During one of my commerce classes in Henry Angus Building, I glanced the attending students and I discovered a fun fact: most of the students are girls! They talked to their friends sitting beside them about the shopping of last weekend; They were light or heavy makeups; They were yoga pants or skirts, all looking like shining stars in the business world of the future.

As one of the girls, I know that there are challenges for women to survive in this man-dominant world. Saying man-dominant may be a little bit exaggerate, however, it would be hard to imagine that the board members are all women, instead of men in their middle ages. In fact, women in the top C-level jobs are stuck in 15%-16%, not even close to 50% and the number is no longer growing. With the world and our culture becoming more and more acceptable to women, I wonder why women only compose so little percentage of the top workforce.

In my opinion, there are several reasons. First, women face traditional domestic tasks. The burden of maintaining a family happy, clean and organised falls mainly upon on women’s shoulders. One of my mother’s friends, a MIT graduate, becomes a housewife with 3 kids after 5 years of marriage. Once married, women become less ambitious in workplace, longer for a stable, less demanding job to enable them spend more time with their family.

Moreover, under constant reinforcement from the world, female becomes unconfident in their capability.They assume they cannot become high achievers like men do because their family and friends tell them so. Especially when the status of a woman and her likability is negatively correlated. In a study, people hate their female bosses more than they hate their male bosses. The ambition and vigour of a woman in workplace strongly contracts how people perceive women in the past. Conservative people expect women to only become a gentle wife and a good mother, but refrain from those female bosses. So female get this kind of information thus resigned in pursuing status.

In summary, closing the gender gap needs efforts from both women and the world.

The problem of BC Hydro is controversial. When managing to build a megawatt hydroelectric plant generating station on the Peace River in northeastern British Columbia to contribute a clean electric solution for growing population , BC Hydro invades the land of First Nation and inevitably destroy farmland, fish rights and wildlife habitat.

According to PESTEL analysis, BC Hydro is now facing political, technological and environmental factors that will affect the performance and activities of its business in the long-term.

First, political factor is obvious when it comes to the legal factors concerning with land usage conflict between a company and aboriginal people. Since Canada was created in 1867, the federal government has been in charge of aboriginal affairs. The Indian Act, which was enacted in 1876 and has since been amended, allows the government to control most aspects of aboriginal life: Indian status, land, resources, wills, education, band administration and so on. For over 100 years, The Indian Act has been continuely amended in order to ensure First Nation’s rights and economic development of other citizens. So for any slight modify in legal regulation, there would be a ineligible impact on BC Hydro’s stations that build on First Nation’s land. This external instability would be a constant concern for BC Hydro’s future development.

Second, technology limits BC Hydro to build hydroelectric stations without causing so much damages on land. Imagine if there was a technological innovation that allows BC Hydro to build station without disturbing the life of aboriginal people, it would be a win-win solution to contribute both sides.

Last, though BC hydro dedicates itself for building clean hydroelectric plant that decreases the future environmental costs, it unavoidably damages environment while building stations. The dam would flood a vast area of 83 kilometres. Liz Logan of the Fort Nelson First Nation said: “It’s our church, it’s our store, it’s our school. We have elders’ gatherings there annually”. Switch perspective to aboriginal people, I certainly would not want concrete monster ravages the land that raised my people for generations. So, while BC hydro affects on environment, it also has business ethical problem to ponder.

First Nation chiefs to stage Site C showdown
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/First+Nation+chiefs+stage+Site+showdown/10215965/story.html#ixzz3FRarZ5am

Background: The Indian Act

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/background-the-indian-act-1.1056988

Social media, such as facebook, instagram, snapchat, ect. now composes a great part of modern social life. In stead of spending time to make face-to-face connect with other people, we now can easily “poke” them on social media page. Besides connecting friends, social media can also be a great way to build relationship with customers.

