Angela Qin's Blog

Home for the Games is an organization created for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics.It can be classified as a social enterprise as it’s main goal is to provide housing for visitors during the Olympic games. The charitable part of it? “Hosts offered affordable accommodation,and shared half the revenue with charities fighting homelessness in the host region.” By the end of the games they were able to raise “$50,000 for Covenant House Vancouver and the Streetohome Foundation.”

There are usually three types of company

1) Profit-maximizing

2) Charity

3) Social Enterprise

The last one is a combination of the first two.

The difference between social enterprise and profit-maximizing firms is that the former usually takes the profit and reinvests it into the business. They cannot be publicly traded and have a social conscience at the core of its operations.

This startup benefits many different individuals.

Visitors: Finding an affordable place to stay during the olympics when housing is in extremely high demand

Hosts : Share the experience with a guest. Earn a tax donation receipt for the 50% donated to charity

Owner: A sense of accomplishment that he started a business that has social values. (Social enterprise)

Society: Receives a donation from this organization.

Following the success of the 2010 games, this organization is moving forward to the 2012 games to be held in London.

I first read this article a few weeks ago and I thought I was just being overly sensitive about this topic.

The original article has actually been taken off macleans, but I found a copy of the article here

But recently there’s been alot of controversy revolving this article and I realized I’m not alone in feeling hurt and unjust with the obvious racism underlying this article.

There were ways that the article twisted the words to extract emotions from the reader.

In the first paragraph when talking about these girl, one was described as “a second-year student who looks like a girl from an Aritzia billboard”. This immediately makes the readers think of an influential, gorgeous, charming girl. At least when I read it, her words became more credible and seemed like what the leader of the pack would do. Which is to “go to Queen’s, Western and McGill.” This is a halo effect where their one quality overshadows everything else.

This comment is mostly subjective and has no scientific research to back it up. “but is also looking for a good time—which rules out U of T, a school with an academic reputation that can be a bit of a killjoy.” However, many readers would now remember that fact when in fact it’s just based on opinion.

There’s other comments in the article that doesn’t make sense. “Many white students simply believe that competing with Asians requires a sacrifice of time and freedom they’re not willing to make.” So when they say that Asians are smarter, that’s not true. It’s just that a majority of Asians place education at a high priority so they are willing to take the time to do well in school.  It’s not necessarily a race thing but more of a culture upbringing.

Their statistics about local residents are also skewed. Living in Richmond, I am in contact with alot of Asians. Some highschools in Richmond have even 90% population of Chinese. So coming to UBC, the students are already really diverse from some of the high schools in local areas.

UBC Professor speaks out:

http://www.straight.com/article-361680/vancouver/henry-yu-macleans-offers-nonapology-writing-nonstory-called-too-asian

Lululemon is a great example of an entrepreneur.

They introduced new products in a new market.

Judging by the active lifestyle of Vancouver, Lululemon set out to make a brand of clothing that’s fashionable while functional.

1) Wealth

Lululemon is not just a small owner business because it has now grown into a million dollar industry

2) Speed

Lululemon has climbed quickly within the recent five years

3)  Risk

By pricing their items at a premium price, Lululemon faced a risk of demand

4) Innovation

The idea was to combine fashion with workout and it’s perfect for the vancouver envrionment

So it’s three am, and my team has been working on a case for 12 hours. The trudge continues, but I’m taking a break to blog about our experiences.

I’m currently at the CMA BC Case Competition designed for 1st and 2nd year commerce students. And I realized how the topics I’ve learned in COMM101 all tie in together.

Some of the topics we touched on are

-Break Even analysis

-Overhead cost

-Fixed/Variable cost

-SWOT analysis

This case shows really how one discipline of business is not separated from all else.  When we look at human resource issues, we also need to look at the numbers which relates to accounting. Then when we look at profit and revenue we also need to look at management and how the company operates.

Update: Saturday night  and LOW on energy.

This experience has been amazing. Although we didn’t place (very close, judges told us!)  we learned so much and gained an interest in case competitions. There was a case review at the end of the day when the judges talked about general improvements.

One suggestion is very practical and I will be using it in future presentations. That is, to have Q&A slides prepared. Usually, presentations are limited by time and it’s hard to put down and explain all calculations. The Q&A slides kind of acts like appendixes so when the presentation is over and the judges want to know how we got to the numbers, we have something concrete we can pull up.