Category Archives: Humor

Frozen Corporate Strategy

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Disney’s Frozen is now the top grossing animated film of all time (almost $800 million in revenue so far). But that is only the box office proceeds. FrozenThe Lion King brought in over 2 billion and the box office was just a small part (see the HBS Lion King case for a breakdown). Of course, they will leverage the characters across their entertainment assets (frozen cruises, stage shows, theme parks, broadcasting, etc.). This might make one think that the bulk of the additional returns stem form their diversification strategy. In fact, most of the revenue will come from merchandise sales where the manufacturing is outsourced. Because Disney owns the rights to the characters, they have bargaining power to appropriate most of the profit — no need to vertically integrate. For a rare discussion of management policies to maximize cross-business opportunities, see the Lion King B case (The Synergy Group). Interestingly, Disney has loosened their copyright grip to allow the many spoofs that have overtaken YouTube (click here for a listing). They now see this as free advertising that pumps up the demand for merchandise. This all makes for a nice classroom discussion as well as a host of entertaining videos (like the one below).

Contributed by Russ Coff

Special Orders Outsourced at BK

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This funny video depicts the movement from poorly trained and low paid local workers to outsourced workers overseas and finally to flawed voice recognition software. The result is equally frustrating for the customer. Ultimately, this touches on a variety of subjects including human capital, global strategy, outsourcing, and technology strategy. One important caution is that the video reinforces stereotypes. This too should probably be a part of the conversation.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Failure to Pivot: Stroke of bad luck?

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Of course entrepreneurs need to anticipate when to pivot off of their initial plans (same applies to larger firms but it’s harder). This silly video drives home the need to pivot lest you run up against a wall. You might then follow up with some examples of first movers who had the business model almost right but failed to pivot (firms like MySpace, LinkedIn, AOL, Yahoo).

Contributed by Russ Coff

Does Team Production Bug You?

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Specialization, team production, and cooperation are all important topics in strategy. These bugs do it all. Acquisition of valuable resources is critical as well. Here, the resource is stolen – Maybe there’s an ethics discussion in there too…

Contributed by Russ Coff

An Engineer in a Meeting…

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This clip illustrates how an engineer perceives the product specifications as communicated by marketing professionals. As silly as it is, the underlying language problems are very real and are at the root of many failures to coordinate in organizations. Indeed, the firm that is able to do this effectively and consistently may enjoy an advantage in the marketplace. The video is a bit longer than I would use in class (especially given how silly it is) but might be good as an electronic resource outside of class. If you are looking for an exercise that emphasizes coordination across units, you might check out the MicroDesign negotiation.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Google/Apple vs. Their Employees?

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Google and Apple must pay a total of $324 Million to current and former employees in a class action lawsuit that they lost. This highlights the multiple arenas on which competition and cooperation play out. Is it surprising that strategic alliance partners might agree not to actively poach employees from each other? Such trust seems like a prerequisite to a productive alliance. And yet, fierce competition in product and intellectual property markets makes it hard to imagine close coordination to collude in strategic factor (human capital) markets. This brings together a nice discussion at the intersection of factor markets, alliances, diversification, game theory, and rent appropriation. The video below gives an idea what Google employees do all day…

Contributed by Russ Coff and Aya Chacar

The Bear Necessities…

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There are several nice Samsung cases that describe how the company has tried to merge Western practices (and managers) with Korean/Japanese practices (and managers), to become the truly global firm. It leads to a nice discussion of how a firm can transcend national identity and become a global player. The advertisement below exemplifies this: 1. Bears aren’t identified with a single region (a global species), and probably considered “cute” just about everywhere; 2. The advertisement is easily dubbed in any language as you never see the people talking; and 3. The creative/fun aspect of the ad is probably not what students think of when they think about Samsung tech products — it exemplifies that Samsung has achieved a sophisticated level of global infotainment expertise. Or has a great ad agency. Or you could just do something simpler by using it in an intro about how diversified Samsung is. (e.g., “What industries do you think Samsung is in?” (put answers on board) If someone gets to washing/drying machines, pause for a moment, smile, run the ad. If no one gets to washing/drying machines, pause, smile, ask “What about major appliances?” and run the ad. Fun fun fun.

If you have other ideas for how to use this, please post them as comments below.

Contributed by Melissa Schilling

Let Your Emotions Go, Deer

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Strategy is a cold calculating science, right? And yet emotion may be the key to value creation on so many levels. Recent research by Quy Huy (among others) expands on this. However, this is still only scratching the surface. How far might we take this in the classroom to balance the more analytical frameworks we regularly trod out? How might it relate to differentiation advantages? Human capital as a resource? The strategy process? Governance? In fact, it may add an important dimension to almost any topic we cover in class.

