MAGNET SCREEN DOOR: INNOVATION AT ITS FINEST

Innovation is the creation of a great new method, idea, or product. In this case, this magnetized screen door is a new idea that created a new product which now makes life simpler for thousands. The reason this caught my eye is because it's so simple and honestly I should have thought of this. I have a million animals at my house and the amount of time spent walking back and forth to the screen door to open it for them to go in or come out is crazy. With this innovative idea, cats and dogs can walk in and out when they please without the door being wide open for bugs to get in.

SAP

The SAP game was a big learning experience for me because it was hard to get everything correlated together and have the timing right to get more inventory and sell it accordingly. The biggest pain in my eyes was deciding how to price our bottled water and getting our margin up. We for some reason just could never break the 10% mark which most groups seemed to be achieving. Ultimately our sales were great it was just the amount of profit on each sale was significantly less than most other groups. My group ended up finishing in the middle of the pack which is better than the first day but there was defiantly room to improve considering we knew where we messed up: Pricing. The biggest things I learned during this activity is that the business world moves quick and with the increasing technology available it's only going to move quicker. The other important aspect I learned was pricing determines a lot of your success regardless of how many sales you have. To end on a good note though, our marketing strategies went very well as we had more sales and less money spent on marketing than just about any group.

Decision Making Software

I haven't heard much about decision making software until I was asked to do this assignment. From researching online I discovered that decision making software can really help businesses, especially people trying to start their own business and don't know exactly which route to take. I found a website that explains how the software works and gives you a tutorial on how it works. It puts you in the shoes of an up and coming entrepreneur that needs to make some business decisions, but the software guides you. Check it out and let me know if you think decision making tools are a good idea.



http://chooseit.sitesell.com/

Ethics

I had a job at a Japanese restaurant once and noticed that I was getting paid under the table. Now I knew at the time this was illegal but I continued to work anyways. After about a month I realized that it wasn't ethical to be doing what I was doing even though it seemed like no one was getting hurt. I waited until another job arose which took about 2 more weeks and then I simply told them I could no longer work for them. I got paid 3 dollars less working at a snowball stand but in the end I knew I made the right decision.

No Child Left Behindhttp

I saw an interesting picture online while I was looking around for articles discussing the American educational system. I'm going to attempt to upload it here but if you can not see it, it is a picture of an American boy about to jump over a bar. The bar is the American flag rolled up and the bar in extremely low. This is a metaphor for the educational system in America going down the drains. Because of the No Child Left Behind Act, kids aren't learning instead they're just passing tests that are easier for the one student who isn't as smart. It has good intentions but I believe the act should be taken out of the educational system because it is not advancing our youth. Even Barack Obama has been quoted on Fox News as saying "States will get unprecedented freedom to waive basic elements of the sweeping Bush-era No Child Left Behind law, calling it an admirable but flawed effort that has hurt students instead of helping them." I'm just glad I got out of school before all of this nonsense because I don't want to be just another statistic. Educational Secretary Arne Duncan warned the American people with one huge statistic that caught my eye. "Duncan has warned that 82 percent of schools next year could fail to reach proficiency requirements and thus be labeled failures." This is a scary statistic and I certainly hope it never reaches that point, but the only way it won't is if this Act is destroyed.

Picture - http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/02/14/23merrow.h26.html
News Article  - http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/09/23/obama-to-propose-states-opt-out-from-no-child-left-behind-education-law/