The Economist Baobab Blog site has posted a blog named “Angel in Lagos” that has greatly inspired me. The blog is about how Nigeria’s investors, bloggers, tech people, bankers, and even governor officials have grouped together to launch “Lagos Angel Network.” The “Lagos Angel Network” serves as a platform for people in Lagos and even in Nigeria to get support from Niger’s firms and government. The network can help people to get jobs, book travels, get customers group deals, and provide online films and music. The network touches all aspects of daily life trying to make life of Niger people more convenient. The network is founded by big cooperation in the States.

This blogs really inspires me in that small countries like Nigeria, ranked 131^st out of 185 World Latest Doing Business Report still have entrepreneurs who tries within their ability to make profit to themselves but also to help more people to become richer. By reading this blog I remembered a line learned in Business ethic class, the professor said, “money should not be the reason you enter the business world, money is a subsides that came along while you doing what you are passionate about.”

Source:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2012/10/nigerias-entrepreneurs

Social media has become increasingly more influential to world politics and economy. For instance, during last year’s Arab spring, the protesters outset the dictator with the help of the social media. Now the powerful effect of social media start to play an important role in business world, as young French entrepreneur took Facebook in protest of new tax increase on the rich. According to Varun Bathania, my fellow classmate, he said that street protest are common in French but they have little effect, but the Facebook protesting for increase taxes on the rich was surprisingly successful.

Reading Varun’s blog, I am really impressed of the power of the social media. The social media has become a great impact on world community; it allows ordinary people to have power to state their opinion rally supporters. However on the other hand it is still a dangerous tool for people with bad intension. Social media can become tools for company that want to slander its oppositions through Internet. For ordinary citizens, it is more likely for them believe the words came from other people like them instead from newsagent or television media.

Source:

Varun’s blog: https://blogs.ubc.ca/varunbanthia/2012/10/14/frances-pigeons/

What leads me to chose to study in BCOMM program and what path shall I take down the road, are the questions came in mind when I read my fellow classmate, Clement Lau’s blog “I would Rather have a Swiss army knife.” His blog was inspired by a fascinating Sauder graduates, Tom Dobzranski, who kept his passion in Music while using his BCOMM knowledge to start his business in the industry. Clement inspired by Tom was soon believed that he should have multiple background knowledge to ensure his success in the future because world has been moving at a rapid rate.

I quiet agree with Clements’s idea that having only one background knowledge such as accounting or finance is not enough for me to achieve my ultimate goal. Absorbing knowledge from different field can broaden my vision, and thus making more accurate decisions, which is what I believe is key for entrepreneur. Unlike Clement I have a goal to study in BCOMM, although vaguely, that is to found or invest in firms. The ability that entrepreneur has to design his company is what motivate me to pursue in this field.

Inspired by Clement Lau’s Blog

https://blogs.ubc.ca/clementlau/2012/11/16/i-would-rather-have-a-swiss-army-knife/

Canada has the third largest world oil reservation, 170 billion barrels of oil that can be recovered economically within today’s technology. The bright side of this high oil reservation in Alberta is that the North American countries would depend less on Middle East oil, and potentially could reduce the oil price. However many obstacles are presented to the Canadian government and other large oil firms. Geographic, Pipes and capital are three factors that restrains Canada oil output to only 3.5m oil barrels per day, which is half that of America.

Oil reservation in Canada has its importance as it is now and in foreseeable future it will still be irreplaceable fuel in many part of industry. Having the oil sand means tax money to the government, improving national economy, and help Canadian oil firms to grow. Although oil sand is making less profit because it is costly to extract, it is perhaps beneficial for Canadian economy in the long run. At the moment, Canadian oil firms are not capable to extract oil by itself and must rely on international firms. By not fully extracting now means in the future more Canadian firms would have the opportunity to extract the oil, improving oil industry in Canada overall and may even boost nation’s economy.

Sources

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21566686-become-energy-giant-canada-needs-capital-people-and-pipes-sands-grime

Energy aware is a Vancouver based company focusing on resource conservation founded by Janice Cheam, a previous Sauder graduates, in 2005. I had the honor to listen to Janice’s presentation in our Comm 101 class. Her presentation moved me in many aspects. Her life story provide me a brand new vision and route that I can be taken after graduation, that is: Entrepreneurship. Before coming to the class, I thought entrepreneurship as an ultimate path I would like to go on but I never thought it would be possible just after graduation. Listening to Janice’s story, I realized the great opportunities that are provided to me in Sauder and UBC. The school has great resources including its programs, courses, clubs and competitions, and more importantly the people we met.

The root of Energy Aware came from case competition from hosted in UBC that provide students a platform to test the validity of their ideas. What I gain most out of Janice’s story is that with great ideas, although it will be hard but it is still possible for graduated students to pursue in the route of entrepreneurship.

Video games are tagged with the reputation of violence, shooting zombies or zapping aliens, however they are more than just that. Video games offer a great variety, ranging from gentler amusement to managements. The gaming industry is growing at a great rate and has now become a $67billion industry. The fact that video games are able to attract millions of people to spent countless hours on it while still gain a great satisfaction becomes a potential for firms to apply for their employees. One famous case was Microsoft have hired programmers to find bugs in their program. They give points for each bug programmers found and create leaderboard ranking the points which each programmer controls. This has greatly motivated the programmers to find bugs in the program. The “gamification” theory has been proven to be useful.

