According to Milton Friedman’s saying that “the social responsibility of business is to increase profits”, the only target of firms in operation is to maximize their profits. Oppositely, there are some people who are will to forgo profits or even contribute their own savings to run a business.

They are social entrepreneurs.

(http://deliriantistiromani.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/socialenterprise_graphic2.png)

Social entrepreneurs do not sacrifice their profits because someone told them to do so but they have strong faith of changing the world little by little. Compared with local government, or the United Nations, social entrepreneurs are super heroes who can physically go to somewhere, get to know the people there, tell them “no worries, we can help you”, and do help them get rid of poverty, illness, and desperation.

Social entrepreneurs can do whatever they want and whatever they think will help the local. They may offer help in the form of a 27-dollar debt, a pair of shoes, or a training program.

To be distinct with social entrepreneurs, what the United Nations can do is quite limited even though it was fully funded. Those great international and official organizations often have more rules which have to be obey and have more restricts on what action is going to be taken. They might even hardly be able to know people who desperately need help well. Compared with United Nations, social entrepreneurs have more free.

That’s why I believe that even if the United Nations was fully funded, people still need social enterprise.

November 11th is the Remembrance Day in Canada, and people in China also celebrate on the same day, but for what they call a Single’s Day, for super discounts on online shopping websites.

This year’s Remembrance Day is the first Single’s Day Taobao.com it faced right after it became public this September. The total sale broke the gate of a billion RMB within the first minute of November 11th in China.

“The finance industry need a disrupter, it needs a outsider to come in and carry out a transformation,” Mr. Jack Ma, the co-funder of Taobao.com, said. We cannot doubt his words because his unlikely ascent and the amazing sale number has already proved to the public his great success.

(Mr. Jack Ma   Alibaba, via Associated Press)

However, not all the online retailers selling through Taobao.com enjoyed the crazy shopping festival. As some of them said, they even sustain losses on that day in exchange of a large number of sale.

Higher the quantity of supply, higher the average variable cost. The artificial festival causes a “blowout” of sales in November and December in exchange of the unexpected low sale in those two months. In other words, this festival breaks the equilibrium of the market and artificially makes a illusion of a super thriving market environment.

“I would rather not having such festival.” One of the anonymous Taobao retailer said. What is the real cost of a Single’s Day? Only the sellers know.

Related Article

The Unlikely Ascent of Jack Ma, Alibaba’s Founder, Neil Gough and Alexandra Stevenson, May 7th 2014

As a disruptor in food industry, refrigerated and frozen food thrives and gradually earn a place in the market and win bunch of consumers in these years. From the aspect of popularizing rate, it seems that refrigerated and frozen food can be considered a quite successful disruptive innovation in food category.

(http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06/09/300m_innovations/source/8.htm)

However, several months ago in New York, “Frozen food makers plan to launch their first national TV ad in defence of their products on Tuesday as the category fights to boost slipping sales.” (The Associated Press, 2014)

Compared with disruptive innovations in electronic device industry or entertainment market, which simply simplify people’s life and allows a whole new population of consumers who didn’t have corresponding high skills or were;t wealthy enough to enjoy such products or services, food market is much complex. People want to know what they eat directly which will stay in their body and digestion system for several hours and eventually be transformed into life energy.

Is the frozen food as fresh as fresh food? What is its component? Is there any nutrition left with it? … Consumers always have a galaxy of questions when it is related to their physical health. I guess why that is why the rise of the disruptive innovation, the refrigerated and frozen food does not severely affect neither the recent market of grocery nor the situation of restaurants or shops.

Related Article:

Food Industry To Air First TV Ad, The Associated Press, Published Monday, May 12, 2014 12:50PM EDT 

Mainly focuses on media entertainment market (such as films and series) and costs very little while providing high quality goods (or services), Netflix is considered as taking a Focus Strategy (low cost).

(http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2012/10/netflix-100010107-orig.png)

According to Porter’s Generic Strategies, “firms that succeed in a focus strategy are able to tailor a broad range of product development strengths to a relatively narrow market segment that they know very well” (QuickMBA.com, 2010). That is exactly what Netflix did and is doing.

