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Guidelines for 741 Team Research Project (rev 9-18-16)

Guidelines & Rubric for Doing The 741 Team Research Project

Overview: The team innovation research project consists of consulting on a chosen company’s business strategy for the next 3-5 years, including recommended product or service initiatives. It will involve considerable research (mostly via the internet, including your BU Library access http://www.bu.edu/library/), and should emphasize and clearly apply the concepts of this course. Think of it as student-directed learning, where you can “build-you own-case” and apply the learnings from analyzing formal cases earlier in the term.

This project consists of four things:

1. A proposal (1-2 slides which you will also present in class). Your team #, the members of the team (including nicknames), the proposed independent company (or a particular division with the instructor’s permission) that you wish to analyze using the concepts of the course and recommend a product/service strategy, why you want to study this company (including any personal interests of group members); some of the topics and reactions that come to mind, and a sampling of the articles you have already found on the internet that are relevant and fit within the guidelines below. Note: The topic and how you plan to go about it - must be approved by the instructor before you go further ahead with your research project.

2. A team research paper (1,750 minimum - 2,500 words maximum including all parts such as citations, references, and any appendices).

3. An oral team presentation (10 -12 minutes maximum) supported by PowerPoint of 8-10 slides. Note: All members of the team must participate and must be familiar with all parts of the presentation and paper. Make sure your presentation is within the maximum slides and can be done within the time limits, shorten it beforehand if necessary.

Please be sure to submit both your paper and the PowerPoint slides for your final presentation through the Assignments link on Blackboard . The paper can be submitted only in .doc or .docx format, and the slide presentation must be in .ppt or .pptx format. Name your files based on these examples: The electronic filename of a team project’s slides should be “Team#-Course#-Your-Section#-Name-of-topic- Proj-Preso” (for example T4-741-B2-Tencent-Proj-Preso.pptx), and the electronic filename of your research paper should be “Team#-Course#-Your-Section#-Name-of-topic- Proj-Paper” (for example T4-741-B2-Tencent-Proj-Preso.docx) .

Approach: Imagine your clients are the major controlling shareholders of these companies, and your presentation and paper should be effectively designed to win their hearts and support for the steps you are suggesting.

Outline of Process:

1. Propose your topic by the date indicated in the schedule. Use a Word document and attach it to your email the Instructor (be sure to copy all members of your team on this email so the instructor can best respond to the whole team). The instructor will get back to you and the rest of your team on whether the topic is approved and/ or needs to be changed. Note that we may reject topics that have already been done in the recent past, are already being done by another team this semester, or have been used as an example in class.

Include the company or company divisions you want to study, its major products or services, and why you feel it meets the criteria above of being interesting, based on or impacted by innovation, and facing current challenges, particular issues you want to focus on in your analysis and recommendations for this company, and referencing (with correct citations including links if this is from the web) some appropriate materials you have already found in a preliminary search.

2. Find materials:

a. Look for 5 to 8 recent (from the last eighteen months) quality articles about the company and the broader issues and factors affecting its industry. These may come from the academic literature, general media and business press, and discussion or blog sites, but you will probably get the most interesting and current results with careful internet searches. You may not use business school cases as your sources -- these are generally not current, based on other articles, and rarely make conclusions. Find your own fresh sources. Make sure you choose a company or a division within a company (e.g. Samsung Electronics) that is currently or potentially innovation based, in an industry or country interesting and relevant to the members of your team, and hopefully also in the midst of industry change and/or competitive threats --- and for which you can find enough appropriate articles out there that deal with the company, its products or services, and its overall industry environment.

b. The most useful articles would be about:

i. the company’s strategic development, what got them here, and the current strategic and competitive situation;

ii. the company or division’s product and/or services, and its directions and positioning in the marketplace;

iii. what the company seems to be doing well or not well;

iv. how are the company’s products or services doing well in the marketplace, what is the basis of competition and does it seem to be shifting;

v. what the members of the business press including bloggers and commenters are saying about the company, its current competitive situation, and about larger factors in the industry, and what needs to happen [note that critical articles are often especially valuable];

vi. the company management and its internal “value network” or organizational culture, capacity for innovative ideas to survive, the internal politics, expertise, capabilities and core competencies?;

vii. the external social, political and technological trends (both opportunities and threats) that are shaping the industries in which the company competes;

viii. other types of inputs that may be relevant to your understanding and conceptually analyzing the company’s current situation, and developing strong recommendations based on this.

