商务教育清谈

一段时间以来，一直写着英文的日志，无论是对写者还是读者，要完成两种不同语言之间的跨越都非易事。然而，在语言之外，音乐却是极完美的一种联结物，音乐的追逐者和表演者拥有共通的元素，它是跨越国界和族群的。

最近，音乐史上一位里程碑式的人物、摇滚天王迈克尔·杰克逊去世了，各大网站、报刊又有了新热点，我才注意到了一些未曾注意过的事情。上个世纪80年代的第一次追星（用零花钱买两盒卡带之类的行动搁现在的层次根本算不上啥了）便是买了一盘名为《BAD》的专辑，至今留存的印象便是封面上半男不女的黑甲克外衣装扮和某支歌里吉普车引擎的音效（那是我第一次体验双声道效果）。诚恳的说，对这位巨星人物的整体感受并不鲜明，甚至感觉不到什么“光辉”，而之后的漂白、性骚扰丑闻更是在他身上加了资本主义糜烂的标签。现在他死了，我们知道了他独自支撑着39个慈善基金会、他曾来到过中国的中山雍陌村与阿婆^[1]、宝宝^[2]这些普通村民们亲密接触、他的所谓虐童案^[3]是无中生有的诬陷（非常可惜的是，该案当事人直到最近才公布当年的真相）……

从媒体到个人现在正在发现迈克尔·杰克逊的伟大、以及一些真相。他在2002年7月9日纽约抗议索尼音乐公司的高峰会上的一段话颇令人感触：

“自从我打破唱片纪录开始——我打破了猫王的纪录，我打破了披头士的纪录——然后呢？他们叫我畸形人、同性恋者、性骚扰小孩的怪胎！他们说我漂白了自己的皮肤，做一切可做的来诋毁我，这些都是阴谋！当我站在镜前时看着自己，我知道，我是个黑人！”

即便是这样的巨星，据说行动也并不自由，连家人见面都要经经纪公司的批准和监视，其内心的孤单可见一斑。不过即便是孤单了、不自由了、被诬蔑了，又能如何？昆西·琼斯视迈克尔为当代的莫扎特、贝多芬，只在去世后才能被人们尊重和真正认识的人。反过来说，有些光辉，也许注定在一段时期内是被掩盖的，也许正是为着之后的喷勃而发。

对迈克尔·杰克逊来说，无论光辉是否曾被掩盖过，他的成就都令混沌中的众生们无法望其项背。这是一个因亲民和平实的行为脱离庸俗的不平凡者。

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1. 网易娱乐. 2009. 中山村民忆杰克逊:他主动与阿婆拥抱合影(独家). 网易娱乐, July 3. http://ent.163.com/09/0703/03/5D92DNKH00032KMI.html (accessed July 5, 2009).
2. 网易娱乐. 2009. 中山村民忆杰克逊：他全情跳舞逗笑宝宝. 网易娱乐, July 4. http://ent.163.com/09/0704/00/5DBBLPL800032KMI.html (accessed July 5, 2009).
3. 凤凰网娱乐. 2009. 视频：杰克逊娈童案受审录像曝光 数度无奈摇头. 凤凰网, July 5. http://ent.ifeng.com/special/stay/maikeerjiekexun/shipin/200907/0705_7098_1234677.shtml (accessed July 5, 2009).

The shabby campus email service broke down several times, so I referred Microsoft Live@edu to our IT department  staff with the purpose of their switch to this no-charge service particularly designed for and offered to educational institutions around the globe.

The obvious benefit can be seen by faculty members and IT technicians such as its stability, low or even zero switching cost from existing mail service, and the extra gadgets attached. However, my proposal was not as expected welcomed by one of our technical representatives, who did not believe a solution program as such provided and supported by Microsoft could be a free lunch. She told us in QQ group very confidently that the 'no-charge' assertion was only the bait for future lockup and that we might start to pay in a few years after today's signing up.

I wouldn't believe that there is something called free lunch, but when we sign up for this globally-offered service, we do give Microsoft something for an exchange. It is just that we don't have to pay for this by cash, or in a monetary way. By forming a collaborative effort with colleges and universities, Microsoft will enter a naturally defined market segment which consists of students and academic scholars and establish target market's preference for its brand. As said by Takeshi Numoto, corporate vice president of the Office Product Management Group at Microsoft Corp, the goal with Live@edu “is to equip the next generation of leaders with a rich set of productivity and collaboration tools as they move from campus to business environments.”^[1]

If you are insightful enough, you will know you actually pay too much to assist Microsoft in achieving its future strategic advantage. There is free lunch, but on Microsoft's side.

1. Microsoft PressPass. 2009. The Choice Is Clear: Universities Worldwide Select Microsoft Live@edu. Microsoft PressPass, June 22. https://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/jun09/06-22LiveEduv3PR.mspx (accessed June 23, 2009)

It’s a really fun trick to help buyers enjoy discounts which are actually not.

