The Wounded Warrior Project
The Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) was established in 2003 in Roanoke following the incursion into Afghanistan. This was after the founders had come to the realization that the men and women from the battlefields had severe wounds and injuries. The founders had also forecasted that the injured and wounded would hardly get from the hospitals with the primarily comfort items such as a sweatshirt and a medicine kit. The Wounded Warrior Project, led by John Melia (the project’s first director), kicked off the idea of creating a backpack in which these comfort items were put. WWP’s mission is honoring and empowering wounded warriors (WWP, n.d.). This is geared toward fostering the most successful and well-adjusted regeneration of wounded warriors. The project purposes at raising awareness and enlisting help from the general public to meet the needs of the injured service members. Jacksonville, Florida, serves as the Sacrifice Center. However, there are other program offices in various parts in the U.S. Its programs include combat stress recovery, family support and physical health and wellness programs. These programs are geared toward nurturing the body, the mind as well as engage and empower the warriors economically. The funding for this project is basically from donations and charity from private citizens, foundations and corporations (Melvin, n.d.).
Undeniably, the WWP encounters various challenges such as the unique problems among the wounded warriors and funding problem. However, the project has in the recent past adopted some creative ideas in dealing with the same. These include entering into partnerships with corporates such as Raytheon as well as going digital- through the various social networking sites- to call on supporters to make their contribution. Having been a technologically advanced company, Raytheon project has succeed through the use of the Twitter (Raytheon Company, 2012).
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motors Company is an automobile company that was incorporated in 1919 and is involved in the manufacture, development, and distribution and servicing of vehicles and other automobile accessories across the globe. It is a United States-based automobile company with its headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan (Ford Motors Company, 2013). The company also operates in Brazil, Mexico and Canada. Ford operates through the automotive and the financial services sectors. While the automotive sector offers vehicle under the Lincoln and Ford brand names, the financial services sector carries out various automotive financing products to and via dealers in the same products. The automotive sector is known for marketing trucks, cars, accessories and automobile parts in North America (through retail dealers), Europe, South America, Russia, Asia Pacific Region and Turkey (through distributors and dealers). On the other hand, the financial services sector offers such automotive service activities as retail installment sale contract, leasing and insurance services. One team, one plan, one goal, one ford is the company’s mission and vision (Dornbach-Bender, Slade & Thorpe, 2009).
Ford has managed to become the world’s number one automobile company through its strategies of a centralized strategic leadership and decentralized policy implementation. While centralized leadership has ensured the responsibility of making decision being bestowed on the top management, decentralized policy implementation has enabled flexibility and rapid implementation of the decisions (Dornbach-Bender, Slade & Thorpe, 2009). Ford has also adopted low cost strategies which have ensured a quantifiable reduction of costs. Another reason as to why Ford has been successful is its aspect of maintaining consistency in its products unlike General Motors, which is reported to be faced with the challenge of industry revolution through smart innovations (Dornbach-Bender, Slade & Thorpe, 2009).
However, some of the challenges that Ford is facing include stiff competition from other global automakers, global excess capacity and little penetration in some markets like Canada (Ford Motors Company, 2013). Nonetheless, the company is doing all it can to differentiate itself from its competitors by minimizing of cash burns and the redevelopment of a coherent corporate strategy.