Markstrat....

In my last post I talked about the marketing strategy simulation Markstrat... all the eight rounds are now over and in terms of our performance what began as a noghtmare has finally ended on a much sweeter note. We began the first round on a disasterous note finding ourselves at the bottom of the league. What followed were rounds of debate, arguements and at times self doubt.Not all was lost but we had to play it big to regain lost ground and stay competitive. But unfortunately given the disastor in round-1 there was not enough money to sustain our R&D for new products and market the existing brands effectively. Our calculations suggested that a loan was a feasible option and although we were strongly adviced against taking the risk (since few companied in the past had managed to recover after taking a loan) we decided to go with our own conviction. Well and it worked ... The loan money helped us develop blockbuster products quickly and we could utilise the market oppertunities to our advantage.The next seven rounds saw us grow exponentially and rise up from the 18th position to the top 3 teams.

Competition and failures bring out the real you and all of us saw it during the rounds of markstrat, when groups did badly but recovered, some did well consistanly while some others did extremenly well to begin with but faded soon after and a few started badly and could never recover. Some groups full of individual brilliance didnt do well while some groups of very ordinery people worked well as a team and the results showed . Lots of lessons for life .....

PS: Just finished reading "Who Says Elephants Cant Dance" by Louis Gerstener. Its a fabulous story about IBM's famous turnaround and how the company rediscovered its strenghts and itself... expect more on the book soon.