Michelle Lee's Blog

With the ever increasing presence of Disneylands in most major continents in the world, and the indoctrination of the Disney image towards a new generation of youths in the form of teen-pop idols (such as the ‘Hannah Montana’ series and ‘The Jonas Brothers’), there’s plenty of reason to believe that the Disney company has indeed become more a profit-centric entrepreneurial company compared to the simple animations firm it once started out as with Walt Disney.

But putting these statements aside, there are also some better things that the company has done in the past. Whilst

The greatest lesson I’ve learned from someone else…hmm.

That’s a really good question. Because life’s got a lot of great lessons to teach.

But I suppose out of the top of my head, one of the best lessons I’ve learned thus far was from my piano teacher before a 200-300 person concert.

That lesson was: “No matter what happens, keep playing.”

And while that seems like something only applicable to instrumentalists, that’s not the case necessarily. Because when you’re stuck in a rut in an impeccably important situation – like an exam, an interview, or maybe preparing a surprise presentation in class – that quote really helps.

Because it basically means: “Regardless of how tough or whatever the situation happens to throw at you – go on with the show.” And I always attempt to keep that line in my head, under even the most intensive and pressuring moments in life.

It’s interesting to know that Philipe didn’t have the most luxurious of careers as a student either – having entered a major that he hated, not realizing that he hated it till later, and having a disastrous career for roughly 4 years after graduation. I sort of understand that – I didn’t have a good time in school either, and I still struggle today through Sauder, wondering whether I’m treading the ‘right path’ at times.

Hearing Philipe’s story reminds me that my faculty is actually full of humans that are able to make mistakes, that we’re not all identical robots aiming for the same career aspirations. It sort of reminds me that it’s okay to be stuck in class wondering and questioning my next few years.

So as part of our first  blogging assignment for COMM 299, we’re required to discuss anything related to our “greatest achievement”. Very vague.

Thus, I’ll start by saying: I have no specific ‘greatest’ or ‘proudest’ achievement. There’s just daily achievements, some really good achievements within the month, the term, and then there’s those special achievements that one has to pour years of effort over – most of mine are academic or personal-based ones.

But given that this is for a COMM 299 class and that I’m probably being reviewed by a fellow Sauder peer – I’ll quit beating around the bush and pick something that’s slightly recent and that I’m particularly proud of:

My proudest achievement was: getting into UBC in the first place.

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So I sat here about several hours ago staring at this little textbox with the sudden urge to fill my un-updated journal with something – anything – just to fill the blank space on my blog.

But I realized that I didn’t have anything valuable or even witty to even put down into words.

Thus, instead, I retreated to enjoying my Friday night with a couple friends, eating a decent Korean meal at the Village on campus, and concluded the night with a nice round of a few Friends episodes and by watching a nice ‘Indie’ film: Eternal Sunshine – of which has drastically changed my perspective on Hollywood actors’ acting (it’s not that they can’t act – it’s just that Hollywood’s standards in terms of story, plot, and script have dropped significantly over the past decade since I was growing up in the 90’s).

And that movie, too, made me reflect on things. And somewhere in the process of it all, I got to thinking about my path within the Sauder School of Business. Where to go? Where to start? Afterall the road’s bound to be full of twists, turns, spiraling paths and crossroads to face, one would presume.

So somewhere along the line, I realize that getting into Sauder seemed very trivial when considering the actual process of having to survive (as primitive and exaggerated as this word sounds – it is in fact very accurate of my experiences thus far) in this faculty; in spite of all the complaints and comments I’ve heard from people about how elaborately difficult it was for them to get into the program, or, in the case of others, how disappointing it was to find out that Sauder was unable to accept them for whatever reason.

And I realize that, in spite of hearing Jeff’s talks about MBA’s, CA’s and whatnot, the jargon behind preparing a fine, fully detailed and extensively decorated resume for potential employers of larger firms for future recruiting periods, I find that at the very end of the day, none of that really seems that important to me.

I’ve been reflecting on my own strengths as a person whilst writing my resume in preparation for applying for the Jump Start program, and I’ve come to realize that as the individual I am, with my background and experiences in my life thus far, my strength does not rely only on my academics, but mainly my ability to perceive the things around me openly, and to be able to respond with an open heart, mind, and spirit to most scenarios I’ve been presented thus far.

And maybe this was contributed by another forte my former economics and business studies teachers from Melbourne talked about before I finished high school – for they said some really powerful, encouraging, and for some strange reason, seemingly accurate things about me during my parent-teacher interview night.

That my main strength is that I learn fast from my mistakes. And that I’m persistent and won’t give up in the things I want.

So even though I don’t necessarily want the glamor of being an upper-class business person (of which I see too commonly stereotyped in the media today with flashy suits, PDA’s, briefcases and an icy demeanor), I suppose that all I really want to do is to charter my own path and to truly help the people around me – as simple minded and idealistic as that sounds.

I don’t have to found a multi-national firm to raise enough funds to stop world poverty, I don’t have to be a nobel-prize recipient and woo the world to world peace, because no, that’s not what I’m getting at.

