First it was Emaar’s unstoppable “invasion” into Saudi Arabia that made news, and now it’s Dnata, Dubai’s airport and travel services monopoly. Dnata have been operating their unique Dnata Travel Center (DTC) in Dubai for quite some time now, and has now been established in the Kingdom.

Hamel’s Business Concept Innovation framework is an excellent example of analyzing the Dnata Travel Center. The center houses cubicles where potential holiday seekers meet with travel advisors who tailor their entire holiday packages from start to finish. They arrange flights, transport, tours, meals and everything else a vacationer may need. The way they do it though is quite unique, allowing their clients to visualize their destinations thanks to the agents own extensive travel experience. They also have screening rooms where clients can sit on a comfy sofa and watch hours of destination video tapes free of charge to get the sights and sounds of their dream destination in their mind, a concept unique to the DTC. Thus, strategically speaking, the customer interface and product market scope elements of the framework are elegantly displayed.

Additionally, the screening rooms and holiday cubicles are strategic assets that fit well into the DTC’s core strategy, which is to provide vacationers complete holiday solutions and to make them feel that their vacations have already started at the DTC, an idea that is cleverly portrayed in their “Your vacation starts at the office” advertising campaigns. The core processes of the DTC are also important, in the way that they put their strategic assets to use by escorting their clients to virtual destinations either by using the advisors’ “blurbs” or by the extensive use of lush and relaxing viewing rooms. Finally, another part of their customer interface is a 24-hour toll free hotline that tends to new and existing client’s needs in a professional and efficient manner, an essential tool in the oh-so-essential aspect of after-sales service.

The DTC brings concepts to the Kingdom travel services that were never available before, and is an example of the far reaching and ground breaking concepts of the city of Dubai. Let’s just wait and see, it will only be a matter of time where another city, country or business will be Dubaitized and made both rich and famous.

With the release of the movie just around the corner and the controversy heating up, I just couldn’t resist writing another entry on Dan Brown’s engrossing page turner.

The Da Vinci Code raises some serious questions about the origins of Christianity. The novel also characterized the Catholic Church and the Vatican as covering up the 'truth' about Christianity. The Catholic Church are overreacting and implying that it's only a novel and the controversy will eventually die down and that the novel is full of anti-Christian lies, and has urged all Catholics to boycott the movie. The real challenge to the church is that the novel has appealed to such a broad audience which may think that the novel is based on facts due to the research it presents in quite a “scientific manner”.

Baron’s market and non market environment framework is quite applicable in this non-market issue.. The article focuses on the social and religious issues which according to Baron are non market issues and are characterised by the four i’s discussed below:

Issue: In this article it is a combination of social and religious controversy. The main issue in the article is claiming that the novel was a deliberate attempt to discredit the Roman Catholic Church through absurd and vulgar falsifications and it is full of offences to Jesus, the Gospel and the Church. Archbishop Angelo Amato, the number two official in the Vatican suggested that Catholics should launch a protest against The Da Vinci Code - the movie - and should not watch it, in addition to calling the novel “stridently anti-Christian”. Another Vatican official said that the film version of the novel is just another example of Jesus being sold out by a wave that he called "pseudo-historic" art. The article also appoints a clear sign that the Vatican has been rattled by the continuing worldwide success of Brown’s novel.

Interests: There is a significant number of interests involved, and they include:
· Dan Brown the author, Doubleday Fiction - the publisher, novel distributors and editors.
· The Vatican, the Catholic Church, the Pope, Priests and all religious parties.
· Organizations that support freedom of speech.

Institutions: One of the biggest institutions at play here is the media. It is crucial and an extremely powerful force that can work with or against the Vatican depending on what information they want to provide in newspaper articles and TV talk shows. This will affect a lot of people and may change the way they perceive things from novels that deal with religion, especially individuals that are not really religious and don’t know much about their own religion. In addition to the media, public sentiment is one of the parties that can also affect this issue, such as in the way the protests that the Vatican urged the public to launch might be interpreted.

Information: Based on the article The Da Vinci Code had an enormous success which probably gave it an incentive to be filmed.

And closer to home, an article in the Gulf News shows how local religious authorities, both Muslim and Christian, have condemned the movie to be full of lies, and while they have stopped short of asking people not to watch the movie, they have asked them not to believe what they see. Regardless of the warnings, the movie is expected to witness a massive demand.

It is an interesting topic but should be taken at face value until further research is done, and that it is very educational and about to be, like everything in life, “Hollywoodized”

The Da Vinci Code is a mega-successful novel written by American author Dan Brown. The novel is a combination of murder, mystery, thriller, conspiracy tale, romance, religious expose, and historical revisionism. With sales of over 40 million copies sold in 44 languages, topping bestsellers charts all over the world and earning its author more than £140m, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is a global phenomenon. Numerous critics noted how "smart," "intelligent," and well-researched the novel appeared to be, a point that surely pleased the author, who insisted in interviews and on his website that his thriller is thoroughly researched and factual in all respects. In addition to this phenomenal success of the novel, it has been made into a movie which will be released on May 19th that is sure to attract a lot of attention, probably more than the novel did.