3. Share the material you find throughout the team so everyone can read it before you meet to discuss.

4. Meet and discuss the material with each other. Review your initial reactions, and together try to deconstruct the company and its situation, according to the concepts from the course. Consider, for example:

a. What is the current competitive situation?

b. What is the changing basis of competition?

c. Is the industry confronted by a disruptive technology or change?

d. How is the company responding to this?

e. What is its current strategy and business model? How is this working out for the company?

f. What are the current threats, opportunities in their market or perhaps new markets?

g. How do the company’s current products or potential new opportunities fit in the framework of The Product Exploration Space?

h. What is the company and its management’s internal value network, organizational structure, and reward system, and strengths or competencies, as well as rigidities? and

i. How does this all fit with your team’s assessment of the company’s challenges and opportunities?

5. Note that the course has provided many tools for strategy formulation and conceptualization of innovation issues - the trick is to artfully apply these tools and those concepts to the analysis of the company! Do not over-rely on broad strategy formulations such as SWOT analysis or Porter’s five forces or obvious descriptors like Kawasaki’s DICEE. Simply filling out lists will weaken your paper. Show us what your point is when you apply a concept. What is the implication? What is the insight that can help you make a meaningful recommendation. Work towards reaching some consensus about how you view the company right now in useful conceptual terms, and the implications of this.

Tip: On Blackboard, you can find a copy of “It's Official! The End Of Competitive Advantage,” a review of The End of Competitive Advantage by Rita Gunther McGrath. Teams may find it helpful to look at this this article (as well as the earlier Chapter 9 in A Good Hard Kick) as motivation to be forceful and not afraid to think at a big level and to criticize the plans and situations of established and/or successful companies. Have some fun and feel empowered.

6. Come up with strong recommendations as a team. Focus on your “on-balance analysis” of which factors you decided to weight most heavily and why, what this means for your analysis of their situation, and what therefore should be the course of action.

7. Organize as a team to write and edit the paper, and to prepare the PowerPoint-based oral presentation.

Format and Style to Be Followed:

Structuring the team paper:

· This should be a professionally written APA-style paper, (but single-spaced!) with 1" margins on all sides using 12 pt., Times New Roman font, and paper header on top of every page.

· Start with a Title Page (company you researched, Team Number, members names including nicknames, Boston University; Course Number; Section Number, Semester, Year, and Date).

· Include an Abstract that gives a concise summary of the key points of the paper. Abstract should be not more than 100 words. (Note: this does not count towards the total word limit).

· Introduction: Don’t forget to set the stage by a well-targeted and strong introduction. Make the “case” interesting and attractive to the reader.

Tip: Just as with the team opening statements you did for the cases, we suggest you start off the analysis part of both your paper and presentation with your “First blush reactions” to the materials you read as a team.

· Next, write a brief background to familiarize the reader and your classmates with the basic facts of the company your team chose. For example, give a quick history of the company or division, where it is located, when it was founded, what it does now primarily, how big is it currently (revenues, employees if known), and if it is a listed or public company and if so on what exchange. Don’t overdue this, just a few pages maximum is enough!! The paper is mostly about your conceptual analysis and recommendations (see the following).

· Analysis (typically 30- 35 % or more of paper): This is a central part of the paper, and provides the force for the recommendations and conclusions that follow. It includes an analysis of what you have read and learned, including your reactions about what struck you either negatively or positively in your reading about the company and its product successes and challenges, your interpretation of the underlying issues, how you have conceptualized this, and the big conclusions you have drawn about the company and its situation. Usually the analysis will actually consist of several, separately-titled sections that logically structure for the reader what you have learned.