By providing high quality video clips and charging relatively quite little fees online, Netflix thrives. Began as a little firm in America in 1997, Netflix is now a worldwide-known website and performing quite well in stock market. (more to read: Aman Jain, Netflix, Inc. International Expansion: A Test For Margins)

Netflix’s success is also a noticeable success among disruptive innovations. Being an entertainment rental disruptor, Netflix forced change within the world of entertainment rentals and pushing a need for convenience by offering technologically improved ways of accessing of all types of video.

However, it took about 20 years for Netflix to be as successful as today, and there are still a bunch of barriers stop Netflix from opening a wider international market as the new article mentioned.

Will Netflix be more successful? Are all the disruptive innovations share similar fate as Netflix? Will disruptive innovations somehow become sustaining innovations? How long will the transforming process take? There are still a lot of questions left without answers.

People never know who is looking at them on Facebook.

Our parents? Our possible employer? Our college classmates? Or just any stranger who  search “people who eat ricotta with their fingers at midnight”(Sengupta, 2013)?

People, attention! Facebook is not THAT safe and secure as we might think. Somini Sengupta’s article Staying Private on the New Facebook, published by The New York Times, mainly says that Facebook’s new search engine now allows complete strangers to browser all the users’ profiles and get any information they want if posted. And, of course, allow marketers to show suitable advertisements.

(http://socialnicole.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/08/Facebook-Graph-Search.png)

Well, this might be an old “news” – it was posted in 2013. The privacy and ethical issues raised by the update of Facebook’s search tool, however, is still worth people’s deliberation.

As Trent mentioned in his blog entry Protecting Your Privacy on the New Facebook, “It is well known that Facebook generates most of its revenue from advertisements… In my opinion, Facebook has done nothing wrong.” I cannot agree more.

Milton Friedman said that maximizing the profit by taking any possible methods legally is the duty of businesses. If it makes people feel uncomfortable to expose certain information to the public, do NOT post it online first.

How hard is it for government to decide and actually build a dam in a small village? It might not be that hard for governments in other areas in Canada or in other countries, such as China and United States, but it IS very hard for B.C. government to get what they want, especially when there is First Nation issue involved.

(http://www.vancouversun.com/life/First+Nation+chiefs+stage+Site+showdown/10215965/story.html?__federated=1#__federated=1)

Peter O’Nell published an article on Vancouver Sun reporting a recent disagreement about building a dam between the first nation group and B.C. government (First Nation chiefs to stage Site C showdown: Group argues flooding valley would impair their rights to fish, hunt and use the area for ceremonial purposes).

First nation is a special group of people in Canada. It seems that they have special laws or rules to protect their own good and benefits. So for businesses which plan to take natural or labor resources from first nation’s places, such as Blueberry Rive area, as industry input, they need to think about whether it is even possible to reach such resources before coming up with a whole detailed business plan.

After all it is still a serious problem for the government to build a dam in those areas.

Businesses have to recruit well.

During all the previous COMM101 classes, we were taught to use complex (or not complex at all) theories to analysis business, find the most proper market strategy, and make businesses better ones.

What else do businesses need other than perfect theoretical reports? People, definitely!

(http://blogging4jobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/re-recruiting.jpg)

I can’t agree more with Mark Suster’s blog entry “Why Recruiting Isn’t Over When an Employee Accepts Your Offer”. As a former entrepreneur and a present VC at GRP Partners, he wrote from inside aspects of businesses and shows people what a business, or what a businessman, is like.

Mark’s blog, Bothsides of The Table, doesn’t only teach people how to recruit well and keep new forces after recruiting, but also tell business fundamentals as what we learned during COMM101 classes. But in a more interesting way (I’m not saying that COMM101 classes are boring).

Personally, as a student who never took any business or even economics courses before, I found this blog quite practical because all the blog entries combine the blogger’s own business experience and theoretical material, that’s why its both educational but also entertain people.

