VENTURE IDEAS

1. Piano Lessons
Because I have my RCM Grade 10 and experience teaching younger kids, piano lessons would be ideal as a service to offer customers. I have a piano at home and I would be willing to travel to the student's house if they have a piano at home to do lessons. Also, I have access to books which I can offer the students. Teaching piano lessons would not require a lot of external materials other than books and maybe flash cards. The demand for this service may not be relatively high but it gives the opportunity to kids to have introductory lessons to music if they want to continue on with a professional teacher. Also, I would not charge a ridiculous amount of money so the parents can test out how piano lessons would be and to see if their child enjoys it.

2. Baked Goods (cookies, brownies)
Although serving food at our school requires FoodSafe, which I don't have, I can always go get certified. With this product, especially at lunch, people get hungry and this group would be my target market. It would not be an expensive product. However, it would be more costly than piano lessons, as I will need to buy the ingredients each time. This product would have higher demand than piano lessons, as it is cheaper and just more practical. The products would be hand delivered to the customer, as I would walk around the school halls during lunch/break.

Sustainability

Sustainability is the act that a business follows in order to have no negative impact on the environment, community and society. Ways that a business can be sustainable include using recycled paper and reusing materials.


To this day, it is in no doubt that the world produces too much garbage. Starbucks has an example of a sustainability program. It is called the Shared Planet program. With this program, the company's goal is to reduce the amount of paper cups being used. By bringing your own reusable mug for coffee, you receive a discount of 10 cents on your drink purchase and they state that with the customer's contribution, over 600,000 trees will be saved in 50 years time. To me, Starbucks' effort does make profit off of their campaign. Because more and more people are willing to bring their own mugs to the coffee shop, that  means that the company itself can reduce their costs on paper cups which, correspondingly, brings up their profits. As a customer, this program actually does affect me and my buying habits. Because I know that Starbucks is a sustainable business, I will support them by buying their products. As a stakeholder, Starbucks also attracts me with their campaign, as it means more profits.
http://www.starbucks.com/thebigpicture

Business Ethics & Social Responsibility

As a business, each organization is expected to act in such a way that benefits the society positively. This is known as social responsibility. Today, they must follow society's "green" expectation which includes recycling, giving back to the community, as well as acting in a positive manner towards our environment. Aside from a company's need to follow a socially responsible conduct, they must also follow business ethics. Business ethics are the moral principles and values that decide the actions and decisions of a group. This conduct should be followed by organizations but it can also impact them as a whole. For example, because they cannot do a certain procedure because it is morally wrong, it could result in a decrease in profits. Within a business, ethics can be implicated to workers through workshops in order for them to be aware of what is considered "right and wrong". Ethics itself is a complicated issue and sometimes it is hard to determine what is morally correct as different people have different opinions.