking at the industry, you might end up taking a 100% of the market share of the industry thats in total 5 million dollars.Martin: Vincent, you said that hiring is key, I totally understand. What are focusing on when somebody sits in front of you and you want to test whether hes the right guy or girl to join your company?Vincent: It depends on the level that Im interviewing, whether its a junior level engineer, a senior level data scientist, or executive level product officer. Ill focus on t he mid level and above, because junior level is more skill set testing, not too much on the other things. Middle and above, I focus on the mistakes that they have made. I would usually ask how many mistakes that you have made and what have you learned from your mistakes? So, if people say No, Ive not made any mistakes, I would rather see people making lots of mistakes and learn from that, even in EverString, we make mistakes, too. But this is a new space. If you dont stretch yourself too much, you will never be able to grow. This is the thing that I think I benefit the most from is always, every day to go outside of my comfort zone. Every day to try something new, because thats the evolvement of yourself, as I think is the true purpose of human beings, and I find that I learned a lot achievement by doing that. So, coming back to the hiring question, the question I always ask is How many mistakes you have made? The second question I usually ask is If I do a reference call to your sup ervisor and to your peers, what would they say about you? What are the critiques that you think they will say about you? This is really to test whether they have good self awareness of them. If you join Oracle, Microsoft, thats fine, you go there and you work, but if you join an early stage company, the things that were doing nobody have done before. For sure, we will make mistakes, but we want someone that have a very strong self awareness, that every day could reflect and know what did I do right, what did I do wrong, and with this the whole team could grow very far away.Martin: Are there any further learnings you would like to share with our audience?Vincent: I think that the other learning that I have is really just to have the courage to start, if you talk about the general starting up a company. And most of the people that, if you dare to think, and most of the people have very high safe net. Similar to my former background working finance, working Wall Street, you have relati vely high income, and as long as you dont make mistakes, you have a very safe track to be a managing director in a private equity firm or something. You have a high income but if, at the end of the day, when you die, you ask yourself what an influence did you bring to the world and you might think Maybe not too much. So, this is the one that, most of the companies that I see or my friends, their companies, a lot of them fail in the seed round. And the main reason why they fail is not because the product doesnt fit, its that founders give up. The reason why the founder give up is theyre constantly evaluating If I go to work in McKinsey heres how much Im going to make, and in company I make nothing, so every day theyre evaluating their opportunity costs and their salaries in the start. I think thats not the right way to think about it. Burn the bridge, never even think about the opportunity costs and keep going. I think thats kind of one of the strongest lesson that I learned. If you could really be committed, think about the question when you die what are the things you really leave the worlds. What are the things that really pushed the mankind and all the organizations forward, even a little tiny step? And if youre thinking this way, you will find running a company is the single best carrier in a life. Dont do consulting, dont do banking, thats the waste of your life.Martin: Great. Thank you very much, Vincent. And now you should think about what should you do in your life. Maybe start a company.Vincent: Thanks, Martin.

Example Student Teacher Observation Checklist

To prepare yourself for a student teacher role, familiarize yourself with the roles and responsibilities of a student teacher. The experience is rewarding, demanding, and depends on periods of review from other teachers and administrators. These general checklists closely align to ones a student teacher would encounter in the field from college professors and mentoring educators.   Classroom Observation by Cooperating Teacher Here you will find a question or statement followed by specific areas the cooperating teacher will be observing the student teacher on. 1. Is the student teacher prepared? Do they have an organized, detailed lesson plan and all materials needed? 2. Do they have knowledge of the subject matter and a purpose? Can the student teacher answer students questions? Can he/she motivate students to peak their interest in the subject matter? 3. Can the student teacher control students' behavior? Keep their attentionInvolve students in the lessonStop lesson when neededAware of individual needsProvide positive reinforcement 4. Does the student teacher stay on topic? Do they follow a logical sequence? 5. Is the student teacher enthusiastic about the lesson they are teaching? Are students excited shown through class participation and behavior?Are the activities appropriate? 6. Does the student teacher have the ability to: Stay on topic?Give directions?Reach objectives?Vary questions?Involve students?Encourage participation and thinking?Summarize lesson? 7. Is the student teacher able to present: Enthusiasm?Details?Flexibility?Speech and grammar? 8. Do students actively participate in class activities and discussions? Are students attentive and interested?Are students cooperative and responsive? 