Writing Competition — BT Online — Business Today Online Journal

Winner of the Writing Competition: "Privacy in the Eyes of the Data Broker" by Jasmine Bae

As our lives become increasingly digitized in the 21st century, our personal choices, habits, and mannerisms have become intertwined with our online identity. Companies of all industries have been increasingly encouraged to manage and collect data of their clients (or potential clients) in order to compete and strategize effectively in the new global economic system. At the same time, consumers are not only more informed about this phenomenon but are also realizing issues with businesses being in charge of their personal and private data.

2nd Place Winner of the Writing Competition: "Let It Be Known" by Harrison Wang

In the decades leading up to the recognition of CSR as a central pillar of business, CSR was typically viewed as an extraneous project of minor importance for businesses during a time where consumers placed a greater emphasis on the quality of a product rather than the quality of a company. However, as technology and information have become readily available and accessible to more and more of the world population, people have evolved in their consumption calculus by evaluating every aspect of the product that makes it what it is.

3rd Place Winner of the Writing Competition: "With Great Beauty Comes Great Responsibility" by Mohil Chaudari

The apparel, fashion, and luxury industry (AF&L) is one of the worst-affected industries by COVID-19, with demand and supply restructuring towards consumption of essential goods and services. With both retail and online sales diminishing as people consolidate their wealth to survive the pandemic, the industry has realized that they will not be able to operate their current business until the consumer confidence revives and social distancing relaxes.

Third Place Winner of the Writing Competition: "The Future is Data" by Katie McCarren

The breakfast preventing millennials from buying houses: avocado toast and a side of fruit accompanied by coffee from a Seattle-based beverage conglomerate. In this typical American breakfast, the avocados grown in Colombia, the blueberries shipped from Mexico, and the coffee blend originating in Latin America, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. A scroll through Instagram shows people traveling all over the world, a result of the jet age: easier and cheaper travel has aided over 1.2 billion people in crossing international borders and pursuing their wanderlust. Even the iPhone displaying these images is comprised of parts from 43 countries.

Second Place Winner of the Writing Competition: Blockchain: Long Live Globalization: by Tanner Wegrowski

With stories like BREXIT, trade wars, and the rise of nationalism inundating the daily news, it’s hard not to ask the question: is globalization dead? The rapid decline of global foreign direct investment, nationalist parties roiling politics in the European Union, and the weakening of global trade for the first time since the Great Recession intimate that this could be the end of an era. Yet all the while, blockchain is sending us an entirely different signal: hang on, because globalization is very much alive and well.

Winner of the Writing Competition: The Child Consumer by Grace Chuan

It is commonly said that the world is becoming a “smaller place” as communicative technologies become increasingly more accessible. While the world itself is not actually shrinking, it feels as if the practical barriers of traveling, retrieving information, and consuming entertainment are minimizing for everyone—including children. Children are now, more than ever, an increasingly reachable audience for digital services. A growing number of online businesses and industries are creating platforms that specifically target younger audiences to capitalize on their growing profitability.