I have recently read a blog post by one of my classmate, Gurinder Mahal. One of his posts talks about how Amazon lowers the cost of e-books to increase profit and revenue. This is his blog.

He stated a really good point on how usually firms will increase their selling price in order to gain more profit, or they reduce their costs. E-books sold in amazon went from $14.99 to $9.99 as part of their strategy to increase profit. I also realized how e-books costs are much lower than normal books since it does not require any printing of paper. With such low costs, author, writers and Amazon can gain much more profit.

They decided to decrease their price due to the fact that consumers will become more attracted to their e-books since it can be treated as a “discount”. They would also require to buy a electronic device that can read e-books. On the amazon website, the first thing that pops up is how their product, Kindle, is the most “affordable — with one touch”. Since they gain more attraction for e-books, consumers are also forced to buy their product Kindle, as treated like a complementary good. In one way, Amazon is gaining more profit, and they are also increasing sales not just for e-books but also Kindle. Just like hitting two birds with one stone.

This blog is taken from Pandodaily and is posted by Michael Carney: http://pando.com/2014/10/27/how-motif-helped-two-11-year-olds-beat-ivy-league-mbas-in-an-investing-contest/

This article talks about how an online website called Motif helps two 11 year old create the highest performing motif. This motif was supposed to be a competition among almost MBA grads, however the winner were two 11 year old children. The article also talked about how their website makes investments a lot easier and through the data they are able to collect, they can analyze trends on how people invests on their website and collect useful information from it.

This blog post fits in with the day we learnt about entrepreneurs and how they always need start up money and a direction to go for. For example. at this time Ebola became a huge matter, maybe firms might want to start developing better drugs for this sickness. Just like kickstarter where other people are able to view your projects, motif allows others to view your “motif” and invest on it. There are a lot of categories that interests investors, they can then decide on how much they want to invest.

After reading the blog, I believe that investing got a lot easier and it does not limit to just businessmen or businesswomen with lots of knowledge on investing to be able to complete this task. We see children, people with other occupation with very little knowledge on investment able to earn same or even more than professional investors. I believe that this website creates a lot more opportunities for people who likes to invest and for entrepreneurs to learn.

Lastly, I would like to talk about how they can use this data that they collected to help investors in the future. This is just like marketing, collecting data from surveys and make a better judgement on a solution or what to do for the next step.

This article is from First Nations Drum: Announcing the Aquaculture in Canada Initiative (http://www.firstnationsdrum.com/2014/07/anouncing-the-aquaculture-in-canada-initiative/)

The Aboriginal Aquaculture Association (AAA) announces that they are now initiating a plan to preserve the aquaculture in Canada. This whole project’s main goal is to work together with First Nations to “develop renewed community economies based on sustainable, responsible aquaculture” and support First Nations in taking part in this project. In this article, the few main facts that is important about this type of business is the fact that over 50 aboriginal groups across Canada has developed aquaculture business venture and partnerships. By cultivating certain types of fish for example, fin fishes and shellfishes, it can generate more economic income for the country and for the aboriginal groups.

AAA will help First Nations achieve these goals by providing services like development and preparation of business plans, feasibility studies, preparation of project funding proposals and help with the provision of advisory and aftercare support. Aquaculture is able to generate around $2 billion for Canada, and by supporting this industry they can further generate more income and also reduce the unemployment rate.

This article is perfect for using the PEST model, in the political side of view, one line in the article said “support will be needed to address the ongoing challenges such as lack of capital and policy constraints.” Which does show some concerns for this industry, however the main focus will not be in the political side. In terms of economics, with this action plan, they are not only generating more income for households but also revenue for the government. They can also lower the unemployment rate and cultivate 56 different types of fish which might be useful as stocks in the future, which is very beneficial. As for Social sector of this model, it might be the equipment they are using or the certain culture of fishing that made it more difficult for them to have a sustainable income, but having this plan provides service that can provide aid to business in need. Technology plays a big part especially in modern days, they can provide machinery to catch more fishes, or just containers that keeps the cultivated fishes alive and healthy.