Context Is the Secret to Growth for Modern Businesses - UBER

Uber is a taxi-hailing company based in San Francisco, which launched its taxi- hailing service in June 2010.
Uber is the first Unicorn tech-company in \The Billion Dollar Start-up Club" ranking released by the Wall Street
Journal, i.e. the club of venture-backed private companies valued at least $ 1 billion by venture capital
companies. In December 2016, the value of the company is about $ 69 billion , with its service currently
available in 550 cities in 74 different countries. The nature of Uber as a disruptive innovation has been discussed
at length in existing literature, with controversial viewpoints.

The key to the future is understanding what we call the context – the
trends, impacts and relationships between a business and the wider world,”
says the paper. Analyzing the context can uncover “powerful insights for
innovation”, which can in turn sustain long-term performance.

Uber’s relationship with regulation has been really essential to its strategy
from Day One. And I think appreciating the effects of regulation and how its
impact Uber's performance in different markets, is really critical for
understanding strategy and global strategy broadly.

The influence of the three contextual factors on the impact that Uber has on the local taxi industry in the four
selected cities was qualitatively evaluated, due to the substantial lack of quantitative information in the analysed
secondary sources.

 .  Thelevel of market concentration is evaluated either \high" or \low" on the basis of the capacity of
taxi drivers to organize themselves in a greater taxi company (high concentration) rather than operating
as single entities (low concentration);

 .  Theregulatory framework is evaluated either \open" or \closed" on the basis of the willingness of
policy makers to enable the entry into the market of new entrants, even with alternative business
models, such as Uber;

 .  Theavailability of substitutive products or services is evaluated either \high" or \low" on the basis of
the number of different substitutive services within each city that consumers can use to satisfy their
public transportation needs.

Contextual experiences are personal, authentic and purposeful

Convenient and Cashless 

Instead of chasing down a taxi on a street, or calling and waiting for a car service, e-
hail app users can hail a car from any location and have it arrive in minutes. Uber
doesn't even need to ask you for an address. It knows where you are.

Because the passenger's credit card is linked to the e-hail account, no cash
changes hands. At the destination, the driver stops the car and the passenger gets
out and walks away. A receipt is sent via email, with links to options for rating and
tipping the driver.
Safety and Flexibility For Drivers 
Safety is an important advantage for drivers working with Uber and other e-hail
services. The riders using the service have registered their identities and their credit
card numbers on the app. They are not random strangers on the street.

Because the transaction is cashless, a driver doesn't risk unpaid fares or need to
carry cash for change.