9. How do the students respond to the student teacher? Do they follow directions?Do they display understanding?Are they respectful? 10. Does the teacher communicate effectively? Provide visual aidsTone of voice Areas of Observation by College Supervisor Here you will find several topics that can be observed during a single lesson. 1. General appearance and demeanor Dresses appropriatelyGood posture, animation, and smiles 2. Preparation Provides and follows a lesson planHas knowledge of the materialIs organizedIs creativeProvides teaching aids 3. Attitude towards the classroom Respects studentsListens to studentsEnthusiasticDisplays a sense of humorHas patience and sensitivityHelps students when needed 4. Effectiveness of lessons Motivates through instruction and presentationMeets objectivesStays on topicPaces lessonEncourages class participationCarefully directs and explains expectationsUses effective questioningAbility to summarize the lessonHas a concluding activityCorrelates lesson with other subjects 5. Presenter effectiveness Speaks clearly using proper grammarAvoids using  colloquialisms such as you guys and yeahAttentive to detailsHas confidenceBoard writing is legibleMaintains authority 6. Classroom management and behavior Does not embarrass, use sarcasm, or argue with studentsRemains an adult at all timesDoes not tolerate or dwell on inappropriate behaviorKeeps lesson flowing and knows when to stop or wait Areas of Observation Used in Self-Evaluation This list of questions forms the basis of a self-evaluation process for a student teacher. Are my objectives clear?Did I teach my objective?Is my lesson timed well?Do I remain on one topic too long or too short?Do I use a clear voice?Was I organized?Is my handwriting legible?Do I use proper speech?Do I move around the classroom enough?Did I use a variety of teaching materials?Do I show enthusiasm?Do I have make good eye-contact with the students?Did I explain the lesson effectively?Were my directions clear?Did I show confidence and knowledge of the subject?

Mark Twain s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn A Mind...

The mind of Huckleberry Finn is in a constant battle with none other than itself, one side always choosing to debate against the other. Huckleberry Finn is a young boy that embarks on a perilous journey to save his friend Jim from enslavement in the fiction novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. Throughout the story Huck encounters people that change the way he thinks, has a couple of major internal conflicts while floating down the Mississippi River, and makes a decision that sets him on a determined course no matter the consequences. During the novel Huck encounters multiple people the alter his way of thinking and changes his morals.Tom Sawyer, Hucks best friend heavily influences the superego of Hucks mind in telling him the regular and proper way to break Jim free from the plantation. Huck shows Toms prominence in his superego when he narrates that, But we had to have it; Tom said wed got to... (Twain 259). The way that Huck interprets the right to get Jim out i s being monopolized by Tom. Tom is there to show Huck whats the proper way to free Jim, and what he says takes deep root in Hucks mind during this time. The encounters with the King and Duke impact the way id side of Hucks brain. All the various tricks and scams that the King and Duke did were altering what thought of as right and wrong, and he began to think morally wrong things were right. Not only that, but they also altered the way he acts and began to get him toShow MoreRelatedHuckleberry Finn and the use of Satire Essay1109 Words   |  5 Pages Huck Finn and the use of Satire Mark Twains The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been controversial ever since its release in 1884. It has been called everything from the root of modern American literature to a piece of racist trash. Many scholars have argued about Huck Finn being prejudiced. 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A Stakeholder View of Strategic Management in Chinese Firms Free Essays

string(390) " and interesting developments over the past decade which are relevant to the study of strategic management in Chinese organisations, including the Complex Response Process View \(CRPV\), \(Stacey, 2003\), Relational View \(RV\) \(Dyer Singh, 1998\), Institution-Based View \(IBV\) \(Peng, 2002\) and, more recently, the Stakeholder View \(SHV\) by Post, Preston and Sachs \(2002b\)\." INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BUSINESS STUDIES VOL 15, NO1, JUNE 2007: pages 1 of 13 A STAKEHOLDER VIEW OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT IN CHINESE FIRMS Dr Xueli Huang1 Dr Scott Gardner2 Despite the fact that China has emerged as a driving force of the world economy over the last decade, little research has been undertaken into how Chinese firms strategically manage their businesses. This paper develops a theoretical framework of strategic management in the Chinese firms through reviewing and synthesising five strategic perspectives that are relevant to the Chinese context: the Industry Structure View (ISV), Resources-Based View (RBV), Institutional View (IV), Relational View (RV), and Stakeholder View (SHV). We elaborate the relevance of the SHV in the Chinese context and its relationships with other strategic perspectives. We will write a custom essay sample on A Stakeholder View of Strategic Management in Chinese Firms or any similar topic only for you Order Now Finally, we offer several managerial and research implications based on the theoretical framework developed. Key Words: strategic management, Chinese firms, stakeholder perspective I. INTRODUCTION One of the most significant developments in the global economy is the re-emergence of China as a major driving force of the world economy. Since the