Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy, a carefully structured series of educational videos offering complete curricula in math and, now, other subjects. He shows the power of interactive exercises — and calls for teachers to consider flipping the traditional classroom script…watch the video yourself!

Qihoo 360 was the first Chinese internet company to IPO in the US this year, but there are many more to come. Ge Yang, NYSE’s representative in Beijing, states, “Following Qihoo 360 we expect another batch of Chinese firms to go public, with a number of different business models.”

The 17 Chinese internet firms shooting for an IPO this year fall into 5 categories: social networks, online TV and video, mobile Internet, e-commerce, and online media.

1) Social Networks

RenRen

RenRen claims to be China’s largest real-name social network. Its forerunner was XiaoNei, which launched in 2005. Xiaonei was purchased by Oak Pacific Interactive in 2006 and in 2009 subsequently changed its name to RenRen (“the people’s web” in Chinese).

Softbank is the largest investor in RenRen with about a 40% stake. RenRen has 160 million registered users. Its primary revenue sources are web games and advertising.

On February 19, 2011, Sina Tech reported that RenRen plans to IPO in the U.S, with the aim of raising about $500 million.

Kaixin001

Kaixin (Kaixin001.com), founded in March 2008, is one of China’s largest social networks. In August of 2010, it claimed 86 million registered users, with an average of 50 million monthly active users. Its revenues are about 300 million yuan, primarily from advertising (about 80%), virtual goods, and third party developers. CEO Binghao Cheng stated that by the second quarter of 2010 monthly profits were over 10 million yuan.

At the end of last year Caijing reported that the company plans to IPO in 2011. On March 16, it was leaked that Kaixin had already selected JP Morgan and Citigroup to serve as underwriters of the IPO.

Taomee

Taomee (taomee.com) is a children’s social network. It claims to have 180 million registered users with active users of 30-50 million. In January 2011 it announced that it had reached profitability.

In October 2010, Caijing reported that Taomee will IPO on NASDAQ in 2011. It has fulfilled basic preparations at present.

Jia Yuan

In December 2010, Tencent Tech quoted an industry insider, “The Chinese dating site Jia Yuan intends to list on the NASDAQ next year, with the aim of raising $100 million.” Jia Yuan would be China’s first dating site to go public.

2) Online TV and Video

Tudou

Tudou launch on April 15, 2005 as China’s first video sharing site. On November 10, 2010, Tudou filed with the SEC for listing as TUDO on the NASDAQ with the aim of raising $120 million.

The magazine China Entrepreneur reports two possible reasons for the delay since then: 1) Tudou CEO Gary Wang violated the “quiet period”; or 2) A lawsuit from the ex-wife of Tudou CEO Gary Wang which claims a stake in the company. Gary Wang holds a 13.4% stake in Tudou according to the SEC filing.

PPLive

PPLive (PPTV) provides TV streaming and video-on-demand.

In February, PPLive received a $250 million investment from Softbank. According to Caijing Daily, CEO Xinchen Yao aims to list on NASDAQ by the end of the year.

PPStream

PPStream provides TV streaming and video-on-demand.

On February 17, TechWeb reported that PPStream intends IPO in the US and raise $200-300 million. Bank of America Merrill Lynch and UBS Investment Bank will serve as underwriters.

Xunlei

Shenzhen-based Xunlei is China’s largest download client, used primarily for movies and music. Advertising is its largest source of revenue, but the firm also sells value-added services to users, like cloud storage space to host videos and music.

On March 3, Bloomberg quoted an industry insider who stated that plans to list in the US this year to raise about $200 million. Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan will serve as underwriters. On March 23, Reuters reported that Xunlei could IPO as soon as April, but was waiting for the right market conditions.

3) Mobile Internet

NetQin

NetQin is a mobile security software firm. On March 16, NetQin filed with the NYSE with the intention of raising $100 million.

The eve of its IPO China’s CCTV accused NetQin of plotting to disseminate malware via Feiliu, a firm it invested in, and then charge users for NetQin’s services to remove the malware. There is concern that this revelation may hinder NetQin’s chances for an IPO.

UCWeb

UCWeb’s core product is the UCWeb mobile browser. In March 2011, it claimed to have more than 200 million users and over 700 million downloads.

On March 25, Sohu IT reported that the company was reaching out to investors in preparation for an IPO this year.

3G.cn

3G.cn claims to be China’s largest mobile portal. According to management advertising accounts for over 70% of revenues and it estimates 2010 revenues will surpass 200 million yuan.

