Unparalleled Enthusiasm

As a young man I have always been taught to analyze things objectively and never to take anything for a “real, true fact.” I attribute this to watching the Matrix a bit too much, and TOK-but that’s a different story.

Comm101, also known as “Business Fundamentals,” is one of my favorite courses at the moment, right up there with OB. But what exactly IS Comm101? What have I learned so far in such a class? I guess it’s not just the clicker questions, not just the awesome fact that we get to use TWITTER in class, but the fact that we’re tackling both Marketing and Finance at the same time. Although we’re only covering the bare bones of each field, I’ve been able to see both the benefits and downsets that relate to marketing and finance, and I’ve seen how the two fields work together to cover each other’s weaknesses. While Marketing requires finance to keep track of the numbers, Finance needs (or should I say, should need) marketing to keep in mind the target population; what do they want, how do they want it, and how can we get them to know about our product?

When I entered the Sauder School of Business, I had a general idea that Business = Making Money. Now I feel that theres a lot more to it than this general goal; we must employ both objective, quantitative data with subjective, qualitative assumptions in order to succeed…

Comm101. Me like.

I must admit, I am not a finance person. But a recent class in comm101 really grabbed my attention by combining two “fields” that normally aren’t presented together, although they share similar traits: Gambling and Finance/Accounting.

I generally do not like numbers, and I dislike taking risks. I’m highly against gambling, but the concept is really interesting. In the comm101 class, I learned concepts of Finance that deal with the same ultimate goal as gamling: Earning as much money as possible while still being relatively stable.

Here’s an interesting concept in gambling. This page basically outlines all the possible ways of earning money consistently in a certain gambling game on a website known as KOL. It’s quite cool, actually. If you have a large amout of money to start with, you can consistently bet and make lots of money in a short amount of time, but with a 0.01% chance to lose it all. That’s pretty good! But think-If you play a few hundred times, that 0.01% will eventually bite you in the back…

Now, Finance seems similar to gambling to me because there is always, ALWAYS some sort of risk associated. Even though Coca Cola may be a steady company, a change in the ceteres paribus variable (haha, midterms on Friday) will eventually, mind the languange, screw the company over. What if a scientific report showed a direct correlation between drinking COca Cola and terminal cancer? Sales go BOOM, stocks go BOOM, all theories fall to shreds.

Oh how interesting.

I think I may change my opinion on Finance. I still dislike the numbers but, just as with physics, I love the concept. Oh, so, so interesting.

Here is a short excerpt from an msn conversation I had with a friend very recently:

Many of us know the feeling of being one-upped on an auction. We’re familiar with the frustration and anger associated with losing something we thought was for sure going to be ours. But when it comes to large-scale bids, sometimes bumping up a bid is more controversial than it seems

So here’s the deal. If you were trying to sell something and someone bumped their bid up by about a million dollars to match the highest undisclosed bid, would you be suspicious at all? Apparently BC Rail wouldn’t. Or, should I saw, wasn’t.

A recent article described how BC Rail accepted an offer fr one of it’s assets that was just bumped up by over a million dollars to match the highest undisclosed bid. Even though this action implies that the bidder may have had access to confidential information, BC rail took this in stride. A mistake that has landed BC Rail in a bunch of trouble.

Bidding, especially when bids are undisclosed, is a business deal that is closely tied to ethical issues. For example, if a competitor bidder had access to the list of bids, they could easily top the highest bid by a minuscule amount and still win the bid. For this reason, the bidder and seller are bound to a certain degree of secrecy.  The reason why BC Rail is in a spot of trouble right now is because they are held suspect of breaking this secrecy by failing to suspect the suspicious bid as being tipped off. Now BC Rail has to deal with the allegations that they may possibly be accepting bribes or leaking confidential information-allegations that could have been avoided had BC Rail been more alert.

Remember, kids: If it seems like a bad thing, don’t ignore it! I think BC Rail is going to remember this lesson for some time.

You can find the article here

As you may probably tell from my previous two posts, I seemed to be quite a poor professional. I seemed clumsy, lazy, perhaps inferior to the other dedicated bloggers on this respectable site, at least in terms of professionalism. Any employer who would skim this blog to get a grasp of my personality would be abhorred by the sheer lack of efficiency and seriousness presented on this site.

And that, my friends, is exactly how I feel about Detroit’s Big Three automakers. They might want to step it up a notch.

As taken from the article “Detroit Still Stuck in the 1950’s,” the Detroit auto industry seems to be lagging behind competitor brand names such as Toyota or Honda in the sense that innovation is lacking in their newer models. Whereas Toyota and Honda are producing cars that are more efficient in terms of gas usage, General Motors seems to be producing cars that are either terrible in terms of gas efficiency or are too unaffordable  to produce at a large scale.

Now as a reader of said article, I am fairly disappointed that General Motors seems to be unable to adapt to the changing needs of the economy; people want affordable cars that have less impact on their wallet and the environment. Note that I am on neither “side” of the debate, I am neither for or against General Motors. But what General Motors is doing is a great example of what I see as the economic Darwinian theory: if you can’t adapt to the changing economy, sooner or later you’re either going to bump into problems or become extinct (which they were actually close to, at one point). What intrigues me is WHY General Motors is not apt to quickly adapt to the changing needs of consumers: could it be that they feel that they have found “their own niche” in the market? Maybe people WANT to buy big, inefficient cars?

Either way, I’d like to see how GM adapts to this one. Is it time to say goodbye to the old, bulky cars for good? Somehow, I’m not so sure that’s going to happen soon, and smoothly…

This is hereby my very first “official” blog post.

Well, my first blog post after receiving “blogging instructions” at my Comm101 class today, anyways.

“Guys, we need you to post at least 10 times before the end of this course”

“Ok”

“But for extra motivation, we want you to post at least 5 posts by midterm”

“Well, I seem to be well on my way-”

“And for those of you who tend to be long-winded, we don’t want your blogs to be over 200 words.”

“…………”

So apparently I need to seriously cut down on the length of my blogs. My last one was 636 words. This one, so far, is already past the halfway point at 113 words.

Apparently I am very, very long-winded. In fact, disregard this post. It doesn’t seem very professional, but I guess the title gave it away. I should be more careful of what I type on teh interwebs because this post just might get pulled up during class for all to see my brilliant literary skills of “srs bsns.”

If this post was, by chance, pulled up in class: Hi.

But for now, I assure you that the next post will be worthy of consideration. My first “real” post. One that doesn’t suck. One that isn’t just another draft. Yes. You can do this, Chris. You can do this.

Chris