Business Basics for Engineers
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HOTLINKS:
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Students are encouraged to phone anytime (since I
don't keep regular office hours) with any questions. Note - it looks like some links (eg RoB) become inactive or accessible by subscription only after a week - so it may be prudent to read and/or save right away. |
Thursday, Dec 13, 2007.
The Gradebook (on WebCT) now shows your individual final business plan grade out of 40. Part of this grade (25 points) is from the team grade. The other 15 points comprise the personal portion. Your personal grade may be higher or lower than your team score - based on your relative contribution and understanding. For example, if it is obvious that the business student on the team worked on the financials (a common occurrence, contrary to the guidelines) without much ENSC student involvement, you'd lose some points.
The Final letter grades will be posted over the next few days and FINAL grades will be submitted to the ENSC office on Monday, Dec 17th. If you are missing any grades, please advise the TAs BEFORE Monday. After that, it is difficult to make grade changes. Thanks.
Friday, Dec 7, 2007.
Due to problems that I'm having with WebCT, I've not been able to post feedback on your plans individually, so I've resorted to posting all the feedback for all teams here (click). Good work!
Thursday, Dec 6, 2007.
And the Winners (of the Ken Spencer Business Plan Competition) are:
1. PlexTech (SmartMassage) $3,000
2. Systegration (EasyShop)$1,500
3. Pensito (KMI) $500
Unfortunately, Sigma was a no-show. That's a pity because they had a good shot at it and had they relinquished their spot earlier we could have slotted in some other teams. Tsk. Tsk!
Ean and I have finalized the team project grades. For the ENSC201 students, you will soon find your team reviews and comments along with the grades under "Assignments" on WebCT. Your individual grades for the business plan project - which may vary greatly from the team mark - will be posted shortly as well in the gradebook. And, by the way, the Competition ranking is NOT the same as the grade ranking!
Wednesday, Dec 5, 2007.
Check out Ron Simmer's Bizarre Patent Calendar at: http://patex.ca/pdf/publications/calendar_2008.pdf
Tuesday, Dec 4, 2007.
The finalists list for the Ken Spencer Competition are:
Sigma Technologies - Unique ID
Aphesco Solutions Inc - Spoil Foil
Systegration Devices Inc - EZ Shop
Plex Technology - Smart Massage Patch
NaviaTech Inc - NaviTop
Pensito Inc - Kinetic Magnetic Induction
ALL students are welcome to attend the presentation and dinner on Wed, Dec 5th at the D.A.C. at 5pm. Hope you can make it!
After reviewing all the plans on the weekend, I identified three more that were of competition calibre. These are:
MedVision
Trailer Innovations
Hedgehog
After further discussion with Ean (Bus Prof) and George (Competition mentor) we decided that because these three were so close to each other and because we could only add one more entry to the competition, we would let the original 6 stand as is.
Friday, Nov 30, 2007.
Well, my friends, today is the last day of class for ENSC201. It will be a short class - from 2:30 to 4:00 pm in Room ASSC 10081. In order to get a mark on the Business Plan project, you must complete the Business Plan Questionnaire at the end of this class (at 3:30pm).
You are all INVITED to the Ken Spencer Business Plan Competition Finals on Wed, Dec 5th at the D.A.C. at 5pm. Dinner and drinks are on the house. Hope you can make it!
Tuesday, Nov 27, 2007.
Some of you have asked for the assignment 7 answers. They are posted at the assignment 7 link (from syllabus or agendas). It might help in preparing for the next test. Good luck tomorrow. I think you will enjoy Stephen Robinson's talk and it may be helpful to you. See you Friday. If you can't make it on Friday, please let me know at least 24 hours in advance.
Monday, Nov 26, 2007.
I have now posted optional assignment #8. You can do this if you think you need to improve your marks on assignments. If you do assignment #8, then will count your top 7 assignments in order to give you an assignment grade out of 35. Any bonus marks will be added (so, it is conceivable that you can score 37 out of 35). On Wednesday, at the end of class, Test #2 will be given to you. This will be a half hour test with many short answers. It will include all the topics that we have covered in the course. On Friday, I will meet with you at 2:30pm in Room ASSC 10081 to wrap up the course. There will be a mandatory business plan questionnaire (nothing you have to study for). I hope that you have been enjoying the guest lectures in my absence. I will post their presentations (as I receive them) on the syllabus web page. Meanwhile, the markets (eg as reflected in the DOW or the NASDAQ indices) are not doing so well. Any thoughts as to why?
Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007.
I hope you didn't stay up all night working on your business plans. We look forward to receiving them today and reading them ;>). What was the hardest part? What took you the most time? How can we have made it better for you? If you have some strong views on this, please send me a short email and let me know.
Remember the video about IBM and how they were after software in order to launch the IBM PC? Well, today, they are offering almost $5 billion for Cognos, an Ottawa based business intelligence software company. Last year, IBM's software revenues amounted to $18 billion - about 20% of all IBM revenues. However, software accounted for 40% of IBM's total profit. On another matter, trading in Cognos' stock was heavy prior to the announcement of IBM's offer. Could this have been insider trading?
Do you think that it's a bad thing for Canada to be losing some of its prime big-cap tech companies to foreigners, are do you believe in the super-nova effect?
In today's Globe, there's a chart that identifies various companies whose shares are trading below book value. This is what Larry the Liquidator (Other People's Money) was looking for. Book value = total assets - total liabilities. Book Value per Share = Book Value/Total Shares O/S. Does that mean these companies are a bargain? I note that one of our local tech companies - Angiotech - is listed - trading in the $3.75 range, near its low. Usually tech companies trade at a huge premium to book value (because of future expectations). Is the company in trouble? Is it a bargain to buy? Or, could it be that certain assets, for example patents, are unrealistically over-valued? On the other hand, some of the other companies listed, such as Canfor or West Fraser Timber may have property under assets which is valued at cost - usually below market - and may be worth even more.
Tuesday, Nov 13, 2007.
Re Business Plans - you do NOT need to submit 3 copies to each of Bus477 and ENSC201. Only 3 copies in total. In order NOT to be counted late, just make sure you upload to WebCT in time. Don't wait till the last minute - you can still upload and then recall, edit and reload up to the deadline.
Monday, Nov 12, 2007.
Funny enough, most of today has been unproductive due to a lengthy power failure from weekend storms. Still off as of Tuesday. My contingency should have been to have a generator backup. This too, would not be an acceptable reason for making late submissions. In business, whenever there is a call for proposals - eg bidding on an engineering project, you can bet that there's no leniency for lateness!
Sunday, Nov 11, 2007.
To submit your business plan on WebCT - go to ASSIGNMENTS on WebCT (not MAIL). You may submit your business plan by group on WebCT anytime between 2:45 pm on Nov 11 and 2:45 pm on Nov 14th. If you have any problems with this, you can also email your submission to Mike, Maryam and Arina (but do this ONLY if you cannot do so on WebCT).
Saturday, Nov 10, 2007.
BUSINESS PLAN NOTICE re DUE DATE: Just to be clear, your business plans (3 hard copies and one soft-copy version) must be submitted BEFORE 2:45 PM SHARP ON NOV 14th. LATE Plans will NOT be accepted- no matter what the reason. If you are not finished, submit what you have - it's better than getting zero. Please bring the hard copies to class. Please submit the soft copies on-line at WebCT (only one person from each team should submit online). You are advised not to wait until Nov 14th. What if the internet goes down? What if you run out of paper? What if your dog eats your plan? What if you get sick? What if you get invited to a cool party? Don't procrastinate - hodiate!
Other dates: Nov 21: Assignment 7 (last one), Nov 28: Test #2 (half-hour in class); Nov 30: Business Plan questionnaires (mandatory) Assignment 8 (optional). The preliminary agenda for Class #11 is also posted.
If you're struggling with your business plan, think about what General Motors must be thinking - the company reported a loss in its 3rd quarter period of 39 billion (yes, billion). I'll bet that wasn't in their business plan. Ford Motors, on the other hand, reported a $380million loss in the 3rd quarter as compared to a $750million profit in the second quarter! You can see how volatile performance (profits) can be. Sometimes, companies report abnormal losses (or profits) due to accounting adjustments such as asset write-downs. Could this be what happened to GM?
Friday, Nov 9, 2007.
How are the business plans coming? I'll be around this weekend if you want to call. If you're not sure about something, it can't hurt! Don't be shy.
The Globe reports that 25,000 Canadians bought cars south of the border last month and that some 170,000 will be one there this year. From the way I talk, many of you probably think I drive a fancy Benz. Well, you're right, but it's a Smart car (yes, I'm a green guy!). This week I saw the Smart being introduced in California for U$12K. I wonder: if you bring one back to Canada, will you get the Government's green rebate of $2K? In that case, taking into account exchange rate, you'd have a fine, efficient green machine for under $10K...hmmmm? Wonder what that would cost on a lease? What about the duty?
