Article taken from: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/digital/innovation/a-lean-mean-entrepreneurial-spirit/article2241673/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Home&utm_content=2241673

As seen in the article, April Glavine, a young and passionate founder of Lean Machin Healthy Vending Service Inc., achieved her success in her vending machinge world.

A successful entrepreneur should always have a passion in one’s mind. One has to be courageous, and ambitious, and has to have strong belief and right idea of what he/she is doing. April Galvine didn’t “dream small,” and although she might have faced many difficulties after she founded the company, she managed to overcome the hindrances, and now she’s here as a 31-year-old successful CEO of a venture company!

Joel Primus, the founder of NaKed Co.  and who gave us presentation in COMM101 class, had similar attitude as April Glavine towards his career and dream. Both of them had their own dream and didn’t hesitate to start their plans once they were set. This ambition and passion towards their dream, along with their creative ideas (innovation), made them successful in their career as business people.

Response to Haley Palmer’s posing at https://blogs.ubc.ca/hayleypalmer/2011/10/19/a-softdrink-in-disguise/

I totally agree with her on this idea. VItamin Water’s advertisement and their packaging are luring consumers with misleading infromation.

I remember Priya had been drinking this “vitamin” drink almost everyday because she thought it does give enough vitamin needed daily. I didn’t think at all that it was not healthy either. However, after we heard how much sugar it contains and how less nutrition it actually provides, we now don’t really drink it that often. (Of course I do drink it, as a “drink”, but now I am aware that it is not healthy at all)

This can also be another example showing the importance of effective marketing strategies. Indeed, Glaceau Water did succeed in foolinig most of the consumers at their first glance.

Response to Priya Painuly’s posting on Business Ethics: https://blogs.ubc.ca/ppainuly/2011/09/14/overworked-2/

I agree that it’s not soley the company’s reponsilbility if the workers did know about the work environment and still wanted to enter the company. I also agree that the society as a whole has become more cold-hearted that we are not that much surprised by this kind of news anymore. However, to the question “If people know about the situation (about the 38 suicide cases) then is it really that ethically wrong if people choose to come into the company despite knowing the circumstances?”,

I would answer yes.  It is very wrong in terms of business ehtics. People knowing about the poor work environment does not mean that the company can just abuse them. Maybe they had no other choice than going to that company. They knew the situation that was going on in the company, but would you choose to starve when work is right there waiting for you? Especially this was in China, not even a somewhat developed area as other cites. People have no choice and just go there to work knowing that they are going to suffer, but the company should not be taking it for granted and abuse them. It’s just even more cruel.

image taken from: http://dylannein.wordpress.com/

I’ve recently read a news about the following Olympus’ accounting scandal.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-09/olympus-scandal-means-japan-way-no-longer-excuse.html

I remember learning the case of Enron Scandal in highschool, and I think it is an important example of window dressing that companies must be aware of.

While all other competitors used traditional agent model for reporting revenues, Enron created its own model and reported the whole value of its trades as their revenue. The more competitive the market became, Enron inflated its revenues even more to impress the investors with good business performance. Enron also created many off-shore entities, which were used for avoidance of taxes. Arthur Anderson, the world’s top audit and accounting firm, made Enron’s financial statements look realistic and confusing enough to fool the investors and public. Its complex business model also helped stretch the limits of accounting, and the company used it to manage the revenues and modify their balance sheet to look good. However, the company had to perform more and more financial fraud to make false revenues while they were actually losing more money to do so.

Even now, there are many companies using window-dressing to raise their credit rankings or attract investors. However, we know from the case of Enron that window dressing can never be a perfect solution for companies’ finance. It might result in short-term profits, but in long run, it will actually lose more money just like Enron did. Then the company will eventually collapse and huge damage would be upon the investors. Hence, Enron is an important case that companies should study, so that none of them take the same step as Enron did.