Wai Lung (Andy) Mao's Blog

The person that first comes to my mind when I hear the word “entrepreneur” is Steve Jobs. Today he is the CEO and Chairperson of the powerful Apple Inc. In today’s society it is impossible to not have the desire to place our hands on an apple product, such as their newly released Iphone 4 and their Ipod nano 6th Gen. His entrepreneurship” can be summarized under two main categories, risk and innovation.

Risks

In today’s highly competitive electronic industry, Apple is placing themselves on the hot spot. New ideas must be brought on the table everyday to avoid being consumed by their competitors such as Samsung, Sony, and Blackberry. Their products must meet high demands in the industry against the competitors’ such as the newly released Blackberry Torch.

Innovation

The iPhone 4 is regarded as one of the most innvative phones in human history. Its features include a full touch screen, two way camera chat and wifi connectivity to emails and video entertainments. Furthermore, Apply has launched over 300,000 apps since 2008 to constantly improve their products. Over 1 million Iphone 3G were sold within the first three days and an estimated $300 million was made as a result.

The chart below displays how much of an impact Apple products have influenced the world.

After our last COM 101 class, I was tempted to do more research about the risks for financial investments. One of the biggest reasons behind our 2008 recession is caused by the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers. During the month of May, shareholders were constantly selling their shares. As more and more people sold their shares, the Lehman Brother’s share value went up and down drastically. By the end of that week, Lehman Brothers were losing 8 million dollars a minute.

The big question is what were the significant effects to the rest of the world? Lehman Brother was one of America’s oldest and largest banks. Its bankruptcy not only caused negative effects to the banking industry but also caused a big unemployment.  Thousands of people lost their job and it also helped push the United Kingdom into recession.

This is an example of the risks behind share-holders. The share-holder only gains money if the stock is raising its value, but there is a maximum point in which it can go up. Sadly the value of the stock went down and thousands of thousands of people suffered over the world.

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sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPOtQkSiCk8

Treanor, Jill. “Banking crisis: Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy protection.”guardian. N.p., 18/sep/2008. Web. 3 Oct 2010. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/15/lehmanbrothers.creditcrunch>.

Joshi , Mohit . “Lehman Brothers’ collapse to be subject of BBC film.” top news. N.p., 19/aug/2009. Web. 3 Oct 2010. <http://www.topnews.in/lehman-brothers-collapse-be-subject-bbc-film-2203702>.

In our last COM 101 class we had a Finance guest speaker, Murray Carlson, to give us a brief understanding of finance. We discussed why Wal-Mart was planning to bid the South African retailer Massmart with such a big risk. We found out that in the long-run Wal-Mart will gain substantial profit from the company if everything goes well. One of their primary purposes of the investment was to transfer their wealth in time.

The two graphs below shows two different types of investments

The column on the left shows how employee will get a stable and safe earning but it will always be constant and there will be no way of buying a big house and a luxurious car.

The column on the left shows how in the long-run the entrepreneur will have the chance of being extremely rich but with a very high risk of losing.

Finally we had two volunteers in class to demonstrate how one could lose everything or gain twice as much by one chance as an entrepreneur. The employee volunteer had many chances to earn more but ended up only gaining very little.

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sources:

https://www.vista.ubc.ca/webct/urw/lc5116011.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct

As technology is in its booming age, consumers around the globe are constantly exposed to new gadgets.  The Apple Ipad has finally bet its new rival, the Blackberry Playbook. With only half the weight of an ipad, the Blackberry Playbook contains many exclusive features.

For example, the Blackberry Playbook has its advanced security feature with which gives consumers better security. This ultra slim tablet is compatible with Adobe flash which allows consumers to entertain themselves with online videos.

The Playbook’s biggest feature is probably its ability to allow Blackberry owners to connect with their phone and to have access to the phone’s content. This will allow one to “play [and] manipulate” the phone’s information with a bigger virtual image.[1]

Despite all its benefit to consumers, is this really an ethical way to make money? Will this gadget race result in a lack of valuable resources that will be harmful for our next generation?  Nevertheless, we have to admit that both the Ipad and the Playbook are both very attracting business tools that will benefit us at least in the short term.

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[1]“BlackBerry unveil the PlayBook to rival iPad.” N.p., 28/09/2010. Web. 30 Sep 2010. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbSpBHwVNH8>.

Sources:

Ganapati, Priva. “RIM Unveils Tethered Tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook.” RIM Unveils Tethered Tablet, the BlackBerry PlayBook. N.p., 27/09/2010. Web. 30 Sep 2010. <http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/09/blackberry-playbook-tablet/>.

