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