In July 2010, after completing a third round of investment for $100 million, CEO Yuqiang Deng stated, “This is our last round of financing before an IPO. We plan to list at the end of this year or the beginning of next year.”

Yicha

Yicha was established in February 2004 and was China’s first mobile search engine.

In May 2010, Chairman Bin Liu stated, “Yicha originally planned to list in Japan this year, but due to a weak market we’ll wait until next year; we estimate 2010 revenues will reach $10 million.”

4) E-commerce

Qunar

Qunar is a price-comparison site for booking plane tickets, hotels, and travel packages, similar to Kayak in the US.

In September 2010, Qunar’s CEO told Reuters, “At the earliest we hope to list in the second half of next year and release 20-25% of our shares. Our first choice is NASDAQ.”

Red Baby

Red Baby is China’s largest site for mothers and babies. Sales reached 2 billion yuan in 2009.

In December 2010, the managing director of New Enterprise Associates China, an investor in Red Baby, stated that the firm plans to IPO in the US in the next year.

5) Online Media

Shanda Literature

Shanda Literature is a subsidiary of the Shanda Group and includes well-known literature sites like Chinese Web.

On February 16 HeXun Tech quoted an insider saying the Shanda Literature plans to IPO on the NASDAQ in June.

HeXun

HeXun is a famous Chinese financial portal. Last December Chinese Entrepreneur reported an employee who stated management was aiming for an IPO in the second quarter of 2011.

iFeng Media

iFeng is a cross-platform media company that includes a portal (www.ifeng.com) , a mobile site (3g.ifeng.com) and iFeng video.

iFeng Deputy Director Xinzeng Liu revealed last year that the firm plans to IPO in the third quarter of 2011 and that the video property would be included as a selling point.

BestBuy is not the first one and definitely will not be the last one to pull out of China. Given the fact that China is strong in electronics and the native retailors are already taking a strong hold in that market, it wasn’t easy for BsetBuy to carve out a piece for itself.

Do you see it as a failure for Best Buy? In fact, Best Buy had failed to gain national influence since its entering Chinese market in 2006 because most of its retail stores were located in East China. There has been talk during the six years about its withdrawal. It has been said that Best Buy’s failure in China is based on its “famous”, “advanced” business model.

It has been well accepted that the Best Buy business model stands for a higher business civilization; nevertheless, a direct consequence of Best Buy model was that the retail store cost was too high, failing to provide a competitive price. It significantly reduced Best Buy’s competitive power in this way, especially in China.

When Best Buy entered China in 2005, the Chinese suppliers were not terrified at all; instead of it, they deeply expected it—the business model of Gome and Suning (Two Chinese biggest household appliance retailers) had had an ingrained vicious circle which was suffocating every supplier. Household appliance manufacturers expected a new model that could contend against the current model; in addition, the carrier must be strong enough—such as Best Buy, the biggest household appliance retailer in the world.

However, the result was disappointing. Best Buy suffered in deficit year by year and after six years, it ultimately came to an end.

Theoretically, the Best Buy “buy out” operation method and “spot trading” were supposed to be the best way to return to essence of retail and the most beneficial model for business ecological harmony. Included in their business model was to obtain the dominant right of the retail store by buying out the products and bear the depreciation loss; the employees of Best Buy are responsible for the sales promotions; making profit by scale purchases and purchase and sale price differentials. Compared to the badly condemned business model of Gome and Suning, Best Buy model stands for a higher business civilization with no doubt.

Do you see it as American morals fail to transcend Chinese consumer market?

Then what exactly is the Gome and Suning model? They enjoy a model that combined commission sale and distribute. They rent the sales area in the store to different household appliance manufacturers. Then they collect the rental fee and a certain percent of the manufacturers’ revenue. Even the sales promotion people are hired or appointed by the manufacturers. The tremendous fast expansion of Gome and Suning was based on collecting the store entrance fee from those manufacturers and returning money to them slowly.

It’s not hard to tell that one of the direct consequences of Best Buy model is the high storing cost—labor cost, advertising cost and other cost for a single store are much higher than one of Gome and Suning. This made Best Buy on one hand fail to provide a more competitive price to the consumers; on the other hand, due to the limited profit from every single store, the pace of Best Buy opening new stores was detrimentally slow—Gome and Suning have thousands of retail stores in China, and Best Buy only had nine. The sales revenue could not satisfy the U.S. headquarters, plus, it could hardly benefit Chinese customers and suppliers; as a result there was no way Best Buy could find a reason to stay in China.

What’s the lesson here?

