BUS 374 Reflections

      Being a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints from birth means that self-reliance has been taught to me my entire life. The idea of self-reliance is that you, as an individual, develop the skills that you need to in order to provide for yourself. I remember having Wednesday night Young Women's activities be lessons on how to sew on buttons, can peaches, change a car tire, in order to learn self-reliance. Microcredit is the practice of  providing small loans, often to individuals in impoverished or underserved communities, who lack access to traditional banking services. Sometimes small business will use microcredit in order to become self reliant.      I found the video about how self-reliance can lift people out of poverty interesting. Overall though I don't think that the only cure to eliminating poverty can eradicate poverty entirely. For example people with extreme cognitive disabilities will never be able to have self reli...

 Impact investing is a concept I think is great. As someone who dabbles (emphasis on dabble) in investing in the stock market I think impact investing is a great way to make money in a more…for lack of a better word, moral, way. Putting your money into companies that make a difference helps not only yourself and the company you invest in, but people in need as well. My favorite part of this week was the business analysis of the glasses company Warby Parker. I liked it because of how the business started with a group friends basically coming to the conclusion that 400$ for good looking prescription glasses is stupid. Because it is stupid.  Do I think that poverty will someday be only museums? I hate to be a negative Nelly, but no, I don’t think it will be. We live in an imperfect world where a lot of imperfect people live. I think it would take massive amounts of coordination and effort from a lot of those people to make poverty a thing of the past. And I just don’t think it’s ...

      Week 10... this is the point where I start to get burned out in the semester, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't interested in this weeks subject! I really enjoyed learning about hybrid businesses. Hybrid business are a combination of for profit and non-profit business models. There's way more to that but, honestly I don't want to write it all down here.     Let's talk about my favorite part of this week. I LOVED coming up with my own hybrid business. It was by far the most fun thing. Here's a logo I made for my business:      It was fun to make, and I love the idea of being able to promote both reading and parent-child interactions. I think part of the reason why literacy rates are dropping is that parent are tired and don't put in the same amount of effort to interact with their kids, and I would love to have a business that helps fix that. Sometimes people need a little extra motivation.     Hybrid businesses are so successful ...

      This week we learned about non-profits and NGOs. I think that non-profits are really important, especially because they are on the ground, seeing the day to day of the communities they serve in a way that a large government can't. Overall I think they're a net positive to society.      Fun little side fact, I used to work for a non-profit organization. I loved it, however it's really interesting to observe how a non-profit effects the communities it helps from the perspective outside of working for one. A huge downside of working for a non-profit is that the budget is always tight. Which meant that even though I had worked there for a few years, there were no raises. No employees received any raises at all ever. And, because the company could not afford to provide it's workers with insurance it circumvented that requirement by having all workers be "contract" workers. Thus they were not legally required to provide the option for insurance. I...

      This week we took a look at CSR, "corporate social responsibility". Which I loved, business and corporations have a huge place in American society, and I think that businesses should absolutely take responsibility for the impact they have on society and the environment. The world needs more corporations that care about being ethical and actually helping society as a whole.     Which brings me to my favorite part of this week. I really loved having to evaluate a company and determine if their CSR works. The company I chose was OverDrive, which provides digital books and audiobooks to libraries and schools. They do a little more than that, but that is the gist of it. The whole point of the company is to promote literacy and provide accessible education. Which, I think they do. My own husband uses Libby, which is an app OverDrive created for libraries, all the time. So I really enjoyed looking at what they do, and how they can improve.    ...

      Well, this week was alright. To be honest this was one of the weeks I was not looking forward to. I wouldn't label myself a business oriented person, and so learning about business models and start up stuff was difficult. But, something Alexander Osterwalder said in his "A Better Way To Think About Business" article was interesting to me. To paraphrase he pointed out how the Business Model Canvas was a far less complicated way of laying a business out, and that it helped Nespresso turn around their business. I like to keep it simple, so if I ever start a business (I am very doubtful I will), I would prefer to use this more simple way of creating one.       Sharpening my own business skills will help others because I will have a better understanding of how a business works and can spot the weak areas of a business more easily. Which means I could help fix those weak spots and make the business even better. I don't know what business skills ar...