Shamshubaridah Ramlee

Energy policy shifts towards sustainable energy future for Malaysia

As a developing country, Malaysia’s prosperity and welfare depends heavily on having access to reliable and secure supplies of energy. As a result, the country’s future energy requirements have become a policy priority in recent years. Energy is essential for human life, and a secure and accessible supply of energy becomes important for the modern societies. Fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are currently the world’s primary energy sources and continue to provide energy source to the world. These energy sources have depleted in reserves in recent years and they can also cause irreparably damage to the environment such as global warming and climate change. These environmental concerns can be addressed, to some extent, through more sustainable solutions such as the use of renewable energy resources. In Malaysia, the economic and environmental impacts of fossil fuels use have become hard to ignore. The government has introduced and implemented policy measures to address concerns surrounding the use of fossil fuels and to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy use. In this paper, we review the historical evolution of Malaysian energy policies and initiatives designed to secure diverse energy sources and avoid over-reliance on fossil fuels. In recent years, Malaysia has been catching up with global call to shift to renewable energy use and is now putting a focus on renewable energy in its future energy mix. The paper also discusses challenges and concerns over the future of sustainable energy of the country.

Start-up, growth and internationalisation of entrepreneurial ventures by the use of service families

This article uses a single case study methodology that draws from the process-based life cycle models of (a) product development (b) product family development and (c) new venture development. It analyses e-Pay Asias efforts to pioneer an electronic prepaid airtime reload delivery system and subsequently develop it into a comprehensive payment service family. This research resulted in the identification of close linkages between new services development and service family extension, especially as they regard internationalisation and new venture development. Both new service development/extension and internationalisation contributed to the development and rapid growth of the case company, thereby confirming the Uppsala model of internationalisation.

Enhancing small medium enterprises opportunity through online portal system

This paper discuss on developing a system called Entreportfolio as an effort to help entrepreneurs create industry networks quickly and easily via online system. The target users are mainly entrepreneurs including startup, SME, agencies and researcher. By collecting entrepreneurs profile in a system and connects entrepreneurial agencies, SMEs and researcher under one stop center, this system is linked to every users. From the research, Entreportfolio highlight the important aspects require by the entrepreneurs to build networking and assess the progress of the business as a resource for entrepreneurs. Users were categorized dependent on business categories such as sport, food, beauty and health, services, automotive and others. The profile store information of their business progress hence enables collaborative networking between each user. Users can update their business profile and display activities to acknowledge their business to other user. Apart from that, the system provides Online Business Simulation (OBS) serve as a business training to sharpen the skills of the users. OBS is an advance simulation game to help startups familiar with the business situation particularly in operation, marketing and finance. In order to help the startup, entreportfolio linked to business incubator provided by entrepreneurial centers, at the same time encourage other entrepreneurs to voluntarily contribute any types of entrepreneurial facilities to the startups. Entreportfolio pilot study aims to create users interdependencies in entrepreneurship.

e-Pay Malaysia: the next 10 years

Subject area Topics covered by the case include: strategic management processes; and strategies, especially of a platform business. Study level/applicability The case is suitable for use in final-year undergraduate business/management degree programs and MBA or MSc in Management programs. The case can be utilized in courses such as strategic management and management of innovation. For MBA and MSc in management programs, the case can also be utilized in organization theory and design and organizational management, or any courses that cover topics of strategic management and management of innovation. Case overview By December 2010, the e-Pay terminal system was one of the most successful payment platforms in Malaysia. This business, which was launched in 1999, was an electronic prepaid mobile phone reload value distribution system known as e-Pay; it contributed about 80 per cent of the companys annual revenue. Over the past 10 years, e-Pays terminal system had evolved into a comprehensive payment platform serving many providers on one side and end customers on the other side. However, since the past two years, the company has been facing pressures from their biggest customers on the provider side of its platform, the three giant telecommunication companies (telcos), which had moved to directly deliver reload values to their prepaid subscribers, bypassing e-Pay as the payment intermediary. On the customer side, the number of prepaid subscribers switching to postpaid services was increasing, and this threatened e-Pays main source of revenue in the prepaid market. In response to this, the company added new service providers to its platform and launched multi-functional cashier machines with reload credits facility. By December 2010, as the market sunk into subscription saturation, the two founders of the company became deeply concerned about the companys future. They wondered if the problems would hinder their company from becoming a dominant payment player in Asia. This case presents an opportunity to discuss strategic posturing of a payment platform company operating in a mobile phone market which was mainly controlled by the telecommunication companies. Expected learning outcomes Understanding of strategic management process and related analysis enable case analysts to apply these concepts in many business situations involving strategy formulation and implementation. Supplementary materials Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email: support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.