Tenth set of results in!

The wait was not too long (and bearable). We got the results for Strategic Management this afternoon. For this class we had to give back a group paper about the strategy of our industry. Sometimes it’s not that obvious to find a common link in strategies of 5 “random” companies but that’s part of the fun!

So, results are skewed to the right. Nobody is at the extremes. More than half of the class has an A- or A! Congratulations to everyone!

More Blue Ocean?

As part of a normal MBA program, it seems you have to go through some obvious, basic steps. Hearing all the time about Apple is one of these ;-) Michael Porter and his models too. Blue Ocean Strategy is the last one we heard about (for 1st yeat PTMBA students at least).

So Blue Ocean strategy was introduced by Prof. Dr. Kurt Verweire in Strategic Management. Initially it’s a book written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of INSEAD. But of course, there are a lot of videos out there about it …

Do you want a short introduction or summary?

Or maybe you prefer the longer version?

Or you just want to see again glimpses of cases, with some patriotic music in the background?

If you missed the Cirque du Soleil case, here is an INSEAD interview with its CEO.

But finally you just want to see how this fits with Porter’s Five Forces? Youtube will always accompany your studies, even here:

Ok just because it’s late, for thos who like electro remixes, here is the “Blue Ocean Electro Rmx” from beatbros ;-)

What is crowdsourcing?

Yesterday Prof. Venkat Subramanian (Strategic Management) spoke about crowdsourcing as part of the value proposition of a business model. The only example that came was some activities at Johnson & Johnson. But in fact we were all like Mr. Jourdain, crowdsourcing all our lives without knowing it (or at least not without labeling it as “crowdsourcing”). Facebook, Wikipedia, Twitter, LinkedIn, … these are all tools that most of us use and that create their value by tapping in the participation of crowds.

Crowdsourcing was first coined by Jeff Howe (@Crowdsourcing) in a Wired article, in 2006: “The Rise of Crowdsourcing“. Already at that time, examples were abundant: iStockphoto, Web Junk 20, Eli Lilly InnoCentive, Amazon Mechanical Turk, etc. But let’s wait no more, Jeff Howe himself will define crowdsourcing:

For those who prefer to read, here is the definition (there is even a book):

Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

Jeff Howe emphasis two crucial terms: open call and undefined. Wikipedia takes a broader view and defines crowdsourcing as: a distributed problem-solving and a production process.

And examples now are abundant and in various fields: creating a bike map of Moscow, funding a music group,  design of furniture, crowdsourcing the writing of a Ph.D. thesis on crowdsourcing :-), solving algorithmic problems, or even producing a movie (Life in a Day, watch below)!

Now the real question is: does it really create additional value? Or is it just a way to produce at a cheap price? Or is it just a bubble? Some think crowdsourcing has plenty of myths, others link it to co-creation as the real value creator, others just include it in the broader framework of Open Innovation, … What are you thinking of crowdsourcing?

Venkat Subramanian’s final link

Don’t want to type in the last link Prof. Venkat Subramanian gave us? Here it is.

iJules

Today we had one of these hot debates, this time about the smartphone wars (for the Strategic Management course). It became lighter thanks to Jules, one of the Apple fans in the class. Thanks, iJules! ;-)