I heard that USB Safely Remove, an application for managing USB devices, announced a discount offer of 30% for life-long personal license, thus totaling 14 USD. Since 30% is not a small discount and SafelyRemove.com put an advert on the up-left corner of its official web site saying today is a Happy Day with 19 hours left, I clicked the ORDER button without hesitation, and completed the transaction in just a minute!

A few hours later, the web site advert showed a reminder of 12 hours left. When I spread the good news of the purchase, I was told by my friend who has been observing the trick for long that the same Happy Day promotion was on for at least two months.

So every day is a happy day, happy for buyers to perceive the value for money at the point of transaction, and happy for sellers to see more orders placed and executed. A nice trick for propelling or pushing your consumers, if properly followed.

Some say that pricing is an art for even the most smart person. It is true, but pricing is also something solid and touchable, and is based on the value delivered to customers. You need to consider variables such as demand and supply, costs, attached services, and speculations and so on when you can finally decide what to write on a price tag. Price, as well as pricing, should both be specific and precise.

Recently my dad was invited to lecture for students of YS college. The arranged textbook was published about twenty years ago, tagged price much lower than that of its peers of these days. When the price was offered to the office of academic division, what has been believed is that this price, set by the publisher twenty years ago, is much favorable since inflation is not considered, but the counter-offer just went beyond my expectation and it included a 25 percent discount! The negotiator assumed he could reasonably apply the alleged practice in textbook distribution system to this case but how can a practice be stupidly transplanted into different circumstances without adjustments?

He is absolutely wrong.

The college is not the writer, nor the publisher, which means it cannot decide the cost of the physical textbooks. The college is not the lecturer who is going to provide the course (as the service), and this means the importance of the course and the quality of the course cannot be determined by those office staff. It is also clear this final batch of textbooks will not be reprinted (at least in a foreseeable period), so the academic division itself won’t be able to supply more to the course participants. Without seemingly considering the above issues, and a final but unilateral price is set to take your profit of 25%?

The Xinhua bookstore, the biggest textbook supplier, is said to allow 25 percent discount as a widely accepted ratio in this business. However, this amount of discount is actually a cost/markup for channel members or intermediaries. The purpose of providing such an incentive is to help facilitate the delivery of goods, to offset the expenses of maximized market coverage and to utilize channels' capability since they are more closer to the end users and more professional in dealing with issues such as information gathering, complaint management and so on. But, our negotiator apparently doesn’t understand this and assumed his division had completed all the calculations correctly, taking it for granted his counter-offer was justified.

Sometimes, men are stupid. They view their profit not as one but as one fourth, but they will ignore the separate part of the entire product, the channel, which is definitely not free.

Universities and colleges have been labeled for long as non-profit institutions, thus more or less respected as their goal of existence and operation is different from that of businesses. These organizations have their own holy philosophies and missions to adhere to, and they won't trade their principles in for easy cash or dirty profit.

Things change while circumstances vary. The current economic crisis attracted people's attention from their daily life to business closures, layoffs and green paper devaluations while it seems no one thought it worthwhile keeping an eye on some colleges/universities in the U.S. mulling degrees in three or two years,^[1] and claiming the purpose of saving students' time as well as money.^[2] The pretension to considering altruistically as an unselfish people for others aroused disgust even more. You know you cannot cram the learning curve of four years into the condensed three and harvest an immature fruit in the process of growing rather than a ripe one in fall.

The mission is to help students complete their learning, but not to sell them a dissembled package and call it flexibility of pedagogy so that the programs, originally designed as an integrated whole, can be manipulated, taken apart and sold separately to avoid unsalable but potentially valuable courses or to market as much as possible. When separated, the programs become unlinked, courses as individual parts isolated and thus won't contribute, at least as planned and to that extent, to the mission.

I am not an opponent of the three-year degree idea, not to mention that of two so far as education can be successfully and as planned be accomplished, but if we rest our standpoint on selling as much as we can to reduce losses under current circumstances while advocating the diverted intention, we will ultimately become greedy Wall Street's dealers ourselves. Take a glimpse at those used-to-be arrogant, but  now-cursed and down-and-out bank guys, and they are road signs.

Business ethics may tell us to satisfy our clients with products so as to maintain a sustainable relationship in between, while the killer of the the goose that lays the golden egg only looks at that one single golden egg in the corner, and destroys the ecosystem.

references

1. azdailysun.com. 2009. U.S. colleges mull degrees in 3 years. The Arizona Daily Sun, May 24, http://www.azdailysun.com/articles/2009/05/24/news/20090524_front_196899.txt (accessed May 28, 2009).
2. Valerie Strauss. 2009. Colleges Consider 3-Year Degrees To Save Undergrads Time, Money. The Washington Post, May 23,
   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/22/AR2009052203681.html (accessed May 28, 2009).