implementation of the open-door, market-oriented policies in 1979, China has quadrupled its GDP and sustained a significant average growth rate of over 9 per cent. The foreign direct investment (FDI) in China in 2004 amounted to US$ 60 billions, making China the biggest FDI destination country over three consecutive years from 2002. Chinese organisations now compete fiercely in domestic markets, and the international trade arena, with the value of China’s international trade accounting for over 70 percent of its GDP in 2004. The Chinese have also expanded their business operations to other countries as illustrated by the recent examples such as the Levono, China’s largest Personal Computer (PC) manufacturing company, acquiring IBM’s PC division, and the unsuccessful bid of China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China’s third largest oil company, for Unocal, the ninth largest oil company in the USA. Despite the important role played by the Chinese economy in general, and Chinese firms in particular, in the global economy, China has been considered as one of the most underresearched regions in the world (Tsui, Schoonhoven, Meyer, Lau, Milkovich, 2004). Although interest from executives, academics and media on Chinese business matters has 1 Dr Xueli Huang is Senior Lecturer at the School of Management, Edith Cowan University. Email: x. huang@ecu. edu. au 2 Dr Scott Gardner is Associate Professor at Murdoch University. Email: s. gardner@murdoch. edu. au 1 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms increased dramatically over the past several years, little research effort has been devoted to studying the strategic management of Chinese organisations. This paper investigates strategic management in Chinese organisations. In doing so, an attempt is made to integrate the current literature on strategic management, focusing on the two dominant perspectives of the past twenty years: the Industry Structure View (ISV) (Porter, 1979) and the Resource Based View (RBV) (Barney, 1997; Prahalad Hamel, 1990; Wernerfelt, 1984). It also examines Post, Preston and Sachs’ (2002) conceptual schema of complementary perspectives for strategic analysis of 21st century corporate environments – the Stakeholder View (SHV). In attempting to make sense of increased strategic complexity and the central role of networks of human relationships in shaping economic activity in Eastern (notably Chinese) and Western markets, our analysis will call upon the ISV, RBV and SHV with additional reference to other contemporary strategic perspectives including the Relational View (RV)(Dyer Singh, 1998), and the Institution-Based View (IBV) (Peng, 2002). By focusing these lenses on how business is conducted in the cultural context and commercial environment of China, this paper aims to: 1) enhance understanding of why and how the strategic behaviours of Chinese managers differ from those of Western managers? 2) explain why the SHV is relevant to Chinese management practice; and 3) develop an integrated theoretical framework that can be used for guiding future research into the unique characteristics of strategic management in Chinese organizations. II. LITERATURE REVIEW The Industry-Structure and Resource Based Views How firms behave and what determines a firm’s performance in international competition are two of four fundamental issues in strategic management (Rumelt, Schendel, Teece, 1994). Searching for sources of competitive advantage has been a key theme for strategy researchers and business managers over the past five decades. Consequently, a number of strategic management views or thoughts have emerged that explain either sources of competitive advantage or how firms form strategy (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, Lampel, 1998). The ISV and RBV are two prominent views that have endured in the literature and in practice despite significant reconfiguration of global market boundaries and technologies over the decade to 2006. The fundamental assumption of ISV proposed by Porter (1979) is that a firm’s performance is primarily determined by the environment, including both macro environment and industry environment within which it operates. These two broad sets of environmental factors heavily influence the attractiveness of a position for a firm to occupy. As such, a firm uses its market power, or in Williamson’s (1991) terms, ‘ strategizing’, as a primary means to generating supernormal returns or achieving competitive advantage. The second prominent perspective of strategic management is the RBV proposed by Wernerfelt (1984) and subsequently developed by strategic scholars, most notably by Barney (1986; 1997), Rumelt (1984) and Teece and his colleagues (1997). The RBV 2 International Journal of Business Studies argues that a firm’s competitive advantage is primarily based on the heterogeneity of the key resources and capabilities it owns or controls, particularly those that are difficult to mobilise. It is the heterogeneity and immobility of these unique resources and core competence that earn a firm’s supernormal rents. In Williamston’s term, firms adopting this approach are ‘economizing’ (Williamson, 1991). Although the RBV has been widely used in strategic literature, its contribution to the theoretical development has been recently challenged (Priem Butler, 2001). The Relational and Institution-Based Views Although these two schools of strategic management mentioned above have contributed significantly to understanding of the firms’ strategic management practices and behaviours, the quest continues. Recent effort devoted to this area has resulted in several promising and interesting developments over the past decade which are relevant to the study of strategic management in Chinese organisations, including the Complex Response Process View (CRPV), (Stacey, 2003), Relational View (RV) (Dyer Singh, 1998), Institution-Based View (IBV) (Peng, 2002) and, more recently, the Stakeholder View (SHV) by Post, Preston and Sachs (2002b). You read "A Stakeholder View of Strategic Management in Chinese Firms" in category "Management" There are considerable overlaps across these views that attempt to balance the long standing use of high level and rational industry analysis to explain firms’ strategic behaviours, within a defined marketplace, with a more dynamic, processual, and ultimately political view of strategy. This is focused on human motives and interactions within inter-connected, local, national and global networks or constituencies. The Relational View (RV) (Dyer Singh, 1998) proposes that firms can achieve abovenormal returns through profiling and actively managing their network of relationships with other business organisations, particularly with suppliers and users. Dyer and Singh (1998) also outline four mechanisms through which these inter-organizational relationships can generate competitive advantage. They are: 1) investing in relationspecific assets to gain productivity in the value chain; 2) substantial knowledge exchange, or sharing between participating organisations to enhance inter–firm organisational learning; 3) leveraging the complementary resources and capability of alliance partners to develop new products and services; and 4) using effective governance to reduce transaction costs. As Dyer and Singh (1998) argue, one of the major benefits of this view is that it extends the unit of analysis for sustainable competitive advantage from a single firm (RBV) or single industry (ISV) to a network of inter-organizational relationships. The RV can be regarded as a middle range theory as it only focuses on a limited number of concepts (Neuman, 2003). Another recently developed view that is relevant to the studies of strategic management in Chinese organizations is the institution-based view (IBV) (North 1990; Peng, 2002). This view attempts to explain why the strategic decisions of apparently similar firms in different countries vary, and considers institutions as a new set of independent factors, besides a firm’s resources and its industry structure, that influence its strategic choices. According to North (1990), institutions are â€Å"the rules of the game in the society†. More specifically, Scott (1995) refers to institutions as â€Å"cognitive, normative, and regulative 3 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behaviour†. Thus, institutions help identify what strategic choices are acceptable and supportable, reduce uncertainty, and provide consistency to firms. Based on this view, therefore, institutional factors constrain the choices a firm can make, and are often considered in the strategy literature as part of the environment under which organisations operate. Organisations in different countries behave differently because the political and legal systems, social norms and values vary from one country to another, and these are important elements which influence strategic decisions. In other words, the institutional framework, as defined by Davis and North (1970) as â€Å"the set of fundamental political, social and legal ground rules†, in different countries influences firms’ strategy and consequently their performance. The IBV has shed much light on our understanding of strategic behaviour of firms in different countries, and could be good platform for developing new theoretical perspectives that are pertinent to the emerging business culture of China. (Peng, 2005). The Stakeholder View A more recent development in strategic thinking is the stakeholder-based view (SHV) (Post, Preston, Sachs, 2002b). In line with the institution-based view, the SHV recognizes the important role played by political and social arenas shaping organisational decision making and performance. Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) build on this broad position, arguing that organisations, and particularly powerful multinational corporations, need to actively develop, maintain and manage relationships with their key stakeholders, including governments and communities. This proactive cultivation and long term management of strategic relationships contrast to the IBV, which suggests passive conformance to the rules. It is however quite consistent with management as understood and practiced in Chinese business networks. It therefore deserves more detailed discussion and elaboration in this paper. According to Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) the stakeholder view holds that â€Å"the capability of a business enterprise to generate sustainable wealth, and hence long-term value, is determined by its relationships with critical stakeholders† (p. 1). There are two primary, but implicit, assumptions on which the SHV is based. First, a firms’ sustainable and long-term value is determined by three broad types of factors: industry structure, resource base, and social and political setting. It combines the external and internal environments of the firm, and human relationships within its immediate sphere of operations and broader constituency as lo ci for analysis. Second, within this broad constituency there are critical stakeholders whose relationships with the focal firm influence its performance either positively or negatively, (See Figure 1). Thus, the authors (Post, Preston, Sachs, 2002a) argue that the SHV both integrates the industrystructure view and RBV into a broader analytical framework for understanding strategic decisions and actions, and complements them through a broader understanding of how the industry position, resources and firm performance are affected by social and political factors. International Journal of Business Studies Figure 1 The stakeholder