Instagram is cool way to connect with your socially engaged consumers. There are 130 million active users on Instagram every month, and every day 1 billion photos are liked. Use the app right, and you could have an instant viral marketing success. Use it wrong, and your efforts on this young site could be a big empty fail. Using hashtag is a important skills to make your instagram account stand out. It’s a big way of how users can find you through their mobile Instagram searches. Many brands, such as H&M, ZARA, are now host photo competition on instagram by using specific hashtags. This tactic both promotes your contest, gets customers to actively involved in brand value proposition, and gives your consumers a distinct tag to connect with others participants and other unexpected cool thing that may deepen your brand value.

Also, to build a successful marketing instagram, you also have Share followers photos on your social sites. Show your customers you appreciate them by acknowledging their cool photos, and share them with your Facebook fan or Twitter followers. By doing so, a company is no longer a distant brand that exists only when customer trying to reach it, but it becomes a intimate friend with customer.

In class, we learned that shortening inventory days is important for matching demand with supply. For the companies who are unable to take advantages in short inventory, social media could be a great way to get feedback from their customer in time and build a positive to make customer actively understand a company’s value and soul.

People lining up to buy Iphone6

When I was in high school back in mainland China, it was a peer pressure to have an Iphone. I had 40 classmates and 36 of them were using Iphone, and a large part of them even update their Iphone according to yearly base. Having heard of the news of Iphone6 will be released in September, 2014, my friends and I devoted ourselves in radical discussion of its new functions and its “improved” appearance. Young people in China love Apple and Iphone and purchasing power in China is higher than that of western country.

So the reason for apple delay release of Iphone6 in mainland China has always puzzling me. I think many disadvantages and risks could emerge from this simple move.

First, by delay the release in mainland China, Apple granted the other competitors a precious chance. There is a news about a teenage boy in China sold his kidney for Iphone5s when it first came to market that shocked people globally. Later, selling kidney for Iphone became a “joke” to sarcastically imply Iphone’s high price and the content about how much people would give up for an Iphone. Before Apple announced the release would be delayed, a large amount of people has already sold their kidneies and gathered the money for Iphone, but now, the money in the hand seem to be burning because there exist other smart phone brand which is as good as Iphone but only of half price of Iphone. So, Apple increased the risk of losing its customer to competitors.

Second, delay release create chance for second-hand over-sea purchase. People in Hong Kong and other countries would grab this chance to make profit by selling Iphone on the Internet, decreasing Apple’s brand authenticity and in-store experience. Moreover, when it released in China, it will not be as tempting as it first released in Semptember.

In modern world, everything is happening so fast that not one single delay is tolerable. I believe the price that Apple will pay for this delay is brutal.

Alibaba might be strange to people outside of China. However, in China, the concentration of Alibaba to Internet is like Nitrogen to the air.

Starting in 1999, a time when internet-based business was a unexplored territory, Alibaba Group focuses on e-commerce businesses, including business-to-business online web portals, online retail and payment services, a shopping search engine and data-centric cloud computing services. Business got further enlarged when it cooperates with Taobao, eBay.com in China, features nearly a billion products and is one of the 20 most-visited websites globally. For every one of the billions deal made on Taobao, Alibaba needs to be used for connecting customer and seller at least 3 times.

Without knowing the background of Alibaba, it might be a shock to hear that on the date of historic initial public offering, Alibaba has earned a market value measured as US$231 billion, an unprecedented record in American history.

What that triggers my interest is, why does Alibaba, a Chinese brand rooted in China, have to be launched in America? And if we look even closer, we would find out that there are 14 Chinese technology companies offered initial public offering globally, and 9 of them were launched into America markets. Moreover, Chinese technology companies were at the leading place in American capitalism market, seizing 4 places in the top ten largest initial public offering.

The answer, later I find out, can be simply put in this way: They can’t. They simply unable to launch into domestic market because it could not coordinates A-share, the main kind of stock regulation in mainland China market, and even cannot in launch at Hong Kong due to violation of certain types of management and needs to corporate government structure.

The fact is disappointing for both Alibaba Group, and vast amount of Chinese investors. For Alibaba, it cannot enjoy Chinese market that contains unlimited potential. For shareholders,being unable to buy shares from such a newly rised company is such a shame.