A Somewhat Unique Business Case

So I ended studying a rather unique business case for one of our classes last night. Learned quite a lot, probably because it was written by one of our great professors. It's rather amazing how week after week, reading 10-18 pages of something and then repeating what you read back to the professor just somehow never loses its excitement. I can't rememeber the exact details, but here's the gist of it:

"A manager is looking out a window wondering what to do next, staring at a symbol of his or her company.

The manager's company was started awhile ago, and its founders originally put a whole lot of work into making some highly original stuff, and actually did a good job of making their stuff really really cool.

But now the manager must figure out how to keep their company growing, and while they’re selling a fair amount of their original stuff, they’re also now making some money selling some totally different stuff. There’s also some cool new stuff they might potentially make. (But that stuff costs money.)

And now there's some competition in the marketplace for their stuff. And in certain markets there's not much demand for their stuff. Some of their competitors are fighting them on price, while others are selling their own stuff that's almost as good. Plus there’s a bunch of consumers who don’t care at all about this stuff. And others who really do.

So. Should the company maintain focus on the quality of their stuff, limiting sales, or commoditize and therefore change their stuff? Right now the manager doesn’t know what to do. He or she keeps looking out the window, pondering all these things, hoping the answer will come."

How does the story end? Where does the narrative go next? Will they ever figure out how to keep selling their stuff?

From what I can tell from all the case studies, business seems to be about continuously introducing problems and building tension, always ending in a few nice tables but no really satisfying resolution. Which is really no different from marriage, when you think about it.

Comments

[sweaty boobs]

wheew - thats a lot of stuff to think about, makes my man boobs sweat just thinking about it.

[Charlie Ballard]

Thanks for that picture, C-Murphs. You do know they make a roll-on for that though, right? Look under the "Elsève" brand.