view of the corporation (Post, Preston, Sachs, 2002, p. 55) The theoretical foundation of the SHV can be traced back to the stakeholder theory popularised by Freeman’s seminal work on stakeholder management and its ethical implications (Freeman, 1984). Since then, the stakeholder concept as a significant element in strategic management theory and practice has been widely used in varied settings, including the public sector and not-for-profit organizations in the USA and various European contexts. Following Freeman’s discussion of the purpose and ethical considerations of stakeholder management, Donaldson and Preston (1995) proposed three types of stakeholder theory: descriptive, instrumental and normative. Descriptive stakeholder theory attempts to describe and explain specific characteristics and behaviours of business organisations, instrumental theory is used to identify the connections between stakeholder management and organizational performance often where profit motive or advantage over rivals are dominant considerations, whilst normative theory focuses on the interpretation of corporate functioning, including moral and philosophical guidelines for operations and management (Donaldson Preston, 1995). Based on this typology of stakeholder theory, instrumental motives and the quest for competitive advantage through stakeholder management appear to have dominated in the literature over the past fifteen years. However this has been offset to a certain extent in recent years by an increased focus in the literature on the role of stakeholders and stakeholder management in the practice and adoption of corporate social responsibility by US and European multinationals (Laszlo, 2003; Sirgy, 2002; Vogel, 2005). In common with other major US based stakeholder theorists, Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) widely disseminated notion of the SHV has been developed primarily from observations of the characteristic management behaviours within a small number of large US and European based multinational corporations, which they refer to as â€Å"large, complex enterprises† (p. 9), citing examples such as Motorola, Shell, and Cummins Engine Co. The reasons for adopting this particular case-based research method is that it 5 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms equires an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the organisations under study, and that the development of the relationships with its critical stakeholders is often evolutionary and path-dependent. Summarising the strategy perspectives discussed above, an integrative framework can be proposed as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. An integrative model of strategic management in the Chinese organisation Is the SHV pers pective appropriate for understanding and explaining strategic management in Chinese organisations? Whilst the SHV ocuses on the relationships with key stakeholders and its impact on the long-term organisational wealth, many have observed that unique business relationships, or Guanxi, have been based on characteristic behaviour of Chinese managers. Thus, there is a coincidence between the SHV theory and Guanxi practice in China. Using the distinction provided by Argyris and Schon (1978) between theory and practice, one could wonder if the SHV is a theory espoused and consciously enacted by Western managers in recent years, but imbued in Chinese business practices for many centuries. As stated by Donaldson and Preston (1995), how stakeholder theory is understood varies from country to country, even in the highly developed market capitalist economies, of the USA, Europe, and Japan. The current Chinese context, in an economic, and more so, social and political sense, is vastly different from those of Western countries. Therefore, it is helpful at both a conceptual and practical level to examine how and why stakeholder management is practiced by Chinese firms. In the following section, we attempt to explain strategic behaviours of Chinese business practitioners, particularly the relationships between stakeholder management and other 6 International Journal of Business Studies dominant strategic views through examining the Chinese business settings and making use of the theoretical insights offered by the SHV. III. THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT AND OTHER STRATEGIC VIEWS IN THE CHINESE CONTEXT Although the five strategic views mentioned above have been largely developed independently, a close examination of these views reveals that overlaps exist between some of them. In the following subsections, we focus our discussion primarily on the relationship between the SHV and other views. Stakeholder management and resource-based view in the Chinese business setting Based on the RBV, an organisation can generate supernormal rents through the identification, acquisition, and use of its resources that are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate and non-substitutable (Barney, 1991). Although human resources have been considered as one of the four major categories of resources within the firm, RBV has not looked beyond the properties of these resources. The focus of this view is primarily internal with little attention who, outside the firm, can influence the processes of resource access, acquisition and use. The relationship between organisational performance and external resources has been convincingly elaborated by the resource-dependence theory developed by Pfeffer (1978). According to the resource-dependence theory, the organisation relies heavily on its external stakeholders for key resource inputs to survive and prosper. For Chinese organizations, there is considerable dependence on external stakeholders for resource acquisition and use. Typically these external bodies or parties would