Several of the strategic management models that we have studied can be applied to the article in question. The one that particularly comes to mind is Barney’s VRIO model. Barney’s model takes into consideration a strategic resource or resources of a firm and how it adds value to an organization. In this case the prominent resource will be the “research” of ‘The Da vinci Code’ that Dan Brown did in order to publish his novel.

Value: The Da Vinci Code was a well researched novel that gave Brown huge financial success over his fellow writers. It's a book that manages to both entertain and educate simultaneously. It gives the reader a fascinating journey through the enigmatic world revealed through a seemingly endless collection of codes, puzzles, anagrams, cryptograms, and hidden messages; particularly the encoding methods developed by Leonardo Da Vinci, whose art and manuscripts are packed with mystifying symbolism and eccentric codes. The amount of exploration and investigation made by Brown to unveil all those concealed pictograms and cryptograms was huge, and valuable.

Rare: The Da Vinci Code is considered as a rare novel due to the fact that the novel tried to undermine the foundations of the Christian faith and of the Catholic Church in particular, and in a way that was never done before. It also portrayed this in the form of a novel rather than a “documentary” book, thus making the research and literary skills of Dan Brow quite rate.

Imitation: The Da Vinci Code will be impossible to imitate, and that is due to the copyright protection the novel has. This copyright will make it very costly for other competitors, in this case authors, to imitate the novel in all aspects. In case an imitation of the novel is made in a way or another, then Brown can easily file a suit against the offending party under the copyrights he has secured for his novel.

Organization: While Dan Brown cannot be classified as an “organization”, the novel’s publication is assumed to be well organised and without the efforts of the publishers, editors, booksellers, distributors, agents, and wholesalers, then the novel wouldn't even exist. Thus the organization of those parties aided the books popularity and Dan Brown’s literary abilities.

Strategically speaking, Dan Brown has achieved a sustained competitive advantage which solidify his reputation as one of the most skilled thriller writers out there. I believe that it is a book that challenges our intelligence and is a real page turner thanks to its many unexpected twists. It’s a masterpiece and is a "must read" novel that will never make you look at the Leonardo Da Vinci painting's the same way again.

Energy City Qatar has been designed as the region's first integrated energy business centre for the global oil and gas industry in the Middle East. It will enable the region, which accounts for over three-fourths of the worlds proven oil reserves, to capture critical above ground economic benefits and competencies.

Several of the strategic management models that we have studied can be applied to the article in question. The one that particularly comes to mind is Barney’s VRIO model. Barney’s model takes into consideration a strategic resource or resources of a firm and how it adds value to an organization. In this case the prominent resource will be the “trading floor” of the city which will generate high value-added business solutions in the energy industry and see them implemented to the benefit of energy stakeholders worldwide.

Value: Value is defined as a resource that can be used to both ward off competition and to be able to respond to market threats. The trading floor of Energy City Qatar will be a vibrant energy centre filled with customers, suppliers and related service providers freely interacting, cooperating and competing for the advancement of the energy sector. Participants in Energy City Qatar will be able to gain significant efficiencies due to the benefits of clustering, ease of interaction and communication, economies of scale and easier access to opportunities and decision makers at all levels.

Rare: The trading floor of Energy city Qatar can be considered as rare resource, since it is the world’s first trading floor of an energy business centre. And by being the first it will attract the most significant regional and international players in the hydrocarbon value chain. It will consolidate markets, research, technology, education, training and finance under one roof, promoting co-operation at both commercial and technical levels.

Imitation: The trading floor may be difficult to imitate, especially thanks to the endorsements it has received from giant corporations such as Chevron, Schlumberger Limited, Statoil ASA who are unlikely to endorse two energy centres at the same time. Theses companies are integrated oil and gas companies with considerable international activities and are considered major leading companies in this form of industry. Microsoft is also one of the endorsees and is by far the world's leading manufacturer of business computing software. Garnering all these endorsements together under the Energy City Qatar umbrella will just make it hard to mimic.

Organization: The article does not provide a large insight as to how the Energy City is structured, but looking at it’s endorsees who are highly successful in their respective fields, it can be assumed that Energy City Qatar is well organized to utilize the resources at it’s disposal, and that the assembly of those companies will allow each company to shine in its own specialization under the Energy City Qatar vision.

Thus I hope to have illustrated that Energy City Qatar will demonstrate a sustainable competitive advantage in the region, which will bring about positive economic, social and political benefits to those involved.