” If  the United Nations was fully funded why would we need the Arc or social enterprise”?

Although the United Nations is more or less fully funded and a huge organization it is still necessary to have programs like the ARC and social enterprise.

The United Nations works on peacekeeping, peace building, conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance. So mainly a lot of their aim is to prevent conflicts from happening and being active once disaster occurs. They are the first helping contact of a lot of social issues and provide things like aid to those in need.

This is great and certainly needed but programs like the ARC and social enterprise have a different intentions and outcomes. They focus on the recovery of people and development of businesses in less fortunate places after the events have happened. This rebuilding process is different in the sense that they focus on business development and is more localized compared to the UN. Furthermore, the impact of ARC and social enterprise is more delayed and takes time to yield results compared to the immediate assistance the UN provides.

ARC and social enterprise look at building towards a better future through developing people’s skills. By teaching them business fundamentals and allowing them to apply it to their own goals concludes in improving the overall efficiency of the society and quality of goods and services in the region. A good way to look at it would be the UN is the past and present and social enterprise is the future. Both are equally as important and vulnerable to failure if carried out wrongly.

References:

http://www.un.org/en/

Original link: http://business.financialpost.com/2014/11/06/telus-winning-the-battle-to-attract-new-customers-and-keep-existing-ones/?__lsa=c953-850a

This article talks about Telus in the wireless market and how with the recent quarterly reports is shown to be a leader in customer retention and attracting new customers. The other big players of the wireless market Rogers and Bell did not have as promising results despite Rogers being the current largest wireless provider in Canada.

Through my personal analysis of all three companies by first-hand experience, it was very evident that Telus of the three companies had the friendliest customer service. Customer service and organizational culture is so important in the wireless market. Customers are constantly looking to upgrade their software, and run into problems. Wireless has become so readily available that customer segments of all age groups are being tapped. Hence, the older and less tech-savvy segment require this friendly, and helpful customer service.

Being an ex-Rogers user I experienced a lack of information on their website, difficulties navigating through their help lines and inefficient automated hotline services. This ultimately made me switch to Bell and emphasizes how customer services like call centres and front desk staff may not be the core of the business, however, it is important to invest thoroughly in the area as it reflects the company as a whole.

Like discussed in class 19, there are so many benefits in creating a company with a positive culture. Telus is doing this right and aside from this is persistently looking to improve their wireless systems to make them easy to use and affordable.

If Rogers wants to remain the top firm it needs to reassess its company culture and invest into customer relations as well as improving the wireless systems.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/saving/article-2823396/Twice-money-stolen-banks-accounts-banks-admit-MPs-warned.html

The article talks about how MPs found that twice as much money is being stolen from bank accounts than what is reported by banks themselves. This is a business ethical issue as concealing information about stolen funds is ethically unjust to the public.

Banks for hundreds if not thousands of years have been the primary place for society to store their savings. The easy to understand interest rates given and security of major banking firms make it the primary place for the public to invest their money. However, after this scandal it highlights that the customer’s money isn’t necessarily safe and it is not ethical for the banks to hide this information.

With gold spiralling to a new low in the past four years and the instable economy making shares, and bonds risky, leaves society clueless to where to store their earnings if the banks can’t be trusted. Banks operate under the assumption of trust and loyalty so for this to be breached highlights a major flaw in the firms.

Some may argue that by hiding this information and regaining the money back by other means reflects on no difference to the customers of the bank. In the end of the day they will be earning the expected rate, and their sum of money is considered to be “safe”. To me ignorance is not bliss in this scenario because the values of the bank should be transparency, trust and loyalty. By being unethical in hiding the information they challenge these values and depict to the public that what is happening to customer’s money may not be what is expected.

Banks should step up and take the ethical route in dispensing correct information.

References:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/investing/article-2823868/Gold-spirals-four-year-low-sparking-talk-fall-1-000.html

Original link: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/09/facebook-to-acquire-instagram-for-1-billion/

Shiv Vashisht’s blog link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/shivvashisht/

It was actually quite staggering to find out that Instagram was worth so much money even in 2012 where the app was although popular, relatively new and upcoming. In recent times everyone has heard of the app from the old to new generation. It serves multiple purposes from passionate photographers showing their art, promoting events through #hashtags, and simply small things like showing your friends what you ate for dinner.

The add-free app really highlights how apps don’t necessarily need to gain revenue through advertising but can generate revenue through its usefulness and community. Facebook has successfully capitalized on this app’s huge customer base by linking it with Facebook. As users update their Instragram photos the photo also has the option to be shared through Facebook. This has the a double effect where Facebook users who see posts of Instagram photos also download that app, vice versa and is exactly what I did.

