Erica's eVentures

Is it a good idea to encourage ALL employees to trade in these markets?  Should insiders and/or highly uninformed people be allowed to trade?  Do they help or hurt the market?

I think that all employees should definitely be encourged to trade in the prediction markets.  Naturally not everyone will chose to participate, not everyone will make informed decisions, and some will make decisions with insider information, but that is real life. And if the market is to be an accurate prediction of reality, than as many users as possbile (informed or otherwise) need to be involved.

In what other industries or areas would Threadless' community-driven product development work well? And not so well?

I think that small businesses are primarily best suited to utilize the community-driven crowdsourcing that brought Threadless huge success. Because the business model is so reliant on the opinions of a tight-knit community, it may be impossible for a company such as this to grow into a larger business, since they are always relying on the input of a group consensus to make decisions. The question is, how large can a community become before it no longer functions as one? I think that a large company like Ikea could use a design contest to gain ideas and input on furniture design from consumers, but I'm not sure it would foster the same sense of community that a small company such as Threadless (with one simple product, T-shirts) can.

Online social networks have become ubiquitous in the past few years. What form of value do users get from these services and who is most likely to sign up for LinkedIn versus other sites?

I think that the reasons people find value in online social networking are fairly similar to the reasons people engage in offline social networking:

a) To communicate more often/better with people they know/trust

b) To increase visibiliy in order to make new connections

Likely if the reason a person is networking online is communication with those people a user already knows, then the community is more likely to be a closed network with privacy viewing controls. Contrastingly, if the reason a person chooses to network online is for broader visibility and to meet new people, the community is more likely to be an open network, where anyone can join and view others' profiles. The majority of people who sign up for LinkedIn are using it to communicate with people they already know: to stay in touch with former and current coworkers, employers, and friends who they are comfortable sharing their personal information and resumes with. LinkedIn has carved out a niche of the social networking market that allows people to keep track of their professional networks online. Other sites such as MySpace target the younger crowd and are oriented to do the opposite: encourgage new connections with people (and bands/ artist groups) the user may not know, but can add to their list of "friends".   Niche online social networks are created to serve a particular group of users' needs according to their lifestyles and life stages.

Do Wikipedia's processes for creating and modifying articles ever lead to high-quality results?

I think that Wikipedia's potential to lead to high quality results depends on the user and what the definition of "hiqh quality results" may be. The problem with the Wikipedia process (and in some ways, the miracle of it)  is that non-expert users in the community create or edit content and publish it. This means that an article will never be "complete", since anyone can come in and edit the content at any time.  While it could be argued that knowledge itself is never really "complete",  I would prefer to compile research from  multiple established experts' publications (rather than random people who may be bored online and have copious free time to contribute to wiki) and would be skeptical of using Wikipedia for anything more than general information.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of implementing internal versus external employee blogs in a corporate strategy? Are there certain industries where one of these strategies makes more sense?

Weighing potential benefit and risk: 

Some advantages of internal employee blogging are the stimulation of employee creativity, the encouragement of feedback on company/departmental policies & procedures, and the creation of a culture of collaboration and transparency through knowledge sharing.

Some disadvantages of internal employee blogging are that blogs consume the time of the creator and the reader in order to have value, and there has to be a balance between time spent working and blogging for it to be cost effective. Also, the blog should be easy to use and searchable, but users should feel comfortable that they will not be reprimanded by management for offering constuctive feedback and criticims.

I think most corporations would hesitate to allow public employee blogging because the risk of a few disgruntled employees posting negative comments, or worse, releasing company secrets would be far greater than the potential rewards.  By their nature, corporations exist in a structure of top-down control, and blogging does not mesh with that concept. Therefore many companies will prefer to project a single message from their top executives to the public rather than the mixed messages and multiple voices of various employees.

1.) Has the digital music market irreversibly tipped in Apple's favor? 

The case states that by the spring of 2006, Apple held a 70-80% share of the digital music market. By using the sale of iTunes as a loss leader (only 99 cents/song) Apple was able to promote sales of their popular iPod music player and earn margins of approximately 25% of off iPod sales.  Because of Apple's first mover advantage, significant market share, loyal consumer base, and extensive marketing investment it will be difficult for a new player to establish itself as a veritable threat to Apple's market share. However, I would not go so far as to suggest that the digital music market has "irreversibly" tipped in Apple's favor.

First of all, Apple is a hardware and software company. Their core strenth is not music production. What they offer with the iPod or iPhone is user-friendly product with an outrageous marketing budget. The Apple brand is definitely strong, but Apple is aggressive in its parterships with other businesses, which opens the door to friendlier competitors.  For example, Apple refused to cede any control over branding, pricing, or sales distribution channels of the iPhone with AT&T, and even managed to get AT&T to sign a contract donating 10% of all service fees to Apple, in addition to subsidizing the cost of the iPhone 3G. Apple has also frustrated major record labels by refusing to charge higher prices for iTunes, which they feel devalues their product. 

I feel that despite Apple's temporary dominance in digital music sales, their high product pricing and closed, highly controlled business practices leave room for market entry from a competitor with more open, flexible methods of doing business and a consumer-friendlier price point.

Hey class! Some of you may already know that I'm in the GMU MBA Student Association. This spring we have planned a great networking/speaker event for you, so mark your calendars now! Hope you can make it!

http://mason.gmu.edu/~krockman/MBASA/

RSVP at MBARSVP@gmu.edu or use the SOM events calendar:

http://som.gmu.edu/web.asp?eventscalendar&calmon=3&list=n&calyear=2009

1.) What are the strengths and weaknesses of Brightcove's Business Model?

When reading the case it became apparent that Brightcove originated as an online video platform that differentiated itself based on marketplace image- Brightcove projected a more professional and polished platform than competitors which attracted major media companies and professional producers and individuals. Over time, they seem to have lost sight of that strategy and drastically tried to expand their target market into all publisher types very rapidly.  Personal experience tells us that no one can please everyone 100% of the time. If Brightcove attempts to expand its customer reach too far beyond its core strengths and capabilites, the company will risk ceding its strategic competitive avantage and compromise its revenue stream competing in an uphill battle with free platform providers such as YouTube.

Since the writing of the Electronic Arts case, the Sony Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii have been released and both have online gaming capabilities. What's your assessment of the current online gaming market?

As far as I can tell, there are 3 major Console manufacturers (and their respective platforms) in the online gaming market right now:

Sony (PlayStation 3)

Microsoft (Xbox 360)

Nintendo (Wii)

It seems like the big 3 are all targeting somewhat different users. From what my friends tell me, the Xbox is most commonly used for online gaming, as it has a strong fan base from its popular Halo and Halo Wars games and great graphics for its medium price-point, making it accessible to a broader range of users.

The more recently released PlayStation 3 by Sony seems to be targeting the serious game lover/techie and luring them with cutting-edge graphics and additional technology capabilities such as Blu-Ray.

Finally, we have the Wii. This seems like the "affordable family fun" option, with familiar Ninendo games like the Mario series of games, with a larger kid-focus.   I think the Wii is not really appealing to the online gaming enthusiasts since it currently doesn't compare with Sony or Microsoft products on graphics technology or features. But there is certaintly potential for the development of graphics that add to the appeal of this interactive gaming controller.

Disclaimer/Confession: I'm not into online gaming. I'm actually not too interested in video games at all...So please pardon the limited viewpoint of a non-user peering into the online gaming market ;)