Monthly Archives: November 2014

The Arc Initiative provides social entrepreneurs with the necessary tools and opportunities to making a lasting and influential impact.

Social entrepreneurship is, broadly speaking, innovation towards “[disrupting] the status quo and [transforming] our world.” The Arc Initiative seeks to foster social entrepreneurs that seek to make a lasting and significant impact in areas of society that are often ignored. Alternatively speaking, the Arc Initiative fills in the gaps that organizations, such as the UN, will inevitably miss or need to ignore even when fully funded. The Arc Initiative paves way for innovators, such as Arielle Uwonkunda, that are able to see issues within their communities that the UN, harbouring broader goals, would often overlook or would be unfamiliar with. Unlike charitable organizations or even organizations such as the UN, which usually administer temporary relief to pressing issues, social entrepreneurs employ long-term programs to mend an issue over time with more lasting results. While organizations like the UN are still important for their global scaled operations and well laid out goals, programs like the arc initiative that “build a bridge” between individuals seeking an opportunity to make specific yet lasting impacts are necessary to heal society. With differing goals that work hand in hand, both types of organizations, ones that work to resolve familiar issues (the Arc Initiative) and ones that work to broadly halt the growth of issues (the UN) must exist in order for changes to be lasting, noticeable, and influential.

Upward Arc

http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/Global_Reach/ARC_Initiative

http://skollworldforum.org/about/what-is-social-entrepreneurship/

In being sustainable, businesses must not only pay attention to their profits, but also to the environment as well as the people. The government has a role in setting up these regulations.

In response to Michelle Su’s blog, “Dont’ Shame Businesses,” I agree with Michelle’s suggestions and viewpoints regarding the importance and possibility of sustainability, however, I would like to offer a slightly alternative viewpoint. Currently, there exists a major debate regarding profit maximizing firms, one regarding the social responsibility of said firms. In seeking to maximize profits and effectively minimizing costs, firms often forego steps to create a sustainable business and this is raising concerns for many activists. I empathize with Michelle’s claims that if firms are able to be aware of their operations and slowly seek to make changes, firms can effectively create economic benefits for themselves as well as social benefits for others. My opinions differ with Michelle’s in the role of the government. While Michelle dismisses governments as slow reactors to social change, I believe that the government plays a major role in social responsibility and sustainability. By setting regulations and standards that businesses can, over time, adapt to, the government can more effectively keep profit maximizing companies at bay and persuade them to adopt more sustainable practices. In developing countries, the absence of government control can be seen with illegal or unethical practices and I believe that while companies can and should have a responsibility to be socially responsible, the government also has a role to impose a standard of social responsibility to the firms.

After doing an earlier post regarding Amazon’s new Kindle Fire, I was surprised and excited that Amazon has decided to once again diversify their services. Recently, in Toronto and Vancouver, Amazon has “[raised] the ante in Canada’s e-commerce battle by offering same day shipping” starting at $6.99 per delivery.

Amazon’s same day shipping is a respectful strategy that may give them a successful run in Canada.

Amazon is already  dominating the online shopping channel, yet Amazon has decided to take another risk with this new service. Amazon faces competition from leading retail stores, such as Walmart, that offers free same day shipping services, yet Amazon is confident in this new initiative; as Alexander Gagnon, the country manager, states “[it’s] all about convenience.” Amazon realizes that a major pain for customers is the long delivery times and customers are usually in a hurry to acquire their products; Amazon hopes to relieve this pain. Same-day shipping is a very common service in the United States, however, in Canada it is still a rare commodity and usually much more costly than $6.99. By keeping the service limited in Toronto and Vancouver, Amazon can effectively control a lower cost, due to a limited delivery frontier, while avoiding large scale competition. Amazon has strategically decided to develop this service in Canada, since it is a relatively fresh market. By adding yet another value proposition, Amazon seems to have a reliable future in their Canadian market.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/amazonca-raises-stakes-in-same-day-delivery-service/article21448160/

http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=8729023011

In response to Panos Mourdoukoutas’s Forbes blog post titled “Is Starbucks Losing Its Coolness?” I would like to offer my alternative, yet similar, viewpoint of competition. Mr. Mourdoukoutas outlines Starbucks’s original business plan, to be an “affordable luxury” coffee that would differentiate it from competitors such as “McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts.” In recent years, however, Starbucks has seemingly lost its edge with fluctuating stock prices as well as changing customer segments to “families and young children.” I believe that this is an issue of competition.

Starbucks No Longer in the Lead?

Recent years have been met with a ‘boom’ of many coffee stores: Blenz, Waves, and Pacific Coffee Company, to name a few, that all operate under a fairly similar business plan compared to Starbucks. In particular, highlighting Blenz Coffee, many products found in this rapidly popularizing Canadian coffee store are pricier and often ‘tastier’ than many Starbucks products – it is no surprise that Starbucks has begun to lose ground when met with all these strong competitors. With companies such as McDonald’s, which has begun to target a more luxurious sector, with the introduction of McCafe, Starbucks has shown no disappointment with their change in business plans to targeting a more diversely aged customer segment, as outlined by Mr. Mourdoukoutas. While facing formidable competitors, I believe that Starbucks’s widespread reputation may still allow the company to thrive if Starbucks can continue to modify their strategies to conform to changing tastes and situations.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2014/11/01/is-starbucks-losing-its-coolness/

Just yesterday, I was informed that my cable was cancelled and, to say the least, I was disappointed since I still regularly used the television. In response to Stella Cho’s blog “Cable Television: The New Old-Timer,” however, I take no reservations in agreeing that cable television is becoming ‘outdated’. The sheer quantity and growth of on-line media has simply been astounding in recent years. Sites such as Youtube, Twitch, or, as Stella outlined, Netflix cover most forms of video media. Sites such as Twitch can feature gaming videos that would be impossible to find on television and sites such as Netflix offer a wide database of movies at a cheap monthly subscription. There is a  noticeable disparity in value propositions and cable television is, simply put, not convenient. Movies or shows are scheduled to play at certain times whereas movies or series can be found and watched on-line at any time. I believe this issue of convenience is a major reason for the rapid and successful emergence of Chinese companies, such as XiaoMi, that offer on-line television services, through which users can watch videos on their television via an on-line network. While there will exist many cable television users for years to come, I believe that eventually the convenience of on-line media will displace cable television as a rare commodity.

https://blogs.ubc.ca/stellacho/