Shiv is correct in saying that at its launch Instagram under Porter’s generic strategies was a product of differentiation. It emphasized that popularity through differentiation will lead into other firms in building upon similar ideas. I feel that without the success of Instagram other apps such as Snapchat that relies on mainly taking photos would have not been developed. The concept of social media through only photographs seemed strange to me at first because social media sites like Facebook, and MySpace have the option to share photos as well. Hence, making Instagram seem not very useful.

Under my analysis I feel that their key to success came through the blow-up of the #hashtag that links one photo to many others or creates trends like #throwbackthursdays giving people a common topic to post about.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/metro/Unilateral+park+declared+Tsilhqot+includes+Prosperity+mine/10192766/story.html

After reading the article I decided to blog about the view from both perceptions. The mining company and also the first nations.

Firstly, from the view of the mining companies this huge plot of land rich in resources and is a huge opportunity. Such an opportunity will provide many employment chances for local population, bringing large income to Canada and also boost the raw material pool of Canada. A point that might be argued is that all of Canada’s land is rightfully owned by natives so whether they construct a mine in this area or another, they are going to constantly be fighting a battle against a First Nations tribe to claim rights to the land.

On the flip side, thinking as a First Nation will conclude that the lands natural beauty, wildlife and diverse environment makes it important to protect. The construction of a new site will spoil the eco-system as it will have knock on affects to other water streams and wildlife hunting in the area. Hence, it should be preserved at all costs and no form of capital can replace the natural gains of the area.

Now combining both sides of the story it is evident that both groups need to collaborate to come up with an agreement. The question will be where, and how much land can be used for the mine site so that it has the least impact on the environment. Also, both sides should ensure the sustainability  of operations once the agreement has been met and this can be assisted by government rules and regulations. It’s important to drive economic growth in Canada but Canadian companies must always keep in mind the land heritage and respect the First Nations. Many of the previous plans have failed because companies have failed to take this into consideration. To satisfy both sides both parties need to be actively conversing from the start and not meet once one side has come up with a proposal.

http://steveblank.com/2014/01/06/15756/

Steve Blanks blog on continuous deployment is immediately caught my eye because it uses Tesla, a case study we used in class, as an example. In the blog he talks about how companies are beginning to explore outside traditional business models like Waterfall product development into agile continuous development schemes.

Firstly, the concept of Waterfall product development influences consumers to purchase the new and improved goods or services the firms provide. By creating different, new and improved goods such as faster computers, better cards or new phones this creates a revenue stream that is continuous over time. Consumers will replace their existing goods with new goods even sometimes when the old good is still useable but they desire that upgraded new god.

This reflects how it is common for the modern society to discard working and good electronic devices for new ones. We do not need them but want them because they are new, better and trendy. This creates a huge amount of electronic waste and is a very unsustainable way of living. By producing goods after goods and not fully utilizing old goods it causes a major wastage.

By companies like Tesla and Adobe fighting this and having this agile development that looks at improving existing items incrementally makes their products more sustainable. By improving a car quarterly by updates is way more efficient and sustainable than buying a new car every 5 years. In Adobes case providing subscribers to new software allows Adobe to have a steady monthly income instead of annual spikes during the release of new products. This is more sustainable because instead of purchasing new software, you simply upgrade your existing software.

Although this is sustainable and appears to be a great idea, Steve Blank highlights a very crucial point which I agree with. The consumer mentality of wanting new things. It is as he says, irrational, inefficient and illogical.

In conclusion, I hope that this new business concept of continuous development and upgrades kicks off because not only is it way more sustainable but it could save consumers as well as producers a lot of resources. With the way we are striving forward unsustainably in the past decade, we will lead to a resource shortage, so hopefully with time large companies will understand this problem and address it accordingly by modifying their business models and values.

Original blog:https://blogs.ubc.ca/kenjiseng/

Article from – http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/business/in-suburban-seattle-new-nests-for-chinas-rich.html?ref=business&_r=0

It is an interesting article that really highlights the issue of many countries. The developing countries that host many millionaires/billionaires like India, Indonesia and Thailand that face social issues like traffic congestion, overcrowding, pollution and so on actually pressure those who are wealthy to immigrate to other countries.

Like China in this example, many of the wealthy tycoons are choosing to move and essentially spend their capital overseas. This reduces the economy of their local countries and actually improve the economy of their countries of destination.

Places like China face a problem where they need to continuously grow and develop but need to find a way to maintain the countries wealthy people. A good idea would be to simply create a desirable area to reside in within the country only for the wealthy but this sparks social injustices and could perhaps cause social tensions.

