Eco-Friendly Drain Cleaners

The active ingredient in Drano and other conventional drain cleaners is sodium hydroxide, otherwise known as caustic soda or lye. It is a man-made chemical used for its corrosive properties. According to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, the substance is not considered a pollutant per se, as it separates into relatively harmless component elements once released into water or moist soil. But sodium hydroxide is an irritant that can burn skin and aggravate nose, throat and respiratory airways, so contact with it is best avoided. If ingested outright it will likely induce vomiting, as well as cause chest or abdominal pain and make swallowing difficult — so keep it well out of the reach of children. For those who would rather avoid such chemicals entirely, safer alternatives do exist. A plunger or mechanical drain snake — along with a little elbow grease — can often free up clogs as well or better than sodium hydroxide compounds. One home remedy with a proven track record is to pour a handful of baking soda mixed with a half cup of vinegar down the drain  and follow it quickly with boiling water. Another option is to choose any number of enzymatic biological drain cleaners on the market today, such as Earth Friendly Products’ Enzyme Drain Cleaner or Bi-O-Kleen’s BacOut. These make use of a natural bacterial and enzyme mixture to open and keep drains clear. And unlike sodium hydroxide, they are non-caustic and will not facilitate combustion. As any plumber will tell you, a good maintenance regimen is the best way to prevent clogged drains. Flushing drains weekly with boiling water can help keep them clear. Also, installing small screens atop drains will help keep hair, lint and other clogging elements out of the pipeline in the first place.

Shakespeare s King Lear And The Great Gatsby - 1346 Words

Personal gratification is commonplace in society, but the force to overcome it is not. In both Shakespeare’s King Lear, and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, man’s natural psychological id is displayed by key characters, who are all morally corrupt. King Lear has 2 distinct sides who represent the id and superego, battling over justice in a kingdom centered around a weathered king. In The Great Gatsby, a commonplace working man by the name of Nick Carraway surrounds himself with friends who indulge themselves in luxury, influenced by the psychological id embedded deep within everyone. When observing family dynamics, both King Lear and The Great Gatsby reveal family interactions are driven primarily by the id, which is further supported when considering the presence of oedipal dynamics in both novels. In terms of narrative events, The Great Gatsby’s events are heavily influenced by the id, with little to no superego expressed. In contrast, while the bulk of Ki ng Lear’s storyline is similarly driven by the id, the superego plays a larger role in resisting the id’s unlawful desires, and this is exemplified through the triumph of the superego at the story’s end. The Great Gatsby depicts how life is hopelessly overridden by human’s natural id while King Lear demonstrates how even the smallest source of superego can combat the aggressive nature of the id present in life. In both King Lear and The Great Gatsby, the id is influential in most family interactions. For instance, King

Apple Powerbook Case Write-Up Free Essays

After the failed release of Apple’s first miniaturized computer, the Portable, the company was faced with the likelihood of losing significant ground in the mobile computing market if it didn’t bring a product to market at record speed. Apple had anticipated the Portable would be competitive enough to maintain market share until its longer term â€Å"Companion† project was complete. However, thirty-six months remained until Companion would be ready. We will write a custom essay sample on Apple Powerbook Case Write-Up or any similar topic only for you Order Now Weak sales coupled with Compaq introducing the far superior LTE notebook created intense pressure to bring a product to market in the next 18 months that could serve as a placeholder until the Companion arrived. Bringing a product to market this quickly was no easy task. The new portable needed to be small and compact, yet the short timeline meant only existing technologies would be available. If that was not challenging enough, the company culture was such that most products had a time-to-market of 48 months and involved a slow bureaucratic process with multiple departments needing to sign-on for each decision. Additionally, Apple still had not fully confronted the notion that their desktop core competencies were not necessarily going to translate into success in mobile computing. Despite these long odds, Apple not only prevailed, but created a revolutionary product called the PowerBook that brought in billions of dollars in revenue and revolutionized the conventional wisdom behind the company’s design philosophy. Part of Apple’s struggle in mobile computing stemmed from being the pioneer of desktops. The company felt it knew what the market wanted based on its previous success. It was with the desktop in mind that Apple released the Portable, a mobile computer designed to do