Corporate Sustainability

Hi delegates! I hope you are all excited for BMUN. With it being only a month away, it is important to start researching and putting thought into your innovation for our topic: environmental sustainability in third world countries. While the sustainability of your product is pertinent to our topic, it is also important to remember that your business approach, product development, and operations process should also practice corporate sustainability. Now this may lead you to ask, what exactly is corporate sustainability? Corporate sustainability can be best understood as a business approach that takes environmentally friendly strategies into account when creating long-term consumer and employee value. In order for your business to be considered sustainable, it is important to think deeply about the social, cultural, and economic environment in which your business is operating.

Now that you have a basic definition and understanding of what corporate sustainability is, I encourage you to read a few of these articles on how corporate sustainability is shaping the business world today:

1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/edfenergyexchange/2018/10/31/how-the-biggest-corporate-sustainability-trends-of-2018-have-really-paid-off/#5583f3976592
2. https://deloitte.wsj.com/cfo/2018/08/17/finding-value-in-corporate-social-purpose-the-role-of-the-board/
3. The Story of Sustainability in 2018 - Harvard Business Reviewhttps://hbr.org/2018/.../the-story-of-sustainability-in-2018-we-have-about-12-years-le…

Beyond reading articles, you can also watch this Ted Talk about the how your business can benefit from being “good”: https://www.ted.com/talks/wendy_woods_the_business_benefits_of_doing_good?language=en

I hope this helps as you work on your research!

-Melika

(Sources: https://www.globalcompact.de/wAssets/docs/Nachhaltigkeits-CSR-Management/un_global_compact_guide_to_corporate_sustainability.pdf)

The Entrepreneurial Process: Competition and Market Share

While BVC's topic is Sustainable Development, the pillar of committee is success within the entrepreneurial system, a tall task with a seemingly endless amount of factors and considerations.

Although generating your own complete business model and plan for development may be daunting as delegates, there are several key elements that are commonplace within enterprise.

Beginning in the very first step of the entrepreneurial process, with ideation, it is important to know exactly what the VALUE PROPOSITION of your good or service is. That is, the exact reason why anyone would ever need or want what you're providing. After figuring out what it is you're providing, the next step is convincing others that it's worth having, and more so, how to get others to buy your product over anything else similar.

This is where the tools of SWOT and conducting competitive analyses are incredibly helpful and insightful. SWOT is a comparative framework that stands for Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths, being what your product does well. Weakness being what it falters on. Opportunities are chances to capitalize on a niche or need that is not currently being filled, and threats being other products that may seize those opportunities. A competitive analysis is an overview of the landscape of products that may be relevant in competition with, and thus antagonizing your profitability. Some important details to note in doing a competitive analysis may be market share and market cap, industry size, age and maturity of industry, and potential cultural, social and political factors that may affect your product's desirability.

I hope that this blog post has given you little more insight into the entrepreneurial process, and we look forward to seeing you all in March.

Regards,
Alexander

Why have I been Assigned a Person?

Hi everyone!

As committee is getting closer, you may have some questions about the "committee assignment" that you've gotten. It's going to be "Person XX". This has been done intentionally, rather than representing a country (or even a company) you're representing yourself. Your placard will have your own name. BVC is run this way to give you full creative control over whatever ideas that you may have. Rather than limiting yourself to somebody else's opinions, you are able to really delve into what you want to create.

If you still have any questions, either let me know in the comments below or at ndubey@bmun.org or bvclxvii@bmun.org!

Thinking about Environmental Innovations

Hi!

Below are some very cool lists of sustainability innovations that have been created over the past few years. I really want to stress that you can create ANYTHING related to the environment and sustainability in the developing world. The more niche and specific you can get, the better your product, company, and pitch will be.

Interesting article about environmental innovation: 
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/edfenergyexchange/2018/03/27/environmental-innovation-will-transform-business-as-usual/#6644cf538821

Articles about specific innovations: 
- https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/environmental-tech-innovations
- https://interestingengineering.com/21-sustainability-innovations-and-initiatives-that-might-just-change-the-world
- http://time.com/5460054/sustainable-products/
- https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/11/tech/ecosolutions-5-ways-tech/index.html
- https://www.businessinsider.com/10-inventions-helping-save-planet-2018-1

These resources are a good place to start if you're stuck writing your position paper and unsure about what company/invention you could possibly create.