be partly those with authority for either allocating resources, such as governments and banks, or influencing resource acquisition and use, such as taxation departments, or Bureau’s of Industrial and Commercial Administration, which can exercise considerable discretion within the broader legal and regulatory framework impacting Chinese business contexts. One particular point in case is the role of the Chinese government. Historically Chinese governments have controlled much of the national wealth and resources, and been heavily involved in making economic decisions. For example, most of major investment decisions in the state-owned enterprises have been directly influenced by the Chinese governments. Moreover, anecdotal evidence, either from public media or the word of mouth conventional wisdom in China, suggests that cultivation of relationships with Chinese banks, other business entities and their employees, are important to support financing, timely information sharing and sourcing critical materials for business enterprises. Stakeholder management and the market-based view Establishing a strong market position in China is very difficult because Chinese markets, even market segments, are usually big due to its large regional population bases. The well-established, and usually large, state-owned enterprises also make it harder to operate competitively for new comers in the Chinese markets. Although many new business 7 A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms opportunities are continuously emerging, most of them are still heavily regulated by the Chinese governments. The governments can help and/or deter market position building through licensing (e. g. , taxi industry, iron ore importing), investment approvals (e. g. , steel mills), and issuing permits for key capital intensive activities such a commercial building and large scale infrastructure projects, whilst similar practices of these can also be observed in Western countries, the licensing and approval processes in China are often opaque and leave much room for discretion by government officials. Stakeholder management and institutional view As discussed above, the legal and political settings in China have profound influence on the strategies pursued by Chinese organisation. The legal systems in China have traditionally been loosely configured and left much room for interpretation. Chinese laws are usually not well codified and difficult to reinforce (Ahlstrorm Bruton, 2001). Moreover jurisdictional boundaries between the governmental departments at the same level or governments at different levels often overlap. Therefore, favourable relationships with Chinese regulatory authorities can have a positive impact on the organisation’s performance. With regards to the political setting in China, the long history of feudalism in China from 221BC to 1912 has consistently shown a close link between political power and economic wealth. With the prevailing feudal system, political power was centrally controlled by the emperor and his royal family with business enterprises in China relying heavily on their government (emperor and royal families) for survival or prosperity. Coupled with the loose legal systems, favourable relationships with the Chinese government or royal family have traditionally been considered extremely important for business organisations to maintain their survival and growth. Modern Chinese history shows similar patterns of a close link between the government and business entities. Even after the Chinese communist party took over the power in 1949, the Chinese government controlled most of the country’s wealth. Many Chinese large enterprises are still state-owned. Therefore Chinese governments have been heavily involved in economic activities at both industry and firm levels over the past five decades. Developing a favourable relationship with various government departments and doing business under their authority or with their help, is still considered one of the most profitable courses for Chinese businesses to adopt in today’s global economy. It is good relationships with the government that help business organisations to grow and occupy a strong position in specific industries with provincial, national and international market penetration. This relational perspective on business and strategy has many historical and cultural precedents in China. Stakeholder management and relational view in the Chinese cultural setting Since the time of the Qin Dynasties Chinese culture has been dominated by Confucianism that stresses the importance of human relationships and harmony within a society. This requires that interpersonal relationships be appropriately arranged. The friendship (yi), which emphasized the mutually beneficial relationships between one and other, has been 8 International Journal of Business Studies egarded as one of the four characteristics of the fundamental tenet of Confucianism is humanity (ren). The central significance of these principles of friendship or egalitarianism has not waned in the Chinese recent history. In contrast, the Chinese Communist Party reinforced these ideas during the 1950s to 1960s, and more recently from the mid 1990’s to the present day, as a desirable social norm or virtue. At the business level, the Chinese governments have facilitated cooperation and collaboration among the state-owned enterprises in many business areas, such as new product development (Huang, Schroder, Steffens, 1999). Frequent gatherings amongst businesses either through political meetings or economic activity among managers in China has also served to facilitate this collaboration and cooperation processes. Such institutional and cultural settings in China manifest in different behaviours including information sharing and informal governance, two of the