everything that a current desktop could do with the added benefit of being able to collapse into a carrying case and be taken on the road. At a staggering 17 pounds and a cost of $5000, the Portable was met with plenty of skepticism and was doomed for failure. The company had simply failed to take the customer’s needs into consideration. Instead of making it smaller and lighter, as the market demanded, Apple focused on functionality and battery life. This contributed to problematic weight and size problems for the machine. The failure to recognize what consumers demanded wasn’t Apple’s only development flaw. They also failed to recognize how quickly technological trends and consumer tastes were changing. The company was still developing products on a three to four year cycle and had yet to embrace a time-to-market philosophy. Instead priorities were still â€Å"time-to-perfection† with the company maintaining that it would not bring anything to market ‘before its time’. Additionally, they still had a desktop mentality, which meant strict design regulations that hindered the development of a sleeker, lighter computer. It was a combination of these factors that led to the failed release of the Portable and created the immediate need to development the PowerBook. As Apple scrambled to assemble the PowerBook team, the project objective was clear; get a mobile computer to market at record speed and keep the size and weight to a minimum. The speed of develop was a major challenge to overcome and it was mainly due to the organizational structure. Apple structured its company by functions and departments. And instead of dedicating specific resources for a project, each department supported all projects. This led to a cumbersome and lengthy decision making process which typically involved project managers struggling to get objectives accomplished. Often times the project manager was relegated in authority and routinely superseded by functional heads with all decisions inevitably at the mercy of the president of Apple Products, John Louis Gassee. Apple realized its current structure lacked the dexterity to meet its time-to-market objective and driven by necessity made several key decisions to secure time-to-market success. First, Apple made the decision to organize the company into separate divisions: desktop and portable. Second, they decentralized engineering and product marketing, with the immediate goal of building a new portable engineering group. Lastly, although their Product and Industrial Design teams remained centralized, it was agreed that personnel from those teams would co-locate for the PowerBook project to ensure everyone was â€Å"breathing the same air and talking the same talk†. Revamping the organization structure was a key step but there were still many missteps and obstacles that nearly derailed the project. One major issue was the allocation of personnel. Despite the intense pressure and importance of the PowerBook, the company still listed the project very low in terms of priority. All of the â€Å"A† talent was dedicated to the Companion project and the PowerBook team was left with either junior level engineers or employees with only desktop computer experience. Inexperience coupled with intense pressure produced multiple mistakes along the way. Design standards were initially poor and prototype builds revealed several critical errors with manufacturing tolerances. All together, a list of 150 items was compiled of issues that the team felt needed to be addressed but it looked unlikely that the time and resources were available to make all the changes. Additionally, the PowerBook team had to overcome intense resistance from its manufacturing department. Manufacturing was accustomed to snap-together desktops and had a very difficult time coming to grips with how they could possibly assemble a portable with 47 screws. The initial reaction from manufacturing was â€Å"we can’t build this thing†. Product verification testing also proved to be treacherous. The deadline was so tight that after the manufacturing process was well underway and thousands of displays were already in inventory the risk was still present that changes may be needed. This would produce a significant waste of resources. Lastly, the PowerBook team was confronted with bringing its new creative, ergonomic design to life, while dealing with size constraints as well as a mechanical engineering team who was on the critical path and working under a â€Å"we’ll do it if we have time† approach. Despite the long list of reasons why the project should have failed, it didn’t. In the midst of all the missteps, Apple made several key decisions which propelled the project to success. One area where Apple thrived was in staffing. Although the engineers lacked experienced, the management involved in the project were innovative, creative, passionate, and practical. They worked tirelessly to make the project a reality and cared very deeply about its success. It was their innovation and tireless effort that slowly caused the project to transform. The team came to the realization that â€Å"a notebook was not a piece of business equipment that someone operated; it was a personal object with which they formed a relationship. † It was this realization that drove