I just want to do things in my own manner, no matter how small or maybe even grand my efforts may seem. This is my essential goal in life of which I’ll pursue, as loosely and as resolutely as possible.

Social entrepreneurs come in all forms – Drew Dudley is a unique Canadian example. His realization on his true ideals of being an entrepreneur came in an epiphany after the loss of a close friend, where he realized that although on a sheet of paper, he was more likely to be considered the more ‘qualified’ of the two, but after witnessing his entire community mourning his friend, he realized that his friend had mattered more to most due to the amount of change he was able to place back into his community.

With this ideal in mind, and now the Founder and Chief Catalyst of Nuance Leadership Inc., Drew currently works with dozens of universities, colleges, high schools, charities and other organizations across the globe to empower young people to increase their leadership capacity. He delivers hundreds of workshops and lectures each year, and has most notably participated in the TEDxToronto conference selected him to be one of only 12 speakers at the conference.

Businesses that aim to provide the unique service of empowering and motivating people to perform at their highest levels is certainly a rarity – one of which Drew Dudley successfully provides.

http://nuanceleadership.ca/about/drew-dudley/

Established in 1993 by Malaysian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes (whom previously as auditor of Virgin Atlantic), the previously failing government-funded commercial airline was transformed into a highly successful PLC budget airliner by 2002, having launched multiple routes between South East Asian countries with fares priced as low as RM 1 (US $0.27). AirAsia flies to routes as far as London in the UK and even Abu Dhabi within the United Arab Emirates, whilst still being able to cover business costs.

Fernandes adopted a ‘cut-rate air service’, which he believed would save many Malaysians time and money, especially in a tight economy of which only 6% of the population had ever travelled in a plane. Adopting a ‘buy-on-board’ marketing strategy not too dissimilar from Ryanair’s, where additional meals and drinks have to be paid for separately from the airfare, AirAsia was able to attract many lower-income Malaysians onto his planes, half of which were first-time flyers.

The airline has so far won multiple awards, both in terms of excellence in budget-aviation service and in terms of entrepreneurship. After his successful venture with AirAsia, Fernandes went on with multiple other ventures, such as the ‘Lotus F1’ team, the ‘Tune’ Hotels Chain in Asia which also adapts a ‘no-frills’ concept; all whilst maintaining the success of his airline.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11647205

Class 15 had us all discussing the real notion behind ‘Market Research’ and justifying why it was important for a business – as well as distinguishing between the different types of market research there is (Quantitative, Qualitative, Primary, Secondary).

But that does not mean that products still can’t be subjected to errors in spite of all this probing research in the playing field that is the actual market.

Take coke for instance, which in 1985, launched a new campaign for a new coke taste, their slogan being: “The best has been made better”. As stated in the article, Coke decided to create a sweeter tasting version of the original coke – which it had been using for 99 years. The company had conducted extensive market research (“millions” the article quotes), including tastings for customers, questionnaires and other forms of market research.

However, after 3 months after the launch of this new coke the product was scraped, Coke admitting to miscalculating market research that had not predicted consumers were already brand loyal to the original tasting coke, and classified the 99 year old product as ‘the one and only’ Coke to buy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/working_lunch/3200236.stm

Export led growth has always been a key factor in increasing a country’s economic growth and overall GDP – but now after the deterioration of the United State’s economy, President Obama has taken a stance and has told countries exporting to the US (specifically China and Japan) to stop ‘relying on exports to the United States for growth’.

China responded with a neutral and politically sound ‘maybe’.

The strain between the US and China has been worsened further by the Yuan’s tied rate with the US dollar, or a ‘dirty float’. This is caused by China’s buying and selling of the US dollar to manipulate it’s value on the currency market.

But the point that President Obama emphasized was that the US “did not want to lose the opportunity to create new jobs back home”, and in order to do that, international exports have to decrease in order to give way for domestic production and jobs – an arguably difficult aspect to change when for many years the US economy has grown use to increased consumption of overseas goods.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11748433

India’s pretty well known for curry, and it’s equally well known for its ‘Roti’ and other bread specialties in many parts of the world.

But within recent times, in little bakeries such as this one, India’s been facing a lot of problems of its own in terms of maintaining a quality supply chain and preserving the grains needed to produce staplegoods like bread.

There’s been a wide variety of reasons, a significant one being the seasonal monsoon weather which wrecks havoc over suppliers, not only damaging crops, but the physical infrastructure needed to maintain the supply chain such as machines and buildings.

It’s also due to lack of proper infrastructure to facilitate the grain industry properly, just looking at the video one would notice the thin polyester bags being loosely sealed with a threading machine and sweating backs of workings running to and from along thin wooden planks in attempts to carry the bags to the transport trucks. About 5-7% of costs could be saved if tattered punctured carrying bags like these were scraped and replaced with better quality ones.

Whilst there has been some improvements such as the gigantic grain storage tanks provided by government, there’s still a long way to go before there’s enough of such infrastructure to provide for the 1 billion people in the country.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10924612