There's a piece on Ballard Fuel and the sale of its Fuel Cell business. What do you make of that?
Also in the Globe, RIM is now after other cellphone makers for trademark violations - i.e. using names that sound similar to Blackberry. Do you think they'll be successful?
Thursday, Nov 8, 2007.
Assignment 6 Quiz answers are now posted.
Wednesday, Nov 7, 2007.
Please note - the last class of the course will be on Nov 30th, at 2:30pm in ASSC10081. Glad to see some of you using WebCT to ask questions! Wow loonie went over $1.10 early today. Imagine. In assignment 6, please note that the Mazda costs $21,385 - not $21,385K.
Saturday, Nov 3, 2007.
Lots of good stuff in today's Globe. You might want to pick up a copy - good reading on a rainy weekend. It sure is hard to believe the rise of the Canadian dollar. Who'd have thought that? The Globe mentions that Rogers Communications has $5.8 billion in debt - in US dollars. Of course, Ted hedged that (in case our dollar would get weaker), so Rogers doesn't benefit - but nonetheless it was the prudent thing to do. On the front page of the Report on Business, there's an interesting piece on picking tech stock winners (like your last assignment). Francis McInerney has a new metric: Cash Velocity - a measure of how quickly companies can turn sales into cash. According to this, Google is still attractive, even at a P/E of 55. He figures it would take Microsoft a decade to close the cash velocity gap opened by Google. He takes days of sales in receivables, adds to days of inventory and subtracts A/P turnover. You figure it out! (I can't). In the classifieds, there's an ad by the Higher Colleges of Technology in the UAE - looks like a great job opportunity - see http://recruit.hct.ac.ae/ - but you do not a Master's.
Friday, Nov 2, 2007.
Further to my comments yesterday on rate of return, I was working on some IRR calculations for a WUTIF investment. Here are the numbers: we invested $100K in a UBC spinoff in Feb,2005 and an additional $75K in June, 2005. In May of this year (2007), we sold the investment for $368K. What is our annual return on this investment? In other words, what interest would a bank have to pay us on two deposits of $100K and $75K in order for us to withdraw $368K approx. 2 years later? That's why the IRR calculation is so useful - it lets us evaluate returns on various investments (ie cashflows). Caution: I used the IRR function in Excel (take a look at it - there's a good tutorial in the help section), and I found it easy to make mistakes. For example, the "i" that you use is per period - so if you use monthly data, then you have to divide i by 12. If you calculate i using the IRR function for monthly data, you have to multiply the result by 12. And, another caution, if you have months during which there is no cashflow, you need to put a "0" zero into those cells - otherwise IRR returns an incorrect result. Try this with my UBC example and see what you get. You can double-check your answers by using the NPV function. i.e. determine your "i" and then plug it into NPV using the same cash flow to see if you get NPV=0!
Over time, you should become familiar with numbers and be able to "guesstimate" returns. What interest rate will let you double your money in 5 years? in 10 years? Have you heard of the rule of 72? Try it.
Wednesday's class topics were on the Business Plan and stages of growth. In addition to my comments on the business plan and David's excellent contribution, especially his financial model (click here for that), please read my web pages on the subject (see links on syllabus).
David Shore mention the word "accretive". What do we call the opposite of that? Can give explain each using an example?
As I mentioned in class, I personally graded Assignment 5 (your BC Company stock picks) to see how you approached this challenge. Indeed, it's not easy to bet on a company. That's why mutual funds (or stock index funds) are popular - let someone else do the analysis and choose the companies. Your grades should be posted on WebCT and some explanation can be found by clicking on the above link.
Thursday, Nov 1, 2007
Yesterday's talk by David Shore was right on with respect to the financial forecasts (ie financial models as he called them) in your business plan. His slides are posted for your edification.