the project’s success. The project became not only about size but about ergonomics and about finding a way to form a connection with the user. It was with this approach that ingenious designs such as the center-mouse trackball and the use of curves took hold. Slowly the PowerBook was morphed from a product simply meant to catch-up to the market to something that surpassed any other notebook available. The team also made several other key decisions that made the PowerBook a success. One key determination was to include the internal floppy drive. There was much discussion if this was a necessary component yet key members of the project argued for its inclusion and it was later determined the product would not have been nearly as successful without it. Another key decision was dealing with the 150 issues that were identified after the prototype build. Originally, only 5 to 10 items were going to be changed. However after much discussion, it was determined the PowerBook would not be a success unless they fixed every last issue. To complete such a major overhaul in a short period of time they pulled all resources from the entire portable organization and were able to complete all the modifications in a reasonable amount of time. As one project member later admitted, fixing all 150 items turned the PowerBook into â€Å"something that I would be proud of versus a piece of junk†. One final trait that the PowerBook team used to make the project a success was persuasiveness. There was organizational resistance throughout the project. From convincing senior management to embrace the ergonomic design to convincing manufacturing that they had the ability to assemble a computer with 47 screws, the team used persuasiveness throughout the project to eventually turn a vision into reality. Apple ultimately took a big risk with the PowerBook and it paid tremendous dividends. Along the way they learned a great deal about listening to their customer and designing to their preferences. The company transformed from designing around homogeneous parameters to instead designing to the customer’s specific desires. Consequently, their product line became more flexible and adaptable to the marketplace. Apple also matured operationally during this process. Prior to the PowerBook, the organization was not designed to be time-to-market, however necessity forced Apple to restructure to keep pace with competition. The company’s human capital also benefited heavily. Mobile computer experience was at a minimum prior to the project, however the process eventually led to a much smoother release of the Companion computer several years later. The PowerBook project was fraught with potential disaster. But inevitably the company overcame many adversities and released a revolutionary product that redefined the standard of excellence in mobile computing. How to cite Apple Powerbook Case Write-Up, Papers

Business Model Design System Perspective Method

Question: Discuss about the Business Model Design for System Perspective Method. Answer: Introduction: The following paper is going to accomplish the objective of developing a coherent understanding regarding business model in terms of a concept. At the same time, the paper aims to understand the way the theoretical understanding of varied business models can be utilized for explaining aspects like value appropriation or innovation process and value creation in a business firm. Therefore, the focus of the following discourse would be to identify and explain the components involved in the process of conceptualizing the business model, the ways business models used for solving static as well as dynamic models. Furthermore, the role of business models in business innovation process would also be evaluated. As stated by Hiroyuki Itami and Kazumi Nishino in their article Killing Two Birds with One Stone, two elements a distinct business system and a particular model for profit margin are essentially required for composing a fruitful business model. It has been understood from the article of Hiroyuki Itami and Kazumi Nishino that one of the necessary components of business model, which is business system, is a system of work designed to successfully deliver the service or product to the customers (Itami Nishino, 2010). On the other hand, a profit model is considered as a particular intention of a firm regarding the ways to make profit to business. However, as discussed by Christoph Zott and Raphael Amit in their article Business Model Design: An Activity System Perspective, business model should be considered as a business system that is integrated with varied interdependent activities, which transcends the focal firm as well as expands the boundaries of business. Furthermore, the afor ementioned authors have indicated that the design of a business model plays the role of a potential decision that entrepreneurs or a new firm holders pursue for acquiring a satisfying business performance (Zott Amit, 2010). Therefore, understandably, according to the conceptualization of business model, the essential components that have been involved are interrelated or interdependent activities of a business firm or the particular activity system that enables an organization to establish value. It has been understood further that some of the chief aspects, which are integrated in time of conceptualizing business model as a system are possible business structure, accessible contents and corporate governance. However, it has been understood that based on individual business aims and purposes, different business organizations develop different business models, which are integrated by different set of activities and different resources and the performance capabilities. As per Zott and Amit (2010), the predominant objective behind designing a business model is to exploit the opportunity of a business through the way of creating appropriate values for the involved parties. At the same time, it should be considered in the context that business models and their functions as business systems have the responsibility to address and satisfy customer needs, establish customer surplus and generate profit for the partners (DaSilva Trkman, 2014). From the aforementioned point, it can be interpreted that business models are helpful system for understanding the needs of the firm partners, as it is one of the responsibilities of business models to initiate profit for them. Nevertheless, in this respect it is required to mention that business model performing as business systems, can be utilized for solving dynamic as well as static issues like problems with the internal stakeholder and issues in marketing and change in the customer demand (Morris et al., ). More precisely, it has been understood that an organizations particular business model and its static and dynamic aspects and their roles are interrelated. An organization needs to bring change in its business model or system considering the changes taking place in both of its static and dynamic aspects (Casadesus?Masanell Zhu, 2013). For example, if an organization encounters sudden change in customer demand or change in market trend, the enterprise needs to modify or bring change in their marketing tactics or need to pursue product modification. On the other hand, if an organization encounters sudden instability in the political or social atmosphere, the management of the organization would initi ally opt for modifying the working culture, manufacturing pattern or relationship with the internal and external stakeholders (Bonakdar, 2015). All of the aforementioned elements are considered as the integral part of a business model as system. As mentioned earlier, business model consists two particular models, which are profit model and business system. As per Itami and Nishino (2010), external and internal delivery process along with the business learning systems is included in every business model, therefore, in order to mitigate any issues in the profit earning system or in the internal business environment, improvement or modification in the business model would be essential. On the other hand, it has been identified that a business model, which is well articulated, provides insights to the investors regarding the ways through which a business organization creates sustainable value. Several times, business organizations attempt to pursue strategic alliance with other business parties for maintaining sustainability, expanding business or for strengthening their brand image. In the context, it should be mentioned that the phrase strategic alliance is indicative of an agreement among two or more organizations for pursui ng a particular set of agreed objectives while remaining independent enterprises (Lanzolla Markides, 2015). Some of the predominant reasons for forming strategic alliance are for forming economies of scale, for increasing competitiveness, setting new business standard and entering into new markets. Some of the fundamental roles of business models are to communicate business values, define value chain, estimate both profit potential and cost structure and most significantly the position of a firm (Kindstrm Kowalkowski, 2014). Henceforth, without the use of business model, it is not possible to understand the need of partners and not even the need of the strategic partnership. On the other hand, considering each of the above-mentioned responsibilities of business models, it is understandable that business models helps to monetize business value and assists in identifying any particular issue in business (Barquet et al., 2013). The phrase business innovation refers to the act of implementing new technology or designing new ways for making new brands or business practice. On the other side, b usiness models refer to the way of creating value to both the customers and stakeholders. Therefore, it can be said that without the proper utilization of business model, it is not possible for an organization to understand the need for brining innovative idea. At the same time, in order to identify an ideal process of innovation, there is the need to utilize the components integrated in a business model (Lambert Davidson, 2013). As identified in Hiroyuki Itami and Kazumi Nishinos argument, in every business, there is the need to learn the about the work and they assert that business model as business system effectively functions as learning systems. Two of the aforementioned authors have also asserted that business models in terms of business system is responsible for determining the elements of