Hi all!
Today we used the time in class to share individual ideas for the Business Model Canvas (BMC). I heard a lot of great dialogue, feedback, and collaboration within the groups. Coming out of class today, you should be going back on your own and iterating on the ideas you came into class with today. For Thursday’s class, you will be converging in your groups on a singular BMC to move forward with during the rest of the semester.
I am sure Professor Darwin is eager to hear about what you thought of the working sessions. Some potential thought starters are: what did you learn from your peers? Did anything surprise you? How are you handling the ambiguity within this process?
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have questions. Look forward to seeing you on Thursday!
Dan
I enjoyed sharing and receiving ideas from my UnitedHealth Group teammates. We engaged in great dialogue regarding the current business model but needed more time to discuss the new business model. We realized that we were not keeping track of time when it was 3pm — time flies when you are discussing the details of a business model. We ended the class by bouncing back and forth mobile application logistical ideas. After talking with my teammates and Dan, I further understand that value creation is associated with revenue and value capture is associated with profit.
I was really interested in hearing the ideas that my fellow teammates came up with for the business model, as well as their analysis of the current business model of Wipro. Our passionate conversations about the challenge helped spark a lot of new ideas and thinking between us about how to approach the challenge. I also learnt a lot of the shortcomings of my business model ideas and ways of improvement from the insightful questioning and feedback from my peers and from Dan. Overall, I came out the class feeling very inspired and excited about all the interesting new ideas and plans that was produced from our discussions.
Working with my peers yielded a lot of extremely useful insights. One of the main things I realized is that everyone brings a different perspective to a proposed problem and only by combining these perspectives can a group come up with a good comprehensive solution. I approached Wipro’s challenge from the point of an engineer and considered the cool engineering tools and solutions that would work. The more business oriented members of my group approached it with more of a business mindset and brought exceptional ideas about customers, distribution, relationships, etc that I would not have thought of on my own. By bouncing our ideas off one another we were able to create or first iteration of the business model we want to propose to Wipro. While we did run into ambiguities, he handled these by pinpointing the questions we needed to answer to resolve these ambiguities and deciding to research these areas further before we meet again.
Being on the same page with your team members is a task more challenging than it sounds. Fortunately, I believe that in my group, UnitedHealth, this task is being accomplished on a steady pace. Details that may appear obvious such as defining how we all think that company works (i.e. how insurance works), where the revenue comes from and where it goes (i.e. who the customer is) and what the definition of value is (i.e. value for customer or for company) don’t seem obvious anymore when brought up in a group setting and some of us have different definitions. Then again, I’m glad that all those details and many more were addressed in the conversation my group had yesterday (with Dan’s assistance, too).
I appreciate the time we had to discuss yesterday since it was the first real meeting with all of us together. It was much needed, after thinking about it. I’m glad everyone in my group is not only smart and creative but also very devoted to the project.
Looking forward to discuss how we’re going to innovate UnitedHealth on Thursday.
I really enjoyed having this time in class to work together with my team. I think because our group had the opportunity to speak with Professor Darwin about our challenge last week, many of us had similar ideas. Therefore, this time was very useful in us discussing more in depth the ideas we came up with as well as discovering new possible solutions. We gave each of ourselves different research assignments so that we would be more prepared to come up with a sustainable business model on Thursday. The time we worked together also gave us the opportunity to really discuss what an open innovation model is and what it should look like for GE. I look forward to our next meeting where we will bring our new and refined ideas together.
It was quite interesting to gather the knowledge of five into one. I stayed up very late the night before trying to read through every words of the website. But it just gave a vague idea of what Fujitsu could offer but not what Fujitsu’s comparative advantages are. But for the peer discussion session, we are able to settle down what we think are the most important part for Fujitsu’s business model, from the perspective of “Resource”, “Activities”, “Partners”, “Relationship”, “Customers”, “Distribution” and “Value Creation” and “Value Capture”. It also occurred to us that some bullet points can fall into two or even three categories. But throughout our discussion, we are able to combine our five individual business model canvas into one.
It was interesting to see how we all thought of our challenge in different manners, sometimes on the opposite spectrum. Some of us addressed the issue of “How do we make the process of finding new technology more efficient?” vs. some of us who addressed the issue of “How do we create a common language to measure and evaluate technologies?”
These different ideas helped us understand both perspectives, naturally. The time to do group work was a nice gem, where it allowed us to work with our team instead of having to worry about trying to schedule a meeting.
Yesterday’s class went well! It definitely took a significant amount of time to weave our way through each person’s idea of how to approach every component of the canvas. But that gave us a chance to really analyze and understand both detailed and general aspects of Fujitsu’s setup. Being such a large company, as are all the companies the teams are working with, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly whether we are being too general or too specific when it comes to working on a few strong points for the business canvas. However all in all, using the class time to hash out our ideas and our ways of understanding Fujitsu was definitely very helpful for all of us to move forward in terms of creating a stronger and more focused canvas. Looking forward to Thursday’s class!
The class on Tuesday was great. Our group utilized the time to really brainstorm our ideas and try to come up with solidified and concrete answers. Some of the ideas that my group mates presented were really remarkable, ones that I could never come up with myself. Through the group discussion, we were also able to stumble upon business goals and challenges that were overlooked when I was doing the business canvas alone. Some of these new things that we learned about our project made us think even further on how to come up with the best possible solutions / ideas to the table. We spent a great amount of time brainstorming for “Value Creation” and “Value Capture”. It was certainly hard to unite all our ideas together and make them into one tangible proposition. I hope that by Thursday our group, Johnson & Johnson, would have the time and resources necessary to bring everything together into one solid idea. Looking forward to class tomorrow!