On the other hand, many argue, “trying to enliven boring, unskilled work is risky.” Workers have already been toiled with reward-money; any type of new form of rewarding system might be suspicious to the employees. In addition based on psychological research, intrinsic reward the best motivations in comparison with extrinsic rewards. Whether gamification can be applied to business world is still a question but at least it provide a new vision for modern management.

Source:

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21565926-video-games-are-behind-latest-fad-management-more-just-game

Based on the World Development Report, it is observant that the small firms in developing countries tend to stay small after a period time, usually a decade or two. On the other hand, cooperation and firms in the developed countries such as United States, companies tend to become a lot larger after a period time. Based on research, in America if a firm lasts 35 years, it becomes average 10times more productive and employs 10 times more people. However in countries such as India, if a first last same length of time the production only doubles and employment actually decreases.

Governments of the developing countries have tried many different methods to help improve this situation because only an increase in the number of world-beating companies, such as Google, Tita or Samsung, the country’s economy could be accelerating. However most of method such as cheap loans, grants to pay wages for extra employers, and support female business owners, did not provide a effective solution to the problem at hand, according to The Economist. What doe work though was free management training. Desh had sent 130 of its stuff on a management-training program for 8 month and once they came back, they helped Desh to set up textile exports and modern industry. Today Desh generating $13billion of exports a year. The only obstacles stops this method to put into action is that majority of the head of the small firms do not believe they need management training program for their employees.

Source: The Economist, Oct.6, Looking for a Google

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows”——Shakespeare

The misery of the Europe auto industry, the falling of the Big three and other carmakers have forced the company to make alliance with their rivals. Daimler is increasingly become third member of the long running partnership between Renault of France and Nissan of Japan. The first cooperation between Daimler and Renault and Nissan start in 2010 and over the two years, the cooperation between the three carmakers becoming increasing intimated. As Mr. Zetche, Daimler’s boss stated, “Over time, we have built up so much trust we are working like hand and gloves.”

The alliances between carmakers are perhaps the most logical way to cut costs. Through cooperation company can combine their production, introducing new range of compact engines, and as well as sharing transmission on models. For example, GM is working with Ford to develop fuel saving gearboxes; Ford is working hybrid vehicles with Toyota; and Toyota cooperates with BMW for diesel engines. Thee all showed the trend of increasing cooperation between carmakers.

However, based on the recent events, partnership between the companies in automobile industry showed more failure than success. In 2005 GM paid Fiat 2billion to break up an unhappy alliances, and Volkswagen has went on a legal case with Suzuki due to their partnership.

Source: The Economist, Business Section, Oct. 6, “All for one, one for all”

CNN news channel is famous for its non-partisan view on world news. It has 45 bureaus around the world-more than its rivals, Fox News and MSNBC combined-and about 4000 employees. Whenever there is a terrorist attack, flood or war, CNN got a lift. However, when the news is about words rather than action CNN struggles. It struggles to attract viewers due to its objectivity. Viewers want news to report in the way that they wanted such as reporting only good news about the party they support, and negatively reporting the rival parties.

This raised a good question on the business ethics of news channels. Does news channel has to be biased over hot debated political issues in order to attract viewers and advertisers? Ideally, news channel should report news to the viewers with unbiased analyze, provide an objective insight into world issues. However it seems that the more biased the view the news channel provides, the more viewers it will attract and more profit margins it will gain. MSNBC has 46% profit margin and Fox has 55%, whereas CNN only has 37% profit margin.

Although CNN is struggling with its unbiased stand, its objectivity also brings benefits for the company. CNN is still heaven for advertises that do not want to associate themselves with a political agenda. It also has most of the young and racially diverse audiences compare to Fox’s, which is 95% white. With the new Boss starting from next year, CNN might commissioning more global reporting than national politics to increase its revenues.

Sources: The Economist September 22nd – 28th, Business Section, “Unbiased and Unloved”

One of the fundamental business ethics would be the rights and security that workers receive from their firms. Workers are human, as human their rights and freedom should be respected and the company they work at should protect their safety.  However companies today still challenges this business ethic.

The issue that the companies were unable to provide security and rights for their employees is not a new topic. In the 1880s the Canadian railway company have poorly treated the Chinese railroad workers, giving them little rights and safety. In recent years, the condition of the coalmine in China fail to meet the safety requirement for mine causes the 2005 gals blast, where more than 200 miners were killed. Even with these disasters as guidance, many companies still limiting the rights and security workers received in order to maximize their profit. Just as today, South Africa Platinum miners were still striking due to the poor treatments they received: unsafe mining environment, extremely low wages, lack of clean water and decent health care.

The limited rights and safety worker receives from their firms have become an unavoidable issue in today’s world. Although business is about competing and making maximize profits yet it should not be based on sacrificing the rights and safety of the employees.

South Africa Mine strikes

http://news.yahoo.com/south-african-mining-strikes-spread-172546921–finance.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/african-and-mideast-business/south-african-mine-strikes-spread/article4541031/

2005 Chinese Coal Mine Gas Blast

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4266179.stm