Monthly Archives: November 2012

AfriGadget is a blog focused on stories of African ingenuity. Through the site, I have discovered innovations that African people have come up with to overcome challenges in their life and country. One product that especially interested me was the Saphonian Blade-less wind turbine, an invention from Tunisia by Saphon Energy, that has proved to be better than others invented by developed countries. Using the Saphonian zero-blade system, the company is working towards meeting Africa’s electricity needs in a clean and affordable way.

Overall, AfriGadget a great site for finding out about what’s happening in the African social entrepreneurial world. It’s inspiring to read about how Africans from all over the continent, young or old, have used their creativity to develop products or ways to benefit themselves and their communities. We don’t normally find such news or inspiration in the business section of a paper or site. Reading this blog might just spark an innovative idea in your mind and motivate you to start an enterprise that contributes a social good like Saphon Energy.

Daniel Ek is a serial entrepreneur from Sweden.  He taught himself how to code, which allowed him to start his own web development company and rake in thousands of dollars at 14. After quitting college, he started Advertigo, an online marketing company, which was acquired by Swedish company TradeDoubler. In 2006, he co-founded the music site Spotify. Ek, now 29 and CEO, is on track to raise $220 million from prominent investors, raising Spotify’s value to $4 billion. What interests me most about Ek is not his young age or the money he has earned, but that he has created a strong rival for iTunes.  Spotify is a legal music service that allows users to search and stream music on demand to their mobile devices for $5 or $10 a month. Every time a track is played on the site, artists and their labels are paid a royalty. However, there’s no need to have an Apple device or to download and pay per song/album as iTunes requires. Today, Spotify is highly popular in Europe and is growing in the U.S. It now has over 3 million subscribers worldwide.  Essentially, Ek has found success by reshaping the online music service industry to make it easier for people to listen to music and pay for it, rather than to steal it.

Web Resources:

http://www.inc.com/30under30/burt-helm/daniel-ek-founder-of-spotify.html

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/spotify-is-raising-millions-in-a-deal-that-would-value-it-at-4-billion/

UrtheCast will soon provide people with the ability to view high-definition videos of the world. I agree with Fergus Arnold’s blog post that states “The sense of a ‘global community'” will be redefined. There are definite benefits from capturing earth on video, like helping the UN monitor disasters, but like Fergus, I question how the company will keep sensitive information away from the wrong hands. Once sold to the governments that UrtheCast is allowed to sell to, it cannot stop those governments from using the information in ways that would infringe upon the privacy of citizens.

People are highly concerned about internet privacy as more of their communication and activity occurs online. A study in a 2007 article from the Technological Association of Georgia found that “94.5% of Americans have online privacy concerns.” With technological changes, such as expansion of social networking, personal data is much more easily accessible than before.

Society’s increasing privacy concerns are a threat to UrtheCast’s business. Both Facebook and Google are popular examples of how companies can face continual criticism over their privacy policies. UrtheCast’s success and how it will deal with privacy challenges still remains to be seen. It’s definitely a company to keep an eye on.

Out of the two company presentations, I was most interested in Energy Aware because it was born from a class project. Since the company works with electric utilities to sell their benchmark product, the PowerTab , I can see Energy Aware expanding geographically quite successfully.

However, CEO Janice Cheam stated that Canada comes last on her list. As the company started out in Vancouver, I wondered why the product couldn’t be in BC homes yet.

The Problem:

In order for the PowerTab to work, it needs to communicate with wireless smart meters but a number of BC municipalities, Vancouver included, have passed motions opposing installation of the new meters (see article). The article also states various reasons why people are against the meter, such as health risks and privacy issues.  Despite the public’s concerns, BC Hydro still continues to install them, and maintains that smart meters are “safe” and “green”. While it’s important for the province’s energy infrastructure to be upgraded, BC Hydro needs to go about doing that with transparency and accountability.

What if BC city councils do successfully get BC Hydro to drop smart meters? Then the PowerTab may not be a viable product to BC energy users anymore.

Energy Aware can play an important role in reducing our electricity usage to allow for future consumption. Whether the PowerTab will be able to make its way into BC homes will depend on BC Hydro.

After browsing Vancity’s website, I no longer thought of it as “just another bank”. Having a “triple bottom line” approach to banking means that Vancity uses its $16.1 billion in assets to create economic, social and environmental well-being.  Lending to and investing in local social enterprises and ventures, co-operatives, not-for-profit, etc. is how Vancity strives to “Make Good Money“. It’s banking that balances positive social change alongside financial gain.  I thought, “Wow!  Sustainability and CSR is in every aspect of how Vancity does business. That makes me want to bank there.” 

I researched some more and found a recent report from the Global Alliance For Banking on Values, for which Vancity is a member of. The report shows that during the global economic recession, value-based banks are outperforming traditional banks on average, suggesting that the values-based model could be the answer to avoiding future recessions. Overall, the study demonstrates that “doing good is beneficial for banks not just in a theoretical and ethical sense, but also financially.”

Values-based banking is only just beginning to revolutionize the global financial system. Business schools can participate in fostering this revolution by drawing it to the attention of students. When discussing sustainability and CSR, we don’t often think about it in banks so this is a topic that can be brought up in class.