In response to The Small Business Blog, I agree that night shifts as essential “to keep the country going and ensure that the economy is kept on track,” but in class I’ve also learned about organizational culture. In addition I’ve learned about corporate social responsibility, however when discussing CSR in class the treatment of employees was never mentioned. I believe treating employees well to create productive company culture is the right thing to do. To link this with night shifts, it is found that 29% of male night shift works are dissatisfied with their job compared to 19% of day working males.

So, is there a way to avoid night shift jobs while running a business that requires night-time jobs such as office cleaning or shelf stacking?

Perhaps if the company hired more employees to divide the night shift hours, or in the best case scenario, they strategize to get rid of night shift hours.

Regardless, employee satisfaction should be in a company’s best interest for the sake of the business, organizational culture, and CSR. It is too bad that night shifts are important to a business yet can harm the company by unsatisfying employees.

The answer is – it doesn’t matter!

At least, not as much as the experiences you gain from getting the degree as I have previously mentioned.

I use to fret about whether I should major in finance, or accounting, or marketing and so on. I’ve talked about it with many peers and most express a sense of worry that they have no idea which degree they want.

However, after being introduced to alumni Nolan Watson and Tom Dobrzanski I learned that they had both majored in accounting, however Nolan became an entrepreneur and Tom became a record producer and band

member. As for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, they didn’t even get a college degree. I also met a great College Pro franchise manager who had majored in finance. From what I’ve learned and come to accept with open arms is that the degree you choose doesn’t solidify a path for your career.

From this knowledge, I plan on continuing to focus on business school while equally focusing on my passions in the hopes that I will find a career that involves something I love to do.

Recently GSP defended his title against Johny Hendricks in UFC 167 and won by a controversial decision. Many fans were confused by the decision and many educated fans agreed that Hendricks won the fight, and this wasn’t the first time the judges have seemed incompetent of judging.

However as I began frantically looking for the video I was unsuccessful. My only option to view the fight was to pay for it. That’s when I realized all the benefits for the UFC the controversial decision would cause.

GSP is one of the most loved mixed martial artists in the UFC, and recieves a lot of attention. Any controversy revolved around him would get the UFC lots of publicity. Not to mention people, including me, wanting to purchase the fight to see it for oneself. This results in free marketing, the opportunity of a hyped-up rematch, and the added value proposition in purchasing the fight to be able to self analyze the match.

I’m not sure I’d go as far as saying the UFC is rigged, however I believe it is possible that Dana White is in no rush to communicate with the athletic commissions to hire better judges.

In response to Ashley’s blog, I question the success of marketing just to attract a lot of attention. While I personally love advertisements like Red Bull’s cliff jumping I question the effectiveness of it.

Sure, you can reach a huge amount of people, but does it matter? The people viewing the advertisement are thinking about the content in the ad and not the product. In addition it is useless to advertise to people your product doesn’t apply too. In other words attracting the attention of a million five year old girls when selling power tools may be a lot of attention, but fairly useless.

In my opinion high buzz marketing is only successful when applied in a way that presents your product. An example would be Old Spice commercials. The commercials were un-orthodox, hilarious, creative, and revolved around the product. It worked as well, seeing as sales

for Old Spice increased 107% after the first man-on-a-horse commercial was released.

In conclusion simply creating attracting a lot of attention though probably beneficial, isn’t the best marketing scheme; it is only when the product is the basis of attention can the marketing be successful.

After learning about Arc in class, it made me think about studying abroad. Studying abroad, or getting involved in oversea learning opportunities like Arc sounds like a great idea.

The concept of studying abroad led me to come up with the idea of working abroad. Working abroad is when a company sends a team of innovators to an entirely new culture to live and work for an amount of time depending on different variables. For example, Apple could send 10 employees who volunteer to be sent to Indonesia to develop the next MacBook series. Though the finished product might not be completed in the time they are there, a new idea they can bring home may arise.

The benefits of this are the creation of team cohesion, company moral, attraction of employees who are open to new ideas, and exposure to other cultures to help develop ideas more suitable for other cultures.

The company would aid in travel logistics because the goal is for them to focus on work, not travel.

Companies already spend a lot of money on employee satisfaction, and traveling abroad has been known to have positive advantages for students, so why not combine the two?