Based on some students' questions, it appears that some of you are struggling with the concept of what we mean by a discounted cash flow. Make sure you know what this means and how to do one. Think of it this way: every investment (or number of investments over time) has a return, ie a single amount or several amounts at different times. The way to compare returns on investments (be it in equipment, shares, property, etc) is with "i", the Internal Rate of Return, the effective annual interest rate we are receiving. For example, if I invest $1,000 today and I get back $1,200 at the end of 3 years, what is my effective interest rate(i)? Which is a better investment: To invest $1,000 and receive $400 back at the end of each year over 3 years? What if an angel investor puts $100K in your company today, another $100K in one year from now and another $100K 2 years from now and then when you sell your company after 10 years, she gets back $1 million? What's her rate of return? Refer to my talk in class on the time value of money and make sure you can work the numbers.
Wednesday, Oct 31, 2007
Happy Hallowe'en! Well, you haven't heard much from me this week. I wanted to give you some space to get those business plans well in hand. You should certainly have all your financials nailed down by now. And, to reward you for your efforts there will be an optional bonus quiz at the end of today's class pertaining to your plans.
Wednesday, Oct 24, 2007
RIM's stock has doubled in the past year! Look at the ROI on that! And there doesn't appear to be any let-up. How can you justify the stock price? The China deal certainly will boost it, too.. Can you believe a market cap of $69 billion. When I looked at investing in RIM in 1987, the Market Cap was $200K! Can you figure out the ROI? Then, on the other hand, Amazon showed very strong quarterly results, yet its stock fell. How can you explain that?
Tuesday, Oct 23, 2007
I hope I see a few of you at tonight's VEF. If you do attend, please say hello to me and give me your business card (so I can note it for extra credit). See how well Apple is doing. Profit and sales way up! Not bad for a $6Bn company! The dollar seems to be hurting a number of Canadian manufacturers with extensive sales in US funds - today's Globe notes a few of these - Bombardier, Cinram, Comdev, etc. The Globe also reports a decline in manufacturers' R&D spending. How important is this? I was chatting with Jimmy Pattison last night and he mentioned two important competitive factors: innovation and productivity - both outcomes of R&D.
Friday, Oct 19, 2007
Publicly-traded Aspreva's stock jumped on news of a friendly takeover bid. Aspreva is a Victoria, BC pharmaceutical firm founded just a few years ago and funded mainly via the Vancouver angel network. Some of the early angel investors that put $100K in, cashed in to the tune of about $10 million. Now's that's the kind you want to pick!
Remember the discussion we had on stock promoters and shady dealers? Here's another one: Paul Eustace fleeces investors.
More tips have been added to assignment #5. If you were a shareholder in New England Cable & Wireless (from the movie), how would you have voted?
Thursday, Oct 18, 2007
Your puzzled looks yesterday when you were given the bonus quiz tells me that you are not current with your team work and/or that you are struggling with understanding financial statements. Make sure you download the sample spreadsheet so that you can "play" with it. A few of you asked for some guidance with respect to assignment #5. Therefore, I've added a few tips and suggestions for your edification. I hope this helps.
Wednesday, Oct 17, 2007
Wall Street rebounded today after key earnings reports including those from JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Yahoo Inc. topped Wall Street expectations. On Yahoo Finance there's a personal finance article relating to our earlier discussions on how to become a millionaire. Note that the article refers to a 401(k) plan - this is the American version of our RRSP plan.
Monday, Oct 16, 2007
Regarding the optional Interim Course Survey, please try it again. There was a glitch that should be fixed now. Only two of you attempted it so far - please re-do it. Thanks! (It's better to give feedback now rather than at the end of the course - because you can benefit from it).
In today's Globe, StatsCan reports some interesting stats: Manufacturing (not logging!) is the largest single business sector in Canada and every $1 of manufacturing output creates more than $3 in economic activity. 16% of GDP is generated by the manufacturing sector. Annual shipments by Canada's manufacturers is $600 Billion. 2.1 million people are employed in manufacturing and these people earn 22% more than the national average. Finally, 66% is the Manufacturing Sector's portion of private sector R&D.
So, is there any connection between the Balance Sheet and the Income Statement? You should know how to account for every possible transaction and how to report it on the financial statements. The bonus quiz on financial statements will likely be given at the end of Wednesday's class.
Saturday, Oct 13, 2007
If you own shares in a company, you will be interested in what the earnings-per-share (EPS) are relative to the price of the shares (P/E). A stock with a low P/E multiple relative to other, similar, companies may be a good investment - assuming the outlook is strong, ie projected earnings. Assignment #5 has been updated with a few suggestions. Have a question? Post it on WebCT. I'll answer it there for you.