four mechanisms suggested by Dyer and Singh (1998) which can be used by organisations to enhance their competitive advantage. It suggests that the strong cultural and institutional foundation that exists in Chinese business for developing reciprocal relationships. This can help improve organisation’s performance – a central principle for the Relational View. IV. THE STAKEHOLDER VIEW AND MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR CHINESE MANAGERS AND RESEARCHERS This paper explored the relational basis on which the Chinese organisations compete in their domestic markets drawing comparisons with recent Western views of strategic behaviour. These were framed in a broader historical context of doing business in China. It is contended that the recent stakeholder view proposed by Post, Preston and Sachs (2002) provides much promise in terms of both theoretical and practical insights into how and why strategic management is practiced in Chinese organisations. However, clear differences in Chinese and Western social and political systems, and the stage of capitalist evolution need to be considered in applying the SHV to the Chinese settings. As stated by Donaldson and Preston (2005), how stakeholder theory is understood varies even in the market capitalist economies. This is more evident in the contemporary Chinese context, where social and political settings are vastly different from those of Western countries. A number of managerial and research implications are proposed from this paper. First, we have presented an integrated framework of strategic management that indicates the mechanisms linking relationships with key stakeholders and organisational performance. It is proposed that whilst developing and maintaining these relationships has been traditionally valued by Chinese as part of their culture, contemporary Western strategic management thinking would seek to equate effort spent on this area with measurable performance outcomes and long term competitive advantage. With this in view, the integrated framework presented could be used to provide Chinese managers with a more holistic and formalised view of strategic management to support the development clearly articulated objectives and productive long term interactions with key stakeholders. A stakeholder view of strategic management in Chinese firms Secondly, it is clear from the framework presented that the stakeholder view is only one of the approaches for creating organisational wealth. Several types of organisations are competing in the Chinese markets and each could be competing on different basis. Multinational corporations compete on their market position and resources, whilst stat eowned enterprises compete on the basis of being institutionalised within political and cultural settings, providing strong market influence and ready access to resources. Most local private firms may compete on the cultural settings, flexibility and speed of decisionmaking. As the Chinese governments gradually level the playing field for all business players, the political settings in China will be changed. Therefore, managers of Chinese organisations, particularly state-owned enterprises, need to develop relationships with other types of new era capitalist stakeholders who can help build strong market position and/or gain access to key resources. Thirdly, relationships with the stakeholders need to be considered as strategic (intangible) assets for business organisations in Western markets and as a powerful means to compete in China. As in the West, these relationships are located within a broader social and transactional knowledge networks (Kaplan Norton, 2004; Nahapiet Ghoshal, 1998), containing untapped strategic value for Chinese companies operating locally, regionally, and globally. Currently many Chinese managers spend much effort practicing a stakeholder theory in a fragmented way at a one – on – one, individual level. Whilst the compounding effect of the aggregation of these individual relationships is not clear, there is an argument with respect to the SHV to support a more strategically aligned, and systematic integration of these routinised interactions at the organisational level. This is one of the most challenging issues in implementing stakeholder theory in the Chinese organisations, as most of the relationships with key stakeholders are based on the trust between individuals, rather than between organizations. Looking to the future merging of Chinese and Western business practices organisational structure also needs to be redesigned to manage the relationships with key stakeholders. This is crucial. Although stakeholder orientation can be built into organisational culture, people need to be assigned to facilitate the ongoing integration and implementation of stakeholder management. There is no doubt that stakeholder management is both a science and an art. It requires intuition and human skills – more art than a science. However, it also requires systematic, rational, and analytical techniques. A number of stakeholder management techniques have been developed over the past decade, which may support the integration of stakeholder management into mainstream in to the strategy processes of Chinese businesses- most notably stakeholder mapping (Johnson, Scholes, Whittington, 2005), and cognitive mapping (Eden Ackermann, 1998) which help to tap into the social capital and relationships embedded in broader business networks. Finally, from a methodological point of view, the SHV points out the importance of a more holistic and integrated approach in understanding strategic management in Chinese organisations. So far, most of studies on Chinese management have used existing Western management theories to explain the Chinese business phenomena. 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