United Nation, as the biggest intergovernmental organization, help maintaining international peace and security, promoting human rights, fostering social and economic development, protecting the environment, and providing humanitarian aid in cases of famine, natural disaster, and armed conflict.  It play a very important role in donating to poor area around the world.  However, there is an old saying in China goes, ” Teach people how to fish is much better than give people fish.”

That is the reason why the world needs social entrepreneurship or program like Arc Initiative.  Unlike UN, they are trying to solve the social problem using their business knowledge from the root, rather than just donation.  Although the speed of making difference for social entrepreneur is slower than the the large amount of fund giving by UN to solve emergency, they give hope to society, they let people in predicament know they have ability to change the situation by their own work.

Another difference between United Nation and social entrepreneurship is scale.  United Nation focus on large-scale issues because of its position, hence UN can not observe the world in detail like individual social entrepreneurs do.  By concentrate on the specific issue or area, social entrepreneurs are more easily to find a practical way to solve the problem and try to change the society.

Reference:

“Can Fair Trade Boutique Expand without Alienating Customers?” The Globe and Mail. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/day-to-day/can-fair-trade-boutique-expand-without-alienating-customers/article4405520/

“What Is Social Entrepreneurship?” Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. Web. 11 Nov. 2014.

http://skollworldforum.org/about/what-is-social-entrepreneurship/

Recent advance in computer and Internet technology have radically changed the business world. E-commerce jumped into the market, and lots of the companies started their online division in order to keep the competitive advantage and expand their customer segment.  However, how to have a successful online business?  Lorna Van Straaten summarized 7 tips in her blog, I would like to reference some of those points to what we have learned in COMM101 class in this comment.

1. Understand who your Customer is.
2.solve your customers problem.
The first two tips is about knowing the customers.  By finding out what is the company’s customer segment, knowing gains and pains of them, the company will improve their value proposition so that it will fit to the customers’ demand.  Impressive value proposition is supposed to be the gain creator and pain deliver for customers.

3.Get traffic to your website from as many places as possible.
Tip 3 is mainly about how to marketing your website.  It mentioned the importance of social media and several ways to grow popularity including:

• Advertise your business where your customer is found.
• List your website in directories.
• Send traffic to your offer as many ways as possible. Repeat your offer everywhere!

4. Add an easy Payment method.
5. Determine how your site is actually working.
6.understand conversion Testing.
Tips 4,5 and 6 discussed the user experience, we didn’t learn about UI in our class, but we can still relate it to a way that express how customer feel about the product, about the website.  Since online business is a window that companies can reach to their consumers directly, what customers experienced decide the success of the business.

7.Use Tech Support.

the last point remind me of we are in a fast-pace world, companies that refuse to accept new technology will obviously lose their opportunity to make the corporation stronger, so in online business, Using technology support will help them improving the company, According to Straaten, the entrepreneurs don’t need to do that by themselves, but they can hire staff with professional skill, and it will pay off.

Link to the original blog: http://smallbusinessbc.ca/post/how-have-a-successful-online-business

eBay recently announced that its fast-going division PayPal would be spun off as a new company in 2015.  This new idea was proposed by an investor, Carl Icahn.  In February he was trying to convince the board that “PayPal’s a jewel and eBay is covering up its value.”  However, at that time John Donahoe, the CEO of eBay, saying that  “Ebay has accelerated and enhanced PayPal’s success, allowing it to be more aggressive, bolder and to take more risk than if it was separate.”   

So why after 9 months, Donahoe make concessions? I think there are several reasons:

Once be released from eBay, PayPal can focus on payment.  After Apple jumped into the mobile payment game and Alibaba’s extremely successful IPO (who also has a mobile payment business) the competition in this category becomes a rat race.  In order to keep the competitive advantage, PayPal should be more concentrate.

The split of eBay and PayPal also means that PayPal can start to cooperate with eBay’s competitor, which obviously will expand Paypal’s market.  Meanwhile, Paypal can find a more outstanding leader to be the CEO because no one wants to lead a company under other company’s control.

Another reason is that With PayPal gone, eBay will save a lot of the cash flow so that they can invest this money in growing its bread and butter business and better compete against Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Based on the analyze above, we can see that the split of eBay and Paypal is an advisable decision.

Reference

Bertoni, Steven. “Ebay And PayPal To Split: Carl Icahn And Elon Musk Wish Comes True.”Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Web. 9 Nov. 2014.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2014/09/30/ebay-and-paypal-to-split-carl-icahn-and-elon-musk-wish-comes-true/ 

Zappos.com is an online shoe and clothing shop currently based in Las Vegas.

In July 2009, the company announced it would be acquired by Amazon.com in an all-stock deal worth about $1.2 billion. Since its founding in 1999, it has become one of the world’s largest online shoe stores.

Zappos is famous for its outstanding customer services, they offer unlimited-time phone service and 365 days free shipping / return policy.  In order maintain the quality of the customer service, Tony Hsieh, who is the CEO of Zappos, creates a company culture that making all the employee in the company feel like they are family.  In Zappos office, they offer free food, decorate their working place, and organize interesting event for employees. every years, Zappos spend a large amount of money to building their company culture and making the employees happy for what they are working. Hseih says, the pay back will not occur in recent 1 year or 2, but it will eventually work for the company.

However, In my opinion, this kind of company culture that satisfy employees to ensure their working quality and loyalty to company is not fit for Zappos.  Unlike those high tech companies like google, most employee in Zappos working as call center staff to help customers, this occupation does not require specific skills, which means the company doesn’t need to spend too much time and money on training employees, and they can easily get new staff as well.  So there is no reason to spend a large proportion of the cost to fulfill employee.  What have been mentioned in the video is that Zappos only get 5% profit from the total revenue, which is quite dangerous for a company, hence if they stop unnecessary investment, it might help Zappos more.