Friday, Oct 12, 2007
The Balance Sheet, among other things, tells you what a business is worth in tangible terms, ie with respect to its assets and liabilities. What is this measure of value called?
How am I doing? Please complete the interim course survey if you'd like to provide feedback on ENSC201. It's YOUR course. You own it and you can effect change if you so choose.
Interested in Stock Options? There's a ton of information on the web. There are even dedicated websites, such as mystockoptions.com.
Thursday, Oct 11, 2007
Quiz Tip for next week: Income statements, sometimes called Profit and Loss statements, measure the performance of a company over a specified period of time (could be daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly). A good place to start is to look at the "top line" and the "bottom line". The first is usually a function of marketing whereas the bottom line is a function of operations and management. Another important in-between measure is gross margin. Knowing this lets you calculate your breakeven point (how many units do I have to sell to cover my overhead, ie indirect, costs?). What factors drive direct costs to allow us to improve gross margins? (The glossary has a lot of definitions for you).
Talk about stock pickers (assignment #5), you can get into trouble if you cheat others in the process. The BC Securities Commission has banned one such guy, Al Budai, from the market for life.
In 2002, China had no billionaires. Now there are 106 of them.
To drive home Amanda Goldrick-Jones' talk yesterday, take a look at the expensive grammatical mistake - a comma - that cost Rogers plenty in the past year.
Business Plans - In case you are interested (as I'm sure many of you are), Spencer Heard is the coordinator for the Queen's Entrepreneurial competition. Check into it.
Wednesday, Oct 10, 2007
In spite of its very high stock price and market cap, everyone is still very bullish on Google Inc. What make's this company and its stock so hot? What makes any tech stock hot? Special treat for today's class: two guest speakers.
Regarding your Team Business Plans, there's a good paper by William A. Sahlman in Harvard Business Review (Reprint #97409). His comments about which information belongs and which doesn’t –may surprise you.
Today's Globe reports that the "Door Opens for Specualtive Tech Financings" - a "must-read". When you start raising capital for your company (or or team) how do you know what it's worth?
Friday, Oct 5, 2007
On Wednesday, I introduced the topics of performance and health (i.e. P&L and Balance Sheets). Take a look at RIM's performance and health since it just reported its better-than-expected operating results. Become familiar with some commonly used ratios, such as the P/E ratio. In an upcoming assignment, I will have you analyze (for investment purposes) a tech company in B.C. An RTO is a special type of acquisition-by-issuing shares transaction. As an example, I refer you to a company in which I'm an active participant. Check out the Oct 4th News Release by Silicon Slopes Capital Corp on SEDAR so that we can use it as an example of how an RTO works.
Have a great Thanksgiving weekend!
Thursday, Oct 4, 2007
What did you think about Brent Holliday's talk? He had a neat metaphor to explain how the subprime loan defaults created problems in the financial markets.
Wednesday, Oct 3, 2007
The TD Bank is acquiring Commerce Bancorp in the the US for $8.5 billion. Even banks don't have that much dough laying around. So, how does a company buy another company if it doesn't have enough cash on hand to write a cheque?
I'm puzzled - I'm getting emails and calls from students wondering what to study for the test today? On the syllabus and the agenda, there is a link to some test questions and tips on what to read! For example, one tip is to read this page and understand the terms and topics mentioned here. You can count on questions based on these. The test will run from 2:30pm to 3:00pm precisely. Receipts after 3:05 will be discarded.
Tuesday, Oct 2, 2007
On Monday, the DOW (what's that?) hit an all-time high passing 14,000. What's behind the bullish sentiment? Did you catch Dragon's Den? The SLIDES for Todd Rattray's talk, our speaker last week, have now been posted.
Monday, Oct 1, 2007
A couple of additional reading suggestions are the two best-sellers by Malcolm Gladwell, featured in today's Report on Business. He wrote "Blink" and "Tipping Point". How will we change the way we work in the future?
Tonight, CBC TV is airing Dragon's Den for the second season starting at 8pm. It's all about startup entrepreneurs trying to get support from seasoned, experienced and wealthy investors (the Dragons). I prefer Angels - but watch the show and you'll see what I mean.
Sunday, Sep 30, 2007
This coming is Financial Literacy Week at SFU. This relates heavily to ENSC201 and I'd encourage you to find the time to attend. On Monday, Oct 1st, I'll be doing a session on starting a business - not too different from what we did in class plus a little more. So, it might be a good idea for you to attend if you want to learn more or need a refresher.