You are advised to proactively use the full power of the modern innovation specific concepts of the course that you have learned to find the best way to analyze and provide insights into the company’s situation, and guide the creation of solid specific recommendations.

· Recommendations (typically 30- 35 % or more of paper): This part of the paper will be organized into one or more titled sections and will build on your analysis to suggest potential product or service areas for future strategic growth, potential innovation and ways for creating value in these products and services. Describe a specific actionable plan for how the company should get there in the future (3-5 years) including organizational changes or resource related investment (developing new competencies) if necessary.

· Any Additional Remarks You Want To Add (optional)

· Citations and References: You must use citations throughout the text of your paper and additionally provide a reference list at the end of your paper that matches your citations. Citations and the reference list must both follow the specific APA formats prescribed for these. Also use appropriate brief citations on the slides in your presentation where important.

Structuring your presentation and PowerPoint slides:

· Start with a title slide showing: company you researched, authors' names (and nicknames), Team Number; Boston University Course Number, Section Number; Semester, Year, and Date.

· After your slide showing the background of the company you studied, please have a slide showing what major articles your team read (so the class and I know what your inputs were), and then one showing what the first team reactions were to reading this stuff.

· The remainder of the slides should support the oral presentation your team gives. Ideally, the big threats the company is facing from competition, innovation, and external trends, and the big emerging opportunities, and your conceptual analysis of the underlying phenomena should “leap out” from your slides, and get us ready for your recommendations.

· If you have a short video [5 minutes or less] you wish to show as part of your allotted time, include the url’s or link in your preso (you must show in parenthesis how long the suggested video is). Test the link beforehand to make sure it works.

· Be sure to look at your slides again before submitting them and double check to see if they read right and tell a compelling story. Think how an audience would receive the presentation. Would they understand the topic company and get the main points you are making? Remember to make eye contact with your audience!

· Make sure your slides also look professional (no spelling errors, consistent fonts, proper labeling).

Team Research Project Rubric (Some of the things we typically look for in reading and grading research projects (both the oral and written parts):

Formatting & Preparation:

· Proposal submitted on time · Slide presentation of 8-10 slides showing: · Title + Group info · Background of company · Reactions · Analysis · Recommendations · Any additional conclusions · Major articles and sources used · Visual appeal (proofread, consistent fonts, slides look professional) · Oral presentation tells compelling story and eye contact is made with audience · Team research paper of 1750 to 2500 words includes: · Title + Group info · Abstract · Balance of Intro, Analysis (at least 1/3 of paper), Recommendations (at least 1/3), and any additional remarks from the team · Citations in APA format (in text and bibliography) showing which sources your referred to

Content criteria:

· Short Introduction. It a) provides background on the company and its current status, and b) signals to the reader the team’s line of thinking, including their reaction to the company based on research, the essence of their analysis, and the nature of the recommendations they are going to make. · Clear use of researched materials (preferably from within the last year). · Analysis is insightful (not descriptive), concept-based and considers: · the company’s current situation (including how it and its products are seen by others, and what this means), · product/service success or problems, · competitors and trends outside the company, and · assessment of any actions and plans the company has recently announced, how well they meet its challenges, and what remains as issues and problems (either now or in the foreseeable future) and why. · Recommendations are specific, detailed, and address what the company should be doing in the next 3-5 years. They should: · build on conceptual analysis to suggest potential areas for strategic innovation and growth, and new ways to create value, · provide an actionable plan for how the company should get there, especially including product or service initiatives, structural and organizational changes and financial or people investments (including efforts to acquire or be acquired). · consider suggestions other commentators or critics have made, · show some creativity and decisiveness · deal effectively with the truly major issues and challenges as revealed in analysis. · Both the analysis and recommendation sections apply key concepts or frameworks from this course correctly (examples include: the shifting basis of competition, segmentation, business models, reframing, product exploration space, partnerships, etc.). The use of generic frameworks such as SWOT, PESTEL, or 5 Forces is not favored, and should only be used where they add new insights, and clear conclusions. · All Charts, tables and/or figures included are explained and relate directly to the analysis or recommendations.