Sweet Jesus! Who would have thought?

Arguably the first big corporation was… no, not Microsoft… no, not Ford… The Church!

A short history lesson: The Church was the most powerful entity in medieval times. It had the vast majority of land in powerful nations, and didn’t have to pay tax on this land. It would offer peasants the ability to work on Church land for free… sort of. They had to give 10% of their goods to the Church. If they didn’t, the Church had a pretty good punishment…

See, the church’s business plan was a unique one. Most company’s entice people using economic incentive – my product is worth the price. But the Church said “if you don’t like what i’m offering… well you’ll only burn in hell for all eternity”.

Hell, and a bit of a rip off – or don’t pay my 10% and get poked by a devil with a pitchfork for the rest of eternity…

Choice seems obvious enough for me. Just like it did for them.

According to this article, The church claimed you had to have them perform your marriage, (otherwise you would burn in hell) baptism (hell) and when you finally died, you had to be buried on holly land or else… well I think you get the picture.

In the end, a person would be baptized at a young age, then would work their life on a church farm, be married by the church, and be buried by the church (no, those last two are not synonymous).

Someone needs to “Occupy Religion“…

A Blogger posted about Ryanair… I had to respond!

His post was all about a recent scandal with Ryanair, and their use of Nicolas Sarkozy and his girlfriend in an ad campaign. As the article expresses, they were kiiiiiinda upset…

So they sued. And it made the news. Everywhere.

The best part for Ryanair is they only ended up paying $60,001 ($60,000 to Sarkozy’s girlfriend, and $1 to Sarkozy). In exchange for this, they got on the news world wide, and in newspapers across the globe.

The question that needs answering: Is this a good marketing strategy? Is any publicity good publicity?

My answer: It depends

If, for instance, this was a charity advertising and there was this scandal, it would probably be bad for their image. But it’s not a charity – It’s Ryanair.

And Lets be honest… Ryanair has a pretty bad reputation to begin with. So did this negatively affect their image? No. Instead, it was just cheap advertising.

Competitive Gaming. It is real, and it is getting huge!

People love it!

Especially in Korea, the hot spot for professional gaming. But just like with everything else, something made in Asia is being shipped to North America… And it’s happening fast!

Game Commentators like HuskyStarcraft are getting millions of views on Youtube, and turning commentating into their profession… And making damn good money…

The Gamers themselves aren’t doing too badly either. With prize money like $50,000 for the winner of a tournament, and tournaments happening all the time, becoming a professional gamer is looking better. 6 figure salaries?! Why go to Sauder…

And if you still don’t think people take it serious enough, listen to these Korean commentators, and (faintly) the crowd watching these two pro’s compete!

Crazy… but kinda cool! I think I have a backup plan for if I fail out of UBC!

J.K. Rowling is at the least a master writer, and in my opinion a master entrepreneur. How can a writer be an entrepreneur you might ask? Read on and find out!

Visit her new website and be amazed! The level of interaction available is unprecedented. one trick is to type in “Magic” on the phone (numbers: 62442) and hit dial… pretty cool eh?

All of it started with an idea: Harry Potter. Her first book was published in 1997, and just over 10 years since it has become a world phenomenon. Now, springing from this one book, there are 6 other books

About 8 video game series:

And various other paraphernalia:

And because none of this was enough, how about the 8 movies! Combined, they made over 8 billion dollars in gross profit…

Very impressive for a writer… not too bad for an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurial? While at first glance, you prooooobably just think these are some immature “adults” doing stupid things and filming them…

Johnny Knoxville is the star, and creative mind behind the Jackass movie series. He is by any means an Entrepreneur. Using the given definition of an entrepreneur, one can see this:

New Product: Never before has there been movies like Jackass before Knoxville made it happen

New Market: Though the teenage market had been exploited before him, Knoxville opened up a whole new way to exploit teens

Amount of Wealth Creation: first movie: gross over 11,000,000. Third movie: gross over 113,000,000

Speed of Wealth Creation: Jackass 1 came out in 2002, and Jackass 3D in 2010. In between they had the Jackass 2, and Jackass 2.5

Risk:… Watch the movies… or watch this:

Innovative: like I said, no one had done this before they had

Knoxville is immature, and borderline insane. But at least he is an entrepreneur.

The electric vehicle (EV) was first created en-mass for the consumer market in 1996. Of course, due to many reasons (and some interesting conspiracy theories) it failed by 1999. Nowadays, we want electric cars, but we don’t like the hassle that comes with them.

