Tag Archives: Video

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

Schmidt on Disruptive Technologies

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McKinsey has put together a video of Google’s Eric Schmidt discussing disruptive technologies. It is divided into four segments: 1) Biology goes digital, 2) Materials and manufacturing, 3) My computer my friend, and 4) Man vs. machine. They also have a transcript of his comments available.

Contributed by Russ Coff

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

Failing … to Succeed

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Peter Klein writes, “To illustrate the importance of experimentation and learning, I showed my students the Michael Jordan ‘Failure’ commercial. Inexplicably, they were not moved to tears, as I was.” J.K Rowling’s 2008 graduation address at Harvard is also a nice example though it may be a bit long to play in class.

Contributed by Peter Klein

Fish Story: A common tragedy

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The  tragedy of the commons refers to the inefficient use of a shared resource when individual actors have incentives that are misaligned with the larger community. Classic examples might be a shared pastures or common waters for fishing. Dennis Meadows and John Sterman offer a computer based game that simulates this problem in a fishing setting (Fishbanks: A Renewable Resource Management Simulation). Below is a short video that describes the problem.

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

Free Org Change Videos

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Education Portal has put together a series of videos on Organizational Change that seem like a nice addition especially for online or part time courses. Education Portal Academy offers these videos for free. The content is fairly basic but some of it might be very useful to augment other course materials. This could help you cover these topics outside of class if you want to do an experiential exercise in class (see, for example, the org change ruse on this site) or if you want to give students some additional background resources.

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

Proof of a Bad Strategy…

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Kathy Eisenhardt has a classic paper describing how “slow” decision makers tend to explore one alternative until it has completely failed rather than considering other alternatives. When facing uncertainty (noisy signals), managers often need strong evidence before altering their opinions. This video depicts the consequences of waiting for such strong evidence.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Valentine’s Day: A Formula for Love

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You may have heard Jay Barney say there cannot be a rule for riches (or the rents will be competed away). However, Harlequin romances has been using a formulaic approach to developing romance novels for years. This HBS case on Harlequin explores their resources and capabilities in this area in the context of a strategic decision. Is the formula a source of advantage? If not, what is? To go with this case, you might consider using:

  • This Pandora radio post on the formula for a love song.
  • This video of Kurt Vonnegut describing the formulaic approach to telling stories (such as Cinderella).

Contributed by Aya Chacar

Groupon: The Next MySpace?

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You could easily fill an hour by just playing the videos below, saying “discuss,” and then stepping out of the way. I use the videos (all 3) along with the available case study — Ivey case W12674, which already has its own teaching note. As preparation for the Groupon discussion, you could also ask students to explore the web site where Groupon makes its sales pitch to merchants, at https://www.grouponworks.com/. Here are the videos:

Groupon would fit best as a closing exercise at the end of a module on sustainability of competitive advantage. To add a humorous interlude to your discussion, you might include this Brazilian video or this ONN TED talk on Social Media.

Contributed by Rich Makadok

ONN: Outsource Your Own Job

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ONN (Onion News Network) spoof on outsourcing — in the end all work is outsourced to one person. Very funny and explores the limits of outsourcing.

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Here is a real news story about a programmer who outsourced his own job to a developer in China. He continued to get great performance reviews while he watched cat videos on YouTube.

Contributed by Aya Chacar

Perception Drives Strategy

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Another in a series of (entertaining) videos that illustrate perceptual biases. In the context of strategy, decision-makers inevitably have incomplete data from which to draw conclusions. In this context, behavior and choices are ultimately driven by perceptions as opposed to some objective observation of facts. You may also be familiar with the classic video where the task is to count basketball passes and viewers get to involved with the task that they miss the gorilla that walks through the middle. Here is a related article that shows how radiologists also miss the gorilla when it is in the middle of a lung scan.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Quiznos Business Model: Exploit?

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This video describes the business model (musically) by which franchise owners were encouraged to open stores that they knew would be unprofitable. The business model was more about selling franchises than selling sub sandwiches. Very profitable for Quiznos but not so much for their partners. Here is a CBS news story on the resulting class action lawsuit.

Contributed by Aya Chacar

Ryanair: New heights from low costs

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In this interview (9:44), Deputy CEO, Michael Cawley, explains Ryanair’s relentless pursuit of cost reduction and the resulting value created. High demand elasticity contributes to their advantage since the increase in total demand arising from lower prices gives them added volume on routes that might not be profitable for other carriers. The interview is conducted by Juan Jose Guemes from IE Business School. Of course, there are several nice cases written about the company that go well with this.

Contributed by Birgul Arslan

One Man Band Gets a Poor Score…

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This Pixar short features a battle of two one man bands. They each do things fairly well but profit is limited. Then a talented violinist “makes a new market” and they are left out. The one man bands are a bit like diversified companies – competent but not excelling at any task. A rival with superior but focused capabilities might win over “jack of all trades/master of none” competitor.

Contributed by Elisa Alt

Don’t Judge Too Quickly…

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Another in a series of videos that illustrate perceptual biases. In the context of strategy, decision-makers inevitably have incomplete data from which to draw conclusions. Any one of the commercials in the sequence below will illustrate the perils of assumptions one might make.

Contributed by Russ Coff

Groupon Follies: Get a Brazilian…

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This Groupon Superbowl commercial is quite funny (even if it is in bad taste). However, the company has struggled and one year after its IPO the price was 81% below the initial price. A recent spike when a hedge fund took a toehold position only underscores the company’s troubles as investors hope for better management. Before the IPO, Groupon turned down a $6B offer from Google — something that Google should appreciate since the company is worth less than half that amount a year after the IPO. One reason for the bearish response is that the entry barriers are fairly low and the competition is significant (e.g., Living Social and even a new eBay venture along these lines). Why was this so hot anyway?

Contributed by Russ Coff