It was so moving to read the articles regarding Sauder’s Arc Initiative and how this program has helped countless business men and women in developing countries improve their business. By spreading business knowledge to individuals in need allows Sauder to practice their corporate social responsibility and establish a charitable and caring corporate culture. This culture is then brought upon the students in order to advocate this ethical stand and encourage Sauder graduates to make ethical decisions in their future career.

Hearing a business owner in Columbia speak about his experience with Arc Initiative was very poignant and motivational. This man was smiling and thanking Jeff throughout his entire interview and from the look of his cheerful face as he was skyping with our class, I could tell that he felt very blessed with being able to participate in Arc Initiative. He learned to “think strategically” and make “strategic decisions” which were concepts that are not taught in the country he lives in. With these decisions, he can become more profitable and improve the social standards of his local community.

What does entrepreneurship mean to me?

Entrepreneur minds are risk taking, unafraid of failure, determined, optimistic, curious, creative, passionate, ambitious and natural leaders.

Employers of large corporations are looking for people who work with an entrepreneurial mindset. And why are businesses looking to hire entrepreneurs? Since it is becoming much more competitive to find a good job that pays well, employers are now on the look out for competent individuals. But how are these entrepreneurial skills applicable for job hunting? In my personal experiences with working with people for group projects, whether for school, work or volunteer, I have noticed that many highly academically intelligent people are incapable of leading a team. These people may have good grades, but ultimately, they are unproductive and clueless when thrown into situations where problems arise. These people abide by the book and are not comfortable with acting based on their intuition and gut feeling.

In this sense, I have come to the conclusion that this is also the reason why Sauder selects their students based on their potential to be successful in the business realm. And hence, I am proud to say that this is what makes Sauder students unique.

10 chain-stores vs Single store

How to use IT to maximize profits in these two situations.?

Aldo’s employee of the year system – Club Elite

An example of a chain store is Aldo Shoes, a Canadian chain store that is now multinational, uses IT to accurately determine which store has the highest volume of sales and which sales associate is responsible for the majority of the sales. The top employees of the year will receive an expensive item or even a paid vacation to the Bahamas! With this system in place, employees are encouraged to sell as much as they can so that they can compete for these generous gifts. Hence, for a chain store, IT helps to maximize profits by encouraging sales.

As for a single store, such as Mia Boutique, a local business that sells formal dresses, one would expect that IT would not be a necessity to such a small business. However, with the use of IT, the business can save more time and improve productivity. For instance, ordering dresses via IT is a more efficient method that allows the business to keep compare prices, track of the number of dresses they have ordered and calculate their total bill. In essence, IT helps maximize profits by increasing productivity.

In class, we debated whether or not Netflix should make or buy content. Originally, I felt that it was a good idea to buy content such as movies and TV shows, however I became strongly convinced that making content proves to be more beneficial to Netflix in the long-run.

To access Netflix’s services, one must pay a monthly fee of $7.99 in order to access Netflix’s service. With this being said, why should we pay for something that we can stream for free somewhere online? Even though this may be illegal in certain cases, it still does not prevent the majority of people from doing so. Take for instance, the illegal downloading of music that has brought down the demand for the whole music industry. The majority of the people are still download music even though it is legal.

With making content, these shows become exclusive to Netflix and hence it is much harder to be streamed online. This is the kind of service that consumers are willing to pay for.

Furthermore, it is wise for Netflix to create TV shows because it makes consumers wait for upcoming episodes, which causes the consumers to inevitably pay monthly for Netflix’s service.

As naive and fan-girl as it may sound: Today in class, I met a celebrity. His name is Nolan Watson and he graduated from Sauder in 2001 and ever since, this man has turned his entrepreneur mindset into one of the most successful businesses ever created by Sauder graduates. He is the founder and CEO of Sandstorm Gold a mining corporation, that makes billions of dollars on gold streaming.

In class, he told us his life story about his path to success. His story was so inspiring that it rendered me speechless. Nolan believes that hiring people who do not need a job and are working for the experience are the ones that are the most wanted by successful businesses such as Sandstorm Gold. It is the people who are willing to learn and grow that become the most successful. Near the end of Nolan’s inspiring speech, I felt a sudden rush of hope and determination to become successful. Now I understand why incredibly talented individuals choose to work for Nolan. It is Nolan’s modest character, strong leadership skills and unbeatable entrepreneurial mind that people choose to follow him.

An example of zoom in on a city with high definition video cameras attached onto a satellite.

When the founder of Urthecast came to visit the class, I was surprised at the fact that he was so confident about his business venture. He believed that it was a profitable investment and that the company’s target audience would be the government and news reporting companies. The government would purchase high resolution photographs and videos of disasters happening in real time and the news agencies would buy photographs to put on the front page.

However, since Urthecast offers their services for free to anyone who visits their website, a question immediately popped into my head: Wouldn’t there be a social and ethical concern regarding privacy?

In David Kuo’s blog posted a year ago (2012), he commented upon privacy concerns of Urthcast. He stated that people can be focused on and zoomed in, hence invading one’s privacy. A year later (2013), when Urthecast returned to Sauder, they mentioned that the newly designed video cameras do not have the ability to zoom in and even the most zoomed in effect would not allow the cameras to catch licence plates of cars. I guess Urthecast did encounter some ethical issues and changed parts of their original ideas.