When I hear oil pipelines I assume the builders are unethical, greedy, and don’t care much for the environment. Most people seem to passively oppose such projects.

However, now that I have a friend working on the project, it makes the subject more personal. I know he needs the job, and while there are possible alternatives job hunting is difficult, especially for one that will pay as well. Because of my personal ties I conducted research on the effects of such a project before opting to cancel it.

I found that not only are there plenty of economic benefits, but the marine protection, land safety, and review process are exceptional. Even with all their precautions, they have a great spill plan just in case.

Also, it occurred to me that many people opposed the pipelines but no one has a replacement for them. The replacements already available like rail are debatably worse and stopping oil from moving through B.C is highly unlikely.

In conclusion, though pipelines have been known to cause significant environmental harm, the Enbridge pipeline in particular seems to be reasonable. As of now, oil pipelines are the best we have.

In response to Zilue Zheng’s blog post,

I believe that college is more than a financial investment.

Though college has the financial benefits you’ve stated, there are other better options if we look purely from a financial perspective. For example oil riggers can make $100,000-$200,000 or more without paying for the cost of college.

However, the experience and exposure you receive from college makes it all worth the time and money. Along with piles of homework and cramming for tests comes the opportunity to make life lasting memories. When you are put in a school of 50,000 bright students you are bound to find interesting people with similar interests. This connects to the point about exposure. Personally, my time in college may have only just started but I have already met incredibly diverse people. In the years to come I hope to make memories worth more than money. I also hope to not only expand my professional network but become acquainted with different people from around the world and learn from them at a personal level.

So yes, Zheng, I believe that college is a good investment.

With the recent shutdown of Silk Road there has been a lot of questions about the future of Bitcoins. While Bitcoins are used for many legitimate websites, the brand position and value proposition are on the unethical black market side. It fills a position in the online market that allows people to purchase goods without any correlation to government, avoiding taxes and traceable information. Bitcoins not only offers a way to anonymously purchase illegal goods online but is considered cool and rebellious because of its non-affiliation to the government. However a downside of Bitcoins is because it was recently introduced in 2009 the young currency’s worth fluctuates as much “as $13 at the start of the year to $266 in April”.

I believe that Bitcoins will fill a growing position in the black market. The shutdown of Silk Road doesn’t mean the battle against online illicit drug trafficking is won, and the volatility of Bitcoins as a currency is to be expected at this point in its life. With an increasing amount of legal business being done online, illegal business done online will also increase and Bitcoins will be there to fill the needs of such businesses.

http://www.pri.org/stories/2013-10-04/why-bitcoin-not-likely-be-currency-future

Today at lunch in the UBC SUB my friend bought bottled water with lunch. When we finished lunch and were leaving, she poured the remaining water into her own personal water bottle. Keeping in mind that there was a free filtered water station just a few steps away, I wondered why she bought the bottled water. In fact, why are bottled water industries still making money in Vancouver? In Vancouver we claim to have the purest tap water in the world and is also available most anywhere. The need for clean water is gone, the convenience of bottled water is debatably more convenient then walking to a tap, it’s “more expensive per volume than gasoline” and plastic bottles aren’t environmentally friendly. According to BC Living the success of bottled water derives from the five marketing myths bottled water companies use.

With that being said the purchase of a plastic bottle for the bottle itself is logical, and bottled water has its benefits convenience wise in situations such as large events, where access to free water is more difficult. However I still believe that the success of bottled water in Vancouver is a phenomenon.

The world of technology is rapidly moving forward, leaving old software behind. Steve Jobs says it best in this video.

However, the proposition of an idea for a new kind of smart phone has had a lot of attention and solves this problem of technology becoming obsolete in a short span of time. Phonebloks is a customizable lego-style phone with attachable and detachable parts like a camera, storage, ect. It is what people would call a billion dollar idea. While I have no idea how difficult the technical implications would be to make this phone a reality, I do believe that if it is possible this will be the next generation of smart phones. Referring to Steve Jobs sediment layer analogy, this would be like the creation of a central pillar in which people would build around adding assets to make it better, stronger, and more lucrative.

While there is a base of 600,000 people supporting the concept through social media, supporting through social media can only do so much. Social media raises awareness, but not much more. A leader who organizes the right team is essential

In conclusion, I look forward to seeing the future of this idea.