Month: November 2011

If any person and company have exemplified entrepreneurship in the recent times, it would be Mark Zuckerberg and breakthrough company Facebook. From its humble roots as an online website connecting Harvard students to the multi-billion dollar company that is used in almost every corner of the globe, Facebook is an astounding example of how far entrepreneurship can take a person.

Mark Zuckerberg’s radically simple and intuitive layout allowed Facebook to reach countless new markets and finds many fast revenue streams.  I find Facebook particularly innovative as these new sources of money come from innovations like games, advertisements, and apps that in turn drive new entrepreneurship among other companies.

Facebook was also a risky endeavour to undertake and Mark Zuckerberg himself took great risks in order to further his company. I admire his willingness to believe in his idea enough that he dropped out of the prestigious Harvard and a chance for comfortable life to create a company that he was passionate about. As a result, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook are renowned for changing the way that you, I, and the entire social media industry thinks about bringing the world together and connecting each one of us.

As I get closer and closer to finishing my first term at Sauder, I’ve been thinking more about where I want my degree to take me in the future. As I was reading my classmates’ blogs, Chloe Chow’s blog addressed one of the big issues nagging in the back of my head: What will my degree get me?

According to Chloe and Francesca Preece’s blog, a university degree isn’t worth much with these lackluster economic times. Both blogs talk about the difficultly in competing for too few jobs among too many applicants. Consequently there are also more university educated students now, diluting the worth of what was traditionally a valuable qualification.

However Chloe’s blog suggests that this problem can be tackled by incorporating an active social, work, and volunteer experiences to bolster degrees while Francesca feels that students should pursue more trade orientated careers in place of a university. Francesca blog does present a valid point on the oversaturation of degrees but I agree more with Chloe’s argument that degrees are still valuable when augmented with life experience. No matter how bad the times can get, comprehensive university education combined with useful life experience will always be in demand.

Declining Value of University Degree Video

Remember the good ol’ days of going to the print shop to develop your photos or actually having to taking quality into consideration before snapping a shot? Well now an era is drawing to an end for the company whose name had become synonymous with all things photographic. It’s sad time for the Kodak when blog’s, such as Don Reisinger’s, are saying that Kodak’s patent portfolio may be worth more than the company itself. Couple this with recent news that Kodak is selling a 10% percent portion of their patents just to stay afloat; it seems Kodak’s last fight for survival. In the recent years, Kodak’s decline has been due to its inability to adapt to the changing photography market and it is now suffering the effects of losing its points of difference against competitors who have filled niches or can produce cheaper. I feel that Kodak had such potential to innovate and use their strength of size to aggressively expand as opposed to letting their threats take advantage of their complacency. Personally, it’s sad for me to see the company whose products captured my childhood memories fade away like an old photo but I cannot see Kodak recovering this time.