Month: December 2010

If you want to buy discount products online, Overstock.com is a good choice. The idea behind this website is in its name, overstock. Companies which have surplus products can sell to Overstock.com. Nowadays, Overstock.com is expanding their business and becoming more and more popular. The reason for the expansion for the company is because plenty of companies do not do a good forecast before they produce or purchase products. For example, a new company which has no prior sales or production data to rely on will find it difficult to do forecasting while a company selling the same product over the years can have realistic sales forecast to guide their production. Yet, even for a company that has been in business for many years, if it introduces a new product, they usually do their forecast based on the old products, and such forecast may not be too accurate. In most cases, forecast is only a guess work. Nonetheless, companies cannot produce without forecasting. Therefore, it is very important to have a good forecasting team. The existence and success of Overstock.com prove that many companies lack a good forecasting team. Having accurate forecast is especially important any industry that depends on trends and styles, like the fashion industry. If a company fails in forecasting, it may lead to overstocking problem and financial loss. When such company does not have a solid finance, it may even go bankrupt.

http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Bedding-Bath/1/dept.html?cid=132977&kid=1472559

I can almost guarantee that every University student has used Google’s services.  Its most popular services are google search and  google map. In 1998, Google was formed. In a relatively short time, it became the top search engine. I believe besides the good leadership in Google, a solid workforce  is one of the key reasons behind the company’s success. Google employees are very satisfied. From an OB angle, when employees are satisfied, they will work harder and have loyalty to their company, which will increase the company’s productivity. We can easily understand why Google’s employees are happy by just looking at their work place. It is comfortable, colourful and casual. The ”Google way” has been established for many years. Even though the company has grown its business, it can still keep the company’s spirit till now; unlike another technology company, Hewlett Packard, which failed to continue with the HP culture and has poor leadership, and thus suffers the problem of staff dissatisfaction.

When I reseach on Google’s culture, their working environment and their culture attract me. In many companies, executives are only concerned about efficiency and ignores soft issues like company culture. Yet, Google’s success has proven that the culture of a company and team bulding are actually very important factors that can directly influence a company’s performance.  Afterall, a company is a collection of people.

http://www.google.com/corporate/culture.html

When we talk about finance, the first person comes to my mind is Warren Buffett, a 77 old man who once passed Bill Gates and became the richest person in the world. In the class, We learned the basic about finance which is risk allocation, how stock prices are determined, how finance affect a company’s opperation. Buffett’s main business is investment in the stock market. He is an expert in risk assessment. He always has special insight to uncover the undervalue companies. After the financial crisis in 2008, many billionaires lost their fortune when their company’s stock lose their value. Yet, at the same time, Buffett’s company raise 20% in stock market. In the financial crisis, many companies went into bankruptcy or other financial troubles because of poor risk management. Sometime, even if the company has a correct market stragtegy, good products or a good leadership, the business can still fail because their financing and credit management are not appropriate. In this area, Buffett is unsurpassed. But sometimes people think that he is too conservative. The financial crisis proven that sometimes conservative is a good thing and they should show restraint in how fast a company expands and how aggressive they use in financing.

After the social entreprenurship class, I am interested in doing volunteer work and helping others. When I went online and search for relevant information, I found a report about a national organization, the Canadian Social Entrepreneurship Foundation, and its recent cooperation with a SFU club. Even though the program has just been launched, it sounded very promising. In UBC, there is a simliar group called entrepreneurship@UBC Fund. Yet, UBC’s Fund combined the normal entrepreneurship with social entrepreneurship. This way, people may get confused and may not pay attention to the club. As we learned in class, branding is really important. I suggest that they can separate the two and establish individual clubs in order to run them more successfully.

The cooperation news – http://business.sfu.ca/news/post.php?id=2116

entrepreneurship@UBC Fund – http://www.uilo.ubc.ca/entrepreneurship/entrepreneurshipatubc.html

BC has lots of successful entrepreneurs. In class, the profs always teach us about ethical. Therefore, when a businessman has talents in using limited sources and money to achieve his goal, he should always contribute the society by using his talent to help others.
 
The SFU program provides successful social entrepreneurs mentors to guide the young people to achieve their goals. I wonder if UBC can provide a simliar opportunities for students to do such meaningful activities. =)