Kenji is right in saying that this type of immigration largely benefits the target destinations as rich Chinese people are purchasing expensive goods and services adding to the economy. Furthermore, creating established businesses in those new “homes”. But the more important issue that this raises is the loss of wealth associated with this move to the home country.

There might still be income derived from areas like remittance and the rich tycoons running their businesses from overseas however by losing this demographic of people will impact the economy in more ways than one. So, to conclude countries like China need to also consciously look to improve the quality of life if it wishes to maintain the higher-income cohort and improve things like local education systems to reduce the amount of talent lost to other countries. With migration and travel being so readily available in modern society it will prove to be quite a challenge to achieve this.

Oringinal Link: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/sep/05/oil-companies-british-petroleum-should-pay-oil-spills-pollution-greenhouse-gas

This is an interesting article that highlights the impact oil spills have had on the environment and how famous spill like BP gulf of Mexico incident have improved legislations and rules on oil rigs but greenhouse gas emission has continued to remain in the shadows.

It would be ethical for large production companies to take it up themselves to try and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. However, this will impact the amount of profit. It appears that there needs to be a disaster similar to the BP oil spill to generate pressure for these production companies to impose rules and restrictions.

Prior to the BP oil spill there were only a small conservation group that was rallying against the oil rigs and measurements of extracting oil from offshore rigs that were occurring. After the spill there was much more public involvement with the issue and BP responded in spending millions to try and repair the issue but furthermore implement new regulations that will stop this from happening in the future. It’s ironic that there needs to be a big disaster for things to change.

Large companies should prepare for these disasters before they even occur and place procedures that prevent them. Currently many large production companies are producing greenhouse gases at an unsustainable manner but they are unnoticed as unlike an oil-spill there is no immediate visual impact of emissions. By adding more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere it is adding to the effect of climate change. Sadly, it will be too late to spend millions to try and revert climate change once it has already occurred so business need to take action now. They need to put profits aside and ethically decide what needs to be done.

Origincal link: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29431412

Windows has unveiled its new operating system Windows 10, a large move away from its recent Windows 8 system. It is reintroducing its Start menu and reverting back to the successes of Windows XP and steering away from the failures of Windows 8 style

Buying a Windows 8 computer a few months ago was a change for me as I went from Macintosh to a new ASUS windows 8. Similar to a lot of the users of Windows 8 I was initially very lost with the layout and features of the Windows 8 platform. This common problem faced by a lot of the consumers of the Windows 8 largely impacted the sales of Windows. As mentioned in the article, most people are still using the obsolete windows XP version which was successful in its easy to navigate and user friendly style.

The launch of windows 8 was an example to product differentiation as Windows hoped to create a cross platform for all tablet/smartphone/computer but received negative feedback as people who purchased the computers hoped for the traditional easy to use Windows style. This is where the competitors Macintosh soared in sales as their iOS barely changed but only came with easy to adjust to improvements.

By Microsoft reverting back to the Start menu and marketing it as an improved version of the original successful Windows XP will gain popular recognition. This is a classic example of how product differentiation did not work and it is smart for Microsoft to act quickly on this matter to regain its lost market of consumers.

Microsoft being one of the largest companies it was a bold move to drastically change its operating system and in my opinion it should only try to improve what is already has because its brand is well-known and popular for what it has done in the past, so to change it is risky.

Original link: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29421555

Netflix has announced that it will be working with the film company Weinstein, to produce its first full feature-length film next year.

This move by the company Netflix reflects how dramatically the company has changed from when it first started in 1997. From starting as a postal DVD rental service, to moving to a major online pay-to-stream platform and subsequently producing Netflix original TV series. The large revenue Netflix has grossed from monthly subscribers of customers has allowed the company to expand its business.

Its success in the TV series that are Netflix originals, like the “House of Cards,” has boosted the brand image and name from not only a platform of watching existing films and series but producing original and successful content.

By moving to full feature Films, Netflix opens another corridor for opportunity. By releasing films on Netflix the same time as movie theatres, it will influence movie-goers to rethink spending money on going out, buying movie tickets and traveling. Instead they will resort to paying a small subscription fees to watch movies in the comfort of their own home on Netflix.

Although beneficial for Netflix, could this possibly harm the cinema industry? Obviously, the experience of iMAX is incomparable to watching a film at home but with ever-improving home entertainment systems like surround sound, 3D television and extremely high quality TVs this could strike up a very competitive alternative. I foresee most people would much prefer to watch films with privacy and comfort of their homes and this can largely impact the cinema industry.