I thoroughly enjoyed using Tuesday’s class time to discuss in our groups. I thought that assigning each person to find their own information and propose suggestions first was a great way to facilitate conversations on Tuesday. By reviewing each of our business models, we were able to talk about where we had problems finding information and determine specific questions we needed answered. It seemed like some of us had similar suggestions and it was great to be able to get and give feedback. I’m looking forward to consolidating the information to create one business model for Wipro tomorrow!
I liked Tuesday’s class time to regroup with my team. By working on it beforehand, we were able to synthesize and move much more efficiently then if we were to sit down and slowly figure things out. By talking through each other’s ideas and seeing our thought processes, I was able to rethink a lot of the ways that I approached the business models originally. I am really looking forward to see what draft my team comes up with for the business model proposal. Hopefully my team can have a great starting point to work with and continue developing for the rest of the semester.
It was really interesting to listen to other group member’s ideas and discuss our thoughts together. Our group had similar thoughts for the existing business model. However, when it came to the innovative business model, we all have different ideas for the project. But these ideas are based on similar thoughts and I believe that we can consolidate them into a comprehensive business model. I think it’s great to start with lots of ideas even some of them might not be that feasible and then combine some of them and go deeper into those ones.
It was great to come together as a group and discuss our challenge for The Coca-Cola Company. We spent some time in the beginning to ensure that we were aligned on the goal of the project and how we could add the most value for our client. I found it extremely helpful to review Coke’s existing business model with my teammates – together, we strove to garner a holistic understanding of the company’s existing model and stakeholders so we could properly identify key opportunity areas for innovation. Our client sponsor has been very supportive so far in answering our follow-up questions, and we look forward to connecting with him again next week!
I found it extremely insight to be able to share our open innovation business models with our teams. When working on the model alone there were many roadblocks that I faced. I was unsure about the direct line of communication, the internal organization and the connection between the Coke and the hubs. However, once we met as a team, we started to answer some of these questions. Now with a greater understanding of Coke’s company, we only have a few questions left. I believe that discovering each and every facet and misstep of the company is the first step to completely understanding the overarching problem. This coming week we will have another conference call with our Coke representative to answer those unanswered questions and become one step closer to developing a plausible solution.
The group activity was really important for me to get to know my fellow group mates better but also to understand their viewpoint of the case we are facing. Regarding my business model I realized I hadn’t focused enough on the specific challenge but had thought of improvement for their business model in multiple areas. However, when we shared our canvases I think all of us really benefited from that since we came with ideas and conclusions that were a mixture of our our different solutions. We stated a couple of research questions for next lecture so we can build our team canvas next time me meet!
This was my first lecture of this course and I was thrown into our groups discussion about WiPro business model immediately. Even though I hadn’t prepared a business model it was very interesting to see the different views and aspects people had focused on. This gave me a chance to quickly get an understanding Wipro and their problems and what we would like them to focus on. Looking forward to todays class and connecting all of our ideas to one united plan.
I found the group brainstorming / feedback activity to be really beneficial. Although we each came to the meeting with our own ideas about how to solve their problem, the group discussion helped us refine our ideas. It made a huge difference in our understanding of the business problem. After meeting, we were able to identify our knowledge gaps and go back to the client with more follow-up questions. In one class time, we were able to cover a lot of information.
Upon sharing our business model canvases, our group realized that it was difficult to fit our challenge to this framework, as we were focusing on a very specialized technology adoption/accelerator unit within Coke (rather than the product itself). As our conversation continued, we realized there was more gray area in our understanding and prompted us to reach out to our challenge sponsor for more clairification on certain procedures within Coke.
It was very cool to see what ideas my other group mates proposed. All of our ideas were circulated around one purpose but were very diverse. In this time we were able to hear each other’s thoughts and explore new ideas together.
It was great having the opportunity to really collaborate as a team and get to know my teammates a bit better. I learned in the process that my teammates are very passionate and outspoken when it comes to their ideas and their approach to the Fujitsu challenge. While this is very promising I can also foresee a lot of back and forth arguments and struggling to make compromises or to have everyone on the same page. This challenge is not simply about learning to develop a business model or incorporating open innovation rather it’s also about learning to work in a team of extremely bright and creative individuals – all of whom generate more ideas than they can keep track of. I’m looking forward to seeing the final presentation we come up with at the end of the semester!
This is a great point and something that I experienced as well. I think the challenge really does lay within human interaction with big teams. It is not that anyone is better or worse. It is about making agreements and progressing. I would love to hear from others how they have managed or seeing good examples of coming to a consensus in large teams. I think the biggest thing is to ensure that all team members are heard in an organized manner and then doing something such as talking through or voting on a solution. I also think that this process will take time. It might be a good idea to dedicate an entire day of being with the team to draft out our idea.
On another note. It has been lovely getting to know the team better. I think this class helped us bond.
Tuesdays class was a great opportunity for my group and I to convene and share our research. After come deliberation, we realized that we needed to complete additional research in specific areas in order to truly understand GE’s current business model and make improvements to it. We delegated research topics to each other and set the deadline to complete them by Wednesday at 12pm. After that, we met and shared our research which really helped us assign possible suggestions in the different boxes of the business canvas model. Looking forward to presenting and improving this model!
I really enjoyed sharing my ideas for the business model of United Health and was glad that some of the others had the same idea. Since, it was research-based information about the BM that we were sharing, my interest peaked when we talked about the new business model that we should create to enhance the current one. Sharing my ideas and listening to others for this part was fun as some of the ideas that I listened to were really creative that I never could have thought of myself. Thinking about the ideas in my brain was different from sharing them vocally to others as I had to explain my ideas reasonably and along this process I was able to clarify and specify myself about the ideas. Also, getting feedback on my ideas was helpful.
I looks like this session went very well and the bonding process has begun with exchange of many ideas. I look forward to your ideas and thoughts on your new business models.