After reading a business blog in BC Business I was astonished to find out that nearly half of all business in British Columbia is are now owned by a single owner. BC is leading Canada in becoming a country of entrepreneurs, in recent study from CIBC discovered that half a million of Canadians have started to begin their own business. It is suspected that BC has become the leader of this movement due to the lack of big companies in Western Canada that hire new employees. With few big companies hiring people who live in Vancouver, or who recently moved to the province, starts their own companies that evolves around their own skills.

This BYOB – Be Your Own Boss- movement is increasing; a great 15 per cent of the labour force in Canada is in the BYOB sector, and a 46% of businesses in BC are soloist. Most of these companies are rather small, consisting usually of only 4 employees.

Entrepreneurship consist a lot of work and multiple trial and errors, to have this many people starting their own micro business or beyond is impressive. Taking some examples from class lecturers such as UrtheCast, it is obvious that a lot of planning takes place before launching a company. Formulating a final plan is crucial for a company to access finance that is necessary to fund a company. This funding can come from various places such as the bank, family and friends, angel investors, government or even business competition.

http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/small-business/canada-be-your-own-boss-country

Social Entrepreneurship consists of a new type of leaders that are currently driving the world of business to become more socially oriented. A social entrepreneur is someone who sees a social problem, either locally or globally, and instead of seeing a problem they see an opportunity. These entrepreneurs use their business knowledge and apply to create, manage and organize a functional company with the goal of making a social change.

Social enterprise contains companies such as Toms, where they have promised that for every shoes bought they will give another to a child in need in Africa. This one for one campaign has helped the company gain a more ethical image and it also presents a point of difference as the company not only sells a product but also an idea that customers buy into. With this image it enables the company to charge a higher price for the quality of their products as well as social responsibility. However different companies may choose to give back to the their community in different ways instead of just giving, for example Zeritu ‘s company, provides fresh and organic milk for her community where pop is the normal consumption. Here Zeritu is giving back to her community by providing a healthier choice as well as providing a larger revenue for local farmers. These organization are still a functional, independent and profit making company but as Professor Dees explained social entrepreneur are change agents, they attack the root of the problems rather than fixing the symptoms.

http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/charity-and-philanthropy/case-more-social-entrepreneurship?page=2&#featurelist

http://www.caseatduke.org/documents/dees_sedef.pdf

Now a days our community has grown into a global village, thanks to technology we can see a live broadcast of an eclipse happening in Australia on our cellphones all the way back in Vancouver. Everything is being shared online, what are your likes, what are happening, events, the latest video, our resumes and much more. This provides an interesting business opportunity, it answers many companies need to understand their market better. Lets take Facebook for example, right when you start your account it asks you to fill out information about yourselves, what is your favorite band, favorite books, activities, personal interest, age, gender, relationship status, family information and it goes on and on.

Here is this website that has 800 million active users all around the world having their biography, the ability to know where they are, and all their interest given to them by the users themselves. This presents an immense opportunity for companies to better target their current and potential consumers and to better reach them with news of their companies.

As an experiment I changed my interest on Facebook and almost instantly I noticed the change in the adds that would come up, these where more direct on my new interest, such as specific activities such as dance, or I would be exposed to new sales for a concert ticket of a band that I had liked their page and so forth.  Another way for companies to utilize tools such as Facebook is to create their own “like Page”, this enables them to see how many people they reached, what is the demographics of the people who are interested in their products among many things, all these tools enable the company to understand what their target market likes and what they should work on or eliminate.

The general idea that comes when one mentions business and sustainability is far from harmony, but is that really true? Being sustainable has cost and may threaten the business mindset of maximizing profit however now a day’s consumer trend has had a drastic shift towards more environmental friendly products, they buy into the idea of companies that do take on a social responsibility. This behaviour changes the idea of business versus environment and rather makes them work closer and closer together. To create a functioning business companies need to sell services or goods, to accomplish this fulfilling consumers wants and needs is an essential therefore as the consumer trend changes it is necessary for companies to change with them and supply environmentally friendly products as consumers demand more.

Another business opportunity presented in sustainability is green energy, as the world aims for more “green energy’ there will be an immense demand for solar panels, wind turbines and hydro electricity. As outlined by Richard Blackwell in his article “Renewable power to soar by 2035: IEA” there will be an immense increase and demand for green energy, hydroelectricity will need to be developed in undeveloped countries such as India and Brazil, Europe will be using more wind turbines and companies will need to use machinery that are more efficient as too exploit the full potential of this industry. IEA says that if managed correctly “huge gains for energy security, economic growth and the environment”. The world is changing and business has to change with it, as demand for more sustainable energy grows business can exploit a great opportunity and supply for this need.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/renewable-power-to-soar-by-2035-iea/article5219302/

Understanding the supply chain is an essence to understanding how to manage products and how to manage ones store, thanks to Sauder Professor, Mahesh Nagarajan I have a better understanding of the supply chain, mainly the demand forecasting and acting upon it.

Going into clothing stores now I have to wonder about the supply chain management of the clothing and the difficulty it is for people to predict the new fashion and quickly being able to produce it to match up with consumers’ preferences. Companies such as Zara, need to try to get the right product at the rights place for the right time and must predict the proper amount that will be sold for it to be efficient. This is no doubt an immense task that is difficult to manage, this is also where marketing has the opportunity to come in and play an essential role. Companies need to be able to market their product properly so that consumers will buy the amount of products that the company predicted so that they do not lose any money in over stocking.

Going back to Zara, they have to forecast the demand of clothing, not only how many but in which color, size, and style. All these aspects are mandatory to produce an accurate prediction; meaning extensive research has to be done on consumers’ behaviour before the company acts. Following the forecast of demand, the company the clothing company has to design the clothes and put it into production rather quickly before the trend is out. This form of mass customization is difficult but is necessary to be well executed for companies to succeed.

Every so often business is thought of mostly as big companies, CEO’s, marketing, finance and accountants, but as we look around business is everywhere from a bakery shops to charities. Our world works on exchanging one product for another and that exchange is the essence of business, where functional organizations are formed to enable an exchange of money for a product.

As a reply to Michelle Lee’s “ Work+ Passion = Possibility?” blog I agree with her that we are able to incorporate our passions in our business. This has become even more apparent when former Sauder student, Tom Dobrzanski, came to our class to discuss how he founded his own music productions company on passion and built it using the skills he had acquired form his business school. Having grown from his parent’s basement to producing well known Vancouver based bands such as Said the Whale, Hey Ocean! and We are the City Tom has come a long way in his business as well as his own band, The Zolas.

As a fan of indie music myself and having seen Said the Whale, Hey Ocean! and We are the City all multiple times in concert it has been interesting seeing how Tom worked behind the scenes with his business skills to enable growth of these bands and to nourish his own passion for music.

In response to : https://blogs.ubc.ca/michellelee3/2012/11/15/work-and-passion-possibility/