Enzo Woo's Blog

This blog post pertains to the three different types of enterprises and focuses on one particularly interesting one: Meals on Wheels.

Drivin' and cookin' for the good of others

There are three different kinds of enterprises:

1. Profit maximizing
2. Charity
3. Social enterprise

Interestingly, the last one happens to be a mixture of the first two, aiming to generate revenue to the best of its abilities. The variation here is that the former takes all earned ‘profits’ and reinvests it into the cause-based business. The latter will solely use that profit for payoff, catering to its shareholders and employees, and will primarily think ahead towards future profit-maximizing opportunities. Social enterprises also cannot be publicly traded and have a social conscience at the core of its operations.

Meals on Wheels is a great example of a social enterprise that prepares nutritious, catered meals for those who otherwise do not have easy access to them. Their clients include seniors, new immigrants, disadvantaged children, people with low-income, and the working homeless. While these meals sometimes come at a low cost, they are aiming to better the community in their own valuable way.

A grateful client of this worthy social enterprise

Meals on Wheels is a phenomenal social enterprise that is worth taking a note of, going about their business with a clear social conscience in mind.

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Amazon. The Seattle-based sales site: www.amazon.com, otherwise known as the second largest web-based entrepreneurship in the world, is awe-inspiring. With a value estimated at $74.4 billion, Amazon is an example of one man’s incredible journey to take what was traditionally only offered in a brick-and-mortar store, and create an unprecedented flow of new and established products – without ever being tied down to a finite structure.

Limitless options: possible only in this box

Amazon.com is by all accounts an entrepreneurial start-up, fulfilling all the possible criteria that we would establish for a small business.

1) Wealth creation? Plenty of it: Amazon has a value estimated at $74.4 billion

2) Speed of wealth creation? Definitely: Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, within 3 years, Amazon.com generated $15.7 million in revenue, and by 1999, over $1 billion (!).

3) Risk? Enormous: For Amazon, survived largely by a $40 000 investment by businessman Nick Hanauer, the potential for failure was limitless.

4) Innovation? Heck yes: Amazon fostered the idea that a customer can literally have just about anything s/he wants without ever having to leave home.

Amazon forever changed the way millions of people shop, prompting a bevy of new start-ups. It is truly an entrepreneurial start-up in every sense of the word.

Phew, a 'slow' day

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The Nintendo Wii revolutionizing the gaming world, innovatively changing the very way that people choose to game, is no breaking news event for anyone who has paid even the tiniest amount of attention to the technology sector.

The minds over at Nintendo seems to have taken this out-of-the-ordinary gaming experience one step further by releasing the game ‘Wii Party,’ a game that plays a lot like the titles Nintendo has released in the past. What’s different about this game from any of the myriad of others is that it resurrects familiar, traditional board games into action-oriented, video game life. Previously loved games from grandpa’s generation can meet with the grandchild’s electronic-crazed one, a phenomenon, yes, a phenomenon, that really does not happen enough.

Ohh yes, they can move it!

The Wii has been fabulously successful since its inception a few years back, and has not looked back since, breaking barriers with Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and now, Wii Party. With a Wii successor rumoured to be in its early workings, it is vital for the first Wii to go out strong with continued releases of innovative products. This keeps the Wii brand of gaming revolution and product differentiation at the forefront of consumers’ minds in a crowded marketplace with, most notably, competitors Microsoft and Sony vying for space.

OMFG I LOVE WII!

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It appeared that starting with the release of James Cameron’s Avatar, 3-D movies and events got a life of its own in the entertainment industry. Seemingly, every other movie that was released had a 3-D element, eager to cash in on the craze.

Yeah, I'm big

It was not long before home TV manufacturers quickly caught on and realized the potential in bringing 3-D into living rooms, and not just reserving it for the large public cinemas that people would venture out to every so often.

Thus, this brought on an unavoidable situation: how will TV companies make themselves stand apart against the competition? The point of parity in Toshiba’s 3D-TV example is easy to see: an ultra-clear TV viewing experience, along with the ability to view 3D in a slim, private residence-appropriate housing, is given to consumers.

Sleek...but a brick come 2030

However, Toshiba appears to have taken things one step further by responding to the market demand of about 30% of TV consumers who have stated that they would like to have a living-room 3-D experience without having to wear the requisite glasses. In response, Toshiba has recently introduced several smaller-sized 3-D TVs, with no glasses required, essentially giving it the point of difference it so desired. Whether this idea proves to be a success is unsure, but no one can say that Toshiba did not attempt to build its own, unique, point of difference very early in the game.

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With Google’s announcement that a project to develop cars that drove themselves was well in the works, in some sectors of the journalism community, all hell broke loose. Are we not sacrificing the key human element in a staple activity that more or less defined the latter half of twentieth century in America? Is this step perhaps the first of many that will inevitably lead us into robotic apocalypse?

Hooooo boy

While there is a large ethics question in taking the humanity out of such a human activity like driving, the bigger, and more relevant, question has to be the one of financial feasibility and business sense.

Self-driving, self-sufficient, self-destructive?!

Though the always-diversifying Google might claim that a self-commandeering car is well on its way, revolutionizing safety and fuel efficiency while promoting comfort at the same time, a truly self-sufficient driving machine has to be far off into the horizon. Will people as a whole adopt anytime soon, putting their life quite literally into the hands of a motorized brain? Will this trust even matter, with so many other drivers who are not commandeering automated cars on the road? Did Google bit off a little more than they can chew with this point of difference? All this remains to be seen.

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When talking about the sometimes-touchy subject of diversity in business, this interesting question came up in one COMM class: what about women in business?

According to the French economy minister Christine Lagarde, women operate quite differently from men, bringing a different model of business behaviour into the industry they may be working in. Specifically, the minister mentions that women bring, “less libido,” and do not let their egos get in the way of business as much as men may.

In this sense, women may have a slight edge in making some executive decisions, being able to do things in a more measured manner.

This begs the second, more important question: where are all the women leaders?

Although women make up 46.3% of the total labour force in the US, and half of all employees in the business-professional sector are females, the presence of women at the executive level is quite sparse. Despite the valuable differences, or advantages, some might argue, that they bring in the corporate world, only 14.8% of board seats in Fortune 500 companies are resided by women, while only 2.4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are of the female variety.

Positivity can result from diversification

Infamous for being an old-boy’s club at times, the top levels of business administration may need a gender overhaul. Who’s to say that the results won’t be positive?

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Skechers cartoon series slammed in petition

Zevo-3 conforms to FCC rules, creators argue

Check this out!

Always a very controversial issue, and now only amplified by the fact that children are becoming more tech-savvy, the issue of the over-commercialization of children has made its presence felt in the spectrum of business ethics.

Frankly speaking, children in general are a goldmine to corporations, filled to the brim with financial potential that could make them, along with their respective families and caretakers, loyal consumers for a significant period of time.

Over-advertising by corporations to children has been a flagrant issue for years, with a broad range of products unabashedly promoted, including, but not limited to: food, toys, electronics, clothes, and even cars for their parents.

In this recent case, the concern is linked to a brand of shoes, Sketchers to be precise. Although there are certainly many aspects to this marketing ploy by Sketchers that one could frown upon, it is important to keep in mind that there are regulations that every advertiser must follow in Canada.

Technically, Sketchers did not violate any of these guidelines, but ethically speaking, discreetly pushing its products onto children through a presumably entertaining show, Zevo-3, brings up some red flags that should definitely provide some valuable points for discussion.

The Sketchers TV Show

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