After reading the articles and news, I understand about more about arc initiative and social entrepreneurship. We can join these two projects in order to contribute to our society.

I believed that the reason why we still need arc initiative and social entrepreneurship when we already have United Nation is because we can join those two originations easily. Social entrepreneurs are aimed to help to create social value in order to make improvements on system and create solution to certain problem. Arc is an organization, which gathers the business people in Canada, alumni from UBC, connecting to the global community and deliver knowledge to the world. These organizations provide us with a direct change to make contributions to our society.

Arc Initiative – Fueling Entrepreneurship

United Nation is indeed a powerful origination, and it mainly focus on worldwide big issues. However, there are some small towns and villages that need help, and their problems can be easily ignored. As a result, arc initiative and social entrepreneurship provide solutions to those areas. From the articles “Can fair trade boutique expand without alienating customers?” and “In a crowded market, entrepreneur finds a sweet way to stand out”, UBC arc team helped to solve the problems in Addis Ababa, which directly help them to find their solution.

Although United Nation is powerful, we still need arc initiative and social entrepreneurship to focus on particular issues. In addition, as a UBC undergraduate student, we actually can participate in these activities. As a result, arc initiative and social entrepreneurship is necessary.

On September 18^th, Alibaba issued its initial public offering that brought the world’s attention. As the largest e-commerce retailer in China, Alibaba now has a market value of more than $250 billion according to the news on November 4^th “Alibaba, Shrugging Off Slowdown in Chinese Economy, Reports Strong First Earnings”, and “Alibaba is worth more than Facebook”.

Alibaba is aimed to provide the world with a new and convenient way to exchange, including on-line payment. I think Alibaba changed the way of how people lived and the numbers shows that this has a lot of potential. I personally like to do on-line shopping and Alibaba makes sure that I can to do on-line payment. Especially in China, Alibaba established Taobao and Tmall, which later become the two biggest online selling systems in China. Alibaba also established alipay, a third party payment platform, which most of Chinese people chose to use. These examples show how people’s lives are changing with technology. I also believe that in now day, the industries that associates with new technology has a lot of potentials, since people want their lives to be simplified. Actually, I think that every firm needs a innovative thinking to make it differentiable.

“Alibaba is worth more than Facebook”

I try to imagine that in the future, people can just sit in their bed and press some bottoms on their smart phone, and they can handle everything. We are waiting for Jack Ma to establish more technology to us.

After reading Sichen(Michael) Pan’s blog “IT’S NOT [JUST] ABOUT THE MONEY”, I found some of his ideas really interesting and I really want to talk about these ideas as well.

He posted a blog base on Kalpana R’s article “Education Is More Than Scoring Marks”, which expressed a different perspective on education. Kalpana R states that we can’t just look at the marks, what’s more important is to gain experience in life.

I really liked that way how Michael brings this idea into business. I totally go along with his point that business is not only about making money, although this goes against with the concept that we leant in Econ class. I want to quote one sentence from Michael’s blog, which I agreed with: “Successful firms, like successful students view problems and challenges as chances to discover”. We can evaluate a successful students on their performance in class, their after school activities and their creativities. Similarly, we can evaluate a firm by its business ethics, sustainability, working condition, company’s culture, and etc.

After learning these concepts from class, I think that we can’t always assume that every business only wants to maximum its profit. The reason that we always assume this is because this assumption can make our life easier since we don’t have to deal with different extra cost spending on, for example environmental protection. However, we should carefully consider these concepts in reality because, as Michael states at the end of his blog, “it benefits not only the creator(s), but also the recipient of the finished product (aka. consumers)”.

Sustainability & Profitability

Home Depot Says About 53 Million Email Addresses Stolen in Breach

For the people who unhesitatingly believe that technology can only bring benefits to our lives, there is a headline for you: “Home Depot Says About 53 Million Email Addresses Stolen in Breach”. The world’s largest home improvement chain was attacked by hackers. The company also states that the hackers used a third-party vendor’s user name and password to enter their network and system.

Along with the developing of technology, a lot of retailers chose to hire consultants for business technology management (BTM). There is no doubt that technology does help the retailer to work more efficiently. The cashiers are able to send you a bunch of coupons through email. This however created a hazard to your personal information, because hackers can use more advance technology to attack the system. On one hand, from my point of view, I believed that any company has the obligation to protect their customers’ personal information. This is important for establishing a good customer relationship. Company should hire a more effective data security system in order to fix the existing vulnerabilities.

On the other hand, shouldn’t the customers consider more before they give out their personal information to the retailer? You don’t have to tell them your email and your zip code, and you can directly avoid some hazards by just being more watchful. I think after reading this news, I will stop telling them my true email address.