After browsing the net, one company I found with outstanding company culture is Google! I was surprised to find out after watching a TV program that they offer their employees an amazing spread of benefits. These include free meals, laundry facilities, gym access, haircuts, generous health benefits, slides instead of stairs, games rooms, and nap rooms. The list goes on and on. 

All the fancy things aside, one perk of being a Google employee that really stood out to me was their “20% Time Program”. Employees are allowed to spend 20% of their time on whatever creative projects for the company that their hearts desire. I found this to be a really interesting benefit because I believe it serves 3 purposes.

The first purposed it serves is to intrinsically motivate the workers. They feel like they’re working at something they have control over and are given a sense of responsibility. Another purpose is provide a productive break for employees. Instead of giving them time to just fool around, Google gets it’s employees to do something useful to the company, and at the same time serve the  purposed to entertain them.

One of the greatest experiences I’ve had in my life was my time at Shad Valley, a summer science and entrepreneurship camp for high school students at sponsored by Research in Motion.

Throughout the duration of the camp,the students are exposed to lectures from real professors and industry professionals, potential-pushing group challenges, and exposure to university residence life.

The main focus of the camp is the entrepreneurship aspect of it. After the first few days of orientation, the students are split up into groups and presented a theme. Each group needs to come up with an product that corresponds to the theme. By the end of the camp, each time will have completed a business plan and created a prototype, which they present in front of a team of industry judges. The winning product from each university goes on to play in the Shad Cup. I ended up being on the winning team from Dalhousie University last year. Shad provided me with the exposure to business plan writing and basic business skills that helped give me a head start in the business world. I would definitely recommend this program to anyone!

In response to Jasmine Chan’s blog about the merging of Skype and Facebook, I agree that the move is a bad business decision. I use Facebook weekly, and I still didn’t even notice the new feature until her blog pointed it out. The integration of different mediums of social media may appear like a good idea on paper, but it’s forgetting something important.People use websites for what they’re known for, just like people go to McDonald’s for hamburgers, and go to IKEA for furniture.
There are advantages to having the two technologies separated. Maybe someone wants to use Skype the same time they use Facebook, or maybe someone likes having the two systems separated.

Most people know Facebook for it’s networking and Skype for its video-calling. I feel like this business move was just an attempt for Facebook to keep up with Google+, a competing networking site that has video-chat abilities. Facebook is trying to be the one stop for all your social networking needs, but maybe “one stop” isn’t what everyone wants.  My opinion aside; whether or not this was a smart business decision, only time will tell.

After browsing a few articles on BPM, I came across one that really caught my attention. Failures in Performance Management by Dalmeny Close gave me a better understanding of how so many businesses can suffer at the hands of their managers. One well-known cause of poor BPM we learned from class is the usage of improper metrics. This means implementing measurement tools as incentives for rewards, that end up being detrimental to the business.An example is awarding customer service centre employees for their number of calls. In the end they will take more calls, but satisfy the customers less than they were satisfying them before.  I learned from the article some other key points to successful BPM. The list includes:

• Making sure the employees share the same objectives of the business
• Making targets clear and understandable
• Providing updates on progress towards goals
• Creating feedback loops
• Providing a way for managers to have their own performance reviewed
• Remembering that your staff are only human
• Make sure your managers are competent and self-reflective

The valuable part of performance management is it can be applied to many areas other than business. Every organization needs proper performance management to help achieve their goals.

In response to Stephanie Fung’s blog post, I agree that TOMS Shoes may be operating with good intentions, but their “One for One” campaign seems to be stealing the sales of local shoe salesmen in needy countries. It also does not empower the needy children, but in a way teaches them that they need to rely on outside aid.

I believe TOMS should consider remodelling their social enterprise, looking at other present day social enterprises  that empower others to make a difference. A good example is Save on Meats in Vancouver, which employs criminals and people from the street to work for them. They teach them valuable skills that they can use to become a valuable part of society and inspire them to help others in need.

Despite the problems with their current social enterprise strategy, TOMS should be praised for it’s effectiveness of marketing, and it’s fight for a cause. It has helped popularize the idea social entrepreneurship in today’s world, and when looking at the state of some third-world countries, is a pretty important accomplishment.

New social enterprises have been springing up every day in Canada. One that got my attention was St. John’s Bakery in downtown Toronto, run by the St. John Mission. The bakery takes volunteers from the streets and teaches them valuable skills in order for them to give back to the community. One touching story from the Globe and Mail

was about a man named Gordon Brown (left) who spent 16 years as a crack cocaine addict on the street and was taken in by the bakery. He now is the lead baker of the company, a cooking teacher for kids, and a speaker for United Way, a charity focused on the well being of kids and seniors

In class we defined what social entrepreneurship as a business seeking a desired social change, but in Canada, there is still no legal definition as to what a social enterprise actually is. This dark area of legality is preventing businesses to form business-charity hybrids; an impediment to the betterment of society. I say that the Canadian government needs to come up with a legal definition if it does not want to be behind other countries in social entrepreneurship.

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