And here is another video along the same lines: Continue reading →

Human Capital: Spinning to the top

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While it is clear that human capital may be a source of competitive advantage, most of our discussion still centers around pay as a critical motivator. As important as that is, advertisers have long ago discovered that people have complex motivations that go well beyond pay (see the video below among others). How can firms take advantage of this to gain access to VRIN human capital? This topic has been explored more fully in my paper with Ben Campbell and Dave Kryscynski (Rethinking Sustained Competitive Advantage from Human Capital).

Contributed by Russ Coff

Nobody Knows the Bubbles I’ve Seen

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We tend to focus heavily on the value of capabilities in strategy. However, the very features that drive willingness to pay (and thus competitive advantage) may ultimately turn out to be a disadvantage. In other words, a core competence can become a core rigidity. When rivals use this against a firm, this might be thought of as a form of “judo strategy.” Below, the animated scrubbing bubbles, the rival’s differentiator, is reframed as “lewd” residue.

Contributed by Russ Coff

When Rivals Eat Your Lunch

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How do firms gain access to valuable resources and capabilities? Barney’s original discussion of strategic factor market theory focused on superior expectations or luck as drivers. This lunchables commercial illustrates how difficult that can be if the value of an asset is widely known. In class, it may lead to a nice discussion of when the value of a resource might not be known.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Softer Side of Sears: Its stock price…

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Hoping to unlock value, Sears has spun off its Lands’ End unit. Unfortunately, both the new unit and Sears’ parent company stock have dropped on the first day of trading. When do spin outs create value? When do related diversified firms create value? Here, the units are quite closely related and still the company could not create value together. For some recent studies of market reactions to spinouts, see Emilie Feldman’s work. The Sears commercial below foreshadows their need for better vision. This might also go nicely with the business combination scavenger hunt.

Contributed by Russ Coff

 

An Agent Who Lacks Principles…

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Often times students become quite disinterested when the topic of agency theory comes up, and they may not completely understand its implications. This short video does a nice job of presenting it in an interesting way in which the students can identify. The context is the relationship between a manager and his assistant, but the discussion can easily be extended to CEOs and the board of directors. Here is another video along similar lines.

Contributed by Tim Folta

Taking Customer Loyalty Too Far?

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Of course, we explore customer loyalty as a key element of differentiation. How far does loyalty go? This ONN story about Southwest airlines pushes that envelope by asking what customers will do for employees (like lying to the CEO’s wife about where he is). Of course, it’s a bit silly but there’s something useful in there too 😉

Contributed by Russ Coff

Rival Analysis: A whale of a problem

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Sometimes firms think they are the “hunter” only to find that their rivals are stronger than they thought. Firms may find that they are the prey rather than the hunter. After an especially cold winter, this video may help to drive home that point. In the context of judo strategy, it demonstrates the value of going undetected until you are stronger than rivals expect. Finally, the video is valuable to illustrate the general issue of managing under uncertainty.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Generic Brand Video

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This Advertising Age article touts the tongue-in-cheek generic brand video (below). All of the segments are taken from stock footage and could be used to promote almost any product. The underlying advertising formula is exposed. In this cliche environment, what does an effective differentiation strategy look like? One might send the class on a scavenger hunt for firm/products that are truly differentiated (and those that are trying but fall into these cliche traps)

Contributed by Russ Coff

Ford Reintroduces the ’93 Taurus

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Going after the market niche of people who don’t want the glamour of a new car, this ONN feature describes Ford’s decision to reintroduce the 1993 Taurus (including a new Superbowl ad). This is simple & silly but it does get at the notion of a cost-based strategy…

Contributed by Russ Coff

Netflix “Browse Endlessly” Service

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Ok, here is another silly ONN segment on a Netflix “browse endlessly” service. It is only funny to the extent that many of us have experienced extreme indecision when faced with the many alternatives that are available to us. In class, this clip might trigger a nice discussion of bounded rationality – the very root of competitive advantage and almost every other aspect of strategy (see Simon, Models of Bounded Rationality).

Contributed by Russ Coff

Do MBAs destroy value?

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MBA programs help students gain general human capital which may give them a feeling that they can solve problems in a broad range of contexts. Some have lamented how this can result in arrogant behaviors that make them hard to work with. Scott Adam captures this problem admirably below. It might make sense to use this to imbue students with a sense of caution as they enter the workforce.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Dogbert on Bureaucracy

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Dogbert writes a new management text and defines bureaucracy as when “a hundred people think ‘A’ but compromise on ‘B’.” One wonders how firms can create any value at all. This might spur a strategy process discussion of how satisficing results in suboptimal outcomes.

Contributed by Russ Coff