Just like the recruitment article. After spending several minutes reading through the whole article with nice mood, now I now that recruitment is a continuous work but not ends immediately after someone accept the offers.

Related Article: Why Recruiting Isn’t Over When an Employee Accepts Your Offer

Recommended Blog: Bothsides of The Table

I got up early on weekends as usual and opened my Podcast. Randomly picked a TED topic, to be specific, “Gabriel Barcia-Colombo: My DNA Vending Machine”, I enjoyed my breakfast as listening to it, and almost choked on my bread.

A DNA vending machine? Seriously?

(http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/13rqtiAPISY/maxresdefault.jpg)

Forgive me that I am neither an artist nor a biologist, so that I can barely appreciate the artistic connotation or innovative scientific ideas, or whatever you call, containing in such a vending machine. From a commerce student’s view, I deeply worry about this vending machine’s life cycle and ethical issues it possibly is going to raise.

I roughly read through the comments under the talk, and was not surprised to find a lot of people claiming their unwillingness of “donating” or “selling” their DNA segments, with their photo on a lovely little white container. I don’t want to either. And I really doubt whether there is anyone who truly want to spend even a buck on buying others saliva, which is claimed as pieces of art with DNA. And god knows what people are going to do with such piece of DNA. Probably clone another you.

Truly, I do appreciate the creativity and bravery of Garbriel, who came up with this idea, but I can also present how unrealistic such idea is by doing a supply and demand analysis. Well, things happen anyway. Probably I should try to enjoy such kind of DNA sample’s beauty before giving definite criticizes.

Is nowadays mothers’ daily behavior of making baby food on their own pernicious? I doubt.

(http://ts1.mm.bing.net/th?&id=HN.608016057774377162&w=300&h=300&c=0&pid=1.9&rs=0&p=0)

Similar to Pierre and the writer of the article “Pernicious Moms Threaten Capitalism” Rebecca, I have serious ethical concerns about Beech-Nut Nutrition President, Jeff Boutelle, or to be general, the businessmen.

Yes, it IS important for business to make profit, to make money, and honestly that is the main reason of the existence of business. Milton Friedman said, “The social responsibility of business is to increase profits” and it seems for him the only social responsibility of business is to maximize their profit but not spend even one buck on charity or other social matters. I guess that is why Jeff Boutelle thought moms’ attempt of making their own baby food is pernicious. OMG they are threatening the development of baby food companies because they are not going to buy their products anymore! How dangerous!

…Seriously? That is the funniest joke I’ve never heard. Guess what? Babies’ health, reduction of environment footprint, saving natural resources… I will say, any of those matters is definitely more important than making more profits from social concern.

Perhaps it is the time for businessmen to put down their calculators and have a look at the beautiful world.

I was attracted by the title. Did cocaine use by bankers cause the global financial crisis? This is definitely a genius title, combining drug issue, celebrities, and what people care most about, money.

Cocaine: usage among bankers has been said to be commonplace in the City and Wall Street. Photograph: Rex Features/Simon Webster

Let’s treat the title as a serious question. Thanks to Prof. Gateman, I learn to define a question before answering.

First, what is the ‘global financial crisis’ on earth? Inflation? Currency devaluation? Credit crunch? What is it?

And why ‘bankers’? Are bankers the only group of people who take cocaine? Are bankers the only group people who potentially affect the global financial trend? Why not economists? Why not Jobs? (No offence.)

Why ‘cocaine’? Is cocaine the only substance stimulates people’s brain and makes people 110% believe what they are talking about but indeed know nothing about it? According to my experience, Vodka works as well.

What I want to say here is that this article does not have any great reference value apart from its genius title. Probably I’ll make it as my blog title this time, but I need to change it a little bit apparently.

How about this? Did cocaine use by bankers truly cause ‘the global financial crisis’?

And I’ll say, “I don’t think so.”

Please refer to the article: ‘Did cocaine use by bankers cause the global financial crisis?‘ http://www.theguardian.com/business/shortcuts/2013/apr/15/cocaine-bankers-global-financial-crisis