Be flexible, even it means to change your business model.

Be adaptive, learn from the local business people.

Be innovative, or pull out of the competitive Chinese market.

Love this following post written by http://www.brasstackthinking.com Tamsen McMahon

Why do we do it? We set goals, we make plans. We tell ourselves we will…this time.

But we don’t.

A while back, Julien Smith wisely pointed out (as is his wont) that three of us are present for any decision: there’s who we were, who we are, and who we are going to be. One begets another.

As I said to Julien then, each has a siren song: Past Self dwells in what could have been, Present Self dwells in the lush tactility of now, and Future Self sees all that could yet still be. Each has lessons: Past makes us what we are, Present sets who we’ll be, and Future reveals the paths from which we choose.

Future Self fascinates me. It holds so much promise, and yet we forsake it all the time—we do things today that pretty much screw over the person we’ll be tomorrow.

Why is that?

Perhaps because it’s so easy to dwell in the past. We know Past Self—it’s as old as we are, minus a day. It walks with us in everything we do, chats with us, tells us how this is or isn’t like what came before, how we have or haven’t succeeded by doing this or that. Perhaps it’s because some of us don’t like our Present Selves very much, and we can’t see the possibilities that Future Self provides, or at least, we can’t see anything but a continuation of who we are right now (and that’s more than we can bear).

Or maybe it’s just that the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t.

I mean, Future Self…we don’t even know that guy. He just sits out there, dealing in abstraction, putting pressure on Present Self, waiting to see what we’re going to do to him. Bastard.

As much as I love to ask “why?” (and trust me, I can be worse than a toddler on that front), the answers fall too often into the True But Useless category of information. What good is understanding “why” if it doesn’t actually move us to do something different? (Or worse, actually holds us back?)

Not much.

The problem is our success depends on our relationship with our Future Self—on someone we can’t know, and yet whose life we control absolutely.

So, how do we do that? How do you?

Image credit antonkawasaki

Posted via email from sn0wfl8ke’s Muse

For this very 1st week, I’d like to introduce my latest addiction - Mind Mapping. It is a fantastic creativity booster and it keeps the thought process well organized. As opposed to linear documents, mind maps are more like graphs, with nodes of information which in turn holds other nodes of information. You can create a mind map for a book, describing each chapter as a node, or for a project, defining each feature as a node. Whenever you have the time to re-create your project, do it with a mind map. Start with the title and then add nodes with features or goals. You can use  mind mapping software programs or you can simply start with a blank paper, the physical support doesn’t really matters. The key is that mind mapping makes it easy to understand, remember, and communicate complex information.

If you are like me, your brain sometimes feels as if it is scrambled because of information overload, overwhelm, or under tremendous pressure. Switching out of the linear perspective, from the height of bird-eye view, something will start to change the way you process information. You’ll start to see new connections, missing links or unnecessary clutter. Before you know it, you will feel more organized and more inspired.

Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question “Why?” His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers — and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling.

In a similar vein, study has shown that by asking potential voters to predict whether they will vote on an election and to provide a reason for their prediction, participation rate could be increase 20% to 25%.

So what’s actually driving the drastic increase? Based on my recent interesting read of <Yes! 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive>, there are two important psychological steps involved in the success of this technique. First of all, when people are asked to predict whether they’ll engage in a socially desirable behavior in the future, they feel compelled to say yes because that’s the socially appropriate thing to say. Secondly, after most of these people have publicly state that they’ll perform the socially desirable behavior, they’ll be motivated to behave consistently with the commitment they just made.

What lessons can we draw from this human factor that can be effectively employed in our lives?

1. If you plan on joining a charity run for a nonprofit, start by asking your friends, family and co-workers whether they think they’ll donate
2. If you manage a restaurant or doctor’s office, having your receptionist ASK instead of TELL when taking a reservation. Simply by changing “Please call if you have to cancel,” to “Will you please call if you have to cancel?” I ensure you the no-show rate would drop significantly!
3. If you are designing a nonprofit/corporate responsibility website where voting mechanism is the center piece, make sure to cement those potential voters’ commitment by making it voluntary, active and publicly declared to others.

Small and easy changes to our messages and to our requests can be made vastly more persuasive, just remember: asking a little goes a long way!

How many problems in life can be solved by TINKERING the PERCEPTION rather than the tedious hard-working messy business of trying to change reality? LOL – isn’t this the main purpose behind all advertising & marketing? Don’t miss Rory Sutherland’s fantastic marketing solutions via TED talk. Check out discussions and comments here.