Honesty is indeed the most important criteria for every entrepreneur. As I went through Raymond Jiang’s blog, one of his posts immediately caught my attention. It was about some business ethics such as making use of partnerships and bank loans to shield their deprivation instead of reporting the accurate amount that were violated by Enron Corporation. I had also quoted one of his conclusion which said “Unethical business behaviors lead to collapse”, and I totally consent to this notion.

As a consumer myself, I do hope that the companies I do trading with always practices ethical manner especially honesty. For instance, if I pay an extremely high amount of money for a certain product, I will expect the product to be a durable good which uses fine raw material instead of some low quality product. However, if I found myself to be cheated by the company, I will turn to be incredibly upset and shall not trade with them anymore or even spread this piece of news to my friends and family. I hope that every enterprise will keep in mind that dishonesty will only brings bad reputation and decreasing revenue like Raymond had mentioned.

References: https://blogs.ubc.ca/raymondjiang/

Images: Ghatneker, Payal Loma. Oversharing is not honesty. 2011. Photograph. BlogspotWeb. 24 Oct 2013.

These recent years, Apple company and Samsung company have been spending a large amount of time and money on the lawsuit. Knowing that both of these companies wanted to dominate over each other, or we can say monopolized the market, lots of unnecessary resources have been wasted on this case.

In a long run for both companies, I strongly disagree with this ongoing lawsuit which also takes place in different countries. As a matter of fact, both of these companies have imitated each other’s patents like “copycats”. Although it is not fair to sound like their products serve the exact same functions,which also means they do not have any self-innovation, however, the truth is they did imitate each other’s patents.

So, why does the lawsuit have to continue? In most of the circumstances, both companies are caught guilty anyhow. Instead, they should focus on producing more varieties of products and improving their old ones, and of course, they should also discontinue from copying each other’s patent again. This is because variations and improvements as well as innovations keep customers, but lawsuits drive customers away since you are actually making a joke out of yourself.

References: Bosker, Bianca, and Dino Grandoni. “Apple-Samsung Lawsuit: What You Need To Know About The Verdict.” Huffingtonpost. N.p., 25 Aug 2013. Web. 21 Oct 2013.

Images: Apple vs Samsung Lawsuit. 2013. Photograph. GgsokuWeb. 21 Oct 2013.

Eight months ago, the game company “Electronic Arts and Maxis” released the game, “Simcity”. Simcity received many positive commendations in the game’s post-release. However, many players reported that they suffered from network interruption and problems with saving game. This is because of Simcity has utilized a type of digital-right management (DRM) called “Always-online DRM”, which require the users to constantly connect to network or server to play Simcity.

It seems that the popularity of Simcity acquired has backfired an enormous amount of players packed into limited servers and caused the instability of game servers. Many game reviewers labelled the game as broken and unplayable, urging players to think twice before buying the game and wait for the issues to be solved.  The Amazon.com had to discontinue selling the virtual version of the Simcity. Also, the game has received very low rating in terms of game’s and server’s stability from customers. These issues could cause lower sales, thus minimize the net income made by selling the game.

In my opinion, the best solution for this circumstance should be the termination of Always-Online DRM. This enables players to play the game without suffering from server instability and other network issues.

References: Benedetti, Winda. “Simcity launch disaster continues as gamers petition EA, White House.” NBC News Technology. N.p., 08 March 2013. Web. 10 Oct 2013.

Images: Nath, Preetam. SimCity receives 4.0 update, new areas and re-enabled features in two. 2013. Photograph. vr-zoneWeb. 10 Oct 2013.

Great Smoky Mountain National Park is one of the most famous tourist area that is situated in Tennessee, USA. As for Jeff Smith, he is the proprietor of Jonathan Greek Inn. His business relies highly on the prominent Smoky Mountain because it is a tourist-only destination.

Jeff is always very fortunate to boost up his sales since the Smoky Mountain is the most visited national park in the USA. However, the government of the state halts all of the official functions and hit Jeff’s business really hard. Due to the fact that the government came to a shutdown, most of the national park facilities such as the hiking trails and visitor centers are closed.

Even though it seems like Jeff can only pray hard to hope for the government to get back to operation, nonetheless, he can always come up with new ideas to compete with the other small businesses which are affected, since all of them are currently facing the same issue. For instance, he can utilize the attractive environment and come about with amusing activities to appeal a different market. Through these, he might not have to depend solely on tourists who visit the Great Smoky Mountain.

References: Kavilanz, Parija. “Shutdown hits Great Smoky Mountains at peak season.” (2013): n.pag. Web. 3 Oct 2013. <http://money.cnn.com/>.

Image: 2011. Photograph. n.p. Web. 3 Oct 2013. <http://blog.auntbugs.com/>.