A new product introduction can boost a company's share price. This is exactly what happened when Palm announced its newest smartphone, the Centro.
Thursday, Sep 27, 2007
I hope you enjoyed Todd's talk on patents yesterday. I will ask him for his slides so they can be posted. Many of you showed interest in Patents. As I mentioned, I have two copies of a book called The New Idea Factory by C Gross et al - it would be a good read for your Assignment #4. I'd be happy to loan out the books.
Sample questions for Test#1 have been posted. Yesterday's quiz and answers are also posted. See the syllabus and/or class agenda for links.
Next Monday, October 1st at 4pm in MBC2290, I will be giving a talk as part of Financial Literacy Week to ACE students (you too, if you'd like to attend), titled "From Dream to Reality" (i.e. starting, building and running a successful company).
Tuesday, Sep 25, 2007
Microsoft is keen to get into the social networking space. In the news today, it's reported that Microsoft is willing to pay between $300 million and $500 million to buy only 5% of Facebook. Not long ago, Rupert Murdoch paid $580 million for Facebook's competitor, Myspace. If Microsoft pays $400 million for 5%, what is Facebook's market cap? How does that compare to Microsoft's own market cap? What's another term for market cap and how is market cap calculated?
What was your personal earnings goal (on the introductory survey)? According to an article in today's Globe, if you are earning $89,000+ per year, you will find yourself in the top 5 per cent of income earners. At $200,000/year you'd be in the top 1% in Canada. You, as an ENSC201 student will have all the tools you need to be in the top 1-5% within 5 years!
Monday, Sep 24, 2007
There's a news release on T-Net about Maximizer going private. That's the opposite of an IPO. Why would a public company want to go private? How do you define a public and a private company?
Friday, Sep 21, 2007
Take a look at the Business Section of today's Vancouver Sun. There's a full page on the NewVenturesBC company finalists - some have SFU connections. The top 3 will be announced at a downtown party next week. If you'd like to attend, I can invite 3-5 quests. Let me know.
In Wednesday's class one of the business student presenters mentioned "IPO" in her slide. What does this mean?
I have now replied to ALL team project submissions (only those received by email). If you have not yet received a definitive "go ahead" on your projects, you better get your act together as the deadline was Sept 19th. We'll give you till Sept 26th. No more. (note - it is possible that I didn't get yours because of an email glitch. While mike@volker.org is preferred, it might be safer to use mvolker@sfu.ca.
A word about missed or late assignments: We have no mercy in this regard. In the world of business, we cannot use the excuse that our printer didn't work or that our dog ate the proposal. If you miss a tax deadline or an RFP, no excuse (even death) will cut it. Even this week, we accepted a few late business cards and assignments, but now you know!
Thursday, Sept 20,2007
Today's issue of the Report on Business in the Globe and Mail is worth buying on the news stands. The Technology section features Deloitte's 50 fastest growing tech companies (not in the online edition). The revenue growth in some of these companies is remarkable. There are some good articles on Canadian tech companies in the Waterloo region as well as several in BC. BC seems to be particularly flush with clean tech companies. What's interesting is how new these companies are - more than two-thirds of these companies are less than 10 years old.
Wow! The Loonie's almost at par. A one or two cent increase in the Loonie's value can wipe out a Canadian Tech company's profit from US income unless it hedges, i.e. a 10% profit forecast can go to zero. Can you explain that? What can a Company do about it?
If you want to ask any questions about your readings, etc - please do NOT send me an email. Instead, please post your questions on the WebCT discussion forum - that way I (and others) can comment and respond.
The results from yesterday's quiz are already posted on WebCT - thanks to Maryam for her quick work on this. I won't be as fast with the business cards.
Note re missed quizzes and assignments - a few of you missed yesterday's quiz. Not to worry - you have two ways in which you can redeem yourselves. If you miss only a partial assignment (like yesterday's quiz), you can make it up by attending a VEF event. You will also get a chance to discard your lowest grade assignment and do an optional assignment/quiz.
Wednesday, Sept 19,2007
I hope that a number of you got to the VEF last night. It was right on the money, so to speak. Two of you gave me your business cards (you get full marks on the assignment!). If you attended, you also get a bonus credit.
