Inventing Elephants

The Markstrat simulation was fantastic.  We were the brand management team of a technology firm and had influence over developing products then choosing to which segment and in what way and with how much financial support they should be promoted.  I learned a number of things related directly to the simulation and experienced for myself some of the foibles of marketing, such as the following two general principles.

It's easy to get caught up in what works at first and not re-examine it later.

In the first couple periods of the sim I found certain tools and points of view that seemed to work and used them.  It wasn't until I was writing up an evaluation for the final that I realized that I could have been viewing profit in at least two other ways or planning product development with a tool that I just hadn't realized the practical use of initially.  I was so overwhelmed that I didn't really stop to think if I could be doing it better, since what I was doing was working well.  Okay, I know this is a common problem, but it's not one I often have, or at least not one I often notice, and it was an illuminating experience.

Things happen outside of your best predictions.

Sometimes in hallway conversations this person or that wonders how these others thought whatever recent failure happened could possibly work.  In a simulation like this when there is only a limited amount of information available it's easy to see how you can make a prediction to the best of your ability, and then have it blown out of the water because the model wasn't right this time.  We fell from first to second place the period that a targeted market segment grew twice what had been predicted.  Our product was better, but we just couldn't make enough of it because our capacity was based on the predictions.

My team never did make it back into first place after my most recent blog entry, especially after the other team introduced the innovative product first and there was not enough time remaining in the simulation for us to follow-up with a refined version, which had been part of our strategy, and claim their market share.   We did well overall, placing a strong second out of five competing teams in the same simulation space, primarily because we directed our efforts to specific market segments early and continually updated our offerings based on the market research feedback.

I turned in my individual final last night.  The team final will be turned in tonight.  I am a very happy and relaxed person, well, except for all those home-related tasks that piled up on my to-do list while I was concentrating on my Marketing class.  But I'll tackle those another day.  I've missed blogging.  I've got a nice stack of titles for future posts and things I've been reading and thinking about that I just didn't have time to really pull together into an understandable format via writing.  My next class should be less intense, so you should see more of me.