In my Strategic Marketing Meeting today, we were brainstorming on our choice of company for our case study. Initially we were indecisive because the company we thought off always were unable to meet to criteria:
1. Primary research sources or accurate/reliable secondary research
2. Unable to think of a problem/issue at hand the company is facing
After many hours of brainstorming and headaches, we realized that we were not really heading to any direction. In any case, I was unaware that a member in my group has a high profile dad working inside a large MNC, and is largely my fault since I did not make a strong enough effort to get to know everyone better.
While we everyone including me were figuring out a problem that the firm is facing, a list of common issues appeared. Some of there were:
1. Low sales
2. Lousy product
3. Poor marketing
and so on and so forth, basically issues that I felt had a very poor angle to base our report on.
Strange how at that moment, I remembered a phrase written in the same Kundera book which I blogged about yesterday (It is strange since it dealt with a distant topic called love). Kundera says:
".... because love is a continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love.
(In that case, my friend Hubl would have pointed out to me, no one loves us more than the police. That's true. just as every height has its symmetrical depth, so love's interest has as its negative the police's curiosity. We sometimes confuse depth with height, and I can easily imagine lonely people hoping to be taken to the police station from time to time for an interrogation that will enable them to talk about themselves.)"
Just as a every height has its symmetrical depth, so does a problem, a positive and negative side to it. From the very beginning, we had been assuming that only poor/under performing companies faces a problems (the negative side) and have neglected that even really well performing companies (not excluding monopolies) have its problems as well (the positive side), and that it is not prudent to assume that the bullish run uphill will last forever (just as how IBM's mainframe computers proved unsustainable against desktop PC in the long run). Problems they face maybe things like having new entrants entering the industry, the threat of deregulation and stagnant growth. It was at that moment an "aha" came across me, and I felt really silly at how narrow my chain of thoughts were.
Funny how the best ideas can come from the strangest places and how business can assimilable with the topic of love.
1. Primary research sources or accurate/reliable secondary research
2. Unable to think of a problem/issue at hand the company is facing
After many hours of brainstorming and headaches, we realized that we were not really heading to any direction. In any case, I was unaware that a member in my group has a high profile dad working inside a large MNC, and is largely my fault since I did not make a strong enough effort to get to know everyone better.
While we everyone including me were figuring out a problem that the firm is facing, a list of common issues appeared. Some of there were:
1. Low sales
2. Lousy product
3. Poor marketing
and so on and so forth, basically issues that I felt had a very poor angle to base our report on.
Strange how at that moment, I remembered a phrase written in the same Kundera book which I blogged about yesterday (It is strange since it dealt with a distant topic called love). Kundera says:
".... because love is a continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love.
(In that case, my friend Hubl would have pointed out to me, no one loves us more than the police. That's true. just as every height has its symmetrical depth, so love's interest has as its negative the police's curiosity. We sometimes confuse depth with height, and I can easily imagine lonely people hoping to be taken to the police station from time to time for an interrogation that will enable them to talk about themselves.)"
Just as a every height has its symmetrical depth, so does a problem, a positive and negative side to it. From the very beginning, we had been assuming that only poor/under performing companies faces a problems (the negative side) and have neglected that even really well performing companies (not excluding monopolies) have its problems as well (the positive side), and that it is not prudent to assume that the bullish run uphill will last forever (just as how IBM's mainframe computers proved unsustainable against desktop PC in the long run). Problems they face maybe things like having new entrants entering the industry, the threat of deregulation and stagnant growth. It was at that moment an "aha" came across me, and I felt really silly at how narrow my chain of thoughts were.
Funny how the best ideas can come from the strangest places and how business can assimilable with the topic of love.
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