As always, reach out to bvclxvii@bmun.org or ndubey@bmun.org if you need help!

General Overview of Committee

Hi everybody!

Berkeley Venture Capital is a specialized committee, and thus runs on different procedure and day-to-day structure. I'm going to try my best to explain it below, but as always reach out to bvclxvii@bmun.org (or my email, ndubey@bmun.org).

As the committee page states (bmun.org/bvc), BVC is a full tech committee. This means that you are allowed to use your laptop any time. We understand the depth of research and collaboration that comes with the internet, especially in a venture capital committee, and want to grant you access to the internet. If we find that this privilege is being taken advantage of we will return to the BMUN standard of no tech in committee.

Position papers have a separate set of guidelines, found on bmun.org/bvc which will be the basis of your initial pitch. It doesn't have to be perfect -- it could be an idea for an app, company, product, or anything else. In the first committee session everybody will get the opportunity to pitch their ideas to the rest of the committee and start to form groups with other delegates. You and your team are going to form a company with the goal of solving an environmental problem in a developing country for the rest of the weekend. The company's product can be a combination of ideas that you had coming in to committee, an expansion of one person's idea, or something completely different.

Rather than having a resolution submitted at the end, you and your team are going to pitch your company to the dais, who will be acting as investors, through a pitch deck. We're going to be posting examples of pitch decks in the upcoming weeks but they're essentially a business model for your company to help persuade people to invest. Based on the feedback of the dais and their initial investment you're going to adjust your pitch and deal with any and all obstacles that may come your way.

This all may sound a bit intimidating, but the entire dais will be reiterating this and guiding you through the whole process with micro-lectures, more blog posts, and an unlimited amount of advice. BMUN is a learning conference and we hope you are excited to spend a weekend with us! Let us know if you have any questions/comments/suggestions at bvclxvii@bmun.org!!

Dais Introduction

Welcome to the BVC blog! This blog will serve as a way for us to communicate information with all of you to help you prepare for BVC this upcoming March! At the current moment, the blog will consist of company spotlights and other useful entrepreneurship tips but let us know if there's anything that you would like us to elaborate on. I just wanted to start off by doing a short introduction of the dais, and we'll be posting more in the upcoming weeks. Also, this blog is more of an informal way for us to communicate with you so don't hesitate to respond to the posts with questions, etc.

Alex, Neha, Melika

My name is Neha Dubey and I’m going to be your BVC head chair BMUN LXVII. I’m currently a sophomore intending to study Business Administration and Economics, with interests in development economics and finance. I was born and raised in the bay area (Fremont) and absolutely love Cal. On the dais for BVC last year, I was amazed by the incredible depth of creative solutions, and I am extremely excited to see how sustainable environmental technology is approached over the course of the weekend. Throughout my involvement with Model United Nations (including attending BMUN as a delegate) I’ve never been more excited for a committee than this one. Besides BMUN, on campus I'm involved with student government and research. Outside of school, I enjoy watching basketball (go Warriors!), trying new coffee shops, and spending far too much time on Netflix. I am ridiculously excited for BMUN LXVII and can’t wait to meet you in March!

Alex Liu is one of two vice chairs for Berkeley Venture Capital and also serves as the BMUN treasurer. Although this is his first time as part of BVC, he has been involved with Model United Nations for seven years including three years with BMUN. He is a junior studying Computer Science and has interests in pursuing a career in the intersection of business and technology in the future. Outside of MUN, Alex likes to go hiking and is an avid fan of hip-hop. He is also involved in a consulting club at Cal, where he has worked with clients on projects ranging from education technology to frozen food. Alex looks forward to seeing you all and hearing about your creative innovations in March!


Melika Rahbar is a freshman at UC Berkeley, intending to major in either Business Administration or Economics. This year, Melika will be a vice chair for Berkeley Venture Capital. After participating in MUN for four years in her hometown of Orange County, Melika has chosen to get involved in BMUN! Outside of BMUN, she is involved in other on campus activities such as her professional fraternity. When Melika isn’t studying, she is spending time with friends, watching Netflix, or drinking coffee. She is so excited to meet all the delegates and see what ideas they come up with!

As always feel free to email us at bvclxvii@bmun.org, or my email at ndubey@bmun.org.