Heimbuch, Jaymi. “Treehugger.” Green Features We Love in Apple’s New iPad. N.p., 27/01/2010. Web. 30 Sep 2010. <http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/green-features-we-love-in-apples-new-ipad.php>.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbSpBHwVNH8



From our class discussion, we brought up the topic on whether Lieber Light Company should decrease its product price by 15% to attract more customers. Firstly, by lowering the price of the product, Lieber Light must be losing a substantial amount of profit. Attracting customers and selling more products will serve no good to the company if it means losing profit. Secondly, if Lieber light decides to stick with the original price, it might risk the chance of losing its current long-term customers. Thirdly, Lieber Light used fixed cost to calculate their overheads instead of using contribution margin which caused misleading figures.

Vancouver Light’s created such an enormous impact to Lieber light by simply finding ways to cut down its cost, thus lowering its break-even points. Hence, it was able to sell products at a relatively lower price to move its demand up. Not only is the Canadian company attracting its local consumers but also ones in America. Different SWOT analysis should be consulted and analyzed for Lieber Light to stay alive with its competitor.

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Sources:

“roof101.” Skylight Manufacturers. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Sep 2010. <http://www.roof101.com/skylights/skylight-manufacturers.php>.

https://www.vista.ubc.ca/webct/urw/lc5116011.tp0/cobaltMainFrame.dowebct

The first thing that came up to my mind from “business ethical issues” is child labour. Most consumers including ourselves don’t realize we are constantly purchasing goods, such as chocolate were made from child labour.

Believe it or not, half of the world’s chocolate production is produced in Ivory Coast of Africa by child labour. Brands such as Mars, Hershey’s and Nestle are no exception.  Most family members make only $30 – $108 annually. In order to survive, 286,000 children between the ages of nine and twelve have no choice but to give up their education to work for those unethical companies and do dangerous labour.  From what I learned in economics, as the cost of a product goes down, the seller would want to sell more. According to the consumers’ incentives we would want to buy more as things are cheaper.  Thus, as a result to fulfill our own personal satification, we have created a world of child labour.

 It is ironic how we purchase chocolate to please our children in our community, while at the same time making children at different parts the world suffer. Next time when we go trick or treating, take some time to think if the chocolate is a TRICK or a “treat.”

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http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12754

http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://www.dentalcarenetwork.com.au/assets/images/Chocolate.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.dentalcarenetwork.com.au/news/2008/09/20/does-chocolate-make-you-smile/&usg=__zkqFZIW1BTuWlsKM5rvmjyxqHB8=&h=335&w=419&sz=68&hl=en&start=15&zoom=1&tbnid=kDzUgHvyEl4sEM:&tbnh=149&tbnw=177&prev=/images%3Fq%3Divory%2Bcoast%2Bcocoa%2Bchild%2Blabour%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1276%26bih%3D645%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=94&ei=rmKSTMqvCYLEsAPLkNi_Cg&oei=Q2KSTJmfDIm8sAPBwIjACg&esq=4&page=2&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:15&tx=123&ty=44

http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://fairtradenaropa.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/fairtrade1.jpg%3Fw%3D448%26h%3D336&imgrefurl=http://fairtradenaropa.wordpress.com/chocolate/&usg=__k2O2kjPFYGcv86R4tzlX9AUL3lo=&h=336&w=448&sz=37&hl=en&start=51&zoom=1&tbnid=BM2xgQQ4gxIzZM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=217&prev=/images%3Fq%3Divory%2Bcoast%2Bcocoa%2Bchild%2Blabour%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1276%26bih%3D645%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=266&ei=pending&oei=Q2KSTJmfDIm8sAPBwIjACg&esq=2&page=4&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:51&tx=104&ty=24

http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://blog.timesunion.com/schenectady/files/2009/10/trickortreat.jpg&imgrefurl=http://blog.timesunion.com/schenectady/date/2009/10/&usg=__eHCV6d2rw9a0s1WePoKm2tgL1d0=&h=400&w=300&sz=13&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=ggKdqFaVC69DkM:&tbnh=158&tbnw=117&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtrick%2Bor%2Btreat%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1276%26bih%3D645%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=1039&vpy=91&dur=219&hovh=259&hovw=194&tx=154&ty=104&ei=1WKSTPi6HoucsQOywdTkCQ&oei=1WKSTPi6HoucsQOywdTkCQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:0

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