Christopher Meloni published his insights about setting up a business with best friends on his Blog, which made me reflect on our class 18.

In class 18, there were several successful former students graduated from Sauder who established their own business in different fields. One of them was in California and trying to develop their business with his best friend- a science student graduated from UBC. This has grabbed my attention since I have heard several cases in which best friends break up because of money issue. Considering your personal relationship and feelings, it’s truly a dilemma to work or not work with your partner. Then how can we successfully handle this?

Christopher Meloni states that before being enthusiastic of running a business, you should determine three things: what’s your goal? Who is the priority? Will you still run it if they are not your partners?

Since you will spend much time working together, I really agree with Christopher that you should schedule some time separating from each other to think about problems and what you can do. Negotiation is essential and you still need to decide who is the decision maker.

What are they trying to do? ———to give us a better life.

   United Nations (UN) targets on a less conflicts and less suffering world with equality.

People from some of the developing countries suffer from starving, sanitation, and poverty problems. The UN provides them with funding to help them walk out of the bad situations. Furthermore, the UN also assists their governments in setting or amending policies in order to maintain steady socities.

However, the UN is such a huge organization that needs to bring benefits to so many countries, so it would be really difficult for them to maintain the benefits they created for the countries or regions. This is the reason for the emergence of the social enterprises. Social enterprises can go on resolving the detailed problems after the UN has established the framework. For example, the UN provides adequate money for Bangladesh to control the flood and improve the sanitation; people in Bangladesh would still be struggling in how to use the money since they are lack of technology as well as knowledge. Finally they may fail in taking the chance to make a better life. So it is up to Arc or Social enterprises setting all the details for the problem. Social enterprises are required to exist because they can provide strategies and assistance to people in those countries and lead them adapt to the changes of their countries and contribute to the developments of their countries.

The well-funded United Nations paves the way for the further development of the Social enterprises that focus more on changing the world in an innovative and detailed way, what the UN is doing is  “teaching a man to fish; feeding him for a lifetime.” rather than “giving a man a fish; feeding him for a day.”

“Sauder School of Business.” About Arc. Web. 9 Nov. 2014. <http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/Global_Reach/ARC_Initiative/About_ARC>.http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/United_Nations.aspx

Look around you; look around the supermarket or the grocery store, whenever you pick up a product how much chances you can see a MADE IN CHINA on it?

I’d say at least 40% among all products.

Canada has signed a reciprocal currency deal in order to fostering the easier trade between Canada and China—the easier usage of the Canadian dollar and Chinese RMB.

What came up on your mind when you see this?

I have lived in China for 18 years, in my perspective, I cannot even remember any products in the market is made in Canada. China, the potential wide-range developing market, is definitely worth the efforts on increasing the export. Increasing export gives the advantage of spreading risks and makes more profits for the company. The world market is more diverse than one as the saying “do not keep your eggs in one basket”. If there is a recession in one market, at least you still have back-up strengths. People are paying more and more attention on the world market because the diversity of the world market allows more demands and offers more opportunities to make money. Here is an example in China: the food security has always being concerned by all of the people living in China and aroused a heated debate. Some American companies already took the opportunity and joined the Chinese market by claiming they have pure milk and powdered milk of really good quality. The result shows that American farmers are selling off all the milk their cows can produce at record-high prices, even though the high prices of those imported products, they really sold well in China. Business is all about seeking chances and taking them.

Hence, Canada should learn from the previous trade prototype between America and China and step into this huge market for itself.

I would like to reflect on my individual assignment2 which did not get an expected grade last week. After our TA gave feedback to this assignment and I reread my business recommendations, I think there are several improvements needed to be aware of.

First, to write a good recommendation, the first thing to do is to identify the main problem while using other points to fix it. For example, the problem of whether the company should shut down the skateboard department or not. In this case, I calculated the break-even point for the skateboard and figured out it is losing money every year. However, I do not think it’s going to worth the cost of closing it, but I rushed in ending this to fit all the information in one page where the table for the assets can be less important. I should have addressed the main problem at first and draw the outline of what leads to it. There are more aspects that I need to take into consideration before I made the conclusion.

Another problem of my recommendation would be the connection between the business tool and the content. I only made a few connections while demonstrating my recommendations. I should demonstrate what those charts are for. To make the problem really clear, which means to make the problem more easy to understand and visible, I should use more multiple tools to illustrate the problem. Like the SWOT, why is the SWOT helpful for analyzing the problem?

   Philip Wong’s posts named “The design of the Blackberry Passport” demonstrated a  really good analysis about the strength and main goal of the Blackberry Company.

   He wrote on the topic of the new innovative product of the Blackberry Company—The Blackberry Passport. It catered the customer segments by improving and revamping their “using experience” and helped the company rebuild their value proposition among all of their customers.Depending on the external research, I think Philip made a really good analysis about this new launched product. Although Apple successfully became the limelight in the end of the September, blackberry also made a sound. The blackberry company believes that the Passport has its distinct advantages than other smartphones.

   For example, its secure system (which what the Blackberry is famous for) and its redesigned keyboard. They used a comparison with Apple’s product: when you want to type a message to your friend, do you feel bothered if there’s a virtual keyboard blocked all your view? The answer is definitely “yes” for me. So the utilization of the physical keyboard actually increased the efficiency of typing and provided a better experience for their customers.