Category Archives: Humor

Gibberish as a Second Language

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Ever wonder what English sounds like to non-English speakers? This video goes a long way to demonstrate. You may feel like you should know what these people are saying but it just doesn’t sound quite right. This is another in the series of videos that are useful for teaching international business.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Baby Click Me One More Time

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Market signals can be rather noisy and firms may over react or miss the signal entirely. In a similar way, the resource based view draws on causal ambiguity as an isolating mechanism — firms may misread noisy observations and imitate the wrong thing. This clip illustrates that problem as a firm ramps up to meet demand triggered by unusual activity on its web page…

Contributed by Russ Coff

A Different Script Ending…

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The economics of video streaming and DVD rental brought Netflix to conclude that the businesses were better off separated. However, they erred in assuming that the separation would be well accepted by their customers. Below is the explanation of the separation and how it would affect users after the uproar ensued. Ultimately, the customer pressure pushed them to reverse their decision.

…and this brought the following reaction from Conan O’Brien:

Contributed by Jeff Martin

Flush with Cash…

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A recent Wall Street Journal article points to a resurgence of toilet manufacturing in the U.S. but it is mostly under foreign ownership (like the Japanese company, Toto). Mary Tripsas has a nice HBS case on Toto’s attempts at entering the U.S. market and the WSJ article seems a nice conclusion to the story. A broader question one might ask is why product innovation has not penetrated the U.S, market in this industry. In Japan, top end toilets are highly differentiated and even link to electronic devices like Android smartphones. As such, this might spur discussion of when innovations are likely to take hold as well as questions about entry into new markets. Nevertheless, this video reminds us that there may still be a need for low tech solutions in this market…

Contributed by Russ Coff

Do You Speak English?

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Here is another in the series of humorous videos about the hazards of doing business in different countries. Will the people want to help you if they can? See some related videos here.

Contributed by Russ Coff

The Problem with Credible Commitment

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Credible commitment sends a valuable signal but can only be achieved at a substantial cost. Unfortunately, that cost can create challenges for implementing different strategies later. A tattoo might be considered one form of credible commitment…

Contributed by Russ Coff

Capabilities: Matrix Mouse

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This mouse clearly has extraordinary capabilities. These are especially notable after it acquires the VRIN resource (cheese). Which is the critical resource, the cheese or the ability to acquire it at a discount (e.g., still being alive)?

Contributed by Russ Coff

Blue Sheep of the Family?

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This Mercedes Benz commercial poses a critical strategy challenge for firms seeking to differentiate: “How do you try to stand out in a crowd where everyone is trying to be different?”

Contributed by Russ Coff

Failing Newspapers Affect Crazy Loons

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Ok so here is another funny Onion News Network story of how the death on newspapers affects crazy loons who fill their houses with old newspapers. However, there is a serious issue on how firms ensconced in old technologies respond to strategic challenges. Here is an academic paper by Adner and Snow on the topic. You may also be interested in their HBR article on the topic that may be useful for teaching.

Contributed by Russ Coff

CEO Excels at Destroying Ideas

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In another of our Onion News Network stories, the video below examines how a CEO has a knack for recognizing great ideas and then transforming them into complete failures. The story includes interviews of employees amazed at the skill with which the CEO dismantles exceptional ideas. Funny as it is, it may invite a rich discussion of how CEOs really can destroy good ideas.

Contributed by Russ Coff

A Cut at Vertical Integration

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Firms have sometimes had a tendency to vertically integrate tasks that can be more efficiently outsourced. This humorous video examines the problem in the context a haircut that ultimately costs twice as much (because they tried to do it themselves).

Contributed by Russ Coff

An Agency Problem at the club…

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When making decisions on behalf of others, managers may not have their objectives aligned. This humorous video points out some of the challenges of trusting a party in this context. It is especially useful in exploring agency theory and corporate governance issues.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Cross Cultural Craziness

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Cultural differences certainly present an important barrier to expansion in new markets. This sequence of 3 commercials get at a few of these differences in a funny way. You can probably show any one of them to spark further discussion on how to manage these problems (mode of entry, routines, etc.).

Contributed by Russ Coff

New Prius Designed to Kill Owner

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Clearly the problem in green strategies is to reduce consumption. What could do this more effectively than reducing the owners carbon footprint to zero? This ONN story explores the new Prius that has this special feature. A nice introduction to green strategies…

 Contributed by Russ Coff

Keystone Cops in a Detroit Robbery

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Competitive advantage is not visible to all stakeholders at the same time. This is why entrepreneurs can have an advantage in negotiating with stakeholders who come late to the game. The bank robbery below illustrates how even a small advantage in awareness can change the game.

Contributed by Karl Wennberg

Developer Releases Pirated Game

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Greenheart Games developed a game (Game Dev Tycoon) where the objective is to manage a video game company. However, they did something a little different. They simultaneously released a “cracked” version of the game that was identical except that player’s new products would be pirated. Eventually, the player’s company goes broke since they can’t make any money. Here is their blog post (or pdf in case the site goes dark) describing what happened (e.g., how users of the cracked version complained that they couldn’t win). This is a great vehicle for discussions of ethics, intellectual property, and even game theory. This short video report describes the ploy:

Contributed by Rich Makadok

Teens Enriching Uranium (ONN)

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The Onion offers another entertaining report about teens enriching and selling uranium. While the discussion of “Toping” is a bit silly, the question about stemming the diffusion of some innovations is central to technology strategy. More seriously, why don’t we see wider diffusion of this 75 year old technology?

Contributed by Russ Coff

Bullets Recalled for Being too Safe

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The Onion offers a news analysis of a recall of defective bullets that fail to kill effectively. Of course, the discussion is a bit silly but this can be used to highlight how blame is assigned in organizations as well as how managers operate under conditions of causal ambiguity…

Contributed by Russ Coff

M&A: Resistance is Futile

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The Star Trek reference to the Borg may be lost on most of today’s students. However, their method of absorbing all life forms with which they come in contact is similar to how some firms integrate targets. I recently taught the GSK/Sirtris case in which there is a debate on how much to integrate a target that has a culture of innovation. Ultimately, Sirtris was fully integrated and the original research capabilities were lost. The final decision to shutter Sirtris came just as one of the original co-founders published promising new findings.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Death by PowerPoint

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Academics are notoriously bad at presentations – especially at conferences. Comedian and former engineer, Don McMillan offers some funny but ultimately very practical advice for all of us…

Contributed by Russ Coff