1. 1. Technology
China’s housing market
overheated or…?
Prices for new homes in Beijing
Shanghai rose 18%/ 7%
nationwide from last year
(Home prices nationwide tripled
from „03-‟10)
Policies deployed to cool market
• Hiking mortgage down-payment for
second homes
• 20% Capital gains tax
• Single people only allowed to own 1
residence
• Foreigners not allowed to buy
property unless they are authorized
to work
Despite these policies, why prices
continue to rise?
Lack of investment options
• Property‟s the only store of value
• 60% of household assets are
properties
(UK: 48%, Japan: 32%)
• Value of urban residential property
market: $18.8 trillion
• Stock & bond market combined: $8
trillion
• Deposit rates consistently falling
behind inflation
• Poor stock market performance
(Down 32% since end of 2009)
• Nascent bond market
What is Big Data?
According to IBM‟s Big Data Platform
Project, 90% of existing data today has
been created in the last two years.
Savvas wrote in his research on Big
Data in 2011 that unstructured and
multi-structured data is about 80% on
average of all data of an organization.
With increasingly popular social
networks and audio-message
communications, this percentage has
been rising exponentially. A report from
The Economist Intelligence Unit, “the
rise of Facebook, which has close to a
billion users, and other social media has
led to an explosion in „unstructured‟
data, such as comments and opinions
posted by customers that can provide
insights into how a company is viewed.”
While the volume of data is commonly
accepted as a pivotal challenge by
organizations, data variety and velocity
are also becoming important issues
(Russom, 2011).
This phenomenon is called “big data”
and has been a buzz word in the IT
industry since 2011. Big data describes
the exponential growth, availability and
use of information, presented in
structured or unstructured way.
According to IBM‟s Big Data Platform
Project, big data has 4 dimensions:
• Volume: large amount of data in both
structured and unstructured ways
• Velocity: the need for high speed data
creation and large data analysis
• Variety: big data not only means large
amount of data, but a great
number of data types
• Veracity: the level of confidence big
data users have to the data available in
their databases
The four dimensions are included in
Gartner‟s definition of big data: “Big
data is high-volume, -velocity, -variety,
[and –veracity] information assets that
demand cost-effective, innovative forms
of information processing for enhanced
insight and decision making.”
With the underlying four dimensions,
big data is more than a matter of data
sizes. “It is an opportunity to find
insights in new and emerging types of
data and content, to make businesses
more agile, and to answer questions that
were previously considered beyond the
reach,” as asserted by the IBM Big Data
Platform.
2. News
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September 21, 2013
By Mingbo Gong By Justin Lun
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3. Start-up Briefing
Tableau Software
A self-contained business intelligence
tool that enables business users to
build data visualization and analyze
complex information simply and
effectively through the drag and drop
function. In the last year, Tableau
Software user accounts grew by
75%.
Main products:
• Tableau Desktop, a self-service
analytics product for anyone with
data;
• Tableau Server, a business
intelligence platform for
organizations;
• Tableau Public, a free cloud-
based platform to analyze and share
public data
Financials:
Tableau raised $254.2 million - the
largest U.S. technology IPO this year
to date. Stocks were priced at $31 per
share and were launched this month.
Competitive Strength:
Focus on breadth and ease of use
and growing deployments against its
competitors.
Company Culture:
Leadership, work/life balance
philosophy, & winner of
Washington‟s “Best Workplaces-
2012 Large Company Gold Medalist”
By Cynthia Li
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2. 5. News
BCG Matrix (growth-share matrix) was developed
by Bruce D. Henderson in 1970. This model helps companies to analyze
product lines and allocate resources. The matrix has two dimensions: market
share and market growth. It indicates four categories in portfolio of a
company.
Cash Cows: Units with high market share but low growth rate. These units
usually stay in a mature market and generate cash for the company.
Dogs: Units with low market share and low growth rate. These units are
usually considered to be liquidated.
Question Marks: Units with low market share but high growth rate. They
represent a stating point for most new products. These units may become
Stars or Dogs later.
Stars: Units with a high market share and high growth rate. They are market
leaders in high growth sectors, and usually require high funding to sustain
growth rate. Stars may become next Cash Cow when the market matures.
According to BCG matrix, a company needs a diversified portfolio to fully
leverage its strengths. Despite its clarity, this model has certain limitations.
For example, market growth is not the only attractiveness for a market and
market share is not the only success indicator.
Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, and his
cabinet have recently agreed to raise Japan’s
consumption tax from 5 to 8% next April.
Why is this a gamble?
Japan had suffered deflation for nearly ten years. To respond, Japan’s
current Prime Minister Abe advocated his idea of devaluating Japanese Yen
in order to expand Japan’s economy. This idea is well known as
“Abenomics.” Abe hopes that his idea can put Japan‟s economy back on the
right track; meanwhile, Abe needs to:
• Settle the huge and growing public debt,
• Secure his reputation and possibly his job
(In 1997, the government attempted to increase sales tax, however, a recession
followed. Government revenues fell and the then premier resigned.)
4. Business Models
By Daisy Li
By George Yeung
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