Tuesday, Sept 18, 2007
Noon hour update - The Federal Reserve announces it is cutting its federal funds rate by a half-point to 4.75 percent, the first reduction in this key rate in four years.... It sent the markets soaring. As of noon the Nasdaq "Cubes" (Ticker: QQQQ) are up almost a buck - that's a 2% increase in less than a day.
I wonder what Ben Bernanke will do today? How will the stock market react? Speaking of stocks, take a look at Craig Wireless' recent stock market entry. What's an RTO? I look forward to seeing many of you at tonight's VEF.
Monday, Sept 17, 2007
Noon hour update - I have now replied (by email) to ALL Team project submissions that I have received. If you have NOT received any feedback from me, it means that your submission was not received (by email). If you were asked to re-submit, please do so in hard copy at the start of Class on Wednesday and email your soft copy to me with a cc to Maryam, Arina, and George. Also cc your team members so that we can "reply all". Only one team really did a good job on the cover memo part of the assignment. Most of you missed the boat on this. I
Some of you have been asking about the Business Card assignment. You are NOT constrained to link these to your team projects or to SFU. You can do whatever you feel is useful to you - preferably something you can actually use over the next few months.
In today's Globe, Finance Minister Flaherty suggest that the strengthening dollar should make manufacturers embrace technology to remain competitive. Is a rising Loonie good or bad for Canadian companies? It looks like the US Fed will make an interest rate decision tomorrow. How are the markets responding?
Saturday, Sept 15, 2007
Today's main story in the Globe: Loonie tops 97 cents. There's a video link on the Loonie. For some more cool ideas go to www.telebrands.com. You might pick up some tips on communicating your message. I have 3 speakers lined up for the next 3 classes. The Syllabus is updated to show these.
I've been reviewing your product brochures. Some are impressive. Some need work. Many have spelling, typos, and grammatical errors. That's BAD! I'll be giving you feedback on a first-come first reply basis. Late submissions will go to the end of the queue.
Thursday, Sep 13, 2007
Our second TA is Arina Aboonabi . She and Maryam will both be available to assist you with assignments and projects. So, more about "bad apples" - in today's Globe, read about corporate malfeasance at Nortel. VMWare seeks to build on IPO Buzz. What's an IPO? Looks like we have 2 speakers confirmed so far. Check the Syllabus for details. Sample answers are posted for the intro survey (linked on Syllabus).
Wednesday, Sept 12, 2007
We have a TA (may have two). Please welcome Maryam Soleimani. For a daily dose of tech news, check www.bctechnology.com. In this week's edition, Brent Holliday offers a good read on the subprime crisis.
Tuesday, Sept 11, 2007
Stocks rallied today on Fed rate cut news. What does this mean?
I noticed an article in yesterday's Globe that mentioned a couple of new gadgets websites - check redorbit.com and dynamism.com - it might spark some more product ideas for your team. There was also an article titled, "Flaherty renews call for single watchdog". What's this all about?
Friday, Sept 7, 2007
If you're having trouble getting SurveyMonkey to accept negative or decimal numbers, not to worry - just put in a number as close as you can get. I'd fix it but many have already responded. In today's news, Apple is offering a $100 credit to early iPhone buyers. How will this impact Apple's bottom line? A good website for financial information and news is Yahoo, at http://finance.yahoo.com/. There are some good video clips as well. And, for free you can set up a stock portfolio to start tracking some of your favorite stocks!. To find out more about BC companies that are public, check out www.bctechnology.com.
Thursday Sept 6, 2007
I enjoyed meeting you all yesterday! I hope you've come up with some interesting product ideas for your team projects. If you're not sure, just give me a quick call or send an email. If you don't have any ideas, I have hundreds! (As the guitar designer said: "ideas are a dime a dozen"). In today's Globe (Business Section), there's an article on Apple's latest product - the iPod Touch.
Wednesday Sept 5, 2007
Welcome to ENSC201! This web page is the way in which I will keep in touch with you on a regular (almost daily) basis. To a certain degree, it is your textbook where I will post articles for you to read. I will leave the previous class's information active for a couple of weeks so you can browse through to get an idea of how it works.
2006 Ken Spencer Business Plan Competition Winnerds:
Ken Spencer Business Plan Competition: The verdict is in. Congratulations to the cash-prize winners:
#1. $3,000: NeoSpectra with their Chroma Tap
product
#2. $1,500: Switch Technologies with their ElectroGlass product
#3. $500: Smart Life with their Watt Watchers product.
Copyright 2006 Michael C. Volker