BUS 374 Reflections

      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...

      To be honest I was not super thrilled with the content of this weeks lesson. This isn't because the information isn't important. I personally am not a very... analytical person, and this week was all about being able to look at and analyze businesses measurements, determining which measurements are important, figuring out what the measurements mean and how you can improve your business process based off you analysis.       However I did really enjoy looking up and analyzing a program that relates to illiteracy in the US. I picked Dolly Parton's foundation called Imagination Library. Something that I noticed that the statistics that were available to the public online were all output focused. How many books they had given out, how much they had grown year over year, how many countries they provided books to. While these aren't bad things to measure, I think that it doesn't capture the potential impact that this program has on children. D...

      Think weeks focus was all about how to design something (be it a product or a program) for social innovation. Meaning, designing things with human beings in mind. I love this topic, I feel like things are so often designed without people in mind. An example off the top of my head are cities/towns without sidewalks. Almost every town I've lived in has never been very walkable, I'd have to walk on the side of the road in a lot of instances. Design thinking is an attempt to mitigate problems like that by undergoing a thorough process that begins with empathy.     Empathy. How many businesses start with empathy? I suspect not very many. But I love this thought of beginning the design process this way.  In order to "fix" a problem, we first must understand the people who this problem effects. What are their struggles like? What are their lives like? How are they effected daily or even long term? What are their thoughts about this problem? By obse...