The EV1

The biggest problem in owning an electric car is you can’t just “fill up” wherever you go. Shai Agassi is going to change that.

Shai Agassi, founder and CEO of Better Place

Shai Agassi is the founder and CEO of the company Better Place. Better Place does not just create and sell electric cars, but it creates and sells electric car infrastructure to countries. The first customer was Shai Agassi’s home-country of Israel, and now better place is in Denmark, and beginning its expansion into Australia, and even has an office in Ontario, Canada.

Shai Agassi does not only plan on selling electric cars, or electric infrastructure. He plans on selling the batteries to the electric cars, effectively giving him a monopoly on this new “gas” equivalent. He has taken the “razor, razor-blade” business model to the extreme, and hopes to make billions from it. Who can blame him?

I do not think I am alone when I say state this mathematical equation:

Midterms = Stress.

This is a pretty fair assumption. And assuming this, one could state:

2*Miterms = 2*Stress

Therefore, the more Midterms you have, the more stress you have. Seems simple enough. What if I told you the more stress you have, the more likely you are to contract diseases? That would mean…

Stress = Chance of Illness increase.

It has been proven that certain illnesses are caused by stress. Some of these include Asthma, Colds, and the Flu. Some studies go so far as the state Stress can lead to activities that increase the chance of lung cancer, heart disease, or stroke! Though this may seem far fetched, most people smoke when they are feeling stressed. People also use alcohol, and hard drugs to escape their “stressed out reality”

So if you’re like me, and you get stressed over midterms, you have (at the least) an increased chance of catching a cold.

To go back to my math analogy, if Stress = Chance of Illness increase, then…

Midterms = Chance of Illness increase

And the more midterms you have, the higher your odds of catching a cold.

Cue theme music!

Star Wars! for all of you who have not yet seen the movies, spoiler alert… it has the best theme music ever!

But Star Wars has something else few other movies have – Longevity. Calling Star Wars a cult classic does not do it justice. Star Wars is THE cult classic. The first Star Wars movie was released in… wait for it… 1977!!!!!!! The latest movie came out in 2005. that is a 28 year spread of pure profit.

Not only does Star Wars make movies, but they now have a cartoon television show, they sell action figures, memorabilia (such as fake lightsabers) and they even had their own trading cards!

Great movie… and arguably an even better business. It is estimated that George Lucas, the founder of Star Wars, is worth over 3.2 billion dollars. Not too shabby for a movie writer.

As you all know, a few classes ago we discussed Netflix’s decision to split its company up into a mail-in service company, and a streaming company (still called Netflix).

I now invite you to take a look at the Netflix stock…

As you can see, it has been hit QUITE hard in the past year or so. Someone not in Sauder would look at this and think “falling stock = bad company”, but a Sauderite may think differently…

I personally see a buying opportunity. The stock market is not solely based on fact – it is also based on emotion. If the market “thinks” a decision is bad, then the market reacts, and generally overreacts. In this case, Netflix’s loss of customers gave the market the impression Netflix was going to lose money, and therefore become less valuable. Of course, in class we all decided this risky decision may actually make Netflix more profitable.

I am going to look into this company a bit more, but unless I find something dramatic, I will be investing. The Market is moody, and overreacted. I plan on cashing in on its apology.

Coca-Cola Company appears to Care about the world. It has many different “corporate responsibility” projects ongoing, and has already completed many more. Most of these projects all have one similar goal – to benefit the environment. Of course, as one could see from the Article “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase it’s Profits” by Milton Friedman, though this benefits the environment it does not benefit the consumer, nor does it benefit the Coca-Cola employee. These statements beg the question – If these social projects do not help the Coca-Cola company, then why do they continue doing them?

Figure 1

Milton Friedman might answer, “Coca-Cola should focus on making money, not the environment!” However, a less radical person would look deeper into the issue. Coca-Cola company would not continue to do this if it had no benefit. The benefit from these programs comes in the form of marketing. Coca-Cola is not just doing these projects, but promoting them through their website, and Twitter online blog, http://twitter.com/#!/cocacola_ca. This blog not only updates users on what Coca-Cola is doing, but also on how it helps the environment! In Tique’s blog She shows how Barrack Gold (Figure 2) has a bad image because of their lack of Corporate Responsibility. These are the sorts of scandals avoided by Coca-Cola through their environmental campaign. According to Nathan’s blog the travel term Thompson has also been taking flack for being “unethical” in the workplace. These are all problems Coca Cola avoids with its Corporate Responsibility.

Figure 2