The council of Ontario Universities recently stated that 46% of students in post-secondary education wish to start their own business following graduation. This percentage spans across a variety of people in different faculties all of which have the idea of entrepreneurship idolized in their minds. But how many of those people will actually implement their ideas and start their own businesses?

Cole Nakatani, co-founder of IdeaHack, brought up an interesting question in a recent presentation that helps to answer this; “What defines an entrepreneur?” If the 46% of students knew that 75% of start-ups fail in their first year would the still believe in their ideas? If the person was truly an entrepreneur, they would. Entrepreneurship is all about believing in your project and implementing a plan in order to make that happen. Cole Nakatani is just one of the vast amounts of people who were able to use what they learnt at a post-secondary level and apply it to everyday situations.

Seeing Sauder alumni achieve the success in their lives shows just how attainable these ideals can be. It not only shows that the concepts and ideas discussed in school have a direct connection to the world outside of post-secondary but also that with the right frame of mind and devotion fueling an entrepreneurial goal is possible.

Twitter has been gaining more public interest in the last few months; the topic fresh off of everyone’s lips. In “Twitter Troubles” a fellow comm101 student analyzed the issues Twitter faced being compared to other social platforms. The main point being that Twitter doesn’t lend itself as easily to advertisers.

The blog agreed that Twitter has to focus on the fact that it is fully integrated with celebrities, a valuable point of difference it has. The blog also stated that Twitter needs to develop a way to become more user-friendly as the process of building up a following and finding meaningful information among the magnitude of tweets is a weakness the platform has. Another critique was that Twitter is only used extensively during certain times, such as sporting games, or natural disasters, rather than a daily routine.

The blog brings up a valuable point in the importance of celebrities in the Twitter world, I don’t however, agree that it should change the other features so that a following is significantly more easy to build up. Having a following on Twitter and taking the time and effort to build it is one of the main reasons why it’s so successful. The fact that ordinarily most people have a smaller network and following makes the larger accounts more credible. Advertisers can then aim directly at these people or businesses. It is a valuable point of difference that Twitter has and trying to shift it towards a point of parity would be detrimental to Twitter.

Siemens, a global electronic and engineering group, recently reported a significant change in organizational structure. Due to pressures to increase profits and make the company more competitive and innovative the company hope to simplify its structure.

They plan to continue to readjust the structure of their business and shift the responsibilities of approximately fourteen regional clusters of employees.

This means that operations, human resources and information technology are part of the new responsibilities that the local management has. Siemens employees more than 370,000 people and this change will affect the 200 countries where it operates. The shift is from a centralized organizational structure towards a more decentralized structure. Upon successful elimination of regional employees is a structure where information can flow easier and more efficiently among the different layers of the business.

Christoph Niesel, the fund manager of Siemens largest shareholder, agreed that the company has to move towards a “more focused faster and more reliable structure.” Rivals in the industry such as General Motors have already made significant changes to their corporate strategy, Siemens hopes to not fall behind and moving towards the decentralized system will do just that.

Sources:

http://online.wsj.com/ad/article/enterprisetech-management

What is the most important aspect about being involved in the business industry? – People. Most reputable businessmen and women in the field would agree that working with other people is pivotal in the world of business. This explains why organizational behaviour plays such a dominant role in evaluating the effectiveness of a business. When people work in an environment that they feel included and respected in, they are motivated to express themselves and work to the best of their abilities.

Bret L. Simmons is a credible business blogger and his blog on interdependence shows how people can not only work individually, but how this can contribute to the team working coherently as a whole. The people involved need to accept full responsibility for their actions and be held accountable, but they also need an extensive support network to supplement this.

In contrast to interdependence is dependency where one party in the relationship thinks that they don’t have to listen to anyone else and their opinion is the only one that matters. This type of relationship is unhealthy and is sustained by both the parties involved. It therefore takes both parties to change the relationship to become an interdependent one. This is where people feel supported enough to take the initiative themselves and ultimately has a positive effect on the business.