work flow, which are required for delivering products and for determining the information system that controls the work flow. However, from Mitsuru Kodamas article, which has focused on the business models of the Japanese business firms, it has been understood that knowledge integration procedure is responsible for establishing new knowledge through the networks those transcends corporate boundaries (Kodama, 2009). On the other hand, from the argument of Christoph Zott and Raphael Amit, it has been understood that design of a business model includes three essential elements, which are activity system content, activit y system structure and activity system governance. In the particular context, the example of the business model of the Google can be considered. The article of Hiroyuki Itami and Kazumi Nishino has evaluated the basic model of business by taking example from Google. As per the theoretical framework of business model, a profit model and a business system integrate an apt business model. Googles use of profit model indicates that the organization gains profit in a unique way. According to the profit model, the users of Google never need to pay anything direct to the organization but with the utilization of the service of Google, users provide the opportunity to the organization to capitalize on the search engine site through selling the sites space to the advertisers. Therefore, the business model of Google focus on the advertisers for the profit related concern, as they know that advertisers are the direct source of revenue for the organization. On the other side, the business system of Google is integrated by varied software and hardware capabilities like numerous elements of bespoke in-house software and in-house server system. Googles present success highly depends on its business system, which is an essential better half of its business model (Itami Nishino, 2010). It is because, through the in-house business system procedure, the organization provides fastest service to the customers and at the same time process a huge extent of contact, which the advertisers have with the customers. The application of the basic business model of Google indicates the fact that the business model of the organization plays the role of a system of work that not only satisfies the customers in a competent way, but also helps the internal stakeholders of the organization to learn about technology as well as customer reaction. Henceforth, the article by Hiroyuki Itami and Kazumi Nishino have been found the most relevant as the article has helped to acquire a clear understanding regarding the fundamental framework of business model through detailed elaboration and evaluation with handful of evidence. Most significantly, the article has helped in understanding one important fact related to business model, which is a business model functions as a learning system too. Therefore, from the above understanding it can be indicated for the future procurement of business model that, a business model should be established by integrating a distinct profit model and business system. Beside for the reason of generating insight and value for the stakeholders, business models should be designed for helping the internal stakeholders to learn the expression of the customers as well as their individual responsibilities. References Barquet, A. P. B., de Oliveira, M. G., Amigo, C. R., Cunha, V. P., Rozenfeld, H. (2013). Employing the business model concept to support the adoption of productservice systems (PSS).Industrial Marketing Management,42(5), 693-704. Bonakdar, A. (2015).Business model innovation(Doctoral dissertation, University of St. Gallen). Casadesus?Masanell, R., Zhu, F. (2013). Business model innovation and competitive imitation: The case of sponsor?based business models.Strategic management journal,34(4), 464-482. DaSilva, C. M., Trkman, P. (2014). Business model: What it is and what it is not.Long range planning,47(6), 379-389. Itami, H., Nishino, K. (2010). Killing two birds with one stone: profit for now and learning for the future.Long Range Planning,43(2), 364-369. Kindstrm, D., Kowalkowski, C. (2014). Service innovation in product-centric firms: A multidimensional business model perspective.Journal of Business Industrial Marketing,29(2), 96-111. Kodama, M. (2009). Boundaries innovation and knowledge integration in the Japanese firm.Long Range Planning,42(4), 463-494. Lambert, S. C., Davidson, R. A. (2013). Applications of the business model in studies of enterprise success, innovation and classification: An analysis of empirical research from 1996 to 2010.European Management Journal,31(6), 668-681. Lanzolla, G., Markides, C. (2015).Does the strategy field need the business model concept. London Business School Working Paper No. LBS SE WP 22. Morris, M., Schindehutte, M., Richardson, J., Allen, J. (2015). Is the business model a useful strategic concept? Conceptual, theoretical, and empirical insights.Journal of Small Business Strategy,17(1), 27-50. Zott, C., Amit, R. (2010). Business model design: an activity system perspective.Long range planning,43(2), 216-226. Zott, C., Amit, R. (2013). The business model: A theoretically anchored robust construct for strategic analysis.Strategic Organization,11(4), 403-411.