Appunti testi inglese b2

Meeting are the basic building blocks of corporate existence but sometimes they don’t work as they should,

they don’t achieve what they set out to do. For reason lots of companies are offering help! We see how the

meetings that happen in the corridor are more useful that others by cause people are spontaneous and they

don’t feel the pressure of big meetings tend to be hold either to share information or to solve problems. In

the first case Roger New suggest to use problem-solving so at the end of the meeting people will remember

what they heard, they will pay attention to putting solutions into practice. Mr. Bradford, a professor at

Stanford business school, also meeting often thinks waste huge amounts of time and that the way to get a

good decisions s to frame the question carefully.

Unit 4: the real -time economy

Information is a key resource for modern businesses and information management has a direct impact on

efficiency and performance. Information flows between the different parts of a businesses information

system ( people, procedures, resources) in the form of data, voice, text and images. Information technology,

hardware and software, allows this information to be gathered processed, etchanged and stored. Managers

are thus able to analyse developments in their business in real time, i.e. instantaneously, in order to solve

problems and exploit opportunities. Information systems are connected to interval and/or external networks

( internet/intranets/extranets) and must be secured against attack.

Glossary:

Verbose: using more words than necessary

Quest: search

Shoot in the dark: guess

Spell the death off: announce the end

How about now?

Gary Reiner is chief information of General Electric and he hands the most important initiative of it: digitising

or computerising as much of its business as possible and it means not any buying or selling things online but

setting up a digital nervous information system that connects everything involved in the company’s business.

All the GE’s senior Managers have a dashboard with green, yellow and red lights that signal the status of

programs if one of them stays red or yellow for too long they get the system to email the people in charge

via the network. In years to come many companies will use inf. Technology to become a ‘ real-time enterprise’

organisation that is able to react instantaneously to changes in its business ( new economy). It also means

the use of new hardware as a wireless sensor that will improve the gattering of the new info overboard.

Software that will suggest way of optimising the supply chain or automatic the response to certain kinds of

new information. The consequences will be a more fluid economy and maybe more volatile.

Unit 5: the place of change

The rapid pace of technological development is affecting every aspect of our personal and professional lives.

Consumer electronics products are making our lives more comfortable and entertaining. New and more

innovative models are coming onto this almost saturated market all the time.

The facility of browsing and uploading onto or downloading from the internet has changed forever the way

we work and view the world. Nanotechnology is a new growth market, which promises to bring smaller,

lighter, more portable technology, more deeply changed our lifestyle than in the field of mobile

telecommunications.

Glossary:

Start-up: new, recently formed company

Untapped market: potential market which hasn’t yet been exploited

Saturated (market) where there are more goods than people who want to buy them.

The march of the mobiles

Mobile phone are the most widespread communications devices, computing devices and consumer

electronics products.

Everybody have a mobile phone also, poor people, children from 4 to 8 years and cars, house hold appliances.

For that reason, the industry is looking for new sources of growth, since it will not be able to rely on subscriber

growth for much longer. The industry hopes that people will do more phone calls and their tactic is to make

cheap calls at home over fixed-line networks; the other one is to extend mobile convergence so that people

can make calls wherever they are, it is already available in underground railway and within two years it will

be on airplanes. The market will never be sutured because industry is already thinking about stream music

and other downloads in the dead of night so even being asleep nothing prevents you from using your phone

Unit 6: the power of persuasion

Advertising is a means of communication between an organisation and its target audience using space or

time purchased in the media (tv, radio, magazines, newspapers, websites, billboards, etc.).

Business generally use the services of advertising agencies to create advertising campaigns that use

combinations of commercials, posters, print adverts or internet pop-ups in order to publicise their products

or services and persuade consumers to buy. Increasingly, advertisers are using other forms of promotion

such as instore displays, product placements and product demonstrations to draw attention to what they

eant to sell.

Glossary

Go down the drain: be waisted

Splurge: spend a lot of money

Relentlessly: continuously, without stopping

The harder hard sell

It was Lord Lever Hulme (the British soap pioneer) who complained about the fact that he wasted half of his

business budget. In advertising pout, today there are more different technology as internet which simply

make traditional marketing so longer now.

You can choose a lot of different ad. From public relations to straight mail, in-store displays, business-to-

business from telemarketing, exhibitions, sponsoring events etc..

People sometimes don’t know which advertising Is better than the others. Is it better to put an advertising

on a newspaper or the internet? Rupert Howell said that tv never killed radio which in turn never killed

newspaper. Advertising industry is relentlessly.

Unit7: in the name of the law

The activities of all companies are subject to national and international laws, which lay down the conditions

under which they can operate in their home markets and abroad. Companies and individuals use the services

of a law firm or of a corporate legal department to take legal action or to litigate in order to obtain

compensation for harm they have suffered. Both sides in a lawsuit are represented by their lawyers ( use

attorneys); the plaintiff or litigant brings the lawsuit against the defendant. Business can be sued if they fail

to respect their obligations under the law. Most lawsuits are settled out of court through negotiation

between the two parties.

Glossary:

Bubble Wrap: protective plastic film used to protect goods

In retrospect: looking back to the past

Blunder: Mistake

Teeter: be in danger of falling

Trigger ( n): mechanism that activates a process; (v) to activate)

Get out of hand: become unmanageable.

The people vs the USA

Sealed air, the manufacturer of Bubble Wrap made a mistake buying a company that now is about to be

bankrupt from asbestos litigation. When word of the litigation (contentious) spread, Sealed Air’s shared and

Bonds were both hit hard. Sealed Air, as defendant, is already paying a higher cost for lawyers, and a higher

cost for capital. Because litigation risk is difficult to analyse, when the financial markets do wake up to these

concerns, they often panic. Litigation is not the trigger for a company’s share price decline but rather the

result because any company whose share price falls sharply, is exposed to legal action. Why shouldn’t a

company that does something wrong pay the price?

The trouble is, there is no incentive for a plaintiff lawyer, or a jury, to weight up the broad-er economic

consequences of huge awards against companies, especially multi-million-dollar punitive damages. Pushing

for reform would no doubt be easier if there were more precise information about the cost of litigation also

because most of them are threatened and settled, leaving no financial trace.

Unit 8: keeping it exclusive

Brands are more than just product names. They are a mark of quality, and it is the brand name that

distinguishes a product from other similar products and gives it a brand identity. Global brands have the

ability to cross both geographical and cultural boundaries, building international reputations of quality.

Creating brands and brand awareness is the job of the brand manager or brand asset manager. Once the

brand name has been established, the makers sometimes engage in brand extension, which involves using

the brand name on a range of products, in the case of luxury brands, companies have to be careful to avoid

overexposure, which could damage the exclusive aspect of the brand image.

Glossary

Staid: sober and unexciting

Accolade: prize, award

Back-end: behind the scenes administrative activities

Gucci has come through challenging times to see its fortunes rise again

Gucci is an Italian brand that was born in 1921 when Gucci Gucci opened an exclusive leather shop with

prestigious clothes, Hight-quality products making them status symbols synonymous with luxury. After Gucci

died his sons took his place and they expanded the brand also in London, Paris and other important cities.

There was a fall when his sons Aldo and Rodolfo took over the business because they pulled the brand to

different directions. Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole made Gucci rise again: the first one with different

designs of products from clothing to perfumes and the second one with communication campaigns and mark

strategies and his efforts were recognised by the European Business Press Federation which selected Gucci

as European company of the year from among 1000 other companies. Analysts still cite Gucci as one of the

stocks with the greatest upside potential.

Unit 9: the rewards of risk

Most business ventures start as investments by entrepreneurs, who hope to make financial gains or returns

on investment (ROI). Money for a new business may come from banks, or from venture capitalists and

business angels, who also give entrepreneurial advice. As business grow, they invest in their own projects in

order to increase profits and dividends for shareholders. Some businesses such as insurance companies and

investment banks employ professional fund managers to oversee investment portfolios of different types of

shares ( US stock) and bonds on the global stock market as their main profit-making activity. Although all

businesses aim to make a profit, some organisations think it is important only to make ethical investments,

possibly with lower returns, in projects that, for example, don’t harm the environment.

Glossary:

Folly: foolishness, lack of good sense.

Myopia: short-sightedness

Boom years: years of economic prosperity.

Freud, folly and finance

People make strange decisions about the future. Daniel Kamneman was awarded a Nobel prize in economics

for his work in the field of behavioural finance, a science